Origin Witch - First Transmutation
A single drop of sweat rolled down the bridge of Corinne’s nose, hanging from the lower wire frame of her spectacles before splashing onto the dark obsidian slab below. She didn’t wipe it away. Her right thumb pressed hard against the master M-rune etched into the center of the volcanic stone, knuckles white, knees locked tight as she hovered flat above the oak workbench on her weightless lift.
The second-floor laboratory inside The Spire was dead quiet. Outside the glass sliding doors of the balcony, the night was pitch-black. The three-day purple storm of the Ether Tide had been over for nearly forty-eight hours, but the air over the giant canopy still tasted faintly of ozone, crushed marigolds, and cold rain.
Down in the ground-floor vault, fifty thousand logs, twelve thousand iron ingots, and forty-two blocks of black obsidian sat stacked in neat silent rows. Up on the third-floor roof beam, Steelwool slept with its head tucked under its metallic gray wing, heavy steel-plated feathers making a quiet clink-clink whenever the cold night breeze blew through the balcony frame.
Corinne was alone with her cauldrons. She didn’t use Zephyr Float to roam. Her leaf-mark stayed dark and silent against her skin, the talent engaged only enough to hold her off the floor. She hung upright above her bare soles, her weight taken by the lift, her heels an inch above the raw timber. Her quads ached, a dull heavy burn that made her calves twitch every few seconds, but her stance held. The Nerve-Restoration Fluid she’d distilled from the Canopy Drake’s marrow had done its work. The white-hot electrical fire that had scorched her lower spine was gone, replaced by a deep steady warmth flowing down her hips, through her knees, into her arches.
“No herbs,” she rasped to the empty room. Her raspy voice sounded small against the broad timber walls. “Not a single leaf.”
On the workbench before her sat the master twelve-sided obsidian array base she’d carved earlier in Thane’s underground vault. Set directly over the three obsidian legs of the array was her star-iron pot, the Abyssal Meteorite Cauldron. The dark blue metal glistened under the amber light of her hanging lantern, its inner walls clean, filled to the five-liter mark with crystal-clear glowing Anseic water from her the Anvil of Repose.
No Bitter-Grass roots. No Yellow-Tail petals. No dried earthworms. No sulfur dust. Just pure untouched spring fluid.
Beside the pot, resting on damp moss inside an open glass bell jar, the S-Rank Elven Monarch butterfly fluttered its broad green light-wings. A continuous delicate rain of emerald pollen drifted from the open glass, floating across the workbench and highlighting every microscopic line of the twelve-sided obsidian matrix in glowing green thread.
Corinne pulled a long deep breath into her lungs, held it until her chest hurt, then closed her eyes. She didn’t reach for a wooden stirring rod. Didn’t reach for a copper ladle. She pressed both hands flat against the cold star-iron rim of the Abyssal Meteorite Cauldron and focused her spirit. Activate Origin Transmutation Array.
The ether in the room drew inward, sharp and silent, as she reached for nothing at all.
The twelve outer nodes on the black obsidian base flared to life. Not the soft honey-colored glow of her standard brewing arrays. A blinding electric white-blue glare that illuminated every oak beam, every shelf, every copper pipe in the workshop. The five liters of Anseic water inside the cauldron began to hum. It didn’t boil. The liquid didn’t release steam or froth against the dark blue metal walls. Instead the water turned into a clear rapidly spinning vortex that created a localized vacuum inside the pot. The ambient atmospheric ether, the wild unrefined magical energy filling Kaelum’s air, soil, and rain, was drawn downward into the spinning water like iron filings to a heavy magnet.
Mana Points, eighty of eighty, sixty, forty, twenty.
The drain on her spirit was brutal. It felt as if an invisible pump had been wired into the center of her chest, pulling her mental energy out through her arms in thick pulsing surges. A sharp blinding headache exploded behind her spectacles, making her jaw lock until her teeth clicked together. Her left knee buckled under the sudden strain. Her calf muscle twitched violently, threatening to drop her hips onto the oak floorboards.
“Hold,” she grunted through clenched teeth, bare toes digging into the timber as she forced her spine straight. “Hold the loop.”
The S-Rank Elven Monarch butterfly fluttered out of its glass jar, hovering directly over the center of the spinning water. It shed a thick concentrated cloud of luminescent emerald pollen straight into the eye of the vortex. The green pollen touched the clear liquid.
A soft concussive pop echoed inside the star-iron pot.
A soft concussive pop echoed inside the star-iron pot. The five liters of Anseic spring water vanished. Not evaporated into steam. It literally collapsed inward upon itself, its liquid mass condensing into a single hyper-dense point of physical matter at the bottom of the meteorite cauldron. The blinding white-blue glare on the obsidian base died down instantly. The golden array lines faded into dull warm stone.
Corinne’s hands slipped off the cauldron rim. She didn’t fall because of Zephyr Float. She caught her balance with her hands against the workbench edge, her weightless lift holding her off the floor, chest heaving in short ragged gasps as her mana bar hit absolute zero.
Mana Points, zero of eighty.
She settled back on her work stool, head hanging low between her shoulders, sweat dripping off her chin onto her dark tunic. Her vision swam behind her spectacles, dark spots floating across her eyes as her natural spirit recovery ticked up one point every sixty seconds. She waited three full minutes until her breathing slowed.
She adjusted her black frames, rose onto her weightless lift, and looked down into the dark blue interior of the Abyssal Meteorite Cauldron. The water was completely gone. Lying at the bottom of the star-iron pot was a single flawless thumb-sized crystal. Not a raw mineral picked out of the dirt by Garrett Thorne’s war-band. A deep translucent purple gem, perfectly six-sided, radiating a quiet steady high-density mana signature that cast soft violet reflections across the metal walls of the pot.
Corinne raised her spectacles, blue-tinted vision zooming in on the crystal. Item created, Pure Grade-C Magic Core. Source, Origin Alchemy Transmutation, zero organic substrate. Composition, condensed high-density atmospheric ether, Anseic solvent anchor. Purity, ninety-nine point eight percent. Note, a masterpiece of foundational transmutation, physical matter synthesized directly from raw environmental magic, possessing zero organic impurities and usable as a universal energy source for Grade-C and Grade-B arrays.
Corinne reached into the cauldron, gloved fingers closing around the cold smooth surfaces of the violet crystal. It felt heavy. Dense. Perfectly balanced. A Grade-C Magic Core. To get one through standard means, Garrett Thorne’s war-band had to hunt a thirty-foot Canopy Drake through the uncharted mud-swamps, losing two men and burning dozens of health potions just to crack the beast’s skull open. She had just synthesized one in thirty seconds using five liters of water and the air inside her room.
Corinne held the glowing purple gem up to the yellow light of her brass lamp. The implications were terrifying. Standard alchemy was a supply-chain game. You were only as strong as the herbs Piper Bell could pick in the woods, or the iron ore Garrett Thorne could mine from the ridge, or the glass tubes Jasper Finch could scavenge from crashed ambulances. Cut your supply lines and your cauldrons went cold.
Origin Alchemy erased the supply chain entirely. As long as the Spire stood, as long as the Anvil of Repose generated Anseic water, and as long as the air of Kaelum contained raw magic, she held an infinite unassailable fountain of raw power. She could synthesize energy cores, raw ore, and refined catalysts out of thin air. She wasn’t just a merchant trading boiled weeds anymore. She was the Origin Witch.
A quiet dry chuckle escaped her throat, a small raspy sound that turned into a short cough as the cold night air blew through the balcony glass.
Steelwool hopped down from its shelf, landing heavily on the workbench beside her arm, metallic gray feathers rustling as it nudged her elbow with its hard beak. Corinne reached out, thumb stroking the bird’s cold steel-plated neck, eyes fixed on the violet crystal in her hand. “No more digging in the dirt, bird,” she whispered to the night. “We own the sky.”
She slipped the Grade-C Magic Core into her Pouch of Preservation, picked up her diagram notes, and set them flat on the desk beside the lantern. The transmutation had worked a second time, clean and repeatable. She blew out the lantern, left the crystal-dark workshop to the night, and climbed the curved heartwood stairs on foot to the high balcony, where she stood at the rail and watched the first gray line of dawn creep over the canopy.
— Origin Witch —