With the adrenaline high of the endurance potion wearing off, Harvey put the free points into Willpower and prepared for Inscriptions 101. She started by reminding him for the thousandth time that he was asking her to teach him the side of her profession she hadn’t tried yet, and he reassured her that he wasn’t going to judge her if she struggled right alongside him.

  There were two types of inscriptions. The artsy ones used detailed imagery to convey complex concepts through the combined will of the art, the artist, the ink, and the canvas. There were also the technical ones, which took tiny bits of standard symbols and strung them together to create what were essentially complex chunks of code. Harvey had no confidence in his artistic ability and wouldn’t mess with the first type unless absolutely necessary. The second strategy reminded him of his life as a software developer, and he knew that as long as he could learn what each symbol meant, he could figure out the rest.

  “These symbols are just templates. You’ll still need to modify them to fit the ink and materials you’re using.” She explained, drawing what looked like a periodic table of the various symbols with a piece of charcoal on an empty workbench.

  “Logically, I understand what you mean. The blood of a bear doesn’t want to let itself become an inscription that keeps you warm in the winter, but what does that process look like in practice?” He asked.

  “I can’t really explain it,” She said. “You just have to feel it. Sometimes it feels like you’re tricking the latent will to follow along, but other times you have to force it to bend to your will. Like an alpha wolf beating down a challenger.”

  “What if the challenger wins?” Harvey asked.

  “You’ll feel that too. The inscription falls apart, and any power in the ink burns up. At that point, you just gotta wipe the slate clean and start over.” She answered.

  They spent hours reviewing the various symbols and their purposes. It was a good thing John’s guides left a perfect memory branded in your brain. Where he had to remember the seven fundamental blacksmithing techniques, she had to remember dozens of complex patterns that had to be drawn perfectly or the entire thing would fall apart.

  Each symbol was akin to a word. Fire, force, battery, seal, anchor, lens. Each on its own meant almost nothing. Even knowing what they meant, trying to string them into a sentence felt like speaking caveman English.

  Each word had a set number of inputs and outputs, like cable ports on a TV. This added another layer of complexity, since you couldn’t just mix and match whatever words you wanted and see what happened. It was like he was the power outlet in the wall, providing the essence that then got sent through a USB port, an HDMI cable, and an Ethernet port, all to somehow transform raw power into a firebolt.

  It was complicated as hell, and Harvey loved it.

  “So, am I right in thinking that this symbol for fire can get an input from a battery, and adding the lens output would make an inscription that shoots flames?” Harvey asked.

  “No, I think that would make it glow, kind of like the campfires I drew on your cuffs. I think you’d use flow to make it do that,” She replied.

  “But flow needs three inputs?” He countered.

  “Yeah, but who’s to say you can’t just add the battery and fire combo three times? It’s a stronger effect, so it would make sense that it needs more juice to work.” She argued.

  He had prepared a few sheets of essence-infused metal to practice on. Each was the size of a playing card, and Elena smirked when her battery, fire, and lens sequence lit up like a flashlight.

  “Told you.” She said.

  “Let me try.” Harvey snatched the card from her. Borrowing the brush she’d made from the fur of the Moonshade Stalker, he mixed a small batch of the same ink she’d used. It was simple, just blood and charcoal. Carefully, he copied her drawing, only for the ink to start hissing like boiling water. Smoke billowed into his face, blinding him. Waving it away, the rune he’d drawn was left smudged and distorted.

  “Welcome to the world of inscriptions.” She laughed, taking back the brush.

  They spent the morning brainstorming possible combinations. He wanted to start with something simple, a pattern that would cover his entire chestpiece and redistribute the force of an attack across the entire surface. It wouldn’t hold up to a strong attack, but it would reduce the wear and tear from being constantly pelted by the Iron Elementals. It seemed like the battery and essence gathering symbols were the most universal, so he stuck them in any empty input slots after mocking up the connections of the various force, defense, and conduit symbols.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “This isn’t an exhaustive list of the symbols, right?” He murmured, adjusting the template he’d drawn on a piece of paper from the notebook they’d bought at John’s Shop.

  “Not even close.” She laughed. “These are just the basics, and the guide mentioned that people started creating their own symbols when they couldn’t find a standard one that fit.”

  Confident his plan had at least a chance of working, he set out to create the ink. He’d keep it simple for this first attempt, combining crushed up Lesser Iron Elemental cores with a healthy amount of his own blood. Cutting his arm didn’t faze him at this point, but he gristled as the stone rod he’d made to complement her inkwell crushed the gems into coarse sand.

  “What’s wrong?” Elena asked.

  “The texture…” He shuddered. “It’s making my brain tickle.”

  “You baby.” She laughed.

  The cores didn’t release any light when they cracked. Whatever power resting inside stayed within the sand instead of flooding back into the wild like when he destroyed an essence crystal. There was no smell other than blood, which he was grateful for after enduring Elena steeping a rotting carrionwing corpse inside a mix of the acid from its quills and her own boiling blood a few days earlier. She’d made the ink for an inscription that rotted both the body and the weave of whatever it cut, and painted it on a few of Harvey’s practice knives. The few reports she’d received from Veilstriders using them to hunt were very promising.

  She was happy to let him borrow her brush and watched intently as he dipped the end in his blood. Harvey felt something awaken the second the tip met the ink. Something inside the brush came alive, and the familiar feeling of an elemental rushed to meet the intruder head-on. The two wills stood like boxers standing in a ring, waiting for the referee to signal the start of the fight.

  Nothing happened, and he realized that the referee they were waiting for was him. Not sure what to do, he let them spar, feeling each other out until they realized they were cut from the same cloth. Both the elemental cores and the tree the brush was cut from shared similar properties, and they chose to stand united instead of tearing each other apart.

  Harvey realized in that moment the benefit of finding collaborative components. If they chose to keep fighting, he’d have to struggle to keep them in check throughout the entire process. 91 points in Willpower might be a lot, but he wasn’t going to be working fast. The latent wills rose again when his brush met the metal, but settled when they found nothing antagonistic to their paths. It was like the beliefs of the beings still lived on, even after being dead for days. Stick three guys in a bar who all like the same football team, and they’ll be friends within the hour. Do the same with two opponents in a rivalry game, and you’d have a brawl by the bottom of their second beer.

  In the end, it took him over an hour to finish his first inscription. He felt the strain on his body and soul with every stroke, and sweat poured down his face when he finally finished the last line. He wouldn’t know if it worked until he did some tests, but something inside him said he’d done it.

  This was the point that Elena would receive a system notification letting her know she had succeeded, but without the profession, he’d have no way of knowing. Or would he…

  Fire burned at the back of his neck, like someone was branding him with red-hot iron. It was right at the point where his head met his spine, and the pain grew to the point he almost passed out. For a moment, he felt like a level 1 Veilstrider again. Scared and afraid in a world he didn’t understand.

  Light exploded out of him, but it wasn’t the light of a level up. That radiance covered his entire body. This only shone from his neck. He wanted to scream, but the pain disappeared just as fast as it came. He couldn’t see the change, but a System notification nudging his mind confirmed his dream had finally come true.

  A Mark.

  He stared at the notification until the words blurred, tears welling up in his eyes. He’d worried that all the System could see was his Stain, but now he had proof there was more to his story than how he’d tried to end it.

  Wiping away the tears, he laughed when he saw the tattoo. It was the cobbled-together grindstone that was still nailed to the floor with the brackets he’d scrapped from the broken barrel. It was ugly, and he’d have fixed it by now if he weren’t already busy with so many other projects. Still, it was hard to hate it once it became the symbol of everything he’d worked for.

  He rubbed the skin on the back of his neck, the leftover tingling slowly melting away. Veil’s End finally had another Mark.