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Torin watched Janus be led out of the classroom. Inwardly, he grinned with satisfaction. Obviously, the little brat had done something wrong, and it was bad enough that Cade himself dealt with it. As the class returned to their essays, Torin allowed himself a moment's luxury to gloat. The shrimp had all those afternoons free of responsibility, so he was bound to get caught doing whatever he wasn't supposed to be doing. A glance up in Abul's direction reminded him to keep working. This assignment wasn't that bad, as he actually found Keer's theories interesting. The primitive savages on the surface must have had sub-average intelligence to voluntarily live down there, at the mercy of the elements. Torin returned to his work, praising Keer's broad depth of understanding on the ground people. His decades of exhaustive research were mind-boggling, that one man could know so much about a different society. Torin flipped through the book on his desk, one that Abul had provided him for research. It was a copy of High Thoughts Conveyed, a collected volume of Keer's essays. Torin's focus was on a particular pair of essays, describing the ground people and the sky-city peoples, respectively. The former explained that the people on the ground were once as fortunate as everyone in the sky, but hasty decisions and flawed logic had caused them to degenerate into brutish tribes, killing animals with metal and stone weapons, and roasting them over open-pit fires. Keer disapproved of this situation, as this is how man was at the very beginning of their history. A truly sad situation, indeed. In the latter essay, Keer continued his discourse by addressing the other side of the situation, the gifted and generous creators of the sky cities, and their miraculous contributions to society. All to be rejected by those philistines who have now become primitive shadows of man. Torin was expounding on Keer's clarity of analysis when Abul announced the end of the morning's class. Usually, he would have leapt up and been the first one out the door, but Keer's works had him really interested and he wanted to continue writing. It did not occur to him how bizarre his behaviour seemed to Abul. "Abul, I'm not done yet. Can I give it to you tomorrow?" "Huh? Oh, sure. That's fine, Torin." Torin folded his essay in half, slipped it into Keer's book of essays, and put it all into his desk. After the afternoon's class he would retrieve it to finish at home. "Hey, Erren, c'mere!" Torin was stirring a yellow paste in a clay pot, holding the stirring rod with thick cloth gloves. Sweat beaded up on the boy's brow, not from effort, but from a thick and very hot overcoat that covered his robes in the event of an accident. He called the other boy over to his lab table, a dense wooden construction with numerous indentations and holes for the various instruments needed for artificery. A half-consumed candle sat on the edge of the table, set in a round hole since filled to overflowing with wax. Sometimes evening classes were held, especially in the summer, when the heat of the lab coats was unbearable at midday. Today, magic class focused on the material side, making devices infused with magic. Magic itself was composed of the chaotic energy of Estra shaped through the essence of the individual using it. One's inner strength and resiliency dictated the magnitude of power that they could shape at once, and, without the aid of a rare mineral called Estralite, the body could not handle very much at all. However, if one focused this energy into an inanimate object, much greater storage of energy could be achieved. Thus began the need for artificers. Erren, Torin's neighbour and best friend, stood beside him, and examined Torin's current project. On one side, a roll of parchment was held flat by four stones etched with odd symbols believed to be the magical writings of the ancients, those who lived before the great separation. Beside the parchment, three small clay pots held a fine green powder. A fourth pot contained more yellow paste, with a stirring rod sticking out. A weighted scale, dull from decades of use and abuse, hid behind the pots. Alone at the end of the table was a pair of hollow steel hemispheres. Curious, Erren took a peek at the instructions. "Hey, is that a shock bomb? Those aren't allowed!" Shock bombs were metal spheres that were triggered by sharp impacts, releasing a strong wave of concussive force in every direction. The exact force could be roughly controlled by varying the amount of detonator, from just enough to knock someone over, to immediately killing a victim from severe disruption of internal organs. A further danger was the metal hemispheres themselves, as they accelerated to high velocity on detonation. Even if the victim survived the shockwave, any amount of metal impacting at that speed was sure to cause critical, even fatal, injury. For that reason, and the ease of which they could be made, shock bombs were banned, after Vanada's library was seriously damaged from a prank involving several dozen bombs timed to fall all at once. "Shh! Keep your voice down. And watch this. If Phasia does come to look, I just do this." Torin waved a hand across the very top of the parchment. A line of black formed at the top and sped down to the bottom of the page faster than Erren could follow. The instructions now clearly gave the ingredients and construction method of a noise bomb, a perfectly acceptable project. Torin waved his hand across the page in the other direction, and the line of black appeared again, this time on the bottom, and shuttled up to the top. Once more the instructions for a shock bomb were inscribed. "And what about the fuse? How're you going to explain the three pots worth? Noise bombs only require one." "Simple. I made too much, but I was going to make several anyway. I just don't have the casings with me." Torin gave the pot one last stir and placed it on the table. He began checking the weights of the green powder, ensuring that each pot held about the same amount. Erren studied the instructions more carefully. The steps were simple enough. Both boys had made noise bombs several years before. A shock bomb differed from a noise bomb in two ways. The shaping of energy was different, and the materials were slightly different. A shock bomb required two pots worth of detonator and a coating on the inside of the casing to prevent premature detonation. Erren did a double-take and re-read the ingredients. "Wait a second. You've got three pots of fuse there. Shock bombs only need two!" "Ah, but they go bang that much better with three." Torin grinned as he finished his weighing and began stirring the other yellow pot. Erren laughed and returned to his own project. Several rows away, a student panicked as bright white sparks began erupting from an unattended pot, arcing over her head and all the way over the empty table behind her. Phasia signaled the end of the afternoon's classes the usual way. Tasia's master artificer slowly dimmed the glowlights in the walls until the room was almost completely dark, and then returned everything to normal. The walls then began oozing colour, a liquid rainbow billowing out across the white stone and forming ever-changing swirls and pools of every colour in the spectrum. The students put away their projects, returning spare materials to their secure containers. A mass sigh of relief bounced off the bizarre walls, as the oppressive coats were removed and hung up, and everyone could breathe again. Torin pocketed the bomb, sealed shut and ready to go. This kind of device was armed at the end of the creation process by necessity. A solid impact would detonate it, so care was to be taken in the creation and storage of this class of alchemical creations. "Hey, Torin, what are you going to do with that, anyway?" Erren joined him as they walked towards the heavy wooden doors of the apprentice lab. A quick look around assured Torin that Phasia would not overhear their conversation. She was busy helping a student clean up a particularly nasty spill that was currently converting his lab table into a thick purple smoke. "Scare the daylights out of Janus." "Heh. He's probably off in the woods, sulking, after Cade finished with him." "I figure, I'll meet him halfway, and just casually hand it to him. He'll figure out what it is just as I give him a little nudge. Wonder how far he can throw?" "Or whose window he'll throw it into. I think that'd earn him another talk with Cade, too." The friends laughed as they walked through the doors towards home. In his anticipation, Torin forgot that he had intended to grab his essay from his desk. |
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Spirits of Blue and all characters contained within are © 2002, Simon Knowles. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. Email me if you want to reproduce this somewhere for any reason. It's mine, mine, all mine! |