Ar'Kendrithyst

When Erick asked about dyes on the way to the farms, Poi directed him to a cloth weaver’s business along the way. A helpful young bluescale man was glad to sell Erick some dyes, but warned him, in a legal sort of way, that death is the punishment for selling inferior enchantments in Spur.

Dyeing gems was quite normal, if one was just learning the trade, but the sale of such an item was quite frowned upon. While Erick was still digesting that information, Bluescale directed Erick to their pre-made dye kits containing 8 perfect color-matched Main and Secondary Stat dyes, formulated for the aspiring enchanter. The kits were 255 gold. Erick bought one, but knew it would likely go unused.

Dyes were damn expensive.

- - - -

With the sky raining platinum and a 300 gallon water basin already filled and inside the temple, Erick dumped two diamond fragments into the huge basin, and cast [Crystallize Diamond]. On a bit of inspiration, he turned on [Cleanse Aura] while the gems bubbled in the basin. [Cleanse Aura] was a major drain, 5 mana every second; he couldn't keep both [Cleanse Aura] and [Exalted Storm Aura] active for more than 5 minutes. But he didn’t need to.

The platinum in the water shimmered bright as it sucked into the growing gems. Thick air bubbled up from the basin. After four minutes, all the platinum had soaked into the gems; the water was clear. The thick air coming up from it now was much less than before. Erick didn’t know what kind of toxins he was creating out of the platinum rain, but thankfully, [Cleanse] was here to solve that issue before it became a problem.

Erick cut his [Cleanse Aura], and turned on his Handy Aura. This was a much easier drain; his mana began to tick back up. He Handy Aura’d the gems into the air; they were each three inches across, with a silver interior, and a layer of clear diamond over that. Erick [Stoneshape]d a fragment of the clear exterior of one diamond and put those fragments into the water. With another [Cleanse] and another two [Crystallize Diamond]s, the water resumed bubbling. Erick put the partially silver gems to the side; he would not be using those.

He renewed [Crystallize Diamond] on the new seed crystals as needed, and [Cleanse]d the water every now and again, but mostly, he left the basin and the two growing gems to their own devices, while he practiced color masking with [Ward].

Over the last few days, a great deal more memories of time spent helping Jane in school came rushing back. On the subject of color: Light was additive, but pigment was subtractive. And [Special Wards], well…

[Special Ward] was special.

Erick worked on the left side of the temple while his diamonds bubbled on the right.

[Special Ward].

A red-mask [Ward] popped up, five foot across, in the air. Erick nodded. This was good. Looking through the otherwise-invisible [Ward] was like looking through a red lens.

[Special Ward].

A blue-mask [Ward] popped up, five foot across, in the air, similar to the red mask in every way but color. Erick nodded. This was good.

But the intersection of the two [Special Ward]s was a pure black void; the two [Ward]s, each attuned to a different frequency of light, were each blocking the only light that the other one let through. Erick frowned. Just to make sure he was casting the spell correctly —selecting the color to come through based on wavelength, and not something else— Erick popped out seven smaller [Special Ward]s in the air, one right after the other, each slightly touching their neighbors.

Violet. Indigo. Blue. Green. Yellow. Orange. Red.

Very good. Erick was able to choose the light based on wavelength. He wasn’t exactly sure how he did all that, but it involved a lot of visualization and applying his own measurements to reality. Violet was 1, with the shortest visible wavelength, while Red was 100. Erick had completely forgotten the correct scale, but it was supposed to be in nanometers. How the heck was he supposed to remember that? There were bigger problems, here.

Like how, sandwiched between each of Erick’s otherwise-invisible [Wards], was a bit of black, where the combined denial of all wavelengths created a void.

Erick tried a different experiment: Instead of a mask, he produced orbs that gave off light. This time, the lightorbs combined where they touched, producing teal and seafoam, amber and umber. That made sense. They were a source of light, and not a mask. They were also terrible for enchanting. Lightorbs did not block interfering wavelengths of enchantment; they just hid what was actually there.

On a lark, Erick produced three overlapping lightorbs: Red, Blue, and Green. And yup, they worked like light. Between red and blue was magenta, blue and green made cyan, green and red made yellow. At the intersection of all of them was white light. So that was obviously working correctly.

The obvious solution to a two-part enchant was a mask that let through two wavelengths of light.

[Special Ward].

A mask attuned to red and blue appeared, like an otherwise-invisible magenta blot on the world. Erick put his hand inside, and yup, his hand was now magenta. Erick dismissed all of the [Special Ward]s, and cast an [Absorption Ward] across the whole of the temple—

Poi interrupted, “Sir. Do you really want to experiment with exploding diamonds… inside the temple?”

Erick paused. He looked over at the possibly-delicate statue of Atunir at the back of the temple. He could [Mend] the statue; that wouldn’t be a problem. But then he looked out over the farms. He said, “Shrapnel could fly pretty far, couldn’t it?”

Poi, relieved, said, “Yes, sir.”

Erick nodded, walking over to the basin. The spell was still going; bubbles broke the surface, while diamonds tumbled underwater. They had gotten big. The real winner here, though, was that the water was completely purified. Not a trace of platinum. Erick went and grabbed the stone bowls he had made yesterday and stored beside the statue of Atunir. With a bit of Handy Aura and the opening of dyes, Erick soon had four bowls filled with very specific shades of red and blue, in perfectly clear water.

With a bit of [Stoneshape], Erick had four seed diamonds plucked from the new clear diamonds. He dropped one each into the Strength-Crimson, Vitality-Cinnabar, Willpower-Ultramarine, and Focus-Cyan water. He started with the Strength-Crimson bowl.

[Crystallize Diamond].

Erick watched the diamond spurt around in the red water, but nothing changed. The red did not get sucked into the diamond like the platinum had. Erick let the gem bubble and stew, and went on to the other three bowls, setting each of the gems underwater to bubbling, smiling a bit to himself, thinking back to coloring Easter eggs with Jane when she was ten.

And then he frowned and laughed, as he remembered Jane pummeling the neighborhood boys with hardboiled eggs.

He went to his enchanting books to pick up where he left off. He renewed [Crystallize Diamond] as he let his mana recover to full. He did not [Cleanse]; that would probably destroy the dye.

Half an hour later, Erick checked on the diamonds. None of the color had been sucked into any of the gems, in any of the pools, but something did happen in each case. The Strength-Crimson diamond was vaguely pink; the color too dim to matter. He would have to leave that in the bowl overnight, like the dye suggested, if he wanted it to turn red. But Erick wasn’t going to do that. He put the barely-pink diamond aside then [Cleansed] that water and dumped it out. Vitality-Cinnabar was brown. Not a bad looking brown, but not the color needed for enchanting; this one was a failure. Erick pulled that gem from the bowl. Then he [Cleanse]d the water, destroying the color and any leftover toxins before he dumped the water out. Willpower-Ultramarine was brown, too. That bucket of water met the same fate as the rest.

Focus-Cyan dye and [Crystallize Diamond] created a yellow diamond.

It was a pretty yellow diamond; almost the color of sunshine. But it wasn’t what Erick wanted. Physical dyes in conjunction with [Crystallize Diamond] probably did something with the elements composing the dye, instead of just sucking the dye into the diamond. Erick either needed a magical dye, like how [Exalted Storm Aura] made platinum rain, or he needed the color mask [Ward]s to work.

And since the color masks already seemed to work, Erick decided to go forward with the masks.

But first! Another attempt at [Familiar]!

Erick had taken Sizzi’s advice to heart; if his [Familiar] didn’t have absolutely everything it needed, then it wasn’t good enough to stick around. So with that in mind, Erick chained together four hard needs, one desire, and three spells.

[Telepathy].

[Scry].

[Conjure Force Elemental].