Chapter 111: Hauke’s Uniqueness
It took Ashlynn several more attempts before she was able to conjure a functional stool that she quickly draped a fur over before taking a seat across the hole in the ice from Hauke.
"That is much harder than you make it look," Ashlynn said as she carefully tested her stool to make sure it would hold her weight.
Once she’d taken a seat, she attempted to replicate Hauke’s actions of threading the thick, barbed fishing hook through the small bait fish he’d caught for her. After several attempts, she finally managed to hook the bait in a way that felt secure though she’d poked several additional holes in the fish in the process.
"I’m sure it’s easier without gloves getting in the way," Hauke said, feeling somewhat awkward as he created an ice spike for her to use if she managed to catch anything. "I’m sorry, I should have offered..."
"No, no, not the fish," Ashlynn quickly said, unrolling a considerable length of line before throwing her hooked bait into the hole in the ice with a loud -PLUNK- sound. "I meant, how do you make things that look so delicate out of something as fragile as ice?" Ashlynn asked, pointing at the Frost Walker’s stool.
"It isn’t easy," the young Frost Walker admitted, conjuring another stool for Heila to sit on next to Ashlynn. "My father spent a great deal to buy books for me from other Eldritch nations. Math, engineering, natural science. He even hired a tutor from the High Fen who taught me how they designed the canals and waterways of the fen."
"You, you studied math and engineering to enhance your sorcery?" Ashlynn asked, momentarily taken off guard by his answer. Nyrielle’s approach to sorcery was more, primal she supposed, grounded in using power to directly enforce her will on the environment or people.
Growing up, her tutors had referred to Eldritch sorcery as ’superstitions that can manifest in reality’ and nothing she’d seen so far had forced her to shed that worldview. What Hauke was saying, however, sounded far more educated and refined than anything she’d seen so far from Nyrielle and her progeny.
"Sorcery is about bending the world to our will," Hauke said as though he were quoting one of his tutors. "But the world resists being bent. The more you force something to be what it isn’t, the harder it becomes and the more energy it takes. But if you don’t change much and you use natural laws when you form your constructs, it takes much less energy to achieve results."