WORK • I S • W O R K
Ash 56, 121 Age of Steel
It was a curious sort who asked for Avamande's second line of work, a very specific set of people who had become associated with them through a rather convoluted process. When first establishing themselves as a Scrivener for hire, there were very few places of employment that would take the then young Hytori. Their parents had kept to themselves and created very few connections in the city, providing no letters of introduction for their offspring when they vanished from their life to continue their own studies. But luckily, magic was common enough in Kalzasi that a thriving set of merchants and shops cranked out products of dubious caliber in the same way as any other field of business in a city so large.Avamande hated it. The work, the employers, the products they created, but it gave them experience - and introduced them to the delightfully eclectic sort who still called upon them even after leaving such houses of ill repute. Customers at those establishments were very rarely mages themselves, instead mostly composed of mundane citizens of Kalzasi desiring the barest hint of magical edge. Scrivening tools were, for them, mostly useless - unless of course they additionally purchased a dragonshard, which such establishments were more than happy to provide for a nominal fee.
This group was different however. Upon reflection, Avamande considered that they were quite possibly a gang, a collection of local youths up to... whatever it was young people whose emotions weren't stripped from them by Threshold Sickness did. They weren't entirely certain what. But importantly, they included among their number a mage, marked with Kinetics - and the group had devised a way to be creative with that power. The Hytori had first noticed them when receiving batch lots of the same glyph, the intended effect being more or less a delayed fuse for the aether poured into the initial Mirror, causing it to burst out after some time. The orders became even more creative after that, and Avamande's interest was piqued at the problem solving they had to partake in to meet the commissions. So much so that they simply cut out the middleman and introduced themselves to the gang directly, caring little for how things were supposed to be or the fact that prior to their bold action the ne'er-do-wells had no idea just who they were and that wall of separation had been destroyed.
Instead they were, dare they say it, excited at the prospect of working directly with such inventive sorts. They lived a far different life from the men and women who now sought their services, but they were entirely unbothered by that. No, Avamande was temperamentally inclined to simply ignore any seemingly inexplicable behavior from anyone else - for they knew that many thought the same of them. It would be hypocrisy to do otherwise. As far as the gang members, they in turn were willing to overlook the stiff and seemingly emotionless Hytori's own oddities in exchange for their enthusiastic participation in their mad experiments.
Said experiments grew increasingly more blunt as they became better accustomed with one another, Avamanade simply not caring about anything that was not blatantly illegal and the gang in turn growing relaxed around their strange new friend. Eventually, the leader of the pack simply told the mage the truth, very bluntly explaining that they were trying to cheat at fights. Once more, the Hytori could not bring themselves to care, reasoning that those they were swindling of their money were likely more criminals than the band were themselves. Though they did have a measure of sympathy for the poor unfortunates they were inadvertently assisting in the pummeling of.
Their goal was very simple, but their roundabout way of asking for assistance of it prior to simply telling Avamande the truth ensured that the effects were never quite what they had wanted. They simply wished for their strikes to be imbued with the power of Kinetics wielded by the mage among their ranks. Armed with this knowledge, they and their mage went to work refining the technique, testing new glyphs and ways to scribe it, attempting to balance power and secrecy. After all, if anyone knew that they were cheating, they wouldn't be able to collect on their winnings. Far more likely that they'd have much worse problems.
Which is how Avamande found themselves armed with a needle and a bottle of Spellwright's Ink, holding themselves still for the woman next to them to give them the go ahead to begin. It was ingenious, and nothing that they would have ever considered on their own. It was also what some might consider a transgression against the entire practice of personal magic, a mockery of the noble arts, but Avamande was far more concerned about the former than the latter. To tattoo a glyph upon living flesh opened up new opportunities and possibilities that canvas and parchment lacked, an entire field of study that as far as Avamande knew was somewhat untapped. And they were using it to cheat at the fighting pits. Some might consider that demeaning, but for them it was nothing more than a mutually beneficial business relationship, made all the better by the fact that their customers were all too eager to be experimented upon.
The work here was going to be... difficult. Not the glyph itself, that was fairly straightforward, an assortment of pictograms Avamande could draw in their sleep. No, the issue was the strange matter of having a canvas that could and would move. Others might be concerned about the willful application of pain to someone else, but Avamande lacked such reflexive compunctions. They knew very well that the procedure was wanted by its recipient, and so did not see any reason to delay beyond what was required when she inevitably flinched. And she did, indeed, flinch, the first press of the needle against her skin causing her to pull back.
A simple array of Mirrors, Paths, and a sole Continuum that if drawn on parchment something that would be given to novices as exercises, was made all the more difficult when placed upon skin. Not only did they have to contend with her incessant moving as they tried to ink the glyph upon her, but the surface was less than ideal. Starting from her back, they had to carefully draw a path up her shoulder and then down the length of her arm, finally ending at her hand. It wasn't just a matter of bringing the energy from point A to point B either, the mage making sure to place Mirrors at sights where the body naturally pooled power.
Before the fight began, the mage would pat the fighter on her back, channeling aether into the Mirror inked there. After that, it was just a matter of making sure she could land a hit around the time that the magic had finished working its way through the rest of the glyph. Avamande's dream was to somehow craft a Continuum that would release its stored energy upon impact, but such arts yet eluded them, so they had to make do with trusting in their customer being timely about the strike. She was already doing quite well with the pain, despite the fact that the mage carried on in the same workmanlike fashion that they did all of their work.
If anything, they actually went slower than normal, well aware that a mistake here could not be fixed by simply throwing away the parchment and starting afresh. No, instead she had to endure meticulous work of a bloodless mage who only slowed when she started enough to risk the perfection of the current pictograph. A Mirror in the center of the back, followed by a Path up the shoulder blade to meet another Mirror at the joint. That was the tricky bit, the blade having an awful habit of rolling in response to many stimuli. Such as a needle being jabbed into her skin. Each stroke of a pictograph was drawn out over minutes instead of seconds, the mage scowling as they had to delay and delay their progress in order for their work surface to lay still and flat once more.
Progress became considerably faster afterwards, another Mirror placed on the elbow with the Path linking the two on the underside of arm. Over halfway done and with the hard part over, they finally relaxed as their needle worked its way towards the palm of her hand. Until they got to the wrist, and the interesting part of the glyph began. The Continuum placed there was needed to not just concentrate the aether flowing through her body, but delay it long enough for her to land a punch. The swirling pictograph was carefully inked, the other members of the gang holding her hand splayed open as they finished the work.
Finally, it was time to expel the magic. Finely detailed work, extremely small Mirrors were placed on the knuckles, Paths connecting them to the Continuum where the aether would be accelerated and then shot out of her balled hand. Avamande was not entirely certain whether or not the glyph would work, and at this point it wasn't their concern. They were, however, wondering what would happen to the by its nature temporary glyph after it was used.
A question for another day.