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Thane let out a nervous sigh full of anticipation as he stared at the pallet piled with neatly organized stacks of silver and gold ingots conjured by the Room of Requirement.
Holding out his hands, Thane prepared himself by taking a deep breath before flooding his pathways with mana.
As the familiar warmth of magic infused Thane's body, he exhaled, and a thick plume of silver flames erupted from his lips.
The fire engulfed the stack of ingots, sticking to the metal like oil. In a matter of seconds, the silver and gold started to soften and glow.
Before the metals could completely liquify, Thane closed his eyes as he reached into his subconscious.
When Thane opened his eyes an instant later, his green pupils had transformed into verticle slits, and his mana resonated with the deep baritone of his beast.
Thane's attention was drawn back to the ignited metal stack as they sang, calling out to him.
Wielding his mana like a tool, Thane lifted the metal into the air, separating the gold and silver into two flaming spheres.
Thane immediately felt the strain of his magic as his brow started to shine with sweat. But he pushed past it, focused on the outcome rather than the temporary pain.
Working the silver first, Thane infused his mana into the sphere of flames, causing the temperature to skyrocket. At the same time, Thane harmonized his mana with the silver.
As the metal liquified, Thane could feel the impurities rise to the top. With a thought, they were incinerated by the flames, leaving behind pure silver.
Once the silver was heated through, Thane quenched the flames, leaving behind a floating orb of molten metal.
With a slight tremble in his hand, Thane spread his fingers apart, and the silver followed, spreading out.
The metal pooled before hitting an invisible barrier, forming a perfect square with edges slanted at a forty-five-degree angle.
Satisfied with the pour, Thane pulled the heat from the metal, cooling it instantly.
Thane lowered the metal plate to the ground. It was precisely nine feet by nine feet, exactly half an inch thick, and completely leveled.
But that had been the easy part. With the gold still floating in its flaming sphere, Thane began to carve into the base plate with his mana more precise than any chisel or blade.
The blueprint materialized in Thane's mind as clearly as if he had drawn it out on a sheet of paper. Thane had labored over the formation's design the entire night before but wanted nothing but perfection.
The formation was a series of concentric circles with runes written in the space between them. The order of the runes created a magical formula controlling the countless variables that could impact the formation's performance. Each was critical, and even a slight variation could collapse the formation. However, that was only for the mana-gathering ritual. A proper formation combined several rituals to achieve a unique effect.
With the mana-gathering ritual at the center, Thane then etched four channels made out of overlapping curved lines that extended to each corner.
Thane then inscribed the four relay rituals responsible for transmitting the mana gathered by the formation into the grow beds that Thane had already prepared. Luckily, they were identical besides the central rune. Any relay ritual with the same room would share the same mana reserve. In this scenario, Thane didn't want the relays hooked up to the same ritual transmitting to each other.
When the outlines were finished, Thane was visibly sweating, and his arms were trembling from the stain. He could have stopped and recovered, but Thane had committed himself to completing everything in one go.
Moving swiftly, Thane purified the gold before moving the molten metal to hover above the etched baseplate.
Thane then cracked the flaming sphere like an egg, letting the molten gold spill onto the base plate.
The metals hissed as they met, but before the gold could spill in any direction, Thane directed the molten metal into the countless engravings.
Like a living being, the gold moved, flowing perfectly into the engraved formation without any overspill. Not a drop of liquid gold was left behind when everything was said and done, and every single engraving was filled to the lip.
After pulling out the heat, Thane finally let his arms drop, and his mana stopped vibrating, allowing his pathways to rest.
Thane let out a sigh as he slumped, barely able to keep upright, 'let's hope this paid off.'
"Are you alright," Luna asked, finally speaking up from where she had been observing in complete silence in her usual spot between the roots with Ingrid's head cradled on her lap.
"I will be if this thing works properly," Thane replied as he took a knee before the formation and slapped his hand down on the metal plate.
Almost instantly, Thane felt the mana being drawn from his pathways at a furious rate, flowing through the base plate before it latched onto the golden inlay, which began to glow with cyan light.
Thane held his breath as he waited, taking his hand off only a few seconds. After a few minutes, a broad grin spread across Thane's face, and the formation glowed with the same intensity.
"Thane?" Luna asked inquiringly.
"It's not losing anything..." Thane muttered before he whirled around with a massive smile on his face.
Luna stood up and skipped over, her smile blossoming as she gazed at the ritual. "It's beautiful. I knew you could do it, Thane! Just imagine all the possibilities this unlocks."
Thane nodded, his mind already racing with new ideas and reformatting old ones, "You're right. This changes everything...but let's not lose focus on the subject at hand."
Thane directed his attention to the eight metal grow beds surrounding the mana-gathering formation, two for each relay ritual. Each was ten feet long, three feet deep, and four feet wide, providing plenty of growing space.
Already, a faint layer of blue mist hovered above the fertile black soil from the paired relay rituals Thane had welded onto the bottom of the grow beds to diffuse into the soil.
"Now let's hope my theory about the effects of mana on plant growth isn't some pipe dream," Thane muttered before he reached into his robes, pulling out a large drawstring sack as his grimoire levitated from its holster and opened to the countless notes Thane had taken on magical agriculture and herbology.
"Let's see, Valerian, Wolfsbane and Royal Staff go together. Dittany, I need to grow it in bulk so it gets its own bed. Fluxweed is aggressive, so it goes along the edge and away from the delicate knotgrass, lavender, and roses. The mandrakes need ample room to grow so they need almost an entire bed to themselves." Thane muttered to himself as he started to reach inside the sack, pulling out a bundle of seeds that started to float alongside him.
All the while, Thane couldn't help but picture the immediate future and all the countless possibilities.