Sorore stood there, eying the black cube by Efrain’s side carefully. When the metal.. the stone? Whatever it was, had dissolved into liquid, something had been snapped to attention within her.
She wanted to get her hands on it, to understand how it worked, and why it worked, magical or not. Lillian had tried to dissuade her, but Sorore just knew she was what was needed to work that metal. That insistence didn’t stop Lillian from trailing her, who was now leaning against the church wall, glowering.
Efrain scrounged around on the side of the pit forge, finding two misshapen nails with a ‘ha!’. He presented them to Sorore, who took them without really thinking about it. Then he raised his hand in the air and began to speak.
“A proper introduction to magic would take weeks, so we’re going to expedite,” he said.
The other workers were visibly nervous at so much mention of magic, but kept their eyes on their work.
“Properties one and two: magic is like heat,” he said, placing his fingers to the edge of each nail, “Magic can well up in an object, and magic can flow between objects and within them.”
One of the nails began to glow a dull red where his finger touched it, the redness spread over the nail.
“Touch them together,” he said. She did so, and watched as the other nail began to hit up. The lesson was simple enough.
“Properties three,” he said, gesturing to the fading glow, “magic will disperse back into the environment if it is not otherwise. Four, certain materials will each have their own resistance to magic, and if that limit is exceeded…”
He removed a loose hair from the shoulder of her robe with a quick snap.
“You flood it. You flood the material, and this happens.”
The hair suddenly glowed, and with a crack, disintegrated into ash.
“Most metal is notoriously difficult to work with, magically speaking. You have to pump in magic,to nearly its flooding point before it becomes malleable. As you can imagine, flooding a bar of iron would be an ill-advised exercise.”
At this Lillian stepped forward - perhaps she thought that Efrain was about to make Sorore do something of that nature.
“But!” he said, drawing up the cube, “very occasionally, rarely rather, you encounter materials that have little or no magical resistance.”
“What is it?” she said, looking longingly up at the surface.
“To be entirely honest, young miss, I’m not actually sure, this isn’t magic known to me,” he said, “I suspect that- Well, it’s not relevant to what we have to do. Now, repeat the four qualities I just taught you.”
Sorore dutifully repeated them, earning herself a nod.
“Now, there are two other qualities that you have to understand,” he said, placing the cube down, “magic will take the easiest path. In most cases, that also means the shortest. In addition, magic likes to be at ambient concentration.”
He held up his hands, palm apart from palm, and continued:
“So, if I made an area of low concentration in one hand, and one of high concentration in the other, what do you think would happen?”
Sorore held her chin in her hands, and thought for one moment about the principles he’d just explained.
“Well, if it gathers in one place, it’ll flow outward, right?” she said, “from high to low.”
Something bright and bluish lanced between his hands with a loud crack! Soroe drew back from the display in shock. Soon enough, however, she was leaning in with even greater interest. That was a sight she’d seen before, raging in the narrow bay that Erratz looked out upon.
“Just so,” said Efrain.
“You made lightning,” she whispered.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she reproached herself for the reverence in her voice. It was not proper, least not for a ma- This time, it was a conscious effort to squash that sullen voice back into the dark.
“How?” she said, holding out her own hands, willing that she’d see sparks suddenly spring into life in front of her.
Efrain chuckled as he looked around - the labourers were watching in wrapt silence.
“I taught you only half the principles,” he said, “the other half, as I’ve no doubt you’ve stumbled upon by now, is how to generate magic. Does anyone have a bowl or cup?”
He had to repeat the question before one of the surrounding men quickly retrieved a small, wooden bowl. Efrain dipped it into a quenching trough, and held it up in both hands. It reminded Sorore of when a member of the clergy blessed a chalice.
“Memory, Intent, and Emotion,” he said, “the goal, the way to get there, and the power to drive the process. I remember the heat and the humidity of steam baths. I see the magic flowing, from my hands into the water, to bring it to life. I am calm, but my desire is strong.”
The flow of the words was nearly a chant, bringing to mind scripture spoken in church. Sorore raised her own hands almost without realising it, mimicking the black clad figure. Within moments, the water began to steam, and Efrain placed it within Sorore’s hands.
“It’s warm,” she said.
“Indeed,” Efrain said, as he sat back down on the coal pit’s lip, “obviously the applications of magic are far more potent and varied than heating soup.”
One of the men laughed at that, though it quickly died in the focused silence.
“However, it's rarely a good idea to draw on your own stores for anything… big,” he said, “it’s possible to draw from the environment. Some places and materials are naturally saturated in magic. Or alternatively-”
He gestured vaguely in the direction of the church, the audience’s heads following his hands.
“You can seek out those with more capacity, and either steal or persuade them to share. My partner is an example of that. The cat,” he clarified hurriedly, “she gives me power to weave spells.”
“In exchange for what?” grumbled Lillian.
Efrain regarded her in silence, Lillian greeting the eyeless stare with set jaw. There wasn’t too much separating him from some of the more stuffy priests in Angorrah. Save for the uniform, and the subject matter, and the magic, and... well, quite a few things really.
“A gift, paladin,” he said, “not given in exchange for tribute. I’m sure all of you have heard tales of sorcerers making bargains with dark creatures of the forests, using… baby’s blood, or something similar.”
There was an awkward silence, with the reddening of more than a few faces. Efrain sighed and leaned back on the lip, looking upwards.
“You can thank your church for that one, paladin,” he said.
“Is it not true?” said Lillian.
“Mages killing innocents? Absolutely. But does a murder weapon incriminate its smith as a matter of course? In that vein, how exactly was the Angorrah empire established? What exactly did Stroe ‘water the fields’ with to secure his reign? Certainly the church did not idly stand by and tacitly endorse him?”
Lillian raised a hand, only for her hand to fall to her side.
“There have been mages who, either reckless or malevolent, have done stupid or evil things. Are there ‘spirits in the forest’ who would offer a pact with that in mind? A few. Why would they have used…baby’s blood, for example?”
He cast around the group, his mask inscrutable - none of the men could even hold his stare.
“Anyone?” he said, “anyone want to hazard a guess?”
“Because they- Because…” said one man, “because it has power?”
Efrain said nothing, but got up and approached the man, pointing at a nearby dagger to be polished.
“Prove it to me, then, my good man,” he said, “go on, just a little prick of the finger, and I will show you what I can do with blood.”
The man hesitantly raised the dagger, with many of his fellows looking on in astonishment. Perhaps they thought that he was under a spell, to do such a mad thing. Sorore half thought so herself, and Lillian was beginning to step forward, clearly thinking that this had all gone quite far enough.
“Come now, man,” he said, “don’t drive it into your palm. Just a drop, not a flood.”
Somewhat reassured, the man winced as he pricked his finger and offered it up for Efrain’s inspection. Gingerly, a black glove wrapped around and a bead of red blood rolled down the cloth. The mage retreated back to his place and sat down, holding up the droplet like a ladybug. As they watched, it rose into the air just above his fingers, and began to loop around in an endless circle.
“And now guess what I can do with this,” he said, his voice dropping low.
That voice told Sorore that something ‘big’ was about to happen, some new lesson that needed gravitas to drive it home, something that would shock and-
“Nothing,” he said, tossing the drop into the coals.
Its small hiss was audible in the stunned silence, people squinting as if trying to see if some trick was being played on them.
“Blood magic is one of the most inefficient wastes of time ever devised,” Efrain said, “It’s like trying to drive a plough with only your feet facing backwards, while perfectly good cattle look on from the pasture.”
He flicked his wrists to dislodge any remaining flecks of blood.
“But! That didn’t stop people from trying to make it work. There have been at least two cultures I know of that tried to do mass sacrifice of various things. They both started with sheep and pigs, one abandoned the project there, the other went onto cattle, and then…”
Sorore felt a chill go through her, realising that she might not want to know the continuation of that sentence.
“And then men,” he finished, “they’d gather captives from war and slaves from their households, cut their throats, and throw them into a pit. Anyone want to guess how that turned out?”
“Was it a failure?” ventured one of the men.
“Correct!” Efrain said, “the priests would chant their long lines, asking for rain, or for gods’ graces or riches for their cities. Sometimes they would get them, sometimes not, and I can tell you the sacrifices had nothing to do with it.Eventually, the tribes they took captives from banded together and destroyed them.”
He seemed to find that funny - Sorore and judging by the looks, the labourers, didn’t.
“The point is,” he said, waving his hands in the air, “they wasted a lot of time and lives on nothing. A cursory understanding of magic could tell you that it was doomed from the start. Magic then, is like a sword, most people can throw one around and perhaps be a threat. But in the hands of someone who understands a blade? Who has the knowledge and experience to wield it?”
He nodded towards Lillian as he raised a finger, which popped alight with a pale flame.
“This,” he said, as petals of orange and yellow folded outwards from his finger tip, settling into a fiery rose.
Just as quickly, he extinguished it, the flames vanishing behind the black cloth of his glove.
“So,” he continued, “consider that your introduction to magic. Go and have a small break, I need to stock up on some things. Be back here… oh, give me ten minutes.”
With that, he got up, and without so much as a further word, walked off. Sorore sat on the makeshift seat, staring at the glowing embers. It was so… banal. She hadn’t been sure what she expected, but this was just the same as any craft she’d learned. Perhaps that was the point - magic wasn’t some unknowable mystery, but an art.
“Are you done here, then?” Lillian said, one eyebrow raised.
“I don’t think so,” Sorore said, “he said he’d be back here in a matter of minutes.”
“I don’t think it matters what he said,” the paladin said, crossing her arms.
Sorore could’ve remarked that this was rather unkind, and a further one regarding Lillian’s motivations for continued disbelief. That however, would also be unkind, so she kept her head straight ahead, her mouth fixed into a thin line. Instead, she saw that the cube had been left on the lip of the ember pit.
The red light from below flowed over the smooth surface, giving the metal the appearance of subtle motion. The overall character was similar to that of a beating heart, Sorore thought. Tapping her fingers on her jaw, she squinted into the beating heart of that dark cube.
“The metal’s alive,” she murmured.
“I’m sorry my lady?” said Lillian who had returned to restraining sulking against the line of the church.
“No, nothing,” she said, trying to place where exactly the impression had come from.
Maybe, maybe if she just touched it, she would glean its story, just as she had from the stone below the church. Sorore looked around at the labourers, who’d largely returned back to their duties, although some snuck looks. She quietly got up, brushed off the pleats of her robe, and walked towards the ember pit.
The metal was cold to the touch, apparently unaffected by the hot coals below. She would’ve thought it nearly impossible to lift with one hand, but the strain in her fingers was minimal as she raised it to her eye. The surface was perfectly smooth, with corners almost sharp enough to cut her if she did not handle it with utmost delicacy.
There was something very beautiful about the way the emberglow played across the cube. Something reminiscent of sunlight on water, or reflected off the mists that rolled in from the wide sea. She got the distinct feeling that the cube liked the fire, almost as if it felt at home near the forge. It had to have been made somewhere. Perhaps it remembered the moment of its creation, in some fantastical smithy far, far away.
“Ah, already?” came a voice from behind her, “I thought you might.”
Efrain was back, carrying some thin rope, several pieces of cloth, and a bucket. All in all, the grim outfit with the peasant accessories proved an awkward combination. Unfortunately any comedy Sorore could’ve extracted was well eclipsed by her embarrassment. She had been daydreaming, again, and out here there was no switch to remind her to focus.
She hurriedly placed the cube down, albeit not so hurriedly that she knocked it into the fire, and went back to her seat. She hoped that most of the onlooking workers didn’t pay much mind to how red her face was. Efrain spent a few moments arranging his various aids to his satisfaction before turning and staring past Sorore.
Quickly bemused by his lack of speech, she turned around to see if there was something behind her. Seeing nothing, she tilted her head and frowned at the sitting mage. Still nothing, in fact he seemed to have frozen in place, not so much as a twitch.
“Hello?” she said, “what’s next?”
“I did say ten minutes,” chuckled Efrain as he picked up a line, and wrapped it lightly around his hands.
He took a few pieces of cloth, and strung them on the line so that they hung down.
“So then, how do we get you to shape that metal, through magic alone?” he said.
“We’re already getting to that?” she said, shocked.
“Believe me, if we had the time, we wouldn’t. But I need to get past the door, and I can’t pull the shape out of your head. Well…” he said, “Anyways, you need to do it, and here’s how.”
He pulled the line taught, flexing the various pieces of cloth as he did so.
“Moving things using magic means two things practically. You set up a ‘flow’, which is a direction you want a thing to go. Think of this rope as the flow, and the cloth as the material being moved.”
Sorore nodded as he began to shake the rope, sending some of the cloth from one hand to another, and some onto the ground.
“Not my best model,” he said with a note of sheepishness, “But the underlying point. You can’t just set up a flow outside of a material, it has to flow through a material as well.”
He shifted out the bucket, half filled with water, and gestured for her to come closer.
“Now, the problem with this, is that the force of gravity acts upon the body. At least, in most cases. If I was to turn this bucket upside down, what would happen?”
“It would fall out,” said Sorore, not sure if the question was a trick.
Efrain heaved the bucket up into the air, where it fell back down to earth with a thud, but no slosh of displaced water. Sorore realised with a gasp that the water hung in a small sphere above them. Efrain chuckled as it broke down into streams and gathered just above his outstretched hand.
“You are right, of course. The magic I use counteracts gravity,” he said, “the moment I let it go...”
Most of the water fell to the ground, unpinned from the air, to splatter across the dirt.
“You get the general idea. Now, as I mentioned however, there are some special materials where, well, gravity does affect it, but not as much as others.”
He picked up the cube, and it melted into a sphere, then began to spill and spin in looping arcs.
“This would be far more difficult to do with water,” he continued dryly, as it settled back into a cube, “but it allows you to shape it with more finesse.”
Sorore said nothing, but reached for the cubes with both hands. She knew, with a religious conviction, she could do it. All she would need would be to touch the metal, and then-
“Not so fast,” he said, withdrawing it from reach, “let’s not go all the way quite yet.”
Setting it down on the lip of the forge pit, he refilled the bucket from the quenching trough.
“Now, here’s going to happen,” he said, sitting down in front of her, “you are going to use magic to try and raise a droplet into the air. Large, small, imperfectly shaped, it doesn’t matter. I just want you to prove you can do it.”
Sorore reached for the bucket and stared into the shallow water, and realised that, although this seemed to all make sense, she had no idea where to start. Efrain walked around behind her, and laid a hand on her shoulder.
“Close your eyes,” he said, “just like with stone. Water is only so much different in the grand scheme of things.”
She did so, sliding into darkness as she gripped the bucket harder.
So, her whole world was nothing but the gentle hand on her shoulder, the roughness of the wood, and the uncomfortable knowledge that everyone in the forge would be staring at her. She felt a flush begin to creep up her neck as she tried not to fidget with the bucket in her lap. It was all a mistake, wasn’t it, allowing him to teach her this fantastical art. Sure it all sounded good in theory, but there were cracks beginning to show in the logic and-
“Stop thinking so much,” Efrain said, much to her further embarrassment, “try to feel it first. Thinking about it comes after. The water is your focus, forget everything else. You can do it, you’ve done it before.”
Sorore, for several agonising seconds, tried, and tried hard. She bypassed her surprise at wanting to do this, to do magic, to realise a new world of discovery. Voices rang out in her head, formal scholars and familiar common folk, warning her of this world. She pushed past them, ignoring the rules that had constrained her life so hard, and tried.
Nothing happened, no new awareness, no new sights or sounds occurred to her, just the darkness. She opened her eyes, glancing down at the bucket, and finding to her grave disappointment that it was still and full.
“Ah, well,” Efrain said with infuriating casualness, “I didn’t expect you to do it on your first try.”
She slammed her lids shut, for she hated that sound more than anything, that half-contemptuous pity and condescension. She would do this, and she would excel, and- She could feel something, something reaching out to her from the dark., With a desperate surge, she reached for it, finding…
There were gasps all around her, and Efrain’s hand seemed to lift away gently.
The bucket was shaking, rubbing rough against her hand, and then there was a crack!
Sorore stood there, eying the black cube by Efrain’s side carefully. When the metal.. the stone? Whatever it was, had dissolved into liquid, something had been snapped to attention within her.
She wanted to get her hands on it, to understand how it worked, and why it worked, magical or not. Lillian had tried to dissuade her, but Sorore just knew she was what was needed to work that metal. That insistence didn’t stop Lillian from trailing her, who was now leaning against the church wall, glowering.
Efrain scrounged around on the side of the pit forge, finding two misshapen nails with a ‘ha!’. He presented them to Sorore, who took them without really thinking about it. Then he raised his hand in the air and began to speak.
“A proper introduction to magic would take weeks, so we’re going to expedite,” he said.
The other workers were visibly nervous at so much mention of magic, but kept their eyes on their work.
“Properties one and two: magic is like heat,” he said, placing his fingers to the edge of each nail, “Magic can well up in an object, and magic can flow between objects and within them.”
One of the nails began to glow a dull red where his finger touched it, the redness spread over the nail.
“Touch them together,” he said. She did so, and watched as the other nail began to hit up. The lesson was simple enough.
“Properties three,” he said, gesturing to the fading glow, “magic will disperse back into the environment if it is not otherwise. Four, certain materials will each have their own resistance to magic, and if that limit is exceeded…”
He removed a loose hair from the shoulder of her robe with a quick snap.
“You flood it. You flood the material, and this happens.”
The hair suddenly glowed, and with a crack, disintegrated into ash.
“Most metal is notoriously difficult to work with, magically speaking. You have to pump in magic,to nearly its flooding point before it becomes malleable. As you can imagine, flooding a bar of iron would be an ill-advised exercise.”
At this Lillian stepped forward - perhaps she thought that Efrain was about to make Sorore do something of that nature.
“But!” he said, drawing up the cube, “very occasionally, rarely rather, you encounter materials that have little or no magical resistance.”
“What is it?” she said, looking longingly up at the surface.
“To be entirely honest, young miss, I’m not actually sure, this isn’t magic known to me,” he said, “I suspect that- Well, it’s not relevant to what we have to do. Now, repeat the four qualities I just taught you.”
Sorore dutifully repeated them, earning herself a nod.
“Now, there are two other qualities that you have to understand,” he said, placing the cube down, “magic will take the easiest path. In most cases, that also means the shortest. In addition, magic likes to be at ambient concentration.”
He held up his hands, palm apart from palm, and continued:
“So, if I made an area of low concentration in one hand, and one of high concentration in the other, what do you think would happen?”
Sorore held her chin in her hands, and thought for one moment about the principles he’d just explained.
“Well, if it gathers in one place, it’ll flow outward, right?” she said, “from high to low.”
Something bright and bluish lanced between his hands with a loud crack! Soroe drew back from the display in shock. Soon enough, however, she was leaning in with even greater interest. That was a sight she’d seen before, raging in the narrow bay that Erratz looked out upon.
“Just so,” said Efrain.
“You made lightning,” she whispered.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she reproached herself for the reverence in her voice. It was not proper, least not for a ma- This time, it was a conscious effort to squash that sullen voice back into the dark.
“How?” she said, holding out her own hands, willing that she’d see sparks suddenly spring into life in front of her.
Efrain chuckled as he looked around - the labourers were watching in wrapt silence.
“I taught you only half the principles,” he said, “the other half, as I’ve no doubt you’ve stumbled upon by now, is how to generate magic. Does anyone have a bowl or cup?”
He had to repeat the question before one of the surrounding men quickly retrieved a small, wooden bowl. Efrain dipped it into a quenching trough, and held it up in both hands. It reminded Sorore of when a member of the clergy blessed a chalice.
“Memory, Intent, and Emotion,” he said, “the goal, the way to get there, and the power to drive the process. I remember the heat and the humidity of steam baths. I see the magic flowing, from my hands into the water, to bring it to life. I am calm, but my desire is strong.”
The flow of the words was nearly a chant, bringing to mind scripture spoken in church. Sorore raised her own hands almost without realising it, mimicking the black clad figure. Within moments, the water began to steam, and Efrain placed it within Sorore’s hands.
“It’s warm,” she said.
“Indeed,” Efrain said, as he sat back down on the coal pit’s lip, “obviously the applications of magic are far more potent and varied than heating soup.”
One of the men laughed at that, though it quickly died in the focused silence.
“However, it's rarely a good idea to draw on your own stores for anything… big,” he said, “it’s possible to draw from the environment. Some places and materials are naturally saturated in magic. Or alternatively-”
He gestured vaguely in the direction of the church, the audience’s heads following his hands.
“You can seek out those with more capacity, and either steal or persuade them to share. My partner is an example of that. The cat,” he clarified hurriedly, “she gives me power to weave spells.”
“In exchange for what?” grumbled Lillian.
Efrain regarded her in silence, Lillian greeting the eyeless stare with set jaw. There wasn’t too much separating him from some of the more stuffy priests in Angorrah. Save for the uniform, and the subject matter, and the magic, and... well, quite a few things really.
“A gift, paladin,” he said, “not given in exchange for tribute. I’m sure all of you have heard tales of sorcerers making bargains with dark creatures of the forests, using… baby’s blood, or something similar.”
There was an awkward silence, with the reddening of more than a few faces. Efrain sighed and leaned back on the lip, looking upwards.
“You can thank your church for that one, paladin,” he said.
“Is it not true?” said Lillian.
“Mages killing innocents? Absolutely. But does a murder weapon incriminate its smith as a matter of course? In that vein, how exactly was the Angorrah empire established? What exactly did Stroe ‘water the fields’ with to secure his reign? Certainly the church did not idly stand by and tacitly endorse him?”
Lillian raised a hand, only for her hand to fall to her side.
“There have been mages who, either reckless or malevolent, have done stupid or evil things. Are there ‘spirits in the forest’ who would offer a pact with that in mind? A few. Why would they have used…baby’s blood, for example?”
He cast around the group, his mask inscrutable - none of the men could even hold his stare.
“Anyone?” he said, “anyone want to hazard a guess?”
“Because they- Because…” said one man, “because it has power?”
Efrain said nothing, but got up and approached the man, pointing at a nearby dagger to be polished.
“Prove it to me, then, my good man,” he said, “go on, just a little prick of the finger, and I will show you what I can do with blood.”
The man hesitantly raised the dagger, with many of his fellows looking on in astonishment. Perhaps they thought that he was under a spell, to do such a mad thing. Sorore half thought so herself, and Lillian was beginning to step forward, clearly thinking that this had all gone quite far enough.
“Come now, man,” he said, “don’t drive it into your palm. Just a drop, not a flood.”
Somewhat reassured, the man winced as he pricked his finger and offered it up for Efrain’s inspection. Gingerly, a black glove wrapped around and a bead of red blood rolled down the cloth. The mage retreated back to his place and sat down, holding up the droplet like a ladybug. As they watched, it rose into the air just above his fingers, and began to loop around in an endless circle.
“And now guess what I can do with this,” he said, his voice dropping low.
That voice told Sorore that something ‘big’ was about to happen, some new lesson that needed gravitas to drive it home, something that would shock and-
“Nothing,” he said, tossing the drop into the coals.
Its small hiss was audible in the stunned silence, people squinting as if trying to see if some trick was being played on them.
“Blood magic is one of the most inefficient wastes of time ever devised,” Efrain said, “It’s like trying to drive a plough with only your feet facing backwards, while perfectly good cattle look on from the pasture.”
He flicked his wrists to dislodge any remaining flecks of blood.
“But! That didn’t stop people from trying to make it work. There have been at least two cultures I know of that tried to do mass sacrifice of various things. They both started with sheep and pigs, one abandoned the project there, the other went onto cattle, and then…”
Sorore felt a chill go through her, realising that she might not want to know the continuation of that sentence.
“And then men,” he finished, “they’d gather captives from war and slaves from their households, cut their throats, and throw them into a pit. Anyone want to guess how that turned out?”
“Was it a failure?” ventured one of the men.
“Correct!” Efrain said, “the priests would chant their long lines, asking for rain, or for gods’ graces or riches for their cities. Sometimes they would get them, sometimes not, and I can tell you the sacrifices had nothing to do with it.Eventually, the tribes they took captives from banded together and destroyed them.”
He seemed to find that funny - Sorore and judging by the looks, the labourers, didn’t.
“The point is,” he said, waving his hands in the air, “they wasted a lot of time and lives on nothing. A cursory understanding of magic could tell you that it was doomed from the start. Magic then, is like a sword, most people can throw one around and perhaps be a threat. But in the hands of someone who understands a blade? Who has the knowledge and experience to wield it?”
He nodded towards Lillian as he raised a finger, which popped alight with a pale flame.
“This,” he said, as petals of orange and yellow folded outwards from his finger tip, settling into a fiery rose.
Just as quickly, he extinguished it, the flames vanishing behind the black cloth of his glove.
“So,” he continued, “consider that your introduction to magic. Go and have a small break, I need to stock up on some things. Be back here… oh, give me ten minutes.”
With that, he got up, and without so much as a further word, walked off. Sorore sat on the makeshift seat, staring at the glowing embers. It was so… banal. She hadn’t been sure what she expected, but this was just the same as any craft she’d learned. Perhaps that was the point - magic wasn’t some unknowable mystery, but an art.
“Are you done here, then?” Lillian said, one eyebrow raised.
“I don’t think so,” Sorore said, “he said he’d be back here in a matter of minutes.”
“I don’t think it matters what he said,” the paladin said, crossing her arms.
Sorore could’ve remarked that this was rather unkind, and a further one regarding Lillian’s motivations for continued disbelief. That however, would also be unkind, so she kept her head straight ahead, her mouth fixed into a thin line. Instead, she saw that the cube had been left on the lip of the ember pit.
The red light from below flowed over the smooth surface, giving the metal the appearance of subtle motion. The overall character was similar to that of a beating heart, Sorore thought. Tapping her fingers on her jaw, she squinted into the beating heart of that dark cube.
“The metal’s alive,” she murmured.
“I’m sorry my lady?” said Lillian who had returned to restraining sulking against the line of the church.
“No, nothing,” she said, trying to place where exactly the impression had come from.
Maybe, maybe if she just touched it, she would glean its story, just as she had from the stone below the church. Sorore looked around at the labourers, who’d largely returned back to their duties, although some snuck looks. She quietly got up, brushed off the pleats of her robe, and walked towards the ember pit.
The metal was cold to the touch, apparently unaffected by the hot coals below. She would’ve thought it nearly impossible to lift with one hand, but the strain in her fingers was minimal as she raised it to her eye. The surface was perfectly smooth, with corners almost sharp enough to cut her if she did not handle it with utmost delicacy.
There was something very beautiful about the way the emberglow played across the cube. Something reminiscent of sunlight on water, or reflected off the mists that rolled in from the wide sea. She got the distinct feeling that the cube liked the fire, almost as if it felt at home near the forge. It had to have been made somewhere. Perhaps it remembered the moment of its creation, in some fantastical smithy far, far away.
“Ah, already?” came a voice from behind her, “I thought you might.”
Efrain was back, carrying some thin rope, several pieces of cloth, and a bucket. All in all, the grim outfit with the peasant accessories proved an awkward combination. Unfortunately any comedy Sorore could’ve extracted was well eclipsed by her embarrassment. She had been daydreaming, again, and out here there was no switch to remind her to focus.
She hurriedly placed the cube down, albeit not so hurriedly that she knocked it into the fire, and went back to her seat. She hoped that most of the onlooking workers didn’t pay much mind to how red her face was. Efrain spent a few moments arranging his various aids to his satisfaction before turning and staring past Sorore.
Quickly bemused by his lack of speech, she turned around to see if there was something behind her. Seeing nothing, she tilted her head and frowned at the sitting mage. Still nothing, in fact he seemed to have frozen in place, not so much as a twitch.
“Hello?” she said, “what’s next?”
“I did say ten minutes,” chuckled Efrain as he picked up a line, and wrapped it lightly around his hands.
He took a few pieces of cloth, and strung them on the line so that they hung down.
“So then, how do we get you to shape that metal, through magic alone?” he said.
“We’re already getting to that?” she said, shocked.
“Believe me, if we had the time, we wouldn’t. But I need to get past the door, and I can’t pull the shape out of your head. Well…” he said, “Anyways, you need to do it, and here’s how.”
He pulled the line taught, flexing the various pieces of cloth as he did so.
“Moving things using magic means two things practically. You set up a ‘flow’, which is a direction you want a thing to go. Think of this rope as the flow, and the cloth as the material being moved.”
Sorore nodded as he began to shake the rope, sending some of the cloth from one hand to another, and some onto the ground.
“Not my best model,” he said with a note of sheepishness, “But the underlying point. You can’t just set up a flow outside of a material, it has to flow through a material as well.”
He shifted out the bucket, half filled with water, and gestured for her to come closer.
“Now, the problem with this, is that the force of gravity acts upon the body. At least, in most cases. If I was to turn this bucket upside down, what would happen?”
“It would fall out,” said Sorore, not sure if the question was a trick.
Efrain heaved the bucket up into the air, where it fell back down to earth with a thud, but no slosh of displaced water. Sorore realised with a gasp that the water hung in a small sphere above them. Efrain chuckled as it broke down into streams and gathered just above his outstretched hand.
“You are right, of course. The magic I use counteracts gravity,” he said, “the moment I let it go...”
Most of the water fell to the ground, unpinned from the air, to splatter across the dirt.
“You get the general idea. Now, as I mentioned however, there are some special materials where, well, gravity does affect it, but not as much as others.”
He picked up the cube, and it melted into a sphere, then began to spill and spin in looping arcs.
“This would be far more difficult to do with water,” he continued dryly, as it settled back into a cube, “but it allows you to shape it with more finesse.”
Sorore said nothing, but reached for the cubes with both hands. She knew, with a religious conviction, she could do it. All she would need would be to touch the metal, and then-
“Not so fast,” he said, withdrawing it from reach, “let’s not go all the way quite yet.”
Setting it down on the lip of the forge pit, he refilled the bucket from the quenching trough.
“Now, here’s going to happen,” he said, sitting down in front of her, “you are going to use magic to try and raise a droplet into the air. Large, small, imperfectly shaped, it doesn’t matter. I just want you to prove you can do it.”
Sorore reached for the bucket and stared into the shallow water, and realised that, although this seemed to all make sense, she had no idea where to start. Efrain walked around behind her, and laid a hand on her shoulder.
“Close your eyes,” he said, “just like with stone. Water is only so much different in the grand scheme of things.”
She did so, sliding into darkness as she gripped the bucket harder.
So, her whole world was nothing but the gentle hand on her shoulder, the roughness of the wood, and the uncomfortable knowledge that everyone in the forge would be staring at her. She felt a flush begin to creep up her neck as she tried not to fidget with the bucket in her lap. It was all a mistake, wasn’t it, allowing him to teach her this fantastical art. Sure it all sounded good in theory, but there were cracks beginning to show in the logic and-
“Stop thinking so much,” Efrain said, much to her further embarrassment, “try to feel it first. Thinking about it comes after. The water is your focus, forget everything else. You can do it, you’ve done it before.”
Sorore, for several agonising seconds, tried, and tried hard. She bypassed her surprise at wanting to do this, to do magic, to realise a new world of discovery. Voices rang out in her head, formal scholars and familiar common folk, warning her of this world. She pushed past them, ignoring the rules that had constrained her life so hard, and tried.
Nothing happened, no new awareness, no new sights or sounds occurred to her, just the darkness. She opened her eyes, glancing down at the bucket, and finding to her grave disappointment that it was still and full.
“Ah, well,” Efrain said with infuriating casualness, “I didn’t expect you to do it on your first try.”
She slammed her lids shut, for she hated that sound more than anything, that half-contemptuous pity and condescension. She would do this, and she would excel, and- She could feel something, something reaching out to her from the dark., With a desperate surge, she reached for it, finding…
There were gasps all around her, and Efrain’s hand seemed to lift away gently.
The bucket was shaking, rubbing rough against her hand, and then there was a crack!
