The sky wept on Tim’s rough green AG uniform as he walked to the Magical Productions building. A week had passed by and today he started work. He waved at the receptionist and headed up to the fifth floor. A few of the others were already there and chatting away. With a warm hello he greeted the room. Only to be met with angry silence.

Tim walked around stacks of small boxes and found his seat. Hoban was fast asleep at his desk beside him. A small wooden bear had fallen down from the top of his desk and nestled in his red hair.

With the sounding of the first bell, the heavy figure of Manager Murata darkened the doorway.

“Sit your asses down and get to work, this is no time for dilly-dallying!” bellowed Murata.

“What’s wrong?” whispered Tim.

“You are,” Murata swiveled her fat neck like an owl. “The Emperor has issued an emergency wartime declaration. We are contracted to provide equipment for the soldiers, at a discount and with top priority. The Emperor made only one order. For 25,000 rings of protection.” She kicked at the boxes. “And we only have two moons to deliver them. “

“Ok?”

Manager Murata’s eyes turned predatory and she smiled ever so slightly. “Dear, please understand, we’ve just been given the largest order in our illustrious history. One that will take us five years of mandatory overtime to finish. But no, we won’t be around that long will we? Because we will be fined for every soldier’s death until we can deliver.”

“You have guaranteed the destruction of this AG in this country. We will go bankrupt, our lands will be sold. Hundreds of employees and thousands of members are going to have their livelihoods shattered. Master Kubo will be forced into debt slavery. Just because the Emperor wants to snatch you up.”

“Now sit down and get to work,” Murata screeched in increasing octaves. “I need something to eat.”

Tim was already sitting, but he swiveled around and looked at his desk. A scroll was laid across the top and a single copper ring sat in the middle. Tim glanced around the room and finally asked Hoban.

“So, what exactly am I supposed to do?”

“You don’t even know how to enchant?” Flecks of bread flew out of Murata’s mouth as she screamed. “You are less than worthless!”

Murata shoved more of the loaf into her mouth as she marched over. The building seemed to shake with ever one of her heavy steps.

“Okada, come teach this fool how to do his job. Because, I am going to work him to the bone, until the bitter end. And then I’m going to laugh as the royal guards drag you away.

Okada rose from her chair and looked at the ground as she wound her way through the maze of boxes.

“Um, so first you fill the ring with mana, then you read the spell, but instead of directing it out, you direct it into the ring. Then you attach the mana inside the ring to the spell to make it stick. I’m not really sure how else to describe it. You just need to work on it until you get it right, then you know what to do next time.”

“Ok. I think I understand.”

Tim picked up the copper ring and let his mana flow through it. It was a bit easier than with the iron weapons. It felt more pure with less obstruction. He etched a conduit of mana around the circumference and then looked down at the scroll. He wasn’t sure how to go about reading it, but as soon as he tried it happened. The scroll forced his eyes to follow the patterns and sucked out mana as it leads him through the sequences. He started to understand the feeling part of spellwork.

As Tim finished reading the scroll, the paper charred black and smoldered away into nothingness. Distracted, the spell almost escaped him. But he was able to wrench it away from his physical body and forced it down into the ring. He could almost see the shapes taking form inside the ring. The network built up in metaphysical space. With the spell copied inside the ring, he pushed little connections between the pieces. Mana flowed through the connections, lit up the sigil network and circulated back out.

He held out the ring to Okada.

“Is that correct?”

Silence. Every mouth in the room was agape. He was about to say something but bit his tongue when Murata smacked his head.

“Why in Aamond’s green world did you waste a scroll like that?”

“But I did just like Okada said. The spell is in the ring.”

Murata snatched the ring from Tim’s hand. After a moment her beady eyes roll up and leveled at Tim.

“How, how did you do this? Is this some sort of trick?! Answer honestly, that’s an order!”

Tim grabbed the collar on his neck. “Honest. I did just what I was told!”

“But how?”

“Okada is a good teacher?”

“No, this shouldn’t be possible...” crumbs fell from Murata’s trembling lip. “I need to contact some people. Everyone, work hard until I get back.”

When her pump form tottered down the stairs and out of sight Hoban leaned over.

“Um, Tim, you do know that enchanting a ring should take all day right? Even the senior enchanters can only produce two or three a day.”

“I didn’t know.”

By the end of his first day, Tim had finished a box of rings. Before the end of his second, additional scroll makers had to be brought in. At the end of the third day, Tim could enchant two rings at the same time. At the end of the first week, Tim had reached level five in Enchanting and opened up access to subskills. On Sunday he went with Hoban to the research workshops.

After breakfast, Tim and Hoban met at the research facilities. It was a plain looking warehouse that stunk of iron. Furnaces and forges puffed out smoke from the back and the clangs of hammers rang out periodically. Just inside the doors was reception, and a burly bald quartermaster seated behind a barred window.

“Could we get two standard copper rings, six ink and spellsheet sets?” asked Hoban.

“That’ll be 7 silver 4 copper.”

“Oh, and two potions. Those are returnable right?”

“So long as they are not used in any experimentation. That’s one gold each and a copper for the service.”

“Damn that’s expensive,” muttered Hoban. “Take it out of his account.”

“Remember,” The gruff quartermaster issued the standard warning, “selling for personal profit is forbidden. The guild is currently only buying items posted on the bulletin. Looks like you’ll be in room 17 today.”

Inside the small workspace, Hoban drew up a scroll of protection while Tim prepared a ring. His hand still remembered the pain from the first time he used a ring of protection. But, objectively, the effects were amazing. He postulated why it melted to his finger; the excess mana had nowhere to go.

For Tim’s first experiment he focused on creating a wide and slow-moving mana conduit around the circumference. He cleared out imperfections and put rifling along the walls. Soon the ring glowed blue from the mass of mana that slowly spiraled around inside.

With a completed scroll Tim channeled the familiar spell. After the spell network was fully imbued came work on the connections, the capacitors as he liked to call it. Wide, fat and thick metaphysical connections were pushed into place by Tim’s will. He set the two connections at opposite rotational flows to try and create a vacuum. Then set outward flowing connectors around them, a way for excess mana to vent out.

“Well let’s see what we got,” said Tim. “Copper Ring of Protection – Tier Five – Overcharged.”

“Tier five? Holy fr… wait. What’s overcharged?”

“Not sure, but there’s a way to find out.”

Tim put on the ring and immediately felt light headed. A shimmering second skin enveloped him as the ring sucked mana like a lamprey. Tim checked his status; his MP was ticking away steadily. He could get maybe five or ten minutes use before he completely collapsed.

“Quick, do the test!” Tim said while holding out his arm.

Hoban recovered and took his knife and tried slicing into Tim’s shirt.

“I can’t cut it!”

Tim popped off the ring. “Damn, that was sucking me dry! Ok, well we have a few more theories to work with. Let’s try the next one.”

Inside the next ring, he wrapped the mana conduits into a triple Mobius, but he didn’t widen it like the first. Instead, Tim smoothed out the edges and focused on keeping the flow as perfect and ripple free as possible. That was the easy part. Tim then placed the scroll on the table as Hoban watched. He channeled the spell in triplicate. Creating duplicate layers he stacked the sigil networks upon themselves. He closed his eyes and concentrated on linking it all together.

Sweat dripped down Tim’s furrowed brow as he wove capillaries connecting the networks. The sigils shifted and changed as mana circulated. Each new connected altered the flow again and again. Tim’s mind swam down inside the networks. He reached out and caught sigils as they darted about like fish in a sea of mana. But the more he tied the sigils together the more they worked in harmony. Each strand he wove became a cage that held the networks in balance.

Tim fell to the floor gasping for breath. He had forgotten to breathe. Hoban grabbed his hand and hauled him back up to his feet.

“Are you ok?”

“Yeah. I think so.” Tim wheezed.

“Do you need to sit? Because you weren’t here, man. I mean your body was here, but the rest of you? Gone. You’re like the medicine man from back home.”

“No, I mean maybe. Give me a minute.” Tim wobbled to a chair and sunk down. “Ok, I think my brain has cooled down from a boil to a slow simmer. So let’s take a look at what we have now. Copper Ring of Protection – Tier Eight – Epic Ranked.”

Hoban took the ring and turned it over and over in his hand. “How is this even possible?” he asked. “What is epic ranked? Is that like the legendary weapons forged by gods?”

“How am I supposed to know? I’m new here, remember?”

“Yeah, humans do age differently.”

“Not what I meant… You know, I’m kind of scared to try this out.”

“Me to,” replied Hoban as he slipped the ring over his dainty finger. “I don’t feel anything different. Let’s give it the blade test.”

Tim took up the knife and slid it across Hoban’s shoulder. Shards of metal tinkled like rain upon the wooden floor as the blade eroded and snapped. Tim’s eyes bulged as they went from the knife to Hoban and back.

“That, that can be normal. Hoban, what does this mean?”

“I think it means we need a new knife.”

Dumbfounded the two stared at the ring.

“Oh-kay. I think we should go ahead and try the next part.”

“Yeah, but, um, let’s not tell anyone about that ring, ok?”

Tim took out his notes and pinned up two sheets. The first one had only the inner network drawn, the second was a control water spell.

“So just copy the control water spell, but replace the inner network here with these sigils.”

“Yeah, yeah I know.”

“Just do it.”

Tim watched patiently as Hoban worked on the scroll. He dipped the brush in the special ink and drew his circles and control sigils but floundered on the inner network. A few minutes later he put down the brush.

“Ok, I think I did it. But it still seems strange. I mean this is unnatural. It’s just doesn’t flow. We gotta follow the flow of the spell like a leaf on the wind. Without a flow, I don’t know what it’s going to do.”

“Then let’s find out!”

Tim lit a candle and set it on the table. He focused his mind on it and read the spell. Hoban backed away into a corner.

The golden red flame danced up from the candle and reached for the ceiling. Then it shrank back down and stretched out flat. Tim willed it to spin in a fiery helix and it did. Hoban came over and placed his hand on Tim’s shoulder.

“I can’t believe it works. Ha! We made a new spell! With the bonus we get, I may not have to renew my contract!”

“Are the bonuses that big?” Tim asked as he formed the flames into a cube.

“In my mind it’s massive. We need to be careful though. I don’t think we can reveal how we came up with the spell. Your ideas are too dangerous. And I’m willing to bet some fanatic would try to kill you over a ruined life’s work.”

“I’m getting a lot of that lately.” Muttered Tim as the spell wore out. “Ok, I have two more ideas for you to try, now that the first proved a success. Your first challenge is to make another create fire scroll. But this time you’ll be using the control ring from a high level sculpt stone spell!”

Tim hung up three papers for Hoban to copy. One had the control ring network, another the inner network and the third had the central network. Three pieces, taken from three different spells. Again Hoban took up the brush and dipped it in the ink. He drew the outer circles, added a few sigils then started drawing the central network subshapes.

“Why don’t you finish the control network first?”

“I dunno. This just feels like the way to do it.”

“But you don’t even know what it’s supposed to do.”

“Yeah, but I kind of get the gist of it. Although it still feels weird.”

“Well, why not feel out each section independently? Feel the flow of the outer network and finish it before moving on? Feel each section independently. Be three leaves.”

Hoban cocked an eyebrow, but went back to the control network and started filling in more sigils. He started slowly but soon his arm moved in a beautiful dance. Bristles twisted and pushed. They paused and jutted forward in a dash. They drank up more ink and flew on. Too soon the song ended and the scroll was finished.

“I’m starting to hate you being right all the time.” “Well quit. You’ll wilt your leaf.”

“What’s this spell supposed to do? Control more fire?”

“No, control it better.”

Tim read the scroll and the candle flame took firm form. Two figures arose and intertwined arms. Their faces took shape, their eyes blinked and they danced gently. Tim concentrated and the fire rearranged. A branching tree flickered to life. Roots, limbs, and leaves grew out. A swing formed under a branch, a small Hoban sat upon it and swayed back and forth.

“There is a completely different level of control with this spell. That proves another theory. “

“Never in my long years have I seen such an incredible spell…”

“This is just the beginning. We know what each of the sections does. But we don’t know what the sigils mean, or why they work the way they do. There is a lot to figure out. And that brings us to your third challenge Mr. Leaf. Let me present you with the most complex control ring I have found. And for the middle section this strange piece. But you can rest easy; the central network should be a breeze!”

Tim hung up three new sheets of paper. The control network was large and black with a thick layering of sigils. The inner network was sparse and the central network was the same as the first scroll.

“What exactly am I looking at here?”

“The outer control network is the same as the Sculpt Stone spell. But I duplicated and mirrored the sigils. Not sure what that will do. The inner network is the sigils found shape air, water, and earth spells. Minus the ones they don’t share. And the central network is the same as the other shape spells. But also missing the element specific sigils.”

“Are you trying to do what I think you are?”

“Maybe.”

Hoban picked up his brush. He went through an entire bottle of ink on the outer network. With an arched eyebrow, he finished up the inner and central networks. He looked it over one last time before declaring it finished.

“So are you going to try this on the candle again?”

“No, I bought something special for this.” Tim took out a silver ring from his drab uniform pocket. “This will be our final test for the day.”

Tim had already cut the most complex conduit structure into the ring. He read the strange spell and felt the sigils flow through him and into the silver. The sigils glowed more clearly than the copper rings from before. The symbols seemed clearer and crisper. He duplicated the spell and doubled it again. Each network connected to its own conduit. Then down into the either he swam again, to link it all together.

Hoban smacked Tim’s face three times before he came to. Hoban offered some water to Tim after helping him into a chair. The candle had burned down to a nub before color came back to the world.

“I almost dumped a potion on you.”

“Thanks for not doing that.” Tim staggered to his feet and held up the ring. “It’s called Shape.”

“Y, y, you mean it has a name?”

“Yes, but that’s all I can tell about it.”

Hoban’s green eyes flew open. He scooted back only to fall on his butt. Still, he shimmied away until his back was up against the wall.

“You made an artifact? And with an unknown spell? You’ll kill us!”

“Then here’s to the afterlife.”

And with that, Tim slipped on the silver ring.

“BOOOOM!”

“AHHHHH!” Hoban squealed. Tim laughed.

“You bastard, if that thing doesn’t kill you, I will!”

“Relax pointy ears, it’ll be fine.”

Tim picked up the broken knife shards. In his hand they grew together and merged with the blade. Cracks and seams melted together and became whole. The edge regrew and gleamed with an evil sharpness. The wooden handle elongated and formed contoured indentations for fingers. Tim took the knife and shaved off a little hair on his arm to test the sharpness.

“It worked as intended. Here, check out how sharp it is!” He handed the knife to Hoban.

Hoban looked at the knife and then back up at Tim.

“You used Shape Metal and Shape Wood. At the same time. Two different spells! How in blue blazing elf balls is that possible?” roared Hoban, whose face was nearly as red as his hair.

“You look hot. Let me cool you off.”

A breeze whipped through the windowless room. A vortex of air circled around Hoban and ruffled his green AG uniform. Tim broke into a huge grin as the winds died down.

“It’s not Shape Metal or Shape Wood or Shape Air, it’s just Shape. It should work on almost anything really. With enough examples, it was actually pretty easy to figure out. Take the metal part out of a Shape Metal spell and you’re left with just shape. And now we know what that function is. With that, we can figure out the functions of other spells. And I can finally get back home.”

“It really is an artifact.”

“Hey, it’s almost lunchtime. Shall we head out?”

“Yeah. I need a drink.”