A World of Devices

A week went by with few revelations about the nature of my magic. Trying to charge the freezing device, called the “froster,” was a useless endeavor, though Loali expressed surprise at the fact that my attempts still didn’t degrade the device in any meaningful way. I could use it, we’d tested that first, but nearly all people capable of interfacing with magic could use magic devices for their intended purposes, the only real factor at that point being their control over the output of their own magic.

“That’s an unfortunate bust,” I remembered Loali saying, “the frosters we currently have are gonna be too degraded to use soon, so I was sort of hoping you’d be able to repair them or make more.”

There was only one person in the village currently who had ice magic and was capable of controlling it well enough to charge the devices, but he was entirely incapable of making magic devices, so they had to outsource the devices themselves using some of the funds they gained from selling off their own village products.

Their primary exports were the very devices made in this workshop and magic-related materials that could only be found this far away from Boundary City. That “constant stream of production,” of both the devices and hunted and foraged materials themselves, kept the village’s finances afloat.

“Doesn’t this put a lot of pressure on you?”

“I’d be making magic devices anyway, and if it were too much pressure I would’ve kicked you out a week ago to focus.” She joked as she, for what must have been the fortieth time over the past week, took back an unidentifiable scrap of material she’d handed me just a little while earlier. “You were concentrating, right?”

“There’s magic in it,” I confidently replied, and after she squinted at the shiny little black object she briefly nodded. “So?”

“I still got nothing.” She sighed, placing the object down on the table as she returned her eyes to the square bag she’d made out of aquamarine fur and jet-black, scaly leather. “There’s magic in it, alright, but still no visible difference.”

“So what haven’t we tested?”

“Who knows,” she mumbled, the tone now familiar to me. I now had only half of her concentration, as the other half was dedicated again to her forming the item in front of her. Since this one required multiple affinities, creating this kind of device took a lot more skill than making a one-affinity device like the light glasses. Bridging between multiple affinities of magic so that the device didn’t immediately begin to degrade when the different magics interacted was a delicate process.

“Are you still sure my magic isn’t affinity-less?” I knew from experience that she didn’t want me to stop talking, that she’d somehow be able to keep up the conversation despite her focus, so I posed the question as it came to me.

“Like we walked about before, I’m certain I can feel some kind of affinity from the magic you’re outputting- it's different from environmental magic. You probably have a really rare or really narrow affinity, one that can interact with most other magic without causing degradation.”

“Right,” I sighed, and propped my head up in my hands as I let my elbows rest on the table.

I was told that magic is, by its nature, without any affinity. Floating all around us is magic undifferentiated by type, environmental magic, and all living things that take in that environmental magic give it a type and store it until they use it. The types of magic one can produce and store are referred to as their affinities, and they can generally safely absorb magic of these affinities from others and objects in which it is stored. Once magic is used, or it interacts too much with magic of different types in an uncontrolled fashion, it returns to its typeless environmental form- sometimes in violent or destructive ways. Such was the reason the workshop had to be in the home farthest away from most of the other main tunnels and homes, even if such accidents were relatively rare.

At some point the affinity I gave my magic should have theoretically reacted to the materials we’d tested by turning them into conduits, batteries, or primitive magic devices, or should have degraded them, but none so far had shown a reaction of any of these kinds. Each could accept my magic without degrading, even though this did not charge them in any meaningful way. They technically contained magic of some affinity, sure, but that magic was unusable in all of them.

“Don’t go getting disappointed on me,” she warned in the same mumbled tone at my temporary silent contemplation, though I detected just a hint of sharpness.

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“Good. I like that about you,” she replied, and I watched just the slightest lift to the corners of the mouth of her otherwise purely concentrated face. As I tried not to let the comment get to me, I attempted to continue the conversation.

“If we took anot-”

“Ha!” Given my thoughts just moments earlier about the reason for the location of the workshop, Loali’s sudden exclamation combined with her jumping to her feet led me to grab her shoulders and pull her back as I came to my feet as well. “Bwuh!?”

“Wh-”

“I did it!” She clarified, and pulled herself forward out of my arms to grab the device where it’d fallen on the table, “we need to test it, but both affinities are interacting!”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive! It was hard working with the time magic because I don’t have that affinity, but I made it happen! All that experience I got forcing electric magic to listen to me did me wonders,” her voice remained high and excited as she observed the stiff, fuzzy backpack from every angle in her arms, and I couldn’t help but take on some of that excitement myself.

“How do you want to test it, then?”

“How else but the way you described it to me? We’re right on time for our meal, so let’s get ourselves three bowls full.”

“That’d be quite the waste if it didn’t work.”

“Of the food?” She questioned, then scoffed. “If this didn’t work, the worth of one meal would be meaningless to me,” she responded, an intentional deadpan to her voice. “Discounting the expense I took on to pay for these materials, the amount of time I spent solidifying that image...”

“Not to mention the danger,” I added, having caught her point. “Didn’t you mention something about how risky it was to stitch magic of affinities you don’t have in the first place, especially given the volatility of both time and-”

“And the fact that I made it happen despite their volatilities anyway, in organic materials at that, is simply a testament to my skill. Feel free to praise me,” she said, intentionally holding her head high as she led me out of the workshop door and to Itelber and Fridle’s home just a little down the tunnel.

I took the opportunity to begin clapping mechanically. “What a great honor it is to walk alongside the accomplished Loali, device-maker extraordinaire.”

“Where’s the enthusiasm?” She sighed, shaking her head in an equally mechanical fashion. “Kids these days just don’t appreciate innovations and the great people creating them in front of their very eyes...”

It took us several minutes to convince Itelber to let us experiment with a hot bowl of seared meat and grains, but when he eventually relented we immediately placed a bowl into the bag, watching it disappear before our eyes into the bag’s seemingly endless depths. We had no trouble retrieving it a moment later, except for the fact that Loali nearly dropped it, proving the first aspect of the device Loali had intended to create based on the stories I used to read. The space magic not only expanded and safely stored items in a space far larger than the actual size of the bag, it also responded to Loali’s image of what she wanted to retrieve and gently pushed it out of that space.

Just that was a feat. A few people had apparently already made bags with expanded space but, according to what Loali knew, they hadn’t made ones that could create a space that things actually disappeared into like this. They mostly only expanded the bag by a degree visible to the eye, as expanding it too much would make items theoretically impossible to find again, eventually fill the bag to the extent that it was too heavy to move, or otherwise lead to the items all being spit out or destroying the bag once the magic ran out; if you can’t reach the items you put in, you can’t move the bag, and the items are likely to be destroyed once they leave, how can the bag be useful?

My explanation of how the bags I knew incorporated measures to make the space inside the bag weightless, along with my impromptu lecture on gravity, was immediately accepted by Loali, as was my suggestion that some of the magic bags I knew of would respond to the user’s magic to draw out a particular item. Once these ideas were implanted in her head, things sailed on at Loali’s own speed. She had instantly decided that the magic bag I envisioned was possible, and accepted no comments that would indicate otherwise.

Once we confirmed that the bag weighed the same amount with and without the bowl inside, we left the bag and the food inside alone.

Another hour later, the food out of the bag was still piping hot.

I wanted to shout in excitement, but Loali beat me to the punch and quickly wrapped her arms around me.

“I did it! We did it!”

“Incredible. Good work, Loali.” Itelber exclaimed.

“You’ve made an incredible device.” Fridle praised, and Itelber took a step towards me as Loali’s attention turned with Fridle back to examining the bag and food.

“I hope you realize, Danny, this success just ensured Loali will never leave you be. You’ll likely have a hard time getting rid of any of us, now.” Despite the fact that I was likely supposed to be intimidated by that prospect, I could only continue to smile his way as my rapidly beating heart was slowly calming.

“I’ll do my best.”