The Artifacts Of Elios (Book 1) (14 page)

“Merde en enfer!” Shane cussed uncharacteristically as he struggled ineffectively against his restraints.

“
Greetings student
,”
hailed a semitransparent image of a middle-aged man, dressed in sandals and a long off-white robe trimmed in gold with a long robe length burgundy vest and a wide gold colored cloth belt around the waist.  The image appeared to be standing in the air about a hand height above the floor between Shane and his desk.  If Shane hadn’t been restrained he probably would have fallen over or jumped up and fled. 
“My name is Ahhan, I am the designer of the instructor that you have before you.  You have requested that the device read and analyze your thoughts.  Please allow me a few moments to impress upon you the benefits and cautions associated with this procedure.

First this procedure can record all of your thoughts; it is recommended that you set the parameter to refrain from recording anything you consider personal
; things of that nature always seem to come back to haunt you.  The instructor is sophisticated enough to recognize these and will not record them.  Second it is recommended that you do this in dream mode as direct mode can be somewhat painful except for those that have a high capacity for handling Lumen; to the uninformed
that’s magic
,”
the image winked.  “
Lastly
,” the image continued with a smile, “
the procedure can last a while and it is recommended that you prepare yourself to remain stationary for a long period of time; the more intelligent the student the longer the procedure.”

“Do you wish to proceed?”
queried the image.

Stunned, it took Shane a few moments to gather his wits. “Yes,” he stammered; torn between wanting knowledge and possible pain; he could always call halt if it became unbearable.

“Do you want all thoughts analyzed or do you wish to filter private personal information.”

“Filter personal please,” Shane answered.

“If you are a good student with high intellect you should be prepared to remain stationary for an extended amount of time.”

“I’m
top of my class but I’m good to go,” said Shane bracing himself mentally.

“Are you certain you don’t want to receive this procedure in dream mode?”

“I’m sure.”

“Procedure beginning,” intoned the instructor.

Shane felt a warm pulse; nothing else.  He looked and saw a wide grin on the image’s face.  Looking down he also realized that the restraints were also gone; with that realization he looked back towards the man just as the image winked out of existence.

“
Analysis complete,”
spoke the voice of the instructor.

“What’s going on,” blustered Shane.  That didn’t hurt at all.

“
Your lumen capacity is exceptionally high,” said the instructor.

“And
it happened instantly,” growled Shane.  “I guess that makes me an idiot; how embarrassing.”

“
Do not be upset,”
consoled the device. 
“The projection of Master Ahhan was joking, the procedure is this fast for everyone; he is well known for his sense of humor.  If you observe the sun has set and nearly four turns of the large hand have circled the clock. The procedure caution that you received is given to all new students and the master refers to it as good natured hazing.  After analyzing you I am confident that you will enjoy razzing future new students when their impatience gets the best of them as well.

“It was pretty funny, if you look at it from that point of view, and it was harmless
,” Shane said, his mood beginning to lighten.  Was it Shane’s imagination or was the instructor more human sounding.

“Now that that’s out of the way,” said Shane
, “What can you tell me about artifacts as I know them?”

“
Simply put,”
said the instructor,
“They are magical machines that were created for the benefit of the Luion.  Once you learn the meaning of glyphs and the rules of lumen, based on your inherent ability and your knowledge you will be able to construct machines of your own.  In fact you already have.  Granted you did copy it with minor modifications but you did pour forth the required lumen unto the glyphs using your own lumen potential; you are definitely a glyph mage.  I have little doubt that if you were to trace your genealogy back a thousand years you would find several relatives of Elios descent.”

I have magic, I mean lumen potential?”  Shane was really excited now.

“That is correct,”
said the instructor
.
  “From the bonding and the mental analysis as far as I am able to determine you have a significant amount.” 

While Shane pondered the significance of this information the instructor continued.
  “As my analysis is complete, I can now anticipate some of your questions.  Would you like me to proceed?”

“Yes, absolutely,” Shane replied like a child on Thanks-Day morning, opening gifts; he barely could contain his enthusiasm.”

“It
might be more comfortable if you placed me on the desk,”
directed the device.

Shane placed the instructor on the desk where it immediately morphed the sphere back into a very large glass screen.  Shane moved the chair back to the desk and sat back down comfortably.
 

“Very well,”
the device began,
“It is my pleasure to instruct you.

H
aving analyzed your thought process and your level of knowledge and the concerns you had prior to the thought analysis I will try to answer some of your questions.  Keep in mind that I cannot over emphasize the need for you to learn of the operations and use of the instructor while you sleep tonight.

To begin glyphs are tools.  They are merely a structure used to assist the mage in directing his magic
, or lumen as it is referred to by the Elios.  It is a way of giving a magical command a controllable form.  For example let us postulate that you wanted to avoid being wet when it rained. You could use lumen to create a barrier that would cause the rain to shed around you. To do so you would have to constantly concentrate on the barrier and soon you would become mentally taxed and would exhaust yourself and the barrier would drop. The way around this is to assign a variable to the lumen that you want to organize or, if you will, that can contain the idea of the barrier; glyphs are used for this purpose; they are lumen purpose bound variables.

The glyphs that you see on the artifacts that are found roundabout were standardized for the use of the Luion refugees that were immigrated to this world thousands of years ago; they were very skilled and innovative with the use of physical machinery; the
glyphs where created to provide a means of powering and enhancing their existing talents.  This standardization and creation of glyphs was a means for the Luion to manufacture their own machines; each glyph has a certain purpose and order and if used in the correct combinations could provide the means to accomplish many things.”

P
ictures began to appear on the screen illustrating the instructor’s dialogue.

“
It is important to note that there are five types of individuals that use or manipulate lumen. 

First is as a user.  A user
can be anyone.  Most often a user is a non-potent; someone that is blind to lumen; at the time of the great migration the entire race of the Luion were blind to lumen; this is another reason why the Elios created the glyphs for them. Glyph users manipulate lumen only through items imbued with lumen by the nature of glyphs.  However users require a mage or other mechanical means to infuse the glyphs with lumen. The reason glyphs were designed that way will become apparent later in your instruction.

Second there is the
glyph mage; the glyph mage can take existing glyphs and order them to perform various functions by placing the glyphs on an object or substrate. Some look it as a magical alphabet; using an infinite combination of letters you can spell an infinite number of words.  Likewise an infinite number of combinations of glyphs can make an infinite number of enchantments. Using the rain repellant example the glyph mage can use the glyphs pousser or repousser as the basis of the force or type of force to push or repel the rain. Then he would need to identify what to push, when to push, where to push - from and to, how hard to push, and how to provide the energy.  This would be done by joining pluie, to puissance, égaux, aura and inertie. Lastly to set the activation you could set a manual activation by adding a glyph of activation or you could be fancy and use a combination of sur quand il pleut; this would activate the rain repellant automatically if it sensed rain.  The difference between the glyph mage and the glyph user is that while users can assemble glyphs it takes a mage to cause them to become infused or contain lumen.  The glyph mages created machines to cause lumen to enter the glyphs for the lumen blind user but it is apparent that this knowledge has been lost and but a few of these machines exist. 

The
third manipulator of lumen is known as a glyph master.  The glyph master is an adept at all glyphs and their uses. Unlike the user and the mage, glyph mastery is only achieved by the most potent of the glyph mages; they are also very intuitive on the use of the glyphs to use; not unlike a master poet naturally knows the best way to structure words for powerful poetry.  Additionally the glyph master has a talent for lumen and for some lumen manipulation without glyphs. Thus the mental ability to order glyphs in the air or in his mind, to affect actions using lumen via the glyph structure without a substrate; this is only achieved by few and for most requires a life time to achieve.  When the Elios were in residence on Eliom there were those of the Luion that were learned and achieved some degree of glyph mastery but very few at a young age.

The fourth manipulator of lumen is the lumen
mage. There have been no records of a Luion ever achieving the level of a lumen mage.  All of the Elios are lumen mages; that is how great their powers are.  The breadth and depth of a lumen mage to a glyph master is as the sun is to a candle. The Elios promised that the day would come that the Luion would become like them if they followed the Laws of Wisdom but that day is not yet; and won’t be until the Elios return

The Last and fifth practitioner of lumen manipulation is the lumen master. A lumen master is a mage that has perfected the understanding of lumen; it was the lumen masters of Elios that authored the glyph structure and the glyphs that are used by the glyph mages.  They do not identify themselves and there is no way
of identifying them should they chose not to make themselves known.  Only other lumen masters can recognize another lumen master by sight; how this is accomplished has not been given to me to instruct.

“Amazing,”
muttered Shane as he watched the screen clear at the conclusion of the instructor’s discussion.  “To be clear, I have the ability to inject lumen into glyph enchantments without a machine?”

“I believe that I made that point quite clear,”
responded the instructor. 
“You have no need of any mechanical means to imbue lumen into glyphs or glyph enhanced machines; or activate as your magetech scholars refer to it.

Shane felt suddenly exhausted.  “Why am I so tired?” he said aloud.

“The thought scanning procedure is very taxing on the mind and body.  That is why it is recommended that you do any non-observational or mind direct instruction in dream mode.”

“Well I’ve got nothing planned tomorrow; we’re going to build something.  I don’t know what yet, but it’s going to be awesome.”  Shane yawned, “Don’t forget to give me the instructions while I sleep tonight.”

Shane commanded the instructor to resume its place as the portrait of Ava, then practically fell out of his clothes and was asleep as soon as his
head hit the pillow.

Stafford didn’t waste any time.  As soon as his breakfast meeting with the king had concluded, his first stop was to a hidden room deep within the dungeons of the palace.  He grabbed a small hand held artifact that had a hollow spot the shape of a finger.  He placed his index finger into it and felt a tiny prick as it extracted a minute drop of blood.  “Blood Chemistry Normal,” a small display read.

“Great
, at least they didn’t try to poison me, yet,” he mumbled as he put the tester away. 

Using the video recorder artifacts that he had found and copied over
the years he reviewed the meeting with the king; before, during and after.  He noted the conversations that the king had had with Wendell and smiled to himself.  While the conversation with Wendell after he had left was what he had expected, it was the conversation before his arrival that had been the most enlightening.  The king had confided with his intelligence officer of his plans to remove any minister that had been in place at the time of his father’s rule.  There were only three remaining. “So predictable he thought.”

An hour later he sent two secret messages to both the director of IDAD and to Leslie; both dear friends, both members of
an old Luion society to restore the knowledge of glyphs to all who would learn.  Phillip and Leslie would know to take an emergency trip out of the city.  Hopefully due to the excitement of the warball championship their egress would not be noticed until Lundi at the soonest.

After sending his messages he began to implement his own exit strategy.  “Nothing to it he thought to himself.  All I have to do is
burn down a building, accidentally kill myself in front of witnesses, abduct my niece’s boyfriend, and not get caught or die in the process. 

By Venri he was exhausted. Stafford had not slept since leaving the king’s private breakfast room.
  First thing in the morning he would find Wendell and walk him through the plan as he needed to see it.  Until then he would catch a few hours of sleep.

The sun and the birds combined with his alarm clock finally were enough to extricate Shane from his slumber.
As he rolled out of bed he looked up at the wall and smiled at the portrait of Ava.  His glance at the picture triggered an avalanche of thoughts and his new understanding of how the operation and use of the Instructor worked.  “What a powerful device,” he thought.

“Instructor, release camouflage and return to my desk.”  Instantly the Instructor shrank to the size and shape of the original brass
plate and blinked from the wall to the desktop.  Ignoring routine Shane decided to skip his morning run and calisthenics that he usually did first thing on non-practice mornings and grabbed some clean clothes and hurried down the hall to the showers.  Having completed his morning ablution he quickly gathered up his laundry and stuffed it into a hamper.  Looking around a now tidy dorm room he contemplated his new knowledge and the operational instructions of the instructor that now seemed to be available for recall as if he had always known them.

Simplicity is what I need here
, he thought out loud.  First things first; he went to the desk and pressed the activation button.  His first item was to simplify his interaction with the instructor.  “Instructor, apply mental interface as default unless I specify audio.”

“
Acknowledged
,
mental interface now activated
.”  The difference was amazing.  The sound now seemed as a voice inside of his head; it definitely would take some getting used to.

“
Instructor, full display please,” the flat glass pane appeared above the brass plate; nearly three cubits wide and two cubits tall.  “Can you show me a list of simple glyph enchantments that a novice can practice?”  Shane asked.

“I am happy to instruct,”
announced the newly named instructor in a voice that only Shane could hear.  Immediately a list of one hundred enchantments filled the screen with a menu at the bottom that said page one of one million six hundred fifty thousand thirty three.

“Simplify,” said Shane.  “Give me the top ten
most simple please.”

The screen changed and listed
“cold water”, ”hot water”, “shed precipitation”, “find”, “hide”, “instant window”, ”light fire”, “douse fire”, “glue”, and “scribe”.  Scanning the list Shane read what each enchantment did.  “Shed Precipitation” was the same enchantment that the instructor had used the day before in its analogy of how glyphs were used.  The fire enchantments were basic start and extinguish fire enchantments that could be used in countless ways to ignite countless items as well as extinguish almost any combustion.  glue was used to attach items together and was a good combination enchantment that could mix with many others.  “Find” and “hide” were used to find lost items and to hide items that you wanted to remain invisible.  Hot and cold water could be used to heat existing water or added to a vessel to keep the contents cool or hot; they could also be combined with other liquid substance enchantments to provide hot or cold to the conjured substance.  Scribe was the one that Shane found the most interesting.

Scribe was the most complex of the simple enchantments, but after seeing its use he understood why it was in the top ten.  The scribe enchantment could be placed on a
pointed stick or rod, or a writing implement that would allow the user to permanently inscribe glyphs onto any material.  If Shane would have had this device he would have been able to create the instructor in a fraction of the time that it had taken him to engrave the brass by hand.

Shane decided to do the scribe first.  Looking around he could find nothing suitable to use as a substrate for the glyphs that
would be suitable to hold in his hand like a pen. 

He went back to the screen.  “
Instructor,” are there any simple spells that can be used to create a pointed metal rod?”

“There are four hundred and thirty seven
,” Instructor responded.

“Please show the top ten on the screen.”  The screen changed and showed the enchantments.  Shane finally selected one that used only four glyphs.  In the foot notes there were several more complex additions that could be made to better define the size and shape as well as the material of the rod. 

Shane grabbed a piece of paper and began to write the four main glyphs.  As he was writing them he could see them in his mind. As he visualized the glyphs, trying to decide which modifiers to use he felt more than thought as he mixed in several from the foot notes.  Jotting the new recipe down, he maintained the visualization.  Looking at the finished recipe Shane decided to give it a try.

Carefully he touched his hand to the first glyph on the paper and drew into the lumen that he could see in his mind.  The next thing Shane could recall was he was on the ground staring at the ceiling.  As he slowly took in his surrounding he smelled smoke.  Suddenly fully alert he jumped to his feet and noticed the ashes of the now incinerated paper which he had inscribed the recipe.

“Instructor, what just happened?”

“
I am happy to instruct
,” the device said with what Shane thought might be amusement.  “
First the substrate that you were using for the enchantment was not sufficient for the energy required to transmute the material you were creating and was consumed by the heat generated.  Second you did not specify an energy source; by default you became the source and thus you were instantly fatigued and lost consciousness.  If you review the footnotes you will see that there are notes to this effect and that you must add a power glyph to power the enchantment.  A solei glyph would have been sufficient.”

  
Shane straightened his chair and sat back at his desk and began rechecking the foot notes.  Sure enough he had not read them thoroughly and he saw where he had made his mistakes.  Without thinking he visualized the glyphs in his mind and reached out to the image with his lumen.  He felt a shock of tingling energy and the image vanished as he lost his concentration.

“Whoa!”  The feeling was not painful but like an activation tingle that he felt throughout his entire body.  Looking down he saw lying on the desk a shiny metal rod pointed on both ends approximately
one and a half hands long.  Sensing he had just done something unique he described what he had just done to the instructor.

“
What you have just done is a glyph mastery technique.  Many advance glyph mages are successful with simple spells using the mastery techniques due to the rudimentary concentration required but the more complex the enchantment the less successful the imbuement,”
explained Instructor.

“Could I have injured myself if something had gone wrong?”

“
No; the enchantment would have succeeded or failed.  The success of glyph mastery depends on the ability of the mage to concentrate and maintain the glyphs.  If you recall my explanation from yesterday when I mentioned that if you tried to maintain the lumen needed to shed rain you would eventually exhaust yourself and drop the enchantment; the same principle applies here.  Eventually you would have tired, lost concentration, then lost track of the glyphs.  The rule being, the more complex the glyphs, the more concentration required to maintain the visualization of them.  As this particular enchantment was a conjuring function and you only needed to use it one time you were able to use it before you lost concentration.

This is why glyph mages inscribe the glyphs on a substrate; the benefit being that it is always there for use, the pitfall being that depending on the energy required the substrate may require material or a heat sink able to withstand the side effects of the energy requirement as you saw when the paper was consumed on your first attempt.”

“So what I did was normal?” asked Shane.

”On the contrary,”
the instructor explained further.  “You are a beginning glyph mage.  You imbued your first enchantment not more than two days ago.  What you have accomplished today is something that only the most advanced glyph mages can do after much practice.  I would suggest that you study and learn as many glyphs as you can, this will increase your glyph vocabulary, which will help in the ease of visualization.  I will adjust your training regimen to fit your recently displayed capabilities. Make sure you ask for instruction dream number one augmented tonight when you retire. ”

As Shane mentally digested the information that
his instructor had just provided he gathered up a new piece of paper and his pen and wrote down the glyphs necessary to create the scribe enchantment.  He then realized that he would need to engrave them on the metal rod that he had just conjured.  With a moan he dug out his tools and painfully began the process of engraving.  He cheered somewhat as he realized that if the scribe tool worked as promised he would not have to engrave with tools again.

An hour later the engraving complete, Shane quickly imbued the glyphs with lumen with practically no effort and barely a tingle; this definitely got easier with practice.

By lunch Shane had finished the scribe, created a hot and cold enchantment on a mug that he had lying around his room.  He had also searched the list and found enchantments that would clean and freshen his clothes after a few hours while they were in his hamper.  He created another scribe as he found additional enchantments to put on his first one; they included disguise and locate should he need to keep it concealed or in case he should misplace it and he didn’t want to spend another hour engraving by hand the additional enchantments.

By the afternoon he was looking through the lists and found enchantments dealing with healing and protection.  Thinking that it would be a shame to be hurt on the final gam
e he carefully used his scribe to enchant his game socks and jersey with a simple impact protection and a heal enchantment that would heal over time simple sprains and scrapes.  There were more efficient enchantments but they were very complex and he didn’t feel comfortable with that level of difficulty.

That night Shane took a drink of nice cold water from his mug
; proud that he had been able to make something so practical.  He then transformed his scribe into a spoon that he placed in the now empty cup.  He glanced up at the instructor hanging on the wall in the form of the portrait of Ava and with a smile he turned off the lights and went to bed.