Chapter 322 (1/2)

“It… actually makes a lot of sense.” Simon said, raising his head. Thea looked around as he spoke, and their eyes met, an understanding passing between them. Simon felt his heart pounding slightly, and then he realized that he had been staring at Thea and smiling for several seconds.

He looked away, embarrassed, and said. “But… I want to go see him. To understand.”

Once again, Simon and Thea shared that strange agreement, nodding together. Jemma just seemed nervous.

“Maybe… wait a bit? Rhaidon says that until the bone wurm can control her new body, its a bit dangerous, so…” After seeing they both assented to this, Jemma continued. “Uh, the other pledgees… well everyone, the old riders too… there’s a big party thing, to celebrate the Rider, and freedom and stuff…”

Again, she trailed off. Simon felt his stomach do a weird flip flop. “Are you… inviting us to a party?”

Unsaid was the fact that the girl in front of him couldn’t be older than 11 or 12. But she nodded. Simon immediately turned to Thea, who was thoughtfully looking at the ground. She seemed to sense his gaze, however, and looked up, nodding.

“Yea, it happens every time. A way to relax and mingle a bit.” Thea confirmed. “If we aren’t going to see Dav- the Ghosthound, we might as well. After all, you can’t work all the time; humans just aren’t built that way.”

****

At dawn, Randidly breathed in through his nose, and out through his mouth, his eyes glittering, as he examined the greaves in front of him.

Basic Iron Greaves Lvl 14: A rather simple design that was done by a hardworking man. Health +10, End +2. Wrought in Shadow I.

Engraving of Shadow IV 39% ©: The air you walk is thick with shadow. Due to the shadows, you are slightly less easy to predict, and you take slightly less damage from physical attacks. Stealth abilities are 50% more effective. May activate and consume the Engraving to double the previous effects for 30 minutes, as well as a slight amount of darkness damage to all physical attacks.

Wrought in Shadow I: This piece of armor was engraved completely in darkness. Agi +2, Focus +2, Wis +1.

It was really… that simple…? Randidly thought gazing at the Engraved greaves with wonder. There were, of course, several problems with the method but…

The difficulty in Engraving, Randidly speculated, is that Engraving was an incomplete art because it was based on Aether manipulation by people who actually couldn’t manipulate Aether. So although they could find some way to peer into the mysteries of what Aether could accomplish, they weren’t able to do it directly, as they didn’t have access to it.

So they were forced to use what they had access to, Mana, and tried to shape it into the rigid shapes that Aether could be formed into. Because Aether was a strange, mystical form of… something that was alternatively an energy source, and then some sort of building block for meaning. Additionally, some parts of Aether could be infused with meaning, causing the symbols to be rigid.

While some portions were rigid, and others could still be flowing and fluid. Meanwhile, mana was a pure liquid energy source. So the trick was to mimic how Aether behaved by carving shapes into the armor with mana.

Although the previous Engravers likely had to spend a long time experimenting and testing different theories in order to achieve the results they wanted, Randidly didn’t really have that difficulty; he already had access to an ability to sense and manipulate Aether. Of course, the Engraving Pen he possessed couldn’t channel Aether, and all of his attempts to shape it thus far made strange twisted constructs that ticked in a way intimidatingly similar to a bomb, but that didn’t mean he had any less of an advantage.

After all, he knew what it SHOULD look like. He just needed to use Mana to do it.

Randidly had spent the night refining his technique, until he came upon a very cumbersome, but manageable, way to do it. The only reason he could use this method was because of his huge Mana pool, but instead of pouring Mana into the armor in a shape, Randidly used flashes of Mana to burn away huge chunks in the armor.

It was a little like setting off dynamite.