The Trapped Mind Project (Emerilia Book 1)

by Michael Chatfield

  Dave ran his hand over the blade, closing his eyes; magical runes formed circuits, enchanting the blade as his hand passed. They were not on the outside but the inside of the blade: unseen, unknown, and still as powerful as if they were placed on the outside.

  Dave felt the oddity, the growing flaw. He stopped and looked at the blade. He smiled. With a click of his fingers, the blade turned to shadows and disappeared.

  “Well, you can do better than that, Dave. Try again,” Bob said, appearing in Dave’s house.

  “Practice makes perfect.” Dave took a breath, letting his Mana refill more before another strip of ebony appeared in the room. Again, Dave formed it. His left hand rested on the ebony ingot; his right touched and changed the floating strip until it was identical to the ingot in his left.

  This time, he gave the blade a curve, changing its form and function; new runes and new circuits were created.

  Dave held the blade in his hand, his eyes closed. He felt the weight of the blade, its innate strength and makeup. He moved it around, swinging it twice before it again disappeared into shadows.

  Now two axes formed from shadows.

  “Now you’re getting the feel of it.” Bob sat forward in interest.

  Dave worked through the night, forming weapons, armor, tools, anvils, and nails, creating Magical Circuits.

  Here and there, Bob made a recommendation. They talked theories. It was as if Dave were back on Earth, working to create Rock Breakers once again. The spark of creation, the fight to overcome obstacles, the excited talk of progress and ideas turned into possibilities.

  He was testing and playing with the runes, with their abilities and the Magical Circuits that they formed. Although master enchanters had to take materials and carve their runes into them, Dave was able to form runes directly into his creations. What would have taken days to carve or engrave took him minutes and hours. He talked and Bob made notes, both of them lost in the discovery of it all.

  They might be Jukal and Human, or god and mortal. What connected them was their want to build, to create.

  Chapter 8: A Mixing of Metals

  Dave rose and went to the bank that had come to Cliff-Hill. It was one of the stone buildings. Instead of looking cold and uninviting as many human-made stone buildings, it was elegant, with carvings across its walls, and inviting. It looked like a modern building made from smooth marble. Dave walked inside; it was warm, unaffected by the early morning frost that had settled over Cliff-Hill.

  He walked up to an Elven teller.

  Before he could get there, Ukon walked out of a glass door. “Dave!” He moved toward him.

  Dave grinned and shook the other dwarf’s hand. “Hey, Ukon. So, what did you want to see me about?”

  “Come into my office. We can talk about it there. Would you like some warm cider or tea?” Ukon asked.

  “Some cider would be nice, its getting a bit colder out there. Dave smiled.

  Ukon let out a grunt of agreement, a slight smile on his face. He guided Dave to the rear of the bank, where the portal treasury was located, a powerful creation that linked all banks together and to their depository. It was old and ancient magic that no one had been able to break.

  A secretary brought them their drinks. Ukon closed the door to his large office and sat behind his desk, looking at Dave.

  “As you know, your holdings with us have been considerable. As you have said, Master Smith Kol is in charge of your portable smithy and the attached renovations. Wis’Zel is in charge of the kiln factory, and I have come into managerial position of funds and patents connected to yourself,” Ukon said.

  Dave nodded.

  “The patents have done better than hoped. I have been submitting your new patents on Magical Circuits for lighting, heating, and the designs for simplified running water pipes and this item you call a shower. It has started to take off at a rate that I could not believe. As you have put forward a good amount of money, it has been made available to those who wish to start businesses in the area at a percentage of their company’s earnings. Currently your holdings are around 2,354 gold pieces, with 54 silver and 87 copper.” Ukon watched Dave.

  Dave was impressed and nodded his head. He knew a lot of that money went to overhead costs for the kiln and smithy. Right now, they were making money hand over fist, supplying people with materials, repairing and manufacturing armor and weapons, though it mattered little. If the battle against the citadel was lost, then Cliff-Hill would soon fall.

  “That is a lot of wealth, Dave. Enough to get a comfortable home away from all the fighting,” Ukon said.

  Dave looked to a wall of the office, roughly in the direction of his home. “It might be but I like it here.” Dave looked to the other dwarf.

  Ukon shook his head but Dave saw the dwarf was proud in Dave’s decision. “Very well. I will continue to manage your funds as you have detailed and continue to send you messages detailing opportunities and growth per month,” Ukon said.

  “Thank you, Ukon. Now I must be going, else Kol will find me hiding out here and drag me back to the smithy.” Dave rose, finishing off the warm cider, and shook Ukon’s hand.

  “Till we meet again,” Ukon said.

  “Likewise.” With that, Dave headed out of the bank and to the smithy. He greeted and waved to people as he walked.

  Kol was waiting for him next to the wall where the Dwarves kept their tool belts and food.

  “Kol.” Dave nodded. He’d gotten over the man’s burned face. He might not have eyes but he could see better than most who did have them. His own Touch of the Land was powerful when looking at items that were associated with the Dark or Earth.

  When Dave had asked about his skill level, he had waved it aside as if it had no bearing on anything. Kol usually left him to work on the various items that were listed up on the work board. He might be working with steel plate one day and then iron screws, which were in constant demand.

  He got less experience working with the lower grade metals but he had started doing his own experiments with the metal and the way he worked it.

  He was a master of iron. It practically danced in his hands as steel was finely crafted. He was good with silver but silver armor was rare as it would cost entirely too much. They might have intricate carvings filled with silver but nothing was ever made out of pure silver.

  Dave had learned to make reflectors for the large torches that illuminated the wall and filled in magical runes, connecting them and making them more powerful. In that way, they were like circuitry. Silver was highly conductive for the magical power imbued in items, as it was for electrical energy.

  Kol had taught Dave a lot. Silver might not be as flashy as gold, but it was 24 points more conductive. Meaning that magical runes that had been connected with silver were nearly a third more powerful than the same runes connected by gold.

  “It’s time that you worked with more than just a single piece of metal. Today I want you to make shields,” Kol said.

  Dave looked to the man as he pulled on his apron and tools. He nodded seriously. A dwarf’s shield was everything to them. If it was weak or improperly made, it was not just their life, but the lives of those who relied on them. Making a dwarf’s shield was not only a great honor, but also came with great responsibility.

  “Got it,” Dave said. There was no room for error and this was a test by Kol.

  Kol tapped him on the shoulder in reassurance before he headed through the smithy, checking the work that was being done there.

  Dave’s portable smithy now had four separate structures added to it, from a large refinery and metal casting facilities, to different workshops that made nails, blades, armor, shields, and frying pans. Everything that was metal came through the shop. Different smithies dealt with different items and metals. Each smithy had a variety of smithies, from novice to a single master or expert level. Kol was the only master smith in the smithies.

  Dave grabbed a finished shield and took it to his station. He took his
time as his hands moved over the steel creation.

  Steel was a subset of iron, its stronger son which then had a bunch of subsets. Three kinds of steel were used in the shield. It was built like a kite, with three triangles making the top, two large triangles for the bottom, and a rectangle in between.

  The main pieces were made of a strong steel alloy and then fused with stainless steel to prevent it from rusting. Bands of tooled steel connected the plates together and formed the points that dug into the ground, again covered in stainless steel.

  On the back of the shield were leather bracers for a dwarf to put their forearm in. Simple runes had been carved into the alloy steel; that worked to make the shield lighter and stronger. The enchantment was smart. The shields gave a strength modifier that increased with the number of shields touching.

  With every attached shield, the Dwarves got a larger strength modifier. It was why breaking a Dwarven shield wall was like breaking into a stone castle. The more of them together, the stronger they became. It was an impressive piece of Magical Circuitry. It extended to every edge of the alloy and met in the middle with the central enchantments.

  Dave let his hand wander over the shield again, feeling the mixture of elements that had come together to create the item in front of him. He’d worked silver into steel alloy and sheathed it in stainless steel, but this was much more complex.

  He’d learned that with enchanting, actually writing the magical runes into the material instead of just straight up enchanting an item made the enchantment much more powerful. It also increased the chance of success and took less power to charge the Magical Circuits.

  He smiled, looking at the shield, his latest challenge.

  “Well, I’m going to need some damn ore.” Dave put the shield to the side of his work station, writing on it with chalk, saying it was free as he was in the refinery.

  No dwarf worth his weight was going to let anyone else handle the ingots and materials that he’d use to make a Dwarven shield.

  ***

  Gurren looked over his fellow shield bearers. They were all tired, their weapons and armor damaged from the fighting. Lox greeted the guards at the gate as they trudged in. The wall looked like wood on the outside but inside, a stone parapet rose up behind it. Slowly, the mages and workers were piling stone into a defensive wall.

  More Dwarven guards were on the walls, with a few Elves here and there using their enhanced eyesight to look through the forest. More had been in the forest but Gurren hadn’t been able to pick them out.

  They walked up the road that would head to Omal. They walked through the forest that rose along the road, covering Dave’s compound.

  The small kiln and the log seats had remained in their place. Lox stopped there and slammed his shield into the ground. They each put their shield down, checking it and making sure it was in good condition before checking their blades and then armor as they pulled it off.

  “Damn bears,” Tounk growled as Max had to use his personal warhammer to knock his pauldrons off. They’d been clawed and sunk into his cuirass.

  “Go get checked by a healer. Joko, go with him. Gurren, get our armor checked over. Max, get something cooking. I’m going to see Wender.” Lox sounded as tired as they felt but they had work to do before they could rest.

  Gurren let his armor fall off, people making piles of what was good and what wasn’t. Most people couldn’t wear armor for extended periods of time due to the weight. They’d been training in it, so it was a second skin. Altered it so that it was a lot more comfortable than what the Humans used.

  Travelers loved to use their armor all the time, causing debuffs and loss of stats that they didn’t even notice. Over time, Emerilia had adapted and just made those stats part of their characters.

  To everyone else, it looked painful being stuck in armor all day.

  Gurren took the busted-up armor as people left for their tasks.

  He walked toward the smithy. A smile fell on his face as he smelled coal and felt the heat of the place. He moved to the work table and dropped off the broken gear. In the depths of the smithy, he saw two familiar faces: one hammering away at something on an anvil, the other standing nearby, speaking into the first’s ear.

  Gurren walked around the smithy to get a better look.

  Dave was working a massive piece of armor. Gurren studied the creation. It was a Dwarven shield. Steel had been bent, heated, formed and covered. Gurren was no master smith but he could tell that the shield was strong and powerful and that Dave had spent many hours working on it.

  Now it was facedown on the work space as Dave worked with chisel and liquid silver heated by a torch. He tapped runes into the steel, filling them with silver to link them together.

  It had been two weeks since Gurren had left. He saw that the work was rudimentary and Dave had a distance to go. Yet the distance he had come already—it was impressive.

  Gurren smiled to himself, proud of Dave and thankful to his grandfather for teaching him the ways of his craft.

  The compound had grown. There was now a large barracks through some trees beside the smithy. Smithies lived there, waking and turning in to the sound of hammers.

  Another barracks was past it, meant for those who were working on the kiln. It would be some time until it was completed but people were already laying the foundations and more trees littered what had been Dave’s worksite, ready to be trimmed and shaped.

  He wandered back to Max and sat down next to the fire.

  An Elf came out of the forest.

  “Deia,” Max said in greeting.

  “I see that you’re back safe and sound,” she said.

  Gurren looked over to her. There was a change about her. Her eyes now reddish brown than brown flecked green. Her hair caught the sun, with red light instead of brown.

  “How is everything back home?” Max asked.

  Gurren listened up; they’d been without word of what had happened with the Earth Lord’s betrayal.

  Deia sat down on the log. “The clans have united against the lords of Earth and Dark,” She sighed.

  “So, what does that mean for us?” Gurren asked.

  “It means that instead of siphoning our power off to them in offering, we’re going to feed it back into our own people. The walls of Mithsia and Kufo’tel have risen. Rangers are scouring the forests and finding the agents of the Earth and Dark. Warbands move to destroy them.”

  “What about those in the depths?” Max asked.

  “They have risen, but the warbands are strong and the Elves’ Fire mages stand with them,” Deia said.

  “Fire mages?” Gurren asked.

  “Well, we might have overemphasized the strength of our Earth mages while keeping our true power as Fire mages a secret. Most people see fire and think destruction and death. They do not think of the warmth it brings in its fires or the life through the burning of our sun. We kept it hidden. Our Lady of Fire understands and does not mind. She might be the lowest of the Pantheon, but she is the least interested in games. Now that we have shown our true Affinities once again, her power surges forth and fills us.” Deia smiled, sadly, as a flame filled her hand. “I wish that we did not have to show our true Affinity.”

  “Huh, so you’re a Fire mage?” Max stood and stirred the pot that rested over Dave’s first kiln.

  “And an Elven ranger,” Deia agreed.

  “Well, that would have been useful five minutes ago. Damn wood’s all damp,” Max muttered.

  Gurren laughed and sat back, happy that his people were safe.

  “You don’t care that I’m a Fire mage?” Deia asked.

  “You’re still our Deia—just have another useful skill. You Elves do like your secrecy.” Gurren closed his eyes and yawned.

  He didn’t see the happiness that danced in her eyes at his words.

  “So, when you going to ask Dave out?” Max asked.

  “W-what?” Deia said.

  “Come on, lady. I think you’ve been trying to ca
tch him naked ever since that patrol,” Max chided. Gurren chuckled as he found a comfortable place for him to nap.

  “N-no, I haven’t!” Deia wasn’t convincing anyone with that tone.

  “Damn—we might live half the time you Elves do, but we sure as hell are a bit more forward with our emotions. ’Cept our Dave. That guy’s training so often, I think he’s forgot that women even exist,” Max grumbled.

  “Four months until that citadel opens. We ain’t gonna live forever—live what you’ve got now, before it’s all too late.” Gurren cracked an eyelid and looked at Deia. “And let a dwarf get some damned sleep!”

  Max and Deia laughed at Gurren’s antics.

  Chapter 9: Report

  Lox greeted those he knew with grunts and noises. Since he’d been gone, the warclan sent from Mithsia had arrived. The camp that had been cleared for the warclans now hosted the five thousand shield bearers and their one thousand Elven rangers.

  Sorcerers, mages, engineers, maintainers, healers, archers, the sub units, and camp followers had spread into the city, adding their labors to the cities at cost.

  With them, supplies filled the outpost.

  Players were making a good profit on pelts, meat, wood, and raw materials while the outpost was making coin on their high-quality weapons and armor.

  More Players had headed for the city; two more clans other than the Golden Sabres had set up camps and there was talk of expanding the wall with the influx of people. Cliff-Hill had hosted nearly a thousand people; now it was almost four times that and growing.

  The Dwarves had warned off bands of Players more than once. They’d had to kill more than a few of those who tried to fight their way to the prison’s entrance.

  Lox stepped before Wender, who was examining a map of the area.

  “Lox, good to see you.” Wender’s voice was deep and calm as he braced the other dwarf’s arm.