Industrial Strength Magic

Chapter 37: Perry Bites Off More Than He Can Chew

There were 4 basic spells that Perry wanted to work on today.

Summoning,

Unethical Blood rituals,

Protective charms,

Disintegration (with chain effects, if possible)

Frost and fire spells

Modifying the properties of Areonite.

Permanent floating armaments, to create a linked computer.

(that was more than four, wasn’t it?)

Starting from the top. Summoning rituals were largely similar, they usually involved candles set up in a specific pattern, incenses that would either attract or repell certain entities, and a token of meaning to these creatures. Sometimes there was a chant or a hymn to a specific deity to really get their attention, but the basic principle was the same.

All Perry had to do was find the type of summon that would work well for him. Or types.

Something that had occurred to him when he was fighting insects was a more-lethal option would come in handy should he have to perform another invasive species extermination.

Perry originally wanted to summon elysian warriors, who would be strong, wise, and capable of exercising judgement, unfortunately they each required a non-refundable proof of the summoner’s skill in righteous battle.

Which Perry couldn’t exactly produce en masse.

After an hour or so of flipping back and forth through the summoning chapter of mom’s spellbook, Perry narrowed the choices between Klameth, who liked carrion, and Ordenn, who took payment in gold.

After much deliberation, Perry decided on the Ordenn. Gold was expensive, but they didn’t give Perry the impression that they’d wander off and eat people if he left them alone.

Rob people or sell them a time-share, maybe.

Perry could deal with that.

Summon Ordenn: (Intermediate Difficulty)

Ingredients: One jangle of gold. Beeswax candles placed in a hexagon, Realm-piercing crystal dagger, Gold-tinge flower incense, twine from an Alastran monk’s sackcloth robe.

Find a location where two or more merchants are haggling within earshot, set up the candles two paces away from each other, with the twine from the monk’s robe lining the inside of the hexagon.

Place the gold and incense in the center of the hexagon, light the incense, then back out and light the candles, being careful not to allow any part of your body across the line created by the twine.

Once the candles are lit, if circumstances are right, an Ordenn may show interest in your call. Their body will become visible passing through the incense.

The user can then (carefully) use the realm-piercing dagger to pierce the veil and bring the Ordenn to this reality. Be especially careful not to allow the Orden to drag you back to their realm of greed for an eternity of servitude.

Once the Ordenn has arrived, you may negotiate with it for a term of service.

Perry read and re-read the entry, setting aside all the tools he needed for the summoning.

Okay, I have everything except for a realm-piercing dagger.

A realm piercing dagger was chipped out of realm-piercing crystal, and looked something like a mundane obsidian dagger chipped out of volcanic glass, albeit turquoise in color, faintly glowing, and allowing the user to see and cut the veil where certain entities were trying to push through.

An absolutely critical ingredient in summoning spells.

Perry hefted the head-sized chunk of volcanic glass and turned it this way and that, eyes narrowing as the world outside began to fade.

Now, how should I do this?

Perry didn’t know anything about making arrowheads and knifes out of obsidian, and he didn’t want to ruin this block of realm-piercing crystal on the first attempt.

He would hate to waste his time and money like that, and there was only one other block of realm piercing crystal this big on Earth that he knew of, and it wasn’t in Franklin city, and it was much better quality, making it nearly priceless.

In short, he had one shot at it.

So Perry watched youtube videos and practiced on a dummy piece of obsidian he’d bought for that exact purpose.

Chipping away pieces of glass shards with the intention of creating a knife felt awkward and uncomfortable at first, but as the Tinker twitch took over, Perry began going faster and faster, seemingly acclimatizing to what he was doing.

As he went, Perry realized he could likely make several knives from a head-sized chunk of realm-piercing crystal.

He also realized that physics were getting a bit wonky as they interacted with his Tinker Twitch, as the piece of obsidian he was working on was gradually lengthening as he worked on it.

How?

F**K you, that’s how.

A chunk of obsidian that had started about the length of his palm was now nearly two feet long and growing as he chipped more and more off of it. Perry’s hypothesis was that the obsidian being broken off was being reabsorbed because of his Tinker Twitch, ormore obsidian was being created from his attunement to match the mental image of what he was trying to create.

In either case, the obsidian blade kept growing until it was three and a half feet long.

I think…I think I got the hang of this.

Perry admired what was basically a straight sword for a moment before setting it aside on the nearby pallet full of sheet steel.

The blade turned sideways on one of the straps, causing the edge to slip through the metal sheets like water before it impacted against Perry’s ankle.

HP: 2

Perry carefully picked up the glass sword by the handle, went over to a vice and clamped the handle in place before setting it aside.

Accidentally made an SCP.

Obsidian was an incredibly sharp material, nearly monomolecular, but its biggest weakness was lack of toughness, hardness and flexibility.

Obsidian is a 5-5.5 on the Mohs scale, with similar stones having and absolute hardness of 48 @Mohs 5. If we estimate the improvement from Spendthrift at a conservative 40 times effectiveness, that makes obsidian…

1920 on the absolute hardness scale, compared to diamond which has 1500.

Meaning…depending on how much Spendthrift actually improves obsidian, that near monomolecular blade might be a little harder than diamond, or sitting right at diamond.

If toughness and flexibility are similarly improved….that’s not a bad material to work with, taking advantage of its strength while eliminating its weaknesses.

Perry glanced over at the menacing black sword thoughtfully.

Eh, screw it, this is worth testing.

Perry grabbed another vice and bent the sword five degrees before it exploded, sending insanely sharp shrapnel flying through the underground lair.

HP:1

Perry thought for a moment as he plucked razor sharp shrapnel out of his shirt.

Normally obsidian would not bend at all. Ever. Five degrees was quite a bit, when you considered the original material’s brittle nature.

Perry only hoped that the massive improvement of every relevant measure of performance would carry through to the low-quality Realm-piercing crystal.

That was a good knife. Now let’s make a magic one. Also I should adopt better safety procedures, because I almost killed myself twice.

…I’ll get around to it.

Now significantly more versed in knapping, Perry broke off a palm-sized chunk from the head-sized piece and began shaping it into a knife, watching with interest as the clarity of the glass improved as he went.

Perry stopped once the blade was about eight inches long and carefully set it aside, making sure to lock it in a vice. He wasn’t interested in the blade accidentally freeing some interdimensional horrors because he bumped it with his elbow.

It was unlikely to happen, typically, but Perry had the suspicion that this particular Realm-piercing dagger might be a bit...atypical.

Now it was time to wait for the summoning spell-discs to finish training, and move on to the next category of spells.

Unethical blood rituals!

Perry had been eating a bagel while flipping through his mom’s priceless spellbook when he found contracts which were enforced magically.

All one had to do was use their own blood to write a contract on a specially prepared form of ivory in Ordennish, and they would be forced to obey the terms of the contract.

Great for new years resolutions and losing weight!Mom’s note in the margin had triggered a thought.

It would be a great way to enforce a peaceful surrender. But how do you force supervillains to sign a surrender in their own blood?

What if...

What if I created a dart that instead of injecting something, siphons a bit of the target’s blood into pre-scribed contract?

Perry’s Ethics courses immediately started blaring warnings in his head about mind-control. Forcing a specific behavior against someone’s will with magical forces squarely fell under that umbrella.

In short, he couldn’t test it without consent unless he was in combat, and that was a great way for things to spiral out of control.

He’d have to get someone to help him test them. Someone who believed everything they were told….

***Later***

“So what is this thing again?” Brendon asked, rolling the tiny blue cylinder in his hands. It was about as wide as a finger and two thirds as long as one. It didn’t have its flight feathers or needle on it yet, so it was hard to tall what it was.

Inside the cylinder was a carefully scribed spiral of demonic ivory that would squish blood out into lettering when it was injected with any amount of force.

“A demonic contract.” Perry said, fetching the needle and fin cap for the cylinder.

Brendon dropped it.

“Dangit, Brendon, that’s valuable!” Perry cursed as he picked up the cylinder and inspected it for damage. “It’s something I’ve been Tinkering on.”

“I’m not sure you should be touching that,” Brednon said.

“It’s totally harmless. This particular contract states that the author agrees to pat their head and rub their stomach for thirty seconds.”

“Who’s the author?”

“Well, it depends on whose blood is funneled through the needle…probably. Possible problems that could arise are it simply not working, or making me perform the actions, because I made the guidelines the blood is travelling along.”

“So no losing your soul?”

“Pssh,” Perry waved him off. “Selling your soul is way more complicated. You gotta have a representative from the higher and lower planes present, a big contract written on the skin of a sapient creature of the opposite alignment of whoever you’re making the bargain with, and all participants have to witness and sign and so on, which requires summoning and binding them in the first place…it’s way more effort than it’s worth.”

Brendon cocked a brow.

“…anyway,” Perry said, clapping his hands together. “This is just a magical behavior contract enforced by residual Essence from a particularly law-abiding species of demon. Simple stuff.”

Brendon squinted at him.

“I made hamburgers for after we’re done testing.”

“Oooh!” Brendon’s eyes lit up. “Heck yeah, I could go for that!”

“Alright, just hold still,” Perry said, loading the dart into the tube.

“Did you try this on yourself?” Brendon asked.

“Yep. Didn’t work.” Perry said, taking aim at Brendon’s shoulder.

“Is it gonna hu-“

PHEW!

“OW! That –“

Brendon’s eye widened as he began patting his head and rubbing his tummy.

“Oh, this is weird, I do NOT like this,” Bredon said, the dart in his skin wobbling in place as his shoulder moved.

“Deep breaths,” Perry said, hitting the timer on his watch. “Relax your limbs and don’t fight it, you only have to do this for another twenty-five seconds.”

“I think I’m freaking out.” Brendon said, eyes wide.

“It’s fine, just another twenty seconds and-“

“AAaah!” Brendon screamed and ran for the exit, still patting his head and rubbing his tummy. “My arms aren’t my arms!” he shrieked, running out into the parking lot.

Perry sighed, tossed aside his timer and sprinted after Brendon.

Somebody had to stop him before he ran into traffic.

After a spirited twenty second chase, Perry managed to herd the panicked teen away from traffic and closer to the motel, where he stumbled to a halt, sinking to his knees and wrapping his arms around himself.

“That was the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me,” Brendon said before looking down at his arms, clasping and unclasping his hands. “I felt like someone’s puppet. It was awful, and I never wanna do it again.”

Perry wordlessly clasped a hand on Brendon’s shoulder as a single tear rolled down the football star’s cheek.

Perry took a deep breath.

“Burger?” Perry asked.

“Oh, hell yeah!” Brendon said, leaping to his feet.

“Ow,” the oaf winced as Perry pulled the blood contract dart out of his shoulder.

***Later***

“Oh, my god, this is literally the best thing I’ve ever tasted,” Brendon said as he devoured the meat-substitute burger.

Perry, meanwhile, was arranging the burgers he’d cooked in order of their structural integrity.

The first burger had nearly broken Brendon’s teeth, while the last burger had been superburger.

So…his perk had applied the structural integrity enhancement to the first burger he’d made, but not the last. A burger’s purpose was to be eaten and being that strong was counter to its purpose.

Does that mean there’s some kind of orientation that occurs?

Perry’s hypothesis was that his Perk took direction from his brain about what was a good or bad attribute to have for a specific creation, but this process took a little bit of time to establish…a groove in Perry’s brain. A category for food, perhaps?

Perry took a lead pipe and smashed the first burger as hard as he could.

Brendon blinked.

The pipe wrapped partially around the burger, leaving a small dent in the bun itself.

Now what if I made a triple decker burger with all the fixings? Would it be as loose and sloppy as a normal one, or would it hold together better while still being edibly soft?

Perry frowned, inspecting the dent in his lead pipe before glancing over at Brendon, who was giving him a thumb’s up.

And are they safe to consume? I guess we’ll find out.

“Man you should host a barbecue at your hotel, or something. This is awesome.”

Perry frowned.

“You know, my grampa is in town, and I wanted to show him my motel, anyway. A barbecue sounds like a great idea.”

“Your motel?” Brendon asked.

“The motel I work at. My job.”

“Oh, cool.” Brendon nodded before frowning. “How come I never see anyone else working here?”

“Cuz I’m that good,” Perry said, before a thought occurred to him.

“Hey Brendon, you want a job cleaning the pool and stuff?”

“Really?” Brendon asked, eyes widening.

“Yeah, I’m in good with the owner.” Perry said. And it’ll keep Brendon in my line of sight so he’s less likely to get kidnapped.

“Well, that would be great! With school out, I was looking for a job! I was gonna go apply at Burger Joint this weekend.”

“Nah, you can work here. Lemme just call the owner.”

What followed next was Perry speaking into a dead line about how great Brendon was and negotiating his hourly pay. After a long (fake) conversation, Perry gave Brendon the good news.

“Yep, you’re hired!”

“Wow, awesome!” Brendon said, wiping a napkin across his mayo-smeared mouth. “So like, what do I do?”

“Well, I’ll teach you how to clean the pool and the gym and man the front desk.” Perry said. “It’s not hard.”

“Whew,” Brendon said, “That’s good.”

“First job you can do is clean the pool and the area around it for the barbecue,” Perry said, pulling out his phone and sending out invites to his friends and family.

No one turns down free food.

Perry glanced out the window at the setting sun and frowned. Only managed to work on two of the spells I wanted.

The blood-contract dart was an unmitigated success, though.

Ah well, I can work on the next ones the day after tomorrow.

DING!

Perry glanced down at his phone.

DAD:

That sounds awesome! Especially with the whole family in town! Can I invite some of your mom’s and my friends as well?

“Oh, god, what have I done?” Perry whispered.

New Quest: Host a Super Barbecue!

Reward: Variable