Scientific Sorcery : Beware of Kittens!

I considered the violet dust in my bag and what to do with it.

Ordinarily, human bones burned up in a crematorium at around 1,000 to 1,300 degrees Celsius becoming dry and brittle and turning into a grayish ash. I wondered what would happen if I heated this crystalline bone dust? Would it catch fire or maybe exhibit other unique properties?

I filled the base of the forge with coal and set it alight.

While the forge heated up, I retrieved a small clay crucible from a back shelf in the smithy.

Then, I carefully placed a small mound of the bone dust into the crucible and set it atop the forge. The heart of the forge, fueled by coal and bellows, roared, bathing the smithy in a warm, orange glow. I turned the heat up high, my eyes never leaving the crucible as the bone dust within began to glow.

It didn’t take long. Within moments, the bone dust melted as glass would, coalescing into a single, shimmering bead of liquid violet. I used a pair of tongs to remove the crucible from the forge.

The forge experiment showed that the crystalline bone dust had the property of vitrification when heated, aka sand turning into glass!

I dipped a metal rod into the molten bone dust and carefully extracted a small droplet. It cooled rapidly in the frigid air, hardening into a tiny, teardrop-shaped bead.

As I stared at the glass bead made from human bone I realized that none of this should have been possible. I pulled the Witch’s Codex from my bag and outlined my thoughts, trying to mentally sort what I discovered so far.

Domain-affected gemstones are malleable: Sapphires, and other hard crystals that should require extreme heat and pressure to reshape behave like soft clay. Crystals that were supposed to be harder on the Mohs scale are somehow easier to grind down.

Human bones crystallizing: Upon contact with my domain, bandit remains transformed into violet, pulsing crystalline structures - a process that should be biologically impossible.

Rapid Vitrification: The crystallized bone dust powder liquefied at temperatures far below what's required for making glass or melting metals.

Rapid cooling without typical effects: The molten bone-glass cooled almost instantly without shattering or showing typical stress patterns.

Transmutation of elements: The wooden floorboards were developing crystalline structures, implying a fundamental change in their atomic composition.

As I wrote, a disturbing realization dawned on me. It was as if the distinction between different states of matter was blurring, and the energy required for phase transitions was being altered on a fundamental level. Solids behaved like liquids, organics transformed into inorganics, and the very atomic structure of materials seemed to be in flux.

I scribbled another line in the codex:

"A witch’s domain appears to be rewriting the basic laws of thermodynamics and materials science. The energy barriers between different states of matter seem to have been drastically lowered or even eliminated entirely. This suggests a complete overhaul of how atoms and molecules interact within a witch’s sphere of influence."

I stared at the grinding wheel.

Water.

My God, I'm an idiot sometimes!

In my exuberant state of mental flow, I completely forgot to use water to cool gemstones down as I ground them down!

According to Yaga Grandhilda a witch could drown her enemies in her earth, sink through roots, solid rocks… this meant that a witch could liquefy everything that was beneath her feet, turn all solid matter into liquid at will.

But how? How could witches cause phase transition in gems?!

My hand slid into my pocket as I contemplated the impossibilities presented to me. My fingers closed around something hard and I pulled out gemstone 51.

I stared at gemstone 51, turning it over in my hand as my mind raced. Suddenly, everything clicked into place.

"You!" I exclaimed, holding the large, brilliantly-violet gem up to my eyes. "You're not just softening glass, are you? You're altering matter itself! You’re… causing phase transitions! Ordinarily a rock experiences phase transition, melts at temperatures around 1000°C to 1200°C, turning into magma. But… a witch can just sink anything through solid rock without heating it up, right?”

I stared at the gem. "You're lowering the energy barriers between different states of matter. That's why the glass becomes rubbery, why the bones crystallize, why everything seems to behave so... fluidly around me! You’re the reason I can just grind a corundum gemstone without it cracking, breaking the grinding wheel or overheating!”

Stormy watched me with curious eyes as I continued my animated monologue. She probably thought me mad for yelling at a rock.

"Don't you see?" I turned to the kitten, gesturing wildly. "This gem, and probably many others like it, are fundamentally changing how atoms and molecules interact within my domain. They're rewriting the rules of physics on a quantum level!"

I scooped up Stormy and held her at eye level, my words tumbling out like raging river. "Stormy, this is revolutionary! This is a complete overhaul of the laws of thermodynamics!"

The kitten mewed softly, clearly not sharing my enthusiasm for quantum physics or being shaken in the air.

"Just think about it!" I continued. "If we can control these energy barriers, we could potentially transform any material into any other material. We could create substances with properties that shouldn't exist in nature. We could..."

I trailed off, my mind reeling with the possibilities.

“Mmmrrrr,” the kitten said.

“Right,” I set her down back onto the work table. “Just me then. You have no human hands, Miss Assistant.”

I quickly bound gem 51 into a basic locket on my neck and set out to make extremely basic glass lenses from the human-bone-glass dust.

When they were completed, I waited for the glass to cool and then polished it. The process was definitely faster and easier than it should have been had I been working with mundane glass, the material behaving almost like slightly softened clay.

After that was done, I added the produced lens to my Astralscope pliers and eyed Stormy through it.

The kitten’s black fur viewed through the lens of the bone-glass combined with a multitude of other crystal lenses, glowed with an ethereal, otherworldly radiance, covered in minute violet radial shimmers.

Day 37

Attempt at meditation 98 resulted in no changes. Still, I persisted at it, meditating in the pub and outside of it at random locations while wearing the backpack.

Even if I couldn't open my inner eye or hear the spirits of the wind, it still gave me some time to think about things, to organize the thoughts in my head and to contemplate the nature of magic.

From what I could observe with the Astralscope, my current hypothesis was that magic moved akin to electricity. Generally, in electrical wires, the speed of the electric signal was about 50% to 99% of the speed of light, which was approximately 150,000 to 297,000 kilometers per second. Magic, it seemed moved a lot slower, as if the medium it was traveling through was some kind of thick soup.

Using a sand-clock I discovered in the ruins and various snips of copper wire that's been sitting in my witchy pile of earth from a few hours to 34 days, I determined that the speed of magic traveling through witch-earth-blessed copper depended on how much life-rad the copper absorbed. Copper wire infused with an hour of life-rad conducted magic through it had an abysmal rate of 3 centimeters an hour! I could actually watch the magical radiance crawl across the wire like a snail via the Astralscope.

Wire that sat in my domain for 10 days, possessed a slightly more respectable rate of magical conductivity of 37 centimeters per hour.

This was of course, approximate calculation based on a ruler I've created myself using abandoned boots I found in the village, approximating that the average human foot of an adult was 26.3 cm.

34-day old copper wire conducted magic through it at 0.3 millimeter per second!

Walking around the village while testing the speed of magical conductivity in copper resulted in weird deviations. Inside some of the ruined houses covered in snow and ashes, magical conductivity of 10-day copper fell to 11 centimeters per hour!

This experiment made me arrive at a conclusion that somehow my domain accelerated magical conductivity the closer I was to it and whatever the hell the dragon did completely screwed up magical conductivity in an area.

Magic conductivity also fell dramatically when I placed the 10-day copper wire over Glinka's rock, moving at around 21 cm/hr. Basically, magic that wasn't aligned to me slowed/disrupted the magical conductivity of my copper wire.

Day 38

Eager to explore further magic smithing, I retrieved the two heart gems made from two bandits from the pile.

I melted the first heart gem down and created another set of Astralscope lenses from half of it, which further improved by observation of magic.

“Now… should I try to fuse these two using heat?” I grinned at Stormy, showing her the remainder of the heart-gem and gem 51. “Will doing that improve gem 51’s functions or make it worse?”

“Mr-mrrr,” Stormy said. I took her answer as more of a yes than no.

Back in the smithy I placed gem 51 and the bandit’s heart-gem into the crucible.

It only took a few minutes under high heat for the two crystals to melt.

I poured a drop of 51 into a drop of heart gem, fusing the two together. When the combined drops cooled, I held the newly forged crystal up to the light, marveling at its iridescent sheen. The heart gem’s deep violet-crimson had melded seamlessly with the translucent violet-blue of gem 51, creating a unique swirl of colors.

"What do you think, Stormy?" I asked, glancing down at my feline companion.

"Mrow?" she chirped, violet eyes fixed on the newly produced crystal.

"Yeah, I'm not sure what it does either," I said. "Let's take a closer look."

I settled into a chair, pulling my Astralscope out. As I peered through the multitude of crystalline lenses, improved crystal 51-B seemed to pulse with an inner fire, tendrils of energy coiling and uncoiling within its depths, projecting out of the gem in distinctive radial patterns akin to seeing field lines around a bar magnet.

“Curious,” I murmured. "But how do I measure this increase in magical potential? I need some way to quantify magical power..."

Stormy hopped onto the table, her tail swishing back and forth as she watched me think.

"That's it!" I exclaimed, snapping my fingers. Stormy startled, nearly falling off the table. "We're going to build a magical galvanometer! Well, I’m going to build it. You can watch and tell me if I’m going in the right direction, Miss future-seer.”

“Brrrrrr,” Stormy commented, possibly excited by the prospect of managing me.

"Galvanometer time!" I said as I sketched out the diagram of the galvanometer in the Witch's Codex.

She tilted her head at the word galvanometer with a somewhat confused look.

“A galvanometer is an instrument used to detect and measure electric current,” I explained, showing her the sketch. “It works by indicating the presence of a current and its direction. I think I'm going to call it a… Hexometer! Since it’s going to measure hexes, aka the presence of magic and its direction.”

I went back into the pub and rummaged through my collection of witch-affected materials, laying them out on the workbench. Stormy perched herself on a nearby table, her violet eyes tracking my every move.

“Galvanometers are made with a magnetic coil of wire. The coil is usually wound around a rectangular or cylindrical frame,” I explained. “Positioned around or alongside the coil are one or more permanent magnets. These create a steady magnetic field in which the coil is situated. The interaction between the magnetic field generated by the current in the coil and the external magnetic field of the permanent magnets causes the coil to experience a torque.”

Stormy squinted at me.

“The coil is typically attached to a lightweight pointer that moves over a scale,” I explained, not sure if she even understood any of my words. “It's mounted on a pivot or a set of jewel bearings so that it can rotate freely. When current flows through the coil, the magnetic torque induces a rotation, which is translated into a movement of the pointer across the scale.”

Stormy closed her eyes, pretending to be asleep. Maybe she didn't understand anything and I was talking to myself like a crazy cat lady.

“Basically… There's a needle connected to the coil. This needle moves when there's electricity, or in our case when there's magic. Oh and there's a spring too which helps the needle return to the starting position when there's no electricity. Get it?” I explained things again, hoping that Stormy was sapient enough for my words.

“Mewlrr,” Stormy sighed.

"Alright, let's see what we've got here," I mused, going to the pile and sorting through the items. "We need something magically conductive for the coil... Ah! This copper wire should do nicely, yeah?"

Stormy ignored the copper and went to smack a gold chain that was tinted violet.

"This is for science, not for playing." I commented.

"Mrrp," Stormy replied smacking the gold chain again, with greater insistence.

"You want me to use gold for this?" I asked.

Stormy nodded.

"Okay, Miss Assistant," I nodded.

I returned to the forge and melted the gold chain down, hammered the produced gold into a flat sheet. Then I drew the gold through a series of progressively smaller holes in an iron drawplate. The violet-tinted gold didn't seem to require annealing. Whatever gem 51 did on my neck was causing it to be more malleable and less brittle.

When I produced a golden-violet wire, I began winding the wire around a wooden spool, creating a tight coil. "The principle here is simple," I explained to my feline audience. "If magical energy behaves anything like electricity, it might create a field when it flows. This coil should hopefully be able to detect that field."

Stormy yawned widely.

"Everyone's a critic," I muttered. "Okay, smarty-paws, which crystal should we use for the needle?"

To my surprise, Stormy hopped down from her perch, ran left and right and then suddenly jumped at absolutely nothing at all, spinning through the air as kittens often do while playing. Then she looked left and right, hopped sideways for a bit and then pawed at one of the rocks in my pile and then grabbed the coral piece that I had extracted from one of the jewellery sets in her mouth. She dropped the coral atop of a random dark rock.

“Why this specific rock and the coral?” I asked her.

Stormy shrugged.

“Right, you don’t know why something works, you just somehow know that it will,” I muttered.

I grabbed the rock and the coral and went back to the forge. Both melted and fused quite nicely in the innards of the forge. I poured the superheated drop into the form of a needle and waited for it to cool.

"Let's give it a try." I nodded, picking up the crystalline needle.

I carefully suspended the needle from a thin thread, positioning it at the center of the coil.

"Now for the magnet," I said, eyeing the pile of rocks.

Stormy pawed at a rock hanging from my rock collection atop of my shirt.

"This one, huh?" I asked.

"Mrrrrrwrrl," she affirmed.

"Thanks," I said and went to melt the rock in the crucible, pouring and then slowly shaping it into a curved magnet required for the tool I was making.

Day 39

After thirty minutes of meditation, which gave me no new powers, I spend a few hours carefully assembling the hexometer's base using a slab of wood from the outside, so it would not interfere with measuring magic. Then, I spend the rest of the day putting the entire hexometer together, testing and calibrating it so the thing would work properly. It was hard working with medieval tools but I persisted at it, my hands working tirelessly and rather precisely, thanks to the powers of my domain.

"Now for the moment of truth," I announced, reaching for a slightly purple iron flake. "If this works, the crystal should move when exposed to magical energy."

I placed the flake on the measuring plate and pointed two of the gold wires at it from two directions, watching as magic danced across them via the Astralscope.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, ever so slightly, the crystal needle began to twitch.

"Ha!" I exclaimed triumphantly. "Look at that! It works! Magic has a current!"

Stormy meowed excitedly, her tail swishing back and forth.

"You're right," I agreed. "We need to calibrate it. Let's try different materials and see how they affect the needle."

Over the next few hours, Stormy and I tested various objects from the pub. Mundane items didn’t move the needle, organic things made slight twitches, while witch-grass and other magically infused materials caused more pronounced movements. The heart-gem belonging to the 2nd bandit made the needle go wild.

"Fascinating," I muttered, scribbling notes in the Codex. "It seems the strength of the reaction correlates with the level of magical saturation. Magical saturation matters. I wonder if some witches are more powerful if they place their domain inside an area that has greater... uhh... Aetheric density? Maybe places where the barrier between the physical and the Astral is thin are easier to do magic in? What do you think, Miss assistant?"

I saw that Stormy was purring contentedly, curled up next to the Hexometer. She did lots of running today. Managing me was clearly a tough job!

"You know," I said, scratching her behind the ears, "I couldn't have done this without you. You're a pretty good lab assistant!"

"Mrow," Stormy replied, her eyes half-closed in contentment.

I went back to refining the design of the Hexometer, my end goal to make it more ergonomic, more responsive and less flimsy.

Day 40

I rubbed gem 51-B against a magic-infused wooden board, observing the interaction of two magic waves radiating from gem 51-B and the wood with the Astralscope. Gem 51-B was a definite improvement in magical power compared to gem 51. I knew now why some witches turned evil. Killing people for their crystalline hearts increased the efficacy of other magical crystals in a witch’s garden where the bodies were buried.

I still couldn’t pass my hand through solid wood, but the surface of the wood interacting with 51-B seemed a lot softer now, almost like rubber when I pressed hard against it.

"I think that I’m onto something here, Stormy,” I commented.

Stormy tilted her head, letting out a curious "Mrrrww?"

“Piezoelectricity is when certain materials generate an electric charge in response to applied mechanical stress. It's how some lighters work, or how record players turn the vibrations in the grooves into sound,” I said.

"Mrrp," Stormy replied, padding over to sit on my lap.

"Exactly!" I said, as if she'd made a profound point. "Material-softening gemstone 51 isn't quite the same as basic quartz which is piezoelectric and can convert mechanical energy into electrical energy. It's responding to magical energy and my fingers in some specific way, not mechanical stress. Instead of generating electricity, 51 is somehow altering the properties of materials around it... making them more malleable.

“I think I’m going to call this effect… the Arcanoelastic Resonance,” I announced to no-one in particular, writing the term into my Codex.

“Brrr brrr,” Stormy shrugged. She didn’t care for how things were named.

Day 41

"Alright, little miss future-seer, let's tackle this Arcanoelastic Resonance problem head-on,” I got off my work table in the pub, stretching.

Stormy's tail swished back and forth as she lazily pawed at one of the spirits.

“I think that what I’m going to need is a remote control of sorts for gem 51-B,” I explained. “I can’t speak to spirits like a witch does via the astral, sooo… I’m going to make a remote for it!”

Stormy tilted her head my way.

“A remote control is a device used to operate another device from a distance, usually wirelessly,” I explained. “All of these spirits stuck within the rocks are performing specific functions within my witchy domain. Gem 51 can somehow make hard materials softer, so it stands to reason that this effect can potentially be controlled remotely, amplified, reduced, reversed. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to order gem 51 to do what I want without talking to it through meditation or whatever it is female witches can do that I can't seem to perform no matter how many times I try it."