They were basically two methods to create functioning magical circles. One of them was the more common option by using magical ink to create channels in which the mana could flow through. I had already done that a few times for example as I made the needlessly complicated circle to link Hannah´s and mine senses. The problem was through that these circles weren’t that durable and liked to fail at some point.
A simple fireball was doable this way, but something like a firestorm was hardly possible. And for these appliances, one might either turn to a real mage which knew the necessary spell, or used mithril as a conductor. There were several problems with these approach though.
For once, mithril was a metal. It may be shiny and all, but was still heavy which was also why modern swords only had engravings in mithril to achieve certain effects and not the whole sword consisted of this precious metal. Another issue was that it was goddamn pricey. Everyone desired a magical weapon, but there were very few places in which mithril could be found. The result was that very few could actually get their hands on it and even less could work with it.
Thankfully though, we already knew someone who could craft what I had in mind and we also had several ways of purchasing mithril either through Hannah´s acquaintances in the military, or through dark channels.
The materials were thus already delivered as we stumbled into the smithy once more, which was now strangely cold. Nobody except the dwarf was in there and he didn’t look too pleased to see us either.
“What do you want with 8,8 pounds of mithril?” I had never seen any dwarf this angry before. Well, admittedly he was the first one I knew, but he did have a lot of volume in his lungs. He was basically screaming at us in a deep voice which was quite surprising.
“Who measures stuff in pounds?” I asked and pursed my lips. I already knew dwarfs were quite the hotheads and didn’t exactly keep their rude behaviour in check at all.
“I measure everything in freedom units so that you dumb mutts don’t know what I´m talking about! And now, what the fuck do you want with so much mithril?!” I really tried to switch to a better topic to calm him down, but that apparently enraged him even more.
“Well, as I already wrote in my letter a month ago, we need these four kilogram of mithril for a magical circle.” I explained calmly and went towards the table full of the blue, glittering metal. By having the highest mana conductivity known to mankind, it was truly a wonderful metal to possess. “Are you in, or not?”
“Why should I? You are clearly up to no good and I don’t want to be involved in anything troublesome.” The dwarf said and crossed his little but muscular arms in front of his chest.
“Trust me, it´s not troublesome. We just want to make a magical circle to claim life with the equivalent of a half Aska. Oh, that’s a measurement I made on my own.” The last time Aska apparently freaked out was thousands of years ago. It were only two parallel dimensions he destroyed by accident in his rage though. Measuring explosives this way was thus a valid way for me.
“You want to build a bomb?! There is even less incentive for me to help now.” Oh, I certainly didn’t want to build a simple bomb. Where would be the fun in that? Especially because using mithril as a kind of explosive was shamefully uneconomical. But I didn’t want him to know the real reason either, so I had to make up something in case he recognised any of the runes we would be using.
“I solemnly swear your creation will not be used to the detriment of you. I know I am asking for much, but you will be paid handsomely and I will offer you a bit of knowledge myself. How about I tell you how to create S tier magical weapons?” I proposed with a smile on my lips. I knew exactly how tempting this offer must have been for him. Since hundreds and hundreds of years, nobody managed to create on of these artefacts which main selling point was that they didn’t use the mana of their wielder up to a certain point.
“That’s impossible.” The dwarf claimed, but I could see that my smug smile worked wonders already.
“It´s not. You only deem it as such because the problem isn´t the skill of the blacksmith. It lies in a completely different area altogether.” I explained and snipped against the cold mithril. “I am not saying you will be able to create them afterwards, but you will understand these artefacts better. How about it?” I asked, knowing full well his thirst for this kind of knowledge was enough to convince him.
“Deal.” He said plainly. I could see his anger wasn’t exactly gone, but we were beginning to warm up to each other. At least a little bit. “As long as I don’t need to see her.” He said and pointed at Hannah who just stood there innocently. She wouldn’t even hurt a fly in this smithy, and yet she was disliked. Well, sadly we didn’t have any other option except to persuade the dwarf to work for us and Hannah must have realised this as well. In good dwarven style, she showed him the middle finger secretly and left without saying anything.
“What you did wasn’t very nice … “ I mumbled quietly and looked at the dwarf as he picked up the mithril in front of me easily.
“Why should I care?” He grumbled and put the metal into a large steel bucket. I wasn’t entirely sure what he wanted to do with that until he lit the furnace on fire.
“Sorry. I had my ‘normal’ month behind me, so I´m kind of rusty at being mean, you dimwit. Oh, didn’t take long to get back to my usual self. Where do we start?” I asked and chuckled loudly. He looked at me quite strangely until he deemed the furnace to be hot enough which it certainly was because the smithy was quite warm already.
“I am doing the work. As if I let some idiot mess up anything.” He commented after waiting so long in front of it that I assumed he didn’t want to talk at all.
“Oh, I know exactly what you mean! Last time Lars salted my stew too much, I was incredibly tempted to hurl everything towards him. But I knew I shouldn’t have don’t that so …” I salted his stew as well. I naturally didn’t hurt him as he was a poor human who would inevitably hurt himself someday. I really didn’t need to do anything in that regard.
“Why are you telling me this crap?” The dwarf asked while stirring the hot mithril. He was probably even right to ask such a question because we didn’t know each other at all.
“Hey, I just tried a bit of small talk. And who is a better test subject than an asocial dwarf?” I commented drily and stepped away from him as he picked up the special bucked with a long plier.
“Fuck. You.” He said and put the bucket onto the ground. The mithril inside had turned into a very thick liquid which did have a lot of similarities with liquid mana, except the explosiveness of course. “And what now?”
“Hmm … how do you usually draw magical circles?” I asked a bit confused by his question. I thought he would give me some sort of pencil which I could then use to draw everything on some kind of plate.
“With a mould.” Well, that was troublesome simply because there was no way I could ever craft a mould for the product. Moulds and three-dimensional circles just didn’t go well with each other.
“Do I look as if I have a mould?” I asked and patted my sides, just to prove that I indeed didn’t have a mould with me.
“You look like a dumb princess who nags at everyone.” Well, he was certainly on point with his observations, but wouldn’t a blacksmith support a princess with everything he had? Wasn’t his task to prepare everything? And didn’t he, just mere minutes before say that I shouldn’t do anything because I would fuck it up?
“Fine, fine, you win. And now, give me what I need.” I sighed loudly but was pleasantly surprised as he went to a nearby shelf, picked out a rather unique pipette and handed it over to me. After looking at it for a little while, I turned my gaze to the mithril and shrugged my shoulders. I mean, what could go wrong using a pipette to draw my beloved magical circle? Nothing! Except that it was searing hot in my hands after I vacuumed a bunch of mithril up. I was sure that all the heat didn’t do my skin any good, but I smiled happily nonetheless.
The dwarf said nothing, but I could see he was surprised just by how his eyes glimmered in a gentle brown. He even went into a backroom and placed a circular metal plate in front of me.
“Call me if you need anything. The mithril needs to be reheated every ten minutes and don’t even try doing that alone.” He said, even though I was already on my knees, doing the two outer rings of my magical circle like I remembered. Next were the channelling lines connecting the outer rings with the centre of the circle and then, I started writing.
‘Lucinda, I am. Born from the ashes of purgatory I was. Four arms I have, two eyes …’ And once again, I butchered the language of the gods hopefully in the right way. I already knew the other stuff I needed to write, but this circle should be unusable for anyone but me. There was a simple reason for this. I didn’t want any knowledge to fall into the hands of my potential enemies, which sadly included everyone.
‘This is human. Human doing human things. Human standing on two feet, human having intelligence. Human being crafty. Human having feelings. Human senses have.’ And next was defining who the effect of this circle should apply to. Generally, I wanted it to be usable on everyone, including elves. I sadly had no idea how to put every intelligent being into a single group, and so I defined everyone as human. They could sue me for racism later … if they could even read the stuff I wrote.
After setting up the foundations of the magical circle with the first two layers of mithril, the dwarf came back to reheat the mithril. He didn’t leave once more though, but rather pulled over a little stool and sat down on it with interest. He probably wasn’t that knowledgeable about magical circles itself, but he also wasn’t a complete beginner. And as such, he knew that what I was doing was indeed very weird.
No magical circles in this world had multiple layers, most importantly because they were all rather simple. Conjuring a fireball with circles or setting up defensive barriers was rather easy or so I was told. What I was doing once more certainly wasn’t. Linguistically, mages were simply not able to write down what they wanted to do except through trial and error.
And trust me, finding a way to relay everything I sensed to another person was certainly not something to be discovered by chance.
They were basically two methods to create functioning magical circles. One of them was the more common option by using magical ink to create channels in which the mana could flow through. I had already done that a few times for example as I made the needlessly complicated circle to link Hannah´s and mine senses. The problem was through that these circles weren’t that durable and liked to fail at some point.
A simple fireball was doable this way, but something like a firestorm was hardly possible. And for these appliances, one might either turn to a real mage which knew the necessary spell, or used mithril as a conductor. There were several problems with these approach though.
For once, mithril was a metal. It may be shiny and all, but was still heavy which was also why modern swords only had engravings in mithril to achieve certain effects and not the whole sword consisted of this precious metal. Another issue was that it was goddamn pricey. Everyone desired a magical weapon, but there were very few places in which mithril could be found. The result was that very few could actually get their hands on it and even less could work with it.
Thankfully though, we already knew someone who could craft what I had in mind and we also had several ways of purchasing mithril either through Hannah´s acquaintances in the military, or through dark channels.
The materials were thus already delivered as we stumbled into the smithy once more, which was now strangely cold. Nobody except the dwarf was in there and he didn’t look too pleased to see us either.
“What do you want with 8,8 pounds of mithril?” I had never seen any dwarf this angry before. Well, admittedly he was the first one I knew, but he did have a lot of volume in his lungs. He was basically screaming at us in a deep voice which was quite surprising.
“Who measures stuff in pounds?” I asked and pursed my lips. I already knew dwarfs were quite the hotheads and didn’t exactly keep their rude behaviour in check at all.
“I measure everything in freedom units so that you dumb mutts don’t know what I´m talking about! And now, what the fuck do you want with so much mithril?!” I really tried to switch to a better topic to calm him down, but that apparently enraged him even more.
“Well, as I already wrote in my letter a month ago, we need these four kilogram of mithril for a magical circle.” I explained calmly and went towards the table full of the blue, glittering metal. By having the highest mana conductivity known to mankind, it was truly a wonderful metal to possess. “Are you in, or not?”
“Why should I? You are clearly up to no good and I don’t want to be involved in anything troublesome.” The dwarf said and crossed his little but muscular arms in front of his chest.
“Trust me, it´s not troublesome. We just want to make a magical circle to claim life with the equivalent of a half Aska. Oh, that’s a measurement I made on my own.” The last time Aska apparently freaked out was thousands of years ago. It were only two parallel dimensions he destroyed by accident in his rage though. Measuring explosives this way was thus a valid way for me.
“You want to build a bomb?! There is even less incentive for me to help now.” Oh, I certainly didn’t want to build a simple bomb. Where would be the fun in that? Especially because using mithril as a kind of explosive was shamefully uneconomical. But I didn’t want him to know the real reason either, so I had to make up something in case he recognised any of the runes we would be using.
“I solemnly swear your creation will not be used to the detriment of you. I know I am asking for much, but you will be paid handsomely and I will offer you a bit of knowledge myself. How about I tell you how to create S tier magical weapons?” I proposed with a smile on my lips. I knew exactly how tempting this offer must have been for him. Since hundreds and hundreds of years, nobody managed to create on of these artefacts which main selling point was that they didn’t use the mana of their wielder up to a certain point.
“That’s impossible.” The dwarf claimed, but I could see that my smug smile worked wonders already.
“It´s not. You only deem it as such because the problem isn´t the skill of the blacksmith. It lies in a completely different area altogether.” I explained and snipped against the cold mithril. “I am not saying you will be able to create them afterwards, but you will understand these artefacts better. How about it?” I asked, knowing full well his thirst for this kind of knowledge was enough to convince him.
“Deal.” He said plainly. I could see his anger wasn’t exactly gone, but we were beginning to warm up to each other. At least a little bit. “As long as I don’t need to see her.” He said and pointed at Hannah who just stood there innocently. She wouldn’t even hurt a fly in this smithy, and yet she was disliked. Well, sadly we didn’t have any other option except to persuade the dwarf to work for us and Hannah must have realised this as well. In good dwarven style, she showed him the middle finger secretly and left without saying anything.
“What you did wasn’t very nice … “ I mumbled quietly and looked at the dwarf as he picked up the mithril in front of me easily.
“Why should I care?” He grumbled and put the metal into a large steel bucket. I wasn’t entirely sure what he wanted to do with that until he lit the furnace on fire.
“Sorry. I had my ‘normal’ month behind me, so I´m kind of rusty at being mean, you dimwit. Oh, didn’t take long to get back to my usual self. Where do we start?” I asked and chuckled loudly. He looked at me quite strangely until he deemed the furnace to be hot enough which it certainly was because the smithy was quite warm already.
“I am doing the work. As if I let some idiot mess up anything.” He commented after waiting so long in front of it that I assumed he didn’t want to talk at all.
“Oh, I know exactly what you mean! Last time Lars salted my stew too much, I was incredibly tempted to hurl everything towards him. But I knew I shouldn’t have don’t that so …” I salted his stew as well. I naturally didn’t hurt him as he was a poor human who would inevitably hurt himself someday. I really didn’t need to do anything in that regard.
“Why are you telling me this crap?” The dwarf asked while stirring the hot mithril. He was probably even right to ask such a question because we didn’t know each other at all.
“Hey, I just tried a bit of small talk. And who is a better test subject than an asocial dwarf?” I commented drily and stepped away from him as he picked up the special bucked with a long plier.
“Fuck. You.” He said and put the bucket onto the ground. The mithril inside had turned into a very thick liquid which did have a lot of similarities with liquid mana, except the explosiveness of course. “And what now?”
“Hmm … how do you usually draw magical circles?” I asked a bit confused by his question. I thought he would give me some sort of pencil which I could then use to draw everything on some kind of plate.
“With a mould.” Well, that was troublesome simply because there was no way I could ever craft a mould for the product. Moulds and three-dimensional circles just didn’t go well with each other.
“Do I look as if I have a mould?” I asked and patted my sides, just to prove that I indeed didn’t have a mould with me.
“You look like a dumb princess who nags at everyone.” Well, he was certainly on point with his observations, but wouldn’t a blacksmith support a princess with everything he had? Wasn’t his task to prepare everything? And didn’t he, just mere minutes before say that I shouldn’t do anything because I would fuck it up?
“Fine, fine, you win. And now, give me what I need.” I sighed loudly but was pleasantly surprised as he went to a nearby shelf, picked out a rather unique pipette and handed it over to me. After looking at it for a little while, I turned my gaze to the mithril and shrugged my shoulders. I mean, what could go wrong using a pipette to draw my beloved magical circle? Nothing! Except that it was searing hot in my hands after I vacuumed a bunch of mithril up. I was sure that all the heat didn’t do my skin any good, but I smiled happily nonetheless.
The dwarf said nothing, but I could see he was surprised just by how his eyes glimmered in a gentle brown. He even went into a backroom and placed a circular metal plate in front of me.
“Call me if you need anything. The mithril needs to be reheated every ten minutes and don’t even try doing that alone.” He said, even though I was already on my knees, doing the two outer rings of my magical circle like I remembered. Next were the channelling lines connecting the outer rings with the centre of the circle and then, I started writing.
‘Lucinda, I am. Born from the ashes of purgatory I was. Four arms I have, two eyes …’ And once again, I butchered the language of the gods hopefully in the right way. I already knew the other stuff I needed to write, but this circle should be unusable for anyone but me. There was a simple reason for this. I didn’t want any knowledge to fall into the hands of my potential enemies, which sadly included everyone.
‘This is human. Human doing human things. Human standing on two feet, human having intelligence. Human being crafty. Human having feelings. Human senses have.’ And next was defining who the effect of this circle should apply to. Generally, I wanted it to be usable on everyone, including elves. I sadly had no idea how to put every intelligent being into a single group, and so I defined everyone as human. They could sue me for racism later … if they could even read the stuff I wrote.
After setting up the foundations of the magical circle with the first two layers of mithril, the dwarf came back to reheat the mithril. He didn’t leave once more though, but rather pulled over a little stool and sat down on it with interest. He probably wasn’t that knowledgeable about magical circles itself, but he also wasn’t a complete beginner. And as such, he knew that what I was doing was indeed very weird.
No magical circles in this world had multiple layers, most importantly because they were all rather simple. Conjuring a fireball with circles or setting up defensive barriers was rather easy or so I was told. What I was doing once more certainly wasn’t. Linguistically, mages were simply not able to write down what they wanted to do except through trial and error.
And trust me, finding a way to relay everything I sensed to another person was certainly not something to be discovered by chance.
