Chapter 5: Magic Item Design Award
FIVE months had passed since Olivia began working at Gordon’s Magic Appliances. One day, after the summer heat had passed and the trees along the roads had started to change to the colors of early fall, Olivia knocked on the door of a workroom on the fourth floor of the shop.
“Mr. Laraconia, it’s Olivia. I’m coming in.”
She opened the door to a disorderly workroom. In the center was a pool of water the size of three beds pushed together with stone statues of people and animals placed at random around it. The floor was covered with stacks of books and papers on the verge of collapse.
Olivia smiled to herself. It’s always hard to find a place to step in this room. I can’t believe it’s the same size as Mr. Harrison’s room.
Just as she was thinking about how a person’s personality did seem to show in their room, the cheery face of a small man popped up from between the statues.
“Ah, Olivia! You’re here!”
Laraconia was one of Olivia’s mentor artificers who specialized in magic items relating to water. He threaded his way through the statues out to Olivia and grinned.
“This is a huge help. How much time do you have today?” he asked.
“Gordon needs me this evening, so I should have about three hours free.”
“Right. Then, can I ask you to do five of the cores for small fountains like you did before? The magic stones and materials are in the usual place, so feel free to dive right in.”
“I’m on it.”
Olivia went over to the cabinets, dodging things on the floor as she did. She opened one cabinet labeled “For Fountains” and took out a large box and a magic plate. After setting them down on a moderately tidy worktable nearby, she took out a sky-blue magic stone the size of her fist and a deep-blue scale about the same size.
Let’s get to work.
It was popular at the moment among nobles to have small fountains in their gardens, and the shop was swamped with orders.
Olivia sat and quickly drew out the magic circle, sent a jolt to test, and stood up to place the stone and scale on top and run mana through it again.
“Levitate.”
Her mana encircled the stone and scale above the magic circle.
“Extract effect. Imbue.”
She drew blue mana from the scale, which flew through her own into the magic stone. A few moments after the glow subsided, she lifted the stone and carefully examined the color to check there was no unevenness in the mana gradation.
Looks good. I think that went pretty well.
She repeated that four more times with breaks in between. Once she had completed five deep sky-blue cores, she sighed and turned to Laraconia, who was working on something else in another corner of the room. “Mr. Laraconia, I’m finished.”
“Ah! You’re done?” He came over to her with a broad smile on his face, crunching objects below his feet as he went. Olivia chuckled as she watched. He took the cores from her, then moved to the pool in the center of the room, stepping on things again as he did. “Right! Let’s test them out right away!”
“Please do.”
Laraconia set the cores in the water. Olivia watched somewhat nervously. “Here we go,” he murmured as he touched one and gently sent mana through it, causing water to burst upward from it. He carefully checked the amount and force of water, then smiled with satisfaction. “It’s perfect! It’s the best one you’ve done yet. You’re a huge help, Olivia. Thank you!”
Olivia did a little internal victory dance at the compliment from the more experienced artificer. Yes! Mr. Laraconia’s the hardest one to impress, and he’s finally complimented me!
Laraconia took a small package from a worktable covered in things and tossed it to Olivia. “This is for you.”
It was a cute pink package emitting a sweet aroma. Olivia saw the name of one of her favorite confectionary shops on the packaging, Platinum Sweets, and her eyes shone. “For me? Really?”
“Yep. It’s a thank you for always helping me out,” he replied with a huge grin.
Olivia smiled back and bowed, though she couldn’t help wondering how someone this brisk and diligent could have such a messy workroom. “Thank you!” she replied.
About four months earlier, Gordon stopped Olivia in the hallway on the second floor.
“How’re you finding work? Everything going all right?” he asked.
“Yes. Mr. Harrison has been taking good care of me. I’ve been trying to work on adjusting switch components while I continue practicing making cores.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “So, you’ve been here for a month now. Anything stand out to you? Your strengths? Your weaknesses? Anything at all.”
Olivia thought about it for a moment. “Well… I think I’ve confirmed I’m not great at large cores, like I thought.”
It was something she’d realized during that month. She’d never handled large cores at Carter’s Magic Items, and she was very bad at them.
“I’ve also realized that I know almost nothing about anything other than magic jewelry and lamps,” she added.
Gordon nodded. “Well, you hadn’t worked on anything else before, so that makes sense. However, this does mean you have a narrow scope as an artificer. Now that you’re here at our shop, which deals with a wide variety of items, I’d like you to take advantage of this opportunity and spend some time with each of our artificers. Learn about the different offerings they do while you keep tackling those cores.”
After that, Olivia worked with five different artificers and learned about their specialties as she made cores from morning until night. She didn’t work very efficiently at the start because she was inexperienced, and needing time to redo her mistakes meant she sometimes worked late into the night, but she approached it with dedication.
Some of the older artificers were skeptical of her skills at first, but they came to respect her for her talent and—more importantly—her hard work, so much so that they started going out of their way to teach her.
Then, finally, today, five months after starting her job here, she was told by Laraconia, the harshest of all the artificers, that something she made was perfect.
These five months have been so long…
She walked down the hall on the fourth floor, filled with elation, and took the stairs down to the second floor to Gordon’s office. Olivia knocked before entering and found Gordon looking up from his paperwork, backlit against the orange evening sun coming in through the window.
“Ah, Olivia. How have you been lately?” he asked.
She sat in the chair in front of his desk, to which he’d gestured, and answered, “Good. I’m getting help from everyone as I assist Mr. Harrison in his work developing new products.”
“Harrison said you’re incredibly fun to work with because you have interesting ideas and a unique perspective.”
Olivia looked away; she couldn’t stop the grin spreading across her face at the compliment from the person who’d supported her the most.
Gordon looked at her warmly, then shifted his position in his chair like he was about to change the subject. “Right. So, there’s a reason I called you to my office today.”
“Yes?” Olivia adjusted her position as well, feeling like something very important was about to come.
Gordon took a sheet of paper from his desk and looked straight into Olivia’s eyes. “Do you have any interest in entering the Magic Item Design Awards in three months? Specifically, the category for women’s magic jewelry?”