Child of Aidon
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WM [113] Bjorn?
🕑 Added 2025-04-21 19:22:07 +0000 UTCThe process to create an Angel Core would be in two parts. The first was the vessel that was the shell the inner core was housed in. The Angels made the cores into spheres but that seemed to be a design choice not a requirement. Bjorn didn’t know if Angel Cores were valuable or if people still knew about them. If they did, having a working one would put a target on their backs for people that wanted the ancient artifact. Bjorn was going to make one for himself and one for Tanisha. His was going to be a fancy looking collar for one of his necks but Tanisha’s could be anything.
It would have to be something that no one would question a mage to have. He then remembered that while Tanisha had many weapons there was something she was missing. In fact it was something she lost the same week they met in the fight for survival with the troll.
“Can we make Tanisha’s Angel Core a wand?” Bjorn asked.
“I feel… I am unfamiliar with this particular item,” she said cautiously. “You wish to make her Core… into a long, thin stick?”
Bjorn chuckled. “Oh, right. Wandmaking is a mana-based development. It came after your time. Basically, yes. A wand is a mana tool. It helps direct the flow of magic, either acting as a medium or a focus. It’s kind of a magecaster equipments standard these days.”
Laxy frowned, “So... not a walking stick. Nor a staff for balance or defence, but a ceremonial... twig? That assists with mana based spellcraft?”
“That’s not an inaccurate description. Yes. She lost hers a long time ago. ” Bjorn said.
“I can not create mana based enchantment due to limitations on my programing, but if we are making an aetheric stick it should not be a problem.” Laxy agreed.
“Good, do that.” Bjorn said. “Make the collar first, we will start there.”
Bjorn, Failsafe and Isin quickly fell into conversation about how to create the core internals. Bjorn had the same memories but not the understanding that Isin and Failsafe seemed to gleam from them. Bjorn’s version of the memories were like looking at the events from a detached perspective. Isin on the other hand was those memories, in a sense, and gaining them back made him more like himself. Failsafe looked at them analytically. He picked apart the smallest detail to an extent that would be challenging for an organic mind.
Now that they not only had memories of the internals but Isin had ripped it from the control of an Angel, Failsafe and Isin practically had the full schematic. They knew how it ticked and how to control it. The external of the core in the shape of a collar was complete first. There was a large tag with the name “Bjorn Scalebound” emblazoned in fancy calligraphy. The collar was more like a silver gold chain made from interlocking links that seemed more like liquid metal. Bjorn ran a claw over it and was surprised at the level of aetheric conductivity it had. It was practically humming with just a touch.
“To create the internals we will work together.” Laxy said. “Focus on the device with one hand on the fabricator. Let your aether create the framework inside. I will synthesize the material into that framework.” She paused for a moment. “Please be careful, this will require absolute focus. We will not only be dealing with the fundamental nature of aether but also forming the internals with Creation.”
“I thought you couldn’t make Angel Cores.” Bjorn said.
“I can not.” Laxy said. “But it is well within my programing to follow a magical framework for an enchanted collar. For this part I will recommend to have your daughter wait outside.”
He looked over to Anasuya; she reverted to her normal form as a níðhöggr with a notable addition. Instead of a dress she had a red and gold ribbon tied around her neck in a large bow. More concerningly however she was climbing up the side of a rack of weapons which promptly fell over with her laughing all the while.
Bjorn sighed. “None of those are live, right?”
“I take immense offense at the implication I would store loaded weapons within a child’s reach,” Laxy said with a mock gasp, clutching the place where a heart would be on a human. “I follow every protocol for safe weapon storage, thank you very much.”
“Anasuya!” Bjorn snapped.
The little níðhöggr froze mid-laugh, dusted herself off, and stood at attention.
“Yes, Father?” she chirped sweetly.
“This isn’t a playground. Those are dangerous tools. We’re not in the Chaos Lands anymore. Those things belong to Auntie Laxy. What would you do if you broke something?” Bjorn said.
“Sorry.” Anasuya looked down at the floor.
“I am about to do something that requires me to focus.” Bjorn said. “Sit down and wait for me to get done.”
Anasuya nodded, well actually she did a head tilt with a double-blink which meant the same thing. Bjorn had come to recognize many of the níðhöggr expression analogs in his time with her. She then found a place on the floor to sit and wait. Bjorn trusted her to follow his directions. She had during their journey through the Chaos Lands even if it meant sitting still for hours.
“Good girl,” He turned to Laxy. “Let's get started then.”
Bjorn placed his hand on the fabricator and he, Failsafe and Isin focused on the collar in front of them. He pushed a tendrel of aether through the air but felt the fabricator grab hold of it. Instead of resisting he let the device pull the tether of power. In moments it connected him directly to the shell of the new Angel Core.
Bjorn could feel the inside of the hollow device. At the same time he was just looking at the outside. It was an odd dissonance of feeling and visual feedback. He closed his eyes and felt Isin and Failsafe follow suit with their heads. Bjorn didn’t know what to do at this point. He saw the internals of the core the same as Isin and Failsafe in the memories he gained from his past life but there was a separation he had from those memories they didn’t.
“Let the aether flow, I will direct it.” Isin said.
The aether saturated the device and more and more concentrated golden light formed inside. Then it began to condense. Almost like the first specks of ice crystals forming in frigid water. A single channel was made after what felt like hours. Before him thousands if not millions of such structures could fill the space within the collar. A weave of what looked like thread made from crystalized fractals spun into the shape of the channel Isin had created.
A weakness overtook him as soon as it was done and he left the mindspace, opened his eyes and slumped to the ground. He felt exhausted as if he had been standing there for far longer.
“You should rest.” Laxy said.
“Dad!” Anasuya ran over to him.
“why do I feel like I just fought a mountain?” Bjorn asked.
“You have been channeling aether for twelve hours,” Laxy said. “It is normal for you to feel tired.”
“How long is this going to take?” Bjorn stared at her. “We worked for twelve hours... and made one channel? Out of what… millions?”
“Your current rate is faster than expected for your first attempt.” Laxy said. “I am unsure at how long this process will take you. I suspect you will get faster as the skills develop. I can not assist in this endeavor unfortunately, I am unable to know the process to create an Angel Core. Following an outline is… pushing that directive as far as I can.”
Bjorn bit back a frustrated reply. It wasn’t Laxy’s fault. He was the one that needed to understand the flow of aether better. He just wasn’t even sure where he could improve.
He groaned as he pushed himself up to sit. “I need food. Turns out focusing Aether is more draining than swimming through blood maya.”
***
Bjorn was in the barracks; it was the only fabricator that could make food readily. He allowed Anasuya to try as many different vegetables as she liked. She instantly fell in love with sweet potatoes. He was fine with it until she got a sugar rush and couldn’t stop running and flying all over the place. After that, Bjorn had to institute a firm one-sweet potato-per-day rule, to which she agreed with the dramatic resignation of someone truly oppressed by the universe.
Eventually, she burned through the last of her energy and collapsed against him, a tiny form wanting to share warmth against his side. She cuddled up against him until sleep claimed them both.
The next day offered little improvement in progress. Another single channel, this one stacked precisely above the previous, required hours of focus. Bjorn poured over the process, no longer just brute-forcing power into the core but watching, well really he was feeling how the aether moved and aligned. Why it flowed through one path and not another. With each session, he began to notice more. Curves within curves. Symmetries that looped back on themselves.
It wasn’t until the sixth day that a spark ignited in his mind. He finally saw a pattern not only in the core but in the math that made up the aether itself. Each channel wasn’t placed randomly. They followed a sequence. At first, he thought it was a numerological spacing to the Fibonacci sequence or golden ratios—but no. It was cleaner, more elegant.
The channels were in order of perfect numbers. 6. 28. 496. 8128 and so on.
“We need to talk about the structure.” Bjorn said. “The channels. I’m seeing a pattern—something mathematical. Perfect numbers. First six, then twenty-eight, four hundred ninety-six… and I think the next might be eight-thousand-something?”
“8128. Correct.” Failsafe said with usual glee. “You are observing the harmonic convergence in the aetheric lattice we are creating. We go up for levels of perfect numbers then circle back down. These numbers aren’t arbitrary, they are mathematically ideal. Each is a perfect number, the sum of its proper divisors. It’s a rare sequence that aligns with how aether flows through this plane.”
“Right, but what does that mean in practice?” Bjorn questioned. “Why does it work like this? Why are we stacking channels in this specific sequence? I want to help. We are going too slowly and won’t make it at this rate.”
Failsafe hesitated as if thinking about a response. “Because each channel is not merely a container of energy.”
“Yeah I know it held part of Nuriel’s soul.” Bjorn said.
“Let me finish, I was going somewhere with this.” Failsafe said taking on a teacher’s tone. “It is a transdimensional conductor. Think of them as frequency gates, arranged not only spatially but temporally and dimensionally. We are building a spellform in four dimensions while operating within three.”
“Imagine the core not as a sphere but as a growing song, Bjorn.” Isin cut in. “Each channel is a note in a melody that must rise and fold back into itself without discord. The perfect numbers are not just mathematically clean which is important but more so, they feel right. I have a strong inclination that this is more feeling than math when it comes down to it.”
“Each perfect number allows us to arrange the spellform with no internal contradiction in the fourth-dimensional topology. The aether moves through this structure not within this space, but into the fourth, then cycles back into the next channel.” Failsafe said.
“So the aether flows out… and up… but in another direction we can’t perceive in the normal three dimensions?” Bjorn questions.
“Yes, but we can perceive that dimension, unlike me in the past we are a True.” Isin said. “There is no guesswork with how things are going to flow in the parts a mortal would be unable to see. I was only able to understand it after we came back to the warp and saw that serpent ripping at the fabric of reality. The reason mortals go mad at such a sight is because other dimensions were visible to the naked eye.”
“I think I get it.” Bjorn said. “I have to try something.”
Bjorn’s mind dived deep into his core where he saw the cracks forming from the animal magic slowly shedding away. He pressed intent into those gaps, not a spell, not in the traditional sense. A command. A truth, carved with will. It hurt.
The shape of the spellform came in flashes. Pain and clarity. He threaded it with Primana, the source that transcended maya and mana both, and began to build. Not in symbols, but in meaning. Not in words, he was True Immortal, he didn’t weave spells he weaved laws.
Aether surged with some resistance but soon yielded. It locked into place, like a puzzle finding its perfect completion. He felt the weight of it. The permanence it would place in his soul for a time. This would be the second spell, the only other one he could form until animal magic’s limits were fully sloughed off from his soul.
The sensation was just like Isin said. It wasn’t the math that guided him nor strange symbols or formulae. It was feeling first, but the math still followed. Aether itself demanded structure, craved containment. Where maya was breath, mana was life, and primana was the essence of all things. Aether was limitation. Not weakness, there was a big difference, it was refinement. The desire to become less so one could become more.
“Bjorn what are you doing… no how did you? What?” Failsafe questioned.
Wandmaker
Primana Cost: 1000 (channeled over 12 hours)
Inscribe the Aetheric Pattern of Perfection into a suitable vessel. This spell may only be cast upon an aetheric vessel. During the entire 12-hour channeling, the caster must remain motionless and undisturbed. Any interruption, whether by movement or external force, triggers a catastrophic magical backlash, instantly drawing the full 1000 Primana. If the caster lacks sufficient Primana the remainder is forcibly taken from their life force at 2x times remaining draw.
“It worked!” Bjorn said.
“You could do that this whole time?” Isin questioned.
“You even named it,” Failsafe said. “It could have been a cooler name, but you made a second spell. An aetheric one too!”
“I don’t know, I think it is a good name.” Bjorn said out of breath.
“At our level of primana regeneration we should be able to manage it.” Isin said.
“In two days we go and find Tanisha and put an end to this whole mess once and for all.” Bjorn said as he promptly passed out.
***
The aetheric spellform snapped into place without much fanfare. There were no glowing glyphs, no ripples in the air, no spine-chilling warble of higher-dimensional energy. It was almost mundane. In fact if not for Laxy’s fingers rapidly weaving strings of pure Creation into the collar as the channels were made it would look like nothing was happening at all.
The spell was not even complicated or particularly draining. It was eighty-three primana an hour, but at Bjorn’s current Primana Regeneration he gained nearly three times in the same time. Not to mention that was without the bonus from Tanisha. Keeping concentration wasn’t even fully required anymore. Since it was a spell once it was casted Failsafe could monitor it and control the aether perfectly. Bjorn nearly fell asleep before when the aetheric item was suddenly complete.
“The Angel Core is fully functional.” Laxy said. “It must be connected to your aetheric form. Push as much Aether into the Core as possible. It will feel as though it is draining you, it is not. The Aether will loop through it then back into you completing the connection.”
Bjorn did as he was told and again was surprised in the lack of a reaction. The aether left his core looped through the Angel Core then came back to him. Then, the collar rose from the table, graceful and deliberate. It hovered for a breathless moment, then clasped smoothly around the middle neck of his hydra form, anchoring to the soul beneath the flesh.
“That’s it?” Bjorn questioned.
“We still have Tanisha’s wand.” Failsafe said.
“I know, I mean—” Bjorn gestured vaguely at the collar. “This. The Angel Core. I thought there’d be a reality quake, or... a celestial scream or something. But this? It just floated on.”
“It’s just a tool, do you expect after a black smith finishes polishing a blade for it to blind everyone that sees it?” Failsafe questioned.
“The fact nothing is leaking out of it means it was made correctly.” Isin said.
“Well on to Tanisha’s wand then.” Bjorn said.
***
The underground city had once been vibrant then it became a place of death, abandoned and left as a machine-world carved into titanium veins. Its towers gleaming like the spines of some buried True Immortal. Now, only ruin remained. Buildings crumpled under the weight of time and violence. Streets were cracked, littered with hundreds of shattered metal limbs, flickering eyes and scorched silicon cybernetics leaking sparks and smoke.
The stillness was broken by a sudden, deafening explosion. An ongoing battle which was finally reaching its climax. A burst of golden plasma lighting up the city's remaining skyline.
From between the towers, a shape emerged, a mechanical behemoth, the size of a house, standing on four crab-like legs. Its plating shimmered with iridescent alloy, its joints hissing with superheated coolant. It was damaged beyond repair but still fighting just as fiercely as it had started days prior. Its arms, more like cannons than limbs, rotated and locked with shrieking hydraulics. Aether surged within it, coalescing into a brilliant beam, then fired.
The landscape cracked and screamed as the pure aetheric energy screamed through the wreckage, slicing a ruined skyscraper in half. The column collapsed behind the three figures facing it, each barely dodged the beam’s kiss of annihilation.
Aurelius moved first in a blur almost vanishing. One moment he was beside the others; the next, he blurred forward, faster than sound, his blade leaving arcs of broken space behind him. He carved clean through one of the robot’s legs in a shimmer of dissonant speed. The machine screeched and buckled, spraying coolant and fire.
Fuyumi raised both arms. Ice bloomed like living mist, crystalizing in spirals from her fingertips. She froze the barrel of the robot’s primary cannon mid-charge. The metal screeched in protest, lines of frost webbing across its surface. The glow sputtered then stilled vents quickly vented the access energy.
The third figure, already airborne, landed like judgment. A woman wreathed in crackling violet plasma, her bardiche held aloft. She slammed it down onto the robot’s main chassis, the head of the weapon glowing with radiant runes. The impact erupted in a thunderclap of energy, plasma searing through the hull and deep into the core.
The robot's limbs spasmed as systems fried and final protections failed. Its death throes ended in a final hiss of venting aether and silence. Smoke filled the air. Shards of broken machine rained down like ash. Sparks danced in the shadows.
From beyond the rubble, another presence stirred. A tall silhouette stepped into the fractured light Bjorn. Surveyed the scene before him with awe and relief.
The woman on top of the ruined robot turned slowly, her boots clinking against the cooling metal. Her armor was battered, streaked with blood and burn marks. The humming of residual power still pulsed through her bardiche. The visor of her helm hissed open slightly, revealing only a sliver of her face, but her glowing golden eyes shone with disbelief and stunned recognition.
“Bjorn,” Her voice cut through the settling dust.
It was not a question of fact, but of wonder. As if she’d seen a ghost step into the world of the living.
End of Book 2.
Comments
Child of Aidon
And then she turned it to Bjorn and said "Maybe the real The Chronicles of a Scalebound Sage: Wandmaker, were the friends we made a long the way!" And everyone clapped!
WingedIkaros
Is this the second time we've gotten a book's namesake in the final chapter?
Child of Aidon
Not going to be long I promise!
Mike
And now the long wait. Lol. Glad I was doing grip exercises in preparation for this cliffhanger. :)
