24th of Frost, 119th Year of the Age of Steel
Talon struck the surface of the blood dragonshard with one of his jeweler’s runesmithing hammers. He watched as the aether within the shard was primed for interaction. The sorcerer’s sand strewn across the surface of his workbench crackled with a small amount of electricity. The smell of copper and ozone filled his nostrils as the pictograph that he had drawn within the powder began working to contain and redirect the aether being worked on within the dragonshard. Picking up one of his tonal forks, Talon struck the surface of the dragonshard. He listened as the sound that reverberated in his workshop was likened to chimes all simply being dropped in a pile of glass and beaten with a hammer. He winced. If that wasn’t an indication that the aether he was working with was far from refined, he didn’t know what was.
Talon struck the surface of the crystal once more with the tuning fork. As he did he kept the fork pressed to the shard. He watched as the aether paths within the crystal vibrated in a jagged and haphazard way. Gently he brushed the tonal fork over those aether paths. He could feel the vibrations of the fork in the tips of his fingers. As he guided the fork down that particular pathway he felt the vibrations grow stronger until the fork was beginning to emit a low screeching whine. Talon pulled the fork away. That was not a good sound. It meant that the aether pathway within the dragonshard was blocked and wasn’t primed for adequate tuning at that moment in time. He sighed inwardly. He knew that it wouldn’t be a quick process but he had been hoping that due to the inherently magical nature of the dragonshard it would at least be somewhat easier. Still, it gave him a good idea of exactly how long it would take.
Picking up a pair of tongs, Talon grasped the crystal. He took one of his hammers and struck the crystal. Again the sorcerer’s sand crackled and glowed. Out of the corner of his eye he watched as wisps of aether that broke away from the crystal were drawn into the pictograph and redirected back into the dragonshard. Carefully, Talon rotated the dragonshard so that he could more fully observe the aether pathways within it through the aura glass. He could see quite a few uneven clumps of aether that were causing the blockage preventing him from properly tuning the crystal to a more refined state.
Brining his hammer to one of those clumps, Talon tapped it lightly. Each tap caused the sorcerer’s sand to glow more brightly. The aetherite slab of his workbench responded to the work until the whole of his workshop was filled with the soft blue-violet glow of his enchanting. The air was filled with the different smells that Talon had grown accustomed to. Ozone was the most prevalent smell that accompanied the whole ordeal. It was why he never wore any of his more expensive clothes into the workshop. His mother always hated when he returned to the palace smelling of the forge.
Talon kept tapping lightly at the aether clump until it began to smooth out. Each time he rotated the crystal with the tongs so that he could break it up as evenly as possible. It took several minutes of tapping, rotating, tapping again but eventually Talon saw that particular clump broken up and redistributed back into the dragonshard. He set the crystal back down into the pictograph circle then picked up his tuning fork. Gently he tapped it against the side of the dragonshard. The sound that the crystal emitted wasn’t as harsh as before but it was still discordant to his ears. He touched the tuning fork to the surface of the crystal allowing it to begin vibrating softly. The aether pathway that he could see didn’t act as sporadically, responding to the tuning in a much more desirable manner. Carefully, Talon guided the tuning fork in a downward motion along the aether pathway, listening carefully to the noise that was being emitted. It wasn’t exactly harmonious but it was better and it didn’t produce that violent whining.
Setting the tuning fork down, Talon picked up the crystal with his tongs again. He rotated it until he could see another aether clump. As before he began tapping it with the hammer, being mindful of the reaction it caused to ripple outward. He was glad that he had chosen to use sorcerer’s sand as opposed to drawing the pictograph with ink. It would have faded a lot quicker otherwise. At this rate he knew he was going to have to pause his work later in the afternoon in order to redraw his pictograph. He continued tapping and rotating but he noticed that this particular clump was being more stubborn than the other one had been. He gave it a few more experimental taps but it was not being reduced. Placing the crystal back onto the surface of the workbench, Talon set his tongs aside. He grabbed his chisel, positioning it over the aether clump he brought his hammer to the butt of the chisel and tapped lightly. Spidery cracks appeared in the aether of the clump but it did not disperse. Talon gave it another tap then watched as the aether broke apart.
Talon waited a moment to observe the flow of the aether pathway through the aura glass. He chewed on his inner cheek gently and grumbled to himself as the aether began gathering in that spot again. Pressing the chisel to the surface of the dragonshard, he began gently carving an actual line into the crystal. He did it slowly, only making a few taps at a time so that the pathway being created didn’t interrupt the flow of another pathway inadvertently. After several minutes of diligently carving out the new pathway for the aether to follow he went back to the growing clump and broke it up again with a few light taps of the chisel. Taking his hammer, he gently hammered out the aether into following the new path that he had created in the crystal.
When the aether was flowing into its new pathway, Talon watched it for a moment before giving a satisfied nod. He picked up the tuning fork once more. Tapping it lightly against the crystal he was pleased to hear that the sound it emitted was getting closer to being more melodious. It still had an edge of disharmony to it but that was to be expected. With slow diligence, he continued guiding the aether pathway, sliding the tuning fork down it so that its form evened out. Once that was complete, he again picked up the crystal to observe it from multiple angles in order to inspect it for more unevenly distributed aether. His eyes fell upon, not a clump so much as a broken pathway altogether.
Setting the crystal back down so that the broken pathway was visible, Talon grabbed his hammer and chisel once more. Carefully he began the process of creating a new pathway. The difficulty in this particular instance would be reconnecting the broken path. The aether was not flowing correctly and Talon had to assume that it was due to how he had extracted the crystal from the pedestal. Were he a trained dragonshard miner, that likely could have been avoided but he had neither the training nor did he know one that he could personally call upon. At least, not without raising more questions than he felt like answering at the moment.
Lightly, Talon created an arc linking the edge of the two broken pathways together. Once it was completed he picked up his hammer and began hammering out the matted aether so that it flowed correctly from one path to the other. Upon finishing that, he once again picked up the tuning fork. Tapping it to the surface of the blood shard, Talon was pleased to note that the disharmony wasn’t nearly as bad as when he’d begun. Still, it needed some more refinement. He began guiding the aether through the various pathways both natural and created across the surface of the dragonshard. The tuning fork continued to vibrate lightly in his hand only emitting a soft whine as it did so. Little by little that whine began to turn into a chime that rung softly in Talon’s ears. He continued this slow methodical tuning of the dragonshard until the sound that rung from it was no longer that of broken chimes being hammered against glass but a steady and full chiming that was pleasant to the ears.
The Avialae set his tools down. He rolled his shoulders then flexed his wings lightly before picking up his pen so that he could make more notations in his journal. With the tuning of the dragonshard out of the way he could actually begin the work of refining the corruption out of it. That was not going to be any easier but few things about the runeforging process were.
