Cal set to work while Max got the dinner going. Cal started with the enchantment that was both his own favorite, and the favorite of so many of his customers - his best-seller, the warmth enchantment.
Though many of the cores had the new ability Good Cheer and Cal was keen to see how that manifested, he decided to stick to the reliable warming enchantments for the moment. Good Cheer, he guessed, would work best as a key rather than a pendant, though it might also be used to enchant mugs to impart extra positive effects from drinking ale, coffee, or tea. Such enchantments would be best suited to inns and coffee-houses. The possibilities were many, and though Cal was looking forward to experimenting, for now he was going back to basics.
He lifted a fire wylf core from the desk and placed it in the groove on the enhanter’s table, then selected one of the pendants from the bag of supplies. As he worked, the savory smell of onions, garlic, and carrots frying over a gentle heat filled the little room. The smell of Max’s cooking made Cal’s mouth water and his stomach grumble, and he became suddenly aware that he hadn’t eaten since lunch.
Well, this work is what allows us to have nice food, he thought to himself. The enchanting is going to bring me all the things I’ve ever wanted.
As the orange-red light from the fire rune flickered into life and the red smoke from the core drifted up to gather around his right hand, Cal thought about his plans for the next few days. There was the spider web to consider, and all the new possibilities that could be derived from his new cores. There was also the new monster materials, and he was looking forward to Laria’s return and his ability to begin experimenting with crafting from the bronze biter ore.
Alongside the possibilities and opportunities, there were some threats as well. The continued belligerence of the Heftons was high on Cal’s list of potential problems, as was the sly, sneering, and vaguely threatening presence of Jara Nexon, the Pedantus Guild district inspector. Cal couldn’t help wondering if these two problems might find themselves combining into one. If Lady Hefton did as she threatened and complained to the district inspector, Nexon might follow up on even a clearly malicious and silly complaint, just for the sake of making Cal squirm.
Cal didn’t know for sure, but he felt pretty confident that the local inspector was up to his eyes in some kind of dirty dealings. That had been shown by Nexon’s attempt to take a charm for free, an obvious ploy to test whether or not Cal was willing to give a bribe. Cal had refused him, and the inspector’s response had been to make a veiled threat. It had been a small thing - Cal didn’t have his certificate of Level 1 enchanting up behind the counter yet - but small things like that could be used by a malicious guildsman to cause real headaches for someone like Cal, a person with a new business that was still getting established. Cal was not in a particularly strong position yet, though he was making progress. Aside from his contacts with the vampire lord, he didn’t have much leverage in the city and he was still getting to know the other traders.
He sighed as he moved the red smoke of magic from his right hand to his left, noticing the way that his breath didn’t impact on the strange magical smoke at all. He smiled, his attention caught by the colored magic smoke and the play of light on the dark surface of the table.
It was beautiful, this process, and he enjoyed it for its own sake, as well because it would bring him new possibilities as the money started coming in again. Enchanting was creative, stimulating, challenging, but it was more than that. The process was also deeply calming. Even as he worked, moving the smoke from one side to the other and beginning the folding process, he noticed how his mind had moved from the anxieties of a moment before to a calmer state. Yes, there were problems, challenges to be faced that were less enjoyable than the exciting, intellectual challenges of enchanting, but Cal would face them as they came up.
He felt his smile growing on his face as his breathing deepened and his heart rate slowed. His troubles left him as a deep sense of peace flowing in and took their place as he folded the warmth enchantment down into the pendant.
* * *
“Cal,” Max said. “Cal?”
Cal blinked and glanced up. He’d just finished folding a warmth enchantment, and he held the completed pendant in his left hand.
“Sorry, Max, I was miles away,” he said, feeling as groggy as if he’d just woken from a troubled sleep.
“You were deeply absorbed in the enchanting process,” Max replied with a questioning smile.
“I was,” Cal agreed. He rubbed his eyes and blinked a few times, feeling strange. “Wow, I haven’t gone that deep into the enchanting for ages. What time is it?”
“About nine,” Max said. “Dinner’s ready.”
Cal looked about himself. The room was subtly different from how it had been when he’d started work. It was brighter, with new candles strategically placed around the room in the perfect places to banish the darkness. The fire had been fed again and flames were crackling along lengths of fresh wood. A covered pot sat a little away from the heat, and the teapot steamed invitingly next to it.
On the desk to Cal’s right, a whole stack of enchanted pendants were neatly laid out next to each other, all strung with the dark cord that Tom the potter supplied with them.
“You strung the pendants,” Cal said. “I didn’t even realize I’d done so many!”
“You were deeply absorbed in the process,” Max said again. “When I saw how many you’d completed, I started taking them over to the table and adding the strings so they’re finished and ready for sale. You didn’t seem to notice. Come on, you’ve been at it for a long time now. I laid the plates out in the front shop for dinner. Shall we eat?”
There was a flicker of concern in Max’s eyes as he took the last pendant from Cal’s unresisting fingers and laid it next to the other ones on the desk. “Is it normal to get that lost in the process?” Max asked. “You seemed to have completely checked out from everything else.”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Cal yawned suddenly. “Normal?” he said. “No, I don’t think it’s exactly normal. It does happen, it’s not unknown. That kind of deep focus, so deep that I lose myself… I don’t know. It used to happen to me more often, back when I first started, when I used to practice at the enchanting library up at the guild academy. Yeah, I remember going off into that kind of state back then, but it’s not happened for ages. I guess it kind of happened when I was working on the eyeglass earlier, but that was different, because it was much more complex work that I was doing. I was still very aware of what I was doing, even though I lost track of what was happening in the room. But just now, I didn’t even realize how many pendants I’d enchanted. How many cores have I used?”
“Fifty-two,” Max said immediately, looking at the pile. “No, fifty-three now, counting the one you’ve just finished. Come on, let’s eat, then I think we can say you’ve done enough for one day. We can open the shop in the morning with the stock you’ve made tonight, and tomorrow I can serve the customers while you enchant.”
Cal nodded in agreement. He was suddenly dead tired, and he remembered how little sleep he’d had the night before. Despite his nap in the afternoon, he felt like he was ready to drop.
He walked through to the front of the shop and Max served them both stew in simple bowls, then ladled the freshly-scented Yallishian green rice beside the stew. There were some fresh steamed greens with a little butter melting on them, and Cal tucked in with a sudden flare of appetite.
Cal lost himself in his dinner almost as much as he’d lost himself in his enchanting work, and after the second bowl he drank down the last of his mug of tea and sighed contentedly.
“Ah, Max, that was something else,” he said with a smile as they took the dishes through to soak in warm water in the workshop, then flopped down in the chairs by the fire. There was some more tea, but Cal didn’t feel like putting anything else in his stomach just now, so Max finished the pot. There was plenty of stew left over for tomorrow, so they wouldn’t have to cook.
“I’m looking forward to tomorrow,” Cal said. “It’s going to be good to get the shop open again, and get some customers through the door.”
“It’s been a while,” Max agreed. “Though I get the impression that we’ve maybe not missed out on too much custom through being shut over the last few days. The whole city is still dealing with the impact of the storm, it’s not just us. There haven’t been many people out and about recently, though I’ve noticed that some folk have been looking curiously at the Emporium as they passed, as if they were wondering when we’d reopen.”
“Well, tomorrow we will,” Cal said. “And tomorrow, I’m looking forward to making a few more pieces to sell.”
* * *
Cal’s sleep was deep and dreamless that night, and he woke early, feeling refreshed and energetic. He looked around the little upstairs room, noticing that there had been some spider activity. There was a new crop of webbing glowing over where Loruk had put down the cheese - just as expected - and this seemed to have been expanded in a few different directions now as well. When the adventurers got back, Cal thought that he would get Laria to bring the Core Collector 1000 upstairs again and see if they could harvest some more blank cores from the spiders. He’d made the eyeglass, and that had been a success, but he was interested to find out if and how he might be able to alter the other enchantments he was making. Would he be able to augment them, too, with the application of a blank core?
It seemed likely. What new properties would be discovered when he experimented with other enchantments?
When he was washed and dressed he headed downstairs. He opened the outer door and stepped into the street. Another cold, clear night was coming to its end, the first suggestion of dawn just tinting the eastern sky with a hint of light blue. Cal shivered. The silent street was nice to see at this time in the morning, but the air was very, very cold. An internal stair between his shop and his apartment above - that was what was wanted. He smiled. It was still a high ambition, but he wanted to aim high, and today was the day to keep consolidating his progress.
When he’d thought about the internal stair before, he’d told himself to rein his ambitions in - at that point, he didn’t even have decent boots. Now, he looked down at his feet and saw his clean, comfortable leather boots that he’d bought new from his earnings. He smiled. There was the testament to his progress. Slow and basic his progress might be, but it was progress nonetheless, and that was something to be proud of.
Max, ever the early riser, could be heard splashing and singing in the bathroom when Cal went into the workshop. The kettle was singing on the hearth, and Cal took it off the heat and looked for the teapot. It was set ready on the hearth, cleaned and with fresh herbs already laid in the bottom. Cal poured the water into the teapot and then went over to the enchanting table while the tea brewed.
“A few more warmth enchantments first, I think,” he said aloud, “then it’ll be time to move onto something new.”
He started working on enchanting the bowls and mugs that Max had brought back from the potter. There were still lots more fire cores to use. The hunter team had made a particular effort on the Level 1 fire cores, knowing that these were Cal’s bread and butter for the day-to-day enchanting work.
It seemed likely that they would continue to sell well for a while yet. At the moment, it was still very cold outside, and Cal was glad of the fact. There were plenty of citizens of Jutlyn who would benefit from a warming pendant or a key to hang in their home or their place of work, and the warmth-enchanted mug, bowls, gloves, and hats were always popular too. So long as the freezing weather held, Cal thought it unlikely that he’d run out of demand for his warmth-enchanted goods.
Cal poured a cup of tea, but found it was not quite brewed enough yet, so he poured it back into the pot and put the pot back on the hearth. Then he got to work, careful to keep a closer watch on his awareness this time. He didn’t want to slip into the deep trance that had taken him in his previous enchanting session. Last night, he’d completely lost track of himself and had enchanted more fire pendants that he’d intended to. Now, he wanted to see if there was any suggestion of that same level of trance appearing again.
There was no sign of it, however. After he’d enchanted two mugs and a pair of gloves - achieving 300 day durations on all of them - Max appeared from the bathroom, dressed in clean clothes, whistling and drying his hair.
“Oh, you’re up!” Max said, sounding surprised. “I thought you’d sleep later than that today.”
“Good morning to you too!” Cal laughed. “No, I slept well and woke feeling rested, so I thought I’d just come down and get started. There’s tea in the pot. Pour me a cup too, would you? It should be brewed properly by now. ”
“You used a lot of those fire cores last night,” Max said as he pulled his socks and shoes on and poured tea into two mugs. “I know there are lots available, but did you mean to make quite so many fire pendants?”
Cal shook his head. “No, I went into an enchanter’s trance and definitely used more cores than I planned to. I’d hoped to use a few more for keys, and to keep a couple to experiment with the light-up hat idea that you suggested.”
Max grinned at the mention of the illuminated hats, but said nothing.
“As it stands,” Cal continued, “I’ve got enough cores here to do the hats, gloves, mugs, and bowls that you brought back, but I don’t have enough to do more than a handful of keys. I think it might be an idea to only do one or two keys. If I do two, I can put some on display and keep a few cores in reserve. If people ask for the keys, I can offer to make one to order, but since the pendants, the mugs, and the woolens are definitely our best selling products, I’ll focus on those and just keep a few cores in reserve. That way we can sell our most popular products and build a reputation for enchanting to order at the same time, and that’s only going to be good.”