Chương 26: Chapter 25: Two Reconstructions

Kellan's description from the night before sat in the margin of Elizabeth's notes: catches. She kept coming back to it. Her own discharge never felt as though it caught anything. It advanced because she made it advance, one section after another, and every extra half metre gave the structure another chance to bend towards a nail, a clamp or the iron frame of the workbench. The reconstruction worked, though, and that was enough reason to make it dependable before she discarded it for something better.

For two evenings she concentrated on the route she already had. Kellan reset targets while she altered the interval between sections, shortened the termination lag and shifted the test stand whenever some piece of metal proved more attractive than the thing she meant to hit. One iron screw in the stand caused trouble often enough that Kellan finally removed it with a pair of pliers and replaced it with a brass one from his repair box.

"That screw cost less than the mana you've wasted proving it exists," he said. Elizabeth checked the next cast. The route held straight.

"Keep the brass."

"Generous." Most of the work was less interesting than that. Cast, measure, write, reset. The cellar grew warm despite the cold outside, and by the third night the air smelled faintly of hot metal and old stone. Elizabeth could form the pathway without having to stop and consciously stabilise every section. When she released the next charge, a blue-violet line crossed the room and left a black mark on the iron target. She crouched to measure it. The System opened across her vision.

Reconstructed mechanism has reached minimum functional threshold. Provisional designation: Crude Lightning Needle. Mechanism qualifies for experimental registration. No registration slot available. Current registered reconstruction: Structured Light. Elizabeth stayed crouched a little longer than she needed to. Kellan had picked up the target.

"What happened?"

"It qualifies for registration."

"And?"

"I only have one slot." He understood before she said anything else.

"The light." Elizabeth opened the registration panel. Structured Light had been sitting there since the afternoon with Ruby and the prism rig, when a small change in timing had turned a hot, unstable glow into something clean enough for the System to recognise. She could archive it without losing what she had learned, but she would lose the System's help putting the mechanism together. The thought bothered her more than she expected.

Then she remembered Dain's reserve announcement and Samuel putting her on the mat before she had finished deciding how to move. She archived Structured Light. Crude Lightning Needle — Level 1 A short-range guided electrical discharge using a fully prepared mana pathway and progressive termination. Registered reconstructions: 1/1.

"Try it," Kellan said. Elizabeth stood and raised her hand. The System took over much of the work that had been cluttering her attention: maintaining the route, coordinating containment, closing the connection behind the charge. She still felt the path pull slightly left, but she did not have to correct each small deviation herself. The strike landed high on the target, close enough to where she had aimed that she could have hit a torso at the same distance. Kellan inspected the mark.

"Better."

"Faster than before."

"I said better." Elizabeth smiled and reset the equipment. Registration made the crude skill easier to train. Over the next few sessions the pathway stopped branching quite so often and cost less mana to maintain. Elizabeth could cast several times before her concentration started to shake apart. By then she knew the sequence well enough that she could feel the System smoothing over mistakes she would previously have had to correct herself.

The long route still assembled from her hand all the way to the target every single time. After a while she found herself watching it form and getting annoyed before the discharge had even left her fingers. On the fourth cast one evening, Elizabeth let the fading pathway disappear and looked at Kellan.

"Show me yours again." He rolled his shoulder, then shook his head.

"Tomorrow." The command crystal pressed against Elizabeth's ribs beneath her coat. Her hand had already started towards it when she noticed Kellan rubbing the muscle above his elbow. She let her hand fall.

"One low-power cast, if your control is still good. Otherwise we wait." His eyes flicked to the front of her coat, then back to her face. He said nothing and returned to the firing line.

"One." Elizabeth moved the nearest indicator and watched the target rather than his casting hand. The familiar preparatory field spread through the cellar. Faint branches reached outward, appeared, vanished and formed again. Elizabeth followed them towards the iron, expecting the first meaningful change to occur when one finally reached it. A violet thread rose from the target before that happened.

"Hold it." Kellan's forearm tightened as he maintained the cast. Elizabeth leaned closer to the side of the firing lane. The thread was weak, but it was there. She checked Mana Sensitivity twice, then moved the spare clamp away from the target. The answering thread faltered while the metal passed through the field and strengthened again once the clamp was farther off. Her first thought was reflection. The timing ruled that out. Nothing had reached the iron yet to reflect.

"Can you keep it another few seconds?"

"A few." Elizabeth watched the mana around the metal gather into the thin upward branch. The target was not producing anything of its own. Kellan's field was changing what the ambient mana near the surface was doing. The branch from him advanced. The one from the iron rose. They met between caster and target.

"Release." The Needle crossed the completed connection with a crack that made the jars on the back shelf rattle. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. Elizabeth laughed before she could stop herself. Kellan lowered his arm and reached for the water flask.

"Was that it?"

"Do it again tomorrow."

"I'll take that as yes." She was already beside the target, replaying the sequence through Process Mapping. Her own reconstruction filled the entire distance because she had assumed the distance itself was the problem. Kellan's skill spent its early effort changing the target environment. Once the far side answered, the remaining gap was much smaller. The next tests did not need a live charge, so Elizabeth removed it. Failure became much cheaper once nothing in the structure could shock her.

The field itself refused to be simple. Iron responded quickly. Wet leather over metal answered later and less cleanly. Dry wood sometimes produced so little that the structure collapsed before Elizabeth could decide whether she had seen a response at all. A narrow metal edge beside the intended target could answer first and drag the whole attempt sideways. Kellan carried the spare clamp to the other bench after it spoiled a second trial.

"Leave it there," he said.

"I may want it for comparison."

"You've compared it. It wins." Elizabeth considered this and left the clamp alone. She rebuilt the route in pieces. A low-energy field first, directed towards the target. Wait for a response. Advance her own branch only after that response appeared. Join the two. Hold the connection long enough to release the contained charge, then terminate behind it. The first attempt split between two pieces of metal. On the second, the target answered but her advancing branch passed to one side and dissolved.

The third connected for less than a second before the termination closed and erased the whole structure. Elizabeth reached for the controls, then noticed the clock. Kellan was packing away the unused target materials.

"Another?"

"No. I closed it too early." He stopped with a strip of leather in his hand.

"You're actually done?"

"For tonight." Kellan put the leather into the cabinet without comment, though the corner of his mouth moved. The next evening began with another failure. Elizabeth lengthened the termination delay by a fraction and tried again. This time the target answered cleanly. Her branch advanced, met the rising thread slightly off-centre, and settled into a connection that curved through the room rather than following the straight line she had been trying to impose on every earlier version.

The change in strain was so sudden that Elizabeth nearly broke the structure by correcting for resistance that was no longer there. She formed the containment lattice around a small charge. Kellan stepped behind the chalk line.

"If it starts splitting, let it collapse." Elizabeth nodded without taking her eyes from the connection. She released. The metallic crack was louder than she expected. Her right hand opened and closed normally. Elizabeth flexed each finger once, then looked across the cellar. A narrow pit had appeared near the centre of the iron. Distinct reconstructed mechanism successfully demonstrated. Mechanism qualifies for registration. Suggested designation: Lightning Needle. Experimentalist progression increased.

Elizabeth laughed again. She did not bother hiding it. Kellan crossed the room and touched the damaged iron with one fingertip.

"There you are," he said quietly. Elizabeth opened Process Mapping.

"The route confirms before the main discharge. My crude version commits mana across the whole distance whether or not the far end can support it. This waits for the response first. Once the counter-streamer forms—""Elizabeth." She stopped speaking. Kellan rubbed the soot from his fingertip onto the rag. He kept his eyes on the target.

"The army spent years teaching me to get the class that would let me get that skill." Elizabeth waited.

"You had me cast it at a wall until you understood it." He gave the rag another slow turn through his fingers.

"I didn't agree to teach you."

"No." Kellan nodded once and turned the rag over in his hand. He wiped at a patch of soot that was already mostly gone. Elizabeth still had Process Mapping open. She could have pointed out that his aim remained better, that his version carried more power, that understanding the mechanism had not given her his years of practice. She closed the display without saying any of it and opened the registration panel. Crude Lightning Needle went into the archive beside Structured Light.

She registered the corrected mechanism. Lightning Needle — Level 1 Creates a concentrated electrical discharge through a pathway completed between an advancing leader and a target-generated counter-streamer. Uses external containment and progressive termination for controlled release. Registered reconstructions: 1/1. With System support, the next cast assembled quickly. The target answered, the branches joined and the Needle struck a few centimetres from the first pit. Elizabeth lowered her hand.

The skill still had poor range. Dry insulation slowed the response, moving targets would force her to lead the connection, and crowded metal could give the field too many alternatives. Kellan's version remained stronger and faster, but that was primarily due to the fact that he had the necessary affinity. Elizabeth wrote each limit down, starting with the ones most likely to matter in the reserve. Kellan was cleaning the target when he spoke again.

"You won't need me to demonstrate it anymore." Elizabeth looked up from her notes.

"No." His thumb moved once over the mark at his throat.

"Right." He went back to the iron. Elizabeth sat with the notebook open in front of her. The word catches was still in the margin where she had written it the previous night. Underneath, she added the target response, the counter-streamer and the corrected termination timing. She added one final note beside Kellan's name. Kellan's "catch" begins when the target response forms. Identified by feel before measurement. Below it, she wrote tomorrow's first test and turned the page.