My Servant System

For a time after she placed the bone and the metal in the forge together, Anput stared into the flames stoically, her eyes focused on the two materials whilst she stood stock still as she waited for them to heat up to the right temperature, which was a very, very high number; already the flames were going from orange to whitish yellow, reaching a temperature that was absolutely sweltering.

And yet, materials like this were going to require such heat lest they take hours to reach the right temperature, so I just had to watch my mate from afar as I shrouded myself in a thick, ever moving blanket of chilled air as I made sure she was safe.

Leone and I were both standing by with vastly overcharged healing spells at the ready, and we had both already casted a spell overtop the Jackalkin in preparation for the worst, giving her protection from the fire and a general defensive boost that would hopefully protect her physically from anything that happened.

However, the things that Cali had said about these bones made me realize that there was nothing we could do to help defend her from something else; the battle of wills that Cali had described were obviously something that required a more nuanced and mental defense then a physical one, and while I could perhaps bolster my mate’s mind with reassurances, it was mainly up to her to pull through.

It was also the way Cali had looked down at me - more specifically mortals as a whole - that made me wonder what we were missing as a collective that the Fiends had figured out; willpower wasn’t some unknown thing to me, let alone to everyone currently alive and everyone who came before us.

You needed to have the right mindset to be able to do certain things, and that required the ability to be firm in your judgements and your mentality that what you were doing was... what you wanted, be it the best for the collective, the best for you, or just what you desired to accomplish.

That wasn’t a foreign concept to any of us, but she made it sound like there was actually a ’power’ of some kind tied to it, something that few - if any - of us mortals have ever even glimpsed or acquired, and that... well, curiosity was strong inside of me anyways, let alone when it came from someone as unknown as Cali.

Whatever she was saying usually held meaning, as bland and vanilla as that sounded; she rarely seemed to have simple ideas or thoughts that were just completely uncloaked and exactly what they sounded like.

So what was it that she was trying to say?

Besides the obvious, of course, which was the driving force behind your actions that allowed you to do the things that... well, what you were trying to do; so what other power could it hold?

The first clue I had - as I continued to watch over my mate carefully, ensuring her safety - was that you could exert your will over things sort of like how mana could be used, perhaps acting as another form of non material power that could influence the material world.

A force or pressure that one could exert the same way you could make use of raw mana... but that seemed too basic to me, too simple to have not been discovered already by someone else and spread to new people already like mana had been.

If it wasn’t something simple like that, was it instead relating to a way to empower ones self by making use of your emotions and your desires to harness your magic and give it a boost, or perhaps you can actually boost yourself as well with your willpower?

Honestly, the more I stood there wondering about it the more I desperately wanted a pen and pad to begin jotting things down and begin running tests to make some more detailed theories and cycle through said theories via experimentations, but I needed to ensure that Anput was alright.

When she deemed the two materials were hot enough to begin forging them together, Anput reached in with a long pair of tongs and slowly, carefully began to pull them out, both of the materials - the crystalline blue bone and the silvery metal - were now a glimmering yellow that radiated a tad less heat then the forge itself did.

Staring at the two materials intently, she raised her hammer and decisively struck the two as she started the process of alloying them together, and as soon as her hammer landed on them the first time, Leone and I needed to restrain ourselves from shrouding her in a myriad of spells as we watched iridescent energy pulse off of the bone and rush towards Anput.

It tried to coil around her arms before bouncing off of her as she raised the hammer again and struck the two materials a second time, flattening them and allowing her to get them into roughly the shame shape for alloying.

Each hammer strike was accompanied by a burst of that energy trying to attack Anput, but each strike weakened the resistance she was facing as she gradually shaped the materials into one thing, turning the potent arcane bone into a metal alloy as she willed it to become

Something new.

Something changed.

It began to react to Anput as she forged it into something she wanted, and the longer we watched the more we got to see that iridescent energy coiling around the alloy as it accepted her will, no longer attacking her and instead burrowing into the new alloy as it helped her shape it. ṟãƝȏBÊŞ

The more her hammer fell, the less present that energy was in the area around the alloy, and the less Leone and I needed to worry about her getting hurt, so I applied a weaker spell to Anput and whispered "I’ll leave her to you for now... I want to try something out." before turning away from my Vampiric lover and approaching the table with the bones. Grabbing a weaker bone off the table, I took a deep breath and cleared my mind of anything at all as I prepared to run my mana through myself again, but this time I wanted to change something about my process.

If all Fiendish Mana worked this way, then I could just... make the mana my own, or at least introduce it to a partnership of sorts where I gave it purpose, something to ensure we could work together and create change.

To be able to create new bonds together so that I can get stronger and deepen my understanding on what is happening in this world, something that this bone represented in a multitude of ways.

To keep it simple, I decided to go with a simple spell that wouldn’t cause any harm in the room and hopefully to myself, so I went with a simple water sphere as I gradually began to channel my mana into the bone like it was a wand, and in doing so I awakened that energy.

Coiling around the bone first then slowly poking at me, the iridescent energy resisting me at first as it tried to break free; I could feel the mana I was channeling through that bone begin to get disrupted; it felt like it was gradually picking the mana apart and rendering it useless, but whenever I focused on that particular thread of mana it backed away.

So if it was reacting to my presence this warily, that meant it understood there was a difference between me and it, which was... interesting; Anput had come in with a clear purpose and it reacted to that purpose, so that was what I needed to do.

Give myself and it a purpose, and the purpose I could think of was a simple one; I wanted to harness this power and begin exploring its uses, to understand what made it work so that I could make it work with me, and most importantly...

Take the things I learned here and apply them to my Lust Mana, which seemed to also have a mind of its own when given too much leash and not enough resistance.

As I began to pour more and more focus onto the bone - and the energy that was resisting me - I began to channel my mana through it more fluidly until it felt about as smooth as it did through my own finger, allowing me to trace out a rune and start casting a spell.

It wasn’t difficult, but I had also chosen the weakest bone I could find to cast a very weak spell, so that was par for the course; however, even this morsel made me realize that there might be something to this, something that would change things a bit going forwards.

The globule of water I summoned was a bit different then before; it was denser and more compact in terms of mana, and I used less to get a better result, or at least that’s what it seemed like.

So I allowed it to splash to the ground before channeling the same spell with just my hand, outputting the same amount of mana and observing the difference; it didn’t seem to noticeable at first, but the real signifier was the splash mark on the ground when I let it drop

As well.

It sizzled out pretty fast whilst the other was still drying, which meant the mana lingered inside the first one for longer than the normal one; was that the bone or this new ’method’ I

Had found?

I couldn’t really tell, and I needed a bit more time to begin parsing it out, time that was already strained; but it was time that I was going to invest into it as I turned my focus back to the bone for a second round of tests, all while the hammering on the anvil continued on at a

Rhythmic pace.

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