For a mont I genuinely thought my vision was failing , then I thought the cotton was rely discoloring. However, the pulsing glead even more intensely. Even Durand ceased rolling around, confused.
A thrumming sound shivered through the bark beneath my hand. It felt as though so ancient beast was hibernating inside the trunk of that tree, and we’d just woken it up.
Ah. That was not ideal.
But nothing of the sort happened.
The process wasn’t smooth or elegant like magework, but more, for a lack of better word, grainy. Tiny earthen flecks lifted off the bark in rhythmic shivers and vanished into the cotton. Each fleck brightened the fibers from dull brown to a low, emberlike glow, as though soone was feeding coals one pebble at a ti. Only that section of the bark paled with each shiver, not nearly enough for either of the magi out there to whirl around and shout “My heavens, the tree!”
Against my better judgnt, I reached out to touch the cotton.
[Item Registered: Aether-Leeching Huskweave]
This trash bin cotton was an item? With a parasitic-sounding na, too. What did it do, then?
Effect: Absorbs and retains aether from non-sentient entities and inert environnts.
Storage Limit: 11 AP
Current AP Stored: 8
[Task Received: Elastic Consumption Benchmark]
Objective: Absorbs the maximum amount of aether in a single piece of huskweave.
Reward: 50 EXP
Passive Skill: Aetheric Detection (Rank I) – Automatically detects nearby aetheric residue from non-living sources within a 1-ter radius.
The Huskweave held enough AP that, for the first ti, I could actually attempt Static Surge twice. My fingers itched with the thrill of finally casting a spell I’d only ever studied. I’d only ever morized the motion diagrams in one of the Knight-Initiate handbooks and imagined what it might feel like to turn my sword into a lightning rod. Every attempt in training had ended with the sa humiliating outco: nothing.
Now the possibility buzzed in my fingertips. My exhausted body still managed to twitch with an almost boyish itch to finally try it. Just a quick little zap, preferably at Durand. A polite, well-mannered crackle of electricity would do.
Then Derevin’s voice travelled across the courtyard, “Miss Anabeth, when transitioning to the second sequence, ensure your alignnt remains consistent across all civic boundaries. Any surge must remain strictly contained.” It seed they had already moved on from the first spell.
Right. Civic. This was, indeed, a civilian courtyard.
Perhaps firing off lightning was not appropriate.
I reluctantly peeled myself away from the tree and turned back toward the courtyard, just in ti to catch Derevin moving into what must have been the second phase of the demonstration. Whatever ‘civic alignnt protocols’ were, they apparently involved a lot more spectacle than I expected from a spell whose entire purpose was asuring where sothing is.
Derevin lifted the brass rod, its tip glowing with a sharp green spark. Why green, of all colors? I had no idea, but I wasn’t about to question it now. As he passed it over the courtyard, lifting dust and grit from the stones, forming a floating sh that traced the courtyard’s aetheric skeleton. Anabeth recorded each reading, noting misalignnts with ticulous precision.
Anabeth breathed in sharply, the delighted kind of gasp one normally associates with fireworks or kittens.
“To couple a ridian line to a civic anchor,” Derevin said, “the local strata must be coerced into revealing their natural orientation. Properly bonded municipal stone always cooperates.”
‘Coerced,’ he said. I was beginning to understand why civic magic had the reputation of being... bossy.
He lowered the rod marginally, and one of the floating dust-markers stretched into a straight line pointing directly at the carved anchor on the ground. The rest of the diagram narrowed around that single line until the entire formation resembled a hovering compass needle made out of debris.
Anabeth clasped her hands, beaming. “Sir, that’s a displacent of three spans.”
Derevin nodded. “Very keen eyes, Miss. The anchor and its ridian are misaligned by that asure.”
The dust diagram held for another second then dropped all at once, silently settling back into the seams between the stones as if nothing had happened at all.
There really was a spell for everything. This process was much less demanding than walking over and personally asuring the distance with a rope, I suppose. Knowing magic would make life so much easier for just about anyone.
My eyes drifted—regretfully—back toward Durand, who was still wearing the Huskweave like an ill-fitting scarf. If Derevin used magic for asuring distances, then of course he’d have magical tools lying around for collecting aether. To soone like him, this wouldn’t be trash. It wouldn’t be noteworthy, but it would be another instrunt in his arsenal.
This was not discarded cotton. And I had very much taken it. If we were being factual, I’d rescued it from the trash bin, but intent did not matter if the object was not, in fact, trash.
I stared at the glowing fibers, and they were singing at . Use , they said. Finally cast sothing for once in your life.
My fingers twitched. Saints above, the temptation. Twenty-two entire points of AP.
But the Knight Code did not contain a line for: “Thou mayest keep the magical cloth if it seems lonely and/or convenient.”
I had to return it. The Knight code forbade putting myself above others.
But maybe... at least I could finish the Huskweave quest first.
I waited.
The Huskweave naturally absorbed the rest of the AP from the tree bark.
[Task Completed: Elastic Consumption Benchmark]
Reward: 50 EXP
Passive Skill: Aetheric Detection (Rank I) – Automatically detects nearby aetheric residue from non-living sources within a 1-ter radius.
EXP: 2504/2850
Eventually curiosity pushed a few steps closer. I tried to make the movent quiet, neutral, wholly unobtrusive. Unfortunately, the resulting silence made it worse. I hovered at the edge of their work like a misplaced statue while they continued, neither of them acknowledging my presence, which sohow made it even creepier.
Derevin and Anabeth were nowhere near done—apparently, taking one alignnt reading rely encouraged them to take five more. For the next fifteen minutes, Derevin repeated the sa coercion spell at each corner of the courtyard and once dead-center, while Anabeth dutifully marked the numbers down like a small happy dog.
When they finally reconvened, Derevin pulled out a portable drafting board and unrolled the municipal strata map across it. Anabeth handed him a ridian-colored wax pencil, and the two of them began translating the asurents onto parchnt.
Anabeth traced each line with a straightedge charm, which was a tiny, jittery spell that clung to her fingertip and forced every stroke perfectly rigid, no matter how her hand shook with excitent. Magi. They really had a spell even for writing.
Derevin followed with a geomantic square with a glass bead that glowed green whenever the angle matched the courtyard’s natural strata. Bit by bit, a corrected overlay ford, showing exactly where the anchor should be.
“Now that the misalignnt is plotted,” Derevin said, tapping the map, “we can begin the realignnt procedure. And before you ask, Miss Anabeth—no, this technique cannot draft a map from nothing. Civic strata mapping relies on preexisting municipal charts. What we do here is correction, refinent, and verification. Creation is a separate discipline entirely, and is considerably more ti-consuming to learn.”
“Oh, I’d love to learn that one day!” Anabeth chirped.
The ‘procedure’ was naturally another spell. Derevin planted the brass rod beside the carved anchor and drew a sharp sigil across the stones. A muted pulse travelled through the courtyard, barely enough to stir the dust, but it was enough to straighten the ridian and anchor on the map into proper orientation. A neat, self-correcting fix.
Derevin dusted off his hands, pleased. “Miss Anabeth, that covers the full cycle—identification, plotting, and correction. You now have a sufficient grasp of civic map-making for basic municipal application, providing you have another map beforehand.”
That wasn’t very useful; most people got lost specifically because they didn’t have a map on hand. But I supposed it made sense. Masters of any craft rarely handed out the foundation stones of their profession to strangers, even enthusiastic and affable ones. Gatekeeping was, apparently, a universal constant across disciplines.
Well. No matter.
I could always make a copy of Anabeth’s map later. Then I’d just wait for Ceralis to award the ‘Basic Map-Making’ skill as it’d promised and after that, I could finally draw my own maps from scratch.
The only thing left now was the cotton. I’d taken it from Derevin, and every inch of my mind scread ‘return it imdiately’.
It took another minute to wrestle the cotton away from Durand, who’d gotten comfortable in it and was trying his darndest to yank the thing back whenever I tried to pull it free.
Derevin and Anabeth were just finishing up, scribbling the last notes on the map. I edged closer, trying to appear neutral, but Anabeth spotted first.
“Good timing, Sir Henry!” she chirped. “I was just about to co over and tell you we have concluded the—”
I held out my hand and presented the Huskweave in front of Derevin. In silence. For five seconds.
He stared at it, then stared at . I fully expected a full-blown, disdain-laden lecture. Derevin’s expression already had the rehearsed rigidity of a man who believed he knew exactly what to think of .
But then his face curved into a ticulous, pleased satisfaction as he said, “Ah, the Huskweave! I use this for small-scale experints, but I couldn’t rember where I placed it. Seems like you found it and went through the trouble of retrieving it for .”
What? No. I stole it from you.
I was about to correct him, but Derevin, ever so decisive, took the Huskweave from my hand and gave a slight nod. “Thank you, gentleman.”
I would get to keep one of it, and he let keep the one fully charged with aether! That was more than enough for .
Before I could react further, he pinched a single tuft of cotton from the bundle and held it out. “You seem fond of it. Good Sir, you are a more decent man than I thought you were, so I will let you keep this Huskweave for your experints. And, as a gesture of goodwill, you may select one publicly displayed item from my atelier. You two have made my day a tad less monotonous.”
I glanced at Anabeth. Her eyes sparkled like a mischievous constellation. My own probably reflected the sa light; the rare thrill of a freebie, sanctioned by a magus of Derevin’s stature, was impossible to hide.
A freebie from an atelier? We could not say no to that.
The better question now was: what to pick.
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