I quirk an eyebrow at Galea, looking between her and the history text that I have open in front of me. “I don’t think that I heard you right,” I say.
“That should be impossible. This form was created and chosen for having the greatest affinity for understanding between you and I,” she says, looking a bit confused.
Looking down at the book again, I point to the section I just read aloud to her. “This, you can do this?”
“Yes,” she says, nodding.
The current section of the book I am reading is a text devoted to describing magical craftsmen from antiquity. After reading through a few more books that lightly mention enchanting, I decided to look up some records of famous enchanters.
Dorian the Green was a master enchanter that lived almost three hundred years ago. The text describes the man as a genius, coming from a dirt poor area of some place called the Black Lagoon Archipelago. One thing that made me initially give up ever trying my hand at the art of enchantment when I first started reading about it this morning was the fact that it was likely the most expensive of the crafting arts. Special apparatus are required to pull potent affinities out of magical materials. These consumable tools are also required to be attuned to each specific affinity of mana in order to be useful, and as they degrade over time, they need to be replaced. Add to that the necessity of storage spaces for the magical energies to keep them from degrading, and the cost of enchanting begins to climb instantly.
The reason that I found the text on Dorian the Green so interesting, is because the man managed to circumvent the need for expensive tools by exploiting his human heritage. Though the text does not describe exactly how, the man found a way to store the affinities that he harnessed from magical materials inside his soul, circumventing the requirement for both storage and extracting devices.
“You can do this?” I ask Galea again. “You can store affinities?”
“No,” the dragon says, chipper. “Although, the creation of soul tools is within the purview of my abilities.” I motion for her to continue. “As a Faethian fey spirit attached to the artifact integrated with your soul, I have permissions to modify your soul in small ways you desire. The creation of soul tools lies within the bounds of my performable operations.”
I squint at the spirit. “And what exactly is a soul tool?”
“The name is quite self-explanatory. By cutting away a part of a sentient’s soul, there are understood configurations for such free-floating pieces that can be used to achieve similar functions as that of magical abilities. Those in Faeth have been at the forefront of enchantment research for the last six centuries, and their directions for the creation of tools to aid their craft are an integral part of the culture. It is not uncommon for the craftsmen of Faeth to have created soul tools specifically for enchantment before they even reach adolescence.”
Tapping my finger on the paper, several possibilities flash through my mind. What Galea says is interesting, even if the idea of having her “cut” my soul is very disturbing. “Did Dorian the Green go this route?”
“I do not know,” Galea says. “From his description in the text you just read, I would assume that it is more likely he stumbled upon an essentia that granted him a similar ability. Both the knowledge and methodology of manipulating the soul in a way to create soul tools is not widespread. Most with any basis for enchanting would rather spend coin to acquire the tools rather than risk damaging their souls to create equivalent materials. There are downsides related to utilizing soul tools, such as the tool’s potency being tied to the rank of your soul. While the more mundane tools for enchantment can be used by anyone regardless of their rank, soul tools are different.”
“So, I would need to decide between using expensive and powerful tools or cultivating my own tools that are tied to my soul,” I summarize. “If these soul tools are so much less adequate than real tools, why would the Faethian’s use them?”
“Many use both,” Galea says. “For everyday work, it would be preferable for a craftsman to use a soul tool, as that does not cost them in a financial sense. Many in Faeth follow the pursuit of the craft as their primary focus in life. Being hampered from crafting by their wealth would seriously slow down their progress towards mastery. When an enchanter is asked to make a particular object of incredible potency, that is when they would likely choose to use real tools, tools that are of a higher rank or rarity than their own souls, allowing them to create incredible pieces.”
“That makes a certain sense,” I say, nodding along. I skim through the passage about Dorian the Green once more. He is depicted as a master of his chosen craft, single-handedly increasing the wealth of his entire archipelago by a huge margin with his craft. Opening my inventory, I look over the items I have accumulated, my eyes finally falling upon the number in the top right of the window: 32 gold, 18 silver, 93 copper, 687 iron. From the description of enchanter’s tools in the glossary I read through earlier, this amount of wealth that have accumulated over the last several days of killing monsters could pay for maybe ten disposable enchanting tools of the first rank. I cannot even begin to fathom how expensive it must be to train an enchanter through a full apprenticeship.
“Didn’t you tell me that you only know what I know?” I ask the spirit. “This seems like it would easily fall outside of things that I don’t know.”
“No,” Galea corrects, “I can only perceive what you are capable of perceiving.”
“That isn’t what you said before.” I stare at the spirit for a full minute, her just floating there unabashed, before sighing and shaking my head. “Whatever. You are capable of making a soul tool, one specific for enchanting?”
“Yes. With direct access to your soul like what I have already, I am capable of splitting and partitioning a portion that will then be able to store magical energy. The manipulation of implementation of this energy is outside of my capabilities, but the creation of the tool is something that I am able to do.”
I take a long time to think about what Galea is offering. Skimming through the bookshelf, I do find an introductory reference for enchanting and a novice’s guide to the trade. “We might do that,” I tell her, taking a seat on my pallet of bear furs and opening the book.
The idea of allowing the fey spirit to mess around with my soul is off putting, but hasn’t she been doing that already? Every time that I reinforce my soul, Galea is in charge of that process as I sleep. Thanks to her, I have been able to fix the inefficiencies with the soul reinforcement process that makes humans lag behind the more efficient races. Without those additional attribute points, I might have died already. There is no malice or underhandedness in the spirit’s words, despite her obviously keeping secrets from me. If she wished me any harm, she probably would have done so by now.
I push the musings aside and focus on the book in my hands. If I am going to pick up the enchantment trade, then I should probably find out all I can about it before beginning.
The book covers a decent amount of material that I already learned from the glossary. “A Novice’s Novel Pursuit” explains how enchantment is the other half of spellcraft, the two disciplines that encompass magical expression as an artform. Enchantment is the more physical form of magical creation, relying on the possession of magical materials in order to work, while spellcraft does not necessarily require any outside materials.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
One part of the enchantment process is harnessing affixed mana from natural treasures and affixed items found in the world, taking that affixed mana and delivering it into stable materials provided by the enchanter. Affixed mana by itself does affect the world, but often the items that the mana is bound to are unusable for crafting. My Bane Crystal would be one such example, the affixed mana that it gives off is incredibly potent, but as it is, it cannot be used to make a weapon that would carry the Acid affix.
An enchanter would first need to pull the affixed mana from the Bane Crystal and transfer it into a medium, gold, silver, copper, and platinum being the most common. It is this medium that would then be integrated into the creation of a weapon in order to give the finished product the mana affix of the original crystal.
Spellcraft, on the other hand, is a far more ephemeral form of magic. Skimming the few notes on spellcraft in “A Novice’s Novel Pursuit” leads me back to the shelf to retrieve the same two books that Arabella had me read. Unlike enchantment, spellcraft does not necessarily require affixed mana, though it can sometimes be incorporated. Spellcraft is as much a language as it is an artform; its creations are called stanzas, and the language that comprises the form is immensely complex. Essentially, a master of spellcraft is capable of writing complete stanzas with their own natural mana, creating a spell that would then produce a predetermined magical effect. Reading this makes me think back to that woman on the slope who summoned potions for us to use in our fight against the Dire Bears. The spells that masters of spellcraft are able to produce are incredible works capable of carrying out very specific and powerful effects, but once the spell is cast it is gone, needing to be constructed from the ground up once again.
Everything begins to become more complicated once you begin to add in the runic language of spellcraft to enchanting items. While enchantment is mostly a form concerned with mana affixes and their interactions, to create items that have very particular effects, requires the integration of spellcraft, though, the introductory text clearly states that an in depth understanding of spellcraft is not required to begin.
For example, if I pulled the Acid affix out of the Bane Crystal and joined the affixed mana with a bladed weapon, simply by being integrated into the weapon the affixed mana would cause magical acid to accumulate on the edge and make the weapon far more potent. Entire sections of the glossary are devoted to describing the effect of mana affixes interacting with otherwise mundane items. I don’t get a good explanation of why, but something about the form of an object has an effect on what the affixed mana will do.
More specific and complicated magical devices require the addition of the runic language to direct the mana to carry out a specific process. Looking through the description of how all of these work together begins to give me headache after an hour or two. For some reason, I always thought of magic as being a relatively simple thing. A magician would get their essentia, gain magical abilities, and that would be the end of the story. The books laid out in front of me paint a very different picture of reality.
I lay back, watching the clouds pass overhead for a while, thinking about what I should do. Almost all of my gear is gone, stolen from me by Kendon and Coriander. Sure, I acquired all of those pieces over the course of just a few days, but something tells me that it will not be so easy to find magical items in the future. If I want to finish out this Passage on my own, I am going to need some kind of edge that will get me there.
“Galea,” I say, the dragon appearing in front of me as I say her name. “Tell me more about this soul tool.”
She smiles. “By separating a small part of your soul from the whole, I am able to create a finite pocket capable of storing mana. You can think of it as similar to the storage ring that you already possess, a separate inventory that can hold a limited amount of mana types that can then be utilized in the creation process of enchantment.”
“You can only imitate the storage item?” I ask. “Not the extraction items?”
“Correct,” she says. “That is a limitation, but all of the races of the world have a way to pull affixed mana out of the world. The soul tool is merely a way for an enchanter to hold onto the mana and prevent it from decaying.”
“I see.” Having just read about how the different races of the world are capable of taking mana from the world, the explanation makes sense to me. Dorian the Green was a human like me, and apparently, we are capable of gaining and strengthening our affixes by eating things which contain those affixes. Elves are able to merely meditate in a magically dense environment to take mana into themselves. It would be through this process that the soul tool would accumulate affixed mana over time. “Wouldn’t I be incapable of doing this until I reached rank two?”
“Not at all,” Galea assures me. “While magicians require the second rank to begin incorporating environmental mana into their souls to reinforce their souls or increase their affinity for affixes, the harnessing of these energies can be done even at rank zero. However, without the soul splinter captured inside of the soul, this energy has nowhere to go, nowhere to be imprinted, and dissipates.”
“I see.”
An hour passes as I continue to mull over the decision. Eventually, after being unable to see any negatives for going through with this, I sit up in the nest. “Will creating this soul tool harm my soul?”
“No,” Galea says. “The soul is infinite, taking a small portion of it to create this tool will cause a temporary weakening of the soul, but such damage will repair itself shortly. You may experience your vital energies being unable to reach their maximums for a few days following the process.”
Taking a deep breath, I focus on the fey spirit. “Alright, do it.”
A window appears in front of me with a simple message.
Grant the fey spirit, Galea, permission to create a rank one soul tool, Enchanter’s Affix Index? (Yes/No)
After a few attempts, I realize that I actually need to push a finger into the spot indicating that I consent to this. The second that I press my finger to the word “Yes” an incredible pain rakes through my body like someone just took a razor to my spine. I contort, my lungs frozen as I double over from the pain, and the world begins to disappear around me.
In the next second I am somewhere else, the pain in my body vanished, standing in an infinite void, the wan lights of stars far off and in all directions. Something begins to emerge out of the blackness in front of me, a shapeless object of wispy white light that rotates and slowly becomes more and more real. The translucent object slowly condenses until its form stops shifting, floating towards me as I hold out my hands. It hovers in front of me, a strange object of twelve sides, each a pentagon, which turns over and over itself.
Galea scares me as she pops into the void right next to me. “This is it,” she says, pride stretching her face as she puffs out her chest. “A perfect Enchanter’s Affix Index if I do say so myself.”
I study the strange object. All of its twelve faces are completely bare, unmarked by anything. “What do I do with it?” I ask her.
“When next you consume anything carrying trace affixes, you should have an instinctual understanding that you can push the mana into your Enchanter’s Affix Index. At rank one it can only hold twelve different affixes, but as you climb in ranks, it will be capable of more. I have to say Mistress Charlene, having such a large Enchanter’s Affix Index at rank one is quite remarkable.”
“Is it?”
“The average enchanter will only have six sides to their index at the first rank.” Galea turns, looking behind me. “I am guessing that is responsible.”
I turn with her and am struck dumb by what I see. A massive object of white floats in the void in front of me, as large as a ship but of incredible complexity. Because it is somewhat transparent, I can see the complicated mechanisms of its constitution. On the surface, it looks like a sphere, only the faint outlines of ridges over its surface giving away that it is made up of hundreds of faces. Inside of that object is another that also rotates slowly, something made up of a hundred faces. Inside even that one is another geometric object, twenty faces this time, and on the surface of one of those I can see an unfamiliar rune emblazoned. There are more of the geometric shapes, each smaller and with less faces than the large one that surrounds it. All of the objects turn and shift in a pattern impossible for me to understand, though I intuit that there is some order to the movements. Around the largest of the shapes float three familiar spheres: gold, silver, and orange.
“This is the shape of my soul,” I say, knowing that it is true as I say it.
“You have a beautiful soul, Mistress Charlene. I have never seen one with so many unutilized affinity plates.”
“You have seen more souls than mine?”
“No.”
I ignore the spirit, my attention captured by the intricate movements of the soul before me. I know without needing to ask. Emperor’s Prerogative has made my soul into this shape, a series of shapes inside each other, an infinite canvas on which I will one day be able to paint every affix in the universe upon.
“I think that I will like enchanting.”