Role

Chapter 6

Time passed, and Phindarn grew to truly love the art of artifice.

He still had not even made his first scroll, but month by month he got
closer. His teacher was free with earned praise, and Phindarn grew quite
fond of the stuffy old gnome. He'd long since discarded the notion of being
a guard, though he still visited the training guards; there was something
soothing about engaging in a bit of the old ultraviolence, though he wasn't
really sure why. Probably not important. No. Phindarn was going to be the
greatest artificer, and that was that. He'd even make his dear old mother a
talisman when he could for her birthday, though maybe he'd send it by
courier just to be safe.

Then, quite suddenly, his mentor died.

It had not been meant to happen. He'd come down with something brought in
by an outsider's teleportation spell, and the transmuters had been sent for
to purge his system of whatever disease it was.

They had failed. The Veil had been too thick. Even there best had been
unable to muster the power required.

The event had a profound impact upon Phindarn.

It seemed so senseless. So avoidable. All the miracles of modern magic and
it had come to nothing in the end.

He kept to his studies, though the room seemed somehow emptier without the
old man and his commentary. He kept working upon his penmanship.

But he also began to study the Veil. It had never mattered to him before,
really. He was hopeless at magic with and without it.

At first it had been a part of his grieving process, but then he had
learned that even magic channeled through devices must still be drawn
through the Veil. Suddenly, it had become all the more important.

The more he read, the more he learned. How there were ways to thin and
thicken the Veil, but how it always stayed intact.

And in the darkness of his former mentor's home, books scattered across the
table and piled upon the floor, Phindarn asked himself a question which
would set his feet upon a long, and very dark road indeed:

Could you make something to cut something which cannot be cut?

He could imagine the response from his old mentor even now, though from a
time he'd asked a far simpler question.

"You can make anything, my young friend. Artifice is the key which opens
all doors."