Ch 2.9: Engineering

Elaina groaned as she reached her room after lunch, her first day of class since the attack in full swing. Combatives had been rough, Calivahn offering no mercy, forcing them to drain their mana repeatedly, a taxing addition to the normally physically effortless act of using their aspects. “Stress training” she had called it, but torture was more apt to Elaina. Even Tira had seemed exhausted at the end of it.

And Elaina was supposed to be done with classes now, if not for that damned letter. She grabbed it off the nightstand, looking over the short missive. It was only one paragraph, informing her she’d had a class added to her schedule, and that today would be the first lesson she’d have in it. “Engineering for Related Aspects,” she muttered, reading over the course name. “First floor, west courtyard.” She grabbed her satchel and made her way out of the dorms.

It was odd having a class listed as both first floor and the courtyard. It wasn’t like she would know if it had said third floor east courtyard after all, but she was more annoyed by the prospect of the additional academic load than the quirks of the classroom location.

Elaina winced as she left the west exit, bright sunshine flooding her mind. She hadn’t slept well the night before either, her mind taunted by images of Flora. If it had just been dreams then it would have been fine, nice even perhaps, but her mind was so distracted by the thoughts she’d barely gotten to sleep at all, and returning to the outside world was the last thing she wanted at the moment.

Eyes adjusting, she glanced around the field, looking for a group of students. There were two things holding her back from finding her class location immediately, one being that she’d never been on the west side of the school grounds. The bigger problem though was that she didn’t exactly know what they word “engineering” meant. Both Carline and Tira had mentioned it would probably benefit her to take, but they hadn’t been very specific about it, and she’d been too embarrassed to ask.

There weren’t any groups of people immediately apparent to Elaina, but she heard something in the distance, the sound of clanging metal. Swords? Maybe engineering was a different type of fencing class, or something, but she wasn’t sure why her aspect would be related to that. It was the only lead she had though, so she started walking.

It wasn’t long before she found the source of the sound, a large covered area built off of the side of the school. Underneath the wooden roof was indeed a large group of people, but not in a field or a classroom, but a work area. It was like every craftsman’s workshop from back home, all piled into one. There was a forge on the far end, hot and ready for smelting, a set of three anvils next to it, all being manned by students. Closer to Elaina was a woodworking section, various saws and lathes. There were even a couple of spinning wheels, the only tool she was really familiar with.

It was comforting, in a way. Engineering had to be some type of craftsmanship she guessed, and that was something she could wrap her head around, better than Remedial Etiquette at least. She noticed a wall with student jackets hanging off of it, a bunch of dark blue smocks hanging right next to it that all her classmates were wearing. She walked over and placed her jacket with the others, grabbing one of the smocks and pulling it over her head.

“Aye, Weaver!” Elaina turned as she finished tying her head, seeing a short man hobbling over to her. He had a pockmarked face, wild and long white hair on the sides of his balding head, and most notable of all a metal leg that seemed like it had been stolen from one of the automatons where his right leg would have been. “You’re fifteen minutes late, lass. See it doesn’t happen again, understand?”

“Oh, uhm sorry, the schedule wasn’t very specific about the start time. I’ll be on time next—”

“Aye aye, I know stuff like that happens. That’s why I’m not stringing you up by the heels, this time. Now, come.” The man turned and started walking, limping along with each step as Elaina followed behind, doing her best to go slow enough to not overtake him.

“Name’s Sylvas, and you can call me Sylvas. None a that ‘Professor Barnacious’ business, ya hear?”

“Uhm, yes sir.”

“This is the workshop. Those are the spinning wheels, but by your name I take it I don’t have to introduce you to them. I’ll probably have you spend a little time there, but not too much I reckon. Got the woodworking sections here, lathes and saws and shit, probably a bit of time here in your future as well. Forge you’ll definitely be working in, but not before you do your book learning and whatnot. Classroom’s thisaway.”

They reached the far end of the workshop, where there was a door leading back inside the school, back into a regular lecture hall. It didn’t mean class was on the first floor of the courtyard; it’s the first floor and the courtyard. Elaina blushed a bit as she realized she was the only student in the actual classroom portion wearing a smock, but Sylvas was as well, and he didn’t mention anything.

“Miss Weaver, what does engineering mean to you?”

“Uhm…” Elaina went bright red, as could not have thought of a worse question to be asked. “Making things?”

Sylvas sighed, tutting as he shook his head. “Better than some a this lot, but still not right. Engineering is about solving problems. You don’t have to make shit to solve problems if you already have the things you need. It’s about using what you have, knowledge, materials, time, all together to get things done that couldn't be done otherwise.

“Just making shit isn’t enough. Take Sturgess there. His aspect is Weapons, and the only thing he ever thinks to do with it is make swords. Swords for fuck’s sake, one of the least effective martial instruments in the world, the biggest advantage of them being that they're easy to carry around sheathed, which isn’t an advantage at all when you're conjuring it from thin air anyway!”

“Sorry, sir!” a student said. He was sat alone at a table in the corner, facing the corner.

“And weak swords at that. The poor Fireguard girl's snapped on her in the middle of fighting one a them pale bastards. Coulda died! Imagine if we’d been fighting armored opponents instead of naked savages.”

“I fought with one of those swords…” Elaina said, the memory coming back to her. She’d wondered how Waine and Prisma had gotten the weapons in the first place.

“Aye? And how’d it feel, compared to the training swords in class?”

Elaina frowned, thinking back. “It was… heavier, but still didn’t feel as sturdy, somehow.”

“Balance,” Sylvas said, nodding. “They were lighter than regular rapiers, less durable, but the weight distribution was off, so they still felt heavier. Which is why the first thing I have Sturgess doing is studying physics. Most of your learning is going to be by doing, but I don’t have the time to personally teach the textbook basics to all of you, which is what textbooks are for, I suppose. Now, I hear you made bear traps out there?”

“Uhm, yes sir.”

“Aye, a good use of your aspect, clever. I’d had my eye on you all week, probably would’ve pulled you into my class on the first day if I’d had time to think over your aspect, but your timing didn’t leave us much to think it over. Tell me, Weaver, how does a bear trap work.”

“It— it’s claws, and then when the button is pressed, they close shut.”

“Wrong!” he said. “It needs tension for gods’ sakes! ‘Press a button and it closes shut,’ fucking stars, come here!” Sylvas shuffled over to the desk in the front of the room, pulling a thick book from the middle of a stack of five and plopping it open, thumbing through the pages and settling in the middle, the paper showing a diagram of a bear trap. “This’ll be your copy, by the way. Now make this, with your aspect, the same way you’ve done before.”

Elaina nodded, focusing and conjuring the bear traps just as she had against the Red Order.

“How much of your mana did that take?”

“Uhm…” She couldn’t be honest, really. She knew she had way more mana than she was supposed to. “A good bit, I guess.”

“Aye. Now make another one, one that’s already closed.”

Elaina did as she was told, and instantly she knew the answer to Sylvas’s next question, before he even asked it. “It’s like, nowhere near as much mana!”

“That easy to notice? You’re packing some force in there then. Real bear traps work off tension, springs,” he said, pointing to a section of the diagram showing the internals of the contraptions. “Yours don’t have any tension though, they’re just there, waiting for something to hit the button. You didn’t have to for the one that’s already closed, but the open one you’ve loaded up with potential energy, direct from your mana well.

“The mundane engineers are bound by certain rules, but the Awakened flout them.” He waved his hand, conjuring another bear trap right in the middle of Elaina’s two, a perfect reflection of the diagram. He then waved his hand again, creating another perfect replica, but closed. “These two took me the exact same amount of mana to make. We can’t break the laws of physics, but we can bend them, make a bear trap that’s already loaded with that potential energy through its spring mechanisms, all without extra effort. It’s not fair really.”

Elaina looked between the four bear traps, still astounded at how much of a difference in effort was required for the two she had made. “I can make the open one with the same amount of mana as the closed one?

“Aye, with practice, with understanding. Aspect control is all about your perception. Sometimes having an open mind is good in that regard, but you need to still need to be knowledgeable. You can’t bend rules if you don’t know the rules, after all” Sylvas slammed the book shut and then placed it back on top of the pile.

“Wait,” Elaina said, watching Sylvas walk away from the giant stack of books, “I thought you said that one was my copy?”

“Aye? Lass, all five of these are yours. Now get to your seat, general lecture’s about to start.”