I picked the precious thing up again and turned it in my hands. It was roughly the shape of an egg, though smaller. A hard outer shell seemed to meld into something softer inside, then into the liquid. I ran my finger over the smooth surface, then I stopped, looking closer.
“What is it?” asked Amelia.
“I think it’s a soft spot,” I replied. “Yes, here, right on the base, see?” I held it out to her, pointing with the tip of the dagger.
“Oh, yes!” she said. “You’re right! There’s a little dimple in the Core’s surface, where the outer shell is thinner. I think that’s our best bet, don’t you?”
“I certainly do,” I said. “All right, let’s try this.”
“Be careful not to spill any when you crack the Core,” Amelia warned as I set the beautiful little orange Core down on the stone. She was sitting on the ground beside me now, watching.
“I’ll be careful,” I replied. “I don’t want to waste a drop of this fluid.”
I held the Core with my left hand, resting it against the rock face, and carefully found the soft spot with my dagger. Then I pressed down, feeling the surface give slightly under the pressure. I wiggled the point of the blade a couple of times, and it slipped through.
Amelia drew a sharp breath. “The blade’s going in. It worked!”
I pushed the rounded shaft of the dagger down a bit further into the shell, then withdrew it gently. The fluid, a rich, dark orange, adhered to the tip. When I looked closer, I saw that the fluid had filled up the hollow tip of the dagger, just as Amelia had said it would.
I’d felt a slight tug from the Cores the whole time that Amelia had carried them, but I’d grown used to the sensation. Now, the feeling was even stronger. It felt as if something was physically trying to pull my mind toward the Core.
Filled with interest, I held the Core up with both hands and looked inside at the well of sticky, sluggish orange liquid inside the shell.
“Well, we did it,” I said. “It feels like it’s really drawing me. Let’s find a spell in your book to try making a tattoo from.”
“Let’s.” Amelia grinned as she opened the book on her lap.
With the dagger in one hand and the open Core in the other, I looked over her shoulder at the pages as she flicked through them. I’d rarely had the chance to see books before. The only ones I usually saw were accounting books used around my foster-father’s farm to keep records. They always had fresh, thin looking paper inside, obviously meant for temporary use.
The pages of this book looked to be made out of parchment. I’d only seen parchment a couple of times before, but I knew these pages had to be made out of animal skin, not plant pulp. These pages were far smoother and thicker, and they still had a faint smell of animal hide. The curing process could never quite get rid of that.
These pages didn’t look particularly old. I supposed a basic spellbook was probably not that rare in Astros, where Amelia had brought it from. They would be creating new copies fairly regularly. Still, the illustrations were quite beautiful. They hadn’t spared effort on those.
Amelia flipped past pages filled with pictures of monsters, pages filled with weapon designs, and pages filled only with writing, presumably recounting lore and instructing Mages in techniques.
I didn’t know much about reading, myself, but I had been taught to recognize the letters. Perhaps Amelia would be able to help me learn to read better at some point.
“Here are the Fire spells,” Amelia said.
“Right. It would make sense to look for another Fire spell, since this ink comes from a fire Beast.”
“Not only that,” Amelia added. “You may be able to build on the spell you currently have. My theory is that your tattoo mirrors the spell runes on enchanted items. If that’s the case, you should be able to add some augmentations to your current tattoo and change the way the spell works.”
I leaned forward. “You mean I can add more symbols like this spear?” I pointed at the tattoo on my arm. “I guess that would require less ink than a completely new tattoo as well.”
Amelia nodded. “Have a look through these pages and see if there’s something that catches your eye.”
She turned the pages slowly for me as I held onto the opened Beast Core in my left hand.
“What does this knife symbol do?” I asked as I pointed at a drawing inside the book.
“That represents a piercing spell. It reduces the enemy’s resistance to fire.”
“That would have helped against the bear we faced earlier.”
“Indeed, it would have,” Amelia said. “Be careful though; I suspect anything you add onto this tattoo will make it cost more Mana. You expended a lot of your Mana back there, and you almost passed out. If you add too many augmentations, you might find you only have sufficient Mana to cast the spell a single time—or possibly not at all!”
“That makes sense,” I said. “I don’t always have to use the whole tattoo though, do I?”
“What do you mean?” Amelia asked.
“Well, earlier I was able to use the flame symbol in the middle of my tattoo to set things on fire, but the spear was only activated when I cast fireballs at range.”
“Incredible,” Amelia breathed. “You might be right. We’ll have to experiment with it. It’s possible that you could activate only certain parts of the spell. That would make it much more versatile and preserve far more Mana.”
“What does this symbol do?” I pointed at the opposite page, near the top. The symbol depicted there was like a gust of wind.
“That increases the strength of the fire,” Amelia explained. “It will make the
