"I thought we would be making a spellbook," Alarion said with a hint of skepticism at the items laid out before him: stencils, gold and black ink, several brushes, and, of course, his oversized mace.

He was seated on the floor of Valentina's now-empty room, in the middle of a diagram similar to the one ZEKE had used to test his affinities, albeit one much larger and drawn in chalk. "Isn't that what most mages do?"

"It is, yes. But you don't strike me as a book person."

Alarion scowled slightly, unsure if that was an observation or an insult, but he let it slide to examine the pot of golden ink and the less familiar tools surrounding it. "So, how does this work?"

"The first step is normally boring theory, but I think we can dispense with that for now, yes?" The woman smirked at Alarion's enthusiastic nod and continued, "Practical it is, then, with a side of theory. You'll need all the rectangular stencils. Set the rest aside."

Alarion did as she asked, separating the various stencils into two piles by shape until only twelve remained. They were made of a flexible green metal that Alarion was wholly unfamiliar with. Each rectangular stencil had several arcane symbols punched through it, and one side was inset with some sort of slide. Curious, he fiddled with the device and watched a second thin plate slide within the first, shrinking or enlarging the designs depending on its position.

"Traditional inscription is delicate and time-consuming work. Even a master can take weeks or months to inscribe an implement to their liking. What you're holding was designed as a workaround, a toolkit built to allow anyone to create or replace an implement in a matter of hours. That speed comes at a slight cost in precision and power, so you will eventually want to refine or replace the implement we make here. But you are in a hurry, so we'll use this for now."

The way Valentina said those last words was enough to make Alarion roll his eyes. Over the last several days, the once god had made no secret of her distaste for his time limit or her desire that he exceed it. She didn't want him to leave early; that much was clear. The only question was whether it was out of concern as an educator or because she would be lonely once he was gone.

"As you can see, the basic stencils should be familiar and-"

"They are not," Alarion quickly interjected.

"Really?" Valentina's brows knit together. "Oh… hmm. You're on the right continent, but I suppose some contextual dri-"

"They represent the Affinities, right?" This time, Alarion interrupted, his fingers tracing over one of the open symbols. It didn't look like anything ZEKE had taught him, but the design matched the pattern she laid on the floor. "This would be fire, right? Which would make that water, then air…?"

"Well done." Her tone didn't quite match her expression. She'd been gearing up for a lecture she could no longer give, and the loss rankled her. "The first set of stencils covers the breadth of the Affinities, while the latter are known as communion runes. These exist to interface between the various Affinity runes. Mana of one type rarely mixes well with another, but by properly filtering it, you can store spells of various Affinities within a single implement."

Alarion nodded a little, but it was clear from his expression that he was still struggling with the topic. Valentina would get to lecture after all.

"Imagine for a moment you threw a pail of water on a fire. What happens?"

"It douses it?"

"And boils off some of the water. The exchange alters both, often in unpredictable ways." She gestured to one of the cutout icons on the second set of stencils. "This rune interfaces between water and fire. Think of it like a pot, allowing each to serve its proper function without destroying the other. With a proper inscription, the mana between the two can even intermingle to create a new effect, though that would be considerably harder with such directly oppositional effects."

"And this last one?" Alarion asked, gesturing to a stencil containing only a single highly complex sigil.

"That is the core rune, the lynchpin. All the others draw their mana from it, and it will draw its mana from you. It is where you store your spell formulas. We will need to make some modifications in your case, and despite what your skill description says, the implement won't work for any externalized channeling unless you're holding it."

Alarion scratched his chin thoughtfully as he took in the instruction. Eventually, he pointed to the mace. "So we're just going to draw on it?"

"Well, it is a little more complicated than that," Valentina scoffed. "But ultimately, yes. We'll mark the item with icons representing each Affinity, with your primary Affinities being considerably larger. Then we'll need to mark it with communion runes, and once that is finished, we'll need to make connections between them."

"That… seems really easy."

The once-god snorted in amusement. "It is easy. That was the point of rewarding you with an inscription kit. But don't mistake easy for inexpensive. The stencils are clever metalwork that can alter their size, but the value is in the ink. It looks like paint, but it is a mana-reactive liquid metal that will adhere to almost anything. A simple formula with expensive ingredients for something given to a novice. Mages have taken out considerable loans to purchase a kit like the one you were given."

"The one I earned," Alarion corrected her.

Valentina tipped her head in acknowledgement. "The one you earned. So be sure not to spill it."

"Where do we start?"

"First. We need to draw a map and practice." A half-scale paper replica of the head of Alarion's mace flickered into existence in Valentina's hands, and she set it down next to the young man.

Alarion was careful as he picked up the paper copy, though he found it surprisingly firm. "This is a good copy. I suppose you can just sort of god up whatever."

"I can, yes. But I hand-made that, actually." When Alarion spit her with a stare of disbelief, she put a hand to her chest in dismay. "What!? I did. I godded up the paper, as you so crudely put it, but you slept long enough that I had time to make several."

Still unconvinced, the young man returned his attention to the paper mace. "When you say 'draw a map'…"

"You'll need to connect the various runes. The wider the band, the more mana can flow from one rune to the next. But before you get the bright idea of drawing them all as wide as possible, keep in mind that the mana flow will become more sluggish overall with each drop. You'll want to strike a balance. Sometimes it is better to have a lesser-used affinity flow through two or three connections back to the core to save the pressure for where it matters more."

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Turning the object over in his hands, Alarion could see why he needed a practice copy. Trying to map out complicated pathways on a three-dimensional object while ensuring everything is properly linked? The task was daunting.

"That is why most mages use spellbooks," Valentina explained, as though reading his mind from his concerned expression. "They're less versatile, but much more easily inscribed. Slap some runes and connections all over the front and back, tether them to the spine, and you're finished. What we're doing will take more artistry and patience. But the result is an implement that you can fight with, and much more importantly, cast through with no need to juggle between mace and spellbook."

"Why not something smaller? A ring or a pendant? Something that can't possibly get in the way?"

"That is a possibility," she admitted. "But not something practical at your rank, or even rank II. These tools aren't nearly precise enough to work with something that small, and you'll need to develop an entirely new method if you want to inscribe an item all on your own. Something internal, maybe? A piercing, perhaps, no… that wouldn't go far enough. But we could embed a…"

Alarion checked out of Valentina's musings and focused his attention on the paper copy in his hands. The mace was six-sided, which was frustrating when he had five major runes he needed to inscribe upon it. The core rune would take up the 'front' facing of the hexagonal mace, with his four primary Affinities, each dominating one of the remaining facings. He could place the lesser Affinities below those and then leave the rear-facing of the mace for communion runes. It was a good plan.

Pity the plan had to intersect with reality.

Trying to put all the communion runes on a single facing meant that most of the connections converged in one tight space. As they could not touch or overlap, he had to move around other lines, double back, and create a maze-like structure on the rear facing that was both ugly and horribly impractical.

His next attempt was better. Splitting the communion runes between the facings with his four affinities, he created a system of 'hubs' that flowed from one to the next, while placing his unused Affinities on the rear facing. It was a stark improvement in organization, but it was still clumsy. Mana would have to circle the mace thrice to go from illusion to sight or air to dimension.

Every so often, Valentina chimed in with a helpful suggestion. Never enough to solve the puzzle, but enough to remind him of some important function he'd missed, like the fact that he ought to use wider lines for his primary runes, or warning him against a particular design for its inefficiency.

Valentina could have put the whole thing together in minutes. He was certain of that. She had an optimal design in mind, and each iteration of his work that she approved of was merely a step toward the one she already knew was best. It was frustrating, but he understood it. As ZEKE had warned, he wouldn't always have a guide at hand. It was better that Alarion learn why her design was proper rather than trying to reverse engineer it long after she was out of the picture.

Even if it felt like an enormous waste of time.

"I think this one should work," she said proudly, turning his seventh creation over in her hands. An eighth paper mace sat off to the side, already halfway folded in case Alarion's latest attempt failed to meet her standards. It shouldn't bother him that she'd been able to guess how many attempts it would take him to get it right. But it did. "A little sloppy on the line work, but I can tell it is because you're getting impatient."

"So we can start?"

"You should take a break before we continue. You've been sitting for hours."

"I want to start." Alarion shot her a firm look before she could argue. "I am ready to start."

Valentina's golden eyes glittered as her lips curled in an approving smile. "That is a good look. Very well."

The chalk diagram glowed to life with a tap from her heel. White-blue mana cascaded out from the point of contact, while the other light sources in the room dimmed in unison. By the time it was finished, Alarion was bathed in an arcane light that pulsed steadily through the floor, then scattered up the wall like lightning when it made contact.

"That should avoid any ambient impurities. Whenever you are ready, and remember, precision. Straight, even lines. Once the substance has been applied, it cannot be removed. The only way to correct your mistakes is by addition. And each drop counts."

Alarion started with the handle, drawing six straight vertical lines with the help of his stencils. Almost immediately, he ran into an issue. The paper copies had lacked definition and texture, while his actual mace did not. The cross-hatched grip of the handle, in particular, was a nightmare to ink, requiring careful placement of blocking material to stop the pigment from leaching out of its intended path.

Once he reached the head of the mace, the lines cut at 90-degree angles, circling its base before ascending vertically. There, they would connect to the core rune, and the real nightmare began.

Lines were easy to touch up. If he'd made a mistake and a dab of liquid metal slipped beneath the stencil, he could fix that by widening the line. It would be aesthetically displeasing and a bit worse in function, but it would work. Doing so with runes was a more risky endeavor. If his mistake was in the right place, he could fix it the same way, expanding the rune to compensate for the sloppy work. If it were in the wrong place, he risked having to make severe alterations to the design. In the worst case, he could ruin the entire process.

There was a surreal absurdity as he laid down the first brush stroke. He'd slain the Duke in a battle to the death, fought with fiends that desired nothing more than to drag his carcass back for reclamation or reanimation. But drawing was more stressful? The stakes were lower, so why did they feel so much higher?

"Stop." Valentina's voice was soft but insistent, a demand, not a request. Her hand touched his shoulder as his golden-tipped bristles shook over the stencil. When had he started shaking? She said nothing more as Alarion stared at his vibrating hand and willed it to stop. Minutes later, when the shaking finally subsided, Valentina squeezed his shoulder and spoke again. "Now you can continue."

They proceeded that way for over an hour. Alarion would work diligently on a piece of the puzzle, drawing a complicated rune, connecting it through a series of straight lines and hard angles to the next encircled rune. Then the next. Every few minutes, she would stop him between brush strokes, and he would linger for as long as necessary to get his nerves under control.

Never once did he complain.

In the end, he only made two mistakes. The first was a simple slip of the hand while drawing a connection line that left it with a small bump, easily corrected with a slight touch-up of the line. The second was a grave mistake while crafting the Sound rune. He'd drawn the rune properly but hadn't kept proper pressure on his stencil. The ink had snuck beneath, leaving a large golden blotch on the mace when he went to study the finished work.

If it had been anywhere else, it might have ruined the finished project. As it was, he had to make an ad hoc change to his intended pathways, painting over the error to turn it into a connection line instead.

The boy was aching by the time he finished, his back sore from twisting this way and that for each new angle, his hands cramped from unfamiliar work.

But the hard part was over.

Assuming he'd done it correctly.

"I think it is ready," Alarion said.

"You're certain? If you've left a glaring error, it will fail. Even if you haven't, this is your last chance to edit the design," her tone was upbeat, even as her words instilled a sense of primal dread within her pupil.

Alarion checked his work thrice over, studying perfect lines for flaws that he was suddenly sure he had missed. Only when he was well and truly certain did he turn back to Valentina. "It is ready."

"Then take my hand."

Her skin was softer than it had any right to be against his calloused palm, and together they grasped the handle of the mace. Alarion agitated the mana within his body, and Valentina helped him to channel it into the item.

The liquid gold glittered with arcane energy, a shimmer running up each of the six conduits he'd laid down its haft. They flowed into the core rune, which darkened with each passing second until it turned completely black. Just as Alarion worried that he'd made some ruinous mistake, the rune glowed with a crimson inner light. New energy spilled out from it, cascading across golden lines and burning each rune red as it reached them, before inevitably returning to the core.

When it was finished, the weapon lay before him, dark grey metal inlaid with golden lines and crimson runes. He knew it had worked, even without the System notifications that blinked impatiently at the corner of his view.

"I never have to do this again, do I?"

"Not until you break it, or your spellcraft reaches rank II."

Alarion's shoulders slumped, hours of exhaustion washing over him in a moment as he responded with a single word.

"Good."

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