Universe's End

“Now, pay attention because here is where things get fun,” Rory said as he reheated the metal, wanting to keep it a little pliable. “First off, stylus.”

Holding his stylus up, Rory took a moment to lecture.

“Obviously are should understand this, but a stylus isn’t necessary at all. The reason I use a stylus is that it helps with direct inscription on materials such as metal, and I’ve designed my styluses to use my own blood as a form of ‘ink’, which, again, is unnecessary. Having spent decades with the affinity, though, I’ve developed a style that revolves around it, including the ability to encode extra meaning within droplets of blood through a skill called Ghost Message. It’s not a great option for anything that wouldn’t agree with blood essence, but I digress.”

Rory was making a point of narrating, letting the woman understand exactly what he was doing and why, now that it was directly inscription-related.

The stylus began to move, and runes began to gently appear within the still softened metal.

“As mentioned in the open lecture, runes don’t always have to be literal. Take these three runes. Energy, Fire, Metal. What do you think I’m putting together there?”

“A fire effect throughout the metal?”

“Bzzt,” Rory said, buzzing his lips like an incorrect buzzer. “It’s a supplement.”

“Supplement.

“Energy, Fire, Metal. Yet, the interlinked meaning is reforging. Would you like to know why I haven’t used a reforging rune?”

“Yes?”

“Because much like you can have a single rune with an advanced meaning, such as reforging, or several runes with sub-meanings, a single advanced rune can lack the sub-meaning of the several lesser runes. I purposely want the meaning broken up, as a reflection of the construct itself, which is itself not a ‘finished’ item; it requires my active input, or it will.”

“So, the meaning of the rune can be in the sub meanings, advanced runes and their advanced meanings, and even how the identity of the rune can be interpreted as a reflection of the item itself?”

“Bingo,” Rory said with a smile as his stylus continued to move throughout the metal. “It’s art and grammar in the same form. Efficient runes can be inefficient compared to lesser or broken up runes if the runes themselves also reflect the item or the situation, context, context, context.”

“I’m following,” Analissa said.

“And now, watch this.”

Pushing gently, the runes seemed to slowly vanish, as Analissa’s eyes widened.

“What was that?”

“Layering. Runes can also be layered or nested within an item. Now, layering is an advanced technique that most inscriptionists can’t manage. There is also a limit to layering; at most, I can manage three layers depending on what I’m working on.”

“Why?”

“Because it requires an intimate understanding of the item you’re inscribing upon. This usually requires that you have been the one who made the item to begin with. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but the more you understand the other crafts and artisan skills, the easier it will be to layer on an item you yourself didn’t craft. Furthermore, each ‘layer’ becomes narrower, as the runes begin shifting from a realm of physical space into a more conceptual area. As I said, three layers is the most I’ve ever managed, and at that point the runes placed on the third layer, which I should mention doesn’t count the surface, are usually only enough space for one or two runes if I’m giving it the absolute maximum focus.”

“How long until I can do that?” Analissa asked.

“Depends,” Rory shrugged. “Every field has advanced techniques. Forging has True Folding, for example, the act of literally folding an item so that double the matter fits in the exact same space. Alchemy has inversion processing. Advanced Gem Crafting allows point rerouting, using existing points as free reroute nodes during the mapping phase if properly planned in advance. And Inscription has layering. Some are more difficult to learn than others, and these are only a few of the advanced techniques developed so far. Which is to say, if you want to learn Layering, you’re going to need to spend time studying other fields as well. A basic first layer. Layering typically only requires a proficient understanding of the material sciences involved, though the more advanced your knowledge, the more the ‘layer’ opens up. Also, the deeper the layer, the more it ties to the innate nature of the item.”

“That’s… a lot,” Analissa admitted, blinking several times.

“I should mention that just because you can doesn’t mean you should,” Rory quickly added. “I don’t truly fold literally every piece of metal; sometimes it’s unnecessary for what it's meant to do. If I want a dagger to be used by a tier one, using True Folded metal will just make it heavier and more difficult to use, and furthermore, the added oomph will force a tier one to fight enemies they aren’t ready for due to having ‘better’ gear. Layering is similar but different: you don’t need to layer every inscription; too much can make it messy. If all I want is a tablet to absorb light, I don’t need a thousand different runes on a thousand different layers.”

Analissa remained quiet, simply nodding.

Having said his share, Rory continued the rest of the inscription work in relative silence, aside from explaining a few cases where he had runes attached to one another in a particular way so as to reflect a specific intent that might otherwise not be clear.

Taking advantage of the silence, Rory began to chant in the unknown language of the words of the wind under his breath. Much like his prior attempts, his relative newness with the skill reared its head, as even after having neutered as many of the ground-aligned aspects of the modified promethium as he had, it still proved far more stubborn than anything else he’d worked on prior. He would chant the word for ‘lift’ only to hear a whispered melody back, a clear impression of no.

It was an odd feeling for Rory to find himself bickering in broken ‘wind-i-ese’ with a piece of crafted metal, but life came at you fast, and so while the rest of the crafting process hadn’t taken all that long, Rory spent hours trying to win over the metal. During that time, Rory had finally let Analissa leave, the woman having gotten everything she could out of the impromptu ‘lesson.’

Alone, Rory spent the better part of eight hours constantly bickering with the metal.

“Lift.”

“No.”

“Lift.”

“No.”

“Lift.”

“No.”

It gave Rory flashbacks to videos of babies back on Earth babbling back and forth like they were in a heated argument. Except, he wasn’t a baby, and neither was the nearly finished chakram.

Had he perhaps jumped straight into the deep end, going from trying to win over the simple components of a glider to arguing with a near-cousin of promethium? Yes, yes, he had.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

But…. Well, but nothing. In hindsight, Rory realized he probably could have learned at least a few more pieces of vocabulary when it came to the words of the wind, but hey, hindsight was twenty-twenty for a reason.

Rory wasn’t really sure what caused the metal to finally surrender, the stubborn no, at last quitting, as Rory waited several seconds in near disbelief.

Wait, for real?

Blinking in surprise, he’d spent so long that night was nearly upon him, Rory examined the item that had been finished in everything except the chanting department.