Kenna was exhausted, so they didn’t try to install the module right away. Instead, Laryn made sure that Kenna was left alone while she went to get rest. Thanks to his constitution buffs, Laryn’s injuries had scabbed up nicely before they made it back home, leaving nothing for Hela to do but comment on how he needed to be more careful to avoid rusty weapons in the future.

  Laryn couldn’t sleep. He wandered around the island for a while and tried to deal with some of the administrative things that Adi wanted him to look at, but he couldn’t keep his mind on it.

  The water level of the Ebil had finally receded enough that the mages had dismantled the wooden walkway and had instead blocked off the flow of water, leaving the core standing on dry ground.

  “Back to work,” he said, gesturing for Gaten and Widan to join him. Nearby the core, they had accumulated several piles of processed goods, as ordered by Laryn. Laryn was curious about the value each of these would bring to the core when sifting.

  The key principle of material essence was this: Essence became more heavily concentrated in highly processed goods. What they’d discovered so far was that about one barrel of grain stalks produced one life essence. These were not processed in any way, other than being cut from the field and dropped into the barrel.

  Laryn was suspicious that most of the life essence was contained in the grain, not in the stalks, and so he’d had Gaten and Widan preparing other versions for sifting. One of them was a barrel’s worth of grain stalks, but they’d been threshed, so that only the grain remained. It was a significant smaller volume than it had been when including all the stalks.

  Beside that he had a similar volume of grain that had been pounded into flour, which was even less in terms of volume. Finally, they had loaves of bread, which had been cooked from the same volume of flour.

  Laryn knew that in theory, these would produce progressively higher concentrations of essence. He found his mind rebelling at the thought though; surely larger quantities must produce more essence?

  So he wanted to test it out, and see for himself the value that processing goods could have on essence. He reminded himself that when using [Sift], most of the essence in the materials he’d sifted escaped. Processing helped create a higher concentration, so that when [Sift] was cast, he’d be able to collect more of the essence.

  Just like sifting bodies.

  “Ready for this?” Laryn asked his [Mages].

  “I’m still pretty sure it’s not going to work,” Widan said. “We threw away so much of the grain in the process.”

  “I told you, volume isn’t what matters,” Laryn said, hoping that he was right. “Place your final bets.”

  “Less,” Widan said. “I bet we don’t even get any. There’s not enough matter.”

  “I think it’ll be the same,” Gaten said. “If most of the essence is in the grain, it should still mostly be there.”

  “Nobody’s joining me in betting on more?” Laryn asked. The boys shrugged, seemingly unable to tell if he was making fun of them.

  “Okay Gaten, you go first.”

  Gaten stepped up beside the core and sifted the threshed grain. He showed Laryn two green glowing orbs of essence; life essence, and pressed them into the core.

  “More!” Widan grabbed his head in his hands. He couldn’t believe it. Grabbing the flour, he pushed Gaten aside and sifted his own container.

  In his hand, three green spheres of life essence coalesced. “Three!” he exclaimed, jumping into the air before pressing the essence into the core.

  Laryn couldn’t stop grinning as he carried the loaves of bread in his arms to stand beside the core. He sifted the bread, and received 3 life essence, 1 air essence, and 1 fire essence.

  “Five!” Widan shouted excitedly.

  “I knew it,” Gaten declared. “I knew Laryn was right about it!”

  “Then why didn’t you bet with me?” Laryn asked. “Should have said you thought I was right before we did the test!

  “So we can be much more efficient with our essence gathering,” Widan said. “We won’t have to sift as much to get the same amount of essence.”

  “It’ll be a more labor intensive procedure,” Laryn said. “So this might not change much for us now, until we settle on some kind of process that we can scale up to keep you busy.”

  Laryn had distracted himself as long as possible. But he was too curious about the spell module. So he had it carted over to the Kingdom core.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Gaten and Widan watched with deep curiosity as Laryn unpacked the spell module from its crate.

  Laryn had seen spell modules before, but he’d never operated one. He understood the concept, but in practice, it was entirely new. He knew that he wasn’t going to be able to actually activate the module, since he wasn’t a coresmith, but he figured he could at least get it ready for Kenna.

  When he’d first looked inside the crate, he’d thought that the spell module was going to be a single, solid cube of metal. It was certainly heavy.

  But he pulled out the first piece of the module, and discovered that it was a thick square plate, about a half meter by a half meter, and several centimeters thick. The entire surface of the glossy metal was etched with small runes; top and bottom, and each side.

  Laryn examined it before shrugging and handing it to Widan and Gaten. They admired the artefact then set it down.

  Underneath that piece were several more components, wrapped in cloth to protect them. Laryn produced these one by one, uncovering a set of tubes that looked like they might fit together into a kind of scaffolding, three heavy metal balls, about the size of coconuts, and a sharp pyramidal obelisk.

  Beneath these, Laryn found another chest. He hefted this out of the box, surprised to discover that this was the heaviest part of the package so far. Setting it down, he carefully opened the lid. Inside a shimmering gemstone, the width of two of his hands, rested on a plush pillow.

  The stone itself didn’t look like it would be that heavy, but Laryn decided it would be safer to leave it inside the chest. He didn’t want to accidentally break anything, and this part looked especially important.

  At the bottom of the chest was another of the square plates as had been at the top of the box.

  “Any ideas?” Laryn asked, looking up at his two mages.

  The boys shrugged.

  “I don’t see any instructions,” Laryn said. “Unless they’re these.” He pointed at the runes on the heavy plates. “But I can’t read those.”

  Neither could Gaten and Widan.

  “Maybe we’d better put it all back, then,” Laryn said, and Gaten and Widan looked as disappointed as he felt. “We should have waited for Kenna before examining all this.”

  As they started trying to maneuver the heavy objects back into the crate, Kenna came running up.

  “What are you doing?” she exclaimed. “Why… Stop that!”

  Laryn set the parts down in the sand and backed away slowly, hands raised. Kenna looked like a wild creature, climbed out of the depths of Horel’s domain. Her hair was wild, her face dirty, her clothing still ripped and torn.

  She clearly hadn’t had a chance to clean up yet.

  “How did you sleep?” Laryn asked.

  Kenna pressed a hand to her forehead. “Not enough,” she said. “But I can’t stop thinking about this module. And neither can you, apparently.”

  She started examining the pieces, and then nodded approvingly. Then she fished a small, silver shard from her bodice. It dangled from a fine chain.

  “The last piece,” she said. “You didn’t think I’d leave the key with the rest of the parts, did you?”

  “Obviously,” Laryn said. “Wouldn’t want to risk someone getting their hands on it.”

  Kenna set to work, ordering them around. The silver sliver turned out to be a small kind of tool, which she used to twist hidden mechanisms within the elements of the spell module, causing parts to lock together.

  The process took a while. Laryn, Widan, and Gaten all helped her, holding things in place as she assembled them. When they were finally finished, they were left with an intricate structure, rising from the two base plates, weaving together around the three orbs, and capped off with the sharp pinnacle.

  They set the module on the ground next to the core. A space remained in the middle of it for the crystal.

  “What happens if it’s damaged?” Laryn asked. It looked fragile.

  “It shouldn’t hurt the core,” Kenna said. “It just removes your ability to use the spell.”

  “How does it connect?” he asked.

  “The process of activating it will allow it to connect to the core,” Kenna said.

  “So the crystal is how it’s powered?” Gaten asked, wiping a grimy hand across his forehead.

  “Not quite. The crystal is actually the spell module. This apparatus around it is all modern construction, designed to contain and channel the power of the module into the core. We don’t really know how they did it in ancient times, but there are a few working theories…” Kenna trailed off.

  “It gets power from the core,” she said. Gaten nodded.

  “Will it drain essence?” Laryn asked.

  “Some do, but this one shouldn’t,” Kenna said. “All of our studies with it showed that it was stable.”

  “Okay,” Laryn said. “So what do we have to do to activate it? Is it easier than deactivating a core?”

  “It is,” Kenna said, cracking her knuckles. “But I’m not sure I’m ready to do it yet.”

  “Hey,” Adi said, appearing beside them. “You’re not going to consult me before messing with my core?”

  “Uh, we were just about to call you,” Laryn said. “What do you think?”

  Adi spent a few moments examining the module from all angles. She made a show of tapping her fingers on the various parts, even though she couldn’t really touch it. “Seems sturdy enough,” she said. “But what’s it all for? Showing off the module?”

  She pointed at the crystal in the middle of the apparatus.

  “To help form the connection with the core,” Kenna said. “These are important features—”

  “I’ve never seen a spell module used like this before,” Adi said. “Usually they just use the crystal, and—”

  “Adi.” Laryn cut her off. “Do you actually have any useful knowledge to offer about spell modules, or are you just stalling?”

  Adi blushed. “I don’t know how you’re supposed to do it, but… You can’t blame me for being nervous.”

  “You don’t have to worry just yet,” Laryn said. “Kenna isn’t quite ready yet.”

  “I do have something,” Adi protested. “When she tries to merge the module, I’m going to have to go into the core and move some things around and make sure it all links up nicely. I feel like I should get some credit for that!”

  “You should, and you will. Do you and Kenna need to talk about that?”

  Adi tilted her head and considered the offer. “Yeah. That might be a good idea.”

  Laryn left the two of them to chat.

  He watched the river rolling past, considering options that they might have for constructing a mill, powered by a water wheel in the water. Laryn didn’t have much experience with that kind of engineering, but even just having the ability to grind grain like that would save a significant amount of labor.

  Kenna found him, looking out over the river.

  “Had a good chat with Adi?” Laryn asked.

  “I did,” she said. “I feel more confident about the module now. There’s just one more thing I need to do before trying to activate it.”