Qi rushed into him, filling him up. He circulated it, desperately sending it into his core, then paused. No. That’s not right. I’m not controlling it. I’m letting it flow with me.

Rather than capturing the qi and holding it in his core, he sent it from one hand to the other, then back into the world. As the qi rushed through him, he imbued the sensation of lightness into it. Dry paper. Fluttering as pages turn. Flying in an airplane. Floating to the ground. Dust motes. Dancing on the air. Swirling in and out, so light that even a feather sends them into a flurry.

His body grew light. He lifted off the ground. Oz opened his eyes and laughed. He tilted his body and soared down the center of the lobby, flying past the stacks.

His qi passages ached. His core trembled, overloaded even with qi flowing through it and not collecting inside. He slowed, drawing to a halt in the air. This is nice, but it’s exhausting. On top of that, if I stop paying attention for a moment—

His core lurched, overfull. Oz focused, manually throwing qi out of his core and pushing it through his passages as quickly as possible. He shook his head. Case in point. I can’t focus all my attention on the fey magic and on wandering the mortal world, possessing someone else at the same time. I need the fey magic to maintain itself and work in perpetuity, or at least until I’m done with it.

The necklace Lif kept offering him appeared before his mind’s eye. Oz nodded. Enchantment. I need to enchant something. But what? How?

He released his focus on the spell carefully, expelling the qi into the world. As any of it fled, all of it fled, the qi surging free of his body all at once. He reached out, latching onto a mote. It would be nice if I could absorb some of this…

Instantly, all of the qi crashed down toward him, the entire mass of qi surging back into him. Startled, Oz let out a breath, exhaling all the qi forcibly. It left him in one mass, all leaving his body at once.

So that’s what I did wrong. If I try to absorb any of the wild magic qi, I have to absorb all of it, and the whole point of using too much is that you can’t absorb all of it. If you expel any of it, you have to expel all of it. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way fey magic works.

I’m lucky to have survived my encounter with the sea of knowledge. By all rights, I should have exploded. It’s only because that voice sent me back and helped me sever my connection to the sea that I survived.

Oz frowned. He put a hand on his chin. That voice in the depths of the qi. They saved my life. Who was that? Ossian, maybe? Or something like the spirit of the library?

He shook his head. Now isn’t the time. First, I’ll figure out enchantment. After that, when I’m not so pressed for time, I can worry about figuring out the library’s mysteries.

Enchantment. He lifted his hand, summoning a book from the shelves. Rather than materializing in a golden glow, it whipped off a nearby shelf and dropped into his palm. Oz looked down at it, a little surprised. Huh. Should figure out what the difference is between the gold energy summon and the fly-to-me summon. Depending on the scenario, I might want to use one or the other.

But for now…

Oz leafed through the tome, settling into the nearest booth to read. A few hours later, he shut the back cover and sat up. Enchantment. The basics are simple: encode the magic, create the encoding in the physical world, then impart the magic into the encoding. Runes are one encoding, the fey language is another, magic circles are yet another, and there’s even some information on the more complex characters in my tattoo in here.

So. Encoding language. I’m trying to encode fey magic, so let’s go with fey language. From my days as a coder, it’s best to keep things simple. No need to add an encoding shift for fun.

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He lifted his hand. A book on fey language basics fell into one hand, a fey language dictionary dropping into the other. I’m not going to master fey language in one day, but I can hack it with the best of them! I don’t need a full comprehension to write a few base phrases in a foreign language. He stacked the books on the desk, then froze and quickly separated them. Let’s not accidentally set things on fire again.

With that settled, I need something to inscribe the language onto. The book said that metals, gems, and valuable materials hold enchantments the best, but this is fey magic, shaped by the implements you use to cast it. He paused, running through the spell in his head. After a moment, he nodded. A stone. I think a stone makes the most sense for this particular spell. Or rather… two stones.

Oz grimaced. He opened the book, eyeing the flowing, organic fey letters. Yeah. That’s going to be hell to carve into stone. I’ll have to try carving them using qi, or else it’ll be the end of the month before I have the letters carved.

Okay. Now all I need to do is learn enough of a foreign language to encode enough meaning onto the stone to get across the idea of possession. Based on the enchantment book and Lif’s necklace, I don’t need to write poems. As long as I choose key words that properly convey meaning, the enchantment should succeed.

The words used in an enchantment become the foundational pillars of the spell. The more accurate the words are to the purpose, intent, and goal of the spell, the more of the spell’s initial power gets imbued into the spell, and the longer the spell lasts. With the ideal words, a spell can remain enchanted forever, while poorly chosen words leave a spell enchanted for mere minutes or hours. Because of this, it’s possible to guess the basic spell imparted into the enchanted material by looking at it, though not the specifics.

Oz adjusted his collar, suddenly uncomfortable. I wonder what the true intent of the spell Lif enchanted into that necklace was? I’d ask Linnea, but… Lif is a subject I don’t want to broach yet.

He stretched, then flipped to the front of the fey language book and stole out its leaf page. Step one: figure out what words I’m going to use.

“Possession. Possession, possession, possession…” Oz wrote down the word “possession,” then tapped his finger on the page, thinking. One word isn’t enough. The number of words also increases the strength, duration, and consistency of the spell. For a beginner, I need at least five words, if not six or seven.

The problem is, the words have to be unique. Repeating the same word doesn’t add anything to the spell.

Oz pursed his lips, then added ‘domination’ and ‘obedience.’ He grimaced. It’s a bit, er, villainous, but when it comes to possession, those are all words I’ll need.

What else?

The words of the enchantment book came to him, suddenly. You might be tempted to use adjectives or descriptives. While these can help, instead, focus on the basics of the spell and describe the spell itself. Rather than imbuing additional traits, consider the additional words as extra support to the spell’s foundation. Adding wishful traits will raise the difficulty of successfully casting an enchantment, where adding support makes it easier.

Oz looked at the words on his paper. Ugh. These are more wishful traits than foundational support. But what’s ‘foundational support’ for possession?

He wrote down ‘mind,’ then paused. Is it mind? Or is it… he added ‘body’ and ‘take.’ Possess, after all, means ‘to have’ or ‘to own.’ Ah! Those are good, too. Oz scribbled down ‘have’ and ‘own.’ Once I have the other body, I want to control it, so let’s add ‘control’ too.

Lifting the paper, Oz checked the list of words. Possess, domination, obedience, mind, body, take, have, own, control.

He bit his lip. Let’s see. If I cut out ‘domination’ and ‘obedience,’ that leaves me with seven. Seven is a good number, but I don’t want to include words that don’t work and make it harder on myself for no reason. Five is still acceptable, so I can cut two if I need to.

‘Possess’ is pretty foundational. ‘Mind’… ‘mind’ is a bit awkward, so let’s cut it. ‘Body,’ ‘take,’ ‘have,’ ‘own,’ ‘control.’ Hmm. ‘Take,’ ‘have,’ ‘own,’ those three are kind of repetitive. Especially ‘have’ and ‘own.’ ‘Own’ implies paying a price, so let’s stick with ‘have.’

He checked the list again. Possess, body, take, have, control. Oz nodded. Five words, and they’re all pretty close to the meaning of possession. Let’s go with this!

Lifting his list, he turned to the fey language books. He took a deep breath, eyeing the massive tomes. Here we go! Super exciting dictionary search time!

Ugh. How did magic somehow end up as a boring research project?

A moment later, his eyes lit up. Yeah, but at the end of that research project… I get magic! I’ll take that any day!

Once more, he plunged into the fey language dictionary. Words blurred past his eyes, the definitions seared into his mind. One after another, absorbing the words like a sponge absorbing water. Every now and again, he paused, noting down a word with a meaning similar to the words he’d picked.

At last, he sat back, giving his list a final look over. He nodded, satisfied with the words he’d chosen. Let’s go find some rocks.