Basic Thaumaturgy for the Emotionally Incompetent

For a while, Fabrisse just lay there, staring up at the ceiling with the faintest trace of a smile.

He couldn’t help it. The possibilities kept stacking in his mind, one neat column after another.

If he could store the quartz, then he could store the practice weights.

If he could store the weights, then maybe he could store the training dummies.

And if the space inside the Aetherfold ignored physical constraints, then theoretically, he could smuggle an entire workbench from the Foundry Archive back to his dorm without anyone noticing.

But another thought intruded, dry and immediate.

The System said ten objects, not ten kilograms, not ten cubic feet. Ten slots.

Which raised a crucial question. What counted as one slot?

A small Stupenstone was one slot. The mitts he wore when handling volatile quartz counted as two, probably because they had hinges, padding, and internal channels of thread-bound silver. And the Aetheric Practice Weights, those things were massive—each would probably demand at least four slots.

But then . . . what about something even larger?

Could he, for instance, store an entire brick oven? Would it take seven slots? Eight? Or would the fold simply refuse and implode in his pocket?

He rubbed his chin, feeling the excitement stirring through the usual fog of fatigue. There was only one way to know.

“Test before theorizing,” he muttered to himself.

He swung his legs over the bed and scanned his room for a suitable candidate—something bigger than the pocket mouth, but not catastrophic if it went wrong. His gaze landed on Greg’s old study globe sitting crookedly on the shelf, the kind with glowing runes etched into its surface. But it was Greg’s, and he didn’t just want to take it.

Then he saw a brass kettle in the corner gleamed back at him, faintly steaming from its own residual enchantment.

“No harm in trying,” he murmured. But his aetherrealm inventory was full, so he had to remove some items first. He turned the thought over once more in his mind. If it could take something as easily as the quartz, then surely it could give it back just as easily—if he asked correctly.

Sitting up, Fabrisse extended his hand and focused. Five stones. Not four, not six. Five.

He thought it, and then they were there: five Stupenstones in his palm, solid and cold. They just . . . presented themselves there, as if they had never been gone. He stared at them for a moment, weighing their shape, their weight, the faint familiar grain on each surface. Everything matched. No displacement, no delay.