I quietly handed Lia off to Marten, then moved to the wagon to unpack the most crucial furniture: three mattresses, each stuffed with what seemed like separate, cushioned layers of cotton and down feathers. I quickly brought one to each bedroom and retrieved a crate packed with blankets and pillows, then whispered a quick goodnight to the group as I took Lia back from her father. She never stirred during the entire ordeal, and we were sleeping comfortably side by side on our floor-bound mattress a few moments later.
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Lia bounced on the balls of her feet as she watched me meditate. “Do you really think it’ll work?”
“I can’t say for sure, but we’re about to find out!” I activated the network of mana beneath my fingertips and was rewarded immediately with a rumble beneath my feet. A huge cloud of dirt kicked up from the clearing in front of us, settling a few seconds later to reveal a large, perfectly rectangular depression in the ground. Tentatively, I reached my fingers down to the disturbed dirt, and was delighted when they sunk into the ground without resistance. “Yes, I think it’ll work,” I laughed.
She let out a wordless victory cry and clapped her hands. “Alright!” she yelled, running a lap around the edge of the disturbed dirt. “Let’s move on to the next one!” Without waiting for a response, she pushed me excitedly to the edge of the clearing where the freshly cut emberwood trees were stacked.
“Why the rush, all of a sudden?” I asked, laughing. “We have as much time to do this as we want.”
“We’ve got to keep the momentum going!” she urged. “If any of these tests fail, we’ll have to do a bunch of replanning, so we should find out as soon as possible.” Her fingers tapped against the closest log insistently. “Also, I’ve really been looking forward to this one.”
As much as I found her enthusiasm entertaining, I also agreed with her reasoning. The building plans we had drawn up relied on us using our magic in ways that, while straightforward, were entirely untested, and we would have to pivot sharply if any of the proposed applications failed. “Okay,” I nodded, pointing to our stash of tools, “get me the hammer.”
While she dashed across the clearing, I reached out a hand to the closest log and suffused a thin cross-section with mana. When I was satisfied I had picked the right spot, the Shatter rune inside my ring flashed for the second time that morning, and the log groaned beneath my palm as a five-foot-long section separated from the rest of the wood. This would have been a helpful ability for Lia to learn before chopping down all of these trees. I hid my rueful grin as she returned and handed me a simple craftsman’s hammer. “Thank you,” I said, taking it in one hand and closing my eyes.
I examined the tool through my Detection, rotating the mental image end over end to observe it from every angle. When I was confident I had every detail mapped, I carefully recreated the hammer’s outline just below the surface of the emberwood log beneath my empty hand. The process created a unique strain inside my head, feeling almost as if I was crossing my eyes to observe an object that sat too close to my face. It also came with a more familiar sensation of vertigo I had come to expect from new uses of Detection, so I clenched my jaw in an attempt to push through and hold my focus.
“Is it working?” Lia asked insistently, her face hovering just a few inches away from my ear.
The sudden noise startled me, and I let out an exaggerated sigh. “It would be, if I had a few more seconds of silence to focus,” I answered, cracking open one eye to glare at her. Her hands flew up to her mouth, and she stepped back with a contrite look on her face. “Thank you,” I said more gently. Restarting the process was simpler on my second attempt, and I soon had the outline of the hammer traced in a thin sheet of mana within the log. After a final moment of focus to trace out a few extra tendrils of energy to the surface of the wood, I activated the Shatter rune.
There was no visible or audible response to the magic, but my Detection told me that the attempt had succeeded. I opened my eyes and ran my fingers along the surface of the log where I had been working, then dug my nails into the bark and pulled. A perfectly square section of wood released without resistance, revealing a hole that held a wooden replica of the hammer in my left hand. “Wow,” I whispered to myself as I pulled the replica from the log, “that actually worked.”
Lia bounded forward and stared at the two objects over my shoulder. “You did it!” she exclaimed, shaking me excitedly by the arm. “It worked!”
“It did,” I laughed, still amazed. As I held the two objects side by side, I marveled at just how thoroughly our plan had succeeded; every detail of the original tool, from its worn handle to the initials carved into the metal head, had been perfectly transferred to the wooden replica. The seamless nature of the wooden tool gave it a bizarre look, and I couldn’t help but be reminded of our time in Atsal, a city which seemed to have been carved from a single, impossibly large block of pure white marble.
“If that worked, and our first test worked, that means we can actually get started today!” she said, running over to our pile of tools and returning a moment later with a large shovel. “I’ll start clearing the first layer of dirt now!”
“I like your enthusiasm, but don’t overwork yourself. This isn’t a project we can finish in a day, no matter how much
