The Pentagram

Hi. So you've caught up to this day of the story, yes? Good.

Now for me to tell you of the third day, but not of a thaumaturge's might, but an enchanter's power...

I figured that if I'm going to stay in this area I might as well learn more magic, as it will be invaluable to me, the NEET, as I did not have renewable source of food or a proper shelter. I opened my book, and delved into elemental magics.

The art of the elemental magics is a long forgotten one, related to thaumaturgy. It's power is control over the five elemental magics, which are fire, water, earth, air, and chaos. The problem with controlling the elements is not the complicated gestures and chants of thaumaturgy, rather, it is that each of them has it's nature which is hard to resist for young mages, who can be consumed by the element and become an elemental. These natures are collectively known as the Cinquain. The natures are: Fire wants to burn, water wants to flow, air wants to move, earth wants to hold, and chaos wants to change. Because of this, you cannot use fire magic to put out a fire unless you are an incredibly powerful mage, you must use one of the others. But earth magic and air magic in moderation can cause the fire to burn hotter. You cannot use water magic to make water still, you must use air magic, as earth would displace the water, making it move faster and fire would either boil the water or would be put out. You cannot use air magic to still air for the same reasons, you must use earth to compress it. And earth cannot be split by earth, only moved, to split earth you need water or air, or you can melt it with fire. Each element has a counter-weight, which can help bring the element under control. Fire and water. Air and earth. Chaos and soul. The elements can go into alternate forms, such as ice, steam, lightning, and anything connected. They also can connect with less obvious things, like water and healing, earth into life, fire into prophecy, air into illusion, and chaos into creation. In all magic, there is an exchange of power such as fire for volume in thaumaturgy. Here, it is energy for motion and creation. You can change something's shape, but not it's essential nature. Power comes from imbalance, control from balance. The balance is a balance between knowledge and potential. And to boost elemental magic, you can eat sand or rocks for earth, blood for air, matches for fire, ice for water. Again, like thaumaturgy, energy can be drawn from any source. But be warned. The magic of sorcery (pg. 13), when it runs out of internal magical energy and is used, will draw upon the soul and life force, which can make chaos magic unstable. To channel these powerful magics, you need only to focus and feel for the energy running through it all.

"Hmm..." I murmured, coming up with an idea.

I fingered my pentacle, deep in thought. I dropped the pentacle, opened my eyes wide, lifted my head up high, and smirked. I focused and drew on the huge repositories of elemental energies around me. I channeled the power, displacing the water out of the castles moat and into the river. I ripped the stone out of the ground beneath it, revealing a cave deep underneath the castle, which had a glint of crystal in it, but I ignored that. I grabbed what furniture and books were in the castle, and gathered it by the other resources. I began trudging on towards the center of the forest, which I felt via earth magic, and prepared for creating my new base of operations.

I reached the area, but something made my magic go wild.

I reached the center of the forest, and ripped the trees out of the area and joined them with the ones around the area, creating a natural barrier. I ripped up the dirt right inside the barrier, and the stone. I carried the stone to the rest I was holding, and diverted water from the river into it, allowing in some of the dangerous creatures that live in this part of the river before sending the excess back.

I created a hill with the dirt in the center, and a stone path up to the center circle, where I formed foundations and a doorframe. I took wood from the trees and formed charcoal with fire magic, and grew tendrils of wood out of other branches to hold it, making torches. I set the torches alight and formed a stone sconce to place one in above the doorframe. I brought together stone and wood, and made a drawbridge, drawing on my earth and fire magic to make metal chains. I made a door and placed it in the door frame, then quickly put together more sconces and put them on stone pillars along the bridge. I had taken all my wood from a growing hole in the thick tree layer that surrounded the area, and I now chose more wood which I used to make it into a gate. It was lined up with my drawbridge and path, so it was symmetrical for now.

I began using more wood, finishing the space I wanted for the gate, and used the majority of the stone to build up a tower to a certain height, with at three different floors, three different holes for adding on. The floors were made of wood, and the very top of the tower was wider than the rest. I decided all the roofs I would make would me wood on the inside and stone on the outside, and roofed the top room.

I used the rest of my sconces and torches except twelve of each lighting up the tower, and I brought together my remaining stone, sconces, torches, and wood making a stairway up the tower and three short, roofed stairways, which connected to three new rooms. I took sand that had come with the water and made it into glass jars using fire magic, and hermetically sealed all my herbs and spices from my components pouch into them. Another room, I left empty. And the last of the three new rooms I put a stone circle for a fire.

I took the bookshelves I had stolen and curved them, placing them through my tower, and put the bed I stole from what I think was Luna's room in the very top. I used air magic to create an illusion of carpet in my room, and made it feel like it too, and then used air magic to theme the whole place after the night, seeing how the night is 'magical' so to speak and I infused the energy into the mage tower.

I was in my room after finishing the illusionary decorations, and I stumbled forward, slinging my components pouch onto the floor and stumbling into the bed. The last thing I noticed before drifting into sleep from letting too much magic out too fast was how much magic that took, and how it's incredible that I could do that.

Luna was spying on my dreams, and I did not know it at the time, but that hardly matters. What matters is that she saw my impressive display of magic, and me stealing from her. That much magic before passing out made me a powerful magician indeed, and stealing those meant to her that I was not afraid of breaking the law.

Luna cantered into the Royal Armory, checking for her sister while hiding her worried air expertly, hiding how worried she was from the guards and servants that were trotting around the castle, performing their daily duties. She saw her, donning her golden battle armor instead of her daily attire, so she had a breastplate instead of a peytral, a helm instead of a crown, and the rest of her barding instead of shoes or leaving it bare.

"Sister, we spied upon the Archmage's dreams once more and we saw a memory of him creating an entire mage tower from his surroundings and magic, covering it inside and out with illusions and then collapsing to sleep, upon which the dream looped itself!" exclaimed Luna, worry clear in her tone without servants around to hear.

"This is troubling news, yet also a blessing." stated Celestia, a smile tracing her lips. "He appears to know only the idea of the magic, and otherwise is using only instinct and the idea of what he wishes to have."

"Indeed." frowned Luna. "Indeed..."

I woke up and stretched. It had been an exhausting effort to make this place, one I won't repeat anytime soon. Those torches won't have to be replaced, it looks like part of the magical exhaustion came from accidentally infusing everything with magic. It should make those torches feed of of local magic like the illusions and keep this place from being to heavily damaged over time. I used earth magic to get some wood inside, and divided the enormous room at the top into my bedroom, bathroom and a kitchen.

"Now for the hard part..." I muttered to myself.

I focused on the energy as the book had said, and I released a pulse of earth magic energy, which acts like sonar for anything with lots of earth magic in it.

I felt the energy bouncing back and I felt gems. A completely, totally, ridiculous, amount of gems, of every kind, every variation of each kind, and even gems that had other types of magic in them. But some of them were already in my tower, supercharged with raw energy. I opened my eyes, and I stared shifting the rock. Some rock was ejected and made hollow tubes, and the dirt mound underneath the tower was hollowed out and supported by stone, and all the gems were put in there, I threw the gems into the deep moat around my tower, and raced down the stairs, reshaping part of the floor into a hidden trapdoor and hollowed out part of the floor to create a ladder.

I summoned up metal and infused it with raw energy as I had done yesterday, remembering the sensation of wild magic, and sand from the bottom of the moat, forming a tank. I took the gems, and started infusing more and more energy into them until they melted, and then I placed them in the supercharged tank. I brought up graphite and I shaped it into pipes, which I put all throughout the building where I had hollowed out the limestone walls. I had all this, and then the mistake hit me- how did I expect to get the water in the building, warm, and pure?

With a sigh, I opened my book.

Enchantment

The Maxim of Persistence: Perfection is eternal.

The Art of Enchantment is the art of perfect ritual. Through the flawless performance of often insanely complicated rituals, magical artifacts can be created that will, if not otherwise destroyed, last literally forever.

Each magical ritual consists of a number of steps, each of which must be performed correctly, with a very small margin of error, for the ritual to succeed. A step in a magical ritual can be simple “ring a 3-inch gong made of brass hanging from a silver chain, using an iron hammer”, or complicated “Douse the nearly-completed sword in the blood of a women born on the night of the rising of the Great Comet, and raised for twenty-nine years on a diet of millet and honey, who is wearing an ermine robe trimmed by …. Etc.” The more powerful the effect added to the spell by a given step, the more complicated, time-consuming, and expensive the step tends to be. Many steps in advanced rituals involve more than one person, and might require precious metals, troupes of dancers, the position of the stars, and any number of esoteric conditions.

Each part of the ritual also requires an incantation by one or more trained magicians, perfectly pronounced or sung, in perfect timing and pitch. Needless to say, Magic is a performing art at its base, and few have both the magical talent and the ability to master the precision and art necessary to advance in the craft.

Due to the strictures of the craft, Magicians tend to cluster into Orders, with large colonies of non-magical craftsmen devoted to supporting their endeavors. With the huge outlay in time, money, and effort that can go into the creation of a single magical item, such Mage Orders support their expensive activities by selling their created items, reserving only a portion of them for their own use. The items sold are incredibly expensive by normal standards, but since they last forever they are purchased nonetheless.

Three common rituals known to any beginning enchanter is to have an iron plate, five inches squared in both directions, carve an arrow into it, inlay it with quartz and sing a simple chant that goes like this: katéf̱thynsi̱s kíni̱si̱ tou káti pou angízei af̱tó. It will cause the plate to move anything that touches it at a constant speed, and if it is a liquid or gas, at a constant pressure. It is commonly used in Procolon as a conveyor belt or to pipe water. The another common one is a five inch square plate with a sun carved into it and inlaid with ruby. Then chant this: thermóti̱ta káti pou angízei af̱tó se mia spondylo̱tí̱ thermokrasía. It will make the plate heat anything that touches it to whatever it is adjusted to by someone merely touching the edge and saying a temperature and saying what measuring system is being used. It is typically used in water purification plants in whichever part of the plant they boil the water, and is also used by the richest people on stoves. The last one is a five square inch iron plate with an octagon carved into it and inlaid with sapphire. Then you chant this: droseró káti pou eínai gýro̱ apó af̱tó se mia spondylo̱tí̱ thermokrasía. It cools things around it at a modular temperature and is commonly used in industrial freezers.

"Huh." I said, my interest piqued. "So I could have a stove, refrigerator, and water system set up using magic? Then I might as well set it up. They aren't too expensive.

I quickly shaped the earth and obtained the iron, sapphire, ruby, and quartz and set to work.

I had made a refrigerator, stove, sink, toilet, another sink, and shower, and I was just finishing up the water tank.

"There..we...go!" I said. "Finally!" I sat down on the ground, panting a little from both physical and magical exertion.

I got up, climbed the ladder, opened the door and drawbridge, and started walking away. With a pulse of earth magic, closed them and started on my way.

I was walking back through the path I took when- lo and behold -a timber wolf pup jumped out in front of me. Made of actual wood. And it has vicious teeth and was drooling.

"Alright, just leave." I told it. "I don't want to hurt you." But to my surprise, the pup went up to me, whimpered, and licked my leg. I grabbed the little guy and he yipped happily. I reached into my bag and took out some of my meat, and I gave him a piece. He ate it, licked me, and went on his way.

I continued on, smiling a bit, until I found that the area that the timber wolf had come from and I had fought the Ursa Major. The whole area is darker and filled with mist, and I think I see a manticore in this?! I need to get out of here!

Unfortunately for me, when I turn around, a manticore looms in front of me. I focus on earth, air, fire, and water, and power in energy. The earth creates a fourth of a sphere around it, then water fills that up, it's sealed with air magic and the rest is filled with fire, boiling the water and boiling the manticore.

Shaking from fear, I picked up the corpse with magic, whose flesh was so thoroughly cooked that it fell of, along with the stinger and hair. I carried it back to my base and chopped all the meat up and set half of them out to dry, and putting the rest in the fridge.

I carried the entrails out, and the pup from earlier bounded up. I saved some of them for later and put them in the fridge. The dog followed me in, so I made it a food bowl and water bowl for him. I set them by my bed, and I went to sleep, preparing for the new day, hoping to rectify whatever I have caused.

Luna stared out at the night sky, ready to enter the astral plane, knowing that the creature would now be falling asleep. She turned back, and saw the circle that she and Celestia had drawn to send them both into the astral plane. She stepped into position.

"It is time." she said ominously.

They lower their heads and close their eyes, and begin charging their horns. They air is heavy with magical saturation. They release the spell, and are thrust onto the astral plane. It is time for battle.