124: Lesson From An Artisan

“Okay, now this might not take too long, but we need to be really, really precise with how we do this.”

Grace rolled up the sleeves of her uniform and pulled a pair of glasses from her breast pocket. A previous Inspect revealed that they had been made by Grace sometime in the past, and were actually similar in function to the Ophthalmic Quadfocals that Bailey had given to Eris, and were then disintegrated. Not nearly as effective in power- and clearly not meant for anything except casual use since the only thing they had were the two enchantments that let the wearer determine exact weights by sight alone, and another that let the wearer determine exact sizes and distances- also by sight.

Of course, that reminded Eris that she also now had that second enchantment in her utility belt of Malleable Arcana, and she made a mental note to try and include that somewhere in her next batch of crafting equipment. It hadn’t even crossed her mind to put an automatic ruler in her goggles, and that seemed more than a little helpful in retrospect.

“We also need to figure out which method we’re gonna use for this,” Tatum added, crossing her arms over her chest. “There really isn’t a ‘wrong’ way to fuse organic material into metal.” She paused, thinking. “Well, actually there is. There’s a lot of wrong ways. Some methods can be damned near impossible, and you can destroy either of the materials in the blink of an eye. I just meant that there’s no ‘wrong’ way to do it among the ‘right’ ways of doing it.”

Tatum blinked. “Fuck, I’m not explaining this right, am I?”

Grace peeked from the corner of her eye. “What she means is that there are a few ways of successfully going about the fusion, and each of them offer different benefits and drawbacks depending on what you want to happen.”

“And what is it that we want?” Eris asked the two girls. Both of them looked at each other for a moment before Tatum conceded and motioned for Grace to take point.

“What we’re aiming to achieve is a replication of the Band of Second Presence by using the raw material of a Neutricore. More specifically, the manipulation of perception and the ability to exist in simultaneous locations. Not a stat modification, but an exotic effect.”

Grace lifted up the jar with the Neutricore antenna and peeked at the mass. Eris could take a second glance over the material that they were supposed to be encasing in silver, and she really couldn’t imagine what kind of creature would have this kind of part carved off of it.

It may have been called an antenna, but it looked more like a small foot if Eris was being completely honest. Though, even that was a stretch. In fact, it looked almost like the tail of a fish, but thin and elongated instead of broad. Furthermore, where the ‘fins’ of the tail would extend from either side to form a kind of triangular shape, they flattened outwards on the wrong axis, forming a shape more like the aforementioned foot- on three sides of the antenna. Of course, the ‘toes’ were longer and more defined to more closely resemble fingers, each with too many knuckles and sitting eight toes to a foot, with three feet.

It was an ugly, unsettling, fleshy, bony flower of fingers and feet about the size of Eris’s wrist and the colour of gravel. An organ that supposedly allowed a creature that only existed in the perception of others to manifest a physical body capable of tearing apart a creature physically and mentally.

“Don’t stare at it too much,” Grace warned, lowering the jar and even covering it with a bit of cloth to obscure the mass. “And don’t even try to picture the appearance. Holding the image of the beast in your mind is enough to birth one into existence- even if you don’t actually know what it looks like. If your mind guesses right, you make it. Very, very bad.”

“Err… yeah.” Eris fumbled, turning her eyes to the floor despite the jar being covered. “Elmas mentioned that back in the Obelisk when I asked what the thing even was.”

“What it is,” Charlotte interrupted, taking a step towards the table and readjusting the cloth to better cover the jar. “-Is a valuable resource to the Syndicate, but a constant headache to properly manage. Whatever you’re making, make it quick.”

Eris nodded, and Grace cleared her throat.

“So, as I was saying, we aren’t looking to try and borrow the attunement of stat modifications from the antenna. We’re looking to borrow the transpositional and metaphysical properties of the creature’s existence.”

“Stasis fusion?” Tatum asked. Grace nodded.

“Leather is the easiest to incorporate into a craft, with the classification mostly encompassing skin, hide, or scales. Those materials have a very, very high attunement for the stat modifications of a creature’s body, not any exotic effects. You can still use leather to get exotic effects, but it requires a lot more effort and is rather inefficient when used that way. The best method to pull out the exotic effect from leather is a process of fusion known as capillary fusion, where you create artificial blood vessels out of magic-conductive materials and attempt to create a mimicry of a functioning circulatory system to pull the life energy from within the-”

Tatum coughed. “Grace?”

The Artisan blinked, cheeks turning a twinge of a shade.

“Err, sorry. Capillary fusion to pull extra effects from leather, and affixed fusion for stat modifications. The second kind of material that is most commonly used are what we call ‘foundation pieces’. Bones, teeth, claws, fur, blood, urine, that sort of thing. There are a lot of ways to go about fusion, because materials like that have a very neutral attunement between stat modifications and extra effects. Whatever you want it to provide is generally very easy to ensure, with lots of options. The last kind of material are the organs. Stomachs, brains, eyes-”

“-Antennae, kidneys, ovaries, tongues,” Tatum continued listing, taking over for Grace. “Lots of stuff like that. Even dicks are useful.”

Eris narrowed her eyes. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope,” Tatum chuckled. “You’d be surprised how useful a troll dick can be.”

“Moving on!” Grace sputtered. Eris furrowed her brow.

“So if leather is attuned towards the stats and the foundation pieces are neutral, I assume the organs are attuned to the extra effects?”

“Yes,” Grace nodded. “But because of their nature, they’re fairly difficult to fuse into an item. Instead of carving a dagger out of a tusk or tanning a hide to make into a leather bracer, you’re having to make an item using something like an intestine. Outside of rare circumstances where the organ itself can directly function as the structure of the product-”

“Ooh! Like turning a dragon’s eye into a grenade? That’s always fun!”

Bailey’s voice chirped up from the other end of the room as she excitedly raised her hand like she were in school.

Still topless, because of course she was. Grace nodded.

“Yes, actually. But outside of those situations, the organs often require complicated methods of fusion to ensure their effectiveness as a crafting material. The three most common are mercurial fusion, stasis fusion, and block fusion. Though, in our case, we only have to worry about choosing stasis or block.”

“Why’s that?” Eris asked.

“Because mercurial is pretty much exclusive to alchemy or culinary crafts!” Bailey chirped up.

Grace readjusted her uniform.

“Mercurial fusion is an act of preservation that allows the organ of choice to be dissolved. Meanwhile, the magical effects are maintained and transmuted through platinum dissolution and transposed into a magically conductive and highly neutral capturing reagent.”

Eris blinked multiple times. After a few seconds, Bailey yelled out again.

“We incinerate the organ in molten platinum, then take the magic from the organ and shove it inside liquid mercury!”

“Thank you, Bailey,” Grace sighed. “That mercury can then be used for more traditional alchemical products as a highly malleable placeholder for the organ in question.”

“What about… stasis and block, was it?” Eris leaned back in her chair. Tatum shrugged, her mohawk bobbing.

“Well, block fusion is the one that’s ultimately kinda pointless unless you have literally no other materials from the creature you can work with. It’s how you ignore the additional effects that the organ is normally attuned to and try to forcibly pull out the stat modifications that you can get so much easier from any other part of their body.”

Tatum leaned back in her seat.

“And the reason it’s called ‘block’ fusion is because a lot of it’s dedicated not to connecting the organ to the item, but rather blocking the extra effects of the organ so that the stat modifications can slip through and be used. It’s both the hardest and least efficient way of crafting something with an organ. Stasis fusion is generally the way to go about binding an organ to an item.”

Grace rested one hand on the covered jar holding the antennae.

“The thing about the extra effects of organic materials is that they’re more closely bound to the soul of the creature, whereas the stat modifications tend to be closer bound with the body. When a creature dies or an organ is removed from it, the enchantments and extra effects in the organ dies, too.”

“Holding a shock dragon’s scale will make you more resistant to electricity, but holding a troll’s heart won’t let you start regenerating missing toes,” Tatum clarified. Grace nodded.

“So, the goal of stasis fusion is to use magic to trick the organ into thinking it’s still alive and keeping it that way. Then, you can use other methods to pull the magic and use it in whatever items you create with the organ.”

“Such as encasing it in silver and putting it in the bottom of a marble dildo,” Bailey chirped.

Eris blinked.

“Okay… so how the fuck do we trick an antenna into thinking it’s alive?”

“Alcohol,” all three other crafters said simultaneously.

“Err… what?”

Thankfully, Grace took over again, taking off her glasses.

“It’s simpler than you think. All you need to do is ensure some kind of preservation of the organ to keep it from decomposing, which can be done in any number of ways. Then, it effectively becomes its own filter. You pump magic into it, the organ thinks it’s alive because it isn’t rotting and it has magic, then it turns that magic into extra effects. As for how you keep it from decomposing, one of the easiest and most accessible forms of preservation for organic tissue is…”

Grace left the end of her sentence open in an obvious invitation. Eris rolled her eyes.

“Alcohol. So… what? We make a little silver jar, put the antenna inside with a bath of whiskey, screw the top back on, then slide it into the bottom of the Key?”

The other crafters all looked at each other for a moment before turning back to Eris with a little shrug.

“Pretty much.”

Clearly, at least some of the lessons from Tatum and Grace had truth to them, since it was the very first attempt at making the Skeleton Key V2 that succeeded. Now, how much of that had just been whatever Artificer tomfoolery allowing Eris to make things nobody else could, and how much had genuinely been through the aid of doing things the ‘proper’ way, Eris didn’t know. However, she was willing to concede that the Stonecutter and the Artisan’s way of doing things was much more refined than using silver string to tie a bracelet to a small pillar and praying for something half decent.

The new Key wasn’t anything special. It could still only be used once per day, just like the original, and only activated by Eris herself. While it didn’t have the Lust effect to open pathways between the points, it did, at the very least, have a way to bring other people along for the sensory-transplaced ride. Of course, THAT was a conversation to be had with Dzhemehal, but Eris doubted the peculiar methods of joining the trip were going to dissuade the encyclopedia from the opportunity to speak directly with an old Artificer.

Right now, though, Eris had a different priority.

Sanctum {Active} {Level 3}

Engage in an arcane ritual and designate a location no greater than {3,000} square feet. While in your Sanctum, you recover expended Mana {300%} faster.

Eris had never given a tattoo before, much less given one to an entire room, but she figured that would be the closest comparison to the ritual required for Sanctum. Multiple kinds of gemstones had been ground down into a dusty powder, which were each then mixed in linseed oil to make a form of paint, in multiple different shades. Soon enough, Eris had multiple small jars of vibrant, sparkly colours. Ruby-red, emerald-green, sapphire-blue, onyx-black, topaz-orange, citrine-yellow, amethyst-purple, and more beyond that filled out a quick holder Eris carved to hold all her colours. With an Ichryte-dust-white added in as her final shade, Eris was then able to take a needle-pointed chisel and paint over the workshop after Charlotte moved all the tables and shelves out of the way.

It took much longer than normal painting would allow, because Eris wasn’t allowed to use a brush and paint her strokes. Instead, she needed to manually dip the iron needle she made into her pigments, then hammer it into the stonework of the floor and walls to make a single colourful dot. Then another beside it. And another. And another. Over and over and over again.

Eris quickly realized that levelling up the skill almost exclusively provided the benefit towards the mana regeneration, not the total area. Sure, Eris could use it in a larger space than just her workshop, but she’d also need more of her sparkly paint and a lot more time. Tattooing the gemstones over the walls, floor and even the ceiling had taken up every minute of the rest of the day, and then some. Weirdly enough, Eris’s crazy efficiency with her Control stat didn’t seem to work on this. Sure, Eris could hold a ruby the size of her pinky nail against a grinding wheel to get over four ounces of usable dust without seeming to leave a mark on the gem itself, but her reserves of paint were almost completely depleted after making a mosaic of her workshop.

Regardless, by the time that Eris was able to set the hammer, needle and paints down, it was a little past nine thirty- half an hour past the official cut-off time for her work schedule. That did mean, however, that Alex and Jaxie were both present to watch the last colourful patterns take shape in quiet as Eris took priority of focusing over conversation.

Eris would never call herself a proper artist. The only ability she had at drawing were nothing more than hasty diagram sketches that barely made sense to herself, much less other people. That had changed, of course, after she gained her class and those sketches became more defined and clear. Planning was a part of crafting, after all. However, looking over the display that her skill walked her through the creation of was a sight to behold.

There wasn’t a specific pattern or any defined shapes. There weren’t images of grass, or water, or fire, or any pictures of birds flying across the ceiling. Instead, the colours spread out like asymmetric spiderwebs all over the stonework, mixing greens and blues and yellows and oranges and reds in a sparkling, convoluted yet oddly-beautiful mess that looked more akin to a kaleidoscope filled with glitter.

Of course, the skill apparently decided that it needed just a little bit ‘more’, because that apparently wasn’t enough. As Eris gazed over the room with Bailey, Charlotte, Tatum, Alex and Jaxie, all the glimmering specks of colour began to glow faintly. Turning down the runic lights meant that the entire interior of the workshop was softly illuminated in a hundred thousand multicoloured sparkles bathing the room in a gentle wash of hues.

“It’s beautiful,” Alex said softly. Jaxie, naturally, responded to that by using one hand to gently grab hold of Alex’s chin and make the shorter girl look at her.

“You’re beautiful.”

While Eris walked up to slide her hand into Alex’s, she was able to watch with a smile as Jaxie tilted her face downwards to connect her lips not with Eris, but with their mutual friend. The sin in Alex’s eyes was hidden after her eyelids shut, leaving Eris with only the memory of what tainted her best friend. The Envy. The Envy, with a very, very obvious cause that left a sour taste in Eris’s throat.

However, while watching Jaxie and Alex gently make out while cast in the glow of a gemstone rainbow, Eris made a promise to herself. Then, she gave a small squeeze to Alex’s hand.

“You’re joining Jaxie and I for a breakfast date tomorrow, and I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer.”