43rd of Frost, 119th Year of the Age of Steel
43rd of Frost, 119th Year of the Age of Steel
Talon sat at the edge of the stone circle where his runesmithing anvil stood. He had in his hand a paintbrush and a bottle of spellwright’s ink so that he could redraw the pictograph that empowered his crafting. While it had not completely faded, it was better to go back over the lines of the glyph as he was about to enter one of the heavier enchanting processes. The last thing he wanted to happen was for an errant thread of energy to blast apart both him and the artifact that he was forging. One of the things that made runesmithing so dangerous was the fact that the slightest deviation from attention to detail could result in a complete failure or a terrible accident. When Talon was working with something he felt was particularly volatile or he was entering an exceedingly dangerous portion of his crafting, he reinforced his pictograph. As a student he’d even begun reinforcing the air around him with his kinetics in order to dampen his exposure to anything that might have gone wrong.
He didn’t feel that would be particularly necessary in this instance as the vast majority of the highly sensitive work was finished. But there was always a chance. He dipped the paintbrush into the bottle spellwright’s ink, going over the various mirror runes, the paths and convergences that formed the elaborate pattern. As he drew closer to the center of the circle where his anvil rest, he concentrated on the various steps and processes that he had left to do. Each shape was traced over with the sole intent of keeping him safe, augmenting his work so that it became easier and brought forth the height of the aether that he was working with. When Talon was finished tracing back over the pictograph, his bottle of spellwright’s ink was empty. He would have to buy more dragonshards so that he could make more. Not just for himself but for those customers who required it for their own spellwork. It was not uncommon for him to be solicited by the Sky Guard or the Circle of Spells for his inks or sorcerer’s sand.
Setting the empty bottle on his workbench, Talon slipped his blacksmithing apron, his fitted leather gloves and the aura goggles back onto his person. He picked up his tools then tapped his hammer upon the surface of the sword so that he could immediately set to work on what would be an exhausting day of forging. As the aether of all that he’d worked upon rippled before him in the vision of the aura goggles, Talon sorted through each layer, adjusting his focus and looking throughout the pathways of the sword. For a moment he grew worried that the properties he was looking for had been buried too deeply while he’d been working on other facets but he calmed when he found what he was looking for. The distinct bloody red strand of aether that was tied to the dragonshard he had worked so hard to collect.
Talon grasped it with his tongs. He pulled. Little by little he began dragging that magic of the blood dragonshard to the forefront of the viscerite. He didn’t drag it completely to the surface, keeping it waiting just a few layers deeper. Talon then searched through the aether until he found the purifying properties of the illumite dragonshards as well as some of the herbal qualities that he’d laced into the aether of the reagents that he had prepared. Due to his preparation beforehand, the aether of the medicinal herbs as well as the purity quality of the illumite shards had a stronger presence than they would have normally. That was good and Talon was grateful for his steady and unwavering methodical approach. The entire process could have been a disaster if those qualities had been leaked out during the aethereal breakdown stage. Given how he’d prepared the reagents however, they had been interwoven into the materials themselves making them integral.
Carefully he linked the curative and bloody purifying properties of the herbs to the inherent aether of the blood dragonshard. Once those two pathways were interwoven, he further laced them together with the illumite shard aether until it was all one singular red-gold strand in his sight that pulsed with raw power and magic. Out of the corner of his eye, Talon saw his pictograph shining a bit brighter as it worked to contain the energies that were in play during his crafting. He held his breath for a moment waiting for any sign of fault in the weave of the pictograph. When a few moments passed without incident and everything appeared to be in working order, Talon released the breath that he had been holding. He continued his work taking the line of red-gold aether and stretching it first across the outer most edge of the sword. With ever cut that the blade made, the magic would be primed and ready to activate.
However, given the inherent nature of blood dragonshard, this particular magic would only live when it came into contact with the blood of living things. He supposed there were things out that that would have enabled it to interact with other things but Talon wasn’t entirely certain he wanted to work with such objects. Once the red-gold aether was firmly hammered into place along the sharp edges of the sword, Talon then brought his tongs up to the finest point of the blade’s tip. He hammered lightly, not to pound the aether into place but to make it pliable and easy to work with. Plucking up a strand of the aether he began guiding it down the center of the blade. He strung it through each letter of the Sylvain script carved into the blade linking the activation of the regenerative magic to the illumination of the letters along with what was already present.
Finally he tugged a line of aether all the way down to the pommel of the sword. Then with a little bit of the reworking on the jewel that he had carved out there, configured it to match the appearance of a natural formed blood dragonshard. The red vein structures threaded throughout the crystal and the appearance of blood swirling within the gemstone would persist within the jewel of the pommel. Talon eyed the layout carefully, looking for places where things may have improperly overlapped or interfered with other aether pathways. He found only a few. It took some working but he managed to smooth those edges out until finally everything was resting in place to the degree that he was capable of making it with the tools that he had.
Talon picked up another hammer. He struck the blade once, twice, three times from base all the way to the tip, charging the aether throughout the whole of the sword. He then picked it up with two pairs of heavier tongs then turned around so that he could approach one of the charged cooling basins that were prepared to help solidify and stabilize the final stages of the artifact. Talon held the blade aloft for a moment. He surveyed it from end to end, searching for any defect or facet that he might have missed somehow, some way. To his eyes, things were as proper and in place as they were going to be. The only thing that was left to do was to allow the enchantments to fully set within the sword and then put them to the test when the time came to give the blade to Taelian.
Talon placed the sword into the water filled basin. Immediately the pictographs inscribed upon the basin began illuminating softly. He could see the aether within the blade settling from its heightened state. There was less shifting within his gaze as all of his enhancements and enchantments fell into line permanently.
Talon removed the aura goggles from his face. He set them on his workbench and then sighed rubbing his face.
