Solo An Adamant Portal

[Alses]

Timestamp: 5th Day of Summer, 514 A.V.
Location: Elysium Hall

OOCApproved by Catastrophe .

It was one of those lazy, golden summer afternoons with which the celestial city of Lhavit was often blessed, where the air was full of the scent of roses and the atmosphere all awash with the busy hum of a million insects, when Altelo Twilight came to call.

It was one of the city's rest days, true, but Alses had always kept a different time to others in the city, and in any case it had been borne in on her that the servants of the city – and there were no others more in servitude to the city than those who governed its glory – also worked to an entirely different schedule. Their rests, by necessity, tended to come on the festival days, and wherever a day or two could be snatched from the jaws of service to Lhavit.

Which wasn't often.

Thus, Altelo Twilight was really quite lucky - if 'lucky' was the word; she'd not have put it past the head of House Twilight to have had someone check when she'd be around the place – to catch her. Even luckier for Alses that it was a nice day and she'd been enjoying a walk in the gardens, and so was able to intercept the man as he walked up the broad pathway that led in lazy, sinuous curves up from the gates to the main house.

Shock and surprise warred with concern as Alses straightened up from her indulgent admiration of a bank of crimson roses and espied the man strolling unconcernedly towards her. Even though she'd only really met Lord Twilight at some remove, usually across the table at a city function or else catching glimpses of him and his entourage now and then at various times and in various places around Lhavit, the man was hard to miss – and even more so as a master aurist.

Alses never forgot an aura. Once touched, forever remembered; it was an ability that could, in the right circumstances, make her better than a bloodhound.

In any case, Alses had taken note of the man for some time; he didn't fit the mould of Lord Twilight very well – at least as far as she'd been able to gather from the other Heads of House in Lhavit. They were confident, bright, shining and surrounded by their servants and family. Altelo Twilight, on the other hand...he seemed cut from an altogether different cloth; quieter and more introspective, a watcher, a subtle outsider even when he was the centre of attention and the kingpin on which his Tower turned.

Intriguing, in other words.

Discreetly, she hurried through the roses towards the pathway, emerging on the final looping curve before the colonnaded flight of steps that led up to her doors, perfectly poised to intercept the lord as he approached.

“Ah, your grace. I was hoping to find you here.” His voice was light and breathy, almost hesitant, not at all like the voice and the bearing that one would normally imagine on meeting one of the most powerful and wealthy people in the whole city.

“I don't think we've met properly before, have we? Not in what you might call a social situation, at any rate,” he added, giving her a short half-bow that she returned on autopilot, the sun shimmering on her crown-of-horns and giving her a radiant corona. “Altelo Twilight, at your service.”

“A pleasure, Lord Twilight,” Alses replied, half-turning to look back at the bulk of Elysium Hall behind them both, warm and inviting in the afternoon sun. “Would you care to go inside, m'lord? We're given to understand the heat's rather oppressive for most people at the moment, and the Hall is cool even at this time.”

Was that a flash of relief dancing through his aura, a thousand shades of melting and mixing purple, deep and dark, cool and still, veiled and cloaked in mystery? Yes, yes it was, Alses decided after a split-tick of deeper investigation, peeling back the layers with a master's unconscious, consummate ease.

“My thanks for your hospitality, your grace,” he murmured, flashing her a split-second smile. “I'd be most grateful for the shade.”


A


The entrance hall was, as advertised, much cooler and more serene than the bright busyness of the gardens outside, an elysium of calm and a bastion of tranquillity. Coolness wafted gently from the marble, and Alses was privately sure she heard Altelo sigh with relief - he certainly mopped his brow with a silken handkerchief.

It was, thankfully, only a short jaunt through the hallways of Elysium Hall to the morning room, bright and airy and full of fine, comfortable furniture, an ideal place in which to receive the Patriarch of House Twilight. Alses courteously waved Altelo into one of the capacious chairs and then sat down opposite him, eyes bright with curiosity.

Altelo's, too, were alight, although with something slightly different. “You have a beautiful home, your grace,” he observed lightly, eyes dancing across cream and gold and richly vibrant fadeong that glowed with all the subtle, woody notes of a dark rainbow. “I commend your taste.”

Despite herself, she flushed with pleasure. She hadn't done any of the labour herself, of course; that had been the preserve of a small army of workers and a team of architects, but she'd given them directions and steered them in terms of the design, her special requirements and all the little incidentals that turned a building from a shell into a home. Some of them hadn't been too happy with the Zeltivan fusion she'd brought into the place, her marked favour for baroque ornamentation and delicate filigree and flourish that had no purpose aside from to be fancifully beautiful...that hadn't sat too well with some of the more traditional artisans who lived and breathed the minimalist, beauty-in-simplicity, but she was happy with it.

And the few visitors she'd had had all remarked how well the house had suited her. It had been built around her, after all; she wasn't trying to fit to its mould. The admittedly sometimes-overwrought magnificence of the place helped to take away from the extraordinary nature of her own appearance; it was easier to deal with an Ethaefal when everything glittered and shone. Possibly, anyway.

“It's not usual for Lhavit, I know, but we like it, my lord. Thank you.”

[Alses]

“It fits you,” he remarked, his gaze once more sweeping like a laser across the grand room. “Which is what it should do, of course.” There was a comfortable pause – or rather, as comfortable a pause as there could be between the master of the Twilight Tower and the Councillor Radiant of Magic and Foreign Affairs.

The silencer was broken by Altelo, looking around in vain for – something - or perhaps listening for some tiny noise he couldn't then hear. “Apropos of nothing very much, do you still not have any staff, your grace?”

Alses flushed dully at that, and attempted to control herself. There had been so many important things to be getting on with; the changes she wanted to make to some of the city's laws, for one thing, the furtherance of her own magical power and understanding, various other public duties associated with her position and a hundred and one other things besides.

Staff for Elysium Hall had rather fallen by the wayside, therefore, not exactly forgotten but – in the grand scheme of things – unimportant.

Besides, she was managing. Well, sort of. By dint of its relative emptiness, the entrance hall wasn't difficult to keep clean, she used the morning room every day so that got a good dusting, and the same went for her bedroom. Everywhere else, though...

Maybe he had a point. The library was getting quite dusty, to say the least.

“We're afraid I don't, no,” she admitted. Altelo relaxed back into his chair with a faint sigh.

“If you'll take some advice from a Twilight...get some – as a matter of some urgency. You're far too important to be running around the place dusting and tidying, and big houses are too much for one person to cope with anyway. Believe me, I know; we had terrible trouble at the Tower shortly after the Day of Discord with staff shortages of one sort or another.” A sudden, slight grin. “Besides, they are useful for when you have visitors, especially unexpected ones.”

Alses nodded graciously, inwardly accepting defeat and the subtle hint. She really would have to see about employing some servants to take care of her and the house, lest the whole of it slip quietly, all unnoticed, into squalor because of a monumental lack of interest and time for cleaning on her part.

“We'll take it under advisement,” she promised. “You make a good point, my lord.”

There was a moment's pause, an assessment of sorts as Altelo and Alses looked at one another, and then a decision was made. “Altelo will do, your grace. Since this is a social call and we are not being watched by the massed citizenry.”

“Then you must call me Alses, A-Altelo.” She stumbled slightly over the name, not quite able to believe that Lord Twilight had just asked her to use his first name. “In truth, we'd much prefer it.”

Altelo raised one dark eyebrow. “You don't like your title, your grace?” It was self-evident that he'd used the honorific on purpose, a flash of humour from the dark and serious aristocrat.

“We've got too many of them,” Alses admitted with a sigh. “Her Grace the Councillor Radiant of Magic and Foreign Affairs, Master Aurist, Cityblessed and Lhavit's lady magesmith, to name but a few.” She gave him a slightly conspiratorial smile, drawing Lord Twilight into a harmless little confidence. “In truth, when we first fell to Mizahar, we didn't understand the purpose of surnames, let alone all the other titles people collect.”

He smiled at that, only half-believing, the uncertainty swirling around him like a dark maelstrom. “You have collected quite a lot,” Altelo admitted, still with that faint upcurve dancing around his lips. “Lord Aysel tells me they tend to accumulate over time, too – and he should know. Now,” he continued, his aura contracting and darkening, narrowing to a dusky coruscation – Alses sensed that he was approaching the crux, nub and central reason for his calling on her. No-one – well, except for Chiona Dusk and occasionally Lheili Dawn, the pair of them getting away from their respective Towers for the odd few bells – ever came purely for social reasons.

Not that it mattered, of course; she was Ethaefal, perfect and legion, a patchwork of different lives into which she could dip, all of it supported by the boundless love of Syna pouring down from on high.

“It was in your capacity as our lady magesmith that I wanted to talk to you, in point of fact,” Altelo continued, crossing his legs elegantly and folding his hands atop his knee. A slender little ring glittered darkly on his finger, winking almost hypnotically with a whisper of wealth.

“You are – to my knowledge, anyway – the only practitioner of your particular specialised craft in the entire city, which does rather narrow down my options, but,” he stressed quickly, not giving time for her smile to melt into a frown or for her to get defensive over any perceived slight, “I've heard nothing but good of your skill and precision. I was told you used Lady Lariat's laboratory for a while; is that right?”

Alses nodded, cautious. Her interactions with the laurelled Lady Lariat were always a little...strained. She'd always felt as though she'd gone twelve rounds with a prizefighter after even a short meeting with the woman; Elena Lariat seemed to have an unerring instinct for what would confuse, unnerve and annoy Alses in approximately equal measure. That was an explosive mixture, and it was one of Elena's many peccadilloes that she liked it.

“I was impressed when Frost told me that; she's notoriously picky about whom she allows inside.” A pause.

“Would you be willing to accept a commission from the Twilight Tower, Alses?” He rolled her name around his mouth, testing it, tasting it, slightly unsure even though he hid it very well, at least outwardly.

[Alses]

Alses blinked and sat forward in her chair. “That would really rather depend on what you wanted,” she replied, interest piqued. “Do go on; I enjoy a challenge.”

Altelo shifted position minutely, gathering his thoughts. “House Twilight is conducting renovations of parts of the Tower,” he explained. “In particular some of the more sensitive areas – the Family wing, the vaults, that sort of thing. Obviously the Tower is well-protected, but we didn't amass our wealth or our status by being careless, and so I was advised to consult your good self.” He stopped again, for just a moment, assessing the situation and what he could – and should – tell her.

From an aurist's perspective, it was fascinating to watch, especially as Altelo Twilight evidently knew that Alses would be monitoring him and had obviously had experience with other aurists of considerable skill – the shifts and changes in his aura were minute; Alses had to work to spot them, to interrogate the thin little streamers of change.

“You see, we're installing a few extra safeguards, and a key weak point is always the doors. I'm given to understand you might be able to help in this regard; it's said you can change the fundamental properties of things?” there was a rising inflection to his voice, a little flight of hope, and his aura bore out all that he'd said; Lord Twilight wasn't lying, and nor was he entirely certain as to what, exactly, she could do.

Alses steepled her fingers and angled her head absently skywards, thinking hard. “Well, it's certainly possible for us to do such a thing, yes,” she allowed. “What did you have in mind, precisely?” Alses was banking on the fact that Altelo Twilight was generally held to be a shrewd man; he wouldn't, therefore, have come all the way out to Elysium Hall without having had at least some idea, if she'd proven to be able to do as he'd been informed, of what he wanted done.

Altelo Twilight smoothed the dark silk of his robes absent-mindedly. “Strength,” he replied. “Durability, resistance, whatever you wish to call it. A door that you could try to break down for days without success. Something that would cave in a normal door of its type would barely faze what I had in mind, something that might resist the magecrafted weapons you've been turning out as of late. Would that be possible?”

Alses bridled slightly, despite herself. “All the weapons we've made so far have gone to members of the Towers or the Shinya,” she pointed out. “I don't make them for all and sundry. What you ask for...” she tailed off for a moment, thinking about it, debating internally even as her eyes were drawn to a flashing jewel blazing some distance away on the peak, visible through the broad windows that looked out on Elysium Hall's parkland and the city beyond.

The Divine's Gateway, that was what had drawn Alses' gaze and her mind both, a possible source of reagents – always providing they proved amenable, of course. As far as she knew, there wouldn't be a problem. “What you ask for...we should be able to provide.” Always providing the Gateway is cooperative, she added, in the privacy of her own head. “It will, however, cost.”

That brought a darkly amused little smile out of the lord of House Twilight. “Most worthwhile things do. As you're doubtless aware, given the quality of everything around you. House Twilight is wealthy; I assure you we can afford your prices.”

Alses nodded. “I was sure you could,” she agreed. “But I won't ever have it said we mislead our clients or hide the costs from them. For something like this – if I assume it's to be part of a vault or similar secure room – we would work with a fivefold enhancement in its durability, for preference.”

She paused, briefly, thinking, and then in the interests of full disclosure continued: “Anything over five we could do, but it gets exponentially more expensive with every step for very little extra gain. A fivefold enchantment will shrug off most assaults outright; extra steps only come into play when you're dealing with other artifacts, and even then they'd have to be fairly powerful to cut through something so durable.”

Altelo drank it in attentively, face unreadable and aura almost the same, turning over options and new information in his head. “I'll be guided by you in that,” he noted. “Zintila knows I'm no expert. And how much would this be setting me back, then?” he enquired lightly, eyes dancing with amusement.

It was the work of a moment to do the calculation in her head. “We presume you have a door already constructed to specification? If that's so, then...about twenty-seven thousand kina.” Alses was getting better at discussing vast sums of money, but even so she said it quickly, almost ashamed of the cost of her work.

“And the timeframe?” It didn't seem to bother Altelo at all – but then again, she reminded herself forcefully, he was the patriarch of all of House Twilight.

“Fifteen days, Altelo-” she felt oddly daring, using something so familiar as his first name “-always providing a crisis doesn't arise that requires my urgent attention as Councillor Radiant.”

He laughed at that, merry lines creasing their way across his face, and he waved a hand in graceful acquiescence. “Understood. I wouldn't dream – or dare – of trying to take you away from your responsibilities to our shining city. If you could write down a detailed list of your specification and costing and send it over to us at the Tower, I'll look over it and if everything's in order sign it, have a few copies made for security and give the orders to have the door shipped to you from Touch of Fire. Sound all right?”

At Alses' nod, he continued briskly, rising in a crackle of bone from the chair. “Excellent. Thank you for your time, your grace. I'll see myself out, since you don't have any staff. I think I remember the way.”

She gave him a formal bow. “You're most welcome, Lord Twilight. Safe journey back to your Tower.”

Now, where to begin?

[Alses]

Bottles glittered and the air was full of the sound of moving materiel a few days later, when ingredients and reagents began to arrive at Elysium Hall, in preparation for Lord Twilight's commission. This was to be the first greater artifact she'd made for – oh, years at least – and as such she'd forgotten quite what a hive of activity was necessary before she could even get underway.

There were Okomo carts from the merchants in the Azure Market, several more from the various emporia that lined Surya Plaza, a few from some of the more specialist mages in Lhavit; Alses had had to source a few of the reagents she required from Lady Lariat, for instance, something she hadn't relished in the least – and last but not least, the guarded cart that carried the vault door for House Twilight.

By mid-morning, and with no sign of let-up in the flow of merchandise – lightening her coinpurse considerably – Alses was hoarse and hot from directing all the carts up the sweeping driveway and into an impromptu storage area near the laboratory. She was also wishing heartily that she'd been a bit quicker off the mark in employing some staff for Elysium Hall; had it not just been her, she could have surely instructed a minion to do all the traffic-control affairs for her whilst she...got on with something else.

Anything else.

The next batch of carts rumbled up and, with a sigh, the laurelled Councillor Radiant got back to directing them with a sigh and an inward growl of complaint. She consoled herself that soon it would all be over and she could get down to the beautiful art that was her passion and particular genius.

“If you could follow the main driveway round to the front of the house and then take the first left? Thank you so much!” On and on it went, work without end, even before she'd got down to the actual commission itself.


A


It was late afternoon by the time the last cart had rumbled out of her gates and Alses was hot, bothered and caked in a fine layer of dust thrown up from the dry ground. Her throat was hoarse and despite Syna's restoration beaming down from on high, all she wanted to do was retire to the cool elysium of her bathing chambers and vegetate for a while, to recover her strength and her wits.

Temptation got the better of her as she sailed down the ornate hallways towards the laboratory, and instead of heading inside to get started on the commission, she instead turned to the side and descended into the depths of Elysium Hall, ghosting down and into her bathing chamber, shedding dust-caked clothes as she went and slipping with a sigh of relief beneath the glass-smooth surface of the pool.

All was quiet and calm as she floated there, idly watching the water-spangled play of light across the silver and blue mosaics that lined the walls and ceiling, hiding the bare rock from view. The Ethaefal caryatids that supported the weight of the Hall above also glittered, wearing finery wrought from a million water droplets beading their marble flanks, and Alses lazily contemplated their distant, perfect faces, aware in a vague sort of way that that was how most in the celestial city saw her; somehow removed and aloof from the cares and vagaries of Mizahar.

She wasn't, of course, but the whole majesty of the government of Lhavit seemed to conspire to ensure that that was how she was perceived; her and the diarchy both, and to a lesser extent any Ethaefal who found themselves, even for a while, amid Lhavit's dreaming spires.

She couldn't linger too long in the relaxing haven of the baths, though – the infallible internal clock of every Ethaefal that counted down the ticks to sunset and then up to sunrise made her perpetually aware of the time in a way that few others were, and she knew she would have to start her craft soon.

Or, if not start it, then at least prepare the environment and make a plan of attack, to make the most of the precious days. The next fifteen would be hard; she had to juggle her commitments to the city as well as the demands of her craft, which would mean running on very little sleep and trusting to the energies of Syna to see her through.

Alses sent a short, reflexive prayer skywards in recognition for the special strengths she'd been blessed with. Functioning on very little sleep wouldn't be pretty, to be sure, but there were philtres that could take the edge off it, and under Syna's photon rain such considerations as mortal tiredness and hunger and thirst ceased to apply.

It would be okay.

Yes.

With a sigh and a grunt of effort, Alses levered herself up out of the water and let sheets of it cascade off her, running down onto the polished, angled marble floor and draining away through cunningly-placed grates into the obscured blacknesses beneath the city. Where, exactly, it all went was a mystery to Alses; she wasn't exactly au courant with the arcane mysteries of piping and the city's waste disposal arrangements, but the important thing was that it did go, doubtless thanks to the artifice and cunning of Lucis and Lucis.

Having towelled herself dry, Alses wrapped herself in a loose silken shift – no need for elaborate robes or dresses when it was just her at home, and indeed they were a positive hazard when it came to magecraft; one misplaced step, one unfortunately-timed stumble, and the whole of it could all come expensively crashing down.

A disaster that was, on the whole, to be avoided like the plague.

Even though, to Alses knowledge, she couldn't actually get sick. Even when five-sixths of her students had come down with some ailment after visiting the Catholicon on a field trip for the Dusk Tower, she'd remained perfectly hale and hearty. Come to think of it, she'd never suffered from the other various illnesses that seemed to plague the mortals of Lhavit on a seasonal basis, either.

[Alses]

Having procrastinated for as long as possible – and then a bit longer, just because hot water was so nice, such a fundamental pleasure – Alses at last made her way into her laboratory, that large and airy space dedicated, whole and entire, to the pursuit of her craft.

Now dominating the space was the artifact-to-be, an enormous and ornate slab of metal that was just about discernible as a door. There were no obvious hinges, for one thing, and there were several interesting holes that might have been the keyhole. Then again, perhaps not; Alses knew nothing of locksmithing or indeed smithing in general.

It was also highly ornate, and Alses spent a considerable amount of time just looking at the mass of tortured metal, fingers ghosting over the elaborate surface, all carved and etched and filed into a thousand shapes – since this was House Twilight, they were scenes of people morphing into all sorts of things, from common animals that might be found all around Lhavit to much more exotic chimeras – the creations of powerful morphers, melding animals together without regard for rhyme and reason - and fantastical beasts that surely didn't exist except as flights of fancy.

Surely.

Its features continued; on what Alses tentatively defined as the back of the door, there were recessed grooves and a complicated anchoring system that secured, inside them, several frankly lethal-looking spikes. After considerable interested thought on this unexpected feature and its odd location if it were meant as some sort of defence, Alses concluded that they might possibly form part of an unusual locking mechanism, securing the door into the floor in some fashion, another layer of immovability to add to an already impressively-immobile item.

There were unusual holes, too, and all manner of ratchets and intricate little pinwheels; Maeki's advice and input, had Alses but known it. The Animator had experience at secure doors, and House Twilight had consulted her on its design and, indeed, retained her to execute the opening mechanism and part of the identification procedure – hence all the little fiddly bits and the holes, designed to accommodate rails and other attachments that would allow the several-ton slab of metal to slide and glide effortlessly. Always providing the correct authorisation was given, of course.

None of that was really Alses' concern, however; her role was to strengthen the door beyond all reason, to make it almost-impregnable, able to shrug off weapons and fire and anything else that might otherwise trouble an un-augmented item. Yes, when it was done – if all went to plan, at any rate - would-be plunderers after the treasures of House Twilight would be better placed trying to chew through granite than trying to get through the vault's door.

Knowing this, Alses paced pensively around it, eyeing its dimensions with a speculative eye and starting to plan for the commission. She'd ordered in all the requisite materials – and the Divine's Gateway had provided the necessary catalytic reagent, an unassuming sword that nonetheless boiled and writhed with alien djed to Alses’ probing senses – and now all that remained was to tie it all together in a coherent, cogent fashion that would ensure the best and safest results.

So.

How best to achieve that lofty goal? Sitting down at her claw-footed desk – a conceit that amused her inordinately, imagining her furniture scuttling about of its own accord – she cracked the bones of her hands meaningfully, preparing for the hard work ahead. Out came her magecrafter’s journal and the ink blacker than a new moon at midnight, a snowy quill was raised in one fire-opal hand, and Alses began to sketch.

Just the rough outlines at first, bold and fast strokes to outline the basics; that wonderfully intricate door was just seven strokes on the page, for instance. In any case, it was what was around the door that mattered more, the intricate glyphed circles that were an integral part of magecrafting, sequestering reagents and – now – her catalyst as well, until they were called upon. Stabilisation and protection too, those were vital secondary functions that couldn’t be neglected, lest she want to end up as a drooling, djed-tainted monstrosity.

Biting her lip pensively as she considered the problem from several angles, Alses began to write herself the first of many, many lists, adding in extra details to her diagram as she thought of them.

‘Clamps, of course,’ she noted, carefully drawing them onto her basic sketch, large blocks of black ink representing the large baulks of crude metal that would help her to contain and target the vast djed flux that would be occasioned working with such a large item. Nothing less than their crushing presence would do, not if she wanted to be successful, at any rate.

Around the door, in her mind’s eye and her sketches both, there came the circles. Broad and wide and intricate for all their size, leaving plenty of space between their arcing lines of complex glyphic runes, of Paths and Relays and infinite storage loops and other, stranger things, the specialised glyphs developed over years of diligent work in a narrowed field, venting and coercing and half-shielding sigils that bent the djed very specifically to greater harmonies with her chosen craft, or else dealt with free and toxic djed before it could poison Alses’ mind and body.

There was the innermost ring, a set of broad, linked circles, like a necklace of pearls strung around the door, each complex circle-sigil being containment and focus both for a reagent, waiting for the striking impact of a hammer to flare into glorious life, pulsing djed into the hungry voids of the tool, ready to be purposed and targeted by her indomitable will, to break the physical laws of the world and turn mundanity into sublime paramountcy.

Glory, glory.

Secondary to that, running entirely counter to the inner focus ring, was the second and broader circle, the shield that would keep unwanted influences out and djed in, a complicated ring network of baffles and purification lattices that produced the high-djed environment in which Alses preferred to work her magic and let loose her own specialised genius.

Beyond that, there was the small ancillary circle, the charging zone into which Alses always stepped, to centre and calm and purify herself, to prevent disorganized djed from her entrance into the circles from disrupting the delicate arcane machinery and upsetting the balance of her craft. It was a useful buffer, a few moments of calm and serenity for her, helping to anchor her often-wandering mind to a purpose.

Last, but by no means least, was the isolated spear-like construct she’d designed to hold her catalyst; a small, shielded circle with a long Path of tiny glyphs running right into the core of the whole ensemble, blocked with powerful trigger runes that would prevent its premature draining. With something so volatile, so alien, Alses wanted to make absolutely certain that she had full and conscious control over the lot of it.

[Alses]

Ready, at the last, to begin, Alses took a deep breath of the scent-laden air, her sensitive nostrils drinking in the many and varied aromas arising from her ingredients; the stink of metal, subtle plant perfumes, the green smell of sap, harsh caustic notes from some of the mineral powders and much else besides, all forming a heady, unnatural melange that was a thousand times more potent through an aurist’s enhanced senses.

Alses was, however, used to the flood of impressions sluicing in from all sides and knew all the little tricks and kinks and jinking pathways for her magic that could render it harmless, commuted to nothing more or less that a comforting tickling hum – dusted with the scent and taste of cinnamon, for some reason – in the back of her mind.

Out came the tins of glypher’s paint, all shiny and new, their sides unmarred by drips and runnels of congealed liquid, just waiting for that first caress of the brush and the gloopy adherence to its bristles, ready to paint curls and curlicues and intricate little patterns on the floor. Alses cracked them open with a practised hand, breathing in the heady fumes, enjoying the sudden jag of perspective brought on by the vapours before rising to begin the proper work, black-dripping brush well in hand.

The brush was alive in her hand, dancing an elegant pavane as she knelt near the slab of metal that was her artifact-to-be, shaping an intricate anchoring sigil that would form one of the four cardinal points of her innermost circle of glyphs, an elaborate chain of glimmering runes that, appropriately drawn and tasked by absolute focus, would aid her materially in the execution of her difficult and demanding craft.

This first few glyphs, though, they were simply an anchor, a point of stability that would hold fast against the shifting and changing ambient currents, one that would be powerful enough to deal with the magnified djed fluxes that would rampage about it soon enough.

More than that, they would provide a skeleton framework for her, physical points on which Alses could superimpose her plan, make changes and minor alterations to accommodate the very particular djed flows she was attempting to influence. No amount of planning could account entirely for those; they were only assessable through an aurist’s augmented Sight, and thankfully Alses had just the skills to ensure a perfect harmony meshwork between her glyphs and the ambient flow of magic inside her laboratory.

The changes were numerous and fiddly, but Alses’ skill with glyphs was by now quite considerable, the product of bells and days spent wrestling with complex runes and concepts that forever slid elusively out of her reaching grasp, producing muddled blots of expensive inks rather than the elegantly ornate runes she’d been striving for.

Magic followed midnight ink on shining wings of djed, racing down from Alses’ set and certain mind to impress a certain mirroring on the world, guiding the elegant loops and curls of ink that her brush impressed on the yielding tilework.

Sleeves rolled up, wisps of her hair escaping its ties and dropping to plaster themselves on her perspiration-beaded forehead, Alses set to work in earnest.


A


There were few straight lines in Alses’ preparatory circles; a reflection of herself, perhaps, they were all arcing curves and intricate spirals, shifting tentacles that curled in on themselves and gave rise to a Gordian knot of further reaching black coils, almost serpentine in their glistening lengths.

Indeed, the only straight of any note was the lance which led from the otherworld sword, her prime catalyst to catapult this artifact beyond the realms of the supernatural and into the miraculous. It was a coursing route right into the heart of the whole setup, a glimmering arrow-straight causeway, buttressed and strengthened as best Alses knew how against the alien djed that would surge and rage down it – at the appropriate time, of course, when she physically broke the adamant barriers that kept it contained, the reflecting mazes that baffled and confused the evoked djed pouring off the sword in its little circle.

She felt a tight little shiver of pride at those blackly-gleaming meanders, richly cargoed with meaning and inscribed with purpose, ready to wake and work their subtle, implacable magics on the ambient djed of the world at the touch of the appropriate trigger. No need for anything fancy there, none of the elaborate conditional firings Alses could now craft into her glyphic work – the touch of a drop of her blood worked just as well as it had when she’d been a fumbling novice at the craft, rather than a sorceress sure in her power and skill.

Donning thick – though still supple – leather gloves, ones that, after every craft, were dipped in a thoroughly disagreeable purging philtre to clean and strip them of any lingering traces of reagent and djed, Alses turned resolutely to the task of stocking the inner circle with its cargo of precious ingredients, things from which she would draw long streamers of magic from which she could forge miracles, working with the fundamental energies of the world as her raw material.

Such was the privilege of a magesmith, far in advance of any mundane blacksmith or metalworker, even if the tools looked outwardly the same. And speaking of tools…Alses’ gaze drifted towards her tool-rack and its neat ranks of velvet bags hanging on ornate hooks, mind already racing.

She reeled it in with some difficulty; there was the outer circle to complete first, its array of baffles and purifying focuses to change and alter the internal environment, all of it described in meticulous runes, precisely-placed to oppose those of the inner circle, an extra layer of containment, and – as one final measure – bright white instead of the darkly mysterious, glimmering black Alses, as a rule, preferred.

Once more hitching up her robes, wiping the perspiration from her forehead and plastering her hair more securely to her skin by that absent-minded action, pushing up her sleeves and dipping a fresh brush in harsh, white, slightly-gleaming glypher’s paint, Alses bent mind and body to the complex task in hand.

[Alses]

Eyes half-lidded in cerebral pleasure, Alses’ fire-opal fingers danced over the surface of the velvet bags hanging from her tool rack, barely touching their fine surfaces and only lightly tracing the impressions of the valuable tools they contained, following the curves and straights and intricate contours of hammer and flaying knife and prism lenses and much else besides, all the specialised tools of the magesmith’s trade that made her arcane masterpieces possible.

The question at the forefront of her mind right now was a simple, easy-to-grasp one: which tool, or to be more precise, which hammer, to use? Fortunately, she didn’t have to think long; strength and power where what was demanded of her artifact, and so strength and power would go into its crafting.

And in magesmithing, there was one hammer above all others, one material that was sovereign in those spheres; gold. Brash and loud, a powerful clarion call, it was nonpareil when it came to strength, durability, power and probity, a function of its precious djed and the attributes ascribed to it over the millennia.

There was no room or aptitude for subtlety amongst its glimmering constellation; it was a blazing sunbeam, a light that burned away dissimulation and the more ephemeral arts. That made it perfect for her purposes, and so it was without hesitation that her slender fingers undid the drawstrings and dipped into the bag, drawing out the glittering prize with a flourish, admiring the play of light on its polished, engraved surfaces and the aura that put all of that to shame.

“Hallo, beautiful,” she trilled softly, turning it over and over in her hands, reacquainting her conscious and unconscious self with the feel of it, the particular echo and impression that set this hammer apart from any other.

Its heft, and the tingling warmth coursing and rushing over her skin from its powerful enchantments, quickly re-established their familiarity, the swell of its polished mahogany handle fitting snugly into the curve of her palm.

Dancing absently and with the consummate ease of long practice through the thicketing jungle of glyphic runes and sigils, pausing in all the right places to led djed charges earth themselves on her fire-opal skin, purifying currents under the harsh lash of her arcane machinery that stripped away all the impurities clinging to her skin, her clothes, her hair, her glimmering horns.

Pearly teeth gleaming in a broad and slightly insane smile, as the veiled genius that made her such a good magecrafter rose up from its hiding place in the depths of her compound soul and took over with deft hands, she barely slowed in the elegant dance even as the first powerful strike crashed down like the fury of a god onto the poor, innocent reagent, ripping long skeins of djed from its very essence, drinking them greedily down until her golden hammer blazed like a nascent star, drawing a coruscant contrail behind it as she moved.

The door had to be glutted with power first, filled to bursting, before she broke it to harness with a heavy – though skilled – hand. Only through the crucible of that force, the furious clash of djed-on-djed and the roar of thwarted magic raging through its structure could something greater be forged and tempered, something even close to capable of withstanding the world and all its ills, from the creeping corrosion of rust and Tanroa’s insidious river wearing down on everything, to the forces of weapons and human artifice seeking entry where none was wanted; fire and mechanical force, slicing blades and grinding augers and crushing maces, levering crowbars and much else besides, all the contents of a master craftsman’s toolbox that might be arrayed against it. All the weapons of an adventurer, too, for that matter, anyone who might resort to force to pass where they weren’t wanted.

Then, too, Alses was a little concerned as to what, precisely, would occur when she let the catalyst be consumed, what its utterly alien djed might do to the unnaturally-receptive door when the two djed-structures met and interacted and melded together under her exacting direction.

But the craft, the glorious, glorious craft, the unfurling in silver fire inside her brain and the heady, perfect mirroring of those towers of cogitation in reality as she worked and struck and struck again, ringing in the changes on a rising spire of notes, swapping hands with elegant ease when the arcane forces surging through her blood and her bone became too much to bear for one inflamed hand, the antithetical forces tightening and reddening her skin.

Venting glyphs were roaring at full spate as she ruthlessly seeded chaos and disjunction amongst the once-ordered serenity, the rainbow-raimented harbinger wielding a hammer that struck with cruel inevitability and overwhelming force, always bearing with it a fresh cargo of slightly alien magic, thrusting it with an auger’s white-hot burn deep into the wounded and djed-bleeding matrix of the door.

To Alses’s djed-crazed eyes, her brain fogged by the roar and snap of magic, all save for the dancing silver thread she clung to and followed with dogged persistence, the still metal figures writhed and screamed with every strike, the actinic violet light from shrieking venting sigils as they fought valiantly to convert toxic stray djed into harmless light and heat hardly helping matters with the leaping shadows its uncertain and ever-changing radiance cast.

Overhead, the optic ring glowed balefully, long plumes of eye-searing purple light lancing out from every one of the six mirrors that were doing their level best to help control the near-haywire reactions going on below, the antithetical clash of magic on magic, ruthlessly brought to bear again and again by the lash of the mad magesmith nominally in control of it all.

Her laughter, perfect and pure and without much sanity to temper it, the sound of someone living entirely in the moment, a life chiming perfectly in harmony with the soul living it, echoed and rang around the laboratory, moving like a drifting, unsettling gas through the nearer hallways of Elysium Hall.

[Alses]

White-hot splinters of toxic magic, spewing poison in their wake and corrupting the warp and weft of the world, shattered away from the coruscating craters her hammers left in the matrix of the door she was working on, dancing through the air and in their wake leaving subtle change, before her beautiful, perfect glyphs, scribed with an expert’s sure and steady hand, refined by her savant’s synthesis of glyphery and magecraft to something approaching the pinnacle of the art.

There was always more work to do, of course – djed-stream interactions could always be refined just a little more, concepts could always be purified with long bells of study and thought to something approaching their final, metaphysical reduction – but she was closing in on mastery, working and working and practicing until the forms and curves of the glyphs came as easily as dreams to the unwary sleeper, and just as quickly.

Strange smells, distortions – as though she were being viewed behind the strongest heat-haze imaginable, or else through flowing water – and sparkling motes of light were the other signs of her craft, of the strain she exerted on Mizahar with every sweeping crash and chime, and the spitting plumes of violet light were the manifestation of her glyphic machinery striving for normality, churning perpetually against the chaotic tide, milling it, grinding it, processing the dancing flows of djed into ordered uniformity, combing the tangled skein she’d caused back into silken normality.

Pearls of sweat beaded her brow, her hands ached from the press of the mahogany handles into yielding flesh, her bones ached and her joints screamed as the jarring pressure of mundane force flashed into arcane power crackled through them again and again.

The gold hammer sang its strident clarion call again and again as she worked, grimly focused. There was little actual, physical sound endangered in the craft, aside from the gassy roar of glyphs turning poisonous magic into painful light, but that didn’t matter a jot when it was an aurist at the centre of the maelstrom, experiencing the metamorphosing magic firsthand, working it and guiding it with every tool and technique available towards the elusive Elysium that was the far-distant goal.

She watched in pleasure and delight as the results of her last spate of work came in; a tidal wave of magic roared into quivering, defenceless, unprotected conduits, ready to fill them to bursting and more than that, to overtop their bounds and blur the lines between them, filling in the lower-djed potential spaces between their bright webwork until all was a mass of uniform, amorphous possibility, trying to be everything and in the end achieving only bland balance and nothingness – without interference, anyway.

Alses had timed things to the tick; just as the tsunami of djed ripped free from the reagents crested and crashed into the door, three of the mirrors overhead, charged with reflected magic to the point of retransmission, fired in unison, bright beams searing prismatic after-images on Alses’ straining Sight.

At their impact points, carefully garlanded with until-now quiescent glyphs, they struck and split and boiled the onrushing djed, sending up plumes of shattered magic that her circles tore to shreds and wove back into the ambient.

Three wasn’t enough – but she’d planned it that way; just as the rushing tide was about to overwhelm the matrix once more, the other three fired, six burning lances of actinic djed, arranged in exact opposition to the flood into which they blazed. Antithetical reactions annihilated magic and released bursts of uncontrolled energy, heat blasted back at Alses’ face, and still she worked and worked, driven relentlessly forward by the specialised madness that was sometimes called genius.


A


Alses was a shivering wreck by the time her first session was done. Her robes were plastered to her form, darkened by sweat and so soaked by it that every move she made sent a tiny spray of droplets dancing away from them, her face reddened and inflamed by the toxic emissions so close.

It was a herculean effort, too, to open her hands enough to free the hammer that had been clutched so tightly between them for bell upon bell – but it had to be done, even if it set her face into a rictus grimace of agony at the shooting pains firing up from tight-curled fingers, clawed in on themselves, reddened, irritated and all-over insulted by the gauntlet they’d just run in service to her craft.

Tanroa’s Blessing could only help her if they were in a position where they could relax, where there was no extraneous tension on the muscles, tendons and ligaments, or else she would only intensify the pain and the cramps.

Alses hissed through her teeth as the hammer dropped from nerveless fingers and clattered to the desk, but it was done at last and a split-tick later a burst of true-blue light flashed and flared and danced around her, limning for the briefest of instants every part of her bonelessly-lolling form, from the tip of her horns to the smallest of her toes.

After it had vanished, as quickly as it had come, leaving actinic imprints like fireworks on her vision, Alses experimentally flexed her shining fingers, a broad smile dancing across her exhausted features. Sometimes, it was good to be an Ethaefal.

Alses took another look at the enormous slab of metal now garlanded about by her complex arcane machinery, its ephemeral pieces shifting and twisting and chiming unsettlingly together in an almost organic ballet to the commands of the glyphs that birthed them. Under it all, the door glowed like a baleful star, angrily bleeding toxic djed made manifest as painful violet light. All part of the plan – providing she could control it, of course.

The continual battering strikes had opened it up, forced it to submit to a power greater than itself – but such powers in opposition to one another had wounded its matrix, its essential structure, everything that made it an ornate slab of worked metal rather than, say, a fish. That was part of the reason for the long timescales for magecrafted projects; time had to be allowed in order for things to heal, to habituate, and not to fail.

A thousand arcane wounds rippled and danced across it, a crazed webwork of cracks and weeping slashes that bled thick magic in slow, ropy coils, poisoning the purified and concentrated djed of her working circles. That was what they’d been designed for, though, at least in part – the specialised glyphs in their painstakingly-planned arrangements were well-adapted and well-purposed to the task of taking errant magic in hand, purifying what they could and feeding it back into the weave of the ambient or else directing it to the venting sigils all around.

Bright violet light was a failure, in Alses’ eyes, but it was at least a safe failure, merely signalling that her glyphs hadn’t been able to reprocess all the toxic djed boiling off her project and had had to resort to the brute-force approach of the vents.

She was getting better, admittedly, but the sheer magnitude of the forces unleashed, especially as she reached the upper heights of her abilities, still defeated her magecraft-adapted glyphery.

Something to work on, like so many other things. Alses permitted herself a wry, watery smile at that. Time, most definitely, for that break, time to let things - and people - heal.

END

[Raien Ironarm Pitrius]

XP Award!

Name: Alses

XP Award:
Socialization +3
Negotiation +1
Drawing +1
Glyphing +2
Magecraft +3

Lore Award:
Lord Twilight: An Abnormally Introspective Aura
Lord Twilight: A Unique Character
Taking Business Inside
Lord Twilight: An Admirer of Elysium Hall
Elysium Hall: A Useful Tool for Humanization
Lord Twilight's Suggestion: Hire some Help
Lord Twilight: "Call me Altelo"
The Twilight Tower's Request
Lord Twilight: Hard to Read
Magecraft: A Cause for Activity
Postponing a Craft for Comfort
The Twilight Vault: An Impressive Door
Magecraft: Drawing out a Craft
The Divine Gateway: Provider of Alien Reagents
Magecraft: Careful Handling of a Reagent
Glyphing: Could the Shape of Sigils represent the Shaper?
Magecraft: The Beauty in a Familiar Tool
Magecraft: To Craft the Unmovable Object, a Masterpiece
Magecraft: The Euphoria of Crafting
Magecraft: Hammering in The Moment
Magecraft: Always more to Learn
Magecraft: The Pain of Leaving a Craft Unfinished
Glyphing: A Near Perfect Craft is Still not Good Enough
Glyphing: Djed Vents


Grader Comments:
Just... Wow. What can I say? Hopefully the grades speak for themselves, but still. This was truly an exquisite, albeit somewhat difficult, read. Keep writing Alses, keep going until your a master Magecrafter!