“I appreciate your well wishes!” Scorio grinned and strode out of the shop, humming under his breath as he returned to the street.
Once back in Ward 1, he located a vendor of second-hand robes, and bought himself a sturdy set that was reinforced at the elbows and knees, the kind that a manual laborer might wear. Worn soft by use but neatly mended where the hems had begun to fray, it and an old pair of sturdy sandals cost him a copper oct.
A sliver of soap from a sell-all street vendor, a coil of rope, and a large bucket cost him another oct, and then he waited patiently in line till he was able to fill his bucket completely from the closest water fountain.
He wanted a weapon. A sword, perhaps—a dagger at the very least—but Leonis’s pouch was already nearly empty. A priority, then: the next time he earned some coins, he’d arm himself.
Musing on such matters, he walked carefully into the ruins, found himself an abandoned home, and bathed carefully, rinsing and soaping the dirt away as best he could. He tossed his old rags in a corner, sat in the Second Rust light till he dried, and then donned the laborer’s robes.
He had no mirror, but he felt immeasurably better. He passed his hand over his long stubble and decided to leave it.
Twenty minutes later he scaled the fallen blocks to his chamber, and once there forced himself not to consider how bare and squalid his room appeared.
Instead, he lowered himself into a cross-legged seat and opened the scroll tube. Within were six sheets of parchment. Frowning, Scorio resisted the urge to just skim, and instead read through each one carefully, examining the tables, studying and absorbing the information until he had captured it all.
The Black Star flower subsisted exclusively on Coal mana and water, but also needed a fair amount of loose soil or sand in which to anchor its roots. These roots drew no nutrients from the ground, but rather formed a protective mesh in which the plant grew its seed. This seed, once grown and infused with enough Coal, would travel up the stem of the flower and then catch the tides of mana to float away and land where it could sprout and grow another plant.
The treatise, however, dealt not just with the life cycle of the plant, but how best to cultivate it; one could apparently slice the seed into quarters, as long as each quarter had at least two “eyes”; burying a quarter in a mana rich area would cause the eyes to sprout and grow a flower. Thus careful slicing of a seed could result in up to four flowers if they all took root and the Coal was rich enough.
Scorio made his way over to the pile of discarded stems and roots that Naomi had left behind, and pried one apart; nestled within the roots was a dry seed the size of his thumbnail. He raised it to the light and turned it about; the eyes were little more the dimples in the black, glossy surface.
Excited, he set to work extracting as many seeds as he could; of the forty-five plants he’d harvested, he was able to extract thirty-seven seeds; the poor-quality mana in his room had prevented any of them from sprouting.
Thirty-seven seeds split into quarters meant the potential to grow almost a hundred and fifty plants.
Scorio piled the seeds up with exaggerated care and then snatched up the treatise, moving to stand before the window and continue reading.
The next page dealt with ideal mana concentrations, which involved both the regeneration rate and density, all of which affected how quickly the plants would grow. The page after that outlined ideal planting practices—each quarter seed would need at a bare minimum a square foot of soil in which to grow.
A hundred and fifty square feet. Roughly a square twelve feet by thirteen. Scorio paced it out and scrutinized the floor. Doable.
The next sheet detailed methods of harvesting the Coal mana from the plant. The trick involved the delicate insertion of a slender tube into the stem to intercept the coalesced mana as it made its way down to the new seed. A diagram illustrated the process, and below were suggestions as to how to fashion the ideal funnel. A small receptacle beneath the opening would capture the condensed mana, which would not evaporate but rather draw all manner of creatures due to its being exposed to the air.
Scorio frowned, tapping the sheets against his lips. How would he prevent animals or scavengers from raiding his farm? He couldn’t watch it at all hours of the day, nor could he hire anybody to do so.
A problem for later.
The next page was all charts. Each plant would create a small bead of dense Coal mana at the rate of about one per Eighthday. Fifty beads were necessary for the creation of a pill, though only twenty-five were necessary for the creation of a syrup that had the same potency. Apparently, the process of creating pills vented half the mana.
“Syrup it is, then,” muttered Scorio, who then looked out the window in abstracted thought.
He wanted to take the power equivalent of a pill a day. That meant production of twenty-five beads per day, or two hundred to cover a full week. That meant two hundred plants, of which he could already grow about a hundred and fifty. He needed to harvest another twelve seeds to bring him to the magic number, but should probably plant more to give him a buffer in case of any problems. Say two hundred and twenty, which meant another seventeen seeds.
The penultimate page dealt with the purification process, and here Scorio slowed down and carefully studied the data. The pills’ strength was measured in volts, with a single volt being the smallest discrete amount of Coal mana that could be contained within the weakest elixir or pill.
An unpurified elixir contained about eighty volts, and was twenty times as potent as purified one, which contained only four. The drawback, of course, was that the unfiltered elixir was exceedingly poisonous. Scorio thought of the torment he’d suffered while making Cinder, and reluctantly decided he couldn’t undergo such an experience regularly. But if he only filtered it halfway, the result would still be a respectable forty volts, which was ten times more potent than the normal pills they dispensed in the Academy.
Scorio felt a ripple of excitement flutter through his stomach. If this worked, he’d be consuming the equivalent of ten pills a day for only half the damage, and only moderately poisoning himself each day.
The amount of mana he’d be drawing into his Heart would be tremendous.
But how to prevent scavengers from raiding his farm?
He read through the papers a few more times, then carefully sealed them within their tube. First, he had to find the optimal location for his farm, then fashion two hundred slender funnels as well as find the extra seventeen plants. In the meantime, he’d ponder how best to protect his farm.
Forcing himself to put the problem aside for now, Scorio set to manipulating the Coal mana in the room, swirling it back and forth, not drawing it into his Heart but seeing what he could do with it, how he could weave it with his will. Naomi had told him advanced practitioners could split the mana into two, into four, directing the parts into separate techniques or treasures, so he attempted to do the same.
And failed.
But still, he worked at the exercise, until at last he drew the Coal into his Heart and ignited it with a flexion of his will.
Immediately strength and resilience flooded his frame. He leaped up to his feet. He’d told Naomi he might be out all day, not knowing how his meeting with Leonis and Lianshi would go, and so had the evening to himself.
Taking up his treasures and a coil of rope, he stowed them away in his robe and moved to the windowsill.
It was Second Clay. Already the clouds were spiraling thickly about the sun-wire, presaging the dusk rain to come.
In the Academy, his friends were no doubt moving to grab their luxurious dinner at the dining hall. Perhaps they were swimming in their private grotto pool. Perhaps they were talking with friends, discussing the best way to use the elixirs granted to them each morning, or how best to secure patronage from one of the Houses.