The experiments continued from morning till night, only resting to eat and sleep. They continued their routine over and over again. They would eat together, sleep together and she began letting her mask down more regularly. After six days Alexander had told her much about his life.
Alexander told Verila about his studies, his research, his loneliness and his drive. Alexander loved his family even if his father had become distant and worried, he had his mother, Ana and Duke. They made him feel normal, but he remembered the stares and expectations the empire put on him.
He told her specifically, "I can't forget the look Emperor Ceasar Di Valrahn gave me or Empress Aphrodite. Their eyes were the same I gave to my tutors. Absolute cold power and eventually disgust. I knew then I would find a way to stand above them. Call me arrogant but look at what i've done already scrounging books up from libraries."
Verila listened intently. She believed him. She could see his loneliness in the way he talked about feeling normal but knowing he never could be. She opened up a little bit about when she was a child. Verila wrote about the forests. Not too descriptively but she did what she could.
They grew closer. She didn't sleep with her dagger at her chest anymore. She also didn't worry about her shadow dissipating. Alexander had given her some of his clothes to work in. It allowed her to focus and input more mana. They were able to get 10 runes done a day. Then in the morning she would work side by side, deciphering each one.
Alexander would sit on the couch with Verila next to each other. Their shoulders lightly touching. It had been eight days.
Eight days was all they needed when working together.
"V..Verila, Thank you." He grabs her hands tightly in his. "This is going to change my life. I honestly didn't know if this would work. If I could figure out what this all meant. Without you… Thank you." Alexander sets down the master sheet that they created. Every rune and their meanings and not only that a way to figure out how to write them. New ones.
Verila nods and smiles. She didn't wear the mask around him anymore. 'Do you need anything else?' She asks through a notepad he had given her so they could communicate.
"Give me two days. I want to design something and then we will see." Alexander shakes her one more time. "What we promised a week ago. I meant it. I will make you free."
Verila smiles but a sadness rests in her black eyes. A sadness that maybe this would be over. She thought about Torres and his father before him and before him. They had all used her as tools, but when she sat with Alexander it was a moment where she felt equal. Part of her didn't want to leave, but she was held by something here. Held to the family. Held to the Vi Terande line. One day hopefully held to Alexander as well.
She lightly knocks him in the shoulder with her fist and dissapates into the shadows.
I'm sorry V. I wish I could free you now. But I will one day. Alexander's thoughts fell between his budding relationship with her over the past week and his family he hasn't seen. It was time to make his rounds. First Duke and Ana. Then Mother and Finally Father.
But as he is about to move away from his desk. An empty copper plate calls to him. It was going to be the first he made. Alexander had charged a few crystals with his mana. He had thought long and hard about what his magic could be. He had poured over alchemical texts his whole life. Their study of natural phenomena. Mathematical equations that determined mass, speed, velocity and structural foundations of objects.
With those thoughts in his mind he sits at his desk. He quietly and fervently grabs a copper plate. The master sheet of runes next to him. He knew what the rune would be. It was in his mind when they had discovered the last one. It played over and over again, circling within the corners of his skull and he takes his sodering tool and begins to work.
Silver spool melted by a crystal comprised of fire mana makes its way onto the copper plate.
Dots on four corners and curved lines intersecting eachother. A symbol he didn't quite understand, but something that means more than the sum of all his knowledge. Two circles stretching out almost looking like two interlocking chain pieces. It feels like forever to him and in a way it is everything and nothing.
Space. Physics they called it now, the study of space and how everything interacts with it. This will prove if I am right. If what I saw was right.
He has found the perfect set of runes through their experiments and wrote down their meanings. Stabilization, power, efficiency and attunement. All the characteristics for a proper circle. He etches them in. He had thought of new runes. Runes that would strengthen the circle beyond measure. Beyond histroy but he would test that on the other nine plates. For now. This would do.
The circle he etches was nothing like anything in textbooks. Nothing like anything anyone has ever seen. He places it in the aparatus and this time places a wooden block on the circle. He grabs one of the crystals from his desk drawer, where a few others laid hiding filled with faint purple energy. Alexander gently hooks it up to the machine. Then, pours the final bit of energy to push it over the mana horizon.
His purple mana flows through the wires and crystal tubes, things he had Drak build months and months ago, and then he watches the runes light up. One by one his mana pours into the runes lining the circle. The prototype that would lead to the circle around his heart. As the runes glow with magical energy the wooden cube sucks into itself only leaving a hole in the space where it existed.
Alexander can only watch in horror as the void within the space the wooden block took up, sucks the very copper plate it had spawned from and dissapates. Just like that he has proven everything he had thought. The way light bent around the wooden block and into the hole, he watched as each corner folded into itself meeting a singular point and vanishing. The object horizon where light twisted around it and formed nothingness.
It was beautiful. It is so beautiful
Alexander begins laughing. Laughing in that way only one can when everything they believe is proven right. Laughin in the way that he always knew that they were wrong. Laughing in the way knowing no one else would have tried to do this.
It could have only been me. Now. Now I will become the strongest mage in history. Weak magic. Almost no mana. They don't know anything. I will show those fools.
"Now let me go visit my family. The last day as a normal man. A man without magic. In a few days. I will be no longer Alexander the disgraced. The dissapointment. The failed genuis. I will be Great. I will be… Unstoppable." Alexander speaks to himself.
Before he leaves his room he hears a loud crash. He looks back to see his large bedroom windows cracked, splintering in two, lodged in the panes of the glass are two objects. The wooden block and copper plate. They don't have any more magic but somehow were sent through space.
Oh now that. That is interesting.
Alexander chuckles and leaves his room in search of Duke. He has a lot to tell. So much to tell. Alexander was hoping he hasn't formed his circle yet because if Duke was to guard him at school, he would need him to be strong and he had a way to do that.
Experimental or not.
In the master study, Torres sits mulling over business deals and expenses. His son, Alexander, has accrued expenses after expenses. Torres has been relying on his belief that his son's genius would create something. Anything. However even now as he sees how much money Alexander has wasted over the last ten years, he feels it has been a waste, and he grows tired of this chirade.
'Just a few weeks and he will be gone to waste the academies money. Hopefully he will learn well and create something useful.'
Torres thinks about Verila. He hopes she is able to gain some information from his son. At least something worth showing his investors. Torres' mind can only think of the money now. It is the only way to avoid the boot of this terrible empire, even if it is temporary.
Fuck that cursed Ceasar. I'll show him one day. I don't care when. Even if I have to use my son.