Summer 6, 120
Unlike fulgur, where Makt had barely a remembrance of the initiation due to the repression of traumatic memories, zephyr was still fresh in the young man's mind. He remembered how his initiator had forced his body to go through so much trauma. It was almost as if ether had been warped into his body which was a feeling that he would never be able to explain. It was as if he had become ether itself as the concepts of being solid became unimportant. Well, that was how it had been. To date, Makt had yet to have desired to take on another galdr.
"So here I am, clueless as ever," Makt would think to himself as he sat outside in the morning heat. He was sitting just outside of his home town, by a river he had visited earlier in the season. He liked it primarily because there was nobody around to watch him. "Maybe I should have brought someone in case something goes wrong." It was a joke, but what he was going to try to do had every possibility of being able to kill him if he did something wrong.
The feeling to use magic made him hungry. It's like his body wanted it to be used and use it he would. Makt grasped pictured his ether in his mind and tried pushing it outwards. It was a different feeling from using fathom for sure. With fathom he was so used to using his ether to pull at the emotional strands of others. When he did so he rarely needed to send more than a sliver of metaphor in order to pull at the strands. With zephyr, however, his feeling wanted to send out a handful of energy. Makt fought this urge at first but finally gave in. The young man tossed his aether a couple feet away and could almost feel it sitting there on the warm grass. He couldn't move it further, he couldn't pick it up, but he could feel it there.
"Now what," he would say out loud as if his feeling could hear him. For a moment he wished his brain could speak to him in lieu of a teacher. There was no response, only the regular feeling of wanting to be used. Makt focused on exactly what he was trying to do. He had tossed out a small amount of ether and was still connected to it somehow which meant that there had to be a trail of aether leading back to his body. Makt grasped hold of the aether nervously, then pushed.
The feeling of using wind to move his body was not a pleasant one, at least not on the first go. Makt felt as though he had been running at an impossibly fast speed only to stop instantly without having to actually stop. His head was spinning so much that he didn't know if he had even done what he had intended to do. Vomit spewed from his mouth, covering his clothing and surrounding grass with his breakfast. Makt stumbled to his feet and made his way wearily over to the river where he would wash himself off. The clothes were easy to clean, but even after ten washes of his mouth he could still taste the vomit.
If zephyr would make him feel this crappy then he wanted no part of it. A part of him told him to try again, but he was done for now. He would make his way back to the town's entrance but soon came across a hooded figure that stood next to a tree. The figure raised its head to show a grin as Makt tried approached and tried walking past. The fact that this guy never took that smile off of his face was quite unsettling to the man. If he had spotted any obvious weaponry on the man he would have high tailed it out of there.
Makt walked past and looked back only to see that the man was still smiling at him. "What's this guy's deal, Makt would think as he turned to face the creep. "Can I help you," the man would call out, unsure if he really wanted an answer.
"I know your secret," the man would say with his unwavering smile, "I was merely passing by when I heard some commotion. But when I peered in between the trees all I saw was you and a burst of wind. Tell me, was it magic? I hope it was… I know someone that will be very interested in meeting you."
Makt panicked as the man started to approach, brandishing a dagger. Makt hadn't the mind to bring his own weapon and had mere seconds before he would be pierced by the shiny blade. "What's wrong with this guy? And what burst of wind is he talking about?" Makt would think as he leapt out of the way, tumbling onto the soft ground. He spent so much time getting re-situated that he barely had enough time to jump out of the way a second time.
"You won't be walking away from this without some help," The man muttered, and then shrugged off his cloak which was the only thing impeding his movements. Makt started breathing heavily, adrenaline pumping hard. He had never been attacked like this before in his life. He hadn't even done anything wrong! Either way, he needed to get out and fast. Makt dug his feet into the ground, causing bits and pieces of rock to come up off the ground. He picked up a rock and then thrust it forward. Complete miss. "Oops."
The man would only cackle with loud laughter as the metal of his blade glistened in the sunlight. Makt did not have the physical strength to back up the power he was up against. It did not help that the Makt had absolutely no idea what to do in this kind of situation. The man shouted, "Come now. I won't kill you. I have to injure you for my own safety, can't you understand? Then I'll take you to see a very special… person. Just give in. Who knows, you might even come out better because of this?"
The man ignored the proposition entirely. "Maybe I can touch his emotions," Makt thought, feeling out with his ether to get a grasp of the man's emotional state. It was a calm like a gentle ocean, "Calm. How can someone be calm in a situation like this?" Makt's plan was to calm his assailant but that idea was now out the window. Makt then sent out a burst of aether to grab hold of the wind around him. As the man approached much more quickly than the last time, Makt pulled as hard as he could at the aether and felt himself pushed by the wind. His body was carried a dozen feet away in a quick burst.
This time wasn't nearly as bad as the first. Makt's mouth still filled with vomit but he had landed on his feet and could mentally comprehend what he had just done. Spitting out the vile liquid from his mouth, he turned back to see the man glancing around to ascertain his target's position. The man was rubbing his eyes as if they had been injured somehow. Perhaps dust had been kicked up from the gust?
It was at that point that Makt started to run. He would take five steps, throw out his aether, then "Pull!" in order to gain as much distance as possible. He had to have pushed himself with wind at least ten times before he simply ran out of stomach fluids to cough up. Makt didn't even think about turning back. Feeling too dizzy to push himself further, he would run as far as his legs would take him until he collapsed onto the grass. With blurry eyes the man would look back and see… nothing. He had escaped. That, or he had made it close enough to the town that only a fool would openly display hostility.
Makt cleaned himself up and got some food in him. It was time for work soon and despite this dangerous person being out and about, he still had responsibilities. He hurried off to the smith's workshop that doubled as a jewelry crafting shop.
Soon Makt was poring over the documents that he had created over the past couple days. He had been trying to identify how much actual work each employee was doing. A lot of time was wasted on chatting with uninterested customers and gossiping with each other. "We'll have to put a stop to that," he would think as he circled each distraction. Another focus of his was to determine why most of the work was done by just a couple of the employees.
Of all the employees that were employed, it was almost as if most of the work was accomplished by only a small amount of duties that were performed each day. If he were to put numbers to it, he would have to say that eighty percent of the work was accomplished by twenty percent of the effort. "If my terrible math is correct, then I should focus on making the most of that twenty percent to increase productivity."
Getting up from his feet, Makt looked over his list of chores for the day and assigned them to the employees. Now that that was out of the way, he could finally spend time on his craft. He was hoping to do something new. So far he had made quite the medley of jewelry but none of it was very impressive. He hoped that he had demonstrated that he could do the simple stuff and could handle things that matched his skill level.
There was quite the backlog of tasks and today he would try to choose his own destiny. After walking through the doorway he saw that Karo was cleaning the display glass with a white cloth. "Welcome lad, the man said, "there's plenty of work to do today."
Makt nodded and responded, "What kinds of things? I was hoping for something a bit more challenging."
The boss stopped abruptly and gave Makt a cold stare. "Well I've got a ring that needs resizing. If you're confident enough to do it then perhaps you'd be willing to cover the cost if you fail." There was a long pause where the two simply stared at each other. Makt had done ring sizing in the past, it had never been that difficult. Was there something special about the ring or were his abilities being doubted? Karo eventually continued, "ah forget about the last part. I've got nothing planned for the day so I can show you a thing or two."
The two made their way into the workshop and Karo pulled an elaborate ring from his pocket. The elder man stated, "this is the ring right here. It needs to be increased by one size. There are quite a few problems, you see. While this ring is quite magnificent, it was crafted by someone who did not factor in the chance that its owner might someday gain or lose weight. The maker declined adjusting the size and so it was brought to me." Makt took the ring and examined it closely. It was composed of many interlocking and interwoven pieces.
After several minutes of close examining Makt began to become more familiar with the detailed patterns that circled around the ring. He glanced at his boss and asked, "how in the world are we supposed to increase the size? We might as well just rebuild the whole damn thing from scratch!"
Karo smiled at these words and pulled out a stack of blank papers before saying, "yes, it is quite complicated indeed. But I have a reputation to uphold and we shall do our best. The first step is to know the exact design of the ring and the locations for each component. You shall treat this exercise as if you were going to make an exact replica because if worst comes to worst, you will."
And with that the two started to copy the ring with careful strokes of their pencils. Karo would often ask for precise distances away from several points on the ring and perform mental gymnastics to come up with ratios. If Makt was learning anything from this it was that each pattern on the ring repeated a set number of times in order to start and end precisely at the top of the ring. He was gaining great insight as to how a master craftsman planned out his designs.
After about an hour of painstakingly recording the exact patterns, sizes, and spacings on the ring it was now time to get to work. The first thing that came to mind whenever Makt needed to increase a ring size was to use a ring stretcher. An inexperienced jewel smith would probably have slipped the ring onto the tool and hammered away until the ring was at the desired size. However Makt's greenness was not going to be tolerated. Karo showed him how to take the ring and examine the width of the available metal. It looked like there was, in fact, quite a bit of useable metal.
The problem with using a ring stretcher was that the intricate designs and patterns would also stretch. This was an issue because they would stretch around the length of the ring disproportionately to the width. While Makt examined the inside of the ring, Karo saw a look of realization dawn on Makt's face. It was no doubt the fact that he'd realized that they would be able to use the ring stretcher, with a bit of help of course.
"Sir," Makt said politely, "What if we could stretch the ring's inside while keeping the outside fixed? We could smush the metal together and create a little more space."
Karo wasn't surprised - it was the natural step up from thinking of just expanding the whole ring. There was, however, a downside to Makt's deduction. "That would actually work quite well, but if you can look closely you can see that the ring is so complex that it has patterns running down the depth of the ring itself. I will be honest with you there is no easy solution to this. Some options carry more risks and some options are simply a lot of tedious work. I will let you pick your poison since you wanted a challenge," Karo then chuckled and left the workshop, "oh by the way! It's 22 carat gold!".
Makt felt empowered to have a choice on how to handle the ring but also a bit scared to not know what to do. He surrendered to the fact that no matter what he would have to remove all the extras attached to the ring that held its various gems so he decided to start there. He used his knowledge on how these sorts of fixtures were attached to remove them without leaving much of a trace. The removal didn't need much more than a douse of chemicals on it.
After placing the removed fixtures and gems in a safe container, it was time to make the hardest decision of the week. That was when it hit him. Why did Karo tell him that it was 22 carat gold? Makt was now sure that this had been a hint as to what to do. That's when a mischievous grin spread on his face as he got an idea. He would spit the ring and make it larger by adding more gold! Now that he thought about it, this method required the least amount of labor if he was trying to maintain the original pattern proportions.
Makt's main weapon in the quest to resize this ring was the fact that the patterns repeated over and over to end exactly at the same place that the patterns started at. What was more was all patterns originated and ended at the same exact point. This meant that if he split the ring and added just the right amount of new material then he could recreate the patterns until the ring was sized up with the exact same proportions. Makt was thankful that the advice had introduced him to a whole new method of resizing jewelry that he had never even heard of before.
Makt kind of wished Karo had stuck around because he had so many questions to ask. That aside, it was time to get to work. He brought the ring over to vice grip where he secured the shiny metal securely. It was arranged in such a way that the bottom was pointing straight up which was precisely where Makt wanted to cut. He then took the smallest saw he could find and started to chip away at the metal. He moved the saw very slowly, making each pass through as parallel to the previous cut as possible. His goal was to make the narrowest cut possible.
The cutting process didn't take more than a half hour and the end result was Makt feeling extremely regretful for not saving the material that he was shaving off. 22 carat gold was quite soft, after all. He wasn't sure Karo's policy on saving gold shavings so he would put his worries out of mind for now. He had to focus on the next process of determining how much gold he needed to add to this darned ring. It needed to be increased by one size so he figured he would just add a little extra and try his best to match the drawing he had helped create.
Over the next several hours, Makt would spend his time coating the ring with extra gold. He was able to use his fine tools to make sure the designs still popped, but he simply did not have enough time in the day to finish his ring; he would have to wrap this up another day. His boss was understanding, as he was no aelf. Makt performed his other duties to wrap up the day then went home.
