Agatha couldn’t deny she was feeling giddy. All of these last weeks of Agatecrafting classes had been filled with agonizing theoretical sludge that lasted for three hours. But now, finally, they would do some actual work.

  That made her partially nauseous. Nervousness was an insidious killer; anxiety even more so.

  “For starters,” Sergi cleared his throat, “let us see how well you have understood the foundations of golemancy. Summon an agate with Control Embed and press it against the chunks of agate over at the table.”

  The villager’s eyes shot wide open when she noticed the agates her teacher was talking about. While they weren’t veins of agate, they still were formations of agate the size of a person’s torso. Many properties affected the property of an agate, but even then, it was hard to find agates in the wild just because they had long been scrounged by people. So much so that Agatha had only obtained a fingernail worth of agate from a miner in Malachite’s downtrodden mine. Commonplace agate was considered mostly useless – as most people awakened with agates from the depths – but any agate was better than no agate.

  Agatha had the slight suspicion that her mother actively worked against her getting agates, but she never had the courage to ask her that question. Even half of the villagers in Malachite had agates, no matter if those who didn’t was simply because they waited with the hope of finding a good agate in the future.

  How much coin is that worth? Perhaps it wasn’t osmium, but it was still agate. Perhaps it wouldn’t be used for awakening people as agates were always better whole for that purpose, but it still could be worth it for agatecrafting purposes.

  “Is it right for us to use this much agate?” She asked hesitantly.

  “Sure,” their teacher said nonchalantly while he floated to the worktable with his flying chair. “These chunks would not be used by anyone. Too big for awakening, too small for potent uses of inert golemancy. But just the right size for practice,” he smiled. “So do not hesitate. Go crazy. There are more than enough when they came for!”

  It was hard to do so, but Agatha obeyed. She still hesitated a bit as she sent her whole agate to the chunk – her originally small sapphire only now looked a considerable fraction of such massive formation of agate – and pressed it against the natural gemstone after giving it the Control Embed command. Her deep blue and transparent agate merged with the grey and greenish chunk of gemstone. The transition between the two was perfectly smooth and seamless, as if they weren’t two separate stones, just a peculiarly colored agate.

  “Now, what is the next step?” Sergi inquired once both students had embedded their agates.

  “We need to embed the command into the agate,” Shayla answered.

  “Easier said than done,” the greying man chuckled. “Theory is not practice. Give it a try.”

  Instead of going directly for it, Agatha waited for her dark-skinned classmate to act first. Shayla closed her eyes and went through the lessons both of them had covered over these weeks. Agatha could tell it because that was what she would’ve done. But Sergi’s premonition was rooted in fact, for the Intaksolfani frowned and then opened her eyes in indignation.

  “The command is not getting embedded in the agate,” she grunted.

  “If it were as simple as giving commands mindlessly to get a result, agatecrafters would not have a job. Nor lithorists for that matter,” Sergi chuckled again. “Please, tell me the steps aloud.”

  “Well…” Shayla started.

  “Let your classmate do a bit of work,” he interjected. “You do not want to make her envious, want you?”

  Agatha frowned at his selection of words, but she didn’t protest and just went over the steps in her mind before saying them aloud.

  “The first step is embedding our agate into the foreign agate,” the dirty-blond girl said.

  “Which you have already done. Come on, you can do better.” Instead of sarcastic, those words felt encouraging, because – as a matter of fact – she could do better.

  “Next is choosing the command we want to embed into the foreign agate. Any suggestions on what we should put?”

  “Any harmless command will do,” Sergi explained. “But for the sake of visual clarification, go with Light.”

  “Is that not going to be a problem?” Agatha already had a hiccup or two with the Light command, and putting it on an agate that she couldn’t turn off with her mind sounded like a recipe for disaster.

  “Unless you want to use Combust?” The disabled man snorted. “Light is more than fine. These chunks will not have much potency. Remember that there is a reason why we use veins of agate tens of tons in weight for the simplest of activities. You need a lot of agate for the most trivial of results. So continue.”

  Agatha couldn’t deny she was still a bit hesitant, but she carried through with the steps. “We apply the Light command to Embed, and then we push it onto the foreign agate.”

  “And how do you push it?” Sergi questioned with crossed arms and a slight up-nod of his chin.

  “That is…” The petite student blanked out for a moment. “You really have not gone over it.”

  “Because you needed to practice it. Some things cannot be explained, only felt. Now is the moment to do so, so try it.”

  That kind of circular reasoning annoyed Agatha, but she couldn’t deny that she wouldn’t have understood it until she first tried it.

  So she tried.

  Her big sapphire was now commanded by Control Embed Light and pressed against the torso-sized agate. The combination of commands was already making her think, regardless of the next steps or not. Control and Light aren’t doing anything right now, she realized as her agate wasn’t exactly floating nor shining. That means both are affecting or affected by Embed, yet nothing that’s visible or easily perceptible.

  Unable to feel anything with her mind, Agatha chose to go physical. She hadn’t awakened lapiloquia yet, but most practices for doing so involved touching stones and agates with the Embed command, so she guessed that it would give her some intuition, as shallow as it might be.

  And… it sort of did.

  Before, she could only feel her own agate, but now that she was in touch with the embedded chimera of the two, she could also feel the foreign and natural one that was the chunk. If ever-so-slightly. Perhaps this is the trick for finally unlocking lapiloquia… She ruminated for a moment before going back to business.

  Control isn’t doing anything, and it doesn’t seem to have an apparent purpose, unlike Light, so… Agatha concentrated on the command, putting pressure on the connection between Control and Embed. These last years had taught her that the combination of commands – if not outright series – interacted differently as a whole than just their individual units.

  Speed Control wasn’t the same as Control Speed; that was a lesson she would never forget. The former gave its velocity to the Control command, while the latter allowed the Speed command to vary mid-execution. Perhaps not the same, but something similar was happening here. She was able to vary – or control would be the most adequate epithet – the embedding on the agate.

  Control isn’t necessary, she realized. It’s only here to guide me, to make things easier. Like Embed when trying to unlock lapiloquia. So, let’s make things easier.

  The petite lithorist wasn’t sure what she had to control, but there weren’t many possible targets to begin with. Either her sapphire or the commands inside her, and she was inclined to the latter.

  Just like she would modify the Anchor command in the reliable Speed Control Anchor series to target the locked axes of the agate, she had to modify the Embed command. But not just that. That was a trap. She had to modify the rest of the series too. Not just Embed, but Embed Light.

  What am I doing here? Agatecrafting. And what’s Agatecrafting? Giving commands to foreign agates. Agatha questioned herself in every step, but not out of doubt. Only confidence. So let’s give this chunk of agate some commands.

  She was using this series for the first time in her life, but if there was a talent Agatha of Malachite had that prevailed above any other – even that of the outstanding quality of her big sapphire – it was her uncanny ability to just do things first try.

  If anything, she was at her strongest when an uncharted vastness lay before her.

  So Agatha modified the series. She controlled it and did her best to mentally push the light command to the foreign gemstone according to all the preceding classes that had led to this moment. No, she corrected herself. Not pushing a command. Embedding a command.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The usage of the command didn’t fight against her, so she felt validated. It was weird to find commands that didn’t interact or perhaps interfere with each other, but it happened from time to time. Trying to put the same command in a single series or giving Summon Recall to an agate did weird things, the main one being absolutely nothing. One of the many things she tried on her own account when she had gotten the Second Stratum, but didn’t consider valuable enough to reserve space in her mind for.

  It was neat knowing that something commands could fail, though.

  And this was the opposite. This was intended. Agatha doubted there was a higher entity like the god from the Sectons or The Preserver of the scholarites, but now she felt a design in play. Perhaps it was that of nature, like how it made perfect hexagonal pillars of basalt in beaches. Nature had intended for Embed to work like this, for Agatecrafting to exist. Agatha of Malachite could feel it deep in her being.

  And then she finally completed her task.

  Her epiphany was forgotten as the torso-sized agate in front of her started glowing. Even though she hadn’t made any type of exertion, whether physical or mental, Agatha couldn’t help but gasp for air. Something had been taxed, and it wasn’t her body or mind.

  “And that is a success!” Sergi happily announced. “Oh, and do not worry about that pain you are feeling. It is mostly only the first time, when you are accustomed, you will not feel it anymore.”

  Pain? This is more exhaustion than anything else. Agatha thought that, but she didn’t speak aloud. Perhaps because she thought that the answer she would get was that she was simply confusing the two, which was likely.

  “Now that Miss Malachite has achieved it, how about you try again, Miss Belkadi?”

  Shayla rolled her eyes, perhaps due to the tone of their teacher, but tried again with her efforts. Only to fail yet again. Shayla Belkadi was not Agatha of Malachite. No one else was Agatha of Malachite, barring the woman herself; perhaps that was what made her situation even more unfortunate. It took the Intaksolfani almost half an hour to finally find success, and that was only with the help of Sergi and Agatha, as the merchant’s daughter didn’t seem to understand that she had to use all three commands at the same time to embed the command on the agate.

  “Truth be told, that was quite fast,” Sergi revealed as he flew back behind his desk, leaving behind the glowing agate chunks. “Normally, it takes the whole lesson for the students to get their first embedding. I certainly did not expect Miss Malachite to be so swift and then help her classmate.”

  “We are here. You know that?” Shayla all but growled her words.

  “Sure, sure, do not mind this old man’s ramblings,” the disabled agatecrafter chuckled.

  He’s a fractured military engineer; I’m one hundred percent sure of that. Mister Krugger was right. They are all crazy. Should I try to get Christie out of that elective? She thought of the well-being of her girlfriend with a hint of worry. She’s already dummy enough. I don’t think I want her to be crazy too.

  “But your success puts me in a bit of a clutch. As I expected you to take longer, I actually did not plan to show you about animated golemancy just yet, just leave you with a bit of a cliffhanger…” The two girls looked at him with disdain. “Oh well, I guess we should accelerate the schedule a bit,” he let out a nervous smile.

  Shayla and Agatha stood up and sat on the workshop table in front of the desk, also proceeding to ignore the glowing agates behind them. They weren’t obnoxious at all because – as Sergi had said – lonesome common agates didn’t have much power. They produced as much light as a candle, but because it was daytime, it was only detectable when looking directly at them. Agatha couldn’t even see the color the agates produced as the whole workshop was covered in color thanks to the pillars of agate reflecting a myriad-colored light.

  “Alright, so animated golemancy!” Sergi snapped his fingers and raised his chair to the same level as the blackboard. “What do you know about it?”

  “That apparently gives sentience to stones?” Agatha suggested.

  “Something like that, but that is not the answer I am looking for,” he didn’t bother to look at them as he wrote with the chalk. “Something better, ladies!”

  “That it is related to the Autonomy command?” Shayla added with the same doubt as the dirty-blond girl.

  Autonomy: This command allows the lithorist to release the latent cognition of the agate. This factor seems to only increase with the innate quality of the agate, so further increases in quality do not appear to make much difference. Using the Autonomy command with a First Stratum agate will render it inert and will be ineffective. It must be noted that the Autonomy command will give freedom to the agate to pursue any command it wishes, so it must never be used alone under any circumstances. She mentally recalled the description of said command because the teacher didn’t seem to be writing it again and he was only doodling on the slate.

  “Indeed!” Sergi shouted. “Just like Embed is the cornerstone for inert golemancy, so is the case with Autonomy with animated golemancy.”

  “Alright…” Agatha mouthed. “I can understand that much, but how does Autonomy work? You only suggested what it might do with the description and warning you gave us.”

  “Because it was too dangerous to let you experiment with it. Here!” The teacher threw an agate at her. “This agate has only the Second Stratum. What do you think would happen if I gave it the Autonomy command according to the description I gave you?”

  “That it might choose a command on its own?” Agatha wasn’t quite sure how that would even work.

  “Indeed,” he nodded. “Seemingly harmless, until it chooses Combustion, or better yet, Speed at just the exact direction of your eyes. And I must say to you, that is not very amusing, to say the least.”

  The villager’s eyes shot to the teacher’s, only to realize that if something had happened, it was most likely related to the man’s legs rather than anything else.

  “Huh, you are not scared,” Sergi said.

  “I am just confident I could handle a single First Stratum agate even if it is at melee range.” Her confidence wasn’t unwarranted. Her reaction times were swifter than ever, and if she felt something go ever-so-slightly wrong, her agate was already summoned and had enough slots to shove an Invert Summon Range.

  “First Stratum? What are you…? Ah,” he grumbled in realization. “I see what you did there. Yes, it is true it has only one command slot, but it still has the quality of a Second Stratum agate, so you should not get that cocky.”

  Agatha inspected the rough agate in her hands, and she knew for a fact that it was a duplicated agate. Perhaps she wasn’t a miner, but she was probably the foremost expert of that command in the whole academy. The Skyscraper Academy. That was what tended to happen when an obscure command was a must for you. So she had this gut feeling that this was a duplicated agate, which meant that she was painfully aware of the diminished quality of said agate. And its quality was sorely lackluster even compared to her First Stratum agate. So yes, she didn’t fear the agate in her hands.

  Not that she told that to her teacher’s face. That wouldn’t bode much goodwill.

  “So that is what would happen then? This command turns agates haywire?” She inquired without showing fear still. Nor apologetic remorse.

  “Not quite. That is what happens when you blindly apply the Autonomy command. There are some useless or redundant commands out there – like Sleep or Float, respectively – and this is not the case in the slightest.”

  My gorgeous girlfriend would like to disagree with the former, Agatha smiled at him as she was mentally smug. Then she realized something with her teacher’s wording. “Are you not using the Float command currently?”

  “I said it was redundant, not useless,” the greying man snickered. “And neither did I say I was not a hypocrite, but we are getting distracted. This is not about me; it is about Autonomy. And how the command ought to be used.”

  And then the agate shot at her.

  Agatha needed but a fraction of a fraction of a second to do exactly what she planned. All the summoned agates were recalled to their pertaining lithorists, and Sergi looked at her with a bemused gaze.

  “Huh, you actually reacted in time.”

  Agatha squinted hard. “You tried to kill me.”

  “That is a harsh accusation, Miss Malachite,” the teacher's expression switched from amused surprise to scornful. The gall of him!

  “You said yourself that the Autonomy might choose any command, and any direction if it were to choose Speed. So what are the chances it would go strictly for the kill?” She incriminated.

  “Alright, I did lie,” he admitted nonchalantly, which made her blood boil. I really need to fucking get Christie out of Military Engineering. Each of these bastards is worse than the last. “First, that agate is on the Third Stratum, not Second, so you were never in danger as it has a Control Autonomy series in place. I just… relaxed the control I exerted over the series, but I could have tightened my grip at any moment. And secondly, any given Autonomy agate has indeed limitless choices, but – just like a person – it has its biases.”

  “Are you telling me that this agate was… biased towards killing me?” Agatha couldn’t even believe the words that were coming out of her mouth.

  “Exactly! Agates make for great serial killers, if I do say so. Well, more like certain agates. This is my only homicidal agate, part of why I have been reluctant to increase its Stratum much.”

  This was a lie that Agatha was able to detect. Partially because it was a half-lie. That ‘much’ was doing all the heavy-lifting in the sentence. The petite lithorist was one hundred percent sure that homicidal agate was duplicated, so at the bare minimum, it was a Fourth Stratum one. Perhaps even more considering its poor quality and the fact that most agates didn’t exponentially increase in quality like hers, so each splitting would severely affect the agate’s quality as it didn’t duplicate with each Stratum in most cases.

  Perfect, we have to add sycophant to the list of mental afflictions military engineers have, Agatha groaned mentally. Wait, it’s sycophant even the right word? That’s more like flatterer. Surely there’s a word for a person who tells needless lies. I think that Christie’s novels have biased me with all their court romance. At least it’s not homicidal bias, she snickered.

  “So, to summarize,” Agatha now spoke aloud, “each given agate has an innate proclivity towards… something?”

  “Yes,” Sergi nodded and stopped doodling on the slate. Not that they were understandable doodles in the first place. “It is impossible to know so before checking it first – which I would not exactly recommend – but agates can have many tendencies. Some are more controlled; others are more erratic. I have mainly found four types of them. Inert that act like the stones they are, whimsy that like to try commands but without actively trying to hurt anyone, aggressive that do actually try to hurt people, and the erratic ones. Those ones are the worst without a shred of a doubt because you can always expect an aggressive one to hurt you, but you never know when that will happen with an erratic one.”

  “That is… surprising.” It was Shayla who spoke. “So there is a chance that our agates can kill us?”

  “If you do not give them the Autonomy command, nothing should happen,” he reassured her.

  “Yes, yes. I can understand that much,” the citrine-eyed girl said derisively, “but what I am interested in is that intent. Agates are part of ourselves, you have said that they are sentient and, in a way, part of our minds. So why would agates want to kill us? Kill ourselves?”

  Sergi grimaced at that question. Truth be told, Agatha hadn’t thought it like that. Agates truly were an extension of the lithorist’s body; a claim that held evergreen and truer with her recent knowledge in golemancy. And now that question wouldn’t leave her mind.

  “Why?” She asked too.

  The man bound to the floating chair sighed and deflated. “I do not know.” His answer was devoid of any whimsy. “Even as an eminence in this field, there are many things I do not know. But I am only able to come up with two possible answers. Either we, humans, innately hate ourselves enough to kill ourselves when given the attempt – which I find unlikely but not impossible – or, and even worse, perhaps we are not as close to the agates as we thought.”

  The last sentence froze Agatha’s blood as if commanded by Chill.

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