I made a nail for a specific purpose. It was another scribe. I felt like that was important. I could tell that these thoughts were coming from knowledge contained in the base concepts of the aspects I absorbed.

  I took my first rock and tested my scribe against it. It took several tries and several rocks before I got the hang of it. Sadly, my scribe couldn’t take the abuse and dulled rapidly. I had a fix for that if I was brave enough.

  I felt another hint of inspiration, and I combined my nail and scribe. It took three whole fills of my mana to do so, but I got it done. Now for the hard part. I wanted to add one of the two runes I knew. The Cold Iron would have naturally lasted longer than the plain iron, but I wanted something to last. Vex had warned me that time was running out, so I was maximizing effort.

  While the fire stone had the rune carved into it, the coins had the magic inherent in the material. I was aiming for the second mostly because it seemed superior and also because I had no way to inscribe the scribe. I didn’t think I could destroy only part of a material, yet.

  I wanted to focus on the carving point of the scribe, what had once been the tip of the cold iron nail. I dove into the depths of the material but held myself back from being on the inside looking out. I dove combining my visions into a cohesive picture. I was rewarded with a detailed look at a four-foot copy of my scribe. I wanted to enhance the tip, and was concerned with just the tip. I remembered the durability enhancement was over the material, not in it. It was a cage of magical chicken wire, a beehive with every cell the rune. I reformed the image of the rune in front of me and remembered the way the cells bent and flexed around the material. After I had the rune itself formed, I focused on making the lattice. Made out of what I didn’t know, I just felt it begin to happen. I felt the rune grow and sink into the material of the scribe. It wasn’t just the tip but the very center of the material. I watched as wisps of energy began to leak through the material, shifting it ever so slightly. I was worried that these shifts would undo all the work I had done shaping it, but we were at such a small scale that they had to have been microscopic. The material was optimizing. I saw pieces melt, shift, and reform in perfect fluidity, way better than when I had tried to shift the material. This was the inherent power of my magic. I felt as the rune finally settled like a princess on a stack of mattresses, finally free of peas. The leaking energy organized and formed the lattice structure I saw on the coins and then vanished into the same glass-like structure.

  Knowledge seeped into my thoughts on how to do this entire process more efficiently in the future. I knew just how long before this rune ran out of energy and the durability failed. It was a while, but not forever. I inched around the ideas in my brain and found a hole where permanence should be, a hole waiting to be filled. A word came unbidden to my mouth, describing what I had just done.

  “Enchantment!”

  Ink gave an excited trill, but I was disappointed. I knew there was more that could be done. The knowledge of making a permanent item that didn’t need mana refreshed was there, every part but the how. I knew that artifacts were possible, and I knew I was just steps away. I would create these objects one day; I promised myself that.

  I now had a scribe that could reasonably carve on rock. So, naturally, the first thing I did was put it away. The process had shown me how to place a rune in the center of an object. I wanted to see what my fire rune did to a rock.

  It exploded. The second one, too. The third one was the charm, though. I figured out just the right timing to let go of the rune. To pull back the mental energy holding it in place and stopping its spread, and let it do its thing. For a fire rune, its thing was to burn, and a rune didn’t care if the thing it was in was flammable. The rock got instantly insanely hot, burning my hand faster than I could register the change enough to drop it. The rock literally turned to lava, and as it pooled away, I saw the glowing fire rune in the middle. Once enough of the rock melted away, the rune kind of dissipated into motes of mana, leaving behind the now-cooling material.

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  Not what I was going for, but particularly useful. I would have to play with that later to see if size of the rock changed anything. I conjured up another pair of rocks and got to work. The inscribing was difficult. Oh, I was more than sufficiently strong enough to carve with my scribe. I hadn’t written anything in years, so my first attempt was a little clumsy. I turned the attempt into dust. The second rock met the same fate. I held hope for the third, but alas, no charm. I was on my eighth set of rocks when I finally got a passing rune on it. I could even feel how the gap I thought on the first one just naturally formed when you carved it with a tool. I put my scribe in my inventory and had Ink hide away as well. He got the gist of what I was doing and left me completely naked.

  I bridged the gap with mana and tossed it into the corner opposite the still-repairing damage. The result was pleasantly lackluster. There was no giant fireball, and I didn’t even lose any skin. The rock clattered to a stop about a foot out of the corner and lit on fire. I would call it like a fast flare burn, a little firework, or a pile of powder. If there was anything remotely flammable in that corner it might have ignited.

  It took me another four tries to make the rune again. This time, I wanted to add the rune sealant. I had no brush. I didn’t even know the materials for a brush. I realized this after I filled my palm with conjured sealant. Luckily, my ever-present companion came to my rescue. Ink turned himself into a brush. It was a very crude brush with a head that looked like it was made directly from the cord of my old coin sack and a rolled leather tube for a handle, but it was a brush.

  “Woah, bud that’s super impressive. You just felt my need and did it?”

  Proud trill

  “Have you ever seen a brush before?”

  negative trill

  “It’s super good for a first shot. Let’s try it out.”

  Rune sealant is very forgiving. I could have finger-painted the stuff on. It knew the inherent magical properties of the rune and just coated the edges. I took a close look. I knew what the original stone looked like, and this was pretty close. It was test time.

  The first thing I noticed was a different mana signature. The rune was still there, but this one had that same ‘more solid’ feeling that I had felt before on better objects. I realized that the first one was leaking mana like a sinking ship. This one? Like a ship with a pin hole at the water line. I pushed a little mana into it, not bridging the gap to trigger it, but enough to top up, filling a glass if you were.

  When I was satisfied, I bridged the gap and tossed it into the same corner. I almost landed in the exact same spot. The results were markedly different. The first truly was a kiddie firework compared to the incendiary grenade in the corner. Hot sparks and flames erupted from the rock for a good twenty seconds before disappearing without a trace.

  I immediately made four more. Mostly because after the fourth one I was getting antsy. I was a bout to send a mental note to Ink when he dipped out ahead of the message. Little dude was smart and was now more than willing to let me roast my own chestnuts. I did a quick pro and con on whether to hold the stone as I tore it apart or have it sit at the edge of my aura’s effective range. Both had merit in control vs getting burnt debate. In the end, I went with control as the room could deal with me burning.

  The destruction process was every bit as touch and go as I anticipated, more than once I felt I was going to have to toss the stone before it went poof or worse, boom. In the end, I succeded on my first try, for once. I felt the knowledge seep into the depths of my brain. With the knowledge gained having the familiar feeling of missing a critical piece of the puzzle. I had a feeling what that piece was and that were it not for the lack of potential, it would be my next skill.

  I was fine with this. I knew I would have enough mana to create one in a sitting as it stood. I could put in a little effort to create two in just a little more time. I held off on creating more for no other reason than I was bored and needed a break for my mind. With that stood up and set out for the door. Ink, aware of the plan, had me garbed up and ready to go before I could grab the handle. The little guy barely even squeaked during the teleport as I appeared in the Room of Choices and was instantly face-to-face with an irate Mord.