Tekla Dumnchory revelled to be in charge of the Atelier. It had been a little bit less than a week since Hidrss had left for the South, but things were already not the same. On the surface, nothing had really changed; the Atelier was the same place bustling with activity, research and Grace-related incidents and the classes of Arcanic Arts were still taking place at their usual schedules. But if anyone that frequented regularly the Atelier was asked, they would say that something had changed. It was something in the air, invisible but no less distinct.

Isyd didn’t have much time to linger on it. His preoccupations lay in the research and development of the Blysht as Hidrss had tasked him before leaving. They got better at Ingracing the crystal, but they still failed to extract the Grace out of it to do anything useful. Isyd had hoped that after figuring out the [Ingracing Hex], the extraction [Spell] would be trivial. He’d been wrong. Putting Grace in turned out to be as complex as taking it out and all the members of the Commission have been racking their brains on how to solve the problems.

Isyd meant to join the Ravasz in the couple of rooms that had been assigned to them in a corner of the Atelier, but Tekla Dumnchory had decided otherwise. Since Hidrss had left, Isyd had only spent around four hours with the couple of Arcanysta. The rest of his time in the Atelier had been spent alongside Tekla. The woman had decided to use him as her flunky. Isyd had tried to escape her heavy watch and sneak in and out, without avail. Tekla had eyes everywhere in the Atelier. The moment he crossed the doors, she was immediately on him. Then he was tasked to run over here or over there, scrub this object or floor, and copy these stacks of letters or those lists of accounting. Two days ago, she had gone as far as order him to separate entire bags of small metal needles into three stacks, one for copper, one for brass and one for steel. Of course, Isyd had not been allowed to use the Arts for fear of “damaging the Atelier’s property”. For half a day, Isyd had knelt in a corner of Hidrss’s office, painstakingly sorting out the needles under Tekla’s gleeful gaze.

She was enjoying this very much, everyone in the Atelier could see it. The Ravasz had been outraged by the unfair treatment but their hands were tied. So were the hands of everyone else; the Atelier was the sole domain of the Master of the Arcanic Arts and in the absence of Hidrss, Tekla Dumnchory was in charge.

Isyd took it in without flinching or complaining. He had known worst; being used as a lackey by a bitter Arcanyst was nothing in comparison. At first, he supposed that Tekla would eventually grow tired when she saw that her treatment wasn’t affecting him. After all, despite her detestable behaviour, she was an adult and still recognized by Hidrss and the Academy as a competent Arcanyst and it was something he could respect. At some point, Isyd even considered approaching her with his palcat. In the end, he didn’t. A week had passed and Tekla didn’t seem eager to stop her abuse, instead, she seemed to grow more confident with it.

“Wybrany!” Tekla’s strident voice made Isyd sigh.

He stepped into Hidrss’s office, hands behind his back. Tekla Dumnchory stood behind the desk, her straight raven hair falling on either side of her thin face. Her polished nails were batting a nervous rhythm on the wood next to a mess of papers and opened letters.

“Have you delivered the oil pot as I have ordered?” she asked him sharply.

“I have.”

“You better not have spilt a drop of it, Wybrany!”

It hadn’t been easy since the oil in question had been seething hot and he had to carry it from one side of the Atelier to the other, with only thin leather gloves to hold the metal pot.

“I haven’t,” Isyd simply said.

Tekla looked him up and down, her green eyes wary. Isyd could see that she wasn’t sure what to do with his matter-of-fact attitude. She half expected him to have given up already and never come back to the Atelier, but instead, Isyd showed up every day once his classes were over and did everything he was asked without blinking.

“Follow me!” she finally said as she rushed out, shoving him in passing.

Tekla always seemed to be rushing whenever he saw her. Isyd suspected it was due to a lack of organization on her part to handle the complex machinery that was the Atelier, a problem that Hidrss never had.

Their steps led them to a far-away wing of the Atelier. It was where the Blysht Commission had been relocated, a Commission that consisted of only four members. The Ravasz were hard at work. Julya had sent him a few letters to keep Isyd updated on the progress that was being made. They had now entirely mapped out the physical properties of the crystal – from its hardness to its melting point – for each level of Grace Concentration. Hidrss had asked them to focus now their attention on the Grace extraction as well.

Tekla entered the laboratory without even knocking. Norran, with thick glasses on his nose, was monitoring a piece of Ingraced Blysht submerged in water in a jar and taking notes while his wife held a thin of metal, with one end pressed against the exterior of the jar and the other resting against an inactive Lightsphere.

“I have come to see your progress!” Tekla clamoured.

Julya flinched visibly and almost dropped her measuring instrument. Norran sighed but did not turn to face her.

“We have sent daily reports as you have asked, Ms Dumnchory,” he said.

“You have, but I am here now and I prefer to see it with my own eyes and to hear it from your mouth. Go on, Ravasz, did you come up with anything?”

Obviously, they wouldn’t get rid of her easily so the Ravasz resigned themselves to interrupting their experimentation and facing her fully. Isyd took advantage of Tekla’s distraction and approached the desk where the notebooks rested. He skimmed through the last entries while the Arcanysta continued their conversation, only listening distractedly to what was being said.

“We were discussing possible solutions this morning…” Julya said. “Maybe we’ve been going at it the wrong way. Instead of trying to force the Grace out of the Blysht, we should let it flow out naturally.”

“So, you’ve abandoned our idea of an [Outgracing Spell]?” Tekla asked.

“So far, it hasn’t led us anywhere,” Norran said. “We were just exploring other possibilities…”

Tekla didn’t seem convinced. Her eyes flew over the room, before landing on their experiment. “Fine… tell me what you’ve come up with! How do intend to let the Grace ‘flow’ out of the Blysht.”

The couple shared a glance. “Well… we’re not sure yet… We thought about using the Grace Osmosis. Grace flows from a higher point of Concentration to a lower point, right? Well, if we assume that the Ingraced Blysht is fully saturated, we only need to put it in an area depleted of Grace for it to flow out. That’s the theory, at least.”

“And does your theory work?”

“That’s what we were testing before you came,” Norran said.

“And have you succeeded so far?”

He hesitated briefly, then shook his head negatively. “Something seems to oppose the Grace Osmosis. Perhaps, the lattice structure of the Blysht itself. We were thinking that perhaps if we could create a void, a place without Grace at all…”

“Come on now, a void Those are theoretical concepts, interesting to think about but impossible in practice!” Tekla said with a sharp laugh. “Grace is everywhere, must I remind you of the First Law of the Arts?”

“No, it won’t be necessary,” Norran said coldly.

“Well, I have a solution to propose and I want us to put it to the test!” Tekla said.

Isyd tuned out from their conversation and focused on the writing on the desktop. The diagrams were neatly drawn with charcoal, representing different lattice structures next to graphs and notes. Isyd was impressed by the in-depth analysis and research and the words’ precision and sketches. As it was customary for this kind of work, the drawing conventions used were jotted down at the bottom of the page alongside the date and the Arcanyst’s name. The papers were the work of Tekla Dumnchory. It seemed that the woman had been busy, condensing all the information and reports she received from the Ravasz into clearer and bite-sized summaries. The other papers contained a detailed analysis of the [Ingrace Hex], each of its hundreds of composing [Spells] dissected and reviewed as well as the modifications done by Hidrss and the justifications for them. The last pages discussed the [Outgracing Hex] with the final section being a recent addendum from Tekla.

It was an idea of a possible [Spell]. She forwent the Negative Sequence and instead suggested modifying the [Ingracing Hex] to pinpoint fault planes in the lattice structure and increase locally the Grace saturation. From her notes, she explained that this would be done by inducing a Resonance, forcing the Blysht to crack and the stored Grace to leak out.

“It will not work…” Isyd said to himself.

The Arcanysta stopped in their conversation and turned to him. He’d been so discrete they had almost forgotten he was there with them.

“What did you just say?” Tekla asked him through narrow eyes.

Isyd cleared his throat. “I don’t think your idea will work.”

The woman’s mouth hung open, too stunned to answer. Julya walked around her and approached the desk.

“What makes you say that, Isyd?” she asked.

“The fault planes are not significant in terms of Grace Concentration. You must have noticed it as well, right? How does the Blysht breaks, I mean.”

“Yes, the Ingraced Blysht does not break so much that it shatters,” Norran said. “And yet, when it is in its natural state, it is brittle and breaks as easily as halite would.”

“Exactly! When breaking, you’d expect the crystal to do it along its fault planes, but instead, it shatters completely and suddenly. This means we cannot create local cracks without risking the entire crystal.”

“I see. You are making sense,” Norran said, stroking his beard.

“Wait! Why are you taking him at face value?” Tekla said. “He is not an Arcanyst…”

“I also suspect another problem,” Isyd continued, engrossed by the sketches of Tekla’s attempt. He pointed out the different [Spells] used at Julya. “Even if we assumed that we manage to create micro-fractures in the Blysht, I think it will cost more Grace trying to do so than we used to Ingrace it in the first place. This [Outgracing Spell] does not solve the initial problem of the Ingraced Blysht being saturated and thus repealing any attempt to affect it with a [Hex]…”

Isyd’s eyes stopped at a drawing of a sub [Hex] and his mind began racing. Could it be? Could it work?

“You dare…” Tekla fumed in his direction, but Isyd was oblivious to her. He reached for a sheet of paper and seized the pencil that lay there.

“But perhaps Tekla was right in using Resonance…,” Isyd said, excited. “It is hard to apply more Grace to the Ingraced Blysht because it is saturated? Well, let’s use the Grace already stored then! With Resonance, it could work… We will need a way to make the input and the output match… the Song must be harmonized…How…? A unique key for a unique keyhole… Yeah, it could work! Perhaps with—”

The paper he was sketching on was torn away from under his pen. Isyd’s head jerked up to see Tekla standing tall in front of him.

“What are you doing?” he asked her, surprised.

“What are you doing?” the woman hissed.

“I’m trying to solve—”

“You are OVERSTEPPING! You are a 1 st Year Pupil! How dare you tell me that my ideas are stupid? Who do you think you are, Wybrany?”

Isyd looked at her, trying to guess what could have ticked her off. When she had asked him to follow her in the laboratory, he had assumed that he could work on the Blysht. They were so close to solving the problem, why was she wasting his time?

“Get out of my sight, Isyd Wybrany,” Tekla spat at him. “Out with you!”

“What? I am part of the Commission as well. Hidrss tasked me to work on the Blysht!”

“ Tutor Hidrss isn’t here, is he? Get out of this laboratory, Wybrany!”

The woman was fuming, her eyes were wide, and her breathing was coming fast. Isyd stood up to face her fully, meeting her gaze.

Why am I putting up with this? he asked himself. He could end this right here and now. Tekla was actively putting a spoke in his wheels and interfering with his plans. She was a hindrance.

Isyd could get rid of her in hundreds of ways…

He felt his skin twitch under his bandages.

No… Isyd lowered his eyes and took a long breath. This is not the way…

He took a step back, then another and finally, Isyd turned and walked out of the room.

Alone in the hallway, he realized that his right fist was clenched, and he let go. He had almost lost control there. It had been a close call, too close for comfort. Naeht hadn’t been around to rein him in.

But now Isyd could think more clearly again. He will try to be more careful in the future. He realized that in the great scheme of things, the pettiness of Tekla didn’t matter for much. He couldn’t risk it all just to teach her a lesson. Instead, he will find a way to work around her. He had to.

Ultimately, Isyd couldn’t afford to lose sight of his goals and forget what was truly at cost.