1st of Ash, 124th Year of the Age of Steel
The Imperial Academy of Arcana Science boasted any number of workshops and laboratories, and of course, classrooms. Most delighted in the views of the great and good city of Gelerand. Olga Barber hadn’t a view of anything.
Workshop 17-b lay below the Academy, underground, and the only lights that reached here were artificial. Magelights buzzed and burned bright with phosphorescence, casting a hazy, sterile glow over an already unwelcoming space. Carved out and then fortified with concrete, then, without much care, filled with various pieces of furniture. A desk overflowing with ink-stained and annotated blueprints, a broken bookshelf with a cascade of papers and tomes. There were chairs, too, and stools, and even an old couch and cot - but everything had been pushed wayside, to make room for Olga’s half-finished hulk of a project: a tank.
“- and we’re low on Spellwright’s Ink. That, and coffee,” she said, rubbing the last of the sleep from her eyes. “Ask for that stuff from Drathera.”
“The Army asked for a report last time I made an order,” a man, his appearance kept in all the ways Olga’s wasn’t. His short blond hair combed and gelled back, as was the current fashion, and his military uniform pressed and without even a thread out of place. “They’ll ask again.”
Olga sighed. “It’s frustrating. They’re always asking -,” she paused, rolling out a sheet of paper over one side of the tank. Quickly, she sketched out the side in charcoal. Messy work, but there was a precise quality to her scribbles. “This work takes time. They know it. You know it, Tolfar. Certainly, I know it,” she said, on her knees and cleaning up the various bits of Scrivening they’d considered for the project. “How many did they order?”
“Fifteen, ma’am.”
“Report back progress as projected. Nothing more, nothing less. Confirm the schematics match the model they’re using, and remind them - politely - I don’t like to be rushed,” she frowns, erasing a pictograph from the ritual circle. “And, ask for the lead on the engineering team that designed these things, and whoever they’re training to use these contraptions. We’ll need their understanding to create a foundation for the core.” She wiped chalk from her hands as she stood back up. “But, before you do any of that, find Elaine. Windrow, to you, remember. She’s teaching something upside on Practical Scrivening Applications, if that helps. I’ll need to negotiate for her time on this project.”
“Understood, ma’am. Anything else?”
“Yes - can you find a copy of Clegg’s Multiple Theory? And, while you’re looking, a more updated version of Script’s Modern Scrivener’s Compendium. Something from the last five years, Tolfar.”
Tolfar nodded sharply. “Of course, ma’am. I’ll be right back.”
---
“And you’re hoping to multiply the effect?”
Professor Elaine Windrow was a tall, wild sort of woman. Her gray piled high into a teetering tower of braids and curls, held only in place by colorful pins and brooches. Her style was very much in favor of more, various pieces layered awkwardly over others, scarves and jewelry and jackets and dresses all on top of the other, her figure more pile than woman. Her glasses were too large for her face, as was her mouth, not that she cared. Professor Windrow was always herself, very much so, and entirely focused on her study: Scrivening.
“Yes, but through the process. I’m using Clegg’s Multiple.”
“I see,” Professor Windrow nodded, her head, humming as she traced the various runes and pictographs. “It wasn’t the worst instinct. But Clegg’s theory is focused on more personal magic. Doubling an illusion or a fireball, not translated - easily, anyway - to the practice of world magic.”
Olga frowned, looking back at her work. “There’s only a difference in where world magic draws power from. Are you suggesting it won’t work?”
Professor Windrow smiled, knowingly - irritatingly. She shrugged. She didn’t offer a word of guidance.
Olga huffed, pretending annoyance, but they both knew this was nothing more than performance. Professor Windrow had been one of Olga’s greatest supporters when she’d been a star student at the Academy - and her advisor for her senior thesis. And, this was why. Most of Olga’s other Professors had simply taught the subject. Many hadn’t done more than read from the assigned list and expected their students to do little more than parrot answers. Professor Windrow, however, had always expected more. She’d taught Olga to ferret out her own answers, to understand world magics were as much art as science. There was always another way to do things, a way that was more her - and so, through Professor Windrow she discovered a better way of doing things.
“So, if this duplicates only the result -,” Olga began, tapping her finger on the paper. She looked at her work. “...not the end result. Not the effect. But the process,” she hummed, thinking. “So - the mirror isn’t enough. Or, rather, the path and the mirror need to be linked. From me, to them.” She said, making the necessary adjustments. She scribbled, adjusting what was a simple pictograph to a more complicated glyph.
Professor Windrow was smiling now.
“- and, the path isn’t perfect. Energies will be lost throughout. A continuum to direct the copied magic through the Cores. A vortex to capture anything excess.”
“Rudimentary still, Olga,” Professor Windrow added her own scribbles to Olga’s work. “But the foundations of Scrivening can carry you far, all the same. It’d be effective to consider your own placement in the ritual - and the design of your glyphs. Remember, Scrivening should -.”
“Yes, the design of the glyphs should match my intent. Identical paths, to emphasize the mirroring aspect. Flowing scripts to emphasize efficiency, an unburdened and unbroken ritual. And, bold, round designs to -.”
“Keep the magic contained,” Professor Windrow, smiling. “It’s a good design. Not especially unique. You aren’t the first to try this.”
“I wouldn’t have thought so,” Olga added with a shrug. “Although I’m surprised there isn’t more on this sort of strategy. This kind of efficiency would make things all the easier for the military. Or maybe this is something already being done, and other researchers like to keep their cards close to their chest.”
“It could be. But best not to think about that so much. You have work to do, I believe?”
“Yes, Professor. I do.”
---
Olga was used to all kinds of names. She’d been called all sorts of nonsense during her Academy days. Well, no, she’d been called a bitch mostly, but that was only an indictment of her classmates’ lack of creativity. That, and it wasn’t like she’d been responsive to anything else they’d ever called her. Not that they were wrong. She could be a real nasty kind of lousy when things weren’t going her way.
But she’d been a child, then. And now? She was an adult, theoretically, imbued with all the wisdom her supposed maturity had earned her. Supposedly, Olga had learned patience. And with everything she’d endured over her twenty-six years on this planet, Olga remembered there was nothing worse than a fucking engineer.
“...of course that didn’t make it any easier to develop the wheels, ma’am. No. You can’t trust a metalworker to get much right, not where it really counts. They don’t have the head for the math of it. And so that’s why we had the issues with the turning gears. And that’s why -.”
Gunnery Sergeant Jamison R. Dusseldorf was old. Older than Olga, anyway, by at least several decades, and by her earlier logic, wiser and more mature than her by miles. Stationed at who knows where, and when, Dusseldorf was only as senior as he was by virtue of simply outliving everyone else he’d come up with. Bald and obviously decaying, the skin folds around his head so deep and stretched out, Olga hadn’t the faintest clue where his skull sat in his wrinkly prune of a face.
“- back in sixty-nine there were all kinds of issues with the factories. The goblins weren’t so much an issue, then. And, of course, we still had Zaichaer. Shame, that.”
“Please, Gunnery Sergeant. The tank schematics? You were walking me through the design.”
“Ah, yes. Where was I? Oh - the turning gears,” and Olga watched as Gunnery Sergeant Dusseldorf fumbled through his words and thoughts, and his skin sagged from his chin to his neck and further down. He was so distractible. She hoped to (the appropriate and military approved) gods that if she ever got this pathetic someone would have the decency to shoot her right between the eyes.
“- but that doesn’t solve the issues in the actual armor. We needed a design with flexibility, and of course, durability. Mages and the like on the battlefield. There’s the standard anti-magic, obviously, but that isn’t cheap. Not that the resources are easily found. So, we suggested steel. The upper -.”
Olga idly considered strangling him. She wondered how bad prison would be. She wondered if she was genius enough to get away with murder. She looked at Gunnery Sergeant Dusseldorf one last time, thinking about her hands around his absurdly thick neck, before deciding that no, he wasn’t worth it. He had better use to her alive.
“Excuse the introduction, sir - but I have a question. Have you ever participated in the actual process of Artifice?”