Chapter 63: A Different Kind of Teacher

  His training officially started the very next day, so early in the morning that the sun still hadn’t begun to shine through the windows of the top decks. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Tempy was already set up when Tristan arrived, as were a few other smiths. One in particular had a pile of cooled metal beside her bench large enough that Tristan wondered if the woman hadn’t been there all night.

  Meanwhile, Tempy was in good spirits and welcomed him. She’d set up a second anvil beside her own, though she hadn’t laid out any tools on that one. “I remember you spending the first few minutes you’d bought in our shop rearranging,” she explained before he could even ask, “so I figured I’d keep yours clear.”

  When Tristan asked if he should take enchanter as his final Secondary Class or wait for her to tell him to, she outright laughed. “You mean you haven’t taken it yet? You don’t even know what skills you’ll get! Why would you wait? That’s wasted prep time. Also, am I your parent now, or your Path advisor? Why would I get to tell you what to take or when?”

  Tristan couldn't really argue with her, though he did flash back to his first spar against Jamal when the swordmaster had done exactly that.

  Sheepishly, he went back into his interface and found the option that had been presented to him all those months ago:

  You have the ability to take Enchanter as a Secondary Class. Accept?

  With an optimistic resolution, he finally thought Yes. Then the fun really began. An overwhelming surge of knowledge flooded into him, enough to make him close his eyes momentarily. Images of magical circuitry, arcane flows, and other things he now suddenly not only knew existed but also understood. When he reopened his eyes, he had a long string of notifications to read.

  Congratulations! You have taken your final Secondary Class.

  As you may only have two, you may now only take another Secondary Class by overwriting one of your previous selections. Doing so will cause you to lose all abilities and skills gained from the abandoned Class.

  Skills Gained:

  [Disenchant] An active ability that lets the user extract the magical essence from objects, transmuting it into usable elements and materials and destroying the original item in the process. 30 second cast (unreducible).

  [Imbue] An active ability allowing the user to grant new affixes or properties to an unbroken item. One of the foundational methods of enchanting items.

  [Manipulate Magic] A passive ability that grants the user enhanced perception of magic around them as well as a basic knowledge of how to work and shape it as a crafting material.

  Tristan wasn’t surprised to get new abilities, since he’d gotten several when taking swordsman, but it was odd to see that one of his new skills was merely “one of the foundational methods” of enchanting. He asked Tempy about that... and the result was a lot closer to a lecture than he’d expected.

  Tempy, as he was soon to learn, was a different kind of teacher from Jamal. Sure, Jamal’s methods may have been rough and unconventional, but they worked for Tristan just fine. Tempy, on the other hand, was more fluid and forgiving. She advised rather than mandated. She guided, accepting that his style was already different from hers and would continue to be. That first moment, like all that followed, showed Tristan just how different two talented teachers could be.

  “First of all, you’ve got to realize that enchanting something is actually just taking some of your own magical essence and applying it to an object.” She paused. “And no, magical essence isn’t an ‘official’ term, it’s just what I tend to call it because the man who taught me called it that, but whatever. Also, I should explain that the magical essence can either come from yourself or from something at hand: materials, looted cores, elements, and the like. You transfer that magic either into or onto whatever you’re enchanting.”

  Despite the multiple tangents, Tempy’s explanation still made sense to Tristan. It also seemed to put his new [Disenchant] and [Manipulate Magic] skills into context. Though he didn’t like the term ‘magical essence,’ as it felt too wordy. Why not just call it ‘magic’ and be done with it?

  “Alright,” he said, “but what about the ‘foundational methods of enchanting,’ like my other skill says?”

  “Which one did you get?” she asked.

  “[Imbue]--Wait, why? Is it not the same for everyone?”

  “Gods, no. That would be too simple, and I’m here to tell you that enchanting is anything but simple. No, you’re guaranteed to get one of the five methods at level 1, then another one at each of the next four levels, until you finally have them all at level 5. Which ones you get when, though, changes person to person, and I like to think it's your Path deciding for you. That’s why the first method people get is always one they can use most easily.”

  Tristan looked back at his [Imbue] ability and admitted that it did seem like what he’d wanted to do. It also fit his plans for entering the contests perfectly.

  “Anyway, you got [Imbue], so you see that it’s about giving an item a totally new property, or rather a property that’s new to it. We can easily compare that to [Augment], which requires the item to already have the cool ability, and then you just enhance it. Do note that neither [Imbue] nor [Augment] will remain limited to one property at a time, just when starting out. That’s how all these skills run. [Inscribe] is similar to [Imbue], except it’s putting the magic onto a scroll, which then becomes a single-use consumable. But don’t sleep on inscribing, as it’s incredibly flexible, and you wouldn’t believe all the creative uses you can find for properties turned into scrolls.”

  She paused and looked at him then, clearly making sure he was keeping up. Tristan, for his part, was fascinated--and this time, not even by her.

  “Then there’s [Infuse], which is both more permanent, because it’s affecting a material, and also less permanent, because that material usually becomes something else. It’s complicated, but what it ends up doing is strengthening your base object.”

  She sighed. “But it’s not nearly as convoluted as [Bless]. Blessing something is in a category all its own, as you’re basically siphoning off a tiiiiny bit of an actual god’s power and putting that into your chosen object. Be extra careful not to try pulling too much. Even after that’s done, the power of the blessing will be based on too many factors to be practical, at least in my experience, though there are others who swear by it.” She rolled her eyes at that.

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  Tristan took the hint and didn’t ask about that method, but he did have tons of follow-ups about the others. He especially tried to steer her toward [Imbue], as that was where he wanted to begin as soon as possible.

  Tempy showed him several samples of her work, focusing mostly on what she had imbued. “I don’t really do much scrollwork,” she said, apologizing for her lack of inscribing samples, “and as I mentioned, I try not to touch [Bless] with a five-stride pole. Dealing with gods is just... more trouble than it’s worth.”

  What fascinated Tristan most in studying her work was that she used similar runes across all of the different methods. When he asked her about that, and how she used seemingly the same symbols to achieve different purposes, she just laughed.

  “It’s true that runes are my focus and specialization, but that’s just one style of enchanting. If you walk downstairs to the Glowstrip and ask the crafters there what they do, you’ll likely get as many different responses as enchanters. Some weave, some line, some disperse, others shine or glow. There was one dwarf I met who said it was like breathing to him; he just focused really hard and repeated the word ‘Enchantment,’ and the properties appeared, as if they’d occurred naturally. Of course, he was rather simple at times, and he could never for the life of him explain how any of it worked.”

  She went on to explain that runes could be used in imbuing just as easily as they could in augmenting, or inscribing, or blessing. “What’s really cool, though, is that I’ve found the effects can differ based on the method used! Take all the swords I made and keep on display in Rockmoor. They were all done with runes. But! If you tried to recreate some of those properties with other styles of enchanting, some wouldn’t be nearly as easy to pull off, or maybe they’d lose potency, though some might even work better!”

  Tristan blinked, feeling a bit overwhelmed already. “So if I only focus on runes, like you have..."

  “Then you’d be potentially limiting yourself, just as I have,” Tempy acknowledged. “But don’t let that deter you. What I can do is mostly regulated by the runes and combinations I know. There are some major runes that simply can’t be reproduced in any practical way by other enchanting styles, just as there are some properties and affixes that I don’t know any runes for. At least not yet!” she said with a sly wink. “Do you remember my Spatial Blink rune, for example?”

  “Yeah, that was on that gorgeous longsword you had on display. It was a major rune.”

  “Right, [Blinking Rush] is a showstopper,” Tempy said, slapping his back hard enough to push Tristan forward. “That thing took me weeks to make, but it was bloody well worth it! And I’ve never seen any other type of enchanting at my tier that can do the repeated, short range teleports that my rune can. I’ve seen a few that did longer range on a much longer cooldown, but nothing has come close to my Spatial Blink.”

  Tristan was now even more in awe of the blade, which he remembered incredibly fondly. He’d found all its straight lines and bars, each ending in an extra point, to be striking. It was a fair bit more sophisticated than what he tended to make. But if I’m going to add complexity with enchanting, maybe I should try for more elaborate designs in my swords, too.

  He went back and forth with Tempy for over an hour, striving to absorb as much as she could tell him about the basics, before he finally felt ready for some hands-on practice.

  “I’ll give you one simple task, my new student,” she said with a wicked grin. She took out a pencil and pulled over a sheet of scrap paper. Then, in what felt like only a few deft motions, she drew a deceptively simple-looking rune. Placing the pencil behind her ear, she crossed her arms and slid the paper his way. “Reproduce that.”

  Tristan picked up the paper and studied it. “With a pencil, or...?”

  Tempy’s laugh was loud and lively and easily overpowered the constant ambient strikes and sizzles of the Foundry. “Gods, Tristan, of course not on paper. On some steel! What good would putting it on paper do, other than to prove you could match the linework? I guess it would help if you wanted to be a scribe, but that’s not our Path!” She slapped his back again and started walking back to her own anvil. “Oh, but you should make sure you cut your lines as straight as possible. Imperfections diminish the power or throughput of full runes.” She laughed as if at an unspoken joke. “Though, let’s be honest, that won’t matter for days yet. Good luck!”

  For Tristan, the rest of the first day was all about reproducing that one simple rune. He got the general form of it quickly enough, much to Tempy’s delight. He understood the basic strokes, and he actually managed to use the chisels he’d made all the way back in Rockmoor that first trip to Garrow’s to make his lines precise and clean. While they couldn’t be used for the actual enchanting (as Tempy had warned him after he’d made them), he could use them to carve the shapes for the magic to later fill. Toward the end, he hadn’t needed to look back at the drawing as often either. At times he had just sort of felt out the way it should fit together.

  “That last one is really good,” Tempy said from over his shoulder. Then she leaned down, pressing against his shoulder a bit as she pointed out one issue. “But this crossing here is imperfect, and if you were to try to energize this, you’d find yourself losing a ton of magical potency.” She pulled the drawing back in front of him. “I know I did this quickly, but look at my strokes. I drew this one first, and this one went across it. The order is important. Yours may look the same, but the flow will be all wrong. Trust me. You should try it again.”

  By the end of Tristan’s first day as an enchanter, he’d finally produced one rune that Tempy said might actually hold magic well enough, just in much nicer terms. They sat down together, and after working through her feedback yet again, he apparently earned enough experience to push his new enchanter Class up to level 2.

  “I was expecting that for you tomorrow,” she exclaimed with wide eyes. “That’s just--! Congratulations, Tristan! Are you always this quick a study?”

  Tristan grinned along with his response, “When I have a good teacher.”

  “Oh, come off it, you suckup. Just means I’ll get to push you harder going forward.”

  I look forward to it, he thought but didn’t dare say.

  As she’d laid out earlier, Tristan earned his second of the “foundational methods of enchanting” skills: [Infuse]. That left [Augment], [Bless], and [Inscribe] to earn in his next level-ups. He wasn’t remotely upset at what he’d gotten so far, and hopefully [Bless] would be saved until the end. It was clearly Tempy’s least favorite, so he doubted she would want to cover it soon, if at all.

  “What does this rune do, anyway?” he asked, looking at his only acceptable product. With its straight lines rigidly spaced and crossing the smooth outer curve once each, he wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

  “That’s the basic [Minor Rune: Sharpened]. It can be used for the foundation of other runes, though, if you add more around the outside, adjoining them around that outer circle. Those are for later, though. This felt like a good place to start, given your propensity for big blades.” She smiled at him and patted his shoulder. “It was where I started, too.”

  Tristan nearly asked her When?, but then he remembered all his mother’s lessons about the impoliteness of asking women their ages, and this definitely could have led down those lines.

  Tempy stepped away a few heartbeats later, and the moment for cleverness--or closeness--seemed to have passed. Tristan began collecting his tools and gear, but Tempy actually thumped his hand.

  “What are you doing? Just leave all that here.”

  “But what if someone else comes up and--?”

  “This is the Crafting Ark, Tristan. No one’s going to take your shit for fear of breaking Rule 3.”

  Rule 3, Tristan remembered: Don’t be a dick. He looked at his station with uncertainty anyway. “But what if there aren’t enough stations and...?”

  Tempy shot him down with a wordless, unimpressed glare.

  “You’re sure it’ll be safe?” he asked.

  Tempy’s side-eye was withering. “You’re a mid-tier 2 smith who just took his first steps into enchanting. What could you possibly offer that would be worth someone risking getting thrown overboard? Seriously, Tristan. Maybe if you were late-tier 3.” She shook her head and a deep chuckle rumbled out of her.

  In that light, Tristan definitely could see her point. Who was he, currently, to any of these people? No one, yet. But he would work to change that. Oh yes, by the end of this voyage, people would know his work.

  good...

  for those interested. (8 chapters ahead!)