“This is a sculpting wand,” Ridley explained. “The primary tool used by every member of the Guild of Artificers to do our work. Am I correct to assume that during your time on Heschia you have yet to witness artificery in practice?”
“Yeah, you’re actually the only artificer-type dude I’ve ever met. Honestly, I’m still damned-near a magical virgin.”
“Then I shall try to be as gentle as possible.” He laughed under his breath. “Are you already capable of capturing sacred schematics, or will you require my guidance in that act, as well?”
“I’ve figured that part out on my own, I think.”
“Then here,” he said, passing Seymour the wand. “Have a look at this for yourself.”
It was a polished length of wood with a small, crystalline tear-drop affixed to the tip. Maybe eight inches long. The crystal emitted a faint, turquoise glow. As Seymour held it in his right hand, his sigil tingled and the geometry consumed his attention. And then, its label appeared in the corner of his mind’s eye, as well:
“Do you see it?” Ridley asked, his voice suddenly a reverent whisper. Seymour nodded, still consumed with the trippy, Spirograph image existing in at least four dimensions within his mind. This was by far the most complicated design he’d seen yet – more ornate even than the other adept-ranked items he’d scanned during the course of his work. “That is sacred geometry, and you’ll find every single thing across the realm of Heschia is made of it.”
“Everything?”
“That’s right.” He snatched the wand back and Seymour snapped out of the almost trance-like state which seeing its inner architecture had put him in. “Because every single speck of Heschia is potentiated magically, meaning all you need to generate any magical effect you can imagine is the right configuration of matter – at a scale too small for most Heschians to view with the naked eye. Do you understand?”
Seymour thought about it for a moment.
“Nope,” he finally said. “I don’t think I get what you mean at all. Or maybe I just don’t believe you. Are you saying that instead of atoms and electrons and stuff like that, everything here is made up of crazy geometry?”
“Sacred geometry.” Ridley’s tone was almost angry now, like Seymour had just spit on his religion. “Not crazy. But otherwise, yes, I believe you’ve deduced my meaning correctly, for the most part. But maybe an additional demonstration will help solidify this concept in your mind.”
He moved swiftly to the rolltop desk and dug in one of its drawers. When he found what he was looking for, it looked like an ordinary, twisted twig, something he might have collected from the jungle or the cherry blossom forest outside Ghizo’s Crossing.
“A twig?” Seymour wondered.
“Here, have a look.”
He handed it over and again Seymour used his Sigil of Greed to essentially analyze its geometric composition. His mind filled with a series of lines and angles, surprisingly similar to what he’d seen in the Sculpting Wand, though noticeably less dense and complicated. After only a moment, once more a label appeared:
“Tell me what you see.”
“It’s a twig alright,” Seymour replied, doing his best to sound unimpressed despite the fact that this simple stick was nearly as mind-numbingly gorgeous in its internal architecture as the magic wand had been.
And it hit him as a sort of epiphany then, what Ridley had meant a moment ago when he said everything in this world was potentiated magically. Seymour actually had been mostly right before; at the most fundamental level, all matter here was simply upgraded from its Earthly counterparts. Instead of protons and electrons and quarks or whatever, there was this lattice of sacred geometry he’d now witnessed in items both mundane and magical. And if the lines and angles were simply adjusted to a certain configuration, then a mundane object could easily become magical.
In the corner of his eye, he noticed Ridley watching him closely, gauging his reaction.
“Now,” the artificer said, passing Seymour a teardrop-shaped crystal the size of his pinky-nail. “Take this, and use it to create a fully-formed Sculpting Wand.”
“How?”
“First, collect the schematic of the crystallized mana.” He nodded to indicate the tiny crystal he’d given him. “And after that, you simply concentrate on your desired outcome.”
The crystal’s schematic was also surprisingly similar to all the others he’d recently seen – despite being so much smaller and made of a completely different material. Likewise, its label was also in the increasingly familiar format:
Next, awkwardly holding both the ashwood twig and the crystallized mana in the palm of his hand, Seymour did as Ridley had instructed him to and concentrated. He pictured the twig changing shape, losing its naturally-occurring crooks and gnarls and combining with the crystal to form the completed wand. Nothing happened, but he was surprised by how easily the visualization had come to him. Almost as if his already potent imagination had somehow been enhanced.
He drew in a deep, centering breath and refocused. Ridley became a blur in the periphery of his vision. And it struck him then – he shouldn’t be trying to change the outward shape of the stick. He needed to be working with the underlying geometry; the schematics stored in his mind.
As soon as the realization clicked into place, his enhanced powers of visualization ramped up yet another notch. Now he could see a sort of file system, which he recognized instinctively as a manifestation of his Object Memory. It felt like part of his mind had been upgraded to a new version of its operating system. Contained within a sort of digital-spiritual registry, he found the schematics for the three items he’d recently examined: the Sculpting Wand, the ashwood twig, and the crystallized mana.
And then the power took over, or maybe it was the sigil. Whatever the case, it all felt perfectly intuitive as he chose the sacred schematic for the wand and felt his palm tingle with an odd, internal haptic sensation.
It felt almost like something was trying to climb out from beneath his skin, but that wasn’t it at all. Suddenly the void-mouth of the pig-faced sigil didn’t just look hollow but actually was, and the twig laid across it was sucked down into his palm with enough force to snap it in half as the pig-face swallowed it crosswise into its impossible mouth. The teardrop of crystallized mana was slurped up, too, right along with the twig.
Seymour gasped and Ridley leaned closer.
His voice was calm and reassuring. “Good, good. This is how it’s supposed to be, don’t worry. Now concentrate on producing the Sculpting Wand. You must do so within the next thirty seconds, or the raw materials will be expelled again in their original state.”
Seymour’s heart raced but it was out of excitement more than fear. A silver spark ran circuits around the Sigil of Greed’s perimeter. The visual sort of reminded him of the flux capacitor from Back to the Future. He focused on the sacred schematic representing the Sculpting Wand. His palm seemed to call to it where the design was seated in his mind. And then, with a simple act of will, Seymour transmitted the schematic from the vault inside his brain to the pig-faced sigil on his palm.
All at once the edges lit up entirely with the silver spark and then from the central mouth-like void, as well. He again experienced the haptic pressure originating from inside his hand – but this time something truly was trying to escape from within him. As Seymour and Ridley watched—Seymour with his mouth agape and Ridley’s wearing a satisfied smirk—a thin, perfect reproduction of the wand grew from the center of his palm like an obelisk rising out of the desert. Only once it had fully emerged did the silver light stop shining along the edges of his sigil.
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Seymour held the wand and checked its schematic. It was exactly the same as the wand he’d examined previously, right down to the imprint of Ridley’s signature, whatever that really meant.
“Excellent work.” The artificer took the wand and placed it on his nearby workbench.
Then he sat in his comfy-looking chair and said nothing for an awkwardly long time.
After several minutes had passed, Seymour finally asked, “what are we waiting for?”
Ridley answered only by smiling and nodding toward the workbench. Seymour followed his gaze and watched as the Sculpting Wand suddenly began to develop jagged cracks all along its surface. Red and blue sparks of light shone out through the hairline fractures and the wand withered and twisted and then after only a moment Seymour realized it had simply transformed back into the ashwood twig he had used as the raw material to produce it in the first place. Curiously, it was whole again, too; no longer snapped in half from being eaten up by his sigil. Beside the twig, the drop of crystallized mana wobbled briefly on the work surface, and then came to rest.
“Five minutes,” Ridley noted. “By default, an adept-ranked item will only persist for that long if it has been created through your use of Infringement.”
Seymour was confused and disappointed. “So wait, ignoring the whole ‘adept-ranked’ bit that pretty much means nothing at all to me, if I’m understanding the last thing you said then I think it means my magic power has an expiration date and it’s a measly five minutes?”
“That’s only half right.” He scooped up the crystallized mana, but left the twig where it lay. “To clarify, the term ‘adept-ranked’ indicates that the item is enchanted with the second-lowest rank of magical effect, referring to the relative strength of the magical enchantments placed upon it. The unaltered twig, on the other hand, is an example of a mundane-ranked object, which includes all non-enchanted matter in Heschia – even the most innocuous of things such as rocks and water. When you use your means of production to create one of these lesser objects, the default term of persistence is three times as long, about fifteen minutes.”
“But anything I make will still turn back into whatever it was before, right?” Seymour frowned. “I’m not sure I see how this Infringement spell is very useful at all. What good is turning a stick into a wand if it’s just going to revert back into a stick in five minutes?”
“You must try to understand,” Ridley began, “that you are not a god. You cannot simply alter reality at will.” He smiled. “Not permanently. That is, not until you learn how.”
“What does that even mean?”
“For now, you’ll require an extra step to ensure the objects you create will stick around longer.” He picked the twig up from the workbench and held it out to Seymour. “Take this, and use Infringement to transform it again.”
“You want me to turn it back into the Sculpting Wand? Don’t I need the mana crystal thing?”
“Yes, but this time, I want you to try producing the wand without it.”
“Alright then.”
He took the twig and held it against his Sigil of Greed. Accessing his Object Memory called up the Sacred Schematic for the completed wand, but when he attempted to reproduce it he received a message he hadn’t seen before, in the corner of his inner-vision where the item labels had previously appeared:
Yes, he silently affirmed, not knowing if it would work. He immediately sensed that it had.
The sigil on his palm swallowed the twig again before its edges then lit up with the racing silver sparks, and a moment later the wand sprouted up from the pig-face’s mouth like a time-lapse recording of a sapling growing. This time, however, it was only the pencil-like, wooden shaft, lacking its crystal adornment – though there did appear to be a tiny slot at the tip where a drop of crystallized mana could be fitted.
“Good work.” Ridley nodded. “What does the schematic say this time?”
“It’s different in a couple of ways. For one, it says it's unattuned, now. And apparently the rank is neophyte instead of adept. That’s lower, right?”
“Correct, neophyte is the lowest rank of magical effect. It goes: mundane, neophyte, adept, master, ascendant, and finally, celestial.” He held out his hand. “Give me the wand, and I’ll show you how to make sure it persists forever.”
Seymour passed him the unfinished wand and Ridley once again drew his own, complete Sculpting Wand, as well as the drop of crystallized mana. He wondered briefly what was required to extract and crystallize mana, but then the artificer went to work and he found himself completely intrigued.
He watched while Ridley fixed the mana crystal into the tiny slot at the tip of the unfinished wand, and then went about attaching it more securely, using his own wand in a way that reminded Seymour of a soldering iron more than anything else, minus the solder. Ridley wielded the Sculpting Wand deftly, just barely kissing it here and there at the contact points between the mana drop and the wand-shaft Seymour had produced. Super-quick flashes of blue sparks appeared wherever he touched his wand to the other, and Seymour recognized that shade of blue – it was exactly the same as the drop of crystallized mana.
When Ridley was done, he passed the completed wand back to Seymour, grinning more than a little bit like an imp.
“What can you glean from its schematic now?”
He held the wand against his sigil until its label appeared:
Seymour raised an eyebrow at Ridley. “I think it says it belongs to someone named Penelope now, but how—”
“The crystallized mana component was not the same as that which I provided before.” He snatched the Sculpting Wand from Seymour’s hand before he could react. “It didn’t come from me, personally, but was fashioned using mana extracted from a friend, instead. And now that it has been added to the incomplete wand which you produced using Infringement, the finished product will persist indefinitely. And that is the key.”
“The key to what?”
“An object produced with Infringement will return to its original state after only a short period, determined by the rank of its most powerful effect — unless it is combined with a separate component crafted through more traditional means. And that is where artificery becomes invaluable to someone with your sigil power, Seymour. Because once you learn to craft items the old fashioned way, there will be no limit to what you can create in conjunction with Infringement.”
“Okay, I think I get it.” He nodded. “And it’s pretty cool. Like say if I capture a schematic and use it to make a magical blade, I could combine it with any old mundane handle and have a weapon I could use forever.”
“Correct.” Ridley slid both wands—his original and the one Seymour had helped make—back into his pocket.
“But there’s still something I don’t get: what’s up with it being imprinted with this Penelope person’s signature now? Whatever that means, really.”
“Sculpting Wands are highly-regulated by the Guild of Artificers, and leave behind their signature on items which they’ve been used to alter. It’s a simple security measure,” Ridley explained. “My friend and fellow artificer, Miss Amberwine, recently misplaced hers, and would be in hot water with the guild directors if that fact ever came to light. So she provided me with a drop of her crystallized mana in order for me to fashion her a new wand. I trust that you can keep this all a secret? In order to protect her from repercussions.”
“Sure.”
Ridley studied Seymour’s face. Then he smiled. “So you see now, right? How Infringement can be used to correct sacred geometry which has become misaligned.”
“Not really.”
“Well, it’s like this.” Ridley turned back to the workbench where he’d dumped out Seymour’s basket of less-than-stellar stuff from upstairs. He searched around for only a moment before turning back to Seymour with the kinky-bristled Portraitist’s Paint Applier. “I assume you captured a schematic from at least one brush like this that was in better condition, correct?”
“I did, yeah.”
“Good.” He held the paintbrush out. “Use it to make this one whole again.”
Seymour took the brush and appraised it skeptically. “But won’t it just turn back into the shitty version after five minutes or whatever?”
“Don’t think, Mr. Little. Just do it.”
The ritual of swallowing and then regurgitating objects from the palm of his hand was already becoming more familiar, and in short order Seymour had transformed the kinky-bristled wand into one of its better-conditioned cousins.
“Okay, that’s done. What now?”
“Give it here,” Ridley demanded, hand out. “I’ll show you.”
Seymour passed him the paintbrush and Ridley turned back to his workbench again. He operated quickly, first retrieving a thin strip of silvery metal from one of his drawers, and then using his Sculpting Wand to alter its shape into a ring matching the metal bit which attached the bristles to the handle of the Portraitist’s Paint Applier. Then, he removed the corresponding piece of silver from the brush Seymour had only just produced.
“This is called a ferrule.” He held the silver band he’d removed up for Seymour to see. “Most people don’t know its name. They’d probably just call it something like ‘the metal piece that keeps the bristles on the handle’, but as an artificer I’m familiar with the anatomy of all kinds of objects.”
He discarded the ferrule onto his workbench and went back to work. Once more, he used his Sculpting Wand like a soldering iron, this time to combine the metal band he’d fashioned a moment earlier to the handle and bristles which Seymour had produced. He wore a jeweler's loupe around his neck on a cord—the type of thing that on Earth would be used to inspect gemstones—and he put it to his eye in order to examine the rebuilt paintbrush. Then he tossed the Portraitist’s Paint Applier back to Seymour, smirking.
“You can restock that one.”
“Uh, thanks.” Seymour thought for a moment. “Tell me if I’ve got this right. Usually when you repair something, you use that eyeglass thing of yours—”
“My artificer’s loupe,” Ridley interrupted.
“Alright, so you use it to see an item’s sacred geometry, right? And then you can fix any damage you find using your sculpting wand.”
“You’ve got it. And so you can surely see how much more efficient the process could be for someone with the power of Infringement.” He added, “even someone like you – someone who hasn’t dedicated the best years of his life to studying the craft at the Guild of Artificers.”
At that, they stood again in awkward silence. Then Ridley turned back to the items scattered across his workbench.
“It will take me some time to complete these repairs.”
“Guess that’s my cue to leave?”
“Nothing gets past you.”
“Alright then. Thanks, I guess. Like, really. I appreciate you teaching me how to use my weird power.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Seymour took his now-empty basket and left then, returning to the busy showroom. Head swimming, he crossed back to the stairs, making his way up to the third floor to finish his shift. But the last few hours of his workday were far less productive than the morning had been. He was too distracted by everything he’d just learned; too distracted by the possibilities. It turned out Infringement had some legit potential, even despite its apparent limitations.
And tonight, when I get back to Hedwick’s Home, he thought, I know exactly what I’m gonna use it for first.
