62 Ash 112
With a little more understanding and an increase of interest in scrivening, Shuai had himself isolated in his room. No one in the house had any reason to doubt the endeavor as a peek would show evidence of his many attempts to try and understand how it all worked and the liberties he could take with the art. While the adults did not know it yet, Shuai had already figured out through scrivening, the arrangements of mirrors and convergences of paths and all those other technical mumbo jumbos, he could put in the elements and take them out as he needed to. This was all because of the cooperation with a friend who himself knew Elementalism which Shuai repaid with another talisman to toy with. Unfortunately the talisman given ended up a dud according to the complaints as not only did it not take any spell, the talisman also ended up being eaten by the aether used on it and burnt itself to nothingness. "Are you sure you did it correctly? Remember the first time we tried? You didn't use the talisman with your aether, you used your aether on the talisman and burned it up yourself. I think this is another time I can say its all your fault. Or are you sure that you actually used it properly and it was me who messed things up. Think about it." For both boys, it was always going to be easier to blame the other.Although had Shuai been paying proper attention in his lessons, he remembered the talismans came with an expiry date, shorter, the more inexperienced its creator was; for him who had only started out this year, would it be realistic if it had lasted until now? Nevertheless Shuai took this as an opportunity to take his craft to the next level. When he next met his guine- friend for the remains of the dud to study, he also asked for a demonstration of the magic he wanted to put in to make sure Shuai was not the one at fault. Looking at it, it was definitely something greater than just lighting a small flame. Shuai wasted no time in pointing out "It's all your fault. You tried something the talisman was not designed for" which was without a doubt true according to what he knew. If it was that easy to use the talismans with any fire magic the elementalist could do, what would even be the point in Shuai's suffering to learn all those pictographs? Especially when there were so many different arrangements. However as a quick study it was easy for him to figure the arrangements he thought he would need to take in this new fire snake like thing he was shown but for the sake of accuracy, "show that to me again and then tell me what exactly is going on. I saw that snake thing but I have no idea what you were actually trying to do here."
Ah. That was what he wanted to do. "You should have just tried that fun thing we talked about last time. Get some glue, put it on the talisman, stick it on someone's clothes and activate it. Very fun to watch and if you do it fast enough they won't even know it's you." Maybe. Could the adults track them if they did that? Still, the idea showed the fun applications through combinations of scrivening and elementalism were in its creative uses even if it was as petty as setting someone's clothes alight so why was it that in practice on their own, elementalism seems to encourage more creativity while Shuai's scrivening was limited to such rigid applications? That was so unfair. But with no other ideas and guidance for Shuai to follow, it was only these rigid applications he could make use of. "Well this one is for storage... this one makes it move... this one keeps it in... Maybe?" Maybe not. He still had no clue if this could work so despite his reluctance he decided to take it away- home.
"Do you think I can mix some of those patterns I learnt last time to combine their functions? Like if I put this pictograph to hold the water aether together with this water pictograph to launch the water far and this other water pictograph to apply the reverse..." what did the notes mention about it, pressure? Big word and Shuai understood it more as "...movement?" So happy and proud to hear these questions coming from the child's mouth, all the proof needed to be sure Shuai was actually studying instead of slacking in his room where no one could watch him, there were no suspicions to prevent his questions from being answered, a special cake was even sent to his room the next time he announced he was going to do some self study, to encourage him to keep up the good work. But why stop there? Shuai did not know he would have been able to get even more benefits than he expected from that one query of his and, the tricks and methods were shown to him for how to combine the pictographs for different elements and then how to combine pictographs for the different schools of magic. All theoretical of course. For the Chisuos the boy was not ready yet to work with real magic. If only they knew...
But there was still no evidence to hint at it as the boy was content to keep himself in his room, to study the few designs he picked out and figure out how he could fit them all together for the element of fire, not water as he had led the adults to believe. Maybe if they realized he was toying around with ideas for the more volatile and dangerous of the elements they would have put him under stricter observation although while that may stop him in his current experiment, it would not stop him in the progress he was making. Recognizing that despite their different functions, the pictographs shared a lot of similarities and it was not because of the elemental use they shared. With that idea in mind Shuai prepared a new pattern making use of the designs overlaid over one another to narrow their functions as much as possible so he could be sure the pictograph he made would work for that one use of elementalism he was shown. Nothing extra. He did not want the fire to fly out, flail around or shoot up into the sky like some of the other patterns he had based his own design on.
Although lacking confidence in his design, he would have loved to have someone take a look at it for him but after his inquiry based on water, would they notice his sample was made to work with fire? Would they start asking questions? Would they know of his friends who had been inducted into the personal magics already and look into those with a particular affinity to fire? That would be risky so Shuai had another few days to design another arrangement, keeping its functions as close as possible to the original he already made; the only difference, the second would work with water instead. it was quite interesting that through that one single change, there many other changes to the arrangement were required and this was only for different elements within elementalism. The one school. Shuai could only wonder how it would be if he tried to adapt the same for different magics instead. With such a fundamental change would it not force him to put in a lot of work just to adapt the new patterns? That was a great idea for his next set of experiments. He would just have to find a new partner with different magics he could work with, first.
But back to the first. While the water talisman was something he made to hide his true works he was pleased to learn the other scriveners teaching him thought he learned the craft well and had adapted the ideas perfectly. Hearing them say they wished they could see more of his attempts so they could better guide him, Shuai was almost tempted to show them the first talisman he made. Worried they would question him of why he already had one at ready and had not showed it to them along with the water talisman he gave them as well as knowing his friend was growing too impatient for him to spend yet another few days idle to bring out the fire talisman as a new creation he made specifically for the other scriveners to evaluate, Shuai decided against taking the chance and instead promised them that he would make something new they could check in a few days, maybe something which could work with the theory of the talismans working with other schools of magic as he had just learnt instead of limiting himself to only the elements. Thus saying his goodbyes to his seniors, he reconvened with his friend as planned.
"This is it. It'll work with that fire snake thingy of yours." Well not exactly a fire snake thingy but that was how it looked to Shuai even if he knew how it worked thanks to his friends explanation. What were they going to do now? Tossing the talisman at the other boy, Shuai simply instructed him to "just do it like last time. Fill 'er up." and spun the talisman around the other boy's hand as he was holding it on the wrong spot. This was where the problems began. The first talisman they made, the lighter? It was a whole lot simpler. With this fire snake however though both boys knew how it was supposed to work through the normal use of elementalism, they could not be sure of how it was supposed to work with scrivening. The spell itself was too complicated that Shuai did not know much of it other than the basic idea of how it was supposed to work and how the aether worked within it so he kept calling for the other boy to pour in more aether. "More. More. More!" until they could be certain there was enough for it to not end up a lemon. For the other boy, he could tell the talisman was a lot more complicated with all the extra pictographs and was led to believe that it did need more aether for it to function as a whole and followed the instructions without question.
Neither could tell this was new ground for the other and trusted him completely. So much aether was being poured into the talisman and so much of the elementalists aether was being used that own tank was about to empty, it should come to no surprise that the boy overstepped although with the talisman as a medium, it bore the brunt of it as it shattered but the blowback escaped a little to get at the boy calling to the fire. This was Shuai's first encounter with overstepping. This was not good and he panicked to try and put the fire out of the other boy. There were some minor burns in the end but they were also burns which would be noticed so there was no hiding the pair's extra activities. Shuai did not look forward to his punishment and neither did his friend once the latter's pity from this unfortunate event was thoroughly spent.
And so appeared the Aunt Kaylee of this generation amongst the Chisuos.
