Scientific Sorcery : 18 Arcanoelastic Resonator

"Right,” I said. “So… today we're going to attempt to build a remote control for gem 51," I explained, gathering my tools. "First things first, we need a base. Something magical, but not too magical.

“I’m thinking… wood? Which one do you think will work best? This one maybe?” I picked up an oak board.

I watched as Stormy got up and waddled to my pile of scrap wood, stopping at a piece of birch with faint violet streaks running through it. 

“Thanks,” I picked up the birch. 

"Mrrp," Stormy nodded, looking quite pleased with herself.

"Yes, yes, you're the boss," I chuckled. 

I carefully sawed the birch piece into a rectangular shape, about the size of my palm.

Next, I reached for my carving tools, but Stormy let out a disapproving "Mrow!"

"What's wrong?" I asked, puzzled.

Stormy pawed at the Hexometer, then at the wood.

"Ah, I see," I nodded, understanding dawning on me. "You want me to use the Hexometer to guide the carving process?"

Stormy shook her head and then pawed at gem 51.

“You want to connect the hexometer to gem 51?” I asked. “You think that each gem produces a unique magical signature, right?” 

"Purrrr," Stormy confirmed, looking smug.

It took me a bit of fiddling but with Stormy’s aid I was able to adjust the hexometer to host gem 51.

After that was done, I placed the wood on the Hexometer's plate and watched as the needle twitched and swayed. Following its movements, I grabbed a chalk piece and started to draw dots on the wood that seemed to align with the flow of magical energy projected by gem 51 in uneven waves that I could see with my Astralscope. 

The hexometer allowed me to define where exactly the waves landed on the wood dot by dot. It took me almost the entire day of poking the wood with the chalk until a coherent pattern began to emerge.

"Huh,” I commented when I was done with my drawing. “This is sort of like creating a circuit board… for magical energy. Specifically the pattern for Arcanoelastic Resonance!

The chalk drawing on the wood appeared to be a fractal-like snowflake made up from converging pyramid-like shapes. It somewhat reminded me of the hexagram that Yaga Grandhilda drew on my chest. 

“Right,” I said. “I’m going to use a knife to carve this pattern into the wood as precisely as I can manage.”

Stormy yawned and closed her eyes as I worked slowly.

Once the carving was complete, I held up the base, admiring the snowflake hexagram. When I was finished I melted more human-bone crystal dust and poured the liquid solution into the groves, filling them. I decided to call this stuff witchglass.

When the crystalline snowflake hexagram was finished, the hexometer went absolutely wild dancing over it. 

"Now for the tricky part,” I tapped my chin. “I need to create a switch mechanism."

“Brrr?” Stormy asked.

I pondered for a moment, then snapped my fingers. "I've got it! I can use a small piece of the witch-bone armor as a toggle."

I carefully cut a small, circular piece from my armor and fitted it into a groove at the top of the wooden base. "This should act as our on/off switch," I explained to Stormy, who was watching intently.

"Mrow?" Stormy questioned, pawing at gem 51.

"Right, we can't forget the star of the show," I nodded, picking up the gem. "We need to integrate 51 into the circuit somehow..."

I examined the carved channels in the wood, then had an idea. I heated up a small metal rod in the forge and used it to carefully melt a depression in the center of the wooden base. Once it had cooled, I fitted gem 51 snugly into the hollow.

"Now, we need to connect everything," I mused, reaching for some copper wire. But Stormy let out a disapproving "Hiss!"

"Not the copper?" I asked, surprised. Stormy shook her head and pawed at a spool of silver thread I'd salvaged from some old jewelry.

"Silver, huh? Well, you haven't steered me wrong yet," I shrugged, picking up the thread. I carefully wove it through the carved channels, circling the snowflake and connecting the bone switch to gem 51.

Then, I added a wooden dial to the remote, which allowed me to control how much of my hand and gem 51 touched the entire magical snowflake pattern.

"Almost there," I muttered, making the final connections. "Now we just need to test it."

“Br br,” the kitten rolled over.

“Yeah, it does look like a paddle,” I said, staring at the remote in my hand. “Don’t judge my remote design, you!”

Stormy rolled her eyes at me.

I took a deep breath, pressed the bone switch and spun the dial. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, suddenly, a soft violet glow projected itself from gem 51, rushing across the snowflake witchglass pattern.

"It's working… I think!" I exclaimed, grinning at Stormy. "But how do I control what it’s pointed at?”

Stormy got up with and went to paw at the chalk and then at the pile of bone dust.

“Chalk cannot be melted in a forge,” I said. “This is because chalk is primarily composed of calcium carbonate which does not melt; instead, it decomposes when heated to high temperatures.”

“Brbrrr,” Stormy shook her head, tapping the chalk harder with her fuzzy black paw.

“Right… vitrification,” I muttered. “I think I do have a piece of witch-magic infused chalk that’s been buried for weeks in my pile.”

I went to the earth pile and with Stormy’s help found a violet-tinted piece of chalk. 

Stormy followed me, tail sticking upright as I put the crystallised chalk and bone dust into the forge, producing a unique fusion of the two and then pouring it into an approximate form of the chalk and cooling it with water.

“Now what Miss assistant?” I asked Stormy.

The kitten looked at the hexagram on the remote and then the magic chalk and then pawed the floor.

“Gotcha! Of course!” I declared and began to sketch an exact copy of the triangle-populated copy of the fractal snowflake from the remote on the floor with the chalk.

“Moment of truth,” I said as I pulled the Astralscope goggles over my eyes.

I pointed the remote at the hexagram on the floor and turned the knob, permitting greater flow of magic through the hexagram. Through the Astralscope, I could see faint tendrils of violet energy beginning to coalesce around the edges of the chalk-drawn snowflake, noting clear interaction between the snowflake in the remote and one on the floor.

Suddenly, the floor within the hexagram's radius began to shimmer, as if viewed through a heat haze. I reached out with a stick and poked the floor. The wooden planks, once solid and unyielding, started to ripple like the surface of a disturbed pond. The ripple effect spread outward from the area I poked, bouncing off the edges of the snowflake on the floor.

“Yess!” I fistpumped.

“Rock testing time!” I declared and rushed outside to grab a pocketful of small pebbles.

Upon return, I placed the pebble into the hexagram. 

The plain, unremarkable stone I had brought in from outside, began to sink slowly into the now-semiliquid floor. It was as if the wood had transformed into a viscous fluid, its molecular structure completely altered by the arcane energies flowing through it.

I pressed the switch to disable the flow of magic through the remote. The floor instantly solidified, suspending the pebble ¾ of the way in solid wood. I leaned down and tapped the wood and the magically suspended rock in fascination with my fingers and then turned the dial forward all the way.

Then I watched, transfixed, as the stone descended deeper into the floor. The wood seemed to part around it, flowing like molasses. 

As the stone sank and vanished into the liquified wooden floor, I noticed that the liquefied wood didn't splash or splatter. Instead, it moved with an eerie, almost sentient fluidity, as if consciously making way for the intruding object. This behaviour reminded me a bit of Non-Newtonian Fluid.

I pointed the remote away from the chalk hexagram on the floor. The floor didn’t stop rippling. 

I walked to the far end of the pub and tried to throw another pebble into the hexagram. The pebble bounced off. I moved closer, throwing pebbles at the hexagram. This permitted me to calculate that the range of my remote was about 2.21 metres.

The Astralscope showed me that the pulsating waves of energy emanating from gem 51 on the remote, perfectly synchronised with the ripples in the floor. It was as if the gem and the snowflake were conducting an orchestra of arcane forces, bending reality to its will.

I turned to Stormy.

"Did you see that?" I gesticulated. “The Arcanoelastic Resonator bloody works! I did it! Ha ha! Science: 4, Witchy mysticism: 0!”

Stormy, for her part, looked utterly unimpressed at my score-keeping. 

She yawned widely, stretched, and then curled up for a nap next to the burning fireplace, as if to say, "Of course it worked. What did you expect? Girl witches can sink into their domain without any of this remote nonsense.”

I tapped my chin in thought and snipped a flower from one of the metal cases and dropped it into the liquid floor to see if the non-newtonian-wood would absorb organic material. The flower slowly sank and vanished into the floor.

“And that’s how witches drown people,” I commented with a slight shudder.

As I giddily paced across the pub, I noticed the bucket with Glinka’s fish-rock.

“Time for another experiment,” I grinned. “Let’s see how you feel about swimming in my domain, little river-fish spirit!”

I fished the rock out of the bucket, feeling it prickle ever so slightly against my fingers and then dropped it from the air onto the liquified floor section turning the remote dial to its lowest setting.

The moment the stone made contact with the wood, the surface rippled outward like a pond disturbed by a pebble. Through my Astralscope, I could see faint tendrils of blue-green energy, distinct from the violet hues of my domain, emanating from the rock as it began to sink.

The descent of the fish-rock was noticeably different from that of the mundane stone. It seemed to resist the pull of the liquefied wood, as if struggling against an unseen current that tried to pull it under. The blue-green aura surrounding the rock pulsed and flickered, creating small eddies in the violet energy field of my domain.

As the rock sank deeper, I felt a strange sensation, like a discordant note in an otherwise harmonious melody. It was as if my domain itself was reacting to the presence of this foreign entity, struggling against its existence. 

The wooden floor around the sinking rock began to undulate slightly, creating concentric circles that radiated outward.

Through the Astralscope, I observed the interplay of energies. The violet tendrils of my domain's magic seemed to be attempting to envelop the blue-green aura of the fish spirit, but they couldn't quite manage to penetrate it. Instead, they swirled around it, creating a mesmerizing dance of colors.

The rock continued its descent, but at a much slower pace than the mundane stone. It was as if the liquid-wood itself was reluctant to accept this intruder. I could sense the fish spirit's presence within my domain, a small pocket of foreign energy amidst the familiar violet hues of my power.

Suddenly, about halfway through the thickness of the floor, the rock's descent halted. It hung there, suspended in the wood like a fly in amber. I could feel its presence acutely, a small knot of resistance within my domain. 

The blue-green aura continued to pulse, but it no longer struggled against the surrounding violet energy. Instead, it seemed to have reached an uneasy equilibrium, neither fully accepted nor rejected by my domain.

I grabbed the rock from the semi-liquid floor and tied a bit of string to it.

“Let’s give it more oomph!” I said as I placed the rock back into the wooden pond and cranked up the amount of arcanoelastic resonance on the remote to the max.

Glinka’s pebble flashed with silver-blue sparks, vanishing in the depths of the floor. 

I still sensed it somehow, but its magic felt greatly reduced, almost gone, contained. It stopped somewhere in the depths of the floor. 

"Fascinating," I muttered, making notes in my Codex. "The tiny river spirit seems to be contained within my domain, but not assimilated. It's like... like an encapsulated foreign body in a living organism."

I pulled it out via the rope and then measured the distance it went in. 

From my test Glinka’s rock had stopped sinking exactly 30 cm into the floor, which was the exact radius of my chalk hexagram. 

The fish spirit looked at me with what was possibly a very annoyed expression as it swam circles around the rock.

Stormy paid neither me nor the perturbed fish spirit any attention, snoozing by the fire.