Legend of Ransera

122 Searing 87th


Ivar was holed up in his dorm room, hunched over his desk. The object of his focus was a simple katana. The blade was new, with no scars from previous battles, because all he’d cut through was a handful of slimes. He had bought it yesterday morning, the first weapon he'd ever owned. But Ivar wasn't content with it staying as it was. He wanted to make the blade his own, to embed it with his own magic.

His idea was to use scrivening to engrave teleportation pictographs on the katana, eventually infusing it with aether and giving it the power to teleport to wherever it was pointed. It was something he believed to be possible but whether he had the skill level to pull it off was another question entirely. Still, even if he couldn’t pull it off he’d at least have tried so in the future it’d be much easier.

Taking a piece of parchment, he began sketching pictographs that represented teleportation. The glyphs had to be accurate. Each line, each curve had to be perfect. One wrong stroke could change the meaning entirely. After he got a general idea of what he was doing, he moved onto the sword.

It wasn't as easy as he had thought it would be. Drawing the glyphs on a flat surface was one thing. Drawing them onto the blade of a sword was quite another. The blade's surface was hard, and even with the ink he was using, it was a challenge to make clear, legible markings. He didn’t actually want to carve into the blade. He didn’t know if he even could if he wanted to.

A few hours passed with Ivar's complete concentration on the blade. He hardly noticed the passing of time, so engrossed was he in his task. The blade was beginning to show the faint lines of the glyphs he was drawing, but he wasn't satisfied. The lines weren't clear enough to properly allow aether to flow between the paths.

Breaking from his task, he stepped back to assess his work. He could tell that it wouldn’t be easy for this shoddy work to hold any sort of spell. Perhaps he was doing something wrong? Was he using the wrong kind of ink? Should he have engraved on the blade?

He hated the very thought of engraving on it. Engravings would be next to impossible to fix if he messed up. And it made it impossible for someone of his caliber to alter the functionality if he wanted to tweak the spell later. And if he messed up somewhere… that was 15 gold that he’d have set on fire.

He decided, in the end, that he was going to write the spell down on parchment and wrap it around the handle of the blade. That seemed like a good compromise, though he still wasn’t sure whether it’d work or not. He also needed to think of a good place to test his spell out. Something told him that sending a sword in a potentially random direction was the kind of thing that could get him kicked out of school.

The afternoon waned, and Ivar was still at his task. His back ached from being hunched over the desk, his hand cramped as it usually did when he scrivened for too long. The pictographs on the scroll were finally taking on the shape he wanted. The glyphs were there, deep and clear. But it wasn't finished yet. Not until it could hold a spell.

As soon as he completed the final stroke of the pictograph, he held out his hand and focused on casing a spell that would send him forwards by ten feet or so. There was a soft hum and a flicker of light, and then... nothing. He assumed it’d all turned out okay. He took the sword in his hand and started wrapping the scroll around its handle. It was kind of sad to think that all of this work was only going to be good for one trial run.

He vaulted around campus until he found a nice open area. There he positioned himself, taking a moment to breathe and focus. Ivar looked down at his handiwork. The scroll, delicately adorned with meticulously inked pictographs, was now securely fastened around the katana's handle. He traced his eyes over the surface of the scroll, feeling the ridges of the script under his skin. This was the moment of truth.

He ran his thumb across the scroll in the way he had intended during its creation. This was supposed to be what activated the spell. For a moment, nothing happened. And then, with a subtle shift in the air, the sword was gone. Ivar's eyes widened as he looked to where he was pointing, about ten feet away, and there it was.

His katana teleported exactly as he'd planned and dropped to the ground. A bubble of triumph swelled in his chest, and a broad grin split his face. The experiment had worked.

"Okay, so it's one thing to teleport the sword itself. That's cool, impressive really. But if I'm really going to get any practical use out of this, I've got to take it up a notch. Can I control the sword while it's being teleported? If I can teleport it mid-swing, then maybe, just maybe, I could actually do some damage with this thing. But I have to think this through. Teleporting a stationary object isn’t likely to do much unless I drop it on top of someone’s head or something… So it's the speed that's the key here. If I can get the sword moving fast enough in the right direction before I activate the teleportation, then I might be able to actually use this thing to fight.

Those slimes from yesterday would be the perfect target. They're slow, they're predictable, and they don't pose too much of a threat. If I can't make this work against them, then there's no way it'll work against a real threat. I'll need to practice the motion, get the timing just right. Teleport the sword mid-swing, and hope that the momentum carries it through the slime.

But if I can make it work, this could be a game-changer. Distance won't matter, cover won't matter. As long as I can see my target, I can hit it. And with the element of surprise on my side, I might just be able to hold my own long enough to end things with an unexpected attack."

Ivar eventually stopped monologuing and collected his displaced sword. His mind raced with possibilities. What if the sword could hold more than a single charge? The concept of multi-charge magical artifacts wasn't foreign to him. He'd heard tales of adept scriveners crafting such pieces. But this challenge was beyond his current mastery.

Sword sheathed and safely tucked into its holder, Ivar quickly stretched and tried to focus clearing his thoughts. He decided to go for a jog else he’d end up back in his room scrivening and that was only going to hurt his wrist even more. The air was crisp and fresh, and the ground was firm beneath his feet. His limbs started to loosen as he began slowly.

As his legs carried him in circles around the courtyard, Ivar could feel the anticipation of the day's discoveries give way to the rhythmic movement of his body. The jog was not just a physical exercise, it was a mental reprieve, an interlude to his day that grounded him back to the physical realm. The steady rhythm of his footsteps was almost therapeutic.

His mind began to clear as he inhaled the earthy scent of the environment. The sounds of his feet hitting the ground echoed in his ears, harmonizing with the beating of his pulse. This was his reality, simple and unburdened by magical riddles. It was a reminder that despite his quest for knowledge and power, he was still very much a part of the mortal plane.

Gradually, his pace started to pick up. He could feel the pleasing wind whistling past him, the exhilarating sensation of speed, and the feeling of liberation that came with it. His chest heaved with effort, but it was a good kind of exertion. After a while, Ivar began to slow down, his breathing heavy yet controlled. The adrenaline gradually receded, replaced with a satisfying fatigue.

His thoughts were abruptly interrupted when a human body materialized right in front of him. He didn't have enough time to change direction, colliding with the newly arrived person with an unexpected thud. His body reacted faster than his brain, instinctively reaching out to steady the figure he'd just barreled into. It was a girl.

"Whoa!"

So, this was what it felt like when someone just appeared out of nowhere. The thought slipped into his mind as he studied the person in front of him. She was about his age, dressed in the black robes of the entropy college, a bit flustered from the collision.

"Uh... sorry."

Ivar found himself apologizing, even though he was fully aware that it was her sudden appearance that had caused the collision. His face felt hot, a testament to his embarrassment. It wasn't often that he found himself in such a clumsy situation, let alone with a pretty girl involved.

The girl just blinked at him for a moment, looking equally taken aback, but soon a small smile graced her lips.

"No, it's my fault. I should've been more careful with where I showed up. You didn't get hurt, did you?"

"No, I'm fine. You?"

“Yeah. Be seeing you.”

Ivar wanted to ask her out but she vanished again.

“Didn’t even get her name… I’ll have to keep an eye out for her.”

He ended up spending the bulk of his afternoon thinking about her and wondering how he might be able to ask her out. He got it in his head that he might be able to fake an injury to guilt trip her. It was either a really good idea or a really bad idea.