The thunderous explosion at the peak of the rune enchanting process had sent a shockwave through the little workshop, and though the remaining core on the table was unmoved, the rest of the room looked as if it had been swiftly kicked about by an angry giant with a sore head.
“I had no idea the spell would be so forceful,” Cal admitted as he and Max began setting the room to rights.
Cal picked up the hat stand shaped clothing enchanter from where it had landed in a corner and gathered the hanks of purple spider webbing, carefully putting them back in place on the prongs of the stand. Thankfully, nothing seemed to have been actually damaged by the blast. Everything had just been knocked about a good deal. He rehung the webbing and shifted the stand carefully back into the corner, noting as he did so that the purple glow and the fresh stickiness of the webbing had faded a little since it had been spread out on the stand.
Max relit the candles - they’d all been blown out by the blast - and set them back up on the mantelpiece, then he fixed the fire, which had been reduced to scattered embers in the back of the hearth. and Cal picked up the box of bits that had been blown over in the corner and replaced the contents. A discreet knock on the outer door let them know that Alyn had brought the requested coffee, and Cal popped out to get it. The drinks steamed in the cold air, and the morning light was getting brighter, though the city was still far from up and about and the street was quiet. There was no sign of Alyn.
“The only thing that doesn’t seem to have been affected at all by the blast is the cores,” Max said, picking up purple feathers and nuggets of ore from the floor below the desk as Cal came back in with the drinks.
Max’s quill, notes, and ink bottle were on the floor, and he gathered them up, grateful that he’d replaced the top on the ink bottle before the spell blast. The cores themselves lay undisturbed just as they had been before the blast. They were the only thing in the room that could claim that distinction.
Cal sipped his coffee, looking over the undisturbed cores, then he stooped to pick up a little bottle of dark monster essence that Max had missed. “It’s odd that the cores haven’t moved when everything else has,” he said, “but I guess cores aren’t like other objects. They look like little more than pretty stones, but really they’re magic condensed into a purified physical form. I admit that I didn’t expect anything quite so dramatic from the spell, but there’s no permanent harm done to the workshop, and re-enchanting the rune certainly seems to have gone well. It worked just as I’d hoped.”
Max, his quill and papers in hand again, nodded as he looked at the glowing rune on the enchanting table. “It’s perfect,” he said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say the rune had been laid there decades ago by a master crafter. Strange glow from it, though. None of the others glow like that unless they’re active. What do you think that means?”
“That the rune is active,” Cal said with a shrug. “It takes a bit of time for the magic to settle, but don’t worry, it won’t be too long. I’m guessing that by the time we’ve finished auditing our new cores the scryer rune will be ready for use.”
Max nodded again. “Fair enough,” he said. “Okay, we’ve done the gloomfist and fire wylf cores - those are our Level 1 thunder and fire elements. What else do we have?”
Cal was pleased that his friend - after the initial shock - seemed unperturbed by the dramatic effects of the magic that had just happened. He smiled. Max seemed calmer than Cal himself felt. Cal was keeping a lid on his emotions, but to tell the truth he was not only excited but also a little shaken by what he had just done.
As he had explained to Max before he had begun, the magic that he had just successfully attempted was something someone of his qualification level really shouldn’t have known how to do. He’d put a brave face on it and acted confidently, but he couldn’t deny that within himself there had been some doubt about whether it would work, or even whether he should’ve attempted it at all.
There had been little choice, however. He’d bought his magic shop on a gamble, clearing out his bank account and borrowing money from Jason to make up the sale price. Cal was under no illusion about the fact that what he’d done was a risk. He’d taken on a run-down shop that had a bad reputation, and he’d done so with no capital and hardly any business contacts.
He’d been lucky, he recognised that. People had been kind to him, and getting contacts with Hutgyrd’s team of adventurers had worked out well. He’d also worked hard with the limited resources available to him. He’d been successful in showing people that he was genuine and trustworthy, and crucially that he was a very different person to Darkworth, the enchanter of ill repute.
Progress had been made - good progress, considering the dearth of resources with which he’d started - but there had been inevitable and unpredictable setbacks, too. The snowstorm which had closed the city down had stymied his progress after a promising start, and the adventurer team were new to their craft and had not been bringing particularly high quality raw material to work with until now. That first opening day, and the day after, had been great, and he’d made a lot of money, but the custom had been unusually high because it was Blue God’s Day. Even the roaring trade on those first days had come with the setback that he’d quickly run out of stock, and the snowstorm had stopped him from replenishing his stock properly until now.
So, he knew it had been worth taking the risk of doing the high-level magic. After their trip to the monsterlands with Cal’s eyeglass, the improvement in the stock the adventurers had brought back was like night and day. Whole cores, and lots of them, plus higher-level cores and the fascinating extras that had dropped from some of the monsters; with this kind of loot coming in regularly from the adventurer team, he’d be able to step up his business fast, and crucially to get a bit of a store of stock built up so that he wouldn’t sell out so quickly.
It wasn’t lost on him that recently he’d had to keep the shop closed because he simply had nothing to sell. His situation was full of potential, of course - there were the spiders upstairs with their possibility of blank cores and their bizarre webbing, and he’d built up the beginnings of a reputation as an up-and-coming enchanter who was more approachable than the stuffy, self-important type that usually represented the profession.
But all that momentum was new and could be easily lost. The quality of his adventurers was the key factor in how quickly he could progress, and getting Laria an eyeglass of her own was the key that would unlock the door to the next level. The choice had been to take the risk of resetting the rune crystal, or to continue scraping along as he had been, never quite managing to get over that critical threshold of income and stock that would allow him to consolidate his progress and secure his position for the long term.
He was immensely relieved that the magic had worked.
“You okay?” Max asked, jolting Cal from his reverie.
“Sorry, Max,” he said, “yeah, I’m fine. I was just thinking.”
Cal looked down and saw that he had a pale blue core in one hand and his eyeglass in the other. He laughed. “Distracted,” he said with a smile. “Guess I really didn’t get enough sleep.”
He held the eyeglass up and looked at the core in his hand.
Relic Gasper core
Monster level: 1
Rarity: Common
Fullness points: 100
Available effects:
Stamina +3
Calm +2
“No special effect on this one,” Cal said. “I wonder why that is? This is an air core, Level 1. There’s quite a few of these…”
He trailed off as he picked up the next one and glanced at it through the glass.
Relic Gasper core
Monster level: 1
Rarity: Common
Fullness points: 100
Available effects:
Stamina +3
Calm +2
Immunity +3
“Oh, hey!” Cal said, looking again. “This one does have a special effect. This one has an Immunity enchantment. That’s so weird!” he looked back at the first core he’d handled, and it was certain. Only one of the two had the extra effect.
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Excited by this new discovery, Cal moved to look again at the other cores they’d already sorted out from the pile, the bronze bite and fire wylf cores. He’d only actually examined one each of these, identifying the rest by their colors.
Both the fire and thunder cores that he’d looked at had shown potential for enchantments that were not previously known. The fire wylf core had contained the potential for a Good Cheer enchantment which was entirely new, as well as the Destruction power which, though known, was buried very deep and rarely utilized. In the bronze bite core, he’d seen the strange Shine enchantment possibility, which was also - to the best of his knowledge - an entirely new quantity in this mid-level core. He had assumed that the other cores also had the extra possibility. After all, when he’d used the gloomfist cores to create Voice Volume enchantments, none of the cores had not contained the potentiality.
Cal pulled the fire wylf and bronze biter cores together and examined them all quickly, one after the other. Yes, sure enough some of them - the majority - had the new property, but a good proportion did not.
“Are you saying some of the cores have the new potentialities and some don’t?” Max asked.
Cal nodded. “I am. I wonder why that is? Like I said to Laria, I’m only just scratching the surface of how the eyeglass works, but I don’t think the difference is a function of the eyeglass not functioning properly or something. I think that for some other reason, some of cores have the new potentialities and some don’t.”
“How can you find out for sure?” Max asked. “I guess maybe you could try to use the special potentials when you’re enchanting, even if the core doesn’t show them in the glass?”
“Yeah, that’s one way to do it, though if I try to use an enchantment that isn’t there I might break the core. I suppose it would be worth risking wasting a core, just to be sure whether the difference is actually a property of the core, or if they all contain the possibility and I’m just not looking at them right. The more I can learn about the eyeglass, the better, and if I’m using it wrong I want to know. I don’t feel like it’s likely, all the same. I think it’s more likely that for some reason, some cores contain extra possibilities and some don’t, and enchanters have just never been able to see the extra ones before.”
“What makes you so sure?” Max asked.
Cal shrugged. “I’m afraid I don’t have a better answer than what I said; I just feel it. But let’s put the question to one side for now. For the moment, we’ll stack the cores that show the extra enchantment potential separately. The most important thing today is to get Laria’s glass done. Once we’ve done that, we can be confident that the hunters will keep bringing back better loot. Then we can get on with enchanting. We can build up a bit of stock, and then think about experimenting on one or two cores as well.”
They separated the air, fire, and metal cores where Cal could read extra potentialities from the ones where he couldn’t, then continued with their audit of the supplies.
“There’s a few level 3 cores here,” Cal said, picking one up that was a deeper, rustier red than the fire wylf. This core had blackish streaks visible through the surface; they looked like they were running just under the surface of the stone, as if the core were a polished crystal with flaws of some other stone within. He looked at the core through the glass.
Coal troll core
Monster level: 3
Rarity: Common
Fullness points: 100
Available effects:
Warmth +9
Light +9
Good Cheer +6
Appetite +3 (Variable)
Cal quickly sorted through the Level 3 fire cores, separating them again into two piles, one pile for the cores with the extra potentialities Good Cheer and Appetite, and one without
“About half of these have new potentials as well,” Cal said before reading the data out loud to Max, who scribbled the information down on his pad along with the number of cores.
“Appetite?” Max said when he’d finished writing. “That’s an interesting one.”
“It’s new,” Cal said. “At least I’m pretty sure it is, but I don’t know as much about Level 3 cores as I do about Level 1. Actually, let me check.” He grabbed his bestiary - the gift from Loruk, the retired adventurer - and flicked through the well-thumbed pages until he got to the Level 3 section. There were a few different Level 3 fire monsters in the book, but he found the entry for coal troll and ran his finger down the lines.
“Yeah,” he said, “here it is. I’ll read it out to you: The coal troll is a vicious beast when roused, but slow and unintelligent, so easily harvested by a stealthy hunter. The properties shared by all fire cores are present in abundance here, and great boosts to warmth and light may be achieved by the enchanter.”
Cal paused for a moment, running his fingers down the page until he found the passage he sought.
“Ah, yes,” he continued, “Unlike the Level 1 and Level 2 cores, the coal troll core does not contain a destruction property in its third enchantment layer. As is the case with most other elemental core types, the Layer 3 enchantment property reduces in strength in higher level cores, the power becoming more focused into Layers 1 and 2, the specialist properties of the monster. The core harvested from a coal troll contains only the enchantments for Heat at Layer 1, and Light at Layer 2.”
Cal snapped the book shut. “Appetite,” he said. “That’s definitely new, and it’s interesting that Good Cheer is still present despite the increase in level.”
“What does the book mean by Layer 3 enchantments?” Max asked.
“It’s just the ranking system that enchanters use to refer to the properties that are easier or harder to draw out of the cores,” Cal said. “Like with the fire cores, the heat enchantment comes out really easily, attaching itself to clothing, rings, keys, that kind of thing. Warmth is the Layer 1 enchantment in fire cores, the most volatile property, and the one that’s easiest to access. The Layer 2 property in a fire core is usually light.”
“I remember,” Max put in. “We were talking about selling light-up hats! I still think that’s a neat idea.”
Cal smiled at the suggestion. “I think it could be pretty fun, too,” he agreed. “The main distinction between Layer 1 and Layer 2 enchantments is how easy it is to draw the enchantment out. A Layer 1 enchantment will come out almost by itself, without any extra work from the enchanter beyond the usual guidance magic. Layer 2 is a lot harder to do successfully, and Layer 3 is even worse, to the point where most people don’t bother with it.”
“And what was it your book said about Layer 3 enchantments not being present in higher level cores?”
“Just that,” Cal said. “It’s a bit counter-intuitive, but it’s usually explained by the idea that higher level monsters are more focused on their main elemental properties. The higher level you go, the more powerful an enchantment you can make from the top layer possibilities, but it comes at the expense of the variety of other options available in the core.”
Max snapped his fingers. “Oh yes,” he said, “I remember now. Back when we were at Biddle and Kronk’s warehouse and you were buying a few cores, you told me that the Level 1 gloomfist cores have a small boost to magical strength that you can use to improve a magical item. You said that the boost to magic isn’t present in higher-level thunder cores.”
Cal nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. The gloomfist is the level 1 thunder core; it has boosts to charisma, physical strength, and magical strength, in that order - Layer 1, 2, and 3.”
“Except now, there’s another layer, right? Layer 4, Voice Volume, revealed by your eyeglass.”
Cal frowned. Max had only meant to make a lighthearted statement of the obvious, but as he heard his friend’s words, Cal realized that they weren’t strictly true.
“You know, that’s actually not how it is,” he said, his interest caught by the new train of thought that Max’s words had stimulated.
“No?” Max said. “What do you mean? Surely that’s the order you said they appeared in when you looked with the glass to see the data. I wrote it down… yes, here it is, look.”
Max flicked back a few pages in his pad and held it out. Cal looked. There on the page, in Max’s neat, educated handwriting, were the stats of the gloomfist core, just as Cal saw them when he looked through his glass.
Gloomfist core
Rarity: Common
Fullness points: 100
Available effects:
Charisma +2
Strength (physical) +4
Strength (magical) +3
Voice volume +2
“You’re right,” Cal said. “When I look at the cores, the different layers of enchantment potential appear in their accepted order, just like you’ve written here.”
“With Voice Volume at the bottom of the list. Surely that makes it Layer 4.”
“It’s at the bottom of the list,” Cal agreed slowly, “but despite that, the Voice Volume enchantment doesn’t feel like Layer 4.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Max said, frowning.
“I mean that doing the Voice Volume enchantment feels easy, as easy as doing a Layer 1 fire enchantment. I’ve mostly stuck to Layer 1 work since I’ve been here - doing the warmth enchantments for the keys and the pendants - but I know what it feels like to do the lower layer enchanting, and it’s a lot harder. Oh, I can do it, but there’s no question that it takes a lot more concentration. It’s tiring, and it’s a lot easier to slip up and break the core in the process. Most of the time, people just don’t bother with Layer 3 enchanting for that reason; they don’t go below Layer 2. You see what I mean?”
“I do!” Max said. “If Voice Volume was genuinely Layer 4, getting it into the pendants should be near impossible.”
“And yet it’s actually quite the opposite. Isn’t that odd?”
“Perhaps it’s an effect of the eyeglass?” Max suggested. “You said yourself that you noticed a big difference in the general ease of enchanting when you didn’t have it near. It obviously has some effect just by being in the room, even when you’re not actively using it. You could experiment a bit and see if Layer 2 enchantments come any easier when you have the glass to hand - by making a glowing hat, for example!”
Cal grinned. “I think that’d be a good idea,” he said. “I thought that modifying the vision spell in the eyeglass would be a simple thing, with a simple effect, but the further I go with this, the more I realize that there are more mysteries to explore here than I’d ever imagined. I really have opened up a whole new territory of magic.”