Chapter 2

The birds are loud in my evergreen forest I found out the next morning. It was time to get started anyway. First things first it's time for breakfast. The forest should have some dead wood for another fire, so I start there. A five-minute spell gives me a nice fire. Now for the menu. A fresh slab of bear and hardtack bread. While I wait on the fire to burn down some, I'll make a temporary stove. First, I cast the dirt spell and continue feeding mana to it forming a round semi-circle of dirt with a flat top. The next step in my stove building plan requires me to break out my book of basic spells. There is a spell that turns dirt to rock. It takes four tries to be able to successfully cast. The extremely long cast time that I currently have that means the fire has burned down to cooking coals while I've been working on the stove. I begin by putting the coals in the semi-circle of stone and letting the stone heat up. This takes some time, so I think I'll make a list of the task that I want to complete today.

• Make the cave more secure

• Figure out a bathroom

• Start reading the book about how to be an Enchanter

• Try my first Enchantment

• Make a water source

I finished making my to-do list for the day, but it wasn't in any order. I couldn't wait to try my hand at enchanting so the first thing I want to do is just that. As fast as possible I cook and scarf down my food. I open the Enchanting basics book and give it a read or at least the first two chapter which is enough to get me started. Enchanting works a little different for each enchanter. It is the most versatile magic available because every Enchanter must create a unique enchanting language. This means that it is only limited by the Enchanter's imagination. For example, if I want to create a rune for fire, I must create a symbol and pore my knowledge and intent into the rune and essentially burn that rune in my mind. Once that is down every time, I think of fire the new rune would now replace that word in my thoughts. At that point, it is a matter of using my engraver wand to place the fire symbol on an object.

The first five symbols in my enchanter language will be water, force, source, output, transform. They will be my building blocks. Any enchantment that doesn't require an enchanter to use will need a source of power. The enchantment will need that source defined before it will know to draw from that. The power sources could be cheaper one-use mana stones, rarer rechargeable mana stones, and from the item itself. The difference between using an item as the power source and a mana stone is the life of the enchantment. If I was to create an enchantment on a stone and fill the stone with mana it would only hold enough for a few days of use at most. There are some high-quality materials that are the exception to this rule. Now I will work off enchanting basic items with no mana stones for my use in building my new land up.

It will take about a week I estimate to engrave my new symbols into my mind space. I plan to meditate on them at least first thing in the morning and before sleep at night. It will hopefully get faster at making new symbols once I get the skill down. I start on securing my cave next. My plan is simple. I just use my slow spellcasting to make the entrance to the cave just large enough for me to walk through. I also make it six-foot-thick and turn all that into stone. At night I'll close in the door with stone. The last part of security will be to carve a hole for venting overnight so that I don't run out of air after the door is closed. While I was working in my cave, I want to make a better sleeping place. I raise some dirt and form a bed. I cast the spell to make the bed into stone and I gather the softest leaves to sleep on for now.

I'm making good progress on my list, but it is past time for lunch. I sit down and just eat travel food again. It's about time for the bathroom so I start with a simple hole, stone bench, and a stone little wall for protection. It will work for now. Once I start enchanting, I will be able to improve all my basic needs. The last thing that I can accomplish today is getting some type of water for basic needs. I just build a square tank of stone and I plan to enchant a basic rock with the water symbol and with the symbol with no instructions it will just gush water out until the rock runs out of mana.

I settle down for the evening and meditate on my language. The sooner I get a symbol engraved in my mind space the sooner I can start enchanting.