As Aurelius flipped through the book, he found himself getting lost in all the horrendous terminology, and terrifyingly daunting information.

  With a small sigh, Aurelius set the book down, and checked his pockets to retrieve the broken half of the charm.

  “I’ll take up your help for this.” Aurelius declared, setting the charm squarely on the book.

  “You expect me to use THAT as the medium?” Pultris asked, almost offended by the suggestion.

  “I don’t expect some mind magic miracle from your angelic shitter, Pultris. Just do a half-ass job with the ignivite.” Aurelius replied irritably.

  “A dish is nothing without quality ingredients, contractor. But if you insist, I will need to hear the magic word.” Pultris grunted disagreeably.

  …In the spirit of defiance, Aurelius decided to silently pick up the book once again, flipping through its contents as an attempt to see if it may be bearable not to have to rely on Pultris.

  He… really didn’t want to say it.

  “Now, the hesitation is definitely breaking my heart.” Pultris commented, clicking his tongue to spell out his displeasure.

  Slamming the book shut, with words still swimming off the pages in some sort of schizophrenic, hallucinatory episode, Aurelius decided to relent.

  “...Please help with your magic, Pultris.” Aurelius replied, putting as much distaste as possible into the words.

  “Better! See, isn’t it great when we uphold the civility of society!” Pultris said greasily, as small whispers of spells floated past Aurelius’s ears.

  With a small whoosh, Aurelius saw golden light emerge from the paper pages of the book, leaking out in thin threads of gold, first as distinguishable words, then into an entanglement of embroidery in the air.

  He watched, unimpressed as the threads intertwined with each other and pulled itself into knots, creating ropes of gold.

  These threads slowly converged in the air, directly above the crystal.

  Then, the rope lost its form, sinking gracefully in a display of bright light into every edge of the crystal.

  Aurelius found the ignivite inlaid into the stone shift colour, some regions turning darker, and others shifting into a lighter red colour, reminiscent of the heart of fires.

  And as the threads slowly slithered its way through the crystal, it started to merge and tie knots around the inlaid ignivite, sinking and weaving into a new tapestry of complex geometric patterns…

  “Done.” Pultris announced proudly, as the final tail looped and fastened itself to another delicate line.

  “I hope you made it thoughtfully.” Aurelius commented, pulling down his shirt sleeves up to his wrist, and carefully using its hems to lift the charm into the air for inspection.

  For high level abstract wind magic, in cases such as the creation of restricted regions, there was a possibility of directly and magically revealing information as ‘limitations’. That meant that giving the other party key information allowed for the increased effectiveness of certain spells.

  This process worked by binding the words of a contract to the person affected by the spell, creating a situation where the individual was able to ‘read’ its terms magically as an ‘extension’ of the body.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Some had managed to exploit this particular quirk to its fullest limits to essentially ‘reveal information’ to themselves through contracts, achieving what was similar to high level mind magic with lower tier wind magic.

  “Of course. I went above and beyond for this one. It’ll last 6 days before you find a good enough replacement for the medium, and it doesn’t need an activation phrase.” Pultris declared.

  “You fool! How am I supposed to use it without my brain exploding whenever I touch it without an activation phrase!” Aurelius complained loudly, setting the infohazard back onto the table with EXTREME care.

  While Aurelius had experience with this particular branch of magic, he was still quite cautious of it due to a certain unfortunate incident at the Sorcerous Academy in his 1st year.

  Out of curiosity, he had opted to use one of the few novelty memory charms in the library.

  However, one of the issues with these kinds of wind magic charms was the fact that the implantation of the information was invasive, and unpleasant.

  And Aurelius, being the unfortunate soul that he was, had consumed an interesting amount of fish during lunch that day.

  Every time he recalled a memory of that day, he could swear that he physically felt the horrible prickle of half-digested fish poking at his nose…

  “I’m not stupid, contractor. The information is given in small chunks, and you can flip through the information through me.” Pultris scoffed, offended by Aurelius’s underestimation of him.

  Aurelius frowned skeptically.

  He then gingerly reached out to the charm and touched it…

  Instantly, information swirled around his eyes and ears, delivering some sort of information on engine maintenance…

  The experience was hard to describe, it was information spanning half a dozen pages divided into half between a type of screen in front of his eyes, and whispers of the other half of information whispered into his ears simultaneously.

  While uncomfortable, it was certainly not overwhelming.

  “Alright, let’s check out how to put this stupid thing back into the sea.” Aurelius muttered, half to himself and to Pultris.

  “Excellent plan.” Pultris replied enthusiastically.

  ???

  “If they invested so heavily in anti-rust and anti-divination, you’d expect these bloody pirates to put some amount of money into anti-barnacle charms.” Aurelius complained, scraping the last of the pesky mollusks from the previously submerged pectoral fin of the submarine.

  “It’s cheaper to use men like you to scrape it off after every trip.” Pultris quipped helpfully, as Aurelius lifted himself back into the hatch of the submarine.

  “Remember to seal the hatch properly if you don’t want to drown…” Pultris continued, listing off a checklist of things Aurelius had to do before setting sail like some sort of boring old instructor.

  Aurelius followed the djinn’s instructions, turning the knobs and pipes around the submarine, and cross referencing the information with a quick reference with the charm.

  It took around 3 hours before Aurelius was done with preparations for his first foray into the adventures of the ocean, and another hour to carry supplies from the storage room to the submarine.

  “The nose is still far too low.” Pultris commented as Aurelius strapped into the captain’s chair.

  “I thought it was 30 degrees?” Aurelius muttered with a frown.

  “You fool, we’re still in relatively shallow waters with the 5th auxiliary engine at half-capacity. Do you want to crash into the sand and die!” Pultris responded indignantly.

  “Fine, 45 degrees it is.” Aurelius replied, tilting the submarine another 15 degrees with the built-in winches.

  “How the hell do you know so much about submarines anyway?” Aurelius asked curiously.

  “I memorised and sold off a blueprint for the Commission’s 2nd generation submarine to a pirate king.” Pultris replied without an ounce of hesitation, launching Aurelius into a short period of stunned silence.

  …Aurelius wasn’t sure what he was expecting from the amoral criminal djinn, but the information certainly was still quite bizarre.

  Moving on quickly from the information, Aurelius reached down to pick up a long, carved stick-shaped charm and inserted it into the ignition port, deciding to launch the submarine as quickly as possible.

  Given the fact that pirates were scattered, and ports were far and few in between, pirates used a rather insane method of docking for a smaller sized submarine and ships such as the Wind-Blessed.

  “Zzz…” The engines hummed, causing the entire submarine to creak, and lurch forward.

  To increase the speed and efficiency of repairs and launches, pirates had innovated a method named ‘blast-off’.

  Aurelius gulped in anticipation, digging his ass into the seat as much as possible, as he cranked up the engines to half speed.

  Using a specially crafted earth-manipulation charm, they momentarily lifted the entire structure of the submarine or ship into the air, and… blasted it into the sea.

  “Now.” Pultris declared.

  And the Wind-Blessed, after its decade long rest, finally saw the grace of wind once more as it streaked across the air in a magnificent display of engineering.