Jeb was a little uncertain how he was supposed to proceed. Rather than take up space in his grandfather’s workshop, he packed up and left. Halfway to his room, he realized that he didn’t want to be inside, in case anything bad happened.
As he considered where he should go, Jeb remembered that he historically had luck solving Magic related problems when he was beside his bees. It had the secondary excuse of being outside, so an accidental activation of the Wand of Fireballs shouldn’t be too bad, especially if he was careful where he had it pointed.
Out by the bees, Jeb was surprised to see how much stronger the hive looked. It was hard to point to anything specific about it, but it was incredibly clear that the Hive Enforcement the bees had been doing was working. A few sentries lazily floated by him, asking what he was doing there.
“I’m working on a birthday present for my mother,” he explained. The bees seemed confused by nearly every noun in the sentence, which stumped Jeb. How could he communicate the concept of birthdays to a species whose lifespan was measured in weeks and occasionally months? How could he explain presents to a species that relied on the concept of completely communal property?
Mother was at least an easier concept, since the hive all came from the queen. Then again, with the dynamic between a hive queen and her drones, the connotations he would be setting up weren’t quite right. On the other hand, tribute to the queen was a close enough approximation to what he was doing. Jeb tried explaining that he was offering a seasonal tribute to his queen, which seemed to mollify the bees.
He read through the Primer once more. It seemed like each Sub-Enchantment needed to be activated separately. The author suggested that other than the piece which drew Mana in, there was no real need to imbue them in a particular order. Imbuing the piece which drew Mana in anything but last ran the risk, however slight, of activating the Enchantment when another piece was imbued. For all that Jeb was in the middle of a clearing surrounded by a number of bees that actively fed on Fire Attuned Mana, he still was not excited about the premise of accidentally setting off a Fireball.
Or, since he had changed the Enchantment, an arbitrary number of Fireballs until it ran out of stored Mana. Jeb couldn’t deny a small measure of curiosity when he imagined what that would look like, but he was certain that someone in his family would notice. “I was curious what would happen” didn’t seem like it would be a particularly effective excuse if someone asked him why he was setting the sky on fire. At least, not yet.
Jeb was beginning to understand that the rigidity of a style of Magic was almost inversely related to the ease of beginning the Magical effect. With a Song, his Mana felt like it was almost trying to join even before he actively pushed it out. With a Glyph, he had to carefully study the connections and flow before the Glyph was burnt into his soul. And, with an Enchantment, he had to rewrite the laws of the world, if only slightly.
He was more and more grateful for the fact that he had learned a Third Tier Spell well before his time. The added benefit of learning a Song through what amounted to brute force helped too. The fact that his Willpower was nearly triple what it was before he had received his Class certainly couldn’t hurt. More than anything, though, it was his Magic Affinity which carried him through the Enchanting process.
Jeb began with the Sub-Enchantment which set the speed of the Fireball. He looked at the lines he had etched into the steel and visualized the flow of Mana through them. Then, with an effort of Will, he superimposed the two images.
Reality tried to push back. After all, there was no intrinsic reason that a piece of steel would be able to determine the speed of a Fireball. Jeb pushed harder.
When Willpower alone was not enough to force the Enchantment to take, he tried sophistry. “What difference does it make if a piece of steel determines the speed of a Fireball?” he asked, “it’s not like a piece of steel can produce a Fireball.” That seemed to help, but it wasn’t enough.
What Willpower and Intelligence could not do, Jeb tried to make up for with Charisma. “In my view of the world, steel that is etched like this can determine the speed of a Fireball.” His Mana responded to his desires, nearly merging with the steel.
Realizing that it came down to his Mana’s responsiveness, Jeb called on all of his Magic Affinity. “My Mana is mine to do with as I will,” he said, feeling his words resonate with Mana Manipulation.
As his Mana poured into the Sub-Enchantment, moving it from the solely physical into the Magical, Jeb was a little confused why Mana Depth didn’t seem to have any effect on forcing the Enchantment to work. Watching his Mana tick down, Jeb understood.
Because an Enchantment was fundamentally static, it had a set Mana Depth. Jeb found a mention of that in the Primer, though it didn’t explain how to calculate what the Mana Depth was in an Enchantment or if there was a way to change it. What it did say, however, was that the Mana cost to fill an Enchantment depended on the difference between the Mana Depth of the Enchanter and the Enchantment.
With an Enchanting Skill (since that was the only way to test the effects with any degree of reproducibility), there was apparently a nice exponential equation to say how much Mana it would take to fill the Enchantment, based on the number of Sub-Enchantments, the length of the script, and a number of other variables. It was well enough quantified that it let Enchanters know exactly how powerful of a Wand they could make.
That stopped Jeb for a moment. Was there going to be an issue if he couldn’t completely fill the Enchantment in one go?
The answer wasn’t as reassuring as he’d hoped. Even as his Mana continued to drain, he read further to where the author explained that, if a user’s Mana and Mana Depth were not enough to fill a given Sub-Enchantment, not only would the Enchantment fail, but the Mana would all be vented at once. Eight hundred and seventy five Mana being instantly released did not sound like it would be at all healthy for Jeb, so he really hoped that he had enough Mana.
With just twenty remaining before his Mana was completely emptied, the Sub-Enchantment on the rod flashed a bright blueish white and faded. Looking at the rod, Jeb couldn’t see any difference compared to before he had begun Enchanting it. With his Magical sight on, on the other hand, Jeb saw the lines overlaid with Mana. He was relieved to see that the dial would be difficult to adjust.
His mind supplied a helpful analogy. It was like the dial was tucked underneath a lock behind a false wall. In order to change it, a user would need to know where the wall was, how to unlock it, and be able to manipulate their Mana to adjust the values. Thankfully, all three of those characteristics applied to Jeb. He set the speed to its absolute minimum.
As he waited for his Mana to recover, Jeb found himself starting to drift into a half Meditation half sleeping state. He kept himself focused and awake enough to watch his Mana slowly replenish, but only just. When it had, he moved to the next Sub-Enchantment: temperature.
Once more, Jeb needed to use his Willpower, Intelligence, Magic Affinity, and Charisma. Only Intelligence required a different phrase. This time, he tried arguing that “if a piece of steel can already control the speed of a Fireball, it only makes sense that it can also control the impact force. Otherwise speed becomes somewhat of a meaningless measure.” Reminding the world that the rod still could not make Fireballs no longer seemed to do anything, though he still tried.
Watching his Mana tick down again was less stressful, if only because he trusted the author’s claim that every Sub-Enchantment would cost slightly less than the one before. It got deeper into Magical Theory than Jeb could totally grasp, but what little he could understand implied that the more Magic an item had already the more readily it took to having more Magic added to it.
Jeb once more changed a dial on the Wand of Fireballs, this time setting it to make the lowest impact force Fireballs that it could. This time while dozing and Meditating, Jeb noticed that his Mana refilled faster when he was less dozing and more focused on Meditating. It was possible that he was just losing track of time more, but he didn’t think so. Bees weren’t moving around him any more quickly, which was really the only movement around him happening at a time-able rate.
His Mana refilled, Jeb moved on to the third Sub-Enchantment: temperature. On this Enchantment, his attempt to persuade Magic to enter the Wand with just Intelligence worked. Apparently arguing that “a Fireball with known speed and impact force would obviously have to have a temperature. Otherwise it’s just a ball, not a Fireball,” was convincing enough.
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Jeb amended his thoughts. His increased proficiency with the skill of Enchanting, or the rod’s gradual change to a Wand was probably more effective than his own arguments for why it made sense for steel to be able to control temperature. It was only as the Sub-Enchantment started to form that Jeb realized he could have tried arguing from a position that “steel is a great conductor of heat, so it would make sense that it can tell the temperature of a Fireball,” and then try to swap out cause and effect.
His Mana stopped emptying out when the rod flashed again. Looking at the rod with his Magical vision, Jeb saw that the three Sub-Enchantments were all feeding into each other. It almost reminded him of the way that the third level of a Spell Glyph functioned. Rather than explore that further, though, he tried to sink into a deep Meditation after setting temperature to its minimum as well. After all, the sky was starting to brighten even as he worked.
The Sub-Enchantment to begin and halt producing Fireballs on command was the easiest. After all, he had a rod which controlled everything relevant about a produced Fireball, so it only made sense that it did, in fact, produce the Fireball. His Mana only emptied about halfway, which made him hopeful that he would be able to finish the entire Enchantment before the sun had fully risen.
He didn’t need to have it ready before dinner, but Jeb wanted time to be able to adjust the Wand so that it was actually useful as a fire starter. As the final Sub-Enchantment started to drain his Mana, he realized that he hadn’t needed to specify Mana storage anywhere in the Enchantment. Worried that he had missed something, he frantically flipped through the pages of the Primer.
As it turned out, it was uncommon to specify Mana storage. In the absence of explicit directions, an Enchanted object would rely on the Mana storage capabilities of whatever the Enchanted material was. The book helpfully listed the Mana capacities for a number of materials, many of which Jeb had on the farm. He was a little surprised to see that Manaweave was only listed at 25 Mana in a standard sheet, before he realized that he hadn’t corrected for Mana Depth.
To his much greater surprise, Mana Depth did not affect the Mana capacity of a material, at least according to the author “for all practical purposes.” Some Enchanters argued that there was an effect of Mana Depth on the capacity, it was just that every material had a higher intrinsic Mana Depth than Enchantments needed. Rather than get into the weeds of a scholarly argument, Jeb skimmed to list to find where steel was listed. It seemed like it would hold enough Mana to make at least a few standard strength Fireballs, which Jeb hoped would be enough to work as a fire starter.
When the newly finished Wand of Fireballs flashed, Jeb put down the book. Now it was time to test it out.
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)