79 Searing 121
The trip to Master Jacun's shop had been a resounding success. She had come home with a small, egg-shaped aetherite cabochon of sufficient purity and power that she thought would do the job. She didn't want a soul totem that was too powerful when she was but a self-taught novice. She was also acutely aware that she would have to swallow it for the process of creating a soul totem out of the crystalized aetherium, and she hadn't even had to take it to a lapidary workshop to have it polished. If it was rough or faceted, it would have had to have been smaller to go down and come back up safely.
In the workshop, she laid out her notebook and the ivory bowl she had prepared. The pictographs she would etch into the dragonshard would have to match those in the bowl, priming the sympathetic magic that would ensue. The lighting was excellent, but she still had to hold the dragonshard under a magnifying lens so she could see the minute work she would be doing.
While not a gem cutter, she had practiced this technique time and again over the years on lesser stones. Now she held the aetherite under the lens and focused her will and her aether to a hair-thin point. She had first just used Fire, but as she became savvier to how the elements worked, both singularly and together, she had added Earth to stabilize the technique and, later, a touch of Air and Water for an even more stable technique. This balance was especially necessary for magically etching a dragonshard, as it was calcified energy that could react explosively to the wrong stimulus.
It was slow, painstaking work, but she etched the pictographs from the bowl in miniature upon the cabochon. She scrived the lines of power that would make it a focus for aether in ways additional to its nature as a form of energy. Dragonshards were alive by many standards: they grew almost like a fungus. Now it would incorporate the powers of life and death for her. She added a pictograph for Soul because that was a quite specific form that aether took.
Finally, she christened this as she had the bowl with four pictographs that were separate from the sigil that the rest of them formed, and yet, they could not be entirely separate. Raella for Life; Wraedan for Death; Lyren for Undeath and Knowledge; Keela for Wisdom. They were the High Ones, standing below only the Dragon King and the Masked Queen. It was important to her that They approve of her works.
When she was done, she pulled the stone out from behind the lens to look at it with her naked eyes. She knew that it was all correct up close. From here, the pictographs weren't individually visible but lent a nice texture to the reflective surface.
She felt Kaus' presence outside the door. Unsure how long he had been waiting, she was able to focus more on the bond between them now that her mind and her eyes weren't so caught up in tiny details. Her welcome resonated through the bond and he came quietly in. He was concerned about her, of course, but they had grown up in an environment that respected magic, even necromancy, though it was not as common as many other disciplines. There were always dangers, though, and while he had faith in his sister, he would always worry. It was mutual.
"Pretty," he said.
It would also be quite useful. He came at the right time, when she would need his help and his observation.
Together, they unrolled a square of thick paper, flattening it out while she took a wax pencil and drew a careful circle of runes whose diameter brushed the edges of the paper on all four sides. For now, it would only have to fit the bowl, but in a few days, she would have to be able to comfortably fit within its space. The circle was made up largely of the same pictographs that were inscribed upon the bowl and the aetherite cabochon. She even intended to draw them onto her skin when she would be the receptacle for the nascent soul totem. It was important for the resonances to be doubled and trebled, drawing the magic into multiple dimensions, restructuring the dragonshard into something new.
Looking over her work, she finally nodded, moved the ivory bowl into its center, and then set the etched dragonshard into the center of the bowl. Kaus handed her one of her daggers in its sheath.
"Freshly honed to a razor's edge," he said, but couldn't smile about it.
"Thank you." She smiled, reassuring him. He might have been the physically stronger of the pair, but she was the emotionally stronger.
Without undue hesitation, she drew its edge across her wrist below the rascette, so quick that there was no blood on the blade when she set it down outside the circle. The cut wasn't deep, so it would take a while to fully submerge the crystal. Kaus took her arm and gently massaged her bicep and her forearm, encouraging the blood to flow. But while she kept her eyes on the project, he kept his eyes on her, watching for her color to change or her eyes to unfocus. He would not let her fall and him not catch her. She accomplished more for not having to question that he would.
But she was made of stern stuff, a child of the Avialae with or without wings.
When she could just barely see the glow of the gem beneath the surface of her blood, her eyes shifted to the wound and she concentrated. Blood was mostly water. There was iron in there, as well, according to the medical lore. And other things as well, most of which fell under the purview of an elementalist. Still, it took a great deal of concentration to staunch her own wound with magic and willpower. As she focused on that, Kaus carefully applied a tincture of beeswax and other things that would speed healing and prevent infection, then quickly bandaged her wrist.
It was tight, but the pressure was helpful. She only slowly allowed her control to waver and finally wink out. It was more difficult to control now that she couldn't lay eyes on the wound, but the work had been done. They both watched, and while there was some mild spotting, the artificial scab seemed to have done its work while her body did the rest.
Only then did she swoon, ever so slightly. Kaus was there, though she instinctively braced herself against the work table. Her little brother—by mere moments—towered over her, then carefully scooped her up.
"Nap time," he said.
"Mm," she agreed, and let her head loll against his shoulder.
Off Topic
-85 gold for average aetherite dragonshard
