"Last semester was all theory. This semester will focus on applying those concepts to the physical world."

  Instructor Vigo paced the front of the room, his voice crisp. "Observe the model."

  He placed a hand on a three-sided box: a floor and two adjacent walls.

  "You all have one on your desks. You should recognize the components: a Mana crystal and an unlit lamp. The setup is the first model I had you dissect, with one crucial alteration: the conduit is missing."

  Vigo swept his gaze across the room.

  "Your first assignment is to make the lamp operable. The Mana crystal battery possesses exactly enough energy to power the lamp for ten minutes—if it were directly implanted. However, it is not implanted. Do with that what you will. Do not attempt to move either component; you will fail. Do not attempt to introduce new energy into the system; you will fail. Several rubrics will be used to grade the system you create."

  He paused, letting the constraints settle.

  "Tools are provided. You may use your own if you wish. It is due by the end of class. Begin."

  The class set to work in near silence, the room filling with the scratching of styluses and the soft clinking of metal. It was a rare atmosphere—a totally focused cohort of intellects. These were the closest beings to the position of being my peer.

  Let's review what I have at my disposal, Arthur thought.

  In his mind, he dismantled the components before him. He suspended the pieces in the void of his imagination, placing each part exactly five centimeters apart.

  The crystal sat on the desk, a jagged lump of dark red mineral. High impurity. It possessed a mass near one hundred grams, though Arthur knew the actual crystallized mana inside weighed barely a gram. According to Vigo, it held enough energy to sustain the lamp for ten minutes.

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  Ten minutes.

  The timeframe hung in Arthur's mind.

  That is the fuse.

  For a Small Crystal of this mass—far below the ten-kilogram threshold of a Large Crystal—activation wasn't a matter of inputting energy. These volatile little stones were self-sustaining. They didn't need a spark; they only needed a door.

  If I slot it, the clock starts.

  If he connected the crystal to the lamp immediately, the energy would flood the path. Ten minutes of light, then darkness. By the time Vigo arrived to grade him, Arthur would be presenting a dead stone and a cold filament.

  "Operable," Vigo had said.

  A fire that burns until it consumes its fuel is not a machine; it is a disaster.

  To make the lamp operable implied control. It implied the ability to extinguish the light without destroying the fuel source. He didn't just need a connection; he needed a switch.

  Arthur's eyes shifted to the heavy, copper-colored cylinder lying next to the crystal. A standard Conductive Metal Rod.

  Inanimate matter, Arthur thought, lifting it. It has no choice in how it is used.

  Typically, engineers employed it for transfer by thermal conduction, but the thought made Arthur's lip curl. Thermal Conduction was the absolute worst method of energy transfer. It bled potential as heat, sacrificing efficiency for simplicity. Only a novice would resort to it.

  But the material itself held promise.

  He rotated the rod between his fingers, his mind dissecting its atomic potential.

  I don't need it to conduct. I need it to obstruct.

  If he engraved the tip with a repulsion rune—matching the polarity of the crystal's drive rune—he wouldn't create a flow. He would create a stalemate. A stagnation point where the crystal's outward pressure met the rod's inward refusal.

  A Stabilizer Rod. A mechanical throttle.

  He flipped the Rune Engraver in his hand, gripping the weighted brass handle. He turned it to the back end, where the blade was broad and curved, designed for heavy shearing.

  Sever.

  He drove the blade into the copper rod. The metal split, then yielded, a clean five-centimeter segment clattering onto the desk. This pin, once engraved, would be his brake.

  But where to put it?

  Arthur picked up the red crystal. The brake couldn't sit in the channel; it had to sit at the source. It had to choke the reaction at the heart.

  He flipped the Rune Engraver to the fine-point stylus. He held the crystal steady with his left hand and pressed the stylus into the center of the stone, directly down the core axis.

  Drill.

  The stylus whined as it ground against the mineral. Red dust coated his fingertips. He worked with surgical precision, carving a cylindrical void into the heart of the crystal, perfectly sized to house the copper pin.