Rory almost felt like a new person with his improved staff. He twirled it around, using his powers in a different area so as not to inundate the rear with more snow and ice. Noon was coming on and they were preparing lunch after the others had finished up their little tasks. Rory was using the little time he had before getting started on eating to test out his improved powers.

He liked what he found. The blizzards he was able to summon were harsher and colder here. When he focused, he could direct the wintry storm to create a barrier of ice at certain points, one after another. Some experimenting showed that he couldn’t have the blizzard create a barrier while destroying and preserving something at the same time. It was limited to one action at a time. That didn’t count against the passive abilities like the Lifedrain, of course.

Rory figured he was going to have to raise the staff’s Tier some more before he could perform multiple tasks at the same time. Not that it wasn’t already extremely powerful. Any action he performed took barely a second or two, so switching to a different one was no trouble.

“You ready to get something to eat?” Viv asked as she approached him.

Rory smiled at her. “Yeah, I think so.” He stretched, feeling some of his joints pop. His legs ached and he really needed to take a nice rest. It was best not to consider that the day was barely halfway done. “Don’t you feel cold?”

Viv glanced at the snow and ice around them. “A little bit.” She smiled at him. “But I’m chillier at the fact that you’ve been practicing so much without me.”

Rory laughed, hiding his nervousness. “Didn’t mean to ignore you or anything. It’s just that I needed to raise the Tiers of the Sigils and the staff as fast as possible, and training isn’t really that fast.” She raised an eyebrow at him, and Rory went on quickly. “But look at everything I’ve accomplished.”

He went on to tell her about the staff and Sigil of Barricading Blizzard all at Teal I, and how he had Warded the Sigil of Resurrection Field into it.

“I’m proud of everything you’ve done, dear,” she said, patting his shoulder with her good hand. “But you know it’d help us all if you practiced against someone, just so you’re prepared in a situation that might call for that kind of expertise.”

Rory sighed. “You’re not wrong.”

“I know. I’m hardly ever wrong. But come on, let’s have some food first. We can worry about training and whatnot after we have some more energy to spend on it.”

Rory let himself be pulled away by Viv. It felt nice to have someone who cared for him to that extent, and he once again realized how blessed he was to still have his wife by his side.

Their lunch lasted a little longer than it normally tended to. After their recent grocery store raids, they had more foodstuff to go through. That, combined with another batch of fresh produce from April’s gardens meant Rory had a heartier meal than he had in ages.

“I’m not sure I want to train now,” he said when he was finally done eating, trying and failing to contain a burp.

Viv laughed. “You stuffed yourself so much. It’ll come pouring out if I poke you.”

“I really don’t need that kind of image right now.”

It was nice to relax for a while. After all the work with his staff and his new Sigils, Rory realized he was due a bit of a break. The others seemed to feel the same, though that had as much to do with their full stomachs as it did anything else.

But as time wore on and his chat with Viv came a companionable lull, his mind started drifting. For some reason, Rory couldn’t help but think about the people he needed to help still. The first thing he landed on were the dwarves. They still needed a Sigil to help their issue with sunlight.

“What are you thinking?” Viv asked, peering at him like she had already read his mind. She probably had.

“The dwarves,” Rory said. “Trying to think of a way to help them with their vampire problem.”

“Vampire problem?”

Rory laughed. “You know, they can’t stay in sunlight for long before burning up.”

“Oh, right. And hmm, that is problematic, but they have it under control. They’ve got their cloud covers and other ways to deal with it. You sure we need to help them with it?”

“Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know for certain. But then, I want to find out what I can do about it, if I can do anything about it, that is. I’ve got no better idea about what Delic might find interesting, so this is what I’m going with for now.”

Viv nodded, then sighed. “I wish Arelland had been present. He’d have been helpful, considering they’re colleagues.”

“Yeah, I wish he’d get here too. It’s a little annoying. But anyway, on the task at hand…”

“Right, on the task at hand…”

They both paused and looked away, considering. The dwarves couldn’t stand sunlight. That was the only thing they had to go off of. As such, any solutions Rory might come up with had to do with either preventing the sunlight from reaching their skin or from their skin reacting negatively to it.

“You think Smoky Stealth could help?” Viv asked. “Well, in a more permanent fashion, of course.”

Rory crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned back against the column. “It could, yeah, though, it’d just be like a small-scale, personal version of their clouds. I’m trying to think of something that’s not that. Something that will let them act naturally without needing heavy clothes or clouds or any other kind of protection.”

“Well, let’s break it down.” Viv leaned forward where she sat, getting the look on her face that professed she was getting into what Rory referred to as “engineering mode”. It was calculating, logical Viv at her peak. “What’s the main thing causing the issue for the dwarves?”

“Sunlight. Or I guess, if you want to drill into it further, their skin reacting badly to sunlight.”

“Let’s go with sunlight since it’d be a lot harder to do anything about their skins.”

Rory snorted. “That’s true.”

“So, the basic solution is preventing the sunlight from reaching their skin. But we don’t want just another covering around them, do we?”

“No. They can, and already are, doing that on their own. They don’t need our help to do something like that. So, the other option is… reducing the sunlight?”

Viv grinned. “That’s what I was thinking. How can we reduce sunlight?”

Rory thought for a moment. The idea that he jumped to immediately was a Sigil focused specifically on reducing the sunlight in an area. But he didn’t how he was supposed to get it. He said as much to Viv, who was still lost in thought. She had reached the same conclusion as Rory, but it was up to him to actually materialize the solution.

“What if you Wove a shadow?” Viv asked.

“I could,” Rory said. “But the problem is that we don’t know the exact amount of sunlight a dwarf can withstand. If we reduce too much sunlight in the area, it’s going to turn everything dark, so then they’d need external lights.”

“Hmm…”

They were both lost in thought. Here was when it would have been helpful to have someone they could ask exact information from.

Rory stood up after a while. His stomach didn’t feel as heavy as it had when he had finished his meal, so he didn’t mind moving around some more. “I think I’ve got an idea about something I can try. Let’s see if it works. You don’t have to come with me,” he added as Viv rose with him.

She smiled. “But what if I want to?”

Rory grinned. “I am kind of irresistible.”

She shoved him lightly. “Get going, dear.”

Rory led her to his destination. He didn’t have a specific location in mind. All he needed was an area that was shaded from the sun now climbing down from its zenith over the course of the afternoon. He found himself outside the palace walls and under the trees a few yards from the Safe Zone’s golden boundary.

“Shadows are variable here,” Rory said. “It’s not impossible to imagine that the dwarves should be able to survive somewhere over here.”

Viv looked around, noting the shade and the way it shifted slightly whenever there was a light breeze that made the branches sway and the leaves shiver. “That is certainly not impossible to imagine.”

“Here goes nothing.”

Rory used his Weaving. As the white lines burst forth, he focused on the gloomy area around them. The concept he needed wasn’t the shadow itself so much as the shaded area where the sunlight was reduced, that was free from the sun’s direct glare and was cooler than the surroundings.

The new Sigil Rory received was the colour of storm cloud and had the image of what looked like curtains.

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Shaded Field. It’s not possible to bear the sun for ever and ever. Sometimes, you need a cool shade even when there isn’t any. Well, now you can summon your own.

[Cerulean IX] allows summoning shade for a 24-meter radius.

Stats

Type: Concept

Rarity: Ordinary

Tier: Cerulean IX [0%]

Efficiency: Low [23%]

Rory wasn’t satisfied. The problem was that the intensity of the shadow would be even. There wasn’t any option to control it. Maybe he would get the option if he raised its Tier to Teal or something, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to depend on that “maybe”.

“What’s wrong?” Viv asked. Rory explained the problem. Viv nodded. “So you need another Sigil to control its intensity, right? Hmm, not sure what you can Weave for that…”

Rory and Viv suddenly stared at each other. The answer was simple. Really simple.

They both hurried back to the palace. To get a Sigil that controlled anything’s intensity, they needed something that was already being used in an intensity-controlling function. That meant getting any of their junk electronics that had some sort of variable resistor for Rory to Weave.

Well, it took Viv to explain the intricate ideas of electronics and educate Rory that it was a component called a variable resistor that was what he was ultimately thinking of. Rory’s idea had been to Weave something like a tap that changed how fast water flowed or the knob behind a stand-fan that controlled the speed of the fan.

“You two look excited,” Diane said as they hurried past her.

“I think we are,” Viv said in passing.

“You think?”

They were too far past Diane to consider extending the conversation. Rory found himself in their little junkyard, already looking through the pile of useless stuff to find what he needed. It didn’t take him long.

“Aha!” he shouted. “How does this look?”

Rory showed Viv an old, broken lamp. It also had a knob on the side that controlled the brightness of the light.

“Perfect,” Viv said. “Try Weaving it.”

Rory did so, making sure he was careful about it. The white lines only sank into the little knob, and soon, he had a new vermillion Sigil with the image of a similar knob.

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Intensifier. Power isn’t absolute. Nuance and variation come into play in everything.

[Cerulean IX] allows changing intensity for any applied condition by a variation of 30%.

Stats

Type: Concept

Rarity: Uncommon

Tier: Cerulean IX [0%]

Efficiency: Medium [34%]

“This should work,” Rory said, showing the Sigil to Viv and explaining what he had read in its description.

Viv took the Sigil from him, took a minute to turn it around and observe it all over, then returned it to him. “We’ll, here’s to hoping.”

Rory took out the Sigil of Shaded Field and combined it with his latest Sigil. His Weaving turned the two completely white and he had yet another new Sigil.

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Shaded Region. The sunless realms are yours for the taking, but if you fail, you can now summon a bit of it no matter where you are.

[Cerulean IX] allows summoning shade for a 27-meter radius and changing its intensity by 30%.

Stats

Type: Concept

Rarity: Uncommon

Tier: Cerulean IX [0%]

Efficiency: Medium [35%]

Rory stared at the new Sigil, a slow smile working onto his lips. It as always nice to see how combining two Sigils always increased the base Sigil’s stats.

“Now, are we going to test it?” Viv asked.

Rory considered. His immediate reaction was that they couldn’t really check it unless there was a dwarf Viv was hiding somewhere. But there were some basics they could make sure were alright.

A part of his mind cried out that using the Sigil required someone to take it in, and there was no way of extracting a Sigil from someone once they had absorbed it. But that wasn’t true anymore. They had the Warded Sigil of Transfer to move Sigils around. So, with that in mind, Rory headed over to the main hall and recruited Angus to help him test it.

“What exactly am I supposed to do with it?” he asked, looking a little confused when Rory had dragged him to the courtyard.

“Just use the Sigil,” Viv said. “We just want to see if it functions correctly.”

Rory explained how they were trying to find something that could help the dwarves. “We won’t be certain if it’s good enough for them without some of them here, but let’s make sure it works the way we want it to, first.”

Angus nodded. “Makes sense.”

He absorbed the Sigil and activated it. Rory and Viv were standing about three feet away from him, and the entire area suddenly started going gloomy. This was proof that the shading ability worked, though Rory still looked up to make sure there were no clouds overhead.

Nothing. The Sigil was working perfectly. They were in a strong shade without anything visible blocking the sunlight anywhere nearby.

“Can you check if you can control the shadow’s intensity?” Viv asked.

Angus did so. The area around them grew darker in a second, and Rory began to feel a little chillier than before. He looked up. It seemed as though the sun was behind a translucent dark veil, and it wasn’t difficult to stare at it directly at the moment. They’d gotten themselves a very strange Sigil.

But they had proved that it functioned just as Rory had expected.

“It works,” Viv said.

Rory smiled and nodded.