Jul 17 Wednesday, it's been a little over two weeks since my meeting with Celestia and she's sent me a letter, mostly about the research I gave her and some suggestions for books to read. and oddly enough a few really mundane things, she asked me what my favorite food was, I didn't really know how to answer that, so I just sent a letter back answering all her questions, even the food one, and thanked her for the book suggestions.

I mean what else am I supposed to do? Not answer the ruler of the country I live in when she sends a guard to your door with a letter and a request for a response, I wrote a letter before giving it to the guard, the letter also had a mailing address to send letters or packages too, but after that I got back to my plan for today.

I'm going to be doing some enchanting and experimenting, that's why I'm heading to the markets today, I'm going to go gem shopping, unlike last time I'm not looking for a large high-quality gem but several smaller ones at least that's the plan, to explain why I need to explain how linked enchanting works.

When you enchant something with a spell, you're essentially binding it to the object of your choosing, this process doesn't leave any physical markings on the object itself, the only difference is the magic being bound to the object, a good example of what I'm talking about is my stove, the metal ring that heats up what your cooking is enchanted with and how much heat it gives is controlled by a metal dial.

But how are the metal plate and dial connected? There's nothing behind the dial itself and the plate can be removed for cleaning so how does the dial control the heating plate and how is it powered? The power is easy to answer as when you enchant something the number of spells you put on any one object is limitless.

Any object can hold as far as I know unlimited spells, but if you did do that it would be both pointless and dangerous as while you can put as many spells as possible on an object powering them is another matter entirely, most objects depending on what they are made of can handle different amounts of magic and if you exceed that limit the object will start to break down and self destruct.

But back to how the stove is powered, enchantments can use any type of magic as a power source, so the enchantments on the stove are made to absorb magic from around it And this will work with most basic spells but for something more complex there is simply not enough magic to fuel the enchantment in the environment, so most use gems because for their size they have the best weight to energy capacity.

On to the other question of how the plate and dial are connected, well, that's where the linking spell comes in, the spell itself is fairly complex but still easy enough for me to cast, the spell's effect is to link two or more enchantments together, the spell itself only acts as an on and off switch with varying degrees of both as an example if 0 is off and 1 is on I could use either of these or any in between.

The stove has an off position that being 1 and several other options being so if I wanted something halfway in between I'd use 0.5 this means that you can control the enchantments output to a limited degree, and the spell can also be linked to as many enchantments as you like but maintaining the link takes a very small amount of magic, the more links you have the higher the magic drain and if it exceeds what the environment has, or the power source can provide the links will degrade and fail.

As I walk through the markets, I walk to the edge and find what I'm looking for, sitting on a mat in between two stalls I see a gray diamond dog surrounded by several bags as they sort gems, one thing I've found surprising is that most ponies don't buy from the diamond dogs.

Apparently they are considered untrustworthy rumors of them being thieves because of other packs stealing from travelers, much like the show although I haven't heard anything about kidnappings.

As I approach the diamond dog, they look at me for a moment before some recognition shows on their face, "Hey I remember you, you bought a large ruby a few months back."

"Yes, I came to see if you had a few small rubies, preferably cut like a cube?"

They start looking through their bags and after a moment placing three small rubies half an inch in size on the mat, "These are all I have for rubies, but I do have more sapphires in this cut if that will work?"

"Let me see" They nod before going through their bags again before placing six more sapphires all the same size as the rubies.

"How much for each?"

"Twenty each but I'll drop it to eighteen if you buy three."

"Make it fifteen and I'll buy them all" Their face morphs looking shocked at my offer.

"Deal!" I nod and pass him one hundred and thirty-five bits in total and wait as they count them and after a moment they nod, and hand me my new gems, "Pleasure doing business with you," They have a large smile on their face.

"Same to you."

I spend some time looking through the markets and after a while I find what I'm looking for, a small knife made for wood carving, after that, I started walking back to the library to return to my room, after making it to my room I place the gems on my desk and move over to my window, I take a pot that I emptied earlier and also move it to my desk, I also grab a blood leaf tea seed.

As I sit in front of my desk, I place the seed inside the soil of the pot and start to grow it, but unlike the other times I've done this I try to control how it grows by forcing it to not grow any leaves and trying to grow the main trunk of the bush as thick as I can.

After a few minutes I have a weird-looking bush, it has no leaves or branches, only a single stick two inches thick and a foot long, I use my new knife and cut the stick at its base before moving the pot back to the window, I move over to my sink and hold the stick over it and focus using my control over plants to try and remove as much water from the stick as I can trying to dry the wood out.

This process is difficult as it requires complete concentration on my task and after two hours, I'm finally done, as for why I'm going through all this trouble is that to run my experiments I'm going to need a material that can conduct a decent amount of magic and the easiest is the blood leaf tea as the high content of life magic makes the plant strong and its wood durable.

It also means that I can just make more if I destroy what I'm using, as I take my newly dried stick over to my desk, I use my knife to remove any bark on the wood leaving only a solid wood stick, the wood itself is a light color much like cedar with thin strips of red going through the woodgrain much like veins, I start by cutting a small one-inch piece off from the stick with my knife.

This takes me half an hour and after that I start slowly whittling it down over the next few hours, as the sun sets and my room is engulfed in darkness, I grab a candle and light it with the candle flame spell before continuing my work, after my carving I'm left with a small flat wood square as close as I could get it to match one of the gems in size.

After finishing this I grab one of the rubies and start enchanting it to hold magic along with a spell to absorb the magic from the environment around it placing one and then the other and finally a spell to activate the link when you tap the ruby, this spell is very simple it's only prepose being too open and close a link when you give it the desired input, which I've set to tapping the ruby two times, after a few minutes I'm done, and I have a ruby with a small glowing center, this crystal holds much less magic than the large one I have but that's ok I don't need much magic for this.

After I finish the ruby, I start on my piece of what I'm calling bloodwood, I'm going to enchant it with a light spell I've modified for this enchantment, the normal light spell uses symbols and numbers, but this one uses only one symbol as a base while the rest is just numbers so its magic cost is almost half the original cost while being twice as bright.

I enchant the piece of wood with my new light spell and test it for a moment, the spells light easily overpowering the candle on my desk, after making sure it works as intended, I start casting the linking spell and after drawing the runes I draw the number 1 inside a blank spot in the matrix to set the parameters for power output, the spell creates a small white string made from magic coming from the center of the matrix that with some concentration I can move, I move one end to the ruby and the other end to the small wood piece and after a moment the link settles into place before vanishing.

I wait a few minutes for the link to stabilize and start pushing magic into the ruby filling it halfway and taking most of my remaining magic, as I set the ruby down on my desk, I place the wood piece next to it, and after tapping the ruby twice I open the link between them allowing the magic to transfer into the wood piece.

After a second the wood piece starts to glow decently bright lighting up my room in white light, I check to see if there are any problems, and seeing none, I place the wood piece under my bags placing them on top of the wood piece to block the light, my main experiment here is to see if I can make a magic light last for several hours.

The reason being that most in Equestria like I did tonight use candles to light their homes at night, this is because while the light spell isn't hard it does take a surprising amount of magic to maintain mostly because it uses so many symbols in the spell, this means that buying a magic light that can recharge and still lasts for a few hours takes a large and expensive crystal and is out of reach of most ponies.

But a smaller one like the ones I bought today would be while still expensive for most ponies it would be within reach, my hope is to make it last a few hours at least so it can be used by anypony for lighting If I'm right and my new spell has enough of an efficiency boost to let the small gem last a few hours.

But for now that's tomorrow's problem, I'm taking my shower and going to bed.

Author's Note

Thanks for reading my mess of a story