“I won’t make anything that would hurt the birds,” I replied, hesitant to accept the quest. “But I will gladly make something to chase them away. Crows are smart birds. After some time, they’ll stop coming at all.”

“Like you said,” the man replied, one eye closed as a bit of smoke blew back and made him tear up a bit, “they are smart. Smart enough to figure out simple scarecrows are nothing to be afraid of, ya? I don’t care how you do it, but make sure it works and will work for a long time.”

“You don’t have to worry about that—” I started replying as I mentally selected ‘Yes’ on the quest prompt, but Kai interrupted me.

“Yeah, Brie can take care of it easily!” he said enthusiastically.

“Oh, where are my manners?” The man extended his right hand after wiping it on his apron. “I am Jaha. Pleasure to meet you, Brie.”

I shook his hand and smiled at him for the two seconds it lasted. He then retrieved his hand and extended it to Kai instead, with an even wider smile. Kai’s hand was lost between the man’s thick fingers but he shook all the same.

“And I am Magaer,” Kai said, in a loud steady voice.

“Like the one from the Elysian tales, ya?” Jaha asked.

“Yes!” Kai replied with excitement. “You know Magaer’s tales as well?”

“It’s part of the job I guess, ya?” Jaha replied. “Nice to meet both of you.”

“Nice meeting you too, Mister Jaha,” I said, and continued with my next question before he had time to complain about calling him ‘Mister’. “Is there a workshop I can use?”

“Sure,” he replied, and took a large bite of his bread. “Next to the stables, there’s a little woodworker’s shop. You can use it. Come I’ll show you.”

The heavy-set man led us to a small room, which had all the necessary tools for creating and fixing wooden furniture, closets and the like.

“This looks perfect, Mister Jaha,” I said, already scanning the room for what I might need for this magical scarecrow.

“Don’t let me keep you then, ya?” he replied. “I’ll be in the kitchen. Let me know once you’re finished and we can talk payment.”

“Sounds good,” I replied, reaching out to pick up a long wooden bar which would serve as the spine of my creation.

Seeing that I had already started working on crafting his request, Jaha lit the room’s magical lamps and left us to work. I had already formulated a plan of how the scarecrow would look like and how it would work. And while he couldn’t use mana, I thought of letting Kai in on my plan so he would be able to help me in other ways. Certainly, this would mostly be about giving him tasks so that he would feel helpful, but it didn’t mean he would not accelerate the process as well.

“Kai, we need a high cross, identical to the ones normal scarecrows are placed upon,” I told him.

“No problem,” he replied, and started searching for the wooden bars and beams which could serve this purpose. “I’ll find what we need and I’ll nail them together.”

I wasn’t sure how easy it would be for him to use a hammer and nails but it was something he needed to find out for himself. Normally, back in Elysia, the nails would be driven in using mana, but this was a whole new world for Kai to learn about. I continued explaining my plan while searching for what I needed.

“I’m going to use this piece of wood,” I said, “as the spine of our scarecrow. I won’t need any more for the limbs. I think a little wobbly unnatural movement will serve as a better deterrent for the crows. What do you think?”

“Well, it depends what you’ll use as the limbs,” Kai replied, as he compared two similar beams of wood.

“I’ll use garments,” I answered. “I’ll wrap garments around the spine and then magically bind them to work as legs and arms. We don’t actually need a head, do we?”

“I don’t think so,” he said, with a smile. “A head wouldn’t be necessary for driving birds away.”

I nodded and started putting garments down on the workbench in front of me. Once I had enough, I wrapped the thickest of them around the stick and cast a 4-word cantrip which would bind them there.

Name : Matter Merge

School of Magic : Transmutation

Verbal Components : 4 words

Somatic Components : None

Material Component : None

HP Consumed : 0

MP Consumed : 0

Divine Mana Consumed : 120

Range : Touch

Casting Time : 3 seconds

Precondition : None.

Description : Magically bind two solid materials together. The binding is as strong as the weaker of the two materials involved and lasts for 30 days.

I did the same thing four more times for the garments which would serve as arms and legs until the items on the bench resembled a humanoid when laid down.

The spell I needed to cast now would be an animation one. I thought of what I had learned over the past year from the various books I’d read in our chest-home and ultimately decided on a version of the one I had previously used to animate the surveillance parrot.

Name : Living Object

School of Magic : Transmutation

Verbal Components : 32 words

Somatic Components : Simple

Material Component : None

HP Consumed : 0

MP Consumed : 0

Divine Mana Consumed : 1,600

Range : Touch

Casting Time : 300 seconds

Precondition : None.

Description : Makes an inanimate object magically come to life. The object will be able to move as long as the necessary limbs are provided for motor function. The object will follow a single command and perform it to the best of its, abilities for 10 minutes. The object can either be bound to a specific location in which case it will not exceed a radius of 900 feet from it once activated.

The spell needed just five minutes of continuous casting so it was not too taxing on my body. As soon as it was finished, I gave our new little garment scarecrow golem its order. It should scare away birds from the crops.

Before activating it, I needed to get it to its anchor—the place it would go to rest—as well as the the area it would work in. I didn’t want my creation to run around the whole southern continent, scaring off birds. Additionally, the animation spell I had just cast would only last for ten minutes this time.

I looked at Kai and saw he had just finished nailing together a rather large cross, complete with a smaller step for the crow to climb up on, that looked perfectly usable, if a little crooked. Straightness was not necessary for our purpose.

Kai wouldn’t be able to carry the cross alone, but I was more than happy to help him, especially since he’d proved to be such great help. And so, together, we moved the cross into the middle of the fields.

“Kai, can you please bring the little golem here as well?” I asked him.

He ran back to the workshop and as soon as he left, I cast another spell in preparation.

Name : Soft Ground Hole

School of Magic : Transmutation

Verbal Components : 32 words

Somatic Components : None

Material Component : None

HP Consumed : 0

MP Consumed : 0

Divine Mana Consumed : 6,400

Range : Touch

Casting Time : Instant

Precondition : None.

Description : Opens a hole in the ground sized according to the caster but no larger than 2ft. on each dimension.

Instantaneous spells always consumed bigger amounts of mana but this was the only spell I knew to do the job. Following that, I cast the telekinetic spell to raise the cross and placed it into the hole, securing it with a similar cantrip to compress the ground around it. By the time I’d finished, Kai had returned from the workshop with the pile of garments on a stick.

“Making the animation permanent will need a high purity stone,” I said, as soon as I laid out the anchor and area of effect for the scarecrow. “I’ll use one of the rubies for now. I think we have quite a good stash of them, right?”

“Right,” Kai agreed. “You haven’t really experimented with magical crafting requiring precious stones yet, so our stash has grown even larger than it was when we left Nara.”