The man must have purchased one of the music-playing devices that I have come across sometimes in the city. They are a new fixture, a work of enchantment that is able to produce sounds recorded onto a small string of beads placed inside the device. The few stores that I have seen them used to attract customers, but judging by the hard and basey sound thumping through the wall of my friend’s lab, he is using one to destroy his hearing and taste.
Then my irritation turns inward at my own jumpiness, and I accidentally close the door to my own workroom far too loudly, not that there is anyone around to hear it. Silence and the smell of cold metal greet me inside my laboratory. After figuring out the array to mute any strange smells that might roll out from Dovik’s lab, I did the same for my own and added a soundproofing component as well. After my last conversation with him a week and a half ago, I added that same sound-dampening to my bedroom as well.
The array itself is rather simple, only requiring a running line of copper across the baseboard of the interior walls infused with air-affixed mana of all things. Whenever air mana can be used, it is usually the optimal choice as the array can sustain itself so long as the air inside the room doesn’t grow stale.
My laboratory comes alive as I stride across the room toward my work table. The space is bathed in the color of my presence, and dust-infused materials begin to move from their places to hover toward me. I fall into my work chair, the book that I am currently reading moving up to levitate in front of my eyes.
In front of me on the table itself, a pair of obsidiante boots is held securely to the table by iron clamps, the sheath coverings already removed. Most of the enchantment I intend with my newest creation is already done, as it was similar to what I did with the gauntlets I made some weeks before. One of the boots, the left one in this case, is bound to hold the actual mechanism of the enchantment that I am working on, while the right is set up to mirror it. The transformer for changing fire-affixed mana into the other kinds that I will require is already built and waiting to be attached, and the fastenings for the various elements have been drilled and affixed. Only two major components of the enchantment remain to be created, and tonight will be the night.
Casting the book away from myself, I wave my hand. A huge steel box appears on the table in a clear spot as it falls from my vault, and with practiced precision, I unlock it with a set of three keys. Inside, vials, wires, plates, and threaded ropes containing various manas are stored in neat and labelled rows. After what happened with the thieves before, I don’t trust any of my mana to be left lying around, no matter how strong I believe the protections to be. All of my truly valuable equipment and belongings are stored at all times inside my vault, and I am the only one able to retrieve them. Briefly, as I am retrieving various infused materials from the drawers built into the steel lockbox, I wonder if anyone will ever be able to find anything in my vault if I die. Maybe when I die, a big golden vault door will appear over my body, opening to invite whoever is around to pilfer all of my worldly treasures. Now that would be embarrassing.
I take special care with one of the infused materials in particular. An iron rod no longer than my middle finger jingles inside the glass vial it is placed inside of. As I hold it up to the light, it gives no indication of the considerable amount of power it holds inside. Even inside the jar, I can taste the magic as I look at it. It tastes like sugary mint while at the same time containing the pungent vitality of smelling salts. Inside the iron bar lies swiftness mana, and it will be vital for the enchantment I intend.
The glass of the container rings as I set it down on the table, the rod of iron inside bouncing off the walls of its confines for several seconds before finally jingling still. It still fascinates me why certain manas are best contained in various materials. For some reason, ruin mana is best stored in platinum. It isn’t because platinum itself is literally incorruptible, but because it is closely tied to the concept of incorruptibility itself. The same is true with swiftness and iron, as iron is closely associated with strength and stability. Yet, it was noted by one of my professors that iron is special in that, of all the basic elements of the material realm, it literally is the most stable. Sometimes, metaphor and reality align in that way.
I pop the cork cap off the glass vial before willing a floating pair of forceps to retrieve the infused rod from inside. With an exertion of will, another pair of forceps retrieves a length of silver wire I have prepared for the enchantment itself. Black dust begins to pour over the iron rod, sinking into it as I start to strip it of the surprising amount of mana infused within, before that same mana begins to slip into the silver wire. Silver is a good housing for swiftness mana, not nearly as good as iron, but the design for the enchantment in the obsidianate boots requires a flexibility that iron can’t contribute. Perhaps in the future I can get around that design element with some clever engineering, but I am only a first-year enchanting student after all, even if I have devoured every text my professors have planned for our classes.
Swiftness-dependent enchantments are commonly used in equipment to bolster the wielder’s speed attribute. They work in the same way that most speed augmenting enchantments do, by injecting digestible mana into the soul. At this point, my own ability to move my body quickly far, far exceeds what any person should be capable of, and the reason for that is due to how my soul interacts with my body. The energies I have put into refining and reinforcing the scrap of my soul I have called over from the divine realm have had purpose, and making me faster has been one of those purposes. The unfiltered and limitless potential of the soul then manifests in the material world, a good portion of its power bent on making me faster, and so I am. Most attribute increasing enchantments work similarly, but also differently at the same time.
If soul reinforcement(or gaining levels as the faethian texts on essentia magicians often refer to it as) is building your body and soul together like a grand temple, then attribute-enhancing equipment is painting a part of that temple. Well, actually, that is not the best metaphor. The swiftness mana in the enchantment is there to mimic the energies of the soul already directed to making me faster, so perhaps it is more akin to placing struts to help hold a wall or ceiling up. In either case, the attribute-enhancing mana helps support the whole, but is also a burden upon it, which is why every magician can only tolerate so much attribute-enhancing equipment at a time. Even though most magic attribute enchantments function by lowering the etheric density of the world around a magician and not reinforcing the soul directly, this limitation still applies.
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The infusion of mana finishes quickly, and the now-empty rod of iron is discarded. My hovering equipment begins to move the infused silver wire into place inside the grooves I have sculpted into the metal of the obsidianate boots. A moment later, other infused bits of wiring join it, the array coming together. I stitch the wires into place, but I cannot begin soldering their individual join covers until the engraving is completed, something I can’t do until the final part of the enchantment is put in place.
Not wasting any time, the second major part of the enchantment is started. For weeks, as I have been planning on creating this pair of equipment, I have been racking my brain about what additional effects I might want to build into the enchantment. It is a common practice for high-level enchanters to build in some movement augmenting power into enchanted boots–not for any reason other than theming, of course. The major issue that I have is that I am still in my first semester as an enchanting student. Abilities that I might want to augment my movement in a combat situation, like being able to walk across walls or liquid surfaces, short-ranged teleportation, or, perhaps, frictionless sliding, are all far too advanced forms of enchantment for me to even begin to attempt. For a while, I had thought that I might finish my newest creation with it merely able to further augment my attributes. That was before I got a rather destructive idea.
At a gesture, the clamps holding the dissected windglider’s bracers. The leather of the windglider skin is peeled back, the two adjoining surfaces spread wide by a series of clamps to reveal the enchantment beneath. A complex array of infused threads is woven in a pattern that I cannot exactly understand. Over the past week, I have scrutinized every facet of the enchantment that allows the wielder of the bracers to stand on air like it is a hard surface, and in my scrutiny, I have found it. The pieces of the enchantment that contribute to the attribute boosting properties of the bracers have long since been understood and discarded. Those enchantments were simplistic, a child’s creation, next to the power to stand on air. Despite having spent the last hundred or so hours of my week trying to delve into the mechanisms of the enchantment, I have made very little headway.
That is fine, as I merely plan to transplant the enchantment itself.
Reaching forward, I swing an inspection device toward myself to peer down at the minute details of the etching in the bracers once again. After my judgment, I took another look at the enchantment that I had shown off, like the judges suggested that I do. To my shame, they had been right. With the proper lenses and sight, amplifying equipment, the micro-errors in the runes that I etched by hand. Every single error compounded upon each other, resulting in a terrible loss of efficiency for the enchantment. Remedying this immediately became a top priority.
Purchasing a modern set of lenses for my laboratory was a must, and using them and the incredibly intricate array of enchantments inside of them, I can now peer down at the world on a level I previously thought impossible. The world looks very strange through the lenses. As the operation manual suggested, one of the first things I inspected was a droplet of water. Seeing the tiny creatures swimming around inside it drove me not to drink another drop for six days. That had been a very strange six days, as I had only drunk strong alcohol since Dovik told me that alcohol kills such tiny creatures. I never inspected a drop of it to see if he was telling the truth, and I have no plans to.
Knowing that I would also need a set of lenses for the field, as I might not always be able to access my lab and all the bulky equipment inside of it, I also needed to purchase a set of spectacles like the judge had worn. Instead of opting for the much more compact and cheap spectacles that granted a massive increase to the perception attribute, I opted for the more expensive and complex set. Some stubborn part of me refuses to waste precious energy on boosting that attribute when it can go to other, far more useful, attributes instead, and I have no intention of changing that any time soon.
It takes me a good hour to go over each etched rune in the bracers and compare them with the diagrams that I have constructed inside my notebook. After checking three times to make certain that they are all drawn exactly correct, I begin the relatively easy process of snipping the bindings that hold the infused cords to the leather of the windglider bracers. In no time at all, I have a set of ruined bracers and a complex array of infused cords suspended in front of me.
For the entire time as I carefully transfer the enchantment into the obsidianate boot in front of me, I feel like I am holding my breath. The entire match of netball against Lady Talagast hadn’t left me sweating as much as I do in the final moments of placing all of the infused mediums into their place inside the boot. Deep inside my laboratory, time has almost no meaning, and I lose myself to the task.
Once the mediums are all in place, I begin the painstaking process of entwining all of their ends into the transformer that I have built into the boot already, connecting their leads to the source of mana that will power the enchantment going forward. Brakes are placed into the far ends of the infused mediums to stop their mana from flowing into the exit runes of the enchantment until I am ready to allow the device to power on, and I begin the long process of engraving all of the runes into the obsidianate surface of the boot.
For hours, I peer down at the hard metal surface as my will directs my engraving wand to carve each rune in precise and exacting detail into its surface. Without using my hands, the sharp tip of the wand scratches into the metal exactly as I will it to. With the aid of my lenses, several times I notice my mistakes, and several times I have to pour black dust into the metal to slowly force it to become whole once again and erase the rune I am working on. Next to me, Galea recites passages from one of the more advanced physics texts that I have been given to read, but I hardly hear her. I am lost to the task, and by the time I finish etching every rune in exacting detail down to the micro level, it isn’t even the same day anymore.
With similar care, leads from each of the infused mediums are connected to the etched runes and bound into place with soldered caps. The rest of the finalization of the enchantment proceeds smoothly. Connections are made, the transformer is powered on, and the blocks are removed from the ends of the infused mediums.
Power thrums through the laboratory as I begin replacing the sheath covers on the newly enchanted pair of boots and fixing them in place. My excitement continues to grow, almost making me spoil my surprise for myself as I hurry to get everything fastened and finalized. When at last the final bolt is tightened, the seam where the sheath can be removed is almost invisible.
Sighing and sitting back in my seat, I stare down at my newest and most complex creation with more satisfaction than I thought I would have. A smile stretches across my face, and as I wipe the sweat away with a nearby rag, I can’t seem to make it go away.
“You did it,” Galea says at my side.
“I really did,” I mutter, all of my focus fixed on the creation in front of me. “I really did, didn’t I?”
Obsidianate Boots of Aerial Domination(Rare):
A pair of boots crafted by the novice enchanter Charlene Devardem. The extreme attention to detail poured into this pair of boots gives them a magical potency and efficiency uncommon to equipment of this caliber, and the material of their construction gives them incredible defensive capabilities. Despite having enough weight to crush bone, the power of the enchantment inside allows the wearer to stand on air as if it were hardened ground.
Enhancement: +75 Speed, +105 Magic
Power: Seize the Air
Armory Bonus: +70 Defense, +30 Magical Defense
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