Mirror, Mirror, i.
Posted: Sat Jul 31, 2021 8:35 pm
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61 Searing 121
Jacun's Alchemical Goods
Jacun's Alchemical Goods
The elven apprentice had been going over his notes for over a week now. Master Jacun had offered small bits of advice, usually delivered as questions that stumped him for a while or made him stare at his notes and realize he had to start from scratch because he had made some novice assumptions that would have rendered everything an unusable mess. The man was more cheerful about it than Sivan was; of course, he could afford to be, but while Sivan smoldered a bit about everything, a part of him was grateful for his master's even temper. They weren't close as he had been with his previous master, but he trusted that Jacun knew what he was talking about and had his best interests at heart. His previous master wouldn't have called Jacun a friend otherwise.
But Sivan could worry at a problem like a dog with a bone until the end of time and never be quite happy with it. All the same, each setback was an opportunity and he knew that. Each time a few words from Master Jacun made him throw up his hands and start over, he was refining his process, learning lessons that would stick with him now and in the future. Some were even relevant to other pursuits: the engineering aspects of artificing; the brutal attention to detail when forming a contract with a spirit.
"It looks like you are ready to start experimenting," he had finally said, and that was that. He trusted that his plans were as good as they were going to get without moving on to the next stage or else Jacun would have niggled at him with another damnable perfect Socratic question. But he didn't deign to oversee him, which was good and bad. It was good that Master Jacun trusted him to do some experimenting without supervision, but he also anticipated making several mistakes before he hit a wall and asked for supervision because he had once again gotten as far as he could go without his master's wisdom and instruction.
Such was the way of learning.
He wasn't afraid to experiment, though. There were no hidden mistakes he could make that would detonate the building, only mistakes that would pooch the project. Thankfully, Master Jacun was a past master at rehabilitating failed experiments. When things went wrong, they would be able to recuperate some of the materials to be recycled in his next attempt. And he was certain it would take more than one attempt. His old master too had been of the mind that failure was the best teacher. It was one thing to be given easy tasks at the beginning of the journey in order to boost confidence, but there came a time where that bubble needed to break so one could let reality into the thick of things and adjust for setbacks.
The apprentice laid everything out, from the mirror frame he had recovered from a rubbish heap and cleaned, to the ingots of pure silver, and everything else he was going to need. He stoked the pyrolyth-powered burner, which yielded a much more even, easy-to-maintain heat than anything that relied upon more mundane fuel. Precision was of the essence with world magics, he had found. And anyway, a mundane burner would have added ten minutes to achieve the desired temperature, he thought. Efficiency was always key, and would be even more important when he moved on to bigger, more time-consuming projects.
The workshop was warded, of course. The workstations were further warded. But he was always circumspect and made sure the reactions he was going to manifest wouldn't be influenced by the vagaries of outside aether flows. It was a part of his process, drilled into him by his former master and maintained by his current. So many things could go wrong; he always did his best to control those variables that were within his power to control.
Sivan added the silver ingot to the heat, waiting until it began to melt before slowly adding the other ingredients he had collected from Master Jacun's stores. A benefit of being his apprentice was the access to tools and materials that he didn't have to pay for; or, rather, his labor and Jacun's agreement to be his teacher covered those costs. Many of his small projects had been ingredients for larger ones that Jacun worked on, so he was adding value to them with his learning process. It was the way of things. In any case, how else would he have had access to moon-grown tansy and platinum shavings if he wasn't a part of this established enterprise?
When the silver was fully melted and the other ingredients properly combined, he turned off the heat and quickly grasped the bowl-shaped container with special tools so he could pour it over the mirror frame. He attached it to another bit of engineering since he would have to use his hands to move the frame to get the molten silver to spread evenly. This would be easier with Jacun's help, but alas, he wanted Sivan to bang his head against the problem alone for a while before he could get help. So his first attempt was going to feel like juggling poison-dipped daggers because once the flow of metal began, his hands would be busy with the mirror frame and the rest of his attention needs must be focused on the incantation.
Forcing an incantation into a physical material, which would then preserve the incantation's magic and make it ongoing instead of something ephemeral, would be the most difficult part of this endeavor, truly. The physical reality of the silver would resist him trying to muck with it, and he would have to put a lot of concentration into it. He wouldn't be channeling his aether through a rune, which was a clear manifestation of power. Instead, he would be setting his intention through the structure of the words, which had a certain power to it, but always felt less real to him in some ways. The incantation was nothing without the proper circumstances and intention, and while he was creating the circumstances, intention wasn't something he knew how to measure. It felt like praying sometimes, as though he were doing all the work and then asking a Dragon God for Their blessing. That was one way in which this felt like magic more than science to him.
The devil was in the details. As soon as the incantation hit the silver, he knew it would begin to bubble. If the silver hardened with bubbles, it wouldn't make much of a mirror. He would have to scrape the frame clean, gather new materials, and try again. He tried not to dwell negatively on the sureness of this outcome, but he would rather be realistic than optimistic.
The proper way to do this would be to ease the enchantment into the material seamlessly; that's what a good alchemist would do. But he would have to get a sense for how the substances were reacting, and the ability to coax them along. He was still learning how to coax.
Before the silver had time to cool, he quickly went over his notes one more time. He would have to pour the silver right into the middle from as high as the apparatus would let him, then never let the surface tilt more than twenty degrees. He would have to keep it dribbling into the middle of the mirror frame and gently let it spiral out. When it was ready for the incantation, he would add that to the list of things he was doing simultaneously.
"No big deal," he muttered in Rivach, with an accompanying gesture that negated his statement. It was going to be a big deal for someone with his modest skills. Of course, he had found some things easier than expected, either due to his diligent studies of artificing or the ability to see the aether without the aid of an aether glass, but for every time he felt as though he had an advantage, there were two or three times it almost felt like a disadvantage because the logic of alchemy was slightly different. He wondered sometimes if the Gods saw all their pawing at power as crude and unsophisticated, as if breaking things into separate runes and disciplines was counterproductive to real mastery of the aether. He would likely never know.
With a sigh, he twisted a knob that sent the silver slowly pouring and got his hands on the mirror frame. He tilted it in a circular motion, trying to keep the silver flowing evenly all around. Not a single drip spattered, which was in itself a small victory. When the last of the silver was within the mirror frame—Jacun's bowl was treated so nothing would stick to it; waste not, want not—he set the mirror down on the workstation's surface and began the incantation. It was in Mythrasi, which he thought better suited to this work than Rivach. Putting his hands on either end of the mirror, he defined the space between them, clearing his throat, and repeating the incantation until the silver cooled and hardened.
Everything seemed to be going so well, but when it was over, the silver had taken on a decidedly greenish-black patina, which was wrong.
"What the fuck?" he asked rhetorically.