CC 10: Thesaurize ~ Ten!

Shifting somewhat uncomfortably in his chair, Joe idly realized that he’d never considered how dark his workshop was until this moment. Darkvision was a boon from Tatum, and he’d gotten so used to casually and passively using the ability that he’d never really considered what it looked like to other people when they entered his space and saw him working in the dark.

It was likely that Joe would’ve taken a lot longer to realize this fact, but Master Stu had pointed it out near-instantaneously upon having his leather gag removed.

Now the human and the Dwarf were sitting across from each other, staring each other down as each of them plotted on how they would take control of the situation. Joe spoke first, his seeming nonchalance over the situation causing the scowl on Stu’s face to deepen. “Welcome to day one of working with me, Master Stu. I hope that we can be professional with each other, and work toward the betterment of Novusheim. No matter what else has occurred between you and I, I'm certain that you in general have the best interest of your people at heart. With that in mind, let me show you what I'm hoping to accomplish.”

Joe figured that by refusing to give the Dwarf a chance to speak, he could avoid the constant taunting and cutting remarks he was certain would be flying out of the Dwarf's main face hole. Scrolls, parchments, and papers began appearing on the table between them as Joe pulled them out of his storage space. Each of them depicted diagrams, symbols that those unfamiliar with rituals would consider cryptic, some of them partially charged with mana or created with aspects and therefore glowing in the dimly lit chamber they sat in.

Now showing some begrudging interest, Master Stu leaned forward and looked at what Joe was presenting to him. After only a few moments, the Dwarf shook his head and muttered under his breath, “Infernal Conflagration? More like ‘only infernal idjits use this’. Where’d you even get such an archaic spell? I should report you, this spell is illegal in…”

Joe looked up at the Dwarf with an arched brow as the sarcastic Master trailed off. “Let me finish that for you. This spell is illegal on Alfheim. Yeah, something tells me it’s doubly illegal now that the Theocracy is in complete and total control. Seeing as it has extra effectiveness against magical defenses, this seems like something that should have been put in play against them. But we aren’t here to discuss what should’ve happened, we’re here to turn this into a ritual to get you familiar with making rituals. After that, I have other, more important work for us to do.”

“I've got to admit,” the Dwarf smirked at Joe as he contemptuously eyed the bald human. “You've got some cojones, bald bro. Calling me here to work with you on things that could backfire and blow up in your face? Me? I'm just wondering how you think this is a good idea.”

“Whatever else you are, Stu, you know your stuff. Even if you’re mocking your own people’s vernacular.” Joe shrugged as though he were completely unconcerned about whether or not the Dwarf would be helpful. “The better we can keep monsters out of the Town, the better off everyone here will be. Abyss, the more safe you’ll be. I'm hoping that your desire for self-preservation is going to be stronger than your dislike of me personally, and especially my people.”

“I guess we'll find out.” Stu retorted lightly.

Joe nodded gently. “I guess we will.”

“Why Infernal Conflagration? The damage you’re going to do to the beasts makes the meat inedible. Are you going to take responsibility when the city can no longer feed itself?”

Joe glanced up from the notes he'd just started reading over, a hint of irritation showing on his face. “You should know by now that we have alternative food sources in the works. Plus, not every monster will be burned, there's a five and a half second cooldown on the spell. With how fast the monsters move, and how few of these rituals we’ll have set up at a time, I estimate that less than half will take infernal damage. Half of thousands of monsters that weigh hundreds of pounds and are over a dozen feet tall? I don't think we're going to have any concerns with having plenty of fresh meat or not. I just need an effective, efficient way to beat the monsters back.”

Stu grumbled softly as he crossed his arms. “Effective? Maybe. I guess you'll find out. I still don't see why I have to be involved in this nonsense. Community service as a punishment? Bah! I should just be able to pay a fine like every other Dwarf that's gotten in trouble over the centuries.”

“Sure, go ahead and pay us one currency unit per hour of community service you have remaining.” Joe chortled softly as the Dwarf across from him seethed. “Yeah, it's hard to pay a fine when we don't have a standardized currency, isn't it? Just do this with me, and all of your hours working here count double. But if you just sit there and glare, I'll kick you out and find someone who will work with me, even if it’ll be a less effective use of both of our time.”

The Ritualist suppressed a sigh as Stu went silent, obviously considering Joe's words. The human knew that beneath the Dwarf's anti-human exterior there were valuable insights. Frankly, he didn't care how they were offered, as long as he was given the breakthroughs that he needed in order to create better spells and rituals.

Ever so slowly, as the hours passed, the Dwarf got more involved in the work itself. Joe assumed that having some form of mental stimulation was the key here, as not only did the Master of Sarcasm get a chance to speak with someone, he wasn’t being used as standard manual labor or as an energy source to empower building projects. He could only imagine that had been a massive blow to the ex-councilman's pride.

Putting the final touches on his new ritual, which was essentially the diagram for Infernal Conflagration inserted in place of the Wind Blade diagram in the Ritual of Proximity, Joe carefully double-checked his own work—triple-checking all areas Stu had made comments on. “Good. That should work perfectly for chucking out the spell as needed.”

“Pff. Yeah, that’ll do exactly what you told it to do.” Stu snorted, practically turning up his nose at the ritual that had been created.

Eyebrow twitching, Joe glared at the Dwarf as he tried to figure out what he was getting at. “Now that we have this ritual completed, I should let you know that Grandmaster Snow will be checking it over. If you did something to negatively impact our work, she's going to add triple the hours onto your punishment.”

Unexpectedly, Stu didn't have much of a reaction to that warning, simply nodding fractionally as if that was only to be expected. “Yeah, yeah, throw out more threats at the prisoner. Work me to death if you want. I'm just saying, this is the most boring magical item I've ever had the misfortune of having to work on personally.”

“What do you mean?” Joe glanced down at the beautiful, efficient, clean ritual he'd created. “This will do exactly what I want it to do. The spell will be cast, monsters will be killed, and-”

“That's right. It'll do exactly what you want it to do.” Stu leaned forward, a glint in his eye and a snarky grin on his face. “How boring is that? You know what made the Dwarves a contender on the grand stage? Our golems. Did we create those to be safe? A machine that did what we told it to do? Or did we make a magical dynamo that had a wide range of functionality, and every once in a while exploded in our faces? Even then, we planned for the danger and used the detonating cores as a method of attack. This ritual you’re forcing me to work on? It's bland. Tasteless. No room to express itself.”

Remaining silent as he thought over what the Dwarf was saying, Joe looked at the excellent creation he had on the table in front of himself. His gut reaction was to ignore the Dwarf, assuming that it was an attempt to subvert punishment by claiming Joe had gone wild with his ritual and that was why it backfired. But something the Dwarf was saying rang true. Ever so slowly, he wondered aloud, “I don't suppose rituals would be considered a form of enchanted object?”

“My guess is yes.” Stu seemed absolutely delighted that Joe was catching on to what he was hinting at.

“All magical, enchanted objects are kind of alive. At high enough ranks, they’re directly intelligent.” Joe's eyes widened at that thought. “If I’m making high-level rituals boring, am I trapping a magical intellect in a state where they can never grow or improve?”

“Even Alchemical injectables need to be taken by a certain date, or the magical communities consider using them an affront to natural law. So these rituals?” Stu gave a light shrug, “It depends on how persistent they are, I suppose. But I'll also point out that I doubt you found any Master-ranked rituals or better that are single use or consumable.”

Joe had been attempting to find a pattern in rituals as to why some were ranked higher than others, even if they sometimes had weaker effects than those of a lower tier. He decided to think on this more, and put the issue to the side for the moment. “Let's say I want to listen to you. Go ahead and pretend for a minute that you were going to make this ritual exactly how you wanted to do it. What would that look like?”

“Joe, I've been a Master for hundreds of years.” Stu scoffed at the insinuation that the human could wrangle secrets out of him without proper compensation. “I know exactly what I’d do, and how I’d do it. But that's not the job. What am I getting for teaching you how to pursue your own craft?”

Having expected something like this to come up, Joe had a ready answer. “You realize that at some point, the bifrost will open? When that happens, I'm gone, Stu. The faster you help me make that happen, the sooner I'm out of your beard for good.”

“Nice touch on the beard comment.” Stu considered what Joe had said, eventually shrugging and leaning forward to tap the paper. “Fine, I'll walk you through how I’d do it. There's a whole bunch of things to keep in mind when creating a magical… anything, I suppose. The first and most important is the intent of the magic itself. This is an infernal spell. Backing up slightly, this is a combat spell.”

“Meaning that the intent of the spell is to deal damage?” Joe hazarded a guess.

“No.” The smirk on the Dwarf's face grew. “I can see why you need so much help. The intent of this spell is to kill. If you wanted to eat the meat, you’d choose a spell that was meant to deal damage to specific areas. If you wanted more material, better cores, a way to keep the damage off of allies? Well, you’d use a spell that had a different intent. Infernal damage persists until it’s cleansed. If you burn someone with this, they just die. It might take a while, but that's what’ll happen. Real hard to cure infernal damage-over-time”

“Interesting.” It was a strange way of thinking about things, but most importantly it was a different way of thinking about things. Joe pulled out his notebook, and started writing. Information like this was exactly why he'd wanted to work with the Master Dwarf in the first place.