Chapter 38

Divulge

With the morning came a message from Tara. She was ready for another job and wanted to know if Janus was up for it. He etched a reply into the runescribe. He should have known that she would have Hashilli’s runescribe number.

Another message from Tara appeared. “Alright. Tomorrow, at noon. We’ll check out the job board with Rowan.”

Janus leaned back into Hashilli’s fluffy sofa and sighed. New jobs meant money and, more importantly, experience on his delver record. But he was still a little apprehensive after the last one. Besides, he had plans today.

His plan was to head by Bruno’s after a few hours in the sparring area. The goal was to play with his arrow point array.

-

As he reached a sparring platform, Janus eyed the other delvers in the area. There was no way to hide that he was doing something strange to his spell. Hopefully, none of them were looking too closely, and if they were, maybe they would shrug it off as an evolution.

First, he pulled at the ambient mana and formed it into the array. He wasn’t sure what each of the runes was doing here, but he figured he could figure stuff out by the process of elimination.

This array was more complicated than his mana shell. There were two circles, one within the other. Around the rim of each circle were several runes. Adding a rune wasn’t as simple as modifying a rune that was already there. Janus tried to form an anchor rune at multiple points, but it only seemed to cause the array to unravel.

There was something to the positioning of the runes. The runes were either evenly spaced or grouped closely together along the circle. He knew that the closely grouped runes were likely interacting with each other and so made certain to not interfere with them. Maybe he should have spoken with Bruno before heading out.

It was still morning and Janus was determined to experiment for at least a couple of hours. He attempted to move runes around, jumble up groups of runes, and place the anchor rune at various different points. Sometimes, the array would stay semi-stable and produce strange effects. He made certain to take meticulous notes on what worked and didn’t work.

Finally, Janus added an anchor rune to the array, and it remained stable. Moments later, mana projectiles were flying downward at the sparring platform. But the anchor rune didn’t seem to actually anchor the array to anything. The arrow point spell was operating pretty much exactly the same as it usually did.

He was more curious than frustrated at this point. It might be time to see if Bruno wasn’t busy. Janus collected his things and headed for the stairs.

-

Bruno was standing at a counter top polishing a fist-sized stone. “Janus! Very good to see you! I’ve finished appraising your [Deepstone Crystal] and I can gladly offer you a golden bear on top of the five silver eagles I’ve already given you.”

Janus had almost completely forgotten about the crystal. A golden bear and five silver eagles was a lot of money. He could pay off his debt to the tailor and get his robe repaired again. Maybe this time he would spend a little extra and reinforce the robe, if that was possible.

“Well, uh, I’m happy to sell it for that price,” said Janus. “Actually, I was wondering if we could go over runes?”

“Of course. Just let me finish with this stone. A smooth surface makes the runes more conductive.”

A few minutes passed while Janus impatiently paced around the store. Bruno had a wide selection of enchanted items.

“Hey Bruno, do you have a [Focus]?” asked Janus.

“Uh, I might have a few in the back. They aren’t technically enchanted, but almost every mage wants one. Let me go see.”

Another few minutes passed and Janus eyed some strange devices on a shelf.

“Ah, I see you’ve found the projectors! They are some of my favorite things to make. Complicated little devices: they can display images using illusion magic. I wasn’t around when cameras were a thing, but I’m doing my best to recreate them.” Brun reached past Janus and grabbed one of the projectors. He pressed on a small rune and suddenly an image appeared on the wall. “They only display one image for now. I’m still working on the enchantment that lets people capture new images.”

“Huh. That’s pretty neat. It reminds me of television. My dad brought up television all the time.”

“Yes! Exactly! If I perfect all of my enchantments, I might create something similar.” Bruno smiled and held out his hand. “Here is a [Focus]. Nothing special about this one, I’m afraid, but it’ll get the job done. On the house!”

Janus quickly attuned with the magical item and pocketed it. “Ah, thanks Bruno. You’ve been very helpful. After speaking with the other merchants in the commons—“

“Say no more! I understand that not everyone approaches business the same way I do. My devices could mean life or death for a delver. I want to make sure that they are satisfied with my service.” Bruno shrugged. “Now come with me and I’ll show you something to help with runes.”

Janus and Bruno returned to the same small table from the day before. Bruno reached below the table and pulled up a small book.

“This book has every basic rune most enchanters learn. There are more runes out there, including variations on existing runes. But this should be more than good enough to get you started.”

The book was thick, but with a small profile. Each page displayed up to six different runes and the following page explained what effect those runes tended to produce.

“It doesn’t seem to have a very exact description of how these runes work. I sort of thought they always did the same thing. Like an anchor rune anchors an effect on a person or thing,” said Janus.

“Well, it’s like I said yesterday. Enchanting is an art! It’s impossible to nail down the exact effects of each rune. Heck, some of these runes do different things depending on the class of the enchanter that inscribes them. The anchor rune, for example, requires an intent from the enchanter. You need to think about what you want to anchor to. It’s inexact.”

Bruno had already answered Janus’ next question. He had never considered how to make the anchor rune actually anchor to something.

“Wait, you mean I just think about what I want the rune to anchor to when I create it?”

“Probably. What you’re doing is fundamentally different from enchanting, but I would have to guess that a lot of the same rules apply. Otherwise, I’m not going to be much help.” Bruno let out a hearty laugh. “Let’s test it out. See if you can anchor your mana shell to me.”

Janus formed the array, observing as the anchor rune materialized. He willed for that anchor rune to attach itself to Bruno. To his amazement, the mana shifted, and the array appeared on Bruno’s chest. A small sphere of translucent green mana materialized around the enchanter.

“That’s what I’m talking about! You can shield other people and you don’t even have a skill to do it! This is incredible!” Bruno reached out to touch the barrier in wonder. His hand passed through, unharmed. He paced back and forth, and the barrier moved with him.

“I honestly didn’t expect that to work.” Janus collapsed the mana shell array.

“It seems that rules from enchanting can apply to the runes that appear in some spells. This might open up an entirely new wing of rune magic. I could see [Rune Mage]s becoming something more than just enchanters.” Bruno glanced at Janus. “But I shouldn’t get ahead of myself.”

“I mean, if I can help with something like that, I don’t really mind.”

“Really? Well, I would love to know more about whatever skill it is that lets you do this. I know a metamage that would be incredibly interested in this.”

Janus considered his options for a moment. How important was it that he kept [Spell Weaving] a secret? Was it even possible to use that information against him? Many people already knew, and they never really bothered him about it. But those people only knew about a low level version of [Mana Manipulation]. If the station governors knew that Janus could replicate almost any spell, what would they do?

The uncertainty was daunting. But Bruno was offering something that Janus would be hard pressed to manage on his own without revealing his skill to more people. If he could speak to another metamage, they might even have some insight into how his skill functions. Maybe they could help him with [Spell Augmentation].

Janus sighed and looked around Bruno’s shop. “Do you think we have somewhere private we could talk?”

“For this? Of course.” Bruno stepped outside the shop, flipping a sign around from open to closed. “Come with me,” he said as he entered a door behind his store’s counter top.

The office was a cramped space made even more so by the sheer size of Bruno. The enchanter closed and set a small rune-inscribed slate by the door. He shuffled off to one side, taking a seat in a comfortable-looking chair behind a desk.

“Sorry, I don’t have another seat in here. Usually I’m the only one who uses this space. I’ve set an enchantment near the door to keep our conversation private.”

Janus awkwardly stood near the center of the room.

“Uh, right. Well….” he began.