Altering the Vision enchantment was a unique process. The Vision enchantment itself gave the eyeglass the power to see deeper into things. Normally, the glass would allow an enchanter to see new colors and more detail in the cores they were using or the items they were enchanting, giving a better view of their work than their naked eye alone. But Cal’s task now was to take that ability to see further into the process, and then to augment it, using the raw power contained in the blank core to do so. He was glad he’d slept. Having only done this once before he was still finding out the way of it, still working out the details and smoothing the edges of his technique. He wondered for a moment if he had the energy to undertake this task right now, but with the tools before him he found he was too keen to start. He couldn’t take a break right now. He had to embark on this adventure.
The spellwork began in much the same way as any other enchantment. Cal laid the blank core in the groove on the right, and put the Vision enchanted eyeglass in its spot on the left. Then he took a breath. He focused as he let the breath slowly out. He calmed his mind, and began drawing the power from the blank core.
The runes on his table all lit up as soon as he began the magic. They all glowed as brightly as each other at first, each in its own color, but then they started to pulse in sequence, each one dimming as the next one brightened, creating a flow of multicolored light that flickered across Cal’s eager face.
As the lights glowed and dimmed, the power from the blank core flowed up to Cal’s right hand. Unlike the power from other cores, the blank core’s power didn’t manifest as one single color, nor did it manifest as the pure, opaque white of the core itself.
Instead, the smoke came up from the blank core in a dazzling multicolored display, many streams of different shades and tones weaving together as the power was released. The smoke held not only the colors of the twelve elemental properties an enchanter worked with; the core’s power came out as many, many different colors, so many that there was no way Cal could have even found names for them all. Bright yellows and deep blacks twisted like sea serpents around each other, and wreaths of gold and silver and metallic blue flowed through among them. Reds and purples, greens, browns, grays, whites, and a whole range of others flowed up and gathered around his hand, ready for use in his enchanting.
When Cal had done this magic the first time, he’d worked entirely by feel, and the process had been difficult and time-consuming. Now, he lifted his trusty old eyeglass and fitted it over his right eye as before, examining the power that he’d drawn up from his blank core.
The colors were clearer through the eyeglass, but there wasn’t any new data readout. He could distinguish the streams of smoke more clearly now, however, and the very act of putting the eyeglass on made him feel more in control of their flow. Thankfully - unlike with the Level 4 core - he didn’t have to pick the different streams of power apart. There were so many of them that this would have been impossible. Instead, he had to push some of the raw power down into the new eyeglass to begin the process. If he previous attempt was anything to go by, this would open up the Vision enchantment for alteration, and then he could proceed to layer the blank core’s power in on top of the Vision enchantment to augment the enchantment’s effect.
Cal passed the power to the left and allowed a small trickle of the many-colored smoke to flow down into the new eyeglass. Immediately, he felt the Vision enchantment activating and the eyeglass opening up, ready for the new power. This happened much more quickly than it had the first time around. Back then, it had taken several attempts before he had felt the Vision spell under his hands, ready to be altered. Now, at the first suggestion of blank power being added, the Vision spell was ready to accept augmentation.
Cal still couldn’t see any new data, but he wasn’t worried about that. After all, his eyeglass showed him things, but it didn’t allow him to pick and choose what to do with what he saw. It was a tool of information, not a tool of control. He felt sure that the presence of his old eyeglass was having a noticeable effect on the efficiency of his enchanting, and as he reached down into the Vision spell, he became certain of it. His mind ran over the contours of the spall, tracing the detail of the magic and feeling out where it lay, like a sculptor considering how to add to a work in progress.
It would have been very difficult to describe in words what this exploration of the Vision enchantment felt like. Cal was aware of the shape of the magic. He could feel how the spell flowed through the structure of the new eyeglass, permeating the fabric of the glass and metal that made the object. Dropping deeper into his examination, he became aware that there was a level to reality which was too small to see with the naked eye. Glass and metal were not the fundamental elemental materials of the object. There was another layer of reality, much, much smaller, at which the enchantment worked. It was as if the metal and glass themselves were made up of countless crystals all packed together. The silvergold of the metal rim was more ordered in its structure, the glass more chaotic. There were gaps between the crystals, and Cal’s magic had woven itself through these gaps and wrapped itself tightly around the crystalline structure of the metal and glass.
The understanding was powerful. He was using his magic to operate at a scale so small it could not be seen by the human eye, and at this level there was a whole expanse of reality which he’d never even dreamed of. He worked to weave the new power from the blank core in through the gaps between the crystalline internal structure of the metal and glass, laying the new power carefully alongside the enchantment that was already there.
It was not like the folding stage of the regular enchanting process, not at all. This was more like painting - like layering a brighter color over a darker one to bring out the contrasts in the finished item. When he’d done this magic before, he’d merely pushed the blank power into the previous enchantment, feeling his way through and “turning” the enchantment this way and that so the newly added power fitted more neatly.
This time, he could almost see what he was doing, and he had no doubt it was the influence of his old eyeglass that allowed him to be aware of what was happening in such fine detail. As he worked his way systematically across all the places where the Vision enchantment lay within the fabric of the new eyeglass, the slow realization dawned; this was going to be better than his first attempt.
At last, he felt that he was coming to the end of his work. When he’d started, he’d been concerned that he might feel too fatigued for the work despite his sleep, but now that the process was coming to an end he didn’t feel tired at all - in fact, he felt a little disappointed to be finishing.
There’s going to be more of this to do, he reassured himself. This augmentation is going to become a large part of my work, I can tell.
When Cal had first embarked on the augmentation process with the old eyeglass in place, he’d thought he might get some data about what he was doing, perhaps seeing some new options or being able to choose between effects, even though his eyeglass hadn’t given him those options before.
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Instead, he found that the process was largely the same. He had augmented the existing spell by adding the power of the blank core, rather than having choices about exactly how the Vision spell was to be modified. The difference was in the new understanding of the process that he gained.
As it had happened, the power of his eyeglass had changed things, but just not in the way he thought it might. The eyeglass had allowed him to delve deeper into the magic, to understand better how it worked and what exactly it was that he did when he augmented with the power of a blank core.
He withdrew his focus carefully, slowly becoming aware of his surroundings again. He’d been sunk deep in the enchanting, and had totally lost track of the physical space in which he stood.
Now, blinking as he took his eyeglass from his eye and laid it on the side of the enchanting table, he saw that the daylight had dimmed outside, and that there was someone else in the room with him.
Max was standing nearby, his hands full of cloth carrier bags and his face bright and smiling as he saw what Cal had been doing.
“You’ve added the new magic?” Max asked.
A slow smile spread across Cal’s face. “I have,” Cal said. “And I think it’s going to be an even better eyeglass than the one before.”
Max put his bags down in the front shop, leaving the unpacking for the moment in his eagerness to hear about Cal’s progress while he’d been out. Cal stretched, and Max moved to the hearth, relit the candles, and added wood to the fire. The blaze, which he’d fed up before beginning, had burned down almost to embers while Cal had been working.
“I must have been at that longer than I thought,” Cal said. He picked up the new eyeglass, finding to his surprise that the metal was warm, almost hot to his touch.
The blank core had been completely consumed. There was no trace of it now.
As he turned the newly-enchanted eyeglass in his hand, Cal thought that there was something different about it. The metal had a glimmer of new color, and even the glass seemed like it contained shimmering hues that had not been there before. Cal remembered how he’d painstakingly laid the streams of many-colored power through the deep, crystalline structure of the materials, and wondered if this new sheen of color was a reflection of that process.
He held the newly made eyeglass up and looked through it, then nearly dropped it in surprise.
The first thing he saw was the pile of gold ore nuggets that had been the extra loot from one of the monsters. When he’d looked at them with his own eyeglass before, he’d been surprised and a little disappointed to see no data at all about them.
Now, that was all different.
Monster Ore
Level 1
Creature: Bronze Biter
Crafting Points: 25
Crafting Core: Fire, Level 2
“What is it?” Max asked eagerly. “What can you see?”
“Monster item stats,” Cal said once he’d found his voice again. Cal read the stats out to Max, who grabbed his pen and ink and noted them down on his pad of paper.
“This is a new development!” Max said when he’d finished writing. “A crafting material! So there is something we can do with these things after all! What do you think these stats mean?”
Cal looked at the writing on the pad.
“My guess,” he said after a moment’s thought, “is that you can make things from these items, probably using a similar process to that of regular enchanting. The material is called Monster Ore, and it has Crafting Points the way cores have Fullness Points. I guess that the Crafting Core part tells you what you need to make use of the crafting potential of the item. With this one, you would combine the monster ore with a Level 2 fire core, and that would activate the ability to craft an item from the ore itself. Let’s have a look at the others.”
He held the new eyeglass to his eye and looked at the other items, first examining purple phoenix feathers.
Monster Feather
Level 4
Creature: Fateweaver Phoenix
Crafting Points: 75
Crafting Core: Water, Level 5
Next, Cal looked at the little bottles of dark liquid.
Monster Essence
Level 4
Creature: Shadow Hunter
Crafting Points: 75
Crafting Core: Earth, Level 5
Lastly, he examined the strange bones.
Monster Bone
Level 1
Creature: Gloomfist
Crafting Points: 25
Crafting Core: Conjuring, Level 2
“Well, that’s impressive,” Cal said once he’d finished examining the items and Max had finished writing their stats down. “There’s one thing though, that stops us from doing anything with them just now.”
“We don’t have any of the required cores?” Max said.
“That’s right,” Cal said. “You’ve got it in one. But don’t worry, I guess once Laria and her team go out with their new eyeglass, they’ll be able to track down some of the specific cores we need. Now that they can identify monsters by type, we can start putting orders in for specific kinds and…”
The problem struck Cal suddenly, breaking his chain of thought, and even as it did so he looked at Max and saw that he, too, had seen the issue with what Cal had just said.
“The new eyeglass,” Max said slowly, “is the only one that can see the stats for the monster items. If we give the new glass to Laria, we’ll lose the ability to examine the non-core monster loot.”
* * *
Laria breezed into the shop that evening, resplendent in a fine robe of dark green with gold trim, a black cloak thrown around her shoulders to keep out the cold, and high, comfortable-looking black boots on her feet. Her light brown hair was loose about her shoulders, and there was a glint of silver jewelry around her neck and in the lobes of her pointed ears. Her hands were covered in gloves if fine, dark blue wool and a scarf of the same color protected her neck.
She seemed a very different woman from the hard, practical archer of Hutgyrd’s hunter troop. Cal had only ever seen Laria dressed in her hunting gear - her work clothes, he supposed, was how he should think of them. Seeing her now in civilian clothes, with rich colors, jewelry around her neck, and with her long hair flowing free, without the warlike accouterments of her trade, he realized just what a striking-looking woman she was.
All elves were tall and graceful, and Laria was no exception. Cal had only ever seen her with her hair bound up and her battle-stained light leather armor covering her frame, and she’d seemed a fairly unremarkable person, hardly elvish at all, really, except for her height and the graceful upward sweep of her ears. Now, he was struck by the unmistakable otherness of her. She was an elf, through and through, a very different being to him, and dressed like this, the power and austere beauty of her race was breathtaking.
Cal’s workshop seemed to shrink in the glow of her presence, and he found himself feeling a little shabby, dressed in his work robes and having not washed since his long sleep earlier.
“Ah,” she said in her musical voice as she looked at their faces. “You’ve never seen an elf of the high kindred revealed before, have you? Don’t be alarmed. I’m still the same person as always, but I cloak some of my native traits when I’m at work. Come on, don’t stare, get the kettle on and tell me your news. I’m excited to hear what you’ve got to say.”