Verdan carted the weapons from the guard into his workshop and took stock of what he’d been sent. Commander Griffon had followed his instructions and given Verdan three groups of weapons to work with.

He had four crossbows, four spears and four swords, all of decent make and design and all fairly well-used. They had been looked after and kept in good shape, but the signs of use were there. Verdan supposed that it only made sense for them to send him used weapons rather than newer ones in case he damaged them somehow.

Laying the spears out on a table, Verdan considered the construct to attach to them. He hadn’t been completely honest with the commander; he wasn’t just going to put a Pierce construct on them. A necessary piece of fiction as Verdan had no intent for anyone to know what words he did or didn’t know.

It had always annoyed Verdan that he couldn't use the word for Pierce, but it just didn't resonate with him, and he’d never developed a good concept for it. What he did have, however, was an excellent concept for Break. Maybe it wasn’t quite as good for getting through armour as Pierce would be, but the guard would never know that.

"Hyn. Durst." Verdan spoke, keeping the two words separate as he meshed the concepts into the construct he was weaving. Using a concept about breaking things was difficult, but Verdan quite liked the end result. A strike from this spear now would be effective against all manner of protections, mundane and magical.

"Hyn. Torr." Verdan moved on to the swords next, sticking with the tried and tested cutting enhancement.

"Hyn. Grym." Verdan gave the crossbows a power enhancement, which was the best he could think of right now. A Break enchantment like the spears wouldn’t work as it was the bolts hitting the creature, not the crossbow itself. Hopefully, raw power would make up the difference.

Working mechanically through the weapons, Verdan kept a weather eye on his Aether reserves as he expended a week’s worth of power. Doing so many back to back left Verdan feeling somewhat light-headed, and he took a few minutes to sit down and catch his breath afterwards.

Verdan hated expending large amounts of Aether, but he had the reserves to use, and if he was being honest with himself, he still felt guilty about his lousy impression on the city guard. Hopefully, providing the weapons today would help improve their opinion of him.

Sighing, Verdan ran a hand through his hair as he stacked the weapons on the table and closed the door behind him. "Gward," Verdan whispered as the door closed, placing a ward on it that would alert him if the room was disturbed.

While the Aether constructs on the weapons were temporary, they still warranted additional security. The last thing Verdan needed was someone breaking in, stealing the weapons and selling them off.

Massaging his temples to relieve the headache he had, Verdan made his way down to the room where he’d left the weapons that Kai had brought him. Initially, he’d intended to use the weapons from Commander Griffon to test the potential sensitives being sent to them. However, with Kai bringing in some additional people, that wouldn’t work.

Instead, Verdan dragged in a second table and laid all the weapons out. Everything was there, from the one with the successful enchantment for Kai down to the misshapen swords. Working through them, Verdan made sure that half the weapons had Aether constructs in them, and half didn’t.

Of the half that did, he created a gradient, from a weak construct that would fail after a single hit all the way up to one that was veritably burning with Aether. Verdan wanted to know if these people were sensitive to Aether, but he also wanted to know how good their sense for it was.

Verdan’s headache escalated with each further use of Aether, but he grit his teeth and ignored it. Better to get it done now while he was already struggling than to come back to it another time and have the same issue. Besides, he’d not really pushed himself recently, preferring to conserve Aether and use his most efficient spells.

An important lesson to learn for any wizard was that aetherburn, the headache that developed from high usage, only got worse the more you used it, but that sometimes you had to work through it. The shorter the time frame, the more of a toll it took, but you could also build a tolerance to it.

Verdan’s tolerance seemed to have faded to a mere shadow of what it once was, and it was going to be painful to get it back to where he needed it.

Verdan paused as he laid out the last weapon in the jumbled order he’d put together. The throbbing headache from his aetherburn was making it hard to really focus, but he considered his own attitude for a moment.

His instinctive reaction to getting aetherburn for the first time since he’d woken up was to throw himself into possibly one of the most painful training regimes he’d ever experienced. He’d already been through the training once before. Did he really need to subject himself to that again?

The war was over. It was hard to remember that sometimes, Verdan kept expecting someone to run into the room and declare that they were being attacked or that something had gone wrong. Yes, there were still monsters, still creatures of darkness and agents of corruption, but he’d already decided that it wasn’t his responsibility to try and protect everyone. So why was he trying to prepare himself for aetherburn, for battle magic?

Verdan looked blankly down at the damaged sword in front of him, wondering just what he was doing. The potential research, learning and experimentation were what had driven him at first, but he felt as though he was slipping away from that as time went on. The whole expedition to free the logging camp from monsters had somehow snowballed into a rescue mission.

Verdan didn’t regret his actions, he couldn’t, but he worried that he was falling into old habits. He was a researcher, not an aether-damned war wizard.

Frustrated with himself, Verdan went to head back to the manor. He’d spend some time meditating and working on his spiral. Focusing on that would ease his aetherburn and soothe his mind.

-**-

"Verdan, the city guard are here for some form of test," Adrienne’s voice brought Verdan out of his meditative state sometime later. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been working on his spiral, but, thankfully, his aetherburn was gone now.

"I’ll be down to them in a moment," Verdan called back, taking a moment to finalise the changes to his spiral and mentally get himself in order before heading downstairs.

There were just over a dozen guardsmen waiting patiently in the courtyard between the workshop and manor. Kai, Tom, and Tim were out gathering their own testees, but, to Verdan’s surprise, Elliot was watching over the new arrivals.

The big man loomed over even the tallest guard there, his muscular frame putting all of them to shame as he stood near the manor’s entrance with his arms folded.

"Elliot," Verdan said as he stepped outside, his staff in hand. It always pays to be prepared in strange situations like this.

"Verdan. Kai asked me to watch over the estate while he was away," Elliot said, a twinkle in his eyes belying his stern posture.

"Thank you. You didn’t need to, though," Verdan said, not wanting Elliot to feel obliged to do something he didn’t want to.

"You opened your home to me," Elliot said simply with a shrug of his large shoulders. "The least I can do is offer my time in its protection."

Verdan considered Elliot’s words before nodding. It wasn’t like he was going to try to argue with him.

"Good morning, everyone. Who is in charge here?" Verdan called out as he looked over the group of guardsmen.

"That would be me, Wizard Blacke," a familiar voice called out as the group shifted somewhat and Lieutenant Silver stepped into view.

"Oh, I thought you didn’t feel anything when I tested you?" Verdan asked, curious as to why the Lieutenant was here.

"I’m not sure. I didn’t feel it at first, but I spent a few minutes carrying the rock, and when I let go, it felt like something was missing." Silver explained with a hint of frustration.

"Interesting, you might have a slight amount of Aether sensitivity then," Verdan said as he gestured for Silver to follow him to the workshop. "We’ll run you through the test first and see how it goes."

"Very well, lead the way," Silver said, gesturing for the guardsmen to accompany them as they stepped inside.

"This way then, please," Verdan said, guiding the group up to the room he’d prepared in advance. There were too many to go into the room directly, so he told them or organise themselves before heading inside. It would take several minutes for each test, so the sooner they started, the better.

"So, how do we do this?" Silver asked as he followed Verdan in. The Lieutenant eyed the arrangement of weapons with a curious expression, his eyes flicking over to Verdan for guidance.

"Simply order them correctly, with those that have the least energy at the top left and those with the most energy at the bottom right," Verdan said, taking a seat with his staff across his thighs. He was intrigued by how this would go.

Lieutenant Silver didn’t waste time thinking about the task; instead, getting straight into it by reaching out and grabbing the closest weapons. Based on whatever he was sensing, he then ordered those two and moved to the next set.

Verdan watched with interest as the guard officer slowly moved the weapons into something approaching the right order. The ones without Aether altogether seemed to confuse him somewhat, but Verdan put that down to a lack of confidence in what he was sensing.

Still, there were a few mistakes in the Lieutenant’s order, but the general progression was correct. Not a bad effort for someone who hadn’t been able to sense Aether at all initially.

"There, that’s the best I can do without guessing," Silver said, stepping back from the weapons and frowning at them, seemingly unsatisfied with his performance.

"Are you sure?" Verdan asked, verbally poking the other man to see how convinced he was in what he’d done.

"Yes. That’s as good as I can do," Silver said, his frown disappearing as he answered in a firm tone.

"Very well, jumble them up, please, then send in the next person," Verdan said, mentally tallying Silver to the list of people he’d work with. The man was brusque, but he’d only gotten three wrong in the end, which was enough for what Verdan needed.

Silver gave Verdan a look before returning the weapons to their original order, though Verdan wasn’t sure if that was intentional or not. If it was, then that was the kind of precision that would serve Silver well when he worked with Aether.

Sadly, the next two to take the test performed to a far less satisfactory degree, getting at least half of the weapons in the wrong order. Still, Verdan would trust them to know if Aether was present, just not how much.

The third person was a complete failure. They actually put an empty weapon at the end for the most Aether, saying that it felt the most full of energy as they did.

In the end, ten of the people tested had enough sensitivity to be suitable for what the guard needed. Four of those, including Lieutenant Silver, were sufficiently advanced that they would be able to track the usage of the Aether in the weapons. Once they had enough experience with that, they would be able to tell how many more times the weapons could be used before the constructs failed.

The more self-sufficient that Verdan could make the guardsmen, the better. Though, he did still need to look into a way to either allow the construct to be charged with Essence. That or to find some way to manage the expenditure of his Aether. Otherwise, the guard were going to bleed Verdan dry with requests for enchanted weapons.

Still, that was a problem for another day. It was time to get some work on his spiral done before Kai’s group came to have their testing done.