Technomancer: Genesis Chapter 109: Breakthroughs and Scoldings

Ezra was in his lab until evening, he didn't even go home and slept at the lab. He was stormed by a frowning Aerwyna who wanted to whack him for not going home but he had an excuse.

"Mom, wait, mom please!" Ezra exclaimed as his mom charged at him to smack his bottom. He was running fast with magic augmented limbs. However, Aerwyna was gaining ground since she froze the floor and skated toward Ezra.

"Please, Mother don't! I can explain" Ezra was gasping for air. He was expending all his magic on his thighs, even with the precise control of his movement, he couldn't account for everything. It was odd when these times happened because he seemed to use more adrenaline than normal and that impeded his cognitive control over his body.

He hadn't fully explored the phenomenon, but he had a hypothesis that this was psychosomatic because it happened every time his mother chased him to chastise him. Looking back, the pumping dread never even manifested itself when he was face to face with the Precantae or the Terramancer brute in Anticourt.

"Ezra Blackfyre, come back here this instant or else you will suffer even more," her piercing eyes were malevolent. It was as if Ezra could even feel the cold stare going through chilling his spine. Ezra shuddered as he desperately ran toward the walls of his lab.

"Please mother, let me explain," Ezra's voice was high pitched now even almost squealing.

"Explain my arse! We had a deal!" Aerwyna's furious shout rebounded on the whole five floors of the edifice. She was gaining speed.

'Fuck, fuck I'm done for. She is almost on to me!' Ezra thought as he looked back.

'3 meters.'

'2.5 meters,'

'1 meter,'

Ezra thought as he activated amp and measured the distance between him and his mother.

'Now' Ezra thought. He timed his kick to dodge Aerwyna's onslaught.

'What she caught me! How can this be? This is the end,' despair was in Ezra's eyes.

Aerwyna's hand caught Ezra's foot in the air. He dangled in her grasp with his head toward the floor. Her eyes cast a piercing gaze at Ezra's behind aiming for the kill. She had anticipated this, there have been many a time that Ezra had attempted this manoeuvre.

Smack! Smack! Smack! Aerwyna's hand swiftly struck Ezra's behind.

"Ouch, ouch ouch!" Ezra rubbed his aching behind.

"We had a deal! You would go home two hours after sunset every night this was part of the arrangement when we made you this building! Now go explain yourself!"

'Why did she have to hit me first though, I had an explanation. Are all mothers so unreasonable?' Ezra thought.

"I waited for you until midnight, and you weren't there what did you expect!? Hm?" her domineering tone made Ezra shudder.

Evered popped a glance he was watching and standing guard the doorway. He couldn't help but feel guilty and wave. "Sorry, Lord Ezra. I can't deny Lady Blackfyre entry," he whispered as he cowered away in the hall.

Arran and Aegeus were present and couldn't help but make awkward smiles as the boy who they looked up to get thoroughly reprimanded by his mother in front of them.

"I was working with Arran and Aegeus. We were in the midst of a breakthrough until you showed up mother," Ezra pouted, "I was working on this because I might finally be able to understand magic works and I might to be able to cast spells," although he still thought that he was still much further away from truly understanding how spells worked, he just reasoned a little so that his mother wouldn't trouble him so much.

"Well, why didn't you even send a guard to tell me? Is that too much! Uhh, seriously I wasn't like this when I was a your age. I would tell my father and mother what I was up to!" Aerwyna's face contorted as in a haughty expression.

"Well, I forgot okay? I told you I was in the middle of a breakthrough," Ezra sighed.

Thanks to Hestia he finally had new ideas, he found that the lack of foresight in his part was quite reprehensible, however, it was not totally without cause, with the myriad of projects he had, it was certain that he would overlook something. He was focusing on too many things like agriculture and farming and bettering food production, he was also managing the bank's affairs, trying to implement smelting, hasten mining production, among many other things.

"Well I'm here now, let me see what you were doing," Aerwyna's voice was still enraged but her face was less irritable."Well, you see, remember the magic dust, mother?" Ezra explained with a gentle tone.

"Yes of course I do,"

"Well, it turns out that, I can run magic through it as well." Ezra smiled.

"It's just a conjecture, but I think my magic is similar to magic cores, but of course the difference is I blow them to smithereens, once they are smithereens though they don't disintegrate further."

"Then it came to mind suddenly, while I was working a new way of making steel with Arran, when trying to dissolve the crystalline powder I tried acids and other typical solutions," Ezra explained further

Aerwyna nodded seriously.

"However, what went out of my mind and forgot to account for was that metal becomes a liquid when exposed to high temperatures. I actually forgot to test what happened if I mixed it in. We tested it with Iron and we didn't get good results, the thing had cracks all over and didn't seem to homogeneous, the resultant alloy broke down and was not very acceptable."

Aerwyna frowned, " If it wasn't very acceptable why are you still here then if you tested it and it was a dud."

"I wasn't finished explaining mother, remember when we did the wave pattern experiment?"

Aerwyna nodded, "What does that have to do with that?"

"Well you see mother, we found out that carbon blocks magic."

"Yes and? So what?"

"I was mistaken, It wasn't blocking magic aura, It was absorbing it, and once it absorbed the aura it acted like a conductor!" Ezra was beaming now.

"Huh you mean like your electricity experiments, they transfer current. Is magic like electricity then?" Aerwyna said as she scrunched her eyebrows.

"Not exactly, I have yet to measure or come up with units for magic, I don't know the laws which this flow is governed by."

'It doesn't seem to use Foucault current equations, well from what I observed' Ezra thought.

"Well anyway as you know, steel is an alloy of carbon and iron, now when we added the crystalline powder here is what we got," Ezra took out a crude shaped rod.

"Look, mother," Ezra activated his magic. The rod was suddenly aflame.

"By the Great Omnipotence! You've done more than the artificers at Rexasticus. They have been trying so hard to make an enchanted alloy!" Aerwyna grasped.

'Now, I had a good reason for not going home do I not?' Ezra pouted as he thought of gloating but refrained from doing so, his bottom was still sore from Aerwyna's blows which were peculiar because she knew the right amount of magic to put in her limbs to make it sting.

"Now, you see that even organic matter can also hold the magic of crystals without them actually getting damaged." Ezra now used a white leather glove, the glove blazed aflame but it was not consumed. "I'm still not exactly sure how it works though," Ezra added.

"Now what, we did was incorporate what we know on this glove, I expended a wind magic crystal and fire magic crystal, we were about to test it when you came barging in shouting abou-" Ezra stopped he didn't notice that he was already using a complaining tone which was met by a nasty stare by Aerwyna.

"Ahem, yes we were supposed to test this. By my calculations, this can emulate the spell [Flame Blaze]. This was our twentieth try,"

"Let's see it then," Aerwyna sweated in anticipation.

"Four parts of wind crystal powder to two parts of flame," Ezra said out loud, "Now here goes"

He aimed his leathered gauntlet at an empty space facing the wall. There was a gush of wind and fire the resultant of which was like a vortex of flame spinning toward the target.

"That is great Ezra!" Aerwyna exclaimed,"However it does not quite look like [Flame Blaze], that spell looks like a liquid when launched, the magic that was conjured from your glove was somewhat different, but I think it can pass."

"The problem right now is, Only I can use it. No one else can channel their magic to crystals, so we can't use this for military purposes."

"That's good enough," Aerwyna smiled sweetly at least now Ezra can use external magic somewhat even if it is kind of cheating. "Now, let's go home, continue this tomorrow, Okay."

"But," Ezra wanted to reason, he still had a lot of tests to conduct.

"But what?" Aerwyna's voice suddenly became icy.

"Nothing I guess its time to pack up." Ezra wiped his forehead.

"Good," Aerwyna kissed Ezra's forehead as she towed her son away from his lab.

Chapter end