Vhalar 20, Arc 719
The Mortalborn arranged the books on the desk in front of him meticulously before he looked up, at the students that were sitting in front of him, waiting for him to begin. He knew some of them from previous classes that he had taught, but there were also a few new faces here and there. They looked so young and innocent. Most of them were only in their teens and twenties. They were little more than children, compared to him. They knew nothing about the world and what went on behind the scenes, that there was a war being waged.
Had he ever been like them, so full of trust and hope for the future, so ignorant and blind?
He hoped not.
He waited for a new more moments, counting the trills, before he rose to his feet in one swift motion and strode over to the blackboard. “Today”, he announced as he took a piece of chalk and wrote the word “MEDIUMS” on the blackboard. The tone of his voice was firm and cool, and he enunciated his words clearly so that not even the students in the last row would have trouble understanding him – if they paid attention to him, at least.
“Today we will talk about the different mediums. The first medium is powder. As you may remember from our previous lessons, many reagents are powdered as that makes them easier to store and extends their shelf life. The second medium is metal. Armor and weapons are, as you can imagine, often imbued with alchemical effects. The third medium is stone”, he spoke and paused for a moment before he asked,
“Can anybody tell me why someone might want to imbue stone with an alchemical effect?”
Silence. A few students looked at each other, but none of them raised their voice.
“Miss Yishnai Velenar, maybe?” he finally asked. He had first met the half-Eidisi the arc before when he had taught an introductory class. The young woman was shy and somewhat awkward, and she was unfortunately lacking self-confidence – her full-blooded classmates discriminated against her - but she had turned out to be quite talented.
The half-blood looked at him, her eyes wide, as if he had just dome something particularly scary, before she mumbled, “Maybe because they want to make their house float?”
It sounded more like a question than an answer.
The students behind her immediately started to giggle and make fun of her, and Plia Yishnai Velenar blushed furiously. She looked as if she were ready to disappear under her desk, the Mortalborn observed. He didn’t approve of such a display of weakness, but he could abide what her classmates did even less. They ought to look up to her in his opinion. She was the only one of them he could actually see doing a Charter or a Licentiate!
“Stop!” he exclaimed. “Silence! I did not give you permission to talk. Miss Yishnai Velenar’s answer was in fact correct. A sufficiently skilled alchemist could in fact make a house – or an entire fortress – float in the middle of a lake by making stone as light as a feather. Such a fortress would be almost impossible to attack.”
“Stone can also be the source of alchemical reagents though. Many types of soil, sand and stone hold interesting capabilities, and even wells are, essentially, stones.”
He paused in order to give them some time to absorb the information before he posed another question,
“Does anybody know what else wells are?”
The Mortalborn arranged the books on the desk in front of him meticulously before he looked up, at the students that were sitting in front of him, waiting for him to begin. He knew some of them from previous classes that he had taught, but there were also a few new faces here and there. They looked so young and innocent. Most of them were only in their teens and twenties. They were little more than children, compared to him. They knew nothing about the world and what went on behind the scenes, that there was a war being waged.
Had he ever been like them, so full of trust and hope for the future, so ignorant and blind?
He hoped not.
He waited for a new more moments, counting the trills, before he rose to his feet in one swift motion and strode over to the blackboard. “Today”, he announced as he took a piece of chalk and wrote the word “MEDIUMS” on the blackboard. The tone of his voice was firm and cool, and he enunciated his words clearly so that not even the students in the last row would have trouble understanding him – if they paid attention to him, at least.
“Today we will talk about the different mediums. The first medium is powder. As you may remember from our previous lessons, many reagents are powdered as that makes them easier to store and extends their shelf life. The second medium is metal. Armor and weapons are, as you can imagine, often imbued with alchemical effects. The third medium is stone”, he spoke and paused for a moment before he asked,
“Can anybody tell me why someone might want to imbue stone with an alchemical effect?”
Silence. A few students looked at each other, but none of them raised their voice.
“Miss Yishnai Velenar, maybe?” he finally asked. He had first met the half-Eidisi the arc before when he had taught an introductory class. The young woman was shy and somewhat awkward, and she was unfortunately lacking self-confidence – her full-blooded classmates discriminated against her - but she had turned out to be quite talented.
The half-blood looked at him, her eyes wide, as if he had just dome something particularly scary, before she mumbled, “Maybe because they want to make their house float?”
It sounded more like a question than an answer.
The students behind her immediately started to giggle and make fun of her, and Plia Yishnai Velenar blushed furiously. She looked as if she were ready to disappear under her desk, the Mortalborn observed. He didn’t approve of such a display of weakness, but he could abide what her classmates did even less. They ought to look up to her in his opinion. She was the only one of them he could actually see doing a Charter or a Licentiate!
“Stop!” he exclaimed. “Silence! I did not give you permission to talk. Miss Yishnai Velenar’s answer was in fact correct. A sufficiently skilled alchemist could in fact make a house – or an entire fortress – float in the middle of a lake by making stone as light as a feather. Such a fortress would be almost impossible to attack.”
“Stone can also be the source of alchemical reagents though. Many types of soil, sand and stone hold interesting capabilities, and even wells are, essentially, stones.”
He paused in order to give them some time to absorb the information before he posed another question,
“Does anybody know what else wells are?”
