Chapter 7: Ch.5: Wings

“Swallowtail Fairie Wyvern, D. forticatus faietis- The tamest of the wyvern family. It is an omnivorous species that is native to the Great Faerieweald and other areas that are abundant in Aer mana. It comes in a variety of colors but most have a light green hide with some variation of regular patterns on its wings sporting blue, orange or even red circles. Some Sylvani arbors keep it as a mount for their rangers and scouts. It is however considered very hard to breed and thus does not see much use outside of the areas where it inhabits....”-from Philiarz Oonswarner’s Bestiary for Adventurers.

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Arthur’s routine was split between delving into books and practicing his spells. While he had yet to employ his spells for any form of combat, his middling arsenal gave him some sort of confidence.

It was an assurance that he was somewhat assimilating into Eryth where magic and beasts prowled. With the basics out of the way, he started started work on enchanting and artificing for the [Enchanter] class.

As much as magitech was interesting, it was equally complicated. A broad discipline, it required arcane knowledge of enchanting and some light smithing. A stubborn Arthur was determined to power through the tomes despite the convoluted prose therein, of descriptions, perplexing illustrations and some runecraft that almost drove him bald.

Bar none, enchanting was a crafter’s vocation. It leaned into how certain materials behaved and how their intrinsic properties could be exploited to bring about a variety of magical phenomena.

If one wanted to describe magitech, it could have been said to be a branch of magic that married mundane technology and runecraft to create magical items. While magic was pervasive in Eryth, mundane technology seemed almost exotic by comparison, and almost fantastic as magic could have been to an Earthling.

The underlying basis for meshing the magical and the mundane was to make everyday things a cinch to do and make it efficient while at it. For instance, a steam lift that used steam generated by magic boilers was magitech. It used less mana for say, conveying loads of goods and people using pure magical levitation or translocation spells.

That said, such things were not widespread because of Eryth's anomalous state of technology propagation. Magitech was also the preserve of the snobbish dwarves who hoarded its knowledge as a source of power and racial pride.

Very few could pay through the nose for whichever magitech the dwarves were willing to part with—for good coin of course. The only thing that could come between dwarves and their coin was alcohol and they seemed to never have enough of it. Despite their enterprising ways as crafters, they made for very poor farmers. Ironic that, since they literally lived off the earth.

And therein, trade existed because no one race was ever so self sufficient. With the same magitech, the dwarves found themselves everywhere their services were needed, as builders, crafters, enchanters, smiths and brewers.

Their voracious appetites for good alcohol and food which could not be sourced within, forced them to look elsewhere and their crafting prowess gave Eryth its aerships. Then they became merchants and aership sailors too.

Dwarven trading outposts and ports grew to accommodate their need for a stable supply chain which again spurred more development of their magitech. While the Mages Guild held monopoly over communications, the dwarves became a transportation and magitech hegemony.

Somewhat familiar, magitech might have just been something up Arthur’s alley after all. That, even the dragon felt though she did not deign to point it out. As the World was wont, Arthur’s painstaking efforts to understand magitech were with the [Enchanter] class .

And there were two skills to show for it, [Basic Rune Lore] which told him what runes could do, how they were made and how they interacted with mana while [Eidetic Memory] helped him remember them and hasten rune etching without referring to reading material all the time. And that was only focusing on the theoretical part of things!

Although the class was low level then, Arthur knew that it was his ticket to getting the Locus affinity if and when he got around to working on storage items. It might have started as an offhand comment but, Arthur just so happened to be one of those people with an engineer's knack. He loved deconstructing things, seeing what made them tick and putting them back together.

For the time being, Arthur was satisfied with sketching blueprints for conceptual aerships. He envisioned the fantastical shapes, theoretical propulsion systems while trying to find a workaround the bottleneck of scarce learning resources. He was so close he could taste it.

“Still at it [Lost Worlder]?” said Aeskyre as she peered at his chicken scratch. Aeskyre had finally decided if Arthur had his own space to work from, she would no longer suffer him muttering while he worked. Even a dragon could only take so much before they bit off someone’s head or vaporized them with lightning breath.

“I had an epiphany from my dreams.” Arthur started, furtively eyeballing the dragon to see her reaction. “ I think I have found an idea for my own aership without sacrificing either size or power. That means I should be able to build an aership of the size I want without worrying how large my mana sail has to be,” he said, grinning.

“Truly? You have my attention.”

“I was going through Nys’vera’s Properties and uses of Magicore and Mana Crystals, especially the section about Aer and Pyr magicore and mana crystals when an idea came to me. I was theorising that I could use magicore and mana crystals as a primary source of fuel for an aership.”

“Are you certain? I hope you recall that such attempts to use them directly have not been successful. Unless you have come up with some sort of magitech mechanism that is nothing short of radical in its workings. That must be it, is it not?”

“Correct,” Arthur gesticulated excitedly, “That dream I had was the brainchild. It was a memory about a flying machine from my world and I think I can design an engine that uses magicore or crystals for thaumaturgy.”

“Let’s see, the problems you are going to tackle here are…” Aeskyre said as she scooted over to look at his blueprints “One; slowing down the decomposition of stored magicore—

“Magicore is deemed an unstable state of mana that has to be confined within a suitable vessel to slow down or eliminate the process of decomposition using null-steel? I see…," she said, tapping her lip with her well manicured claws; Beautiful and deadly.

“That is ingenious,” she added, “ There is no need for enchantments to perform similar functions when you can have a mundane metal with the lowest magical conductivity do it. Compared to enchantments that do the same task, it costs less mana that way—you won’t need to replace degrading runes.

“Exactly,” added Arthur. “I think the use of runes is just a business model by dwarven artificers to have return customers. Though the storage containers they use have traces of null-steel to slow down degradation of stabilizing enchantments. It is still inefficient. I wonder why nobody has tried that before.”

“Like you, I have no inkling. However, this is a momentous discovery,” Aeskyre smiled toothily.

“The second issue is that magitech can make motive propulsion via raw magicore possible. “ She read on. “ Possible concepts include a type of rotary thaumaturgy engine that uses an Aer and Pyr mixture to provide thrust…” At this, Aeskyre could only crease her eyebrows in consternation.

“I never took you for a pyromaniac Arthur O’reilly. A mixture of Pyr and Aer is unstable,“ she scrunched her eyebrows in perplexity. “ Is it even viable for what you’re trying to do?”

“I think you should read the rest of the notes before you make a conclusion. Let’s see—here are my inferences .” Arthur said as he pointed to a highlighted section

“The workaround for the explosive nature of the Aer and Pyr mixture lies in the ratio of their interaction. I suggest that a one-time infusion of the Pyr magicore into the decomposing Aer magicore should be enough to provide a self-sustaining thaumaturgy. The ratio of the Pyr to the Aer magicore should be one part for every eight.”

“What do you think of that?”

“How did you come to infer this? ”

“Mathematics,” Arthur said with a smirk as he rubbed off the ink smudges from his knuckles.

‘When you mentioned spell matrices, I knew there was a catch somewhere.’ he said internally. ‘ I thought I might not understand all that dwarven gibberish about surface area to mana conversion of a mana sail, Aer output and concentration for Aerostat floats but what words failed to describe, numbers triumphed. What the dwarves essentially discovered was how to harness aer as an ideal gas!’

“I never thought that thaumaturgy had already been quantified through numbers. I would have never made any headway with the calculations [Eidetic memory] either.”

“I can see you already have a proof of concept,” Aeskyre said as she held the blueprint against the light of the magical sconces.

The drawing showed an oblong board that was one and a half times as tall as Arthur was tall by the notations. The craft featured a singular sail that was mounted centre right of the board. Unlike the mana sails on conventional aerships, this sail was shaped like a bisected leaf.

The mana conduits branched out from the mast towards the edges like the veins on a real leaf . There was a boom that not only held the shape of the sail taut but also provided somewhere its user could secure themselves and steer at the same time. The back of the board was the contraption that should make the craft’s propulsion possible—Eryth’s first internal thaumaturgy engine.

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The clincher was, however, the embedded cells of aerostatic floats that made lighter than air buoyancy possible. As long as the thaumaturgy was contained within these cells up thrust would be achieved and for that he’d have to hollow out the board. In its base state Aer had non-existent mass and volume and therefore took the place of an ideal gas, as a result the floats were barely thicker than the board.

“Does this invention of yours have a name?”

“Hmm? I am still working on it. I’ll just go with ‘Mark One’ until I have the real thing working.”

“How soon can you get it made?”

“In a few days,” Arthur said with a raised eyebrow. ‘ I thought you were rather aloof about this. What’s changed?’

“ I have to put together some specialized equipment for machining, welding and the like,” he said, tapping his chin. “ Might take a few nundines, or even a moon to get everything right I guess. Want to help?”

“Of course, why’d you think I asked?” she huffed. “ We elder races rarely have much in the way of pastime. Though old, I am sure the castle’s forge has some smithing equipment you can use for this machining and welding you speak of. What materials will you need?”

“ I think I need a plank of iron wood about hmm,” Arthur hummed. “ Two metres long or its equivalent in dwarven metronic units. Also, I would need a drill bit that’s just as strong to punch through ironwood.”

“ I am sure you can appropriate the latter from a dwarven tool chest. I am sure they are as vain as to make ones from mithril.” she added, giving her two cents. “ My hoard does not lack for such things. Anything else?”

“Besides the ironwood, I think I’ll need some stainless steel for the engine casing; I think you call it dwarfsteel here. As for the rivets and the inside components, null steel should suffice, ” he paused to consider his inventory. “ Ah and also red mithril for conduits to connect a mana sail.”

“Why red mithril ? I would think that pure mithril collects and conducts mana better. Besides, other aerships do use an alloy of mithril and silver thread woven into their mana sails.”

“Blue mithril is well and good for large sails. But red mithril has the mana conductivity of mithril and the tensile and torsional strength of copper, that’s what I am aiming for. I want to prove that my engine uses the mana it collects more efficiently by using red mithril. It is a proof of concept and a control project in one, like hitting two birds with one stone.”

Aeskyre hummed, “You come up with excellent ideas human. Do not disappoint me.”

“I don't rememb—” Arthur pointed out. Aeskyre’s eyes glinted dangerously. Arthur backpedaled. “ Ah, now I remember, where was I…yes, the effects of mithril alloy purity on mana conversion—”

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The following day was the beginning of the three day Erythean weekend. However, compared to weekdays, Arthur and Aeskyre were even busier. On se’taday, sixth day of the nundine, the two were in the ancient castle's forge taking stock of the clutter of equipment scattered about.

Were she a human, Arthur would have said that Aeskyre had a hoarding disorder―she was a dragon, so there was that. And she was rather smug about it; the forge was like another little hoard of her own, an equivalent of a dragon’s broom closet for things that were valuable but would not fit with the rest of her gold and books. They had been pillaged from aerships alright.

There were hammers, anvils, and chisels which were easy to pick out. Then there were punches for well, punching metals, fullers for stretching hot metal, various hardies for bending, twisting or cutting flatters which were just flat-faced shapers he could use to make edges or flatten things.

Fortunately, some tool chests marked which tools to use for hot, cold and magically active metal. Overall they would fit in any smith of a hobbyist's workshop back on earth, if you were willing to overlook the fact that some hammers had heads made of black diamond. Or that the chisels were enchanted with [Eversharp] runes such that you could as well carve relief onto a block of steel as you would timber.

As far as things went, that was the furthest his familiarity got. The other equipment tread too close to the arcane. Arthur had a general idea what they were supposed to be but not how they were supposed to work.

Sure he could be forgiven for not being a machinist or fabricator, an avionics technician mostly dealt with prefabs for components. The Arduino circuits he used to learn programming as a hobby were prefabs for Pete's sake. But he remembered, one way or another he used to sit in a class with people who could do their own fabrication from the ground up.

Some were hobbyists who loved tinkering while others ran side businesses for parts. By association therefore, he recognized a lathe machine for what it was. At least he could tell the headstock from the tailstock. There was a motley of hand wheels, levers and selectors but no buttons or switches whatsoever. Instead, whatever controls required contact were the foci, gems that had been ground or sliced into shape.

A couple of them were hidden by the gunk of grease and dust accumulating at the back of the thing. And that was how he’d found out that the artefact, scavenged from a trespassing dwarven aership decades ago still worked. Arthur was introduced to this world’s power source, or mana source if you were Erythean.

Accessing the maintenance panel, he came face to face with a blue-black oblate gem possessing an iridescent sheen. For a moment, Arthur thought he was looking at a frisbee sized ceramic capacitor. Two conduit leads extruded from its sides before disappearing into the guts of the magitech lathe. It was easy to confirm that there was mana thrumming through the gem by placing a palm on its surface, otherwise it remained shrouded to his senses. Unlike the various mana crystals, gems had no mana bleeding into the surroundings and therefore kept mana for longer.

Nonetheless, with an apprentice smith’s primer at hand, which would set him back some days. He could count on getting the hang of its operation―after cleaning it up of course. The other artefacts sitting under a dusting of detritus and cobwebs were of course also hard to miss. There was the arcane forge that used firestones and aer. Firestones were, like a type of smokeless fuel, a magical coal that could keep going as long as there was mana.

“ Hmm, so this is the thaumostat?” Arthur murmured. He compared his notes on the arcane measurement instrument he’d been looking for after examining the formulas for thaumaturgy in aerostat floats.

There was a methodical approach to magitech and therefore units of measurements which had to come from somewhere. The contraption he was referring to as a thaumostat was a strip of argerum with inset gems the size of a large pearls. Each gem lit up according to the amount of mana expended in every casion.

The thaum was the measuring unit and was, according to Dwomdaer Anvilfall, the amount of mana required to completely melt two spoonful’s worth of gold (25 gran’aums) using a [Heat] rune. It was assumed that there was no heat loss or mana bleed occurring from the transformation of mana into tangible materia effects. He’d delved into high school physics to equate one thaum to 1675 units of energy―in joules. If he were to use earth units, and assuming that impurities were negligible, 40 thaums passing through a [Heat] rune would melt 1 aum of gold.

For comparison, a bullet would have around 1250 ∼ 2000 joules of kinetic energy which would translate to 0.74 ∼ 1.2 units of thaum. On the other hand, a tier 2 [Flame Dart] spell, unlike the [Heat] rune, required 2256.4 joules or 1.3 thaums just to vaporize one gran’aum of water already at boiling point.

It might have seemed like a steep cost for such a spell but there was a kinetic component to it. And while an Aer and firestone furnace would run hot enough to melt silicon, it was still nowhere enough for mithril. The metal would require nothing short of magma, sustained lightning or a dragon breathing at it for the better part of a quart.

‘ I wonder if she’ll be willing to help me with that. They’re small components enough that it's just pouring into a mold which means less technique needed,’ Arthur mulled as he added a notation to that detail. With a melting point that would fall between silicon and carbon, there was no way he’d be able to linger in the same room as a furnace that hot unless he could stave off the heatstroke without encumbering his work.

The last thing he had to check off his equipment list was the welding scriber. It was not so dissimilar in form from the rune scribers he’d been seen save for the size and the mechanism of operation. Where the rune scriber had a nub suited for etching runes, the welding scriber had a crimson gem that was sharpened or blunted according to the time of welding joint required.

Due to its high mana requirements, canisters of magicore fed mana to the gem-holder that served as the foci for a sustained [Heat] spell. The type of gem only augmented the efficiency and output. It was even easier than using an arc welder.

‘So, I’m not seeing any flux anywhere…wonder how they even use it. Best guess is to provide allowances on the jointing seams, or use rivets for the joinery, 'he mulled as he checked out to see if it was in working order. After that, it was just a matter of appraising which items and materials were available, including the wood and unused metal. Again, most of them were just miscellaneous items that the dragon had appropriated from shipments that wandered too close to her territory.

“ I hope you have found the forge to your liking,” Aeskyre said with pride in her tone. Even if it did look like an abandoned warehouse, she seemed rather pleased with the haul she’d picked over the years.

“ Eh, might use a bit of cleaning,” Arthur replied, limbering up. “ But yeah, I can work with this.” Bending over to examine every nook and cranny of the equipment while jotting down notes on his knees had given him a sore back.

“ Good.” Aeskyre said with a grin. “Though mundane tasks I’m sure you can put that magic of yours to some use ,” she added as she turned around to leave.

‘Well then better get started,’ Arthur thought, letting out a jaw splitting yawn. ‘This workshop won’t clean itself’

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