High Artificer, Ch 10: Astral Ice

“This one contains a mix of elemental Fire and Wood,” Sam said as he handed Harsen a mug of mead. 

They were sitting in his new workshop at the long table at the end. The mead he’d taken out was one of his favorites. 

Flames surged across the surface of the mead, but as they reached the edge of the mug, they froze into golden crystals and flowed back again, keeping the liquid contained.

The drink radiated golden heat and just a touch of cold.

“In the depths of the Chaos Wild,” he explained as he took a mug for himself, “there is a certain type of bee called the Sunweaver Bee, which sets up nests near stars rich with elemental Fire and fearlessly defends its territory. 

“It produces a honey infused with the fire from the star they live near, as well as a great vitality. Alone, the honey can restore vitality and stamina. When given the proper attention, it makes a peerless base for this type of elemental mead.

“Try it.” 

He nodded at the mug in Harsen’s hand.

He’d spent some time brewing this batch with one of his avatars in the Void, as a way of experimenting with Modify Aura and elemental essences, merging the essential nature of things to make something that delighted the senses.

He was happy with the result. 

“Tastes like the flame of a sun and winter apples,” Harsen said thoughtfully after he took a long drink. His face flushed red for a moment, but then it faded as his skin turned cool again. 

Ice crystals formed and melted again at the rim of the mug, changing as the liquid inside moved around.

Sam clinked a mug of his own against Harsen’s and took a drink. It tasted of starlight and heat, like stars burning just below the surface of sweetness, and apples that hung on the branches of a world-spanning tree.

“You really made this?” Harsen looked at Sam. "It's fire and frost, but it’s just calm enough not to do any harm. This is something an alchemist could only hope to make. You’ve combined the essences of nature. I didn’t realize you worked in this area as well.”

He shook his head in disbelief.

“I mixed the honey with apples that had a powerful Wood energy,” Sam explained, “and then a touch of stellar Ice to keep it cold. The result balances the flame and gives a permanent benefit to those who drink it.

“For the students, it will alter their constitution and help them to gain an affinity for Fire. It will also improve their circulation, strengthen their muscles, and speed up their minds. At your level, it has more limited benefits, but it will still enhance your constitution and it has a nice flavor.”

“Your class is not for show, is it, High Artificer of the Elements?” Harsen shook his head again as he took another drink. “You’ve blended pure elements into mead. Impressive.”

But instead of commenting on the drink any longer, he looked up at the pillars that towered along the length of the hall and the stars shining above.

“This looks like the real Void outside of Council,” he said in confusion. “I can even feel the chaos winds. It doesn’t feel like an illusion. Are we really still on the world?”

“Yes and no,” Sam said, not bothering to conceal things. “We’re sharing the space where the old training hall was, that’s true, but we are also out here. I rebuilt the dimensional structure to be in both places at once. This is more comfortable for me. Hopefully, it will be inspiring to the students.”

He pointed up at the sun of the system, where it was visible burning in the distance. It cast a warm light on the hall, and the stars beyond were bright enough that he was tempted to reach out and touch them.

He could feel the astral paths that connected to each of them, calling him to travel. It felt like freedom and light. That was why his workshop was out here. 

It was the most relaxing place he could be. 

“This hall is incredible,” Harsen muttered. “I didn’t think it was possible to fold space like this on Council. The wards limit most forms of dimensional warping. It must be nice to be almost at the Sixth Evolution.”

Then he looked thoughtful, his attention turning back to Sam.

“Give it a few more years and I bet you could be on the High Council. There’s never been a human on it before, but with strength like this...I don’t think they could keep you off.”

“Asperio will probably end up there first,” Sam said with a chuckle. “He’s already at the Sixth Evolution, after all. I take it you’re not one of those who wants to keep the council limited to the current High Nine races?”

“Bah,” Harsen said as he waved his hand dismissively, “strength is what is important. Of all the high races, my people would be the easiest to convince. Whoever wants onto the council just has to beat up enough of us.”

“A fair solution,” Sam laughed. “Perhaps not so different from your people’s history with the Astral Titans.”

Harsen grunted in agreement, his attention going back to the mead as he watched the fire rising from the surface swirl around the top of the mug.

Sam didn’t say more, but he was giving Harsen a hint.

Unless he did something that was unmistakably the act of a Titan, like standing outside the world at the height of the sun, it was unlikely people would figure it out on their own. 

They would think that the things he did were a result of being close to the Sixth Evolution and having a unique class or domain. 

As long as a bit more time passed, the image of the human Artificer who smashed the opposition would be fixed in the public mind. 

Eventually, they would wonder why he took human form, but humans would still get the benefit of the association. That was good enough to change how they were seen. 

Until then, he would live as he liked.

“Everyone is talking about the resources you must have used to make those golems,” Harsen said, changing the subject. “Seeing this though, I think they’ve underestimated you. I’ve never heard of a human who can do this, especially not an artificer.” 

“It’s part of my class, you could say,” Sam said, waving his hand at the hall. “All of this is built from elemental essences. My golems are as well. The only way to create them at higher tiers is to have a way to refine the materials yourself.”

“I thought so.” Halfway through the explanation, Harsen was already nodding. He looked a bit envious for a moment, but he instantly shook it off. 

“That was the only thing that made sense. I just didn’t believe it until now. That type of crafting ability is legendary...the dream of every crafter. I don’t know of a single person who’s capable of refining materials at the Fifth Evolution, perhaps some at the Third or Fourth and even that’s rare...but you clearly can. If you haven’t already made a name for yourself, you will. There’s no stopping it. Where did someone like you come from?”

“Have you heard of Aster Fall?” Sam asked, smiling slightly.

“That...no,” Harsen frowned as he stared off into space, but then he shook his head.

“It’s an old world built by the Astral Titans,” Sam explained as he pointed into the distance past the sun. “Far past the Great Divide in the depths of the Chaos Wild.”

“That’s where you’re from?” Harsen’s eyebrows rose. “You mean the Borderlands?”

“No, past them,” Sam said with a shake of his head. “Far past. If you think of the Borderlands as perhaps a mile across, despite all of its size, then this is a million times that and more, far into the depths. That is where I am from.

“That distance is why you haven’t heard of it, but trust me that the High Council has, and recently. They sent a team of Fifth Evolution warriors to reinforce it when a Vos’Rekan attacked, a bit over two hundred years ago in Council’s time. I came here after that.”

“A Vos’Rekan?” Harsen’s hand instantly slammed down onto the table. A lesser table would have broken under the force of the blow, but this one just echoed. 

His muscles surged as he leapt to his feet. His body was tense and his skin was turning golden-red as his blood rose. Scales shimmered briefly across his shoulders and neck.

“I have always wanted to face one!” he roared. “Why was I not invited?!”

“Good response!” Sam laughed as he rose to his feet with him. He slapped Harsen’s shoulder in approval, making the man’s body rock, but Harsen barely noticed in his excitement.

“I like you, Harsen,” he said decisively. “I’ll take you hunting the next time I find one.”

“Yes, we’ll hunt!” Harsen shouted as he raised his fist into the air. He crushed the mug in his hand as he slammed it down onto the table, his expression delighted. 

His hair was long and unruly mane. It twisted behind his back, shimmering with golden flames and hints of a scaled ridge.

The legends of the Vos’Rekan were still present in the settled galaxy, even more than Astral Titans, since they attacked the Borderlands from time to time. They were extremely rare, but well known as world-ending catastrophes. 

Some people believed their arrival presaged the end of an era, like an omen of destruction. Most of the time, they were right.

It took a little while for Harsen to calm down, but they were eventually seated at the table again as Sam handed him another mug of a different mead he’d made.

This one tasted of winterberry and mint mixed with a different type of honey, and it was far colder. It tasted like bubbling ice crystals, but it still flowed easily.

The discussion of Aster Fall and Vos’Rekan slipped away, lost to Harsen’s easy enthusiasm, but he knew the man would remember the promise. Sleset and this fellow would get along if Sam ever brought the naga general over.

Harsen looked around the hall again, shaking his head. He was more than half drunk now, his movements wide and powerful, and if the hall hadn’t been built of astral stone, it would probably have had a hole in it.

“This place is much better than the workshops the academy hands out,” he said earnestly. “So much bigger. Lots of room to craft. I could even transform in this one!”

“I’ll help you remodel yours, if you like,” Sam said with a laugh. “No one should have to teach or craft in a tiny space where they can’t see the stars.”

He was sure Asperio would object, but he didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, the headmaster’s job was to solve headaches for him, not to give him more.

He spent a while longer chatting with Harsen and heard quite a bit about the academy and current events. Eventually, he gave the man a barrel of fire elemental mead to take with him. 

The Dragon Spirit slung it over one shoulder as he half walked and half stumbled out of the hall.

“Don’t forget your promise!” he slurred as he expertly balanced the barrel. “We’re going hunting!”

“Yes, the next time one appears,” Sam promised as the smith disappeared through the gate.

He was a rare one for Dragon Spirits, but in the best way. He was as honest as most of their race, but smarter and less impulsive. That was one of the barriers that kept them from governing well and the mark of their real leaders.

Harsen had the potential to be one in the future. 

He had claimed to be the physically strongest of the faculty and it was probably true. His classes were Spirit Smith-Golden Fist of the Sky at Level 448.

His primary class was a rare type of smithing that could create some interesting armor and weapons, including ones with nascent artifact spirits, while his subclass was as a physical brawler.

Sam considered what he’d learned after the fellow left. 

The academy apparently handed out houses or apartments to the faculty, to make sure they could stay near the school, but he had never bothered to ask about one, nor did he care to see it.

If he wanted a place to sleep, he could sleep here, or on the island, or drifting in the stars, but he didn’t sleep often these days. It was more interesting to spend the time working.

He waved his hand and sorted out the small disaster that Harsen had left behind, and then he started a few projects in the hall as he waited for Altey and Rolen to show up. 

It didn’t take him long to expand the size of the hall to a two thousand-mile radius. That was the size of a small planet and enough for him to feel comfortable. 

The golem chambers in the mountains were working swiftly and his avatars appeared from time to time, adding more enchantments to everything.

From the perspective of the hall, it was like looking out across a world from a mountain peak. Sheer cliffs fell away to plains and then rose again in rolling hills and mountains, all beneath the starry sky.

The hall bent space so it always seemed like it was only a short distance to the side pillars, and there was a clear view of the land if anyone looked out, but in reality it was miles long and over half a mile wide.

Before long, Altey and Rolen appeared at the gate.

“Come in and look around,” he said with a grin as he looked over. “You might as well get familiar with the place.”

Altey led the way, pulling Rolen along with her, but as soon as they stepped inside, they froze and looked around.

“This almost looks like home!” Altey said as she looked around with shock. “Did we really teleport to a mountain?”

“We’re both in the academy and not,” Sam said as he briefly explained the dimensional design at work. It was educational, but beyond what they would be working on for a long time. 

Then he brought them back to the reason he wanted them here.

“Now, the first thing we need to do is work on Rolen’s wards and subclass,” he said. “So both of you come over here and have a seat.”

He waved to the stone table in front of him. The fireplace of the hall burned brightly behind him. Its flames flickered over the astral stone and made it glitter as the light mixed with the glow of the stars it held.

After they sat down, he looked thoughtfully at Rolen. The boy looked nervous, so he started to explain things step by step.

“First, I’ll create an enchantment to help protect you,” he said. “Has Altey showed you the rune tattoo on her arm?”

“Yes,” Rolen said as he looked over at her. “A moonlight tattoo.”

“Yours will be more focused on Ice to work with your affinity for it,” Sam said, “but there are different ways it could go. Ideally, it will be a ward and communication channel, and also help to set the foundation for your subclass and future Evolutions.”

That was the trick of it that he was still considering. He needed to create a tattoo that augmented some of Rolen’s strengths, while keeping it at a level that the boy could handle.

Otherwise, it was unlikely Rolen would be able to get a decent enough subclass with just his current abilities.

If Siwaha were here, she could give the boy an elemental blessing, like she’d given to Sam and his family, but she was back on Aster Fall. 

Fortunately, he could do his own version.

“Let’s start with that then,” he said thoughtfully. 

He reached into his storage bracelet and pulled out a barrel of Ice-brewed elemental mead. This barrel was tiny compared to the one he’d given Harsen, and the mead was made with much rarer ingredients.

Three cups appeared on the table in front of them, each of them made from astral stone with icy blue lines of mana running through them. Frost gathered around the rims as soon as they appeared, the stone chiming as it gathered the elemental energy in the air.

They were smaller than the cups that he and Harsen had been drinking from earlier, but they should be about right. He pulled the lid off the barrel and filled each of them. 

The mead was a dark blue color that had streaks of frost swirling across the top, and flashes of silver starlight appeared here and there, drifting across it like a dream. In the cups, the liquid was only an inch deep and twice that across.

“Drink that,” he said calmly as he stored the barrel away again. Then he lifted his cup and held it out to both of them.

Altey picked hers up and instantly clinked it against Sam’s, but Rolen hesitated. It was only for a moment, and then the boy lifted his cup as well and joined in on the toast. His determined look said that even if it killed him, he was going to drink it.

“It will be fine,” Sam said with a laugh. “Drink it.”

At first, the mead tasted like a frozen winter morning, swirled with ice on the windows and frost that formed on the stone walls of a village home, but then it moved to something deeper, its flavor broadening out to the darkness of the Void and the endless light of the stars, so cold that it froze all living things. 

That cold stretched between the suns, sealing away silent worlds and drowning out all sources of heat. But then bright points of starlight burned within it, turning the cold into something fierce and alive.

Flecks of starlight drifted away from the remains of the mead as Sam set his cup down, each of them resonating with the meaning of Astral Ice.

He’d infused that concept into this mead, making the aura as intense as he could, with all the promise it offered.

He watched as Altey and Rolen set their cups down. Their faces were flushed with a blue tint as their breath froze in the air, turning to a mist of silver snowflakes.

Altey’s expression cleared up first since she already had a Blessing of Ice. Cold was her ally, so the energy of the mead merged with her aura. It didn’t change her nature.

Rolen was different. His aura was that of a regular human. Or it had been. As the elixir merged with him, that changed. 

There was enough energy in that cup of mead to turn an ocean to ice. When it met his aura, his entire being instantly froze over. 

His body turned blue and frost gathered across his skin, making him look like a snow-dusted statue. Runes for Ice appeared across his skin and face, flashing as they turned to mist and dissipated into the air. 

His eyes were originally brown, but now they changed to a dark blue that was the same as the mead. Then the surface was covered white frost. 

His aura shuddered as blue veins ran through it, freezing everything in their path, and then his body began to shake as the essence inside built up, like a frozen volcano that was about to explode.

“Not as gentle as Siwaha’s tea,” Sam muttered. “Ahh well.” 

He reached out and tapped on Rolen’s forehead. His touch drew away the excess energy, leaving just enough to complete the process. 

At the same time, he modified Rolen’s aura directly, attuning it to Astral Ice. Since the boy was already infused with the elemental essence, it was simple.

The frost began to fade from Rolen’s skin and then the blue followed it, leaving him looking almost the same as before. The only major difference was that his brown eyes now had flecks of icy blue in them and his hair, which had been dark, was frosted with silver highlights.

The changes added a slight ethereal quality to the boy that made him look older and more intelligent, and probably more handsome. There was also a sharpness to his demeanor that hadn’t been there before, like the edge of an icy comet.

Rolen blinked and then shook his head as he took in a gasp of air, like he’d just been dunked in a frozen lake, and then his eyes glazed over for a different reason as the Ocean Core spoke to him.

Sam tapped into the core and watched as the notifications rang through Rolen’s mind.

Congratulations, Rolen Galeis!

You have gained the Elemental Blessing of Astral Ice!

This is a special variant of the greater Element of Ice, and as a result, you receive the wider benefits of that element as well.

Ice and snow are your ally. They welcome your presence. When in their presence, your mana and health will regenerate slightly faster. The coldness between the stars will no longer threaten your life.  

You have gained an Elemental Affinity for Astral Ice! 

You are now an Initiate of Astral Ice!

Your spells and abilities related to Astral Ice have a 12% greater effect. Those related to any form of Ice have a 7% greater effect. This benefit will improve as you develop your understanding of Astral Ice.

Congratulations! You have gained the Blessing of the High Artificer!

You have been granted a rare Blessing by the High Artificer...or at least you survived drinking something he gave you. Your aura will regenerate slightly faster in the future and your affinity for the elements, especially Ice, has improved.

“It’s a good start,” Sam decided as he waited for Rolen to wake up. 

The benefit to Astral Ice was roughly the same as the blessing he’d had once upon a time from Siwaha. That one had been 10% to all Ice spells and abilities. The 12% to Astral Ice was a bit better, but it was offset by the lower 7% toward other forms of Ice.

It would work. He planned for Rolen to specialize anyway.

As the boy woke up and began asking questions about what had just happened, Sam let Altey explain how the blessing worked. Meanwhile, he studied Rolen’s aura and new affinity, determining the best way to link it to a rune tattoo.

“Let me see your arm,” he said as he held out his hand. “You can pick where you want it. If you don’t want people to see it later, just tell it to turn invisible.”

Rolen instantly held out his arm. He was still unsettled from the blessing, but it was obvious he’d thrown his lot in with Sam and he was betting all his chips on it.

Runes for astral ice, starlight, metal, fire, and other elements began to swirl around Sam, appearing in his aura like shining stars. They gathered around Rolen’s arm, swirling together as they began to form a complex dimensional pattern, one that built on itself in intricate layers. 

The structure wrapped completely around his left arm. Runes flowed through his bones, in one side and out the other, and bands of them began to form on his wrist, where he had pointed.

Then more layers appeared to the design, wrapping completely around his body in a protective shell. Each of them was unique and layered, designed for a separate purpose.

Rolen stared at them, but he looked away again almost instantly, his eyes watering as he blinked.

“You’ll be able to see them one day,” Sam said as he continued working. “You just need to improve your Intelligence and level. Otherwise, they’ll be too powerful to look at, much less remember.”

The spheres rotating around Rolen faded away from sight, but they were still present as the design came together around his arm. When Sam pulled his hands away, there was a new tattoo there.

It was an array of intricate and interlocking silver runes in a band that looked like shields hooked together, and there were peaks along the top that resembled rays of frozen starlight, or perhaps spears over the top of a shield wall.

Ice Warden’s Tattoo.

A runic tattoo designed by the Lord of Silver Stars. It has inherent abilities to defend the wielder, to act as a research assistant, and to communicate with similar tattoos. It is also linked to the World Core, which can provide help during Evolutions and Path Creation, and to the Moonlight Relic, which has an extensive library of skills and other knowledge. 

“There are some libraries for spells, runes, and crafting designs in there,” Sam said as he pointed at it. “You’ll find them helpful later. It will make it easier for you to study.”

There were also some innate defenses, but like Altey’s tattoo, they would only activate to save his life.

“Thank you...” Rolen said in amazement as he stared at it. Then a moment of hesitation flickered across his face. “Aren’t you worried that I will...betray you, or run away?”

“Not at all,” Sam said with a grin. “If you want to leave, feel free. Otherwise, stay and we’ll see what you can do.”

The boy could make his own choice.

“Right.” Rolen let out a sudden breath as his determination returned. “What’s next?”

“Now for your subclass,” Sam said as he stood up. “You can study the tattoo later. Altey can show you how. For now, follow me.”

Altey came along too as he led them across the hall to a work table he’d set up.

There were all sorts of materials on it, from plates of astral metal, sheets of enruned ice, frost-covered crystals, a simple golem core, and more. Dozens and dozens of ice and astral resources were present.

“There’s enough here for you to build a simple ice golem,” Sam said with a slightly devilish smile. “Get to work.”

He was well aware that Rolen had no idea how to build a golem, but as the boy stared at him, he just grinned.