“This is the last one.” Kirs said, as she rose to her feet having finished the rough outline of their ritual circle. She didn’t sound outright dejected, but there was little hope in her voice. They’d been going through all the circles she’d found for just over two weeks now and so far the results hadn’t been encouraging. Unless you were without access, or at least easy access, to a tethered.

Stepping into the circle, Ranvir took a look around. Ranvir had an affinity for shapes and irregularities. Judging distances and roughly estimating the numbers of things, or something as simple as outlining a circle on wooden boards in the sleeping room he shared with Sansir, Grevor, and Esmund.

He didn’t know where it came from, but suspected it was related to his growing strength as space manipulator. Like how he could determine movement patterns from hearing it. He was able to interpret occupied space more easily than a normal person.

Rituals, or at least this kind, had most things in common with glyphs. Except a ritual didn’t need to be as perfectly formed as glyphs. They were also much larger, despite the lack of exact precision it still generally took longer to make a ritual circle. Just due to the fact that following a template to making a glyph was relatively easy, and you could easily stamp a glyph onto a tab of metal.

That was how bright-torches were made. Bronze stamped with the light glyph, then cleaned up. You might be able to do the same with a ritual circle, though it would need to be at least big enough to fit whatever material you put in the feeding sub-circle.

In practice, that meant it was easier to draw with chalk than stamp on metal, probably. Ranvir had little experience with large scale working of metal, but he could imagine it would be difficult to work with big sheets like that.

As he began cleaning up the lines and fixing the small incongruities, something that was assisted by him embracing the pressure adding another point in favor of his affinity being space related, he thought back on their previous attempts.

They’d first recreated the nightstone. It’d only taken a handful of starjute, which was easy to get your hands on, especially if you knew the right people, like Himir, the receptionist at the administration. It’d gone smoothly and the stone was still glowing at the bottom of Ranvir’s chest.

At first, he’d thought that was an advantage against glyphs, but you could set a bright-torch to just let out a tiny amount of light for easily a month. You wouldn’t even need to be a first-stage to do it. At least, power wise. Fueling glyphs was a little tricky, not that fueling rituals weren’t.

Finishing the feeding sub-circle, Ranvir moved on to what they called the determination sub-circle, which seemed to dictate what kind of effect they were causing. This was the only place where he had to be strict about shapes and distances, at least to his standards.

They’d done a few other rituals, but found their outcomes either hard to test or really unreliable. A coat that snow wouldn’t stick on was kind of hard to explain if you took it outside where other people could see it. Especially, if everyone knew you were friends with a generator and not a manipulator.

And it still didn’t beat out glyphs. Grevor had informed them that nobles usually had a ice tab in their coats that pushed away falling snow, so it wasn’t even more useful than a glyph. Unless you weren’t a tethered, or didn’t have access to one. Which again seemed like the only saving grace for rituals so far.

After that they’d mixed and matched a bit of their rituals, mostly sticking to the nightstone determination sub-circle when they could. There’d been a few different kinds of feeding sub-circles they’d tried. The most useful one seemed to feed on the ambient energy in the air. It was really slow. Abysmally so, but it worked without any materials at all.

It was only two days ago that they’d finished charging the nightstone they’d made from it. Honestly, Ranvir was stoked about that one. It worked like it should and he could set it and forget it. Now he just needed some actually good effects for it.

Beneath Ranvir’s bed one such circle was currently sitting with his boots and the determination for snow repellent. He figured that wasn’t too much of a cheat and rime oak could be kind of expensive to get his hands on.

“This is the last one.” Ranvir said, finishing up the determination sub-circle and leading towards the last sub-circle. This was different in that most rituals only had two sub-circles. They’d waited for this last one, since it was the most intricate of the sub-circles to set up. “We don’t know that this isn’t going to do something crazy good.”

“Thanks Ranvir, but it’s fine. Not everything we find has to break the world somehow.” Kirs said. She stood now, looking out of the shuttered window, leaning against the bed frame they’d tipped on its side. Kirs sighed and turned away from the window.

Esmund’s not going to thank me for today. Ranvir thought, though he kept it from his face. Knowing Kirs didn’t want his pity. Instead, he refocused on the work. The book Kirs had gotten this sub-circle from called it a basin, though it never explained what that meant.

Ranvir suspected it might cause some sort weird manipulation of the energy inside the starjute. They were attempting to create another nightstone. They were easy to make, they knew what to expect, and they were pretty easy to hide. The soft orange glow barely showed up during the day, to the point only Grevor realized it was even emitting light in the beginning. Though interestingly enough, the light was unaffiliated so he could manipulate it.

“I think,” Ranvir said, scooting away from the basin sub-circle. “That it’s done.” Even though the center-circle wasn’t perfectly round, it was close enough even from Kirs’ rough sketch that he didn’t need to touch up on it.

“Let’s get it over with.” Kirs muttered, grabbing the double handful of starjute and laid it in the feeding sub-circle, then the little granite stone in the center-circle. All in all the ritual was around a meter across, with the sub-circles around thirty centimeters across. The determination and feeding sub-circles were pretty simple designs that didn’t require much work. The basin was filled arabesque designs except for an empty space butting against the center-circle. One that made Ranvir a little happy that this project was almost over, it was hell to draw.

Kirs knelt next to the starjute, cut so they could fit within their sub-circle. There was some energy loss when they were cut, but they didn’t really need the nightstone to last that long. She took in slow deep breaths, touching the perimeter of the sub-circle. Ranvir’d activated his own share of these circles and knew the feeling. For a moment another presence would appear in his mind and pushing on it would start the ritual.

The starjute shimmered sending sparks of lights traveling into the determination circle. The light slowed as it navigated the sub-circle before reaching the veritable maze of the basin. Energy crawled through the twists before gathering in the empty culmination of the sub-circle. A thumb thick circle of light.

“What now?” Ranvir asked, after it just sat there for a moment. “Do we do something?”

Kirs frowned, looking from the basin to Ranvir. Then she made her way over to her notebook and started skimming pages. “It just says that the basin will direct the power when ready.” She looked up consternated at the vague passage.

“More power?” Ranvir asked.

Kirs shrugged and grabbed the last of their starjute. They’d bought kind of a lot. Carefully she started picking out handfuls of the plant and placing it in the feeding sub-circle. After the fifth or sixth extra handful the basin suddenly filled out and the light energy ran into the stone in the center-circle.

Ranvir, catching a sense of the power in the basin, reasoned it to be somewhat on par with Grevor’s lesser expression after his advancement, shielded his eyes. “Look away!” He exclaimed, following his own advice.

Despite closing his eyes and turning his back on it, light still pierced his eye lids, though not painfully. After a few seconds, it passed and he turned around to see Kirs pressing her palms against her own eyes.

“Shit.” She cursed.

“Are you okay?” Ranvir asked, kneeling next to her.

“Yeah, I closed my eyes but didn’t look away.” She muttered sullenly. She blinked her eyes open and they immediately watered. She continued blinking for a few moments, before she stilled. “Ranvir that was the stone, right?”

“Yeah.” He looked at the now inert granite sitting in the center-circle. “It’s dull now, though.”

“But that much energy in so little time…” She said, leadingly. She’d obviously reached a conclusion already.

“That’s different from normal.” Ranvir agreed. “Actually…” Glyphs had one limitation, they couldn’t exceed their source. So if a pre-stage was fueling a bright-torch, they could keep pumping power into it like normal. Maybe they could get it to light up for a few hours, but they had a limit to how bright it got.

There wasn’t a lot of power in starjute, and the determination sub-circle further limited how much nightstone expressed at a time. But this stone had glowed like a weak expression from a first-stage tethered, well exceeding its source.

“The basin’s supposed to be before the determination sub-circle.” Ranvir muttered, eyes growing wide, his mouth falling agape, his shoulder getting punched. “Ow.”

Kirs hissed at him.