Jeremy watched the mana flow from his hands into the enchantment, and as soon as the runes were all filled in much more consistently than Caleb’s had been, there was a little flash and then Zanie and Caleb both shouted and ducked to the side. A flame had successfully been summoned and subsequently projected toward the wall between where they sat. The walls of the barn were all dry, dusty old wood and it immediately caught fire.
A successful fire starter, then, although not a very controllable one. Caleb immediately summoned a handful of water and splashed it on the little spot where they flames clung to the wooden paneling. They went out with a hiss, leaving behind a blackened spot in the center of the darkened wet area.
“Good job.” Hazel congratulated Jeremy. He sounded amused, but certainly not surprised. Jeremy wondered what exactly the classrooms in these elvish schools of magic looked like in his world. Was it just utter chaos of students trying out enchantments that send flames left and right. The teachers running around putting out literal fires?
“Is it supposed to be like that?” Jeremy asked. “It just shoots the flame out wherever?”
“If you don’t put a modifier onto the projectile rune to tell it where to go, then yes.” Hazel crossed his arms and leaned his head back to watch from beneath narrowed, lazy eyes. He wasn’t quite laughing at them, but his amusement was obvious. “This is why enchantments get complex quite quickly.”
“Should I even try mine then?” Zanie asked, brushing off some of the wood shavings and holding it up to inspect her work. “What if the flame hits one of us?”
“Why don’t you just add something to direct the flame?” Jeremy suggested, then he turned to Hazel and asked. “Would an arrow work?”
“That should work fine.” Hazel answered.
She bent over to add the arrow to her enchantment, then climbed to her feet and led them toward the doorway so that she could aim the arrow to point out into the puddling, muddy dirt just outside the door.
“Just don’t aim for the wheat field.” Caleb said.
She gave him an unimpressed look and adjusted the board so that it was most definitely aimed at the dirt. The thunderstorm had petered out and the wind had calmed down so the fields were no longer being blown around. Instead of being blown against the sides of the barn, the rain was falling gently to patter against the muddy puddle.
Zanie furrowed her brow and frowned at the carvings. For not the first time, Jeremy was grateful that he could actually see the mana as he worked with it. Just staring at the runes and imagining the flow of mana into them seemed unfathomable to him now that he was able to see it actually happening. He leaned forward to look around her shoulder at the mana flowing through the enchantment. Just as he was thinking that it was also flowing much better than Caleb’s – his runes were just apparently atrociously carved – the entire board burst into flames.
Zanie shrieked and tossed it away. It landed in the shallow, muddy puddle in front of the door with a wet plop. The rain gently pattering down put out the flames with a slight hiss and puff of steam, except the flames would immediately pop back up. So, for several seconds, they watched the board be continuously lit on fire and put back out until it was singed all over and sopping wet.
“What the hell?” Zanie muttered.
“Enchanting is a finnicky process.” Hazel told them. “It’s not something easily taught or learned. You have to just practice it until you get a feel for it really.”
If Jeremy thought that regular spell work was something that took a lot of practice to get more efficient and skilled at, this apparently took the cake. He doubted there was anything wrong with Zanie’s physical carvings, but perhaps her focus as she carved them wasn’t as perfect as it needed to be or something. Or maybe it just literally took practice. His own enchantment went off pretty well, but that could have been beginner’s luck.
“It’s akin to painting or sculpture,” Hazel continued to explain. “A beginner simply does not have the muscle memory to hold a brush or chisel or the knowledge of how to lay down the lines in order to create a masterpiece.”
“Well,” Jeremy looked at the rain landing on the burnt board, where it made the blackened bits shine before absorbing into the wood, “Why don’t we wait out the rain and practice this fire-starting enchantment until we get it down?”
There was no reason to walk through the rain if they did not have to. And if he was going to be able to start experimenting with the scan spell he was going to need to get the process of enchanting itself down first. While they had a relatively stable and private roof over their heads, they might as well remain here so they could rest in between the enchantments.
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Everyone agreed and they began practicing the fire starter enchantments over and over again until there was a little pile of burnt boards in the puddle by the door, another one of duds just inside of it, and a select few which had actually worked. The rain had stopped by that point, but the sun was low in its descent.
Jeremy once again stood by the door looking out over the field.
Hazel joined him. “The storm seems to have brought the temperatures down.”
It certainly had. Jeremy would probably want to sleep with his jacket on tonight, although as he was looking out over the lengthening shadows, he was wondering about another assumption that he had made early on.
“Are the monsters more active at night?” He asked. “Like would it be more dangerous to travel in the dark than during the day?”
Hazel cocked his head to the side. “Not necessarily. It really depends on the creature, although I would say that elves, and humans I believe, would be at a disadvantage to anything that was active at night, just because our night vision is likely not as adapted as theirs.”
“I’m just thinking that it might be more efficient to travel for longer periods into the night and find places to rest during the hottest parts of the day, rather than just trying to walk the whole day through and then sleep somewhere as soon as it gets dark.”
“I would not be opposed to this.” Hazel said. “Especially given your world’s excellent infrastructure. It is difficult to get lost even in the dark. But you should discuss it with your other companions.”
Jeremy chuffed a laugh and turned away from the door. “I will. I literally just had the thought. What do you think of our progress with enchanting?”
Hazel turned back to face the interior of the barn as well. Caleb and Zanie were resting with their backs against one of the walls, tuckered out from all of the enchanting practice. Jeremy had just finished enchanting the last of the scrap boards that had been piled up in the corner, so their practice had come to an end for the time being.
“I think you are making good progress,” Hazel said kindly.
They were at least making successful enchantments two out of every three times, Jeremy included.
“Do you think I could try to do just the scan enchantment in it’s most simple form?” He asked. “No crystals or anything, just scanning the basic overlay and creating an output maybe not even including anything about picking up the attributes.”
“It’s still going to be more complex than the fire starter spell, but you can always give it a try.” Hazel said.
Jeremy nodded and glanced around the barn. All of the pieces of scrap wood from that pile were gone, but there was a dusty old board behind one of the wheels of the large tractor in the center of the barn between where he stood at the door and where they had been practicing. The tires were dry rotted and mostly flat, so he figured its utility as a chock was no longer necessary and stooped to pick it up.
“Zanie, do you have the notebook with the scan spell drafted out in it?” he asked her. She blinked owlishly at him and then pointed to her backpack before letting her head drop back against the wall and closing her eyes. The number of fire starter enchantments they had done had been spread out over most of the day with lots of breaks in between, but the level of exhaustion that the practice caused was basically the same as if they had been walking all day long.
As Jeremy was retrieving the notebook and flipping to the page about the scan spell, Hazel came from his position by the doorway to sit beside him. Jeremy positioned himself close to the little camping lantern so that he could see as best he could in the dim interior of the barn and began copying down the simplest version of the spell he could manage.
In order to truly focus on the enchantment itself, he did not want to have to break his concentration to decide which runes and modifiers needed to be included, so he wrote down the simple enchantment on paper first. That way, he would be able to just copy the script while continuously sending mana into the enchantment, instead of stopping and starting several times while thinking.
“You might want to practice other types of enchantments a little more before going straight into that one,” Hazel said as he watched Jeremy brush the thick layer of dust off of the board and reach for his knife.
“Didn’t you say that the spell was not all that difficult, even if it was complex?” Jeremy asked. “I’ve broken it down into only one part…well, one part that consists of two steps…but why shouldn’t I be able to cast it? I’m mostly getting the fire starter enchantments correct by now.”
“I’m just thinking that the consequences of getting a fire enchantment wrong are completely different from the consequences of getting this spell, with it’s illusion magic and such, wrong.” Hazel shrugged, “But you’re right. You’ve been doing pretty well, so go ahead and give it a try.”
Jeremy narrowed his eyes at him. He was not sure exactly why illusion spells might be something to be more cautious of than fire spells.
“Is it because illusion magic is more advanced than the more basic elemental magic?” he asked.
“No, no.” Hazel waved a hand. “That does not matter in enchanting. Your experience with enchanting is the only thing that matters. Don’t listen to me, you’ve been doing extremely well. I’m just not used to people advancing so quickly in enchantments.”
Jeremy shrugged and picked up the knife to begin carving. He let his mind flow into a somewhat meditative state, where he was not aware of anything except the pattern of carved lines that he needed to create the enchantment and the flow of mana into them as he scratched with the knife. By the time he was finished, both Caleb and Zanie were completely asleep where they sat propped against the wall.
Jeremy looked over his handiwork. He had a last-minute indecision about whether or not he should try to include a directional arrow, then decided not to complicate things, especially since his concentration had been broken. It was kind of like trying to peel an orange or an apple all in one go rather than lots of bits and pieces. He managed to do it this time and did not want to mess that up.
“Here goes nothing,” he said quietly to Hazel, who was still awake and watching him.