novelraw Chapter 259: Analissa
Chapter 259: Analissa
“Inscription is not merely putting down a rune and moving on. Inscription is every symbol, every rune, containing a lexicon of knowledge. One rune that fulfills the purpose of five isn’t just five times better, it’s twenty-five times better when you can also put five of those runes in the same place.”
As Rory spoke, he looked around. The crowd wasn’t massive; inscription was a rather uncommon field amongst Zoey’s people, but those that were here were enraptured. One face in particular seemed to be drinking in every word he said, looking somewhere in her forties or early fifties. Still, as with all individuals who’d achieved their ascensions within an appropriate timeframe, it was the forty or fifty of a fitness model or pro athlete, and not your average soccer mom or recliner dad.
Analissa, I presume.
The fact that she appeared younger than Miguel, who was also hovering around the area, though not nearly as enraptured as some of the folks here, while also being a tier below, spoke of the difference in when they’d achieved their ascensions. As Miguel had said, he’d been a bit of a late bloomer, after all.
Stylus dancing across the tablet, a literal stone tablet, the runes he inscribed were projected high above, giant symbols like a firework display in the sky.
Maybe a little overkill, but hey, it caught their attention, didn't it?
The tablet he was working on was specifically meant to be the ‘brains’ of a modern-generation pneuma crusher that Rory was setting up in Zoey’s village. It was only the single crusher, but compared to the OG models Ehkorrus had used decades back, it was like night and day.
“Now this rune. Does anyone know what it represents?”
A hand raised as Rory suppressed a smirk.
“Yes?” Rory said, pointing toward the woman whose hand had shot up.
“Gravity,” Analissa said, looking proud of herself for knowing what was considered a level two rune, or an ‘advanced’ rune.
Rory hadn’t actually been the one to recognize the names officially, but hey, if the shoe fit.
“Correct.”
Looking pleased, her expression shifted as Rory continued.
“And what else?”
“What else?” the woman asked, taken off guard.
“Yes. The most superficial meaning of this rune is, in fact, Gravity, as is expected of the gravity rune. But what are the sub-meanings of the rune? How else can you stretch it or reimagine it?”
The woman frowned, though not in an angry fashion, more so the look of someone who’d realized they’d only studied half of the material needed for an exam.
“Severity. Resonance. Emotional connection. Even space. These are just a few ways you can reinterpret the gravity rune. For example, if I wanted to create a runic trap that locks down anyone who lacks a specific commonality with me, a single gravity rune is, in theory, all I’d need, as it plays on the literal gravitational meaning, the attraction of like traits, and even the intensity of the emotional regulation. Of course, a single rune trap like that would be horrifically inefficient, but it would be theoretically possible with a single rune.”
Rory watched in amusement as notes were scribbled upon notepads, loose reams of paper, or really anything the aspiring inscription artists watching had on hand. For some time after, Rory continued to quiz and explain his intentions and rationale behind what he was doing, and even outright stating what certain runes were, though just being told what a rune was wasn’t enough to properly understand a rune enough to incorporate it into one’s personal work.
Eventually, the ‘lecture’ came to an end as Rory finished with his inscription work on the tablet. Tomorrow, he’d be giving a lecture on material principles as he prepared the materials to physically construct the pneuma crusher. Had he really wanted to, he could have probably hammered it all out in one day, but it went against the spirit of what he was doing, a literal ‘totem’ left behind as a reminder of the varying lessons taught over these next few days.
As the crowd began to disperse, they’d been warned not to bother the Architect, one lone figure remained –ignoring Miguel, who’d somehow become his personal assistant and chaperone without ever intending to— the same woman who’d been asking questions and answering them in return throughout.
“Analissa, I presume?” Rory asked, mostly for appearances' sake, given he already knew.
“That would be me,” the woman said as she gave him a small bow. “It is my honor to speak with the Grand Architect himself one on one, something I find myself quite envious of my fellow honored eight in having monopolized.”
“Don’t blame me,” Miguel said with a shrug. “Lady Trailblazer pretty much set it up.”
“Well, I will defer to her,” Analissa said, her tone changing mildly at the mention of Zoey. “I apologize for the banter between my peer and me.”
“It’s fine,” Rory said, waving it off. “You don’t have to walk on eggshells around me.”
“Eggshells? But there are no eggs here?” Analissa questioned, looking around with a confused expression.
“An expression or phrase spoken around my people,” Rory said, shifting it to a mere cultural difference and not an outright precursor phrase. “So, to what do I owe the pleasure?”
The woman swallowed once as if mustering her courage before opening her mouth.
“I humbly request to submit myself as your appren-”
“Bzzt, denied,” Rory said offhandedly, purposely playing into his unserious nature to avoid making it any more serious or difficult than it needed to be. “Not looking for apprentices. Plus, you wouldn’t get much out of me in truth; inscription only makes up a single slice of the pie of my activities.”
“Pie?”
“Inscription is only a single small slice of what I spend my time doing,” Rory amended.
“Please,” the woman insisted, surprising Rory. “For the sake of our people. It is no lie or exaggeration to say that we are lacking in the crafts. Furthermore, inscription has been something I’ve devoted my life to since I was but a girl.”
Rory found himself frowning as he looked at the woman, memories of another woman coming to mind. He’d heard the story of Viviann, heard what led her to make the choices she did.
No. I’d rather avoid a repeat of that if possible…. That said, that reminds me.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“The answer is still no,” Rory said with a tone of finality. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t hear you. So, I’ve decided to instead give you a test.”
“A test?” Analissa asked, seeming surprised that the situation had flipped so suddenly.
“Yes, a test. You see, I’ve had ‘apprentices’ in the past, and for the most part, I wasn’t the best teacher; some of them will rather fervently confirm that. I teach, and you absorb. If you can’t do that, I’ve never been good at breaking down the small points, the finer details, into easily digestible information. I get caught up in my own analogies or mindset. So, while I can’t be the teacher or mentor you’d want, I can be your proctor. Prove your worth, and there might be another way I can help you out.”
The unspoken truth was that Rory had gotten a sense of the woman as she spoke to him, able to parse some information from the way her aura felt. It felt… stagnant. While the feel of one’s aura wasn’t some perfect glimpse into what was going on in a person’s mind, psyche, or general situation, for Rory, it was enough to make an educated guess, at least in this situation.
Analissa had been stagnant, if the fact that she was tier six still wasn’t a sign enough. Inscription was at its best when it had other arts and such to play off of. Still, if the peak crafter was barely a tier seven here, and they themselves were rather average at best, it made sense that an aspiring inscription artist found herself floundering without inspiration or the means of pushing her own skillset.
Well, she could have tried to push the envelope further, but that was the sort of thing that tended to end up with a very dead aspiring inscription artist; inscription wasn’t as kind to failure as some of the other crafts, something Rory knew firsthand. Given time, perhaps the woman would have become desperate enough to risk it, but Rory was here now, meaning hopefully that potential outcome could be avoided.
“What do you want me to do?” Analissa asked.
With a wave of his hand, a desk appeared on the asteroid that he’d unofficially claimed as his own, large enough for several buildings or even a large crowd, but otherwise small enough to be neatly tucked out of the way.
“What is the number one creation within your village?”
“Gliders,” Analissa instantly answered.
“Good. Then innovate.”
“Innovate?”
“Exactly what I said. Innovate. During my lesson, was the core of it not to expand one's mind? To have thoughts and reasoning as flexible as rubber? Err, as flexible as possible? So, here and now, innovate. The gliders fulfill their intended purpose here, but it's that blanket functionality, the complacency, that kills innovation. Don’t shoot for ‘it works,’ shoot for ‘it succeeds.”
Rory knew it was unfair to put the woman on the spot to innovate on items that had been cemented for gods knew how long by now, but that was the point; now was the time to put the task on her, right after his lecture, in which his lessons hopefully hadn’t faded already.
“Alright,” Analissa finally said after a moment. “I can do that. I will do that.”
“Normally, I’d take my leave for the time,” Miguel spoke up for the first time in a bit. “But seeing as she is looking to innovate on gliders, well, count me interested.”
“Fine by me,” Rory said with a shrug before turning back to Analissa. “I’ll give you half an hour to mentally prepare yourself. Then, we begin.”
Analissa was nervous. There was utterly no sense in denying that simple reality.
No, nervous might not be a strong enough word.
The Grand Architect was the founding father of Inscription, and it was his shadow she’d been chasing for decades. Oh, certainly, she’d taken the lessons of Lady Trailblazer to heart, explore, have fun, push the boundaries, and so forth. Still, after she’d discovered an inscription on a tablet after a nearly failed delve of a meager six-room chamber, her entire world had changed, the memory as fresh as the day it had happened.
Plaque of the Ancestral Architect
Rarity: Rare
Amongst the worlds, there are titans, figures who have shaken the history of the past, present, and future. Each is a trailblazer of a different kind. Amongst the eight trailblazers, the titan of crafts is known most commonly as the Architect of the Precursors. From his mind, the art of capturing magic and intent into written form was born, forever changing existence. Inscribed upon this plaque are but a few runes he established, a source of inspiration for any who would follow his path.
The item was a simple stone tablet, with only four runes inscribed upon it: wood, earth, air, and acceleration. It had been quite the hodgepodge assortment of runes, but they’d been the perfect runes for the denizens of the sky. It was those first few runes that made gliders a reality, long before Miguel had evolved his vocation into that of a skybound chanter who could manipulate any material with skybound properties.
But most importantly, it had helped Analissa escape her growing dread that she was going to die. She simply wasn’t the gifted explorer or adventurer some of her peers were; she didn’t derive the same joy they’d taken. Most of those peers were dead now, vindicating the feelings of her youth; only eight of them remained, and of those eight, only half of them had remained explorers, adventurers, and thrill seekers.
That had been nearly a century ago, give or take a handful of years. She’d managed to climb all the way to tier six as the main inscription artist of their people, but over time, as the methods of inscription became more standardized and better understood, the things she worked on became more and more automatic; her progress had slowed.
It had finally stalled out, thanks to Miguel himself. His success had been her final nail in the coffin, as his method of skybound chanting brought in a new generation of gliders and other skybound devices that kept afloat more efficiently, purely through their skybound traits rather than any inscriptions; any inscriptions placed upon them were exceptionally simple at that point.
Her anxieties hadn’t been immediate; as a tier six who’d made steady progress in the first 100 years, she still had plenty of time, but she had begun to do the math over the years. As slow as she might age, her ascension progress was even slower. Even if she did crack tier seven, at the rate things were going, it would be after burning through a large portion of her lifespan in tier seven, resulting in fewer gained years upon breaking through, making tier eight functionally impossible.
As things were going, she was on the slow crawl to death.
As time went on, she’d found herself more and more amicable to the thought of engaging in forbidden inscription. There had been some foolish enough over the years to try things like outright making new runes or trying to brute force the use of more advanced runes so they could work on more advanced projects, but it always resulted in death. Inscription was the vocation of calm patience.
And Analissa was gradually growing impatient.
She’d locked herself away for long periods of time, and in secrecy did she attempt experimental ideas. The good news was that, for the first time, she saw some modicum of progress.
The bad news was that she could feel the call. Marginal experiments weren’t enough to regain ground as things were. With attributes largely tilted toward cognition, something going wrong would surely kill her.
But.
But thankfully, it hadn’t come to that. Because then Lady Trailblazer returned. And with it, she brought news of her alliance with the Grand Architect.
And then the Grand Architect himself appeared. An opportunity for growth, from freeing herself from the mires of stagnation. She needed to jump at the chance. Of course, before she could meet with the man, apparently Miguel, of all people, had spirited him away for nearly three months, but his return brought a change: he publicly showcased his skills, teaching anyone who wanted to learn.
Assuming they could absorb what he was doing or saying.
She’d watched, enraptured as he explained the principles and philosophy of inscription, opening her mind to possibilities she hadn’t even considered prior. Runes had always been just runes, a single definition, a single meaning; that was why all inscriptions were kept simple; anything complex took up too much space to put on anything but the very largest items.
Sub meanings, runes arraying with other runes to change the overall meaning, a sort of grammar that they’d never even realized existed right beneath their noses.
It was a door thrust wide open, but it wasn’t good enough for Analissa, not after years of stagnation and then the commitment to put herself beneath the Architect, to become his apprentice.
Wouldn’t mind being beneath him that way either.
That had been a thought she’d brushed aside as quickly as possible. The problem with being one of the honored eight was that everyone within their large village was like squealing kids. Someone older and wiser than her was, well, it was hot.
Focus, Analissa, you’re behaving like a blushing teenager.
Whatever the case, even as her attempt at being his apprentice had been rejected, she’d been offered a different opportunity.
Innovate on something that had been functional for decades now.
Simple. Easy when you get down to it. Why hadn’t I simply thought of doing better?
But the gaze of the Architect was unwavering. And so, she accepted. A single lecture from the Architect, and she was expected to break through decades of functionality.
“It’s time,” The Architect’s voice suddenly cut through her thoughts, his aura that of boundless authority, at least that was how it felt to Analissa.
Trying her best to hide her gulp, she nodded once.
Well, Analissa, you’ve been praying for an opportunity.
Her wish had been granted, and so there was only one thing to do.
“I’m ready.”