Completed [Flashback] A foundation stone [Graded]

[Eanos]

Spring 28, 507 AV Deep within the Silver Tower, Eanos was wresting with a problem set for him by his master. That his master considered it a trivial issue did not make it any easier for Eanos to understand it. After years of study he had finally been accepted into the course for Magecrafting but it had so far not proved quite the success that he’d anticipated it to be. He had spent years in learning the basics of craft which underpinned that of a magecrafter. He’d been warned that this was merely the start of a very long learning process and that it would be necessary to learn at least one other system of djed manipulation since the magecrafting could be a passive system. It was the most powerful system but he was already beginning to see the point that had been made. One step at a time though was the answer and he had time enough yet. It seemed though that the very first step was to remind him of his place, which perhaps was a good thing for Eanos was ever eager to take three steps rather than just the one that the situation demanded, and so his task in the laboratory at this chime of the day involved the manipulation of a broom. It was a broom which required a certain delicacy in its use for when he bore down with some of the strength which had been developed in the strict exercise regime demanded by the Tower and by the smithing which he still practiced when he could, the broom merely skipped and bounced. There was a lesson there too Eanos considered glumly though he doubted that it was one which his Master had been aware of. Not everything could be conquered by the application of force; sometimes finesse was required. It wasn’t a new lesson by any means for it was something he’d learned long ago with his smithing and in other fields too. Perhaps the fact that it occurred to him as he swept away the remains of the crumbled and eroded glyphs of the days crafting was proof that finally the lesson was starting to percolate through to his consciousness, and just perhaps one day soon he might actually start to learn from it. That laboratory had been cleaned down and stood ready for the next time, but the laboratory next to it was still being used. He closed the door carefully so that there was no draught to upset any papers or delicate glyphs and paused inside the door. By now his abilities with the auras was starting to be useful to him in this and he transmuted some of his own djed to allow the personal magic of Auristics to flow within him. As he stood with his back to the door he slowly scanned the room absorbing the knowledge of where magic was active for the auras flashed like molten metal. He didn’t waste time with studying any of them for this was where he’d been working during the day so all were already familiar, but he’d learned not to make assumptions about things. Just because certain things had been in place when he’d left several chimes earlier did not mean that nothing had changed since then for his Master had still been here working when Eanos had been dismissed to his studies.

[Eanos]

Close to the door there had been a trigger and now it was merely a blur on the floor, the intricately crafted calligraphy now just dust, a dust which the slightest of breezes from the opening door had already stirred. That one would need replacing in the morning or so he understood from the general plan, and if he was lucky he might just be the one who had chance to draw it. His broom made short work of the dust and he carefully scooped it into the pail he also carried. If he wanted that chance in the morning then he knew that the Master needed to be able to find no fault in his cleanliness. With the trigger gone, so too were the glyphs for a barrier and he set to on the cleaning of them so that no trace was left, no possible contamination to infect the new glyphs, but soon the room was clean and he left it, his tasks for the day now complete. Dawn broke over the Pitreus citadel and the Silver Tower but Eanos never saw the sunlight for he made sure that he was back in the laboratory early and before his Master had chance to arrive. Eanos was not the only apprentice who worked in the Tower and rivalry was strong. It wasn’t unheard of for unexpected ‘accidents’ to have occurred leaving the hapless apprentice to face his Masters wrath, and for the Masters it seemed that they cared not if the apprentice was guilty of the mistake or of failing to protect himself from the wiles of others; both seemed equally grievous faults. The laboratory however had been still as it had been after his cleaning of the day before and if some dastardly trap had been set then it was far too subtle for Eanos to find it, even when he’d used a small part of his djed to activate his auristic senses. It gave him time to reflect upon the nature of the work being performed, or rather to wonder about it for his Master had not deemed him fit yet to understand the spells being enacted, only for him to stand around and be useful when needed. Finding himself with time to spare and no tasks urgent enough to warrant leaving the laboratory empty he took upon himself the task of redrafting the boundary spell which had expired the previous day. It wasn’t something which he’d been instructed or even been given permission to do, but then he took the view that on the whole it was better to ask for forgiveness than for permission and if he waited to convince his Masters to allow him to do things then he’d be waiting a very long time indeed. He failed to see how his Master would know if he was ready for a task if he never got chance to try his hand at it. The glyphs were somewhat strange to him but he’d taken a good deal of care to study them over the last few days and he’d watched his Masters senior apprentice carefully chalking them back onto the floor each morning. He wasn’t sure if there was a particular reason that the glyphs were always drawn in the same order and starting from the same place in the room each day or if that were merely habit on the part of the senior apprentice. He started in the same place, faint chalk marks acting as a guide to the placement and shaping. It could do no harm to repeat as closely as he could and it might just prove to be essential.

[Eanos]

The glyphs were harder to draw than he’d assumed, harder than the ones he had surreptitiously drawn himself on a scrap of parchment when he’d been given a task which took him out of the laboratory and away from any harm a stray glyph might do. It was one thing he found to draw them casually, another to draw them well enough to overcome the potential anger of his Master at his presumption, and harder to get them all consistent. The first one seemed to go well enough though it took him two attempts at it, but the second was oddly wider, seemingly stunted in comparison to the first. The third seemed closer in shape but sitting back he saw that it was out of alignment to the others. Would it matter? He sat back on his heels and gnawed at his lower lip. The door to the laboratory had opened behind his back without his knowledge as he was engrossed in his consideration as to the aesthetics of his drafting and it was only when it banged shut did he jerk up and glance around guiltily. His eyes met that of the senior apprentice whose eyebrow quirked upwards as though he wondered what Eanos was up to but clearly he knew because he could see the chalk in his hand and the lines on the floor. Eanos broke the connection and looked down at the floor, an action which brought forward a grunt of amusement from his senior who dumped some scrolls onto a seat by the door and came over to view what Eanos had done. ”That needs to be redone,” he commented pointing at the second glyph. ”The power will never flow evenly enough with that there; it will bottleneck and distort the balance of power. Draw it again.” He reached down with a damp cloth he had seemingly magicked out of thin air and rubbed out the chalk glyph. It hadn’t occurred to Eanos that perhaps his senior did not enjoy the tedious drawing of glyphs, he’d assumed that the responsibility of doing it came with a sense of power, but already he was beginning to suspect that in fact it would quickly become yet another piece of thankless drudger under a hard taskmaster. Still though, for him as yet though the work was exacting it was also a good deal more interesting than merely standing around wondering what his Master and the senor apprentice were doing whilst hoping for an errand which would at least break up the boredom.

[Eanos]

He went back to where the second glyph had been and this time made some very faint marks to define the size and orientation of the glyph before he started to draw it once more. The result was better and he erased the fainter marks with a nod of satisfaction. Just drawing them out seemingly at random was all very well he now appreciated for his senior who had likely drawn them out in this room hundreds of times and likely knew exactly where each one fell on each of the paving stones of the floor, but that had led him into serious error with just the first glyphs. For him clearly he needed to take some more time and understand where each was to go, how it was to be oriented and just how it was to be drawn. Fortunately he had a good memory of roughly where the glyphs had been so it was then just a matter of making some sighting marks and stepping back to view the balance of them before making the necessary adjustments to the positions. Only once he was happy with that did he start on the glyphs themselves. He’d worked his way mostly all of the way round the room before the Master entered and if the Master had wondered why Eanos was undertaking this task, Eanos didn’t know because he kept his concentration very carefully on the task in hand. By this point though the runes were coming more naturally to him and he worked more confidently, though not so confidently as to not rough out the shape before starting to chalk it in. He’d also learnt to check the aura of the runes as they were drawn for these were not merely chalk marks, even if he were the one drawing them. They were marks of power and the drawing of them infused them with more than the aura of chalk should have contained. Once he started to view them in that light, though the drain on his djed was something which he could not keep up indefinitely, he started to be able to spot problems before he was tapped on the shoulder by his senior, something which had happened on more than one occasion at the start. As it turned out it was his senior who drew the trigger glyph once he was happy with the glyphs which Eanos had drawn and then he waved Eanos back to his station by the door as the Master moved into position. A hand was waved and the senior apprentice activated the glyphs, a process which Eanos had decided follow with his Auristic senses for once since there had been little to see with his normal vision in the past days.

[Eanos]

To his augmented senses the room was very different to how it appeared to his eyes for the djed was active in a way that he would normally have only associated with living things. Not that the djed was as expansive as it was with a living person, for the auras of the Master and senior apprentice dominated the room, but the aura of activated glyph and indeed the aura of the working piece were much more active and in a sense alive than would normally be the case. It was he decided after some more detailed study, focusing in on first the glyphs and then the working piece, not so much the djed of the pieces themselves but it was the djed of the world magic he was seeing; a flow of energies. It made sense to his fairly logical mind, a mind which understood cause and effect well, a knowledge gained from beating metal from one shape to another and from seeing how the application of heat altered the very nature of the metals. The glyphs he associated with the forge for they were passive in themselves and yet contained energy. His musings were interrupted by the Master who had now drawn out a delicate hammer, a hammer which to Eanos’s senses roiled with energy. This was powerful magecraft, he realised immediately and far beyond his understanding of what was involved. There was a chime of metal on metal and energy flowed from hammer to working piece. He watched fascinated as the new energy, djed? Yes he decided it must be new djed worked its way into the piece which lay on the altar like anvil. It moved with a purpose it seemed, though the movement was very slow. Even though he concentrated, he could not determine the purpose, just that the djeds were mixing somehow to produce something new. ”Enough!” The command rang through the room, the first word that the Master had actually directed to Eanos since his arrival some chimes earlier. ”Get about your duties, and don’t forget to come back later to clean up.” There was no opening in the words to consider a question and so he simply nodded and made his way out, leaving them to continue whatever it was that they were doing.

[Eanos]

Once he had chance to consider the things he had learned and time he had in plenty for the work was slow, certain questions rose in his mind, foremost amongst which was the question of the glyphs. His primary experience was with personal magic and for that to work, he needed to invest his own energy into the work, without it, it was dead and lifeless like a puppet without its puppeteer. How then did the djed flow though glyphs which he had created? Perhaps it was indeed then like the anvil. The one who made it did not know what work it would be used for, except in the most ephemeral way, but they had instead created it so that it exceeded a minimum specification. It was another who then applied the power, the anvil was merely the tool which was used for the manipulation, providing an environment to contain the applied forces which in the case of smithing were heat and hammer. It seemed to him then that the world magic, the djed was the heat and the hammer the same in both, because for all the hammers diminutive appearance to the eye, it contained more force than it appeared. The thought sparked a new wonderment in himself as to how that same process might be applied in smithing. There could be no doubt of the might of an Isurian smith and yet some metals too stubborn or too heavy even for them. Of course enchanted weapons which amplified the users strength were no new thing to tale or reality, but it was always nice when a stray trail of thought could be brought round into a circle to solidify something in his mind. These times of waiting were times when there was nothing to do but think. Magecraft was a alippery concept still in his mind but it was akin to the forms of exercise which all took part in. What made an Isur fit and strong anyway? For some it was one thing and for another something else and what one believed another dismissed. It seemed to Eanos that magecraft was something like this too. There were many paths to mastery, each of which was valid in its own way, but it was difficult for a novice like him to understand which way would prove the best for him. He guessed that in the end as with fitness it was something where he needed to simply follow his masters on and eventually his own path would start to become more clear. He was curious though as to his banishment from the workshop once more. Was there some secret now being played out which someone as junior as him could not be party to? Was it was that his presence might upset some delicate ritual? His frustration at the lack of understanding irritated him and tested his patience. As much as anything it was the fear of being caught and the banishment which would likely result from it that kept him from attempting to seek out the secrets from whose knowledge he was being denied. It was however a situation which he would not tolerate forever.

[Gillar]

Thread Complete and Graded

I particularly enjoyed the whole apprentice aspect. I definitely saw that Eanos was an apprentice in this thread who was trying to grasp all the concepts of a discipline that is so formal and so complex. Very well done!

Glyphing – 3
Auristics -2
Magecraft – 1

Lore: Magecrafting Laboratory Layout – Through basic duties as an apprentice, Eanos has gained the knowledge of how a magecraft lab is designed.

Lore: Glyphs Related to Magecraft – Eanos has an understanding of the types of glyphs that protect as well as focus djed within the confines of a laboratory.

Final Note - I try to elaborate on my Lore awards when I feel a simple title doesn't sufficiently describe what is experienced and learned. And as always, if you feel I missed something, please let me know and I will consider award modifications.