Chapter 24 | PoV: Sanya
Nur led the class out of the room, through the hall, into the foyer, and then right—to the tunnels with the gardens and library. Passing through, Nur told a staff member to find a thermal mage and bring them to the profession room.
Ah.
They headed into the left-most of these tunnels, the unadorned entryway.
It opened up into a large cavern, various stations dotted it, mostly keeping to the edges and allowing for an open space in the center.
One of these stations included a furnace, an anvil, and a bucket of water. Crates stacked up on top of each other sat next to this set-up.
Nur headed to the forge and popped open one of the crates.
Metal rods revealed themselves, purple and warping the air around them. It unsettled Sanya, and she shifted her weight.
“Each of you will get a rod, and you will be able to shape it how you want. You can get old-fashioned and heat it and hammer it like normal. Or you can ask the thermal mage for assistance with the heat.
“There’s various flavor items around here somewhere, which can be used in the forging process or adorned afterward, depending on what it is. There is a crate of voi—of metal scraps here if you want additions to your staff.”
Voi—? What was that slip-up? Why was he hiding the name of the material? What was it, anyway? Void metal? Could it be? Abyssal mage—void metal staves?
Heliux, Sanya really ended up with the edgiest magic.
Wait, who named these things? Maybe Nur, the mysterious aloof headmaster of Diuskel Academy, was some unrivaled edgelord.
“There’s only one anvil. So, with that said, who wants to go first?”
The students paused, as if disbelieving what Nur had said and what they had seen. Their brains processed the information. Then, they glanced at each other, as if seeing who would raise their hand first.
Finally, multiple hands shot up.
Sanya . . . did not raise hers—better to watch everyone else first and learn from it.
“That was a trick question. I will show you first. I don't want this to go to waste, so . . . who wants a staff made by me?”
Students blinked. A couple kids raised their hands after a moment.
“Wrong. You fail. A mage makes their own staff, to have a staff—that you did not put your blood and sweat into making your own—is to accept blasphemy into your soul. It is to deny commitment to being a mage. It is to betray yourself.”
Intense. This was an interesting side of Nur. One Sanya found herself respecting. Sanya nodded in acknowledgement.
Nur created a staff from scratch—he turned the end of the metal rod into a half-circle. He took a scrap and connected a thin piece of metal and crested a smaller rod pointing down from the top of the half circle, and then mirrored it coming up from the bottom. He left a space in the center where the rods did not touch. He affixed some sort of shiny, sickly green gem into the middle.
Afterward, he melted and hammered the metal back into shape and discarded the shiny crystal orb off to the side. While it looked the same as it started, he did not put it back in the chest of neatly arranged crystals, packed with fiber and cloth.
The thermal mage arrived, caressed by faded-red robes, using her staff like a walking stick.
She stepped into the cavern, gaze falling upon Nur. “You called?”
Nur gave a light bow. “Assist whoever is in need of your heat, to help forge their staff into shape.”
“Right.”
“Is there a difference between using the furnace and using thermal magic?” One student asked.
“It's easier for thermal mages to control the temperature,” Nur said. “That is all. While we only have one anvil, we have two furnaces now—not to reduce you to a furnace, Lady Of-Salama.”
Sanya wandered around the room while students created their staves. Nur and Of-Salama gave tips and helped when they saw imperfections or students needed it.
Sanya had wanted to watch, but actually, it was kind of boring.
She now knew what she wanted to do with her staff, so it's not like she needed ideas.
Speaking of, one argument against making the staves now was not giving the students enough time to form their ideas fully. Maybe that's why Nur had originally wanted to wait.
Sanya noticed a loom and fabric, a kiln or oven and clay—all sorts of different things for hobbies or various, well, professions. Anything that was created and wasn't culinary was all here.
After an hour or something, Nur called out. “Sanya!”
Sanya turned her attention back towards the forge. The students stood around, idle. They held up their staves and studied them, showing them off to each other. Sanya noticed she might be the oldest out of all of them, or one of the oldest, at least. Truly, most students had been sourced from orphanages, where turning eighteen got then kicked out.
Sanya began by taking a scrap of metal and bringing it to the furnace. She used some metal plier-looking things to not directly touch the scrap as it heated up.
Soon, it glowed white-hot.
She took it over to the anvil and began hammering at it.
The students watched with curiosity. Nur and Of-Salama watched, vigilant and expressionless.
Sanya shaped the scrap into a wing, arched high—almost like horns—and complete with sections that might look like small feathers or sections of wing as impressions divided it and defined each part.
Sanya took another scrap and repeated the process, doing her best to make it symmetrical with the other wing.
“Do we have any bones?” Sanya asked, examining the metal wing.
Nur looked at her like she was crazy. “Bones?”
Sanya nodded.
“What for?”
“For my staff, what else?”
Nur and Of-Salama exchanged looks.
“We might have leftovers from the hunt,” Of-Salama shrugged.
“The hunt?” A student asked.
“In our free time us mages like to go up to the surface and hunt—animals. Sand sharks and vultures. Their parts can sell decently.”
Nur sighed. “Can you find what remains?”
Of-Salama nodded. “Yeah.” She muttered, “Getting bones for some crazy kid, what a morning.”
Sanya glanced around the forge. While she waited for Of-Salama to come back with the bones, Sanya began working on the main staff rod.
She heated it, then returned to the anvil. She set it there and went to search through the chest of gems.
She found an amazingly imperfect piece of some crystal. It shined mostly purple, but with a yellow core. It had all its jagged edges and rough shaping, yet it looked great. There was a piece of paper labeling each crystal. This one was labeled “ametrine.” Not that it meant anything to Sanya.
Sanya was pretty sure that Mai's favorite color was yellow, so this could be fun symbolism.
Also, the stone was pretty.
She picked it up and walked over to her staff.
Nur immediately jumped in and helped her affix it to the top of her staff, as well as do some stuff or things with it to make it stronger and longer-lasting.
Bored, and still waiting for Of-Salama, Sanya took a sharp knife and ran it through her staff in a spiral shape, adding texture and depth to it. Sanya . . . wasn't, like, religious (in even the slightest) but she created the helix shape anyway.
Of-Salama came back hauling a crate in her hands. She set it down behind Sanya. “There you go. Bones, for all your twisted desires!”
“Thank you.”
Sanya dug through the bones. They really were the scraps. She saw a distinct lack of vulture talons. None of the shark teeth got too big. Then, a bunch of random and useless bird bones that Sanya couldn't use.
That was fine.
She found two smaller sand shark teeth and took them. She thought about grabbing more, but that seemed like overkill, even to her.
How would she get the teeth onto her staff?
Did she heat up the wings and meld them that way? Maybe there was some other way to bind them . . . Nur left to go look through supplies in the room. She glanced between the teeth and the forge. Would the teeth melt—no, they would probably survive, they were bones, after all.
Sanya heated up the wings again, then melded them to the top of her staff, below the gemstone and on opposite sides.
Nur came back with a ceramic jar of something.
He held it to Sanya. “Use this.”
“For? . . .”
“Binding your teeth to your staff.”
“Oh.”
Wings connected, Sanya doused her staff. She brought it back to the anvil and set it down.
Sanya took the jar, and Nur produced some sort of brush as well.
“Get this stuff onto the brush and dip it in water, it will turn into a strong adhesive.”
“Convenient,” Sanha took the brush and dipped it into the jar.
She walked over to the basin when Nur nearly shouted at her. “Not the basin! Use this.”
Nur took a pitcher of water and poured a meager helping into a stone glass. He held it up for Sanya.
She dipped her brush into the water, creating some goopy substance.
“What is that stuff, anyway?” A student asked.
“Poison from a storm scorpion.”
Sanya stopped what she was doing. She was holding what? Her heart almost stopped.
“P-poison?” The student repeated.
Nur let out a sly smile. “Don't worry, it's not poisonous now.”
Sanya let out a sigh of relief and continued working.
She conservatively brushed it against the bottom first wing segments of her staff, the closest to the main rod. She affixed a shark tooth to each one.
“That's the most intense staff I've ever seen,” one of the students said.
“And this is the darkest school and most intense magic I've ever seen,” Sanya countered. “It fits.”
A spiral etching reminiscent of Heliux. A large crystal shard. Metallic wings like a bird flexing. Scorpion poison glue. Shark teeth.
And a sickly aura.
Yup.
Sanya had been tempted to find some bells and hang them from the wings, too.
Maybe some other time.
Another student snorted. “Voting Sanya for Most Likely to Become a Murderer by the End of the Year.”
Sanya rolled her eyes. Although, she almost let a grin loose.
“It fits with hisdelusion,” another stabbed.
The student just said what? Sanya groaned. She gripped her staff tight.
Hmm. That other student was right . . . maybe Sanya would become a murderer! Right. Now.
Just kidding!
Sanya took her staff and dipped.
Scolding words echoed through the tunnel.