Unfortunately for Raevu, she had fallen asleep before I had gotten to do some of the more visually intriguing magical experiments I had decided were worth investigating. From my box of goodies and legally purchased materials came two objects: a silver disc and a small iron chisel for etching. Normally this would be when I began designing some kind of rune array to do something useful or spectacular, but this time I wanted to explore how enchanting worked. From what I had read and going off of the hint that the dragon had given me, enchanting was like the more artsy and nimble brother of runes that was essential for me to learn if I wanted to make any kind of progress. This was easier said than done, and if my second hand knowledge was correct then this sort of thing really required a guide or tutor to explain how one imbued the carved word with their intent. Trial and error had gotten me this far, so it's only natural that I'd want to see just how much farther it can be pushed.

To start off I imagined the word ‘glow’ clearly in my mind, and between the way it was spelled in English and Old Pteronian I chose the Earth borne language because it had fewer letters. Hopefully magic isn't picky about which language I write in and cares more about the desired effect I want it to have. As for what that effect was, I imagined clearly in my mind that I wanted the silver plate to emit light exactly as the light stones in the room did, perhaps even brighter. I kept the mental image of the illuminated silver in my mind as I carved, and by the end of it I had the word carved into the disc with plenty of room for retries.

Okay, so how am I supposed to get it to do what I want? Shaking the round plate did nothing, tapping it against the table did the exact same, and even letting some mana flow into the plate caused no reaction. Perhaps I didn't carve the words correctly, it could also be that glow isn't the correct word for this enchantment, or maybe English isn't compatible after all. I tried again on the same side with the word ‘float’ in Old Pteronian while picturing the object levitating in the air, but still it wouldn't do anything. I tried a third word of ‘follow’ in Jani’nan since it was only one character, but still there was no movement, glow, or homing effect.

There has to be some step that I'm missing here, and I think I know just where to look for answers. The drone eye was still sitting there on the table and I knew that somewhere under that gilded casing was a chain of three enchantments that enabled it to operate. More tools came out of my box of miscellaneous things and the reverse engineering project of the strange device began. Like everything else in this city, this drone showed signs that every piece was meticulously handcrafted and assembled using custom measurements unique to the crafter. Thankfully whoever had crafted this one had taken care to be sparing with joining points, so it only took a small amount of prying and cutting to sever the three points that held the casing firmly in place around my prize.

The golden outer shell popped off and clattered across the table, which thankfully was not loud enough to wake Raevu, and I got to see firsthand that there was more to these enchantments than just carving words. Inlaid on a silver layer were the three words of enchantment, each being connected by a channel carved from the back of the eye itself and flowing through the words like a slash across their lettering. Stuck within these letters was some reddish brown residue that looked to have been mostly burned away with fire but intentionally left there. I activated a new physical scanner to identify it, though even before the rune told me I already had a feeling that it was blood. I let out a tired, disappointed sigh as the rune told me that there was indeed kobold blood burned into these words. Fortunately I would not have to do that, as it became clear why they must have done that when my claw touched the metal itself and detected a high concentration of mana enriched silver just within the letters. That made more sense and was something I could manage without doing whatever it was the cultists had to do for the same result.

Using a collector rune and a single finger, I traced the letters I had carved into the test disc until the silver metal had begun to saturate with mana. There was, however, a problem with this approach. Every ounce of magic I poured into the silver was dispersed almost instantly, and none of it would hold a charge more than the surrounding metal. Shit. Looks like there's more to this riddle than I thought.

I pondered the situation while going over all of the information my scanners had given me about that blood found in the enchantment on the drone when I saw some peculiar things show up in the mix. Mercury, lead, high quantities of salts and minerals, it was almost as if they had made some kind of alchemical mix from a hundred different ingredients and mixed it with their own blood before baking it into the grooves. What was interesting was how all of these elements were there in traces, but the thing that was really doing the work and making the silver itself hold a charge was the blood working alongside the lead. Alright, so where am I supposed to get lead?

I thought hard as I tried to remember where it was that I'd handled any of the heavy metal when I recalled those lead weights used for the scales. My set was currently in the workshop, but Bahruk has a set of his own in the secret storeroom of his. Wait, he keeps the door sealed with his stone magic while he's not home, so that's out of the question. Maybe there's some trace amounts of lead in some of the waste material I've filtered out from things like the gems and bronze. I poked around in the box of filtered spheres, but none of them were useful. The last place I had to look was my box of miscellaneous items, but at this point my hope was low.

My finger brushed against one of the loose gems in the bottom of the box, and my eyes lit up at the information my sensors detected. One of these gems, a particularly yellowish and jagged one, was actually just a little mineral chunk full of lead, and given how I could just disassemble it with runes that meant that it was just what I needed. The little rock was no bigger than a grape, and from it came a dull gray metal ball only about half its size, hopefully enough for a little impromptu alchemy. One little earthenware jar from the kitchen would be my mixing vessel, in which I began to add little flakes of lead that I separated by having two refinery runes overlap over the lead in order to tear the sample apart. Now for the other ingredient, the one that I was a bit squeamish thinking about donating for this experiment.

I held my hand over the jar shakily as I wondered where would be the least painful place to cut, and also where I would be able to get to any of my skin easily. With a bit of leverage I was able to get beneath my scales on the back of my hand, and with a delicate motion I slid one of my claws across the delicate spot just hard enough to draw blood. Damn it I really didn’t want to do this, but I just have to know if this works. Peeling the scales on the back of my hand up so I can get to the soft skin underneath, I used one claw to scrape at the skin just hard enough to draw a thin trickle of blood that splattered into the dish. Once a decent amount had settled over the lead flakes I tucked a little bit of scrap cloth borrowed from Tokols’ sewing supplies under my scales to catch any spilled blood, and once I looked down into the dish I felt a strange shuddering feeling run down my spine. I hadn’t really liked the thought of blood of any kind, and that whole being forced to drink the ichor thing still left me kinda sick at the thought of seeing it. Bleugh.

Stolen story; please report.

Once my mind stopped spinning around the disbelief that I was actually committing to this crazy idea I began to stir the two components together until the blood had little metallic specks floating in it, then carefully turned the dish over until it poured over the edge and onto the silver disc. Goodness me, this looks like some dark occult shit if I’ve ever seen it, and I’m the dimwit just blindly doing it on a whim. The jar was finally empty once all the characters of the enchantments were filled, with a bit of the mix spilling over the edge of the plate and onto the wooden surface beneath it. So I’ve got this thing all covered in what I assume is some enchanting medium, but how am I supposed to heat it? Oh, duh, I’m a walking induction furnace, I can just use that on a low setting.

One problem came with this idea, and that was the fact that this disc would undoubtedly move when the strong magnetic waves began to affect it so there was a slight chance that I’d either be burning myself with red hot silver or sloshed by the unsettling mixture atop it. I could just apply electricity directly into the metal like I did with the copper cookware, but I noticed that doing so tended to leave some damage every so often on our pots and pans. Since I wasn’t attempting to melt the silver, it might do just to have some wooden spacers set between the palms of my hands and the disc rather than having to make some sort of rig to hold it all in place. With an inch between my hands and the piece of silver now being maintained by some little wooden blocks I’d carved, I could try this experiment with at least a modicum of confidence that I would not inflict any more harm to myself.

Dialing the power output of my magnet runes down through a series of limiters and having the capacity of the collectors behind them made smaller, I hoped to create a faster rotation of currents at a lower pull to reduce the odds that it would blow up in my face. Everything was set and going smoothly at first, but then I started to smell something awful in the air. Gross… burning wood and singed meat smell are not a good combination. Bear with it a little longer Kayrux, there shouldn’t be much left to burn off now that things are getting this hot.

A few puffs of smoke escaped from the now boiling red liquid in the grooves of the carved words, but eventually everything dried up and left a burnt brown crust in the channels of the enchantments. A quick scrub down with a rough cloth managed to remove all of the surface level material while leaving the deeper recesses of the carvings untouched, which surprisingly looked to be sunk into the metal itself in small jagged lines. A scan confirmed that there was a distinct change in the silver where it made contact with the burnt blood, but even my runes weren’t able to tell me how that happened. I guess there’s no way of knowing if it worked unless I give it some juice, so here goes nothing.

I placed my palm over the circle and began to pour mana into it, but there was something new happening this time. Every drop of mana, no matter where it entered from, went directly to the carved letters as though they were a drain. I had kept track of how much mana it took to fully saturate the entire disc before, but this time it felt like I had put that much and more and still the silver was drinking it greedily. No more, you’re getting a thorough scan to tell me what’s going on with you. Scanners, go!

Oh.

The saturation of the words I’d carved had saturated alright, but not like how I thought they would. I had mistakenly assumed that the limit of how much mana something could take was 100%, as to me that was how things worked when there was a finite limit on things. I had forgotten that mana did not know this kind of limit, and could exist within itself an unknown number of times over. When I scanned the disc, it was pretty much empty aside from a tiny trace of magic lingering in it. When I scanned the material that had formed within the etched words, my runed told me that they needed more power to scan them. Given more power, they were able to tell me the exact percentage of saturation I’d unknowingly forced into the enchantment, which blew my mind at first.

The maker of the mechanical eye had gotten 8% saturation with their enchantment, but I had blown that number out of the water with a whopping 481%, and worst of all the enchantment was still taking in more mana from the air. As amazing and shocking as this was, I couldn’t help but wonder why it was doing this.

“May I offer an explanation?”

Oh hey there Charles. Go ahead.

“Kayrux mana source immense, body requires very high durability to contain source. Highest probable answer is blood aspect of Kayrux possesses high mana compatibility due.”

I’d thought that too, but why is it still taking in more mana and getting more saturated?

“Silver element acting as receiver, blood acting as storage. Silver minimum mana capacity not met, draws in more mana to meet need. Blood pulls mana stronger, repeat until minimum threshold met.”

So because I'm such a rich source of mana, I am also the best enchanting ingredient?

“Unfortunately, that is correct.”

Right, so how do I stop this? Wait, don't answer that, I think I already know. Maybe these enchantments are the same as runes, and if they're attached to a limiter they have to go through that first before it can get any power. Following the example of the eye drone would probably be my best move here, so carving a new channel attaching each part of the words together was what I did, and from there they were connected to a limiter rune carved in the center. Only one inlet for the rune was made from the edge of the disc to its base, and the effect was immediately noticeable when the mana flowing in skirted the entire surface of the silver before following the rune's path. A quick scan confirmed that this had effectively halted the desaturation of the object, but hadn't stopped the enchantment from slowly drinking in excess mana from the new limiter.

Barring the obvious difference in purpose, I had seemingly created a new device by copying the drone's materials. Alright, let's try this again and try attaching a single thread of mana to this thing like with the eye. Huh, it seems that no matter how I try, the darn thing just doesn't want to connect. Maybe it won't work until it's fully charged. We'll if it wants to be stubborn and not do it's job of floating or following, then I'll just take some time to go and grab a drink and put some medicine on my hand.

I quietly snuck out of the room without bothering Raevu, snatched the salve from the shelf beside my parents’ bed, then marched over to the water barrel. A cup of water and one of those not-oranges were enough to refresh me as I fumbled with the lid on the salve, but eventually I fought trough it and managed to get my hand patched up. I turned around and began walking back to the shelf I had gotten the jar from when I felt something hard smack into my head. At first I thought that it must have been something falling on me from above, but the angle it had come from and the fact that I had walked into it meant that it was something else. Nothing fell to the floor and there wasn't anything on my head, so where did it-

Out of the corner of my eye I saw something lingering in the air behind me, and turning to face it I knew immediately that it was the silver disc. There it was, just floating there at eye level within arms reach. Poking it caused it to wobble for a moment, but eventually it leveled out and became still as it was before. Wow, it really is floating just as I had imagined it. Wait, did it follow me too? I took a step backwards to test that theory, and sure enough it lingered in place for a second before drifting back within reach.

This was incredible! I don't know how it activated, but from the looks of it the enchantment was using its own saturated mana to power itself. Hold on, something isn't right here… shouldn't there also be a ‘glow’ to it-

Ah! My eyes! It burns!