Berla’s expression when I showed her my creation was golden. The thing looked like absolutely nothing. As if I had just tied a string around a crudely cut stick. With some imagination one might think it a trinket that a child crafted, but there was naturally a little more to it. It surely didn’t help that the script was on its currently out of view bottom side though.
“Yea, it doesn’t look impressive, but it was a short night, and it’s just a prototype,” I said with a chuckle, “I’ll show you what it is, but we should wake Ria first.”
“Alright,” she said, raising an eyebrow.
Adding a little bit of curiosity to the mix of surprise and confusion on her face, Berla pried her eyes away from me and glanced at Riala, lying by her side.
Shaking the girl gently, she said, “Hey, Riala.”
“Ngh...”
“Come on, wake up.”
“Not yet...” came a slurred response.
It was a rare sight, her usually being an early riser, but if you tried to wake her from deep sleep, she acted just like Tomar did in the morning.
Berla threw a cursory look to Hayla, getting read to start work on the other side of the room, before elaborating. “Tomar wants to show us something. I suspect it’s a new script.”
Heh. Got me.
“Huh? Script?” Upon hearing what this was about, she raised her head slightly and looked at us through sleepy eyes. When her gaze fell on my hand, she cocked her head. “Is that a necklace?”
“Not quite,” I laughed. “Wait a second.”
I layed the item on the table and walked away to get writing utensils from the desk. Meanwhile, the two inspected the object with curiosity. When I turned back around, I saw Riala crawl over Berla to get a better view.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. Her instincts were spot on. When she flipped it over, she quickly found the script I had edged into the wood. Only once she had proof that this was worth her while, she sat up properly and examined her findings. A surprised gasp escaped her lips, seeing the small characters. “The script is so tiny!”
The centerpiece’s surface was no larger than a pack of cigarettes and carving the entire script onto this cramped space took longer than coming up with the script itself.
“Hmhm, I had to fit it onto something small, because it might get in the way otherwise. And for one more reason... Any ideas what it does yet?” I asked.
“No...” she said. “It looks like it just shoots out mana.”
“It does. So far so good,” I confirmed. “What else?”
As I got down on one knee in front of Berla, it briefly struck me that this gesture could be misunderstood, but based on her expression not changing at all, this presumably didn’t have the same meaning in this world.
“Hm... It’s two mana streams. Going in different directions.”
“Very good,” I praised. “I think the math might be a little too difficult for you yet, so you’ll probably not get further.”
The most annoying part of scripting for me was calculating positions and directions in 3D space without any visual aids or calculators. Someone should’ve really made that easier. But at the time, they were probably very proud of the flexibility this system offered. It really was a bit much for a child who was just learning basic arithmetic though.
“Alright,” I said. “I need to get to your leg. May I?”
I looked up at Berla, and she seemed to finally have an inkling of what I was trying to do here. Staring back at me goggle-eyed, she quickly nodded. “Yes.”
I undid the knot around her cut-off pants leg, revealing the remains of her limb. Separated close to the knee, there was enough left that she didn’t have much trouble sitting. However, without the hinge the knee provided, any kind of prosthetic we could build here would essentially just turn her into a pirate. Not to mention that a medieval-style pegleg would be neither comfortable nor viable for a Fighter, who expected to be able to move around quickly and reliably. I had high hopes for my little contraption though.
“Come here,” I said, gesturing for Riala to take a closer look. She immediately hopped off the couch to stand at my side as I started drawing a script onto Berla’s skin.
“That’s... a snap activation? But she can’t use scripts,” Riala pondered.
“No, but it will still work. Though it’s not looking for a snap.”
“No?”
“This might be too difficult as well,” I said with a wry smile.
Can’t expect her to understand nerves and muscles. Math... Biology... Physics... All the most exciting school subjects come into play for magic. Someone should’ve told me that when I was younger.
“Let’s see... Picture the snap activation like a closed door. The script defines what is supposed to happen, the mana gathers, but until the door opens, nothing escapes your body. What opens the door is a key in the form of a series of signals, traveling from your brain to your hand, telling it to move in a specific way. The script doesn’t proceed until the right sequence comes in. The snap itself is technically irrelevant, it’s the way you move your hand that is important, and you can check for other signals as well.”
“Uhu...” Based on her intonation, Riala didn’t quite get what this was supposed to do yet.
I finished the script, checked it over, and proceeded to tie the piece of wood around Berla’s leg, script against script, while continuing my explanation to my pupil.
“Now to the other concept at play here. Two mana streams going in different directions. But not just any directions—opposite ones. If you use your hand to apply force against something, you push it away. But what happens if you press your hands against each other with equal amounts of force?”
She thought for a moment and looked at her hands before pressing them together with all her might. “Hngh! Hm... Oh! They don’t move!”
“Correct.”
While I was explaining these ideas to Riala and affixed my invention to Berla’s leg, her smile grew wider and wider, and her breathing quickened. She was notably excited.
As the final step, I put my hand on the piece of wood and concentrated. To Berla, this must’ve felt like I was just pressing down on it, but Riala saw the forces at play.
“Mana?”
“Yea. See, our experiments on infusing objects with mana didn’t fail because it doesn’t work, but because we didn’t use enough of it and didn’t concentrate it well. But if you do...”
Seconds passed, as the mana was pushed out of my body and into the item. More and more was pumped into it, and I gritted my teeth as I passed my pain threshold. At the equivalent of approximately one hundred liters of mana, I finally stopped and removed my hand. What it revealed to me and Riala was not a crude piece of wood, but a glowing-white, rectangular object.
Letting out a relieved sigh, I finished, “Then you get an item imbued with mana that can run scripts.”
“Whoa!” Riala exclaimed. “That’s awesome!”
“Before you get too excited, this uses up more mana than you have, and the larger the item, the more mana you need. You can’t do this yet. Understood?”
“Yea, yea! And what does it do?” she asked eagerly.
“Well if you combine a constant force,” I said while standing up, “and you let it originate in just the right way from the body,” I held my hands out to help Berla, “and you adjust its position and rotation according to the signals coming through the leg...”
Taking a deep breath, she took my hands and I pulled her up. Leaning closer, I whispered, “Try to press your leg against the floor,” and then let go of her hands.
Without the support, she briefly faltered and was on the verge of falling to the side, when she did as instructed and was caught by a force invisible to her. Two streams of mana, aimed at each other, provided a solid surface for her leg to rest against and act as a lower leg. Even with us being able to see it, it looked truly fantastical, and it was only thanks to the peculiar properties of mana that this actually worked as well as it did.
“Wow...” Riala said under her breath.
Berla looked back and forth between me and the seemingly empty air under her leg in total disbelief. She carefully corrected her posture and swallowed hard. It was the first time in months that she stood upright properly and securely without crutches. Something she must have been absolutely certain she would never experience again in her life.
Testing the capabilities of this little thing, she moved her legs around. Millimeters at a time at first, then faster. She took a few steps, she crouched, and her magical leg did exactly what it was supposed to do. I noticed a few angles being somewhat off, now that I was viewing it from a distance, but these would be simple to fix.
Mesmerized by every step she took, she walked back to us. Her movements were still a tad shaky, but I fully expected her to soon be much more agile with this than with her crutches. All in all, the experiment seemed to be a full success.
My attention was drawn away from Berla by Riala tucking on my sleeve. “That’s three new things!” she said in an accusatory voice. “Why didn’t you teach me this before?”
“Because I didn’t know it,” I laughed. “I understand mana better now... and I didn’t quite grasp the snapping before either.”
Given the right tools, this new walking aid wasn’t actually all that difficult to develop, but you had to understand the tools to make proper use of them. I didn’t know exactly why I had this new knowledge, but I figured it was related to me having implemented it. Unfortunately I still didn’t remember anything about that other life I lived as an architect. However, I could apparently remember at least some of the features I added to the world and how they worked—or so went the theory.
Looking up from Riala, to the desk where Hayla sat, I noticed her having stopped working and instead staring in our direction. Frozen, and her mouth agape, she appeared to be just a little bit surprised about her cousin walking around again.
“Miles...” Berla whispered, and I turned back to her. I just barely saw the tears in her eyes before she jumped into my arms and hugged me tightly. “Thank you...” Overwhelmed, she clung to me and started sobbing, repeating the words several times, getting louder, but less audible with every iteration. “Thank you... Thank you. Thank you!”
It was the happiest I had ever seen a human being. Holding her, I couldn’t help but remember that we had played an indirect part in her losing her leg. I wasn’t Tomar, who had secretly blamed himself until the end, but being the target of her gratitude, I did feel an immense satisfaction at being able to restore her mobility to a much larger degree than before. And I thought that he might have been happy about it as well.
I can’t fix everything... but wherever you are now, maybe this will give you some solace.
Berla’s expression when I showed her my creation was golden. The thing looked like absolutely nothing. As if I had just tied a string around a crudely cut stick. With some imagination one might think it a trinket that a child crafted, but there was naturally a little more to it. It surely didn’t help that the script was on its currently out of view bottom side though.
“Yea, it doesn’t look impressive, but it was a short night, and it’s just a prototype,” I said with a chuckle, “I’ll show you what it is, but we should wake Ria first.”
“Alright,” she said, raising an eyebrow.
Adding a little bit of curiosity to the mix of surprise and confusion on her face, Berla pried her eyes away from me and glanced at Riala, lying by her side.
Shaking the girl gently, she said, “Hey, Riala.”
“Ngh...”
“Come on, wake up.”
“Not yet...” came a slurred response.
It was a rare sight, her usually being an early riser, but if you tried to wake her from deep sleep, she acted just like Tomar did in the morning.
Berla threw a cursory look to Hayla, getting read to start work on the other side of the room, before elaborating. “Tomar wants to show us something. I suspect it’s a new script.”
Heh. Got me.
“Huh? Script?” Upon hearing what this was about, she raised her head slightly and looked at us through sleepy eyes. When her gaze fell on my hand, she cocked her head. “Is that a necklace?”
“Not quite,” I laughed. “Wait a second.”
I layed the item on the table and walked away to get writing utensils from the desk. Meanwhile, the two inspected the object with curiosity. When I turned back around, I saw Riala crawl over Berla to get a better view.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. Her instincts were spot on. When she flipped it over, she quickly found the script I had edged into the wood. Only once she had proof that this was worth her while, she sat up properly and examined her findings. A surprised gasp escaped her lips, seeing the small characters. “The script is so tiny!”
The centerpiece’s surface was no larger than a pack of cigarettes and carving the entire script onto this cramped space took longer than coming up with the script itself.
“Hmhm, I had to fit it onto something small, because it might get in the way otherwise. And for one more reason... Any ideas what it does yet?” I asked.
“No...” she said. “It looks like it just shoots out mana.”
“It does. So far so good,” I confirmed. “What else?”
As I got down on one knee in front of Berla, it briefly struck me that this gesture could be misunderstood, but based on her expression not changing at all, this presumably didn’t have the same meaning in this world.
“Hm... It’s two mana streams. Going in different directions.”
“Very good,” I praised. “I think the math might be a little too difficult for you yet, so you’ll probably not get further.”
The most annoying part of scripting for me was calculating positions and directions in 3D space without any visual aids or calculators. Someone should’ve really made that easier. But at the time, they were probably very proud of the flexibility this system offered. It really was a bit much for a child who was just learning basic arithmetic though.
“Alright,” I said. “I need to get to your leg. May I?”
I looked up at Berla, and she seemed to finally have an inkling of what I was trying to do here. Staring back at me goggle-eyed, she quickly nodded. “Yes.”
I undid the knot around her cut-off pants leg, revealing the remains of her limb. Separated close to the knee, there was enough left that she didn’t have much trouble sitting. However, without the hinge the knee provided, any kind of prosthetic we could build here would essentially just turn her into a pirate. Not to mention that a medieval-style pegleg would be neither comfortable nor viable for a Fighter, who expected to be able to move around quickly and reliably. I had high hopes for my little contraption though.
“Come here,” I said, gesturing for Riala to take a closer look. She immediately hopped off the couch to stand at my side as I started drawing a script onto Berla’s skin.
“That’s... a snap activation? But she can’t use scripts,” Riala pondered.
“No, but it will still work. Though it’s not looking for a snap.”
“No?”
“This might be too difficult as well,” I said with a wry smile.
Can’t expect her to understand nerves and muscles. Math... Biology... Physics... All the most exciting school subjects come into play for magic. Someone should’ve told me that when I was younger.
“Let’s see... Picture the snap activation like a closed door. The script defines what is supposed to happen, the mana gathers, but until the door opens, nothing escapes your body. What opens the door is a key in the form of a series of signals, traveling from your brain to your hand, telling it to move in a specific way. The script doesn’t proceed until the right sequence comes in. The snap itself is technically irrelevant, it’s the way you move your hand that is important, and you can check for other signals as well.”
“Uhu...” Based on her intonation, Riala didn’t quite get what this was supposed to do yet.
I finished the script, checked it over, and proceeded to tie the piece of wood around Berla’s leg, script against script, while continuing my explanation to my pupil.
“Now to the other concept at play here. Two mana streams going in different directions. But not just any directions—opposite ones. If you use your hand to apply force against something, you push it away. But what happens if you press your hands against each other with equal amounts of force?”
She thought for a moment and looked at her hands before pressing them together with all her might. “Hngh! Hm... Oh! They don’t move!”
“Correct.”
While I was explaining these ideas to Riala and affixed my invention to Berla’s leg, her smile grew wider and wider, and her breathing quickened. She was notably excited.
As the final step, I put my hand on the piece of wood and concentrated. To Berla, this must’ve felt like I was just pressing down on it, but Riala saw the forces at play.
“Mana?”
“Yea. See, our experiments on infusing objects with mana didn’t fail because it doesn’t work, but because we didn’t use enough of it and didn’t concentrate it well. But if you do...”
Seconds passed, as the mana was pushed out of my body and into the item. More and more was pumped into it, and I gritted my teeth as I passed my pain threshold. At the equivalent of approximately one hundred liters of mana, I finally stopped and removed my hand. What it revealed to me and Riala was not a crude piece of wood, but a glowing-white, rectangular object.
Letting out a relieved sigh, I finished, “Then you get an item imbued with mana that can run scripts.”
“Whoa!” Riala exclaimed. “That’s awesome!”
“Before you get too excited, this uses up more mana than you have, and the larger the item, the more mana you need. You can’t do this yet. Understood?”
“Yea, yea! And what does it do?” she asked eagerly.
“Well if you combine a constant force,” I said while standing up, “and you let it originate in just the right way from the body,” I held my hands out to help Berla, “and you adjust its position and rotation according to the signals coming through the leg...”
Taking a deep breath, she took my hands and I pulled her up. Leaning closer, I whispered, “Try to press your leg against the floor,” and then let go of her hands.
Without the support, she briefly faltered and was on the verge of falling to the side, when she did as instructed and was caught by a force invisible to her. Two streams of mana, aimed at each other, provided a solid surface for her leg to rest against and act as a lower leg. Even with us being able to see it, it looked truly fantastical, and it was only thanks to the peculiar properties of mana that this actually worked as well as it did.
“Wow...” Riala said under her breath.
Berla looked back and forth between me and the seemingly empty air under her leg in total disbelief. She carefully corrected her posture and swallowed hard. It was the first time in months that she stood upright properly and securely without crutches. Something she must have been absolutely certain she would never experience again in her life.
Testing the capabilities of this little thing, she moved her legs around. Millimeters at a time at first, then faster. She took a few steps, she crouched, and her magical leg did exactly what it was supposed to do. I noticed a few angles being somewhat off, now that I was viewing it from a distance, but these would be simple to fix.
Mesmerized by every step she took, she walked back to us. Her movements were still a tad shaky, but I fully expected her to soon be much more agile with this than with her crutches. All in all, the experiment seemed to be a full success.
My attention was drawn away from Berla by Riala tucking on my sleeve. “That’s three new things!” she said in an accusatory voice. “Why didn’t you teach me this before?”
“Because I didn’t know it,” I laughed. “I understand mana better now... and I didn’t quite grasp the snapping before either.”
Given the right tools, this new walking aid wasn’t actually all that difficult to develop, but you had to understand the tools to make proper use of them. I didn’t know exactly why I had this new knowledge, but I figured it was related to me having implemented it. Unfortunately I still didn’t remember anything about that other life I lived as an architect. However, I could apparently remember at least some of the features I added to the world and how they worked—or so went the theory.
Looking up from Riala, to the desk where Hayla sat, I noticed her having stopped working and instead staring in our direction. Frozen, and her mouth agape, she appeared to be just a little bit surprised about her cousin walking around again.
“Miles...” Berla whispered, and I turned back to her. I just barely saw the tears in her eyes before she jumped into my arms and hugged me tightly. “Thank you...” Overwhelmed, she clung to me and started sobbing, repeating the words several times, getting louder, but less audible with every iteration. “Thank you... Thank you. Thank you!”
It was the happiest I had ever seen a human being. Holding her, I couldn’t help but remember that we had played an indirect part in her losing her leg. I wasn’t Tomar, who had secretly blamed himself until the end, but being the target of her gratitude, I did feel an immense satisfaction at being able to restore her mobility to a much larger degree than before. And I thought that he might have been happy about it as well.
I can’t fix everything... but wherever you are now, maybe this will give you some solace.
