Scientific Sorcery : Beware of Kittens!

"Right,” I said. “So… today we're going to attempt to build a remote control using 51-B," I explained, gathering my tools. "First thing's first, we need a base. More specifically, a non-magical material that will contain the phase shift resonance that gem 51-B casts without being influenced by it."

Stormy tilted her head at me.

“I’m thinking… wood? Which one do you think will work best? This one maybe?” I picked up an oak board.

I watched as Stormy got up and trotted to my pile of scrap wood, stopping at a piece of birch.

“Thanks,” I picked up the birch. It was strange working with a kitten who somehow sensed what I was going to do in the near future. It skipped a lot of steps and time consuming days or weeks that would be required for testing specific materials otherwise with the hexometer to figure out which one would be the most optimal for my purpose. I wondered exactly how Stormy's power worked and why. Did Stormy want me to complete the remote sooner? If so, how did that benefit a cat? Cats weren't exactly instantly devotedly-obedient like dogs.

"Mrrp," Stormy commented looking quite pleased with herself as she paced beside me tail up in the air, her gemstone-covered harness and collar glittering like violet stardust nebulae against her lush black fur.

"Yes, yes, you're the boss," I winked at her.

I carefully sawed the birch piece into a rectangular shape, about the size of my palm.

Next, I reached for my carving tools pilfered from a woodworker's shop, but Stormy let out a disapproving "Mrow!"

"What's wrong?" I asked, puzzled.

Stormy pawed at the Hexometer, then at the wood.

"Ah, I see," I nodded, understanding dawning on me. "You want me to use the Hexometer to guide the carving process? I was thinking about that earlier, yeah, okay, that makes more sense than simply trying to copy an existing design of a basic remote switch from Earth."

Stormy shook her head and then pawed at gem 51-B.

“You want to connect the hexometer to 51-B?” I asked. “You think that each gem produces a unique magical signature, right? I was thinking about this for the past two weeks, the slight deviation in the radial wave-patterns projected by each gem might result in specific shape."

"Purrrr," Stormy confirmed, looking smug.

It took me a bit of fiddling but eventually I was able to adjust the hexometer to host gem 51-B.

After that was done, I placed the wood on the Hexometer's plate and watched as the needle twitched and swayed. Following its movements, I grabbed a chalk piece and started to draw dots on the wood that seemed to align with the specifically strong flow of magical energy projected by 51-B in uneven waves that I could see with my Astralscope.

The hexometer allowed me to define where exactly the waves landed on the wood dot by dot. It took me almost the entire day of poking the wood with the chalk until a coherent pattern began to emerge.

"Huh,” I commented when I was done with my drawing. “This is sort of like creating a circuit board or a two dimensional representation… for the Auric Signature of gem 51-B. Specifically, the pattern for Arcanoelastic Resonance aka the phase transition causing magical pattern.

The chalk drawing on the wood appeared to be a fractal-like snowflake made up from converging pyramid-like shapes. It somewhat reminded me of the hexagram that Yaga Grandhilda drew on my chest, but was a lot more complex, featured more fractal-like triangle notches that folded into themselves. Did magic, like the shape of trees and mountains operate on specific fractals?

“Right,” I said. “I’m going to use the smallest knife to carve this pattern into the wood as precisely as I can manage.”

Stormy yawned and closed her eyes as I worked slowly. I wanted to make the pattern as precisely as possible so I took my time, spending the rest of daylight on it.

Day 42

Once the carving was complete, I held up the base, admiring the snowflake hexagram and contemplated how the remote would work best. I went back to the smithy and melted the entirety of gem 51 down once again, fusing 95% of it with the crystalline hearts and leaving 5% of it for future experiments as a small glass pebble in my necklace. I poured about a third of the resulting melted gem 51-B into the grooves in the wood, watching as it solidified.

“I think I’m going to call this crystalline material… witchglass,” I commented. “Sounds nicer than 51-B, yeah?”

“Mrrrp,” Stormy chirped.

When the crystalline snowflake hexagram was finished, the hexometer needle went absolutely wild dancing over it.

"Now for the tricky part,” I tapped my chin. “I need to create a switch mechanism."

“Brrr?” Stormy asked.

I pondered for a moment, then snapped my fingers. "Right. I’ll use 51-B for it too."

I melted and reshaped a piece of gem 51-B, and fitted it into a groove at the top of the wooden base with a spring to create a button that I could press with a finger. "This should act as our on/off switch," I explained to Stormy, who was watching intently.

"Mrow?" Stormy questioned.

"Right, we can't forget the star of the show," I nodded. "We need to integrate more of 51-B into the circuit somehow as a separate piece..."

I examined the carved channels in the wood, then had an idea. I heated up a small metal rod in the forge and used it to carefully melt a depression in the center of the wooden base. Once it had cooled, I fitted a large piece of 51-B snugly into the central hollow so that it could move up and down and touch more or less of the snowflake, its descent controlled by a wooden dial.

"Now, we need to connect everything," I picked up my gold wire. I carefully wove it through the carved channels, circling the snowflake and connecting the witchglass switch to gem 51.

"Should I also use gold for the place where the remote touches my hand?" I asked Stormy.

The kitten ran to the pile and smacked a silver chain.

"Silver it is," I said, trusting her instincts.

Then, I modified the wooden dial on the remote once again so that it allowed me to control how much of my hand touched the silver coil and how much gem 51 touched the entire magical snowflake pattern.

"Almost there," I muttered, making the final connections. "Now we just need to test it."

“Br br,” the kitten rolled over.

“Yeah, it does look like a paddle,” I said, staring at the remote in my hand. “Don’t judge my remote design, you!”

Stormy rolled her eyes at me.

I took a deep breath, pressed the witchglass switch and spun the dial, looking at the remote through the Astralscope. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, suddenly, a soft violet glow projected itself from gem 51, rushing across the entire snowflake witchglass pattern.

"It's working… I think!" I exclaimed, grinning at Stormy. "But how do I control what it’s pointed at?”

Stormy got up and went to paw at the chalk and then at the pile of bone dust.

“Chalk cannot be melted in a forge,” I said. “This is because chalk is primarily composed of calcium carbonate which does not melt; instead, it decomposes when heated to high temperatures.”

“Brbrrr,” Stormy shook her head, tapping the chalk harder with her fuzzy black paw.

“Right… vitrification,” I muttered. “I think I do have a piece of witch-magic infused chalk that’s been buried for weeks in my pile.”

I went to the earth pile and with Stormy’s help found a violet-tinted piece of chalk.

Stormy followed me, tail sticking upright as I put the crystallized chalk and the second human crystalline heart and the remains of gem 51 into the forge, producing a unique fusion of the three. Then, I poured the result into an approximate form of the chalk and cooled it with water.

I had run out of human heart gems. It somewhat bothered me that I would have to kill again, to build more tools.

Maybe I didn't necessarily have to kill people. Perhaps, I could figure out how to kill a Jotun. The bones of such a beast have to be extra-magical, otherwise our Yaga wouldn't be wearing them.

“Behold, I have created witchchalk,” I said as I picked up the resulting chalk.

“Mrrrrrr,” Stormy yawned.

“Now what Miss assistant?” I asked her.

The kitten looked at the hexagram on the remote and then the magic chalk and then pawed the floor.

“Gotcha! Of course!” I declared and began to sketch an exact copy of the triangle-populated copy of the fractal snowflake from the remote on the floor with the chalk. It took me a bit of time to do so using a square framework sketched out with regular chalk first.

“Moment of truth,” I said as I put the Astralscope in front of my left eye.

I pointed the remote at the hexagram on the floor and turned the knob, permitting greater flow of magic through the hexagram. Through the Astralscope, I could see faint tendrils of violet energy beginning to coalesce around the edges of the chalk-drawn snowflake, noting clear interaction between the snowflake in the remote and one on the floor.

Suddenly, the floor within the hexagram's radius began to shimmer, as if viewed through a heat haze. I reached out with a stick and poked the floor. The wooden planks, once solid and unyielding, started to ripple like the surface of a disturbed pond. The ripple effect spread outward from the area I poked, bouncing off the edges of the snowflake on the floor.

“Yess!” I fist-pumped.

“Rock testing time!” I declared and rushed outside to grab a pocketful of small pebbles.

Upon return, I placed the first test pebble onto the floor snowflake.

The plain, unremarkable stone began to sink slowly into the now semi-liquid floor. It was as if the wood had transformed into a viscous fluid, its molecular structure completely altered by the arcane energies flowing through it.

I pressed the switch to disable the flow of magic through the remote. The floor instantly solidified, suspending the pebble ¾ of the way in solid wood. I leaned down and tapped the wood and the rock in fascination with my fingers. Then, I turned the dial on the remote forward all the way and turned it on once again.

I watched, transfixed, as the stone descended deeper into the floor. The wood seemed to part around it, flowing like molasses.

As the stone sank and vanished into the liquefied wooden floor, I noticed that the liquefied wood didn't splash or splatter. Instead, it moved with an eerie, almost fluidity, as if consciously making way for the intruding object. This behavior reminded me somewhat of Non-Newtonian Fluid.

I pointed the remote away from the chalk hexagram on the floor. The floor didn’t stop rippling.

I walked to the far end of the pub and tried to throw another pebble into the hexagram. The pebble bounced off. I moved closer, throwing pebbles at the hexagram. This permitted me to calculate that the range of my remote was approximately 2.2 meters.

The Astralscope showed me that the pulsating waves of energy emanating from gem 51-B on the remote, perfectly synchronized with the ripples in the floor. It was as if the gem and the snowflake were conducting an orchestra of arcane forces, bending reality to its will.

I turned to Stormy.

"Did you see that?" I gesticulated. “The Arcanoelastic Resonator bloody works! I did it! Ha ha! Science: 4, Witchy mysticism: 0!”

Stormy, for her part, looked utterly unimpressed at my score-keeping.

She yawned widely, stretched, and then curled up for a nap next to the burning fireplace, as if to say, "Of course it worked. What did you expect? Girl witches can simply sink into their domain without any of this remote nonsense.”

I tapped my chin in thought and snipped a flower from one of the metal cases and dropped it into the liquid floor to see if the non-Newtonian-wood would absorb organic material or if something light would just float atop it. The lightweight flower gradually sank into liquefied wood and vanished into the floor.

“And that’s how witches drown people,” I commented with a slight shudder.

As I giddily paced across the pub, I noticed the bucket with Glinka’s fish-rock.

“Time for another experiment,” I grinned. “Let’s see how you feel about swimming in my domain, little river-fish spirit!”

I fished the rock out of the bucket, feeling it prickle ever so slightly against my fingers and then dropped it from the air onto the liquefied floor section turning the remote dial to its lowest setting.

The moment the stone made contact with the wood, the surface rippled outward like a pond disturbed by a pebble. Through my Astralscope, I could see faint tendrils of blue-green energy, distinct from the violet hues of my domain, emanating from the rock as it began to sink.

The descent of the fish-rock was noticeably different from that of the mundane stone. It seemed to resist the pull of the liquefied wood, as if struggling against an unseen current that tried to pull it under. The blue-green aura surrounding the rock pulsed and flickered, creating small eddies in the violet energy field of my domain.

The wooden floor around the sinking rock began to undulate slightly, creating concentric circles that radiated outward.

Through the multi-lens of Astralscope, I observed the interplay of energies. The violet tendrils of my domain's magic seemed to be attempting to envelop the blue-green aura of the fish spirit, but they couldn't quite manage to penetrate it. Instead, they swirled around it, creating a mesmerizing dance of colors.

The rock continued its descent, but at a much slower pace than the mundane stone. It was as if the liquid-wood itself was reluctant to accept this intruder. I could clearly sense the fish spirit's presence within my domain, a small pocket of foreign energy, a prickling bothersome spark.

Suddenly, about halfway through the floor, the rock's descent halted. It hung there, suspended in the wood refusing to sink in fully.

"Observation: Magic interferes with magic," I wrote in the Witch's Codex.

I grabbed the rock from the semi-liquid floor and tied a bit of string to it.

“Now, let’s give it more oomph!” I said as I placed the rock back into the wooden pond and cranked up the amount of phase transition on the remote to the max.

Glinka’s pebble flashed with silver-blue sparks, vanishing in the depths of the floor.

I still sensed it somehow, but its magic now felt greatly reduced, almost gone, contained. From what I felt, it stopped somewhere in the depths of the floor.

"Fascinating," I muttered, making notes in my Codex. "The tiny river spirit seems to be contained within my domain, but not assimilated, nor dead. It's like... like an encapsulated foreign body in a living organism. Guess it's harder to kill a spirit in a rock on the account that they don't need to breathe."

I pulled the rock with the rope and then measured the distance it went in.

From my test, Glinka’s rock had stopped sinking exactly 30 cm into the floor, which was the exact radius of my chalk hexagram.

The fish spirit looked at me with what was possibly a very annoyed expression as it swam circles around the rock.

Stormy paid neither me nor the perturbed fish spirit any attention, busy snoozing by the fire.

“I’m going to make myself Astralscope goggles using the remote to soften, carve out or maybe liquefy and reshape a small wooden board on its lowest setting,” I said, looking at my chonky and terribly unergonomic Astralscope in my left hand. “Iron pliers with gem lenses tied to them are not comfortable to lug around everywhere.”