Sen sat the books on his bed with bated breath. He felt a rush as he opened the first book, titled A Primer on Glyphic Enchantments. There was no author named, and when Sen realized the entire book was handwritten, as he saw the first page, then flipped through the rest, he wondered if Murdin himself had written it. It gave the book an authentic feel, like it hosted a level of sage wisdom that he’d never seen before.

  Books in the old world had all been printed by mages specialized in replicating the ink of stamped letterings, allowing books to be created and disseminated with relative ease. It certainly made the text a bit easier to read, Sen mused, but thankfully the writer of this book didn’t seem to struggle too much with legibility.

  Sen began working his way through the book, and quickly found himself overwhelmed. While the book was a primer, describing some of the basic aspects of Fiddian magic, it also seemed something of a survey, jumping shallowly into a number of different topics. Worse, it didn’t always explain fundamental parts that Sen thought made certain aspects nonsensical without.

  Sen wished he had a paper and writing utensil with which to take notes, but it had never been especially useful to Tane, so he hadn’t kept any in his room. He would have to see about changing that, now.

  The book jumped between topics quickly, from geology to glyphic enchantments that provided a surprising array of effects. Apparently, glyphs came in a couple different patterns. They could be linked together, almost like a language of their own, in order to create complex and intricate effects. Then, there were larger glyphs that could serve as substitutions for entire glyphic sentences. There was a trade-off, of course - sentences allowed customization to fit specific needs and use-cases, while the bundled glyphs were nearly impossible to customize to any useful level.

  The knowledge helped explain some of the enchantments he had seen throughout the day, but he had missed the foundational principles that made all of this make sense. How did glyphs power themselves? What about a glyph caused the ‘magic’ part of Fiddian magic to act like… magic?

  He flipped back to the beginning of the book, trying to find what he was looking for. No matter how he looked, the information wasn’t there. He checked the other book, skimming through it looking for the same information, but it served mostly as a more in-depth look at one of the topics noted in the first book - drawing. Or, more specifically, draftsmanship, as the book termed it.

  Glyphs required incredibly precise dimensions, meaning that the ability to properly draw lines and curves was an extremely important skill. Sen felt confident that his own abilities, refined over the course of his - admittedly incomplete - education under Amery would be more than enough to handle anything that glyphs threw at him. Although, the more he looked, the more he found himself interested in the techniques used to ensure consistency.

  Sen shook his head. Regardless, he could see the many disparate pieces all sitting there, but without anything linking them together.

  How frustrating, he thought. I get to start learning magic, and the most important part is missing.

  He thought back to Murdin’s words just before he left the mage’s house. Do not experiment, he had said. Did he expect Sen to blindly copy out the glyphs, just to see what happened?

  Well, he did want to do that, but Sen knew how easy it was to cause badly inscribed runes to leak mana, and that led to explosions, fires, and otherwise dangerous objects from trivial things like paper. The emphasis on precision in the second book suggested that similar explosions could happen, and were probably made worse because almost all materials used for Fiddian magic were made of stone. If Fiddian magic functioned anything like his own magic - Ceriddian magic - then Sen expected explosive stones to be a common side-effect of improperly formed enchantments.

  How annoying.

  Having promised Murdin not to experiment, Sen decided to simply read as much as he could. The books were small, but he wasn’t able to finish them entirely before he needed to sleep. They were full of information that he found interesting, though it certainly wasn’t a riveting read.

  The next day came with a morning chill. It was a hazy coolness that did nothing to the world at large but to leave everything just a bit quieter, and the sky just a bit brighter, with a vivid blue unmarred with the white of any clouds. The air had a crispness that felt ever so slightly too sharp, and weighed down on Sen as he stepped into the light of a new day. He still wore the lighter clothes appropriate for warmer weather, and the early coolness surprised the memories in him that knew what was normal in this area.

  In spite of the chill, rather than find a heavier shirt inside, he decided to use what magic he still did have. It was not a common way to use Ceriddian magic, but it did have its own advantages. He body-channeled a warmth spell, and the chill of the morning dissipated. Even with the diminished amount of mana he produced in this new life, Sen could keep this spell running all day long. It was comforting, in its small way, to have a reminder of his old life. A simple one, one that didn’t feel like a weight around his chest.

  It made the trip to Murdin’s an enjoyable walk, rather than one that slowly grew too cold. He noticed several others with too-thin clothes slightly shivering in parts of town where wind like to funnel through, leaving the cold several steps beyond too much for those still accustomed to the heat.

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  He knocked on Murdin’s door only for the man to call out from inside. “It’s unlocked! Come in.” Sen did so, and found an empty room. “In here,” Murdin called once more, and Sen followed the voice to a workshop filled with papers diagrammed with glyphs, drawing utensils, stones, chisels, and more tools that Sen couldn’t name. The sight of several rocks the size of Sen’s head half-filled with intricate glyphs attracted his eyes, and he saw numerous sketches of additional glyphs sitting around each rock. A number of chisels in various sizes, and a hammer sat next to them.

  Murdin himself stood at a separate workbench which held a handful of smaller stones which would easily fit in one hand. Murdin had shown him one such stone the day before, but Sen looked on with curiosity as the mage took a small stylus and engraved into one of them.

  The glyphs allowed for the stone to warm any water it is submerged in to a warm temperature. They were a popular way to warm baths, and one of the nicer luxuries that everyone in the village seemed unable to go without. The glyphs were surprisingly simple, in comparison to the runes he could still draw from memory, but the curving surface gave it a complexity that Sen marveled at.

  Murdin worked his way across the stone at speed, finishing a large section of it in only a short time. Finally, he set the stone down and looked toward Sen. “I’m running behind on a few things, so we may not have time for any specific lessons today, as well. However, our schedule opens up after tomorrow, and until then we’ll have to make due with any questions you have. I assume you started reading those books?”

  Sen nodded, and Murdin grunted. “Good,” he said, turning back to pick up another empty stone. “Come watch.” He pulled a small paper from a drawer, leaving it on the table. Sen recognized it as the same pattern sitting on most of the stones, with only a few minor variations.

  “Why are some of these different on certain stones?” He asked, pointing out the several stones with variation.

  “Good catch,” Murdin said. “Not all of these stones have consistent enough sizing or shape to fit these glyphs properly, so these variations account for those differences and allow each stone to work as expected.”

  Murdin explained more of the details as he worked, but again, Sen felt as though he was missing the underlying foundation that explained how it all tied together. He wanted to ask, but didn’t want to disturb Murdin while he was working, even if he was already talking through his choices on the stone in his hand.

  Eventually, Murdin’s explanations died down. There was only so much to say, and Sen didn’t have any hands-on experience to pull from so that he could ask useful questions. When he came to a variation, Murdin told him that adding too much complexity would only make it harder to learn. He would explain more when it came time, the mage had said.

  The work itself was simple, but painstaking and laborious, at least to Sen’s eyes. Even the simplest of shapes needed to perfectly route along the curvature of the stone, making even slight changes in the face of the stone a troublesome ordeal.

  Sen marveled at Murdin’s control, and wondered if he would be able to recreate that same level of control even with his experience crafting inscripted runes. Precision and accuracy were important there, too, but virtually everything could be inscribed onto a paper.

  Watching a line that should have been straight, according to the reference schematic sitting on the desk next to Murdin, but instead curved across the surface of the rock, seemed off. Yet, with each stone, set it in a little pool of warm water, and after only a few moments the water began to bubble as it boiled.

  Murdin handed Sen a pair of tongs and left him on retrieval duty as the mage continued engraving glyphs. It took nearly an hour for Murdin to finish the handful of stones sitting on his desk, leaving a small but surprising number of stones heaped in a basket nearby.

  “Alright,” the mage announced. “We have rounds all across town today. Inspections for each, but all of these stones need to be delivered today as well. Can I have you deliver some while I make the other rounds? That should free up a bit of time. I’ll meet you at the market around noon.”

  “Of course,” Sen said. The mage gave him a list of homes, each with a number listing the amount of heating stones to deliver.

  The two of them set off in different directions. Sen idly inspected one of the stones as he walked along, wondering how Fiddian magic had developed. The linework engraved into the stone was incredibly precise, far beyond anything he had seen before. That level of precision simply wasn’t needed in his previous life, much less on what would have been useless rocks at that time.

  His thoughts jumped around between topics from the books, studiously avoiding a creeping darkness that wanted to barge its way into his thoughts, and the stones. Murdin had made the engravings look easy, but he wondered if there was a method that actually made it easy, or if the man was simply so skilled that even difficult tasks looked trivial.

  Finally, he arrived at the first of his deliveries. He handed the woman a set of stones after assuring her that these were indeed the ones she ordered from Murdin. Despite her initial confusion, she smiled happily and thanked him as he handed the stones over, mumbling about taking a bath as soon as possible. Sen had several more deliveries, and each one had a bit of a walk.

  The third delivery changed the minor routine up a bit, the older man a bit more talkative than any of the others had been. “I’m surprised Murdin accepted you as an apprentice,” said a grey-haired man as Sen handed him a single warmth stone.

  “Is that so unusual?” Sen asked.

  “I don’t think he’s had an apprentice since he came to Shiren,” the man said. “That’s been, oh, thirty years? It’s not as though he hasn’t had a few travelers come by and ask him, either,” he chatted idly. “I’ve heard him complain plenty about ‘stupid upstarts expecting knowledge for nothing’ more often than I can count,” he finished with a chuckle.

  Sen didn’t know what to say to that, so he finished the exchange quickly. Murdin hadn’t told him to collect any money, so he assumed the stones had all been pre-paid in some way.

  He continued on his way, giving the old man a cursory goodbye. Looking back on it, Sen had been lucky that Murdin simply allowed him to study as an apprentice under him, and seemingly without any good reason. Why had the mage accepted him so easily?

  Was there some reason for that?

  He put the thought behind him. If there was a reason, Sen couldn’t know, not at this point, and ultimately it wasn’t his problem. He had more deliveries, and if he finished them quickly, maybe there’d be time for a few questions…

  He still hadn’t had the chance to ask about any of the many thoughts running through his head.