Chapter 50 — Master Rigure’s Workshop

Nelmi was worried for her mistress. The girl had become more withdrawn of late and seemed to be prone to odd mood swings. And there was another even more worrisome problem...

Careful not to bump the door with the tray of food she was carrying, Nelmi listened. There were clearly two voices inside, but she could only make out what her mistress was saying.

“How did the witch find the house? And how did she know to check the basement?”

“…”

“I told you targeting pets was too risky!”

“…”

“Well, now we don't have much choice; I need to get stronger if we're going to stop the witch. We'll set out tomorrow morning. If I do the meditation like you taught me, I should be ready by then.”

Not good. The girl had clearly become involved in something dangerous. Interfering with a witch’s business was far too risky!

Nelmi knocked and entered the room. She wanted to sigh at the sight of her mistress still in her nightshirt this late into the morning. The creepy monster that had formed a dark pact with her mistress was in the room again, acting like a normal house cat.

“Good morning, Mistress. I've brought breakfast up for you since you didn't come down to eat.”

“Ah, thanks Nelmi.”

“Of course, Mistress,” Nelmi said while setting the tray onto a low table. “Um, Mistress, I know I've said it before, but you shouldn't get in the habit of talking to your cat. People might think you've illegally acquired a familiar.”

The least she could do was warn her mistress to hide her familiar better.

“I know… but, talking to Keth'yan cheers me up when I'm feeling down.” The girl’s mouth tugged upward slightly. “And I can tell him anything, knowing that he'll keep my secrets safe.”

“Well, of course, he will. He's a cat!” Nelmi chuckled, playing along with her mistress’ deception.

The monster sauntered over and rubbed up against her legs, pretending to purr. Whether it was dangerous… she didn’t want to think about too much.

“Oy, you. Don't be underfoot now,” she complained. It could clearly smell the treat she had brought, and the thing took enough distance to look up at her with pleading eyes and meow plaintively. “Alright, alright. I've got your treat right here.”

She always made sure to bring scraps of monster meat that she saved from the kitchen whenever she could. Her pa told her these sorts of creatures needed more than just normal meat to be satisfied. And last thing she wanted was for the thing to get hungry.

When they arrived at the basement door to the tower part of Master Rigure’s house, Ria stared with awe at the door’s powerful defensive ward, inscribed through the use of carved channels filled in with a metal that was glowing a faint blue.

The master mage placed a hand on a control circle in the door’s ward, and after a moment the door opened inward.

Ria followed him inside the room. Inscribed on the floor was the most amazing pattern she had seen yet. The outer part of the design was clearly a ward, but the inner design was something else, and she could feel the flow of earth energy welling up from the design in the center of the floor.

A ley-line connection! This design was powered by a ley-line!

Stunned, Ria closed her eyes and reached out with her energy perception. There, deep beneath the tower, she felt a strong energy flow. She could only find it because of the connection to the pattern inscribed into the floor. In fact, there was a weak water energy flow that was closer.

Ria’s guess was that the water energy connected to the fancy well in the courtyard in front of the manor. She was really excited to find places of power within the town!

“I see you perceived the ‘energy well’ right away. Obviously, I would need a source of energy if I was to be continually enchanting powerful items for Lord Vorshan or for myself. There are special isolation rooms, testing rooms, and warded storage on the floors above,” Master Rigure explained before continuing.

“As you can see, the 1 silver coin per hour fee to make use of my workshop is quite reasonable. For 2 silver per hour, I’ll even provide advice on your current project. For 5 silver per hour, I’ll allow you to kick me out of the lab and give you exclusive use of the workshop.”

Expensive! But, having a place to work while drawing energy from the energy well… She could make powerful scrolls non-stop if she rented space here. She could recharge any number of scrolls, effectively removing the one per day limit on medium-quality scrolls.

“It is impressive,” Ria admitted.

“Aye, that it is,” Master Rigure agreed proudly. “I won’t say it was my life’s work. Regardless, creating this workshop certainly made my life’s work easier.”

Ria nodded. She could see that to be true.

Master Rigure motioned for her to sit at a good-size table that was placed atop the well.

Ria took her seat at one of the two stools placed at the table. On the table were placed books, a thin slab of void stone, and some writing supplies. The writing supplies were of the normal variety.

The books on the other hand… The Art of Inscription, Modern and Ancient… Symbols of Power: A Dictionary of Glyphs… A Study of Divination Rituals and Derived Magicks. Somehow, they seemed specifically tailored toward her.

Seeing her eyes lingering on the books, Master Rigure spoke with a smile as he took the stool opposite Ria, “After our conversation yesterday, anticipating that you would request a lesson wasn’t difficult.”

Hmm, it was so. With a nod, Ria got out her own writing supplies and her journal into which she had been extracting and organizing the important information from Luventi’s book. Flipping through the almost-full journal, Ria decided that she would need to stop by Simon’s shop to purchase another.

The lesson started out with calligraphy exercises that she could use to improve her accuracy. There were different exercises designed for each type of writing tool: quill, brush, and pen. The exercises progressively increased in difficulty and complexity.

Ria diligently copied them down. Improving her skills was certainly important, and simple things like this that could reduce waste, prevent disastrous failures, and increase the efficiency of her scrolls were certainly welcome.

While she was copying, Master Rigure pointed out that when making dense inscriptions she could use her energy control to limit where and how the ink flowed. Using this technique, not only could she prevent lines from accidentally touching as the ink was absorbed, but she could get better results from paper, particularly when using gel-type inks.

Once explained, Ria thought the idea was so obvious that she was embarrassed not to have realized it herself. Master Rigure laughed when she immediately purchased more low-quality paper to experiment with.

The low-quality paper quickly proved useful for the next part of the lesson where she was shown methods to adjust the concentration of magicite in the ink to more safely match the paper’s limits. This not only reduced wasting her expensive magicite stone, but resulted in increased durability and power for her enchantments compared to just using the ink without magicite.

What she had learned was already leading to significant improvements to the amount of energy that she could safely store in a single scroll, but the next technique that Master Rigure introduced her to dwarfed everything learned up to this point.

The technique was called a battery construct. The most common of these being an ‘energy storage spiral.’ Keeping in mind the optimal line density that a material would support, an otherwise unused area of the scroll could be used to store additional energy separate from the spell design itself.

Adding battery constructs was not without risk. Care was needed to make sure the connecting lines were thin enough to limit the flow and prevent the main diagram from becoming oversaturated. If any part of the design oversaturated, a catastrophic failure would result.

Besides extending a scroll effect’s duration, what excited Ria the most about this technique for connecting stored power to a spell diagram was that it was similar to externally powering a ward or spell construct, a topic that Ria was extremely interested to learn.

Master Rigure must’ve anticipated her thinking, because he immediately warned her not to experiment with connecting to ley-lines or other external energy sources until she mastered using both battery constructs and fail-safe circuits.

The next topic was the mentioned fail-safe circuit. The circuit that Master Rigure showed her was a square around the outside that when broken would trigger a dissipator effect to safely bleed off the stored energy. The square also functioned as a bounding element that would trap and bleed energy released from the scroll’s interior when the activation condition wasn’t triggered.

Ria thought it was an ingenious design. In the example Master Rigure provided, only one corner was used for the dissipator, so the other three corners could be used for battery circuits while leaving room for a circular spell design in the center. The recommended dissipator was a darkness fog which would safely billow out from a damaged scroll, giving the released energy a form that wouldn’t harm the carrier or chain-detonate other nearby scrolls.

For the final technique, Ria was taught about template scrolls, where the user activated and powered the scroll’s effect by directly providing energy to the scroll. The design varied depending on whether the scroll was intended to receive energy at a specific location or not.

Master Rigure warned that these kinds of scrolls required special storage to prevent accidental activation, but were popular because of their reusability. Ria thought this sort of scroll design would be useful for making healing and stamina type scrolls, where accidental activation wouldn’t cause any problems. In many ways, template scrolls were a lot like wands.

During the lesson, Master Rigure made use of the inscription and glyph books to show Ria examples and teach her how to use them for reference. He really was doing a good job of selling the books.

With the instruction completed, the remaining lesson time was spent having Ria practice the techniques while Master Rigure was there to give advice and correct mistakes.

There was something that Ria had been wanting to do since purchasing the phoenix quill and now she had the knowledge and facilities to safely do it. Cheerfully humming a little tune about summer fireworks and explosions in the sky, she scritched out a voice-activated firebomb design, fancied up with storage swirls and a darkness fog fail-safe.

“For that to be your first choice…,” Master Rigure muttered, shaking his head, but he handed the completed design back with his approval.

Ria gave a toothy grin. “So how many should I make?”

“How about we start with three low-quality and two medium-quality.”

The low-quality paper ones were excellent practice for Ria’s energy control skills and brushwork, but getting to let loose with the phoenix quill on the medium-quality ones was the highlight of her day.

The test on one of the low-quality ones produced a surprisingly powerful fireball, and Ria really wanted to test one of the big ones just for fun, but the money was more important.

Lightning was next, but from using her wand Ria knew lightning needed a direction or target. Her first solution was to make a template design that shot directly out of the scroll when a sufficient amount of energy was supplied.

Her second idea came with the help of both the glyph and divination books and by applying a variation of the healing targeting that she had come up with before. After a few trips to the testing room and a few reworks, Ria came up with a design for a voice-activated lightning mine that would strike all ‘beings’ within a fixed distance around the scroll. She called the low-quality ones ‘stunners’ and the medium-quality ones ‘devastators’.

Master Rigure was extremely pleased with the ‘stunners’ and ‘devastators’, giving her a great price on those… which she ended up spending immediately to buy the three books from him, to his great amusement. The books were painfully expensive, particularly the rare divination book, but she couldn’t deny their utility.

After the purchase, Master Rigure reminded Ria that these books were restricted and that it was illegal for unlicensed individuals to read them. It was now her responsibility to make sure that they didn’t fall into the wrong hands.

With the remaining twenty or so minutes until her three hours were up, Ria took advantage of the energy well to create improved healing scrolls and a set of stamina and health restoration barriers for Leon and herself. Resulting in a need to buy more parchment before leaving with Grandma Fana.

“How’d it go?” was the first thing Grandma Fana asked after they said their goodbyes to Master Rigure and Shanna.

“Excellent! I really learned a lot, and I earned enough money to buy some books that will help me with my scroll making,” Ria replied with a big grin and raised up her now bulging and heavy satchel.

"Haha, that's good to hear," Grandma Fana chuckled at her enthusiasm. "With the way everything Master Rigure sells is so expensive, I can't imagine the lessons aren’t also expensive. I'm glad that you are getting your money's worth."

"Yup! Totally worth it!" Ria nodded and then saw that they were passing by Simon's shop. "Ah, Grandma Fana, I need to pick up some more writing supplies."

"Sure," Grandma Fana agreed. "I don't think I've been inside this shop before."

"Simon runs the store. He's really nice and was the one who recommended that I see Master Rigure about joining the Enchanters Guild," Ria explained as she led them inside the shop’s dim and dusty interior.

“Welcome back, Ria. I see you’ve come with someone today. A fellow book-lover perhaps?” Simon greeted as he looked up from the book he was reading.

“Ah! I never asked!” Ria gasped at her oversight.

Grandma Fana chuckled at Ria’s overreaction. "Honestly, I'm really surprised to see a village girl that likes books and writing so much. Jarrel and Carli hated learning their letters, but running a shop requires maintaining a ledger and dealing with purchase contracts and such. I was quite strict with them.”

“That’s a sad reason to learn to read. No wonder they hated it! Doesn’t everyone love stories about knights, dragons, and romance?!” Ria complained.

“You mean like the tales the traveling bards tell?” Grandma Fana laughed. “Why spend all that money on something you can get free at the taverns?”

Ria was scandalized.

After several moments of staring in shock, she declared, “Grandma Fana! I will buy you a book and teach you the joys of reading the great authors of Crysellia!”

Grandma Fana smiled at Ria’s antics. “If it will make my Ria happy, I’m willing to give it a try.”

“Simon, I need a book with grand drama! We must go bold!” Ria demanded.

“Hmm… how about Renault’s Tale of Two Sisters?” Simon suggested.

A good choice. Two sisters separated by fate and love. Each fighting for what they believed in, only to have their paths result in conflict and tragedy.

Ria shook her head. “It’s good, but… maybe something with a bit more court intrigue and romance?”

Simon rubbed his chin. “Then, Helmand’s Duchess of the Isles?”

“Oooh, that!” Ria clapped her hands together excitedly. “Let’s do that one!”

After leading them over to a corner of the store, Simon pulled two copies of the same story off the shelf for her to inspect. One was a worn, well-read copy with inexpensive paper and binding. The other was decoratively bound, gilded, and lovingly illustrated.

“This is a beautiful edition, Simon. It must’ve been hard to come by. I’ll buy both. The common copy will make a great gift for a friend,” Ria decided, placing the worn one in her satchel and handing the fancy one to Grandma Fana.

“Thank you, Ria. I will cherish it,” Grandma Fana said sincerely, running her hand along the gold letters embossed into the luxurious leather cover.

“Looks like I wasn’t your first stop for books today,” Simon commented with a grin, motioning toward her satchel. “Rare books indeed, if the glimpse I saw didn’t deceive me. The visit with Master Rigure went well?”

Ria proudly presented her Enchanters Guild card. “I’m a guildmember now, thanks to you, Simon.”

“I see, I see. Congratulations!” Simon said then gave a conspiratorial grin. “By the way, are you already looking for the next book in Lady Hawthorn’s Epic of Heroism and Betrayal?”

Ria shook her head and admitted, “I just came by to get a new journal and some more writing supplies.”

“Something wrong with the previous journal?” Simon queried, surprised.

“It’s full already. I’ve been working hard on my studies, so…” Ria trailed off with embarrassment.

Simon’s eyes widened. “I’ll say! But there’s nothing wrong with that! Let’s get you one with more pages this time.”

Ria soon had her new journal and extra paper and ink for working on scroll designs. Simon thanked Grandma Fana for visiting his store and happily told Ria that she should bring her friend as well next time.

“So, Ria. We’re all dressed up. Shall we try someplace nice for lunch?” Grandma Fana offered.

“Yes! I’d like that very much,” Ria enthusiastically agreed.