As he started walking, Jeb realized that he had nothing to occupy himself with as he walked home. He briefly considered looking at the Enchantment that he was going to try to modify, but quickly stifled that thought. He would almost certainly need to take notes as he worked through it, especially since this was an entirely new kind of Magic for him.
Some small voice in his head suggested that it was an awfully strange coincidence that he was learning an entirely new form of Magic the day after the strange dream he had. It reminded him that he had never known that Enchanting was its own specific kind of Magic before. Jeb did think that was strange, but another voice in his head reminded him that there was nothing that he could really do with the information, regardless of what had happened.
Whether or not the dream he had was truly him interacting with Magic, or at least an avatar of the concept was more or less irrelevant to what he could do. It hadn’t given him any real instructions or guidance, though he did make a note to look up where Fallharbor was, in case it ever became relevant to his life.
His thoughts quickly wandered away from those musings and back to the morning. Jeb was almost certain that he would be able to create the Glyph for Attune Sand Mana before he got home. Not having an Attune Mana for a First Tier Element was bothering him more than he had expected.
Not wanting to waste any more time, Jeb pulled the Glyph for Least Create Sand into his mind. He quickly excised the portion of the Spell that was responsible for Creation and began aligning the two portions. It made the walk pass far more quickly.
When Jeb finished creating Attune Sand Mana, he felt the Glyph burn onto his soul. Looking around, he realized that he had walked all the way home and into his room while working on the Glyph. The sun was still rising in the sky, which Jeb was relieved to see.
Even if he had lost track of time while making the new Glyph, he at least hadn’t lost too much. He sat down and opened the Enchanting Schematic for a Wand of Fireballs.
At a first glance, Jeb had no idea what he was looking at. It almost looked like there was an entirely different alphabet being used on the page. He flipped to the back of the book, hopeful that the Enchanting Primer would be easier to understand.
Welcome to the wonderful world of Enchanting. This Primer is not meant for those whose Class has already given them access to the Enchanting Skill. Instead, it is meant as a way for those without the Skill to learn to unlock it.
With an introduction like that, Jeb was hopeful that he would be able to follow what was happening. To his relief, that hope came true. The writer presumed that anyone wanting to learn Enchanting would have experience with both Songs and Glyphs, which was surprising to Jeb at first.
As he thought about it for a little longer, though, it made some amount of sense. There had to be a number of young Mages or Bards who wanted to increase all of their Mental Statistics, and learning the other form of Magic was an effective way to do so. Shrugging off the question of why people had seemed surprised that he wanted to learn both, Jeb kept reading.
The Primer quickly went on to explain that, as he had first thought, Enchanting used its own alphabet. It went further than that, though. The author explained that, “while I will not enter into the debate over whether the language of Enchanting is itself the primeval language of Magic itself, it is a unique and apparently universal language.” It had a number of citations to other countries that had developed Enchanting without interacting with each other. All of them used the same alphabet, and strings of characters meant the same every time that the Skill appeared.
Apparently scholars (and Scholars) of Magic often placed the different disciplines along a continuum. Songs lay furthest to the side of freedom, which Jeb understood somewhat. The Bard had certainly described the fact that a Song was far freer in its effect than a Glyph.
Enchantments were on the opposite side of the continuum. With a Glyph, there was still some ability to change exactly how the Magic manifested. Not so with an Enchantment. The Schematic spelled out exactly what would happen, and there was no way to modify it.
Flipping back to the front of the book the Librarian had made him, Jeb still had no clue what the Schematic was saying. All the theory the Primer contained, while fascinating, was not going to help him finish his mother’s present. He paged through the Primer, hoping to see where it would explain how to read the Enchanting script.
When the sun had fully set, Jeb realized that he’d been studying all day. He thought that he understood the Enchanting script well enough to at least understand what the Schematic would do, even if he wasn’t totally certain how he could modify it. Once more returning to the front of the book, he was relieved to see that he was correct.
One of the most useful things he’d learned while reading the Primer was that the first part of every Schematic is always the final diagram, where each of the Magical expressions are shown completely interwoven. The fact that it was nearly unreadable was apparently a common enough occurrence, at least for those without at least a Seventh Tier Enchanting Class.
He flipped past the completed Wand’s diagram to see each of the pieces that made it work. A Wand of Fireballs was simple enough, at least as far as Enchantments went. It only had five Sub-Enchantments: one to pull Mana in passively, one which allowed a user to activate the wand and send out a Fireball, one which controlled the speed the Fireball came out, one which controlled the impact force of the Fireball, and one which controlled the temperature.
The fourth Sub-Enchantment was a little confusing to him. Impact force was a function of speed and weight, so why would it specify the energy, rather than the weight? He knew that it was probably not worth the time it was going to take him to find the answer out to that question, but he needed to know.
Thankfully, a quick scan in the index of the Primer explained it. Because a Fireball was, as the name implied, primarily Fire, having a specific weight was difficult to determine. Since Enchanting was so fundamentally based on producing results, rather than the route to the result, Sub-Enchantments that mapped more cleanly onto effects were more popular.
It made some amount of sense when Jeb approached the problem from that angle. A Wand of Fireballs needed to send a ball of flame with enough force to punch through a thin wall. Rather than needing to calculate how much it would have to weigh given its speed, it was far easier for the weight calculation to happen implicitly with the different linking scripts.
Jeb considered which Sub-Enchantments he should prioritize. Two immediately popped out to him as obvious to change. He didn’t want the wand to produce a single Fireball so much as a continuous beam of flame, and he needed the impact force of each one to be incredibly low. After all, it would be absolutely horrible if he gave his mother the gift of a fire starter that also destroyed the oven.
He looked at the Sub-Enchantment for impact force first. To his surprise, he would need to do very little modification. Even with as little experience as he had with Enchanting, he was able to quickly pick out what was apparently a dial equivalent in the Schematic. It looked as though whoever had first made the Wand had set a specific value on the dial and then effectively just welded the dial shut.
He looked at the other pieces of the Schematic and saw that temperature and speed had a similar dial. Jeb quickly sketched out what the dial would look like if it wasn’t welded shut. Thankfully, because Enchanting was such a rigid Magical Skill, he did not need to repeat the work three times. It was an identical dial control on each of the three components.
That led him to the other important change he would need to make. As Jeb thought about it, he couldn’t think of any real practical difference between a constant stream of Fireballs and a constant stream of Fire. He carefully looked through the activation script, finding the point that set a phrase as the trigger.
The trigger would activate once per utterance. It was a relatively easy change to make the script take in two phrases, one to start triggering the Wand and one which would stop triggering it. In theory, the script would now read something closer to “when activated, use sufficient Mana to produce Fireballs with given speed, impact force, and temperature until deactivated.” It was a little strange to Jeb that he didn’t need to specify what a Fireball was or how it was formed, but he decided that was probably something implicit in the Script somewhere.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Now all Jeb needed to do was put the Enchantment onto something. He debated between wood and metal, since those were the two materials he had a Skill for working. Ultimately, he decided to go with metal, because an Enchantment that produced Fireballs probably wouldn’t be all that compatible with wood. Or, rather, he assumed the two would would be far too compatible.
Down in the forge, Jeb was relieved to hear his grandfather still working. Despite the roaring flame and constant pounding, Jeb only needed to knock on the door twice before it opened.
“What are you doing up so late, Jeb?” his grandfather asked.
“It’s Mom’s birthday tomorrow,” he said, “and I was reminded that I should get her something. The Librarian gave me an Enchantment that should work as a fire starter for her, and I feel like it’s better to make it out of metal than wood.”
His grandfather nodded, “so what do you need?”
Jeb considered the question. He had decided on metal, sure, but there were a number of metals that he could work with. After a little deliberation, he came to an answer, “if possible, some steel round stock would be fantastic.”
He waited for his grandfather to ask about his choice of metal, but instead he was simply handed a long rod. “Do you want to work in here, or is this Magical stuff that doesn’t actually require a forge?”
“I’d like to at least get as many of the Sub-Enchantments physically engraved as possible. The Primer recommends doing that until you have actually unlocked the Enchanting Skill, because forcing Mana along specific pathways is far more difficult if they don’t already have a foothold in reality.” Jeb realized that he had gone directly into academic language and smiled sheepishly.
His grandfather just nodded, “your usual spot is open,” he said, turning around and back to his work. Jeb took the bar over to the anvil he had used while learning the Skill. It felt strange to be back, because every movement within the forge just felt natural.
It was clear that Smithing was helping to guide his movements, which he was grateful for. Without further ado, he took out a hammer and chisel and began to slowly and carefully carve each piece of the Enchantment into the steel. If he hadn’t already earned the Smithing Skill, Jeb knew that there was no chance that he would be able to engrave the lines he needed into the metal. They were just too precise. With the Skill, however, it was almost meditative to transfer the drawings onto the rod.
When he had finished, Jeb inspected the rod. It was about twelve inches in length, since he couldn’t carve any smaller and still fit all the details that he needed onto the piece of metal. Now all he needed to do was force the Enchantment into the premade channels.
Jeb’s Status Sheet at End of Chapter:
Jeb Human Age: 16 Class: Least Mud Initiate Level: 1 Experience: 5604/100
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Total Statistic Load: 325 Physical Load: 124 Strength: 28 Dexterity: 21 Endurance: 30 Vitality: 41 Presence: 4
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Mental Load: 201 Intelligence: 46 Willpower: 43 Magic Affinity: 53 Mana Depth: 29 Charisma: 30
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Mana: 875
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Glyph Attunement: 24 Least Shape Earth (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Earth (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Earth (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Earth (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Shape Earth - Efficient (Modified) Tier 3 Spell Least Shape Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Conjure Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Move Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Move Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Mud (Modified) Tier 2 Spell Attune Earth Mana (Modified) Tier 0 Spell Attune Water Mana (Modified) Tier 0 Spell Attune Air Mana (Modified) Tier 0 Spell Attune Fire Mana (Modified) Tier 0 Spell Attune Sand Mana Tier 0 Spell Least Create Sand Tier 1 Spell
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Bard Songs Known: 1 Lute Enforcement
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Skills: Least Mud Magic Meditation Mana Manipulation Spell Glyphing Improved Glyph Groking Gift of Gab Running Identify Soil Savvy Animal Handling Fertilizing Lifting Athletics Lute Playing Singing Musician Pollination Brewing Distilling Bardic Magic Smithing Wood Identification Woodworking Soil Improvement
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Achievements: Focused Meditator Student of Magic
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Quests: Major: Slay the Dragon of the West (Progressive)