Now that Ulric had a good idea of Brighteyes' condition he knew there was no chance of making the trip through the wood to wherever that village might be in the nearest future. Health at under half, obviously wincing at certain motions, especially when he had to bend over to pick anything up, Brighteyes was in pain and hiding it. Hiding it well, to give a child his apparent age credit. But, tough as nails as he might be, taking Brighteyes out into that forest and attempting to traverse who knows what would be a death sentence if they needed to run. Ulric knew he could probably carry the kid and move pretty fast, he'd carried him down from the canopy, after all. Not to be forgotten though, it'd taken him about twice as long to make that return trip as to get up the tree to the canopy. He'd give himself good odds, he'd improved his climbing skills tremendously in the month he'd been regularly ascending the towering trees. However, one of those snakes catching them going up or down and there was no chance Brighteyes would manage an escape.
Nothing for it.
Ulric looked over to Brighteyes, who'd taken on a patient waiting posture, sitting at the camp fire. Might as well get the cards on the table.
"Brighteyes, you know you can't travel like that right?" Ulric was pointing to the status window only he could see as he said it.
At Brighteyes nod he continued.
"Good. You take the next few days and do not much. Eat. Sleep. Recover your strength. I'm going to work on a few projects and get us ready to travel. Meantime, think of anything you know we'll need to travel. You let me know now and I will prepare. Understand me Brighteyes?"
"Understand you, Ulric Glade Chief. Brighteyes hear and obey." the boy sounded almost deferential. He must have been in more pain than Ulric thought. Or maybe it had to do with his own recent change in status. The status had recognized him as [Lord of the Glade]. Probably meant he now possessed a higher standing than some random hermit in a distant wood. Enough to get a polite tone from Brighteyes, anyway. Good enough, it wasn't like he was a "Yes, sir. No sir" type of guy but he'd not be putting his ass in the wind with someone who didn't respect him enough to listen. Besides, with the trip upcoming he didn't want to take chances that a bold youth with too much pride would fuck something up and get both of them killed, simply because he wouldn't follow directions.
The rest of the day went by quickly. Another shared meal, a few camp chores. Ulric stripped the corpse of the Beastman warrior and made plans to retrofit himself some armor. He was relatively sure he could use bones from the [Forest Lord] in the place of those metal plates, they were stronger and lighter than any steel he'd known of in his past life. Fucking magic. He'd make a bone version of the scale armor to start.
Nothing had yet put noticeable damage on the leather made from [Forest Lord] hide, not broken branches, thorns, or anything else he'd run into so far. Even the [Bolt Deer]’s attempt at goring him had failed to produce a rip in the material. Thankfully he hadn't had it tested by that spear, which looked like it would get through cleanly. But just because he hadn't run into trouble didn't mean he wouldn't. Especially not when his first encounter with men had resulted in violent conflict. Future conflicts Ulric wanted to be better geared to face.
Ulric had never been much of a craftsman during his first life. He had an obsessive attention to detail, honed during his years of engineering but his mind frequently turned to the abstract rather than the concrete. He enjoyed the use of his tools to accomplish specific goals or to manufacture solutions but not as a hobby. Hiking, hunting, and relaxing in forests was how he spent most of his free time, back when his legs could take it. Things changed here, early on.
Long days spent sitting in his shelter during the rainy season had produced an unexpected enemy: boredom. With his essential needs met, Ulric had been faced with a surfeit of useless time. He'd been unable to gather food but had plenty. Water was everywhere. He no longer burned fires simply for the sake of burning them as he had a sufficient number of furred hides preserved to stay warm, thus wood was not an issue. The stove in his shelter was stocked for a week at a time and pulling stocked wood from under a small wood shed wasn't involved enough to occupy him. A profound boredom began to eat at him over those first few days and he nearly had a nervous breakdown from overthinking. Towards the end of preserving sanity, Ulric took on projects.
Magic occupied his thought initially. Figuring out how to control and manipulate mana, determining the exact nature of his stats, the elemental breakdowns of magic, so far as he could determine them, and crafting the full set of elemental spells was enough to satisfy him. But this led to the problem where, once he'd exhausted his mana, he returned to having nothing to do for long periods of time. Which led to his exploration of handicrafts.
Sewing, carving, fletching and bowyer work, to start. He'd harvested enough materials of exceedingly high quality from the [Forest Lord]'s corpse to be able to experiment. He'd figured out how to treat and process leather early, his several discussions with a taxidermist who handled his few elk trophies providing most of the details.
Sewing wasn't hard, the knots and stitches an exercise in remembering some knot theory, heh get it? with a healthy dose of trial and error. Carving was a complete unknown but a week of steady practice following spell-crafting got him the gist. Two weeks into the isolation chamber and Ulric had an epiphany: he could make a bow.
He'd bow hunted occasionally in his past life, once gun hunting had grown stale from lack of challenge, although he'd stopped hunting when his knees went out and the depression set in. Still he'd fantasized about making his own bow back in those days. Reality was that you would spend half a day carving, uncover a crack or flaw in the stave and have a very involved walking stick. His second [Steelwood] bowstave that shattered nearly drove him over the edge.
That ended when Ulric remembered how to make glue from antlers and hide. Hours watching a master bowyer make a laminated horn bow gave Ulric inspiration.
A day spent boiling [Bladefern Elk] horn, scraping and liming hides before boiling them as well resulted in a clay pot full of glue solution which he poured into a thin mold for cooling and drying. This took days due to the humidity, even when the hide mold was pulled over top of fire heated stones. As the glue dried, Ulric made decided to use the incredibly hard wood he’d discovered to make a laminate stave with a thinned rib bone core.
Sweat dripped from his forehead, his forearms knotted, the muscles clamping down as he drew his knife through layers of [Steelwood], one hand on the hilt and the other on a leather wrapped point to protect his hand from slips. Eventually he graduated to tapping the spine of the knife with a heavy stone to drive the blade through the seam he’d created, following the natural grain to make thin strips. It was the diligence of days to work his knife through a [Steelwood] bough to produced quarter centimeter strips the wood proved incredibly straight grained, something for which Ulric thanked the Watcher and all the stars in the sky.
Ulric had boiled water in a covered pot and then poured it into a nested wood channel, which allowed the steam into a hide blanketed chamber holding the strips. This allowed him to expose the wood strips to large amounts of hot steam. It took some time but steaming the wood then gluing the layers around the bone core and with all the strength he could muster to wrap and tie it over a properly rounded stone got the shape he wanted. Layers of [Steelwood], glue, and a core of [Forest Lord] bone dried under a boiled leather wrap, the drying leather compressing the materials even as the glue set and the steamed wood settled. Ulric only had to repeat the process twice to get a useful bowstave. It was worth it. What resulted was a masterpiece, at least in his eyes. His braided gigabear tendon bowstring dried about the same time as the stave and, it was with a shocked grunt that he found it a serious effort to string the bow.
This was the source of his recurved long bow's power. Fletching was simple, the same glue held feathers and helped bind glassresin broad heads which were near a hand long and two fingers wide. Far bigger than anything he'd have hunted with on Earth. Then again, they were going to be used on things far more dangerous than deer. They'd done a number on the kidnappers.
Brighteyes had remarked that the bow would “Inspire a riot” which was all the praise Ulric could ask for.
Altogether, the month of being sequestered in his shelter had proved a boon. Ulric had left the rainy season both far more adept at magery and at the bushcraft necessary to thrive in the forest. He'd rediscovered a love for bow hunting, given new flavor for its necessity in these wild lands full of vigilant monsters.
Now Brighteyes had provided a new mission. Contact the natives of this land, learn what he could, and return a boy to his parents. Easy. Ulric just had to navigate several kilometers of wilderness with a child he could only communicate to in pidgin before free climbing down an escarpment that made El Capitan look like a playground see-saw.
These thoughts occupied him while Ulric used his bone chisel to split a giga bear tibia and several ribs into sections of straight and gently curved bone which he then had to grind smooth on a roughened flat sanding stone. Smooth strokes of bone on stone occupied his hours and night fell before he'd finished producing the segments he'd theorized would mimic the scaled patterns. He ate a quick meal of smoked meat and raw turnip things and turned in for the night. Brighteyes had beat him to bed hours ago but obsession was driving him.
Ulric woke before the sunrise, as had become his norm. For reasons probably involving his reforging and the lack of access to easy artificial lighting, he had slept about 3 hours after sundown and rose just before dawn. According to his best estimates he only needed about five hours sleep to feel fully rested. The longer, seven and eight hour sleeps of this waning solar season were downright slothful. Whatever the case, he had breakfast done and was already experimenting with some leather scraps by the time Brighteyes woke.
The thought of magical mending or joining of leather seams wouldn't leave him alone. Seams always caused problems. They were natural weak points, places for water to invade a previously watertight material, and vastly increased the time to produce a complex shape. His leather boots in particular had taken a great deal of time to make comfortable as well as protective. He'd never appreciated the wizardry of cobblers before he'd been pressed to make his own footwear.
Ulric was now trying to mold mana to the shape of the leather. He had a clear vision of what he wanted. He wanted two pieces of the same material to be one piece, smooth and continuous. He had a vague idea of how to do it. Make the leather as liquid and malleable as water so it flowed together, sort of like a metallic vacuum weld with magic. Keep the edges that should meld isolated and then make like join to like using magic to weld them. Last came the Will. This task was easier, in a way, than a fireball or a lightning spell. Ulric just had to infuse mana with matter and convince two pieces that they weren't separate at all.
It was more difficult in that matter seemed to have its own "mana shape" and you needed to match the mana to the substrate or it wouldn't bond and, therefore, wouldn't accept the change you were trying to enact on it. He was seeding graphite again. It was the same problem only with magic instead of metal atoms. The thought made him curse viciously in multiple languages.
Ulric had died before solving the problem, but, before he had, he had created a simulation that had demonstrated a working concept to resolve the issue. It had been impossible. Needed impossible conditions to operate. Like, removing all atmosphere in a perfect vacuum. Something he could do now with air magic, right?
Several minutes intense concentration and Ulric created the spell he needed. Intent focused on absence. Visualize the emptiness, the air molecules moving elsewhere and staying elsewhere or staying still. Understand the pressure lowering to zero, as the molar concentration of gas went to zero, temperature following it, the gas law dictating the relation between mass, pressure, volume, and temperature. Will the void to form around the leather. His Core flashed, power surged through channels, and exploded into reality.
Leather crackled like glass and shattered, then fell apart into a fine powder which then dissipated to smoke. Mana had rushed from his core at an incredible rate forming according to his desires and condensing in the space he'd emptied of everything surrounding the leather pieces. Slumping forward Ulric distantly heard the status as his breath harshly grated on lungs seared by cold beyond description, rapidly dissipating as his effort lost focus, which was followed by a loud rushing bang as air moved into the disturbed air around where the leather had been.
*PING*
When he inspected his status a minute later he saw what he suspected. It was a failure. It was a success he'd never imagined.
He'd created a pristine, perfect vacuum. A zero pressure space. And, as predicted by the scientist Kelvin, that zero pressure had resulted from a zero kinetic energy condition. Other laws then applied. He created a zero pressure around a real object. Thermodynamics had their say and the energy of the leather was drawn out, the heat trying to fill the stilled space, burning his mana as that energy was dissipated, until the leather was also without energy. At which point it fell apart, since the very electrons holding it together stopped moving, bonds failing. Total destruction of the material.
And ye gods the cost. Ulric's core was exhausted, his mana tapped completely. He'd made a vacuum in a space a little less than a basketball, destroyed a couple of pieces of leather the size of his hands, for about two seconds, and it had run him dry. A spell-work beyond his strength.
This, Ulric realized, was the power of magic. A man could create the impossible. He had little doubt that, without the knowledge of exactly how the properties related the resulting cost of the spell would have been completely beyond him. Knowledge was Power, indeed.
The problem was, Ulric realized, he had known exactly what he wanted. He wanted zero pressure. Magic gave him zero pressure. Then it extracted the cost, the monkey's paw curling a finger as the rest of the world got a say. Causes had effects, even for magic. Maybe especially for magic. You don't go mucking about with existence at the extremes of what is possible and not stumble across some fairly terrifying realities. Such as that he'd nearly killed himself breathing super cooled air for a fraction of a second. Like dipping your hand in liquid nitrogen, you only got away with it because you had the thermal energy to spare and there were already gases in the vicinity to take the majority of the cooling. Spooky.
Ulric took a few minutes to think it over, hoping Brighteyes hadn't seen the supposedly responsible adult in the room nearly suicide through stupidity. He might have gone about that all wrong, a thought which nearly summoned all the gods of obvious that had ever existed to smite him. The problem in his old world had required vacuum, to prevent the metal from oxidizing or reacting while it was seeded into the graphite lattice. Maybe joining the leather didn't have such a harsh requirement. For one thing, it didn't seem to be reactive. Maybe the answer really was to envision two pieces becoming whole the edges melding to one, without extra steps. That meant shaping mana to match the material.
Ulric had skipped that first experiment since he didn't necessarily know what was involved with fusing mana to an object.
"Stupid." he muttered. "Blind stupid. Just because it seems hard doesn't mean it's incorrect. Went with something different than I intended just because I thought I already knew enough about something else to feel like it was progress." It was a common failing amongst junior engineers. Handed a new problem they tried to use tools and methods developed for other applications instead of thinking about what exactly they needed to do to work around the given situation. When you have a hammer…
This time he'd lucked out. The mistake had only cost him time and a little pride. Was the [Absolute Zero] a good spell? Yes. For the very specific situation of needing to render something down to its atoms that weighed maybe a kilogram, wasn't moving, and was close enough to touch, while costing his entire mana pool. For essentially anything else? No, the spell was garbage.
Ulric resigned himself to working on his armor pieces while he waited for his mana to regenerate. He'd go slower than planned, now that he was in mana exhaustion and suffering the headache it inflicted.
Taking up the bone plates he'd ground smooth yesterday, Ulric started laying them out in a pattern which allowed the curved plates, about a hand long and eight centimeters wide, to overlap. These curved plates would go on his sides, matching the curve of his body. The flats he'd use to cover his abdomen, the squared plates being suitable to cover his front. He'd already decided that he'd try to make shoulder, breast, and back plates out of the [Forest Lord]'s scapulae. They were more than broad enough. He could probably fuck it up twice and still have enough to do the job.
There would be gaps, but not many. He was going for a Lorica Segmentata kind of affair. The Romans had conquered the known world with it, and the professional soldiers had been able to march nearly 100 kilometers a day in it, carrying their gear. Furthermore, if he didn't dick it up, he'd still be able to climb and shoot his bow in the stuff. It wouldn't do what plate armor did, but he wasn't planning on fighting on horseback either. Problem was that a proper Lorica had something close to 40 pieces and they each needed to be secured to a leather under coat because he didn't have any intention of tying the thirty or so straps to assemble it. He'd need to punch at least four holes in each piece to secure them. With a monster bear tooth awl and a hammer. Sighing at the time and lamenting his lack of skill to simply bore the holes with magic, Ulric got to hammering.
Brighteyes wondered over while Ulric worked. He took an interest in the project and watched raptly as Lorica segments were placed over marked locations on his hide vest and punched to mark the bore holes. Ulric had decided he'd do the breast, back, and shoulder plates together and strap them to the semi jerkin he was making rather than fixing them directly. It would let him shed the bulkiest part of the armor when needed, while still keeping his abdomen protected. It was also easier. An important consideration given that he was finding his skills not quite up to the task of precisely shaping the hard bones with the tools on hand.
Once the segments were all marked, Ulric overlapped them to check that they would provide the cover he was imagining. No way to really know until they were secured and he was moving around in it.
"What you doing bones Ulric Glade Chief?" Brighteyes had watched quietly for nearly an hour and wanted to confirm his suspicions.
Ulric looked up from the one thousandth hole he'd just finished punching. At least, it felt like a thousand. He'd broken two awls. The third didn't look like it would hold much longer. He'd run out of bear teeth at this rate. Frowning at his pace, Ulric thought about how to answer Brighteyes question.
"I am making a set of armor, in case I need to fight more dangerous monsters than those I normally hunt. Including fighting against warriors like the ones who took you. The armor comes from, ironically enough, the design of those my ancestors fought eons ago. They ruled a vast empire and changed warfare. The first professional army commanded by career soldiers. I'd not begrudge them their genius, not when I can make their strength my own. Much like I am making the [Forest Lord]'s strength mine by using its bones and hide to fashion this equipment." A long discourse for Brighteyes to chew on. Should keep him busy enough to not bother Ulric too much.
"You warrior Ulric Glade Chief?" Brighteyes looked even more curious now.
Damn. So much for that.
Ulric looked back down to the holes he was drilling. A rotary hand drill would be just the thing. But how to make drill bits? Shaking his head he decided how he'd answer Brighteyes.
"Not a warrior Brighteyes. Not in my own mind at least. I am…was…an engineer. A man who provides solutions to improve the world of my people. That part of my life is over now, I think. Now I am simply doing as I must to survive in a new land amongst fantastic peoples and powerful creatures. I killed the [Forest Lord] because it attacked me. I killed the men who took you because it seemed right to destroy people who would hurt children. This armor, is a necessity that I had not made before because I didn't think I'd need it. I was wrong and so I am correcting that mistake in preparation. Fortune favors the prepared mind, after all."
Again he'd hoped to buy some peace. He wasn't trying to confuse the lad but he didn't mind giving him enough to think about to be able to work without distraction. Without telling the kid to stomp off somewhere, at least.
Brighteyes looked confused now. Good, probably-
"But you know armor make? Can hunt beast and kill men? Know ways for destruction magic?" Brighteyes was getting more energetic as he went.
"Is wrong word? Warrior is hunter, guard of people in Elven home." He pointed to Ulric's bow and spear and the armor to be at Ulric's feet.
"What else Ulric Glade Chief if not Warrior?"
Now that Ulric had a good idea of Brighteyes' condition he knew there was no chance of making the trip through the wood to wherever that village might be in the nearest future. Health at under half, obviously wincing at certain motions, especially when he had to bend over to pick anything up, Brighteyes was in pain and hiding it. Hiding it well, to give a child his apparent age credit. But, tough as nails as he might be, taking Brighteyes out into that forest and attempting to traverse who knows what would be a death sentence if they needed to run. Ulric knew he could probably carry the kid and move pretty fast, he'd carried him down from the canopy, after all. Not to be forgotten though, it'd taken him about twice as long to make that return trip as to get up the tree to the canopy. He'd give himself good odds, he'd improved his climbing skills tremendously in the month he'd been regularly ascending the towering trees. However, one of those snakes catching them going up or down and there was no chance Brighteyes would manage an escape.
Nothing for it.
Ulric looked over to Brighteyes, who'd taken on a patient waiting posture, sitting at the camp fire. Might as well get the cards on the table.
"Brighteyes, you know you can't travel like that right?" Ulric was pointing to the status window only he could see as he said it.
At Brighteyes nod he continued.
"Good. You take the next few days and do not much. Eat. Sleep. Recover your strength. I'm going to work on a few projects and get us ready to travel. Meantime, think of anything you know we'll need to travel. You let me know now and I will prepare. Understand me Brighteyes?"
"Understand you, Ulric Glade Chief. Brighteyes hear and obey." the boy sounded almost deferential. He must have been in more pain than Ulric thought. Or maybe it had to do with his own recent change in status. The status had recognized him as [Lord of the Glade]. Probably meant he now possessed a higher standing than some random hermit in a distant wood. Enough to get a polite tone from Brighteyes, anyway. Good enough, it wasn't like he was a "Yes, sir. No sir" type of guy but he'd not be putting his ass in the wind with someone who didn't respect him enough to listen. Besides, with the trip upcoming he didn't want to take chances that a bold youth with too much pride would fuck something up and get both of them killed, simply because he wouldn't follow directions.
The rest of the day went by quickly. Another shared meal, a few camp chores. Ulric stripped the corpse of the Beastman warrior and made plans to retrofit himself some armor. He was relatively sure he could use bones from the [Forest Lord] in the place of those metal plates, they were stronger and lighter than any steel he'd known of in his past life. Fucking magic. He'd make a bone version of the scale armor to start.
Nothing had yet put noticeable damage on the leather made from [Forest Lord] hide, not broken branches, thorns, or anything else he'd run into so far. Even the [Bolt Deer]’s attempt at goring him had failed to produce a rip in the material. Thankfully he hadn't had it tested by that spear, which looked like it would get through cleanly. But just because he hadn't run into trouble didn't mean he wouldn't. Especially not when his first encounter with men had resulted in violent conflict. Future conflicts Ulric wanted to be better geared to face.
Ulric had never been much of a craftsman during his first life. He had an obsessive attention to detail, honed during his years of engineering but his mind frequently turned to the abstract rather than the concrete. He enjoyed the use of his tools to accomplish specific goals or to manufacture solutions but not as a hobby. Hiking, hunting, and relaxing in forests was how he spent most of his free time, back when his legs could take it. Things changed here, early on.
Long days spent sitting in his shelter during the rainy season had produced an unexpected enemy: boredom. With his essential needs met, Ulric had been faced with a surfeit of useless time. He'd been unable to gather food but had plenty. Water was everywhere. He no longer burned fires simply for the sake of burning them as he had a sufficient number of furred hides preserved to stay warm, thus wood was not an issue. The stove in his shelter was stocked for a week at a time and pulling stocked wood from under a small wood shed wasn't involved enough to occupy him. A profound boredom began to eat at him over those first few days and he nearly had a nervous breakdown from overthinking. Towards the end of preserving sanity, Ulric took on projects.
Magic occupied his thought initially. Figuring out how to control and manipulate mana, determining the exact nature of his stats, the elemental breakdowns of magic, so far as he could determine them, and crafting the full set of elemental spells was enough to satisfy him. But this led to the problem where, once he'd exhausted his mana, he returned to having nothing to do for long periods of time. Which led to his exploration of handicrafts.
Sewing, carving, fletching and bowyer work, to start. He'd harvested enough materials of exceedingly high quality from the [Forest Lord]'s corpse to be able to experiment. He'd figured out how to treat and process leather early, his several discussions with a taxidermist who handled his few elk trophies providing most of the details.
Sewing wasn't hard, the knots and stitches an exercise in remembering some knot theory, heh get it? with a healthy dose of trial and error. Carving was a complete unknown but a week of steady practice following spell-crafting got him the gist. Two weeks into the isolation chamber and Ulric had an epiphany: he could make a bow.
He'd bow hunted occasionally in his past life, once gun hunting had grown stale from lack of challenge, although he'd stopped hunting when his knees went out and the depression set in. Still he'd fantasized about making his own bow back in those days. Reality was that you would spend half a day carving, uncover a crack or flaw in the stave and have a very involved walking stick. His second [Steelwood] bowstave that shattered nearly drove him over the edge.
That ended when Ulric remembered how to make glue from antlers and hide. Hours watching a master bowyer make a laminated horn bow gave Ulric inspiration.
A day spent boiling [Bladefern Elk] horn, scraping and liming hides before boiling them as well resulted in a clay pot full of glue solution which he poured into a thin mold for cooling and drying. This took days due to the humidity, even when the hide mold was pulled over top of fire heated stones. As the glue dried, Ulric made decided to use the incredibly hard wood he’d discovered to make a laminate stave with a thinned rib bone core.
Sweat dripped from his forehead, his forearms knotted, the muscles clamping down as he drew his knife through layers of [Steelwood], one hand on the hilt and the other on a leather wrapped point to protect his hand from slips. Eventually he graduated to tapping the spine of the knife with a heavy stone to drive the blade through the seam he’d created, following the natural grain to make thin strips. It was the diligence of days to work his knife through a [Steelwood] bough to produced quarter centimeter strips the wood proved incredibly straight grained, something for which Ulric thanked the Watcher and all the stars in the sky.
Ulric had boiled water in a covered pot and then poured it into a nested wood channel, which allowed the steam into a hide blanketed chamber holding the strips. This allowed him to expose the wood strips to large amounts of hot steam. It took some time but steaming the wood then gluing the layers around the bone core and with all the strength he could muster to wrap and tie it over a properly rounded stone got the shape he wanted. Layers of [Steelwood], glue, and a core of [Forest Lord] bone dried under a boiled leather wrap, the drying leather compressing the materials even as the glue set and the steamed wood settled. Ulric only had to repeat the process twice to get a useful bowstave. It was worth it. What resulted was a masterpiece, at least in his eyes. His braided gigabear tendon bowstring dried about the same time as the stave and, it was with a shocked grunt that he found it a serious effort to string the bow.
This was the source of his recurved long bow's power. Fletching was simple, the same glue held feathers and helped bind glassresin broad heads which were near a hand long and two fingers wide. Far bigger than anything he'd have hunted with on Earth. Then again, they were going to be used on things far more dangerous than deer. They'd done a number on the kidnappers.
Brighteyes had remarked that the bow would “Inspire a riot” which was all the praise Ulric could ask for.
Altogether, the month of being sequestered in his shelter had proved a boon. Ulric had left the rainy season both far more adept at magery and at the bushcraft necessary to thrive in the forest. He'd rediscovered a love for bow hunting, given new flavor for its necessity in these wild lands full of vigilant monsters.
Now Brighteyes had provided a new mission. Contact the natives of this land, learn what he could, and return a boy to his parents. Easy. Ulric just had to navigate several kilometers of wilderness with a child he could only communicate to in pidgin before free climbing down an escarpment that made El Capitan look like a playground see-saw.
These thoughts occupied him while Ulric used his bone chisel to split a giga bear tibia and several ribs into sections of straight and gently curved bone which he then had to grind smooth on a roughened flat sanding stone. Smooth strokes of bone on stone occupied his hours and night fell before he'd finished producing the segments he'd theorized would mimic the scaled patterns. He ate a quick meal of smoked meat and raw turnip things and turned in for the night. Brighteyes had beat him to bed hours ago but obsession was driving him.
Ulric woke before the sunrise, as had become his norm. For reasons probably involving his reforging and the lack of access to easy artificial lighting, he had slept about 3 hours after sundown and rose just before dawn. According to his best estimates he only needed about five hours sleep to feel fully rested. The longer, seven and eight hour sleeps of this waning solar season were downright slothful. Whatever the case, he had breakfast done and was already experimenting with some leather scraps by the time Brighteyes woke.
The thought of magical mending or joining of leather seams wouldn't leave him alone. Seams always caused problems. They were natural weak points, places for water to invade a previously watertight material, and vastly increased the time to produce a complex shape. His leather boots in particular had taken a great deal of time to make comfortable as well as protective. He'd never appreciated the wizardry of cobblers before he'd been pressed to make his own footwear.
Ulric was now trying to mold mana to the shape of the leather. He had a clear vision of what he wanted. He wanted two pieces of the same material to be one piece, smooth and continuous. He had a vague idea of how to do it. Make the leather as liquid and malleable as water so it flowed together, sort of like a metallic vacuum weld with magic. Keep the edges that should meld isolated and then make like join to like using magic to weld them. Last came the Will. This task was easier, in a way, than a fireball or a lightning spell. Ulric just had to infuse mana with matter and convince two pieces that they weren't separate at all.
It was more difficult in that matter seemed to have its own "mana shape" and you needed to match the mana to the substrate or it wouldn't bond and, therefore, wouldn't accept the change you were trying to enact on it. He was seeding graphite again. It was the same problem only with magic instead of metal atoms. The thought made him curse viciously in multiple languages.
Ulric had died before solving the problem, but, before he had, he had created a simulation that had demonstrated a working concept to resolve the issue. It had been impossible. Needed impossible conditions to operate. Like, removing all atmosphere in a perfect vacuum. Something he could do now with air magic, right?
Several minutes intense concentration and Ulric created the spell he needed. Intent focused on absence. Visualize the emptiness, the air molecules moving elsewhere and staying elsewhere or staying still. Understand the pressure lowering to zero, as the molar concentration of gas went to zero, temperature following it, the gas law dictating the relation between mass, pressure, volume, and temperature. Will the void to form around the leather. His Core flashed, power surged through channels, and exploded into reality.
Leather crackled like glass and shattered, then fell apart into a fine powder which then dissipated to smoke. Mana had rushed from his core at an incredible rate forming according to his desires and condensing in the space he'd emptied of everything surrounding the leather pieces. Slumping forward Ulric distantly heard the status as his breath harshly grated on lungs seared by cold beyond description, rapidly dissipating as his effort lost focus, which was followed by a loud rushing bang as air moved into the disturbed air around where the leather had been.
*PING*
When he inspected his status a minute later he saw what he suspected. It was a failure. It was a success he'd never imagined.
He'd created a pristine, perfect vacuum. A zero pressure space. And, as predicted by the scientist Kelvin, that zero pressure had resulted from a zero kinetic energy condition. Other laws then applied. He created a zero pressure around a real object. Thermodynamics had their say and the energy of the leather was drawn out, the heat trying to fill the stilled space, burning his mana as that energy was dissipated, until the leather was also without energy. At which point it fell apart, since the very electrons holding it together stopped moving, bonds failing. Total destruction of the material.
And ye gods the cost. Ulric's core was exhausted, his mana tapped completely. He'd made a vacuum in a space a little less than a basketball, destroyed a couple of pieces of leather the size of his hands, for about two seconds, and it had run him dry. A spell-work beyond his strength.
This, Ulric realized, was the power of magic. A man could create the impossible. He had little doubt that, without the knowledge of exactly how the properties related the resulting cost of the spell would have been completely beyond him. Knowledge was Power, indeed.
The problem was, Ulric realized, he had known exactly what he wanted. He wanted zero pressure. Magic gave him zero pressure. Then it extracted the cost, the monkey's paw curling a finger as the rest of the world got a say. Causes had effects, even for magic. Maybe especially for magic. You don't go mucking about with existence at the extremes of what is possible and not stumble across some fairly terrifying realities. Such as that he'd nearly killed himself breathing super cooled air for a fraction of a second. Like dipping your hand in liquid nitrogen, you only got away with it because you had the thermal energy to spare and there were already gases in the vicinity to take the majority of the cooling. Spooky.
Ulric took a few minutes to think it over, hoping Brighteyes hadn't seen the supposedly responsible adult in the room nearly suicide through stupidity. He might have gone about that all wrong, a thought which nearly summoned all the gods of obvious that had ever existed to smite him. The problem in his old world had required vacuum, to prevent the metal from oxidizing or reacting while it was seeded into the graphite lattice. Maybe joining the leather didn't have such a harsh requirement. For one thing, it didn't seem to be reactive. Maybe the answer really was to envision two pieces becoming whole the edges melding to one, without extra steps. That meant shaping mana to match the material.
Ulric had skipped that first experiment since he didn't necessarily know what was involved with fusing mana to an object.
"Stupid." he muttered. "Blind stupid. Just because it seems hard doesn't mean it's incorrect. Went with something different than I intended just because I thought I already knew enough about something else to feel like it was progress." It was a common failing amongst junior engineers. Handed a new problem they tried to use tools and methods developed for other applications instead of thinking about what exactly they needed to do to work around the given situation. When you have a hammer…
This time he'd lucked out. The mistake had only cost him time and a little pride. Was the [Absolute Zero] a good spell? Yes. For the very specific situation of needing to render something down to its atoms that weighed maybe a kilogram, wasn't moving, and was close enough to touch, while costing his entire mana pool. For essentially anything else? No, the spell was garbage.
Ulric resigned himself to working on his armor pieces while he waited for his mana to regenerate. He'd go slower than planned, now that he was in mana exhaustion and suffering the headache it inflicted.
Taking up the bone plates he'd ground smooth yesterday, Ulric started laying them out in a pattern which allowed the curved plates, about a hand long and eight centimeters wide, to overlap. These curved plates would go on his sides, matching the curve of his body. The flats he'd use to cover his abdomen, the squared plates being suitable to cover his front. He'd already decided that he'd try to make shoulder, breast, and back plates out of the [Forest Lord]'s scapulae. They were more than broad enough. He could probably fuck it up twice and still have enough to do the job.
There would be gaps, but not many. He was going for a Lorica Segmentata kind of affair. The Romans had conquered the known world with it, and the professional soldiers had been able to march nearly 100 kilometers a day in it, carrying their gear. Furthermore, if he didn't dick it up, he'd still be able to climb and shoot his bow in the stuff. It wouldn't do what plate armor did, but he wasn't planning on fighting on horseback either. Problem was that a proper Lorica had something close to 40 pieces and they each needed to be secured to a leather under coat because he didn't have any intention of tying the thirty or so straps to assemble it. He'd need to punch at least four holes in each piece to secure them. With a monster bear tooth awl and a hammer. Sighing at the time and lamenting his lack of skill to simply bore the holes with magic, Ulric got to hammering.
Brighteyes wondered over while Ulric worked. He took an interest in the project and watched raptly as Lorica segments were placed over marked locations on his hide vest and punched to mark the bore holes. Ulric had decided he'd do the breast, back, and shoulder plates together and strap them to the semi jerkin he was making rather than fixing them directly. It would let him shed the bulkiest part of the armor when needed, while still keeping his abdomen protected. It was also easier. An important consideration given that he was finding his skills not quite up to the task of precisely shaping the hard bones with the tools on hand.
Once the segments were all marked, Ulric overlapped them to check that they would provide the cover he was imagining. No way to really know until they were secured and he was moving around in it.
"What you doing bones Ulric Glade Chief?" Brighteyes had watched quietly for nearly an hour and wanted to confirm his suspicions.
Ulric looked up from the one thousandth hole he'd just finished punching. At least, it felt like a thousand. He'd broken two awls. The third didn't look like it would hold much longer. He'd run out of bear teeth at this rate. Frowning at his pace, Ulric thought about how to answer Brighteyes question.
"I am making a set of armor, in case I need to fight more dangerous monsters than those I normally hunt. Including fighting against warriors like the ones who took you. The armor comes from, ironically enough, the design of those my ancestors fought eons ago. They ruled a vast empire and changed warfare. The first professional army commanded by career soldiers. I'd not begrudge them their genius, not when I can make their strength my own. Much like I am making the [Forest Lord]'s strength mine by using its bones and hide to fashion this equipment." A long discourse for Brighteyes to chew on. Should keep him busy enough to not bother Ulric too much.
"You warrior Ulric Glade Chief?" Brighteyes looked even more curious now.
Damn. So much for that.
Ulric looked back down to the holes he was drilling. A rotary hand drill would be just the thing. But how to make drill bits? Shaking his head he decided how he'd answer Brighteyes.
"Not a warrior Brighteyes. Not in my own mind at least. I am…was…an engineer. A man who provides solutions to improve the world of my people. That part of my life is over now, I think. Now I am simply doing as I must to survive in a new land amongst fantastic peoples and powerful creatures. I killed the [Forest Lord] because it attacked me. I killed the men who took you because it seemed right to destroy people who would hurt children. This armor, is a necessity that I had not made before because I didn't think I'd need it. I was wrong and so I am correcting that mistake in preparation. Fortune favors the prepared mind, after all."
Again he'd hoped to buy some peace. He wasn't trying to confuse the lad but he didn't mind giving him enough to think about to be able to work without distraction. Without telling the kid to stomp off somewhere, at least.
Brighteyes looked confused now. Good, probably-
"But you know armor make? Can hunt beast and kill men? Know ways for destruction magic?" Brighteyes was getting more energetic as he went.
"Is wrong word? Warrior is hunter, guard of people in Elven home." He pointed to Ulric's bow and spear and the armor to be at Ulric's feet.
"What else Ulric Glade Chief if not Warrior?"
