MAGNUS

Keeping the brush steady while I channeled my meager supply of aether into my eyes was difficult. Gramps always said that learning to act while viewing the flows was the first step to mastering combat binding, but I knew it had to be useful in the process of creating new bindings as well.

I glanced back up at Fenris; who was grumpily posing for my artwork. His aether flowed from nine major points and seemed to flow just so, starting from that point.

My brush, made from Fenris’s own fur, traced the lines with infused ink. The map of Fenris’s aetherical flow was anchored onto the glyph pattern for an essence call; which was further linked to the glyphs used to gather aether.

As I drew the last line, the ink shimmered softly and faded into the piece of cardstock I was using as a drawing surface. My vision blurred as aether all around me surged into the card and a new image appeared to replace the ink as the framework reformed: an image of Fenris in full color, posing against a blood red moon. A border of silver framed the image, and with a quick flip to the other side of the card I saw my personally chosen glyph of a silver shield and blue knotwork tree also appear.

It was done. I had managed to image-bind Fenris himself, rather than a generic Blood Wolf, into the card.

“It worked then? I’m guessing yes with that grin you have plastered on your face pup,” Fenris’s voice spoke into my head.

It was always odd hearing his mental voice, he so rarely used it with anyone other than Grandpa Morgan, but Gramps had told me it was a sign of respect from the old wolf and I answered, “Yeah, it worked; or at least it seems to have worked. I’m a bit tapped out to test it though and the gathering glyph will need at least a day to charge.”

The crisp aged voice of my grandfather spoke up behind me, “It worked. Congratulations on figuring that trick out.”

I turned and looked at Morgan Ward, my grandfather, as he held up a similar card to the one I had just finished. It was bordered in gold and showed Fenris in a different pose, but with the little aether left I saw the base framework was the same though with minor differences due to the different image.

“When you create an image binding of something unique you will get a metallic border. Gold borders are the first of their kind, while silver borders are for the next five. After that they will have a bronze border,” he explained as I was examining the card.

“So I’m the second one to create a unique image binding of Fenris?” I asked.

“Third, your mother was the second,” he said with emotions clouding his face.

I knew they were visible on my own as well, as I thought back eight years to when she had brought me to the mountain my grandfather had secluded himself on. She had left on a mission, something to do with rising war tensions with the Eisenricht Empire to the south. I couldn’t remember exactly as I was only eleven when I eavesdropped on my mother getting her preliminary orders.

Less than a year after I started living with my grandfather a brutal war began between Eisenricht and the Mordanian Free Cities, the former southern nation. The Free Cities were no more, and only the Duchy of Mordania, annexed by the Kingdom of Nilavs, remained after three years of hard fought battles. I suspected Gramps had something to do with halting the advance of the Empire as he, along with Alara and Fenris, had left for a short period of time just before the war ended. When he returned Alara promptly went back to sleep in her tree, and he hung the amulet that showed my mother was still alive from the branches. The soft glow of the binding being the only proof my mother still lived.

With a shake, like Fenris when he wanted to get rid of water, Morgan continued speaking, “Also, you can only make one at a time. If you create another it will only make a standard version. I still haven’t quite figured out how that one works though.”

I shook my head and chuckled a little to wipe away the complex emotions of my mother before asking, “Any other restrictions I should know?”

He smiled and said, “If the image is of a sentient, you need permission from them.”

I thought about that for a second, and then my eyes widened and I said, “Wait, does that mean I could image bind us?”

“Why don’t you try it and find out?” he asked.

I just glared at him and sought inwards at my personal store of aether. It was low, it would recharge fast, but not soon enough to really try to make a binding of the old man. He started chuckling again and said, “To answer your question, yes you can; but there is a distinct difference from an image binding of myself and one of Fenris, and further one you make of yourself..”

I thought over my knowledge of the old man compared to the wolf. His aether flowed in a similar way to Fenris’s in a general sense. There were the multiple points the flow travelled along, but there also seemed to be a pattern within each of those points. Fenris had them too, I had to look closely to analyze those and incorporate them within my image of him.

After a few minutes I shook my head and said, “I don’t see the difference.”

He grinned and said, “Think about it overnight. If you don’t have the answer before we leave in the morning I’ll fill you in.

I nodded in agreement; that was his way of teaching. If the answer was something I could discover myself I was encouraged to do so. Morgan Ward was a firm believer in self discovery, and something he called the scientific method. He was prone to odd turns of phrase, some of which even made sense when put into context.

As for tomorrow that was when I was headed into Nilavs to the new Aegis Academy. I personally thought Gramps could teach me better than any stuffy scholars, but it would be good to see how my old friends had grown.

After a dinner of something grandfather called ‘burgers’ but were really just ground and compacted venison grilled and served between slices of bread, I went up to my room to finish packing. First I pulled out what grandfather called a ‘go-bag’ which had some basic supplies and was always kept ready to easily grab and go in case of emergency. I actually liked the idea when he had explained it to me. He said soldiers and law enforcement, which I assumed was something like the City Guard, kept them so that they could respond to situations faster without having to gather their tools. Mine held basic survival and first aid kits, along with five days of trail rations and a pair of water skins tied to the side that had binding to keep the water fresh.

I also pulled out a large travel bag that gramps had made. It didn’t look like any of the packs that I had seen in town, but my mother had also had one like it. It was made of oiled leather and when stuffed full resembled a soft barrel with straps. The straps were set so I could where it on my back across my shoulders like a standard pack, or shorten them and carry it by hand like a bag. The old man did like what he called adaptive designs.

I filled the bag with a few changes of clothes, and the long coat I kept for rainy days. It had a binding to keep me warm when it was cold, and the oiled canvas shed water like a duck. The weather was expected to stay clear for a time so it went in the bag. Next I knelt down and pulled a box, about two feet across and the sides and about a handspan deep, from under my bed. I opened the box to check the contents first. I remembered making the item inside, and the punishment detail grandfather had put me on when he found out I had snuck his box out of his room. Inside the box was what looked like the stock of a crossbow in steel with a grip of leather. The steel and leather clearly showed various binding glyphs. It had a short barrel that ended just under a foot long, also with glyphs etched into the steel. Next to it were six rectangles of a type of quartz crystal with aether gathering glyphs carved into them. I had based the design on the device my grandfather had, which he no longer used according to Fenris, called a pistol. When he was feeling technical he called it a ‘Browning M1911’ whatever that meant. I assumed it was the type of pistol, like how different swords could be called different things depending on the shape. Fenris had told me how it worked a few years back, and I had wanted to try my hand at equipment binding. I hadn’t managed it, not the way most people did at least.

Equipment binding, as I now understood, allowed you to store a piece of non-living material into a smaller compact form. The size of the smaller form depended on the size of the piece of equipment, but it wasn’t uncommon to see a sword stored within a ring. It took aether to draw out or store the item, but it did make carrying arms and armor easier. Gramps had even shown me his hunting bow, which had four stones inlaid into it which each had multiple arrows bound into them. This allowed him to call a new arrow to his bow without having to carry a quiver.

Since my store of aether was woefully small, especially compared to the old man, I wanted to try something different. Alara had told me of the weapon he used when he first arrived in Nilavs, and how it fired small pieces of metal that were stored in a removable piece. Since I couldn’t charge the device with aether directly I wanted to use a secondary item to do it for me. Grandfather said what I had ended up creating was a set of bindings that chained together to create a specific effect. His proud moment didn’t stop me from having to chop enough wood for every house in the village at the mountain’s foot to last through winter. There were actually three sets of bindings present, an equipment binding to call out cone shaped pieces of metal that I had bound to the barrel; a spell binding to send the ‘bullet’ as gramps called it down the barrel at my target; and the binding to draw aether from the crystals to power those bindings. Gramps said I must have a talent for creating linked bindings as he hadn’t heard of anyone who could chain together different types of bindings like I had. Multiple bindings weren’t uncommon, spellbinders commonly carried a staff with multiple bound spells engraved on it, but three different types of bindings was unheard of.

As I closed the box and placed it in the bag, along with the belt and holster that went with it I paused thinking of my conversation with the old man earlier.

“It can’t be that simple. Can it?” I asked aloud.