Sebastian spent a couple weeks studying the various books on dead languages in an effort to decide which would be easiest to learn. He decided that he rather hated learning new languages, even though he had made some minor progress in a few of them. If I only really need to have phrases or chants that help me focus on the spell I am casting I guess I don’t really need more than those phrases. I think I’ll just mix what I know together into a godawful hodgepodge language and then make up words to use for chants. I bet that will annoy Owdel to no end.

Sebastian smirked at the thought of Owdel’s expression upon seeing Sebastian cast spells in a horrible mashup of the languages he was told to learn one of. He had somewhat lost that sense of awe and respect for the old mage. He had rapidly devolved from all powerful magus, to grumpy old man in Sebastian’s mind. He was still respectful and attentive when Owdel deemed it prudent to teach him about something, but those moments were few and far between, and the rest of the time Owdel mostly ignored him.

Sitting in a tattered chair in the workshop, Sebastian had finished putting the final touches on what he figured would be a passable light spell. He had caught on to the little trap Owdel had set for him in giving him that specific book, it taught you about light yes, and gave explanations about how to create it with magic. What it conveniently left out was the additions you would need to make it a persistent effect, which meant that if Sebastian had simply thrown a bunch of mana into it in hopes of it lasting long enough to last the four-hour minimum set by Owdel, the spell would have spent all of that extra mana creating light all at once. Effectively causing a brilliant flare of light that would blind him and then be out.

The only problem he had left was that Owdel had never taught him how to consciously access his mana. When he asked him, he had been told to figure it out, and that any mage worth teaching didn’t need to be taught. Which Sebastian assumed was basically a roundabout way of saying he didn’t feel like it, since it literally made no sense at all. He closed his eyes and focused on how it had felt all those times he had been drained by the test sphere, he felt the warmth well up in his chest and realized that he had been worried about it for nothing. It felt as natural as breathing.

He started to softly chant the word he had chosen for light, focusing his will on creating a small ball that would emit light at a continuous level as long as it had mana, then nearly lost his focus when he felt the warmth flood down his arm and through his palm without any effort on his part, it was like the magic wanted to be out in the world. After a short while he stopped the flow with a thought, his mana instantly reacting to his will and the moment the mana stopped flowing into it, the spell was complete.

Sebastian opened his eyes to see if it had worked or if he had imagined it. The first thing he saw was a hideous face made out of shimmering light floating a couple inches from him, and he leaped backwards with a yelp, tumbling over the chair he had been in and tumbling to the floor. He would have continued in his attempts to flee from the thing if not for the sudden peals of laughter he heard from Owdel across the room. The monstrous face flickered out as Owdel laughed.

“Oh, you should have seen your face boy, best thing I’ve seen in years!” Owdel finally managed to say, “Still, have to give credit where credit is due, you did a good job on that spell. It didn’t vanish when your focus broke, which means you managed to work out how to get a persistent effect. It also didn’t blind you, so you worked out how to set a limit on how much light it emits at once as well.”

Sebastian wasn’t sure how he felt about getting compliments from someone that had just humiliated him so thoroughly, but decided to work out a scheme for revenge later when he spotted the floating ball of light he had summoned. He reached out to touch it, but his fingers went right through it. In a flash of inspiration, he channeled some mana into his hand and tried again, it somehow allowed him to move it around with his hand, but he couldn’t feel it. He shifted it around a bit experimentally, before suddenly grinning to himself and winging it at Owdel.

Owdel hadn’t really expected that, and didn’t manage to react before the ball struck him square in the forehead, doing literally nothing at all as it went through his head and then stuck against the wall of the tower. He laughed again, then said, “This is why we ward the towers we live in boy, helps keep magic experiments from getting out. Can you imagine what the townsfolk would have thought of a flying ball of light rocketing out into the wilderness?”

Sebastian figured it would probably be viewed as Owdel smiting some unfortunate monster from the tower for some unfathomable reason and be immediately disregarded. He wasn’t entirely sure exactly how long it would last, but his estimate based on how much mana he had put in it was around an hour or two. Since he was going to be here waiting to see how accurate his guess was he opted to ask Owdel about enchanting now that he had learned how to use magic.

“So how do I enchant things? I mean now that I know how to cast spells, it’s just a matter of time spent learning and refining my knowledge to build up the number of spells I can cast. So the next big thing to learn is how to put the spells into items isn’t it?”

Owdel’s expression went sour at the reminder that Sebastian wanted to be an enchanter, but answered anyways, “I’ll admit to having been curious about it before, but found it unpleasant. The best way to explain it is that when you shape a spell it wants to be released into the world, to change its surroundings to match the pattern it was given by your mind. When you enchant something, you force that spell to embed itself into an item. The process will cause the spellform and the item to change in order to fit into the item in question.

“No, I don’t know why you have to force the enchantment when you made the spell specifically for putting into an item, and your intent is supposed to guide the magic process, nor do I know why the items and spells tend to change slightly. Don’t care either.” Owdel waved dismissively and stood up. “It’s getting late boy, I’m going to sleep.”

Sebastian watched him tromp out, bemused and pensive at the same time. He was tempted to just immediately try to enchant something to produce light, but Owdel was right that it was getting late, and to be perfectly honest he was exhausted. So he instead turned his thoughts to various ideas he had for enchanted items that should be possible with what he had learned so far as he made his way back to the third floor and his bed.

The next morning, he didn’t make it past the library. He had intended to eat breakfast before he started planning out his enchantments, but couldn’t help himself. He had a pile of notes he had jotted down about possibilities and different ways to trigger items that he had found in some of the books, but so far his favorite shelf was rapidly becoming the one where Owdel had stored an esoteric collection of books produced by the Ancients. They were written in an eerily consistent hand, on unusually thin paper, and bound in a way he couldn’t really figure out.

While that had bothered him at first, he rapidly became more interested in what they contained. He had found one book that looked interesting titled ‘Dungeon Master’s Guide,’ but was disappointed when he realized it was actually about an old game the Ancients used to play. He had thumbed through the rest of it after realizing that, and froze when he found a list of magic items. Sure, it was fictional, and meant for a game, but it was a list of ideas for enchanted items. The random number values and ridiculous coin costs aside, he could see definite value in the ideas themselves.

Well, some of them anyways. I mean who would actually want an outrageously flashy helmet that might explode if it gets hit by fire? Wearing an explosive hat seems like the height of stupidity. Still though, he saw definite promise in many of the ideas, robes that let you climb walls was pretty neat sounding, even if he figured it would be better on a ring or bracelet since climbing a wall wearing robes sounded tedious, rings that let you fall slowly, wands that shot offensive spells of all types, dancing weapons that floated and fought on their own. The book was worth several times its weight in gold as far as Sebastian was concerned.

He realized that he was procrastinating after a while, delaying creating his first enchanted item out of nervousness. Sure his morning had been productive, but he knew that he could do research any time he cared to, none of it would matter if he wasn’t able to enchant anything. Sighing, he stood and stretched, then went to the kitchen and threw a quick sandwich together. While he wolfed that down, he went outside and searched the ground near the tower. He needed something to enchant, and since he was mostly just aiming to test his ability to actually enchant things he wasn’t all that particular about what it was.

As he finished off the sandwich he grabbed a flat disk-shaped stone and turned it in his hand a few times. Eh, good enough I suppose. Sure wish Owdel had been willing to tell me more about how to do this. At least I can always fall back to being a healer if I end up being terrible at enchanting. He went back inside and up to the workshop while thinking over a light enchantment for the stone he had grabbed.

Settling into a chair, Sebastian stared at the stone in his hand while he built the spell in his mind. He kept it simple, if it worked the stone would emit light as long as it had mana in it, with an upper limit on how much light it could emit at once, so he would hopefully be able to charge it and have it work for a while before he had to charge it again instead of it requiring a constant feed of mana. As soon as he felt the spell was ready he pushed it towards the stone. It promptly lit up as the spell, instead of embedding into the stone, was simply cast on it like normal.

Sebastian grit his teeth and tried again. Then again. On his fourth try he forced the spellform into the stone with raw willpower, guiding it the whole way. When the spell took hold in the stone, and started pulling on his mana to finalize itself he realized what Owdel must have meant when he said it was uncomfortable. The normal warm heat he was accustomed to was an agonizing white-hot fire that blazed across his chest and down his arm to flow into the stone. Strange esoteric runes that resembled nothing he could remember seeing formed on his hand and fingers, then flowed across the stone, which was shifting in his hand. The runes and shifting he only barely noticed though, as the violent torrent of magic flowing through him filled his mind with pain and fire. He tried to stop the process as soon as it started to hurt, but the magic refused to respond to his will, which terrified him.

Before he passed out from the pain, Sebastian’s last conscious thought was that maybe being a healer wouldn’t be so bad after all, and that he really wanted to set Owdel’s beard on fire for saying that this was merely unpleasant.