Chương 11: Enchanting

The afternoon was occupied by crafting. After lunch, Jester played elevator assistant, helping us all get to the imaginatively named Craftorium. My presence in the transport room prompted as large a gap as possible between my bony carcass and the children, which Bork seemed to find comforting. Even his friend Gangle kept him between herself and me. The room was large, big enough to house dozens of workstations, all of which were equipped with what looked, to my glowing blue eyes, to be very primitive equipment.

Mana engravers, magically powered drills and saws, all I saw was room for improvement. Sorting through the blueprints I was familiar with from my previous lives, I picked out half a dozen machines I could introduce to improve the level of their crafted items and enchantments. Master de Blovenstein was a narrow, squirrely man with a sad-looking moustache. His bald head sported a pair of complex, multi-lensed goggles that he would slip into place whenever he inspected one of the kids' projects.

"You need to imbue the runes while you carve them, Bork," I said quietly once we were left alone to work. He was crafting a new wand. It was a narrow blade of knapped obsidian, shaped like a foot-long pine needle made of darkness.

"I can't," he grumbled.

"Controlling the engraver and channelling at the same time is impossible. I've got to do the enchantment afterwards."

"The mana is linked to your movements. You're already channelling it while you engrave; you just need to let it seep out and into the wand. Relax into it. You can't force this kind of thing." His mana channels were surprisingly good, despite needing some work. I should have checked them first thing when I got here. The kid needed to become a peak-tier caster, and he wouldn't do that with the magical equivalent of cholesterol blocking his magical arteries.

The flow of his mana, which was strongly attuned to elemental death, was smooth, but he must have been trained to keep a barrier up between himself and the world. Nothing leaked in or out, which was impressive but not helpful.

"Ambient mana isn't a threat, Bork. Sealing yourself off as you have isn't healthy."

"It was the first thing Miss Gailspire taught us. The purity of our inner mana has to be guarded from outside influences," he finished in a parody of the beautiful teacher's voice.

"That's nonsense. You're limiting your recharge rate, for a start. Mana thrives under conscious control; ambient mana is mindless."

"What about enhancing my mana channels? They need to grow into my own flavour of mana, not get gunked up with outside stuff." He slid the glowing tip of the engraver carefully along the flat side of his future wand, cutting the Lotep rune into the razor-sharp stone.

"Once it enters your body, it becomes your mana. It will convert to your own affinity... they aren't called flavours, of mana and enhance your body's ability to generate mana as well." I glanced around, and sure enough, all the magically gifted in his class had these self-imposed barriers covering their skin. Ah, skin, how I missed it. I ran bony fingers over my shiny, hairless head and clicked a digit against my cheek.

"I should drop the barrier?"

"Yes. It must be bloody distracting to keep a corner of your mind focused on it all the time. You don't need it, kid."

"I would not be so sure of that," de Blovenstein said as he appeared next to me. I'd seen him coming, but he made Bork jump and snatch the engraving tool back to avoid spoiling the work. His own mana channels were almost entirely clogged, bar two perfectly clear lines that ran from his heart down each of his arms to his index fingers.

"You have sacrificed almost all your magical potential in pursuit of perfect enchanting. That barrier you maintain has trapped the falk within you, rather than letting it disperse into the world, ruining all the channels bar the ones to your fingers, sir," I said as politely as I could. One thing that always ground my gears was people acting like they know what they're talking about when they don't. How hard is it just to admit you don't know something?

"Falk?"

"Ah, I'm not sure what you call it on this—in this century. It's the desiccated mana that blocks people's mana channels over time."

"Mana crystals are what we call the stuff, Mr?" he waited expectantly.

"Instructor Dusty Arbuthnot, master de Blovenstein. A pleasure to meet you." I held out one of my bone-gauntleted hands for a shake, earning a disapproving look before I let it drop back to my side. I turned slightly so that the Instructor badge fixed to my chest plate was easily visible. He squinted at it, then flicked his head so that the goggles fell into place on his nose, and there was a quiet whir as various lenses flicked in and out of position.

After a brief inspection of the badge, he looked me up and down.

"A strong minion, young master von Heffleslump. But it is wise not to trust the babblings of the long dead. The world has advanced significantly since these ancient ones were among the living." If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"Well fuck you very much," I muttered once he had stalked off to harass Gangle two desks down. Bork giggled.

"You can see people's mana channels? Miss Gailspire needs an Oculator to get a look."

"Yeah, I can see magic better than most." I had no wish to elaborate on how much better I could see it; that would become obvious in time.

"And trust me, kid, just try it without the barrier. Let a little of your mana slip into the engraving blade. Not too much, just enough to link the tool to you for the time being. Good, now shift the mana into the tip. The argyl rune is next, it's angular, so it's a lot easier to carve." Bork began the cut, smooth, straight lines and I could see his mana lingering in them.

Not much, certainly not enough to fully empower the enchantment, but enough that when he did complete the enchantment, it would be a step above anything he could have achieved before.

"Good work, kid."

"It didn't do anything?"

"Trust me. Go over the lotep rune again, doing the same thing. The residual mana will prime the enchantment to accept the full charge later on. You've been managing basic levels on your practice pieces?" He nodded in answer to my question.

"This should push you up to high-novice, maybe even intermediate."

"Nobody gets an intermediate enchantment this early. That's third-year stuff," he said, turning back to his work. He completed the argyl and reworked the lotep, then moved onto a zerat rune. This one was curled, complex, and resulted in him sticking his tongue out of the side of his mouth as he concentrated.

"Nice, kid. Very nice. That's a basic binding enchantment, but you can add seraps to the argyl and lotep to upgrade it." I looked around for a paper and pencil, leaned over and pulled them next to Bork. I sketched out the small bars that could be added to the start and end of the two runes to strengthen the bond that would be formed between Bork and his future weapon.

"Seraps?"

"That should guarantee an intermediate-tier result." He looked at me dubiously.

"This obsidian was expensive. Mum won't be happy if I waste it."

"I'll get you a new one if it doesn't work."

"You don't have any money," he astutely pointed out.

"That isn't going to be the case for long, short stuff. I don't sleep; what do you think I'm going to do with my nights?"

"Erm…"

"I'm going to clean out the Moulders and the Shroud. Plenty of loot to be had." I didn't want him to speculate on anything beyond that, and thankfully, he nodded in understanding without asking further questions. Bork turned back to the wand and added the small cuts to enhance the basic runeforms, leaving tendrils of his mana behind. To me, the death affinity mana looked purple, which always made me think of Clavius and the Legion. The mean old bastard had been big on imperial purple. I nodded in approval.

"You can empower it now."

"But I need the rest of the runes?"

"Jesus, what level of stupid does this world run on? No, kid, you don't. You need to empower them separately, but in the right order. This is a binding enchantment; you've got space for two more. I'm guessing they are going to be channel and empower to increase the spell intensity when you use it?"

"I was going to use channel and harden."

"Why harden?"

"It's a wand-blade." He shrugged.

"My Wand Mastery skill means I'm pretty useless with every other weapon."

"Huh. That's not a terrible idea. Here, look at this." I flipped the piece of paper over and carefully drew the gabik, hrast and najaf runes. Then I added seraps to all of them.

"Use this series instead of whatever you were going to."

"The schema says barpu, najaf and uvire."

"That's…not terrible, to be honest. It's not ideal, though. Switching to gabik and hrast balances the invocation, bringing it closer to your death affinity. If you really nail the activation, it might result in a bonus effect."

"Rubbish."

"I kid ye not, kid. But by binding the wand first, then applying the hardening schema, and finally the channeling you are building them up on top of each other. Binding it to you makes it easier to empower the subsequent activations. If you try to turn them all on at once, you're splitting your mana three ways, and the item isn't already attuned to you. It's doing it all backwards." He looked doubtful, but I gave him my best—and permanent—smile, nodding in encouragement.

He set aside the engraving tool and held the wand with a hand at either end, then closed his eyes. I watched as his mana flowed into the shard of midnight. At first, it spread all through the stone, like it was looking for something in an unfamiliar place, then it slowly condensed into the lines he'd cut so carefully into the obsidian. The carvings began to glow brightly, his face lit purple from below, showing me a hint of the necromancer he would one day grow to be.

The light threw his eyes into shadowy hoods and lent his face an imperious air. I needed the kid to become extremely proficient at enchanting: it was barred to me in this lifetime. With no magic beyond my bone-related powers, I would be extremely limited in what I could do myself. He looked down as the light faded and smiled.

"I'm pretty sure it worked. We should ask Master de Blovenstein to check it!"

"I can do it, kid." Obsidian wand (intermediate binding)"Well, you failed." His face fell.

"But it felt so perfect! Not having the barrier up, it all just flowed," he moaned quietly.

"I'm yanking your chain, Bork. It's an intermediate binding." The kid was a goddamn genius, it seemed. At least as far as enchanting went, anyway. His social skills were on par with your average namglybeast with a migraine. He lit up like the dawn. An aura of childlike glee spread out around him that would have turned my stomach if I still had one.

"I've got to show—""Not yet," I hissed, pushing him gently but firmly back onto his stool.

"Save it for when you've done all three enchantments and really surprise them."

"That's a great idea, but can I at least show Gangle?"

"Unless she'll take my word for it, which of the following do you think is her probable reaction: that I'm lying for my master, or that you actually managed to perform a third-year enchantment?"

"Ok… I suppose that makes sense."

"I always do, kid, I always do." A bell rang, signalling an end to the horror of formal education, at least until tomorrow. By day, I could play the mild-mannered swordsmanship instructor and loyal sidekick to the awkward teenager, but at night I would be a dark watcher, a lone protector. I would be Batbone… Boneman? No, not that; I needed a better name.