202. Core Experiments: Wiremu

“Mayakku, Have you got a minute?” I asked, entering her little shop across the road from our compound. Cōmpēṟi was sunning himself in the shop window, which might be putting off her customers. He was a larger-than-normal lion.

“Sure, come through,” Mayakku shouted from the back.

Mayakku had a small workspace in the rear of the shop, but she had a large room in the basement of the residential building she had enchanted as a large workroom.

“I would like to borrow your workroom to perform a ritual. I think this may also help you with the Monster Core Enchanting.”

Her face fell at that as she considered it to be a big failure on her part. Despite the revelation she’d had in the cave with the Sand Elemental, she still had not managed to crack Core Enchanting. There was some aspect to it that was evading her.

“You think a ritual will help?” she asked.

“It can’t hurt. I have been reading up on Monsters and on identifying core affinities, and I want to try the ritual. You have the space that smooths out the natural Spirituality and way more Spiritual Sensitivity than I do. We have never tested the core for its affinity, we just assumed it was from a Bonedog and that it would be a bone affinity, but that is not necessarily the case.”

“You don’t just want to use my space. You want me to perform the ritual?” she asked.

“I want us both to perform the ritual and then compare notes.”

“How do you think this will help?”

“I think it will help us feel out aspects of the affinity that we can compare to other types, and I have a feeling this flavour or aspect may be the reason your enchantments are not accepting the core energy.”

“That may be the case, I am obviously missing something. I had pretty much given up. Why is this of interest to you?”

“You mean besides the Elemental Traders having a Core enchanter in the house?” She made a disbelieving face at me. “I am exploring the link between affinities and bonds. My new skills tell me there is a link, and I want to find out what it is. I think the raw spiritual energy you experienced in the cave with the Sand Elemental is more nuanced than that. I think it has flavours or aspects that the Skill is sensing, and I want to see if I can sense it too. You will likely be the one to sense it, as you have much greater sensitivity than I do. Here this is the ritual, have a look at it.” I handed over the notes I had taken.

“You have some materials?” she asked. I tapped my backpack. “No time like the present,” she said, and we closed the shop and took the tunnel back to the residence.

She had not long finished her permanent enchanting room. It cost a lot to enchant, but it was much larger than her wagon.

This ritual required a diagram to be laid out on a flat surface. Mayakku said it was similar to the Inspect rune, which makes sense. I drew out the diagram using a piece of chalk. There was some discussion in the book, and the material used to draw the diagram was similar to the affinity to get a better result. Often you don’t know the affinity, and chalk was a common general material. The Item or person being tested went into the centre, and the materials you were testing against were around the edges. The Spiritual energy for the ritual would come from the items you were testing it with, so they could only be used once, as the energy was sucked out of them.

The Items had to be Spiritually enhanced; the more enhanced they were, the stronger the energy. Monster materials were the strongest. We had a number of Spiritually enhanced creatures around us. The four lions, plus Dusk, who now had an affinity but wasn’t a monster. Apparently, Ruku’s bond Wai had consumed a lot of Spiritually enhanced food and was now a lot more than he was as an ordinary salamander. On top of that, we had a lot of people with affinities who could produce items for the ritual. Ruku could produce Water, Poison Water, and mist. I could produce Granite, Lava, Sand, and Poison. When I get better at smelting, I am sure I can refine a number of other minerals and metal fragments from the lava. I was also keen to figure out how to use Shadows, but that would have to wait. This all started because Tabitha wanted Mayakku to be able to enchant items that Nyx could recharge, so I am sure we will be experimenting with Shadow soon enough.

We put the Bonedog core in the middle. Around the edge, I put some Items I had purchased. A bone fragment, a claw, some flesh, and some saliva. The Lions provided the saliva. They wouldn’t let me extract a tooth to use. The ritualist, in this case, was the initiator and controller. Mayakku wanted me to make the first attempt while she watched. I was more familiar with the ritual than she was.

The ritual called for the ritualist to perform an action with their hands and say a phrase to start the ritual. Then I had to move to each item in turn and perform a different action and phrase. I had no idea why, but I spent much time reviewing the actions and phrases with Mayakku before we started the ritual. The third time Mayakku stepped back and watched me rather than following along.

When I had finished, she said, “The first action to start the ritual is like you are drawing a rune in the air. It has the same outer shape as the empower rune, but the inside is different. Do it again slowly, and I will try to draw the runes.”

It was harder to draw as when the hand moved to the centre, was that supposed to be a line to the centre or a dot in the centre? She drew common variations, but she couldn’t work out which might be the correct one.

It was time to try the ritual. There were only two different actions and phrases; the one to start the ritual and the one to perform at each item. I had Sense Spiritual and Granite Sense running while concentrating on the Spiritual Perception Attribute. I had Granite Sense on because chalk is a rock, which I only discovered when I had levelled my Mineral Lore. Granite Sense is also my only Master Level Sense. Sense Sprirtual is only mid-Journeyman Level.

When I performed the starting Ritual, the chalk diagram lit dimly to my Sense Spiritual. I moved to the flesh and performed the ritual. There was a change in the Spiritual flow along the chalk to the core, but it seemed unstable or perhaps unhealthy. Then the sensation faded. These senses are hard to put into words. I moved to the bone. The Spiritual flow solidified and hardened but then seemed to crack.

I have nothing to compare these senses to in order to know what might be right. I assume the unhealthy feeling and cracking would indicate they are not right, but maybe a different type of bone is needed. Maybe the strengthening part means I am close. I don’t know. I move on to the claw. The claw produces a sharpness to the spiritual flow. It wasn’t as sharp as it could be, but it wasn’t wrong either. This seemed to be the most correct to date. I moved on the saliva. The sensation was of slimy water, unhealthy slimy water.

The connections started breaking down as the item ran out of Spiritual Energy. The Flesh went first. It had been operating the longest, and then the saliva stopped. It must have the least Spiritual Energy. Then the claw, and then the bone. The ritual was over.

Mayakku was bouncing up and down with excitement. Apparently, she could follow the ritual just by observing. She has Spiritual Sensitivity and Spiritual Flow Skills, and a higher levelled Sense Spiritual.

“I could feel the different Spiritual energies from here,” Mayakku exclaimed. “It’s the claw, right?”

“The claw seemed to be the closest, but it wasn’t perfect.”

“I got a sense of the flavours. I want to try it.”

“Flavours?”

“It is the closest word I can think of to describe the differences.”

“Let's repeat the ritual and see if your senses are stronger when you are running it, and I will observe.”

We re-performed the ritual with fresh ingredients. Mayakku did them in a different order, saliva, flesh, claw, and bone. I could still sense the flavours but not as clearly from outside the ritual. I was interested in what Mayakku sensed.

“Definitely the claw, but not this claw,” she said. “In fact, it may not be a claw. It might be sharpness. Everything was much clearer when I was running the ritual.”

“Interesting, that claw is from a feline. I will try and get one from a canine. Sharpness, you say?” I created a stone dart for piercing and a small stone knife for cutting. I had another two claws and some teeth from the same cat. “Shall we try these?”

Mayakku went first. “I think the tooth and the dart were slightly stronger than the claw and the knife. You try.”

I couldn’t tell the difference from outside the ritual, or my senses were not strong enough. The claw and the tooth had cost me coin, but we were experimenting. I ran the ritual and did the claw first. The sensation was the same as before; I would use this as a benchmark for the others. I did the dart next, and the sense of sharpness returned, and there was a penetrating aspect, but it wasn’t that simple as the sensation of the spiritual stone also came through, and it felt crumbly. The knife had the same stone sensation, so it definitely wasn’t compatible with the stone. The sharpness was still there, though. The tooth was better, and the penetrating sharpness came through strongly.

“Definitely not stone, but apart from that, the dart and tooth were stronger.” It seemed to me that the more spiritual aspects an object had, the more complicated the sense or flavour came through.

Mayakku was definitely more sensitive than I was. Then I saw her looking at Cōmpēṟi, her bond. “Can we test Cōmpēṟi?”

She thought he might be compatible with this Monster Core. “I don’t have any more claws or teeth,” I said. “The idea was to help you with Core Enchanting.”

“I can get some, and we can try it. After all, that is what the ritual is for. I think that before we go there, we will need a lot more practice to test that we are sensing things right. If we mess up, both your lives are on the line.”

I used my Skill Analyse Bond on their bond, and sharp piercing was one of the flavours, but only one. The bond also flowed with a gentleness and precision. This was more than when I tried the other catikin bonds. The Skill was growing, but still only early apprentice level, so I knew I was missing things. Was that sharp piercing flavour enough? I had never heard of a piercing affinity if that is what it was. Maybe it is just our inexperience at interpreting things. There are so many unknowns here.

“Getting back to Core Enchanting, did this help?” I asked, getting back on to the topic.

Mayakku thought for a minute, then went to her desk, pulled some notes, and looked at runes. “Maybe,” she said, “I will need to experiment with this gathering rune. We enchanters changed it so only we can empower the enchantments for repeat business, but changing it to match the core, … that would also need changes to the flow regulator rune….” her voice faded, and she got lost in thought.

“Right, I’ll leave you to it,” but I am not sure she even heard me.

I went and saw Tāttā on my way out and got him to find more claws and teeth but from a variety of animals. We also thought about other spiritually enhanced sharp things, like needles, metal spearheads, etc.