The Forge of Kings (A Man Made of Glass, Book 1)

4

^^ Esther Brightling ^^

Finnegan's life improved drastically, -from his perspective at least,- after he retrieved his sand jar from the Ladies of the Forest and began his experiments with it. The repeated explosions didn't bother him, as he'd expected them; there was simply too much iron and plasma in the sand, due to the magical piece of steel that had been planted into it to stop it from dripping blood for fifteen whole years. There was no telling how deep the bloody sand went in the magical jar, and it could very well be forever, so instead of complaining, he simply enjoyed experimenting with it when he wasn't being lectured by Henna on Magical Crafting, which was just normal crafting, but you used Mana and Runes to infuse magic into your craft; it wasn't a very complicated subject, and he was quite confused as to why she was so adamant about constantly practicing it, but there was no real reason not to practice, after all, so he didn't complain.

Infusing Mana into Glass proved to be rather challenging, however; the process of Infusion had to continue from start to finish, without any halting of the Mana flow for even a second, and the process to make glass continued for days, at times, making it a supremely draining attempt... and the explosions from the failed mixes that were infused with Mana were much bigger, as well, resulting in him making a reinforced kiln after his first was destroyed by a particularly devastating explosion. The new one however, made of Mana-Infused Metal carved with the three Runes for Fire, Ice, and Protection, not only held in the heat better, it didn't so much as shake from even the most dangerous of explosions, like when he'd experimented with making dynamite, an explosive made to bore holes in mountains. It also provided him with a method to control the heat inside the Kiln without any fuel or wood, and thus make it perfectly smokeless, something he'd been hoping to manage for his Forge, as well, but hadn't, yet. Inside a sealed box, the control of temperature was possible relatively easily, (the Ice Rune absorbing any energy which would escape, converting it to Mana, and transferring it back to the Fire Rune and the Protection Rune, altogether resulted in a 95% Efficient Looping System, which was loads better than any wood-burning Kiln could hope for,) but the open air of the forge was less conducive to such control, and any attempt to raise the temperature above the Rune to the same degree as the forge wouldn't burn the air so much as turn it to plasma and kill him, -and probably start a forest fire,- so he made sure not to do that, or any other bone-headed idea that would get himself -and everyone else in the town- killed horribly. Still, the way to Infuse Mana into Glass during the Annealing process was a puzzling problem, and one that intrigued Finnegan to no end. While his Glass Mixture didn't shatter explosively anymore, (or at least, not very often,) it still heated and cooled too rapidly, resulting in cracks and imperfections that made the bottles lopsided and uneven, looking half-melted and pathetic. Additional control of the temperature was necessary, he decided, and so he requested Henna's assistance in making a more precise control for the temperature of the Kiln.

"Well, to more precisely control the heat, you'd have to be in control of the fuel, right?" Rahman, Henna's husband, commented casually while we were sitting in the forge and staring at the spare kiln Finn'd made for experimentation with thoughtful expressions to hide their frustration.

"The Fuel? You mean Mana?" Finn frowned, considering the idea seriously. "I suppose that's the simplest solution, but I've no way of standing still for two days to perfectly control the Mana within the Kiln at every moment; if I did, I'd have solved the Infusion Problem already!"

He shrugged, returning to his book and tea carelessly. "Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best solutions. Stop making it complicated, get out of your own way; the road to success is often paved with the stones of failure."