JUL 21 Wednesday.

I feel a strong blow hit my side and knock out a little of my breath as Stone hits my armored side yet again and tries to knock me off balance while I defend with my greatsword.

My armor is better than metal at absorbing the blows and that has proven to be a small but unexpected advantage in a fight. My armor is also still made from living wood so I can simply regrow any damage, although it can take a decent amount of my magic to repair it because it's made from steel wood.

Stone has even asked about the armor, but I just told him it was from an Iron Oak and he doesn't seem to know much about plants, in the end, he just accepted that. I was pretty sure he knew I was hiding things, but he left it be and focused on our training. As I deflect another blow I move to the left quickly as a rock comes from behind me and I quickly move out of the way.

But even with all my practice Stone is one tough bastard, so with two swift blows he's able to knock me down and then ends our match. When I started using armor we agreed that if I got downed and if I couldn't get back up within ten seconds I would lose the match by default.

The reason for that rule is simple, in combat getting back up while in full plate armor is very time-consuming and leaves you open to attacks. So, if I can't get up fast enough I'm defeated, if I do get up we continue. I bang my armored hoof against my armored chest twice to signal an end to our match before the ten seconds are up, and Stone helps me stand up again.

"Good job with the blocking but you need to keep in mind those attack chains." He gives some advice while looking up at me a bit. As I've grown in skill, age, and size he's treated me less like a colt and more like an equal, although we're not really friends still we do have some trust in each other. "Still looks odd without the eyeholes, but I can't argue with the results." He smiles a little and taps the helmet.

I nod and take the helmet off to talk better, it's a small show of respect from me to the older stallion. "Agreed, but with how many things you throw at me I'd be ashamed if I didn-" I stop and move my head to the side as he throws a small pebble past my head from behind, it wouldn't have hurt much but I still rather not get hit. "If I didn't improve." I finish without skipping a beat and laugh a little as he smiles, this is as close to a joke as this rough bastard has.

He nods and puts away his old and battered wooden blade. "Don't get confident now, I can still give you a good thrashing Shade." He says this without humor but with a friendly tone. He is serious about any warning he ever gives, and I take it seriously. I give a firm nod in return while packing up my armor into my mostly empty saddlebags.

I emptied them for this and left my stuff at home. It takes a while to disassemble and pack them up properly and it's a little unwieldy, but after a few minutes, it's all packed away. "See you next week, Stone." I give him a simple farewell and he just nods back silently as I leave and quickly make my way through the streets.

I have plans so after a quick trip home to drop off my armor and take Entropy with me when I head to the library. I have a meeting with Avalon to continue our work and much like with Cadance things are progressing rather well. We've found the right runes and now it's just down to making the spells needed and building the actual prosthetic.

That first part is what we're going to be working on today. I stop my thoughts as I see Avalon waiting at a table in the library with a few books in front of him already. I smile a bit and realize he's not spotted me yet, so I walk up behind him silently. "Hey, how's it going? Find anything interesting?" I ask and can't help but chuckle a little as he jumps from my voice.

His head feathers pin back a bit and his head turns around to look at me while his body stays mostly forward facing. "Shade! S-sorry, you startled me." I smile at my friend's slightly timid tone and wave off the unneeded apology. "Um, well? I think I found a few types of wood that could work well." He perks up as he passes me a piece of paper with a small smile.

His head tracks me while his body stays still as I walk around the table and take the page from him. I always wondered what part of a griffon gave them that trait. The list has several woods but a few stand out as particularly useful, "Oak could be good, but definitely not pine, too weak even if it's lighter." I advise and pass the page back while Entropy looks at Avalon.

"Hello." Entropy has made something of a friendship with Avalon as he likes to draw her when we eat after our study sessions and she seems to like seeing the drawings. Avalon smiles at her while crossing Maple off of the list he gave me. Over time we've talked a lot about what material to use for this project but we're still narrowing it down.

I let Entropy sit on the table while I take out our own notes. "How has it been? It's been a few weeks, and if I remember the last time we talked you were complaining about some noble, or was it a merchant?" I just dive into small talk and flip open my own notebook.

He scratches the back of his head a little. "Well, I wouldn't say I was complaining..." I gave him an amused look in return and he just gave up after a moment. "Ok, maybe a little. But delivering to the Blue Bloods can be... Difficult." He admits and I'm surprised to hear that name.

I don't know much about the Blue Bloods, beyond Celestia complaining a little about the youngest member of the family, although that's only on rare occasions, he's already a headache for some it seems. I smile and hide my interest for some other day, their family can wait for another day. "Fine, just a bit, that's enough for my jokes to work," I admit in return and pass him one of my notebooks. "Here."

He opens the notebook with some curiosity and I watch as his eyes show more and more interest. I took some time to write down all the ways I could carve out the wooden limb, and how to do it himself. He looks back up at me a little confused. "Thanks, but... Well, I thought you were doing all the carving?"

I nod and try to not mislead him by accident. "Don't worry, I still am. But you'll need to know how to maintain and repair it yourself if needed." I reason and he regains his smile and looks at the instructions with renewed interest, we settle into a simple silence for a while and get to work on our project.

We've narrowed down the material we're going to use to some type of wood. Metal is more durable but far too expensive for Avalon and hard to get new parts in remote areas when anything inevitably breaks. Stone or bone are simply unsuitable, and ponies wouldn't really react well to the second one, which only really left the wood as an option.

We could have used magical wood, but that is still expensive for him along with being harder to acquire on his own. So, in the end, we decided to just embed gems in a limb of regular wood, and after our last meeting, I decided to try and teach him enough woodworking to make his own limb.

Ideally, I want him to know how to rebuild the entire thing on his own, even if it takes us longer it will be worth it to never have to worry about it on deliveries. After a while of us working and reading in silence occasionally broken by a few questions and ideas we come across, but eventually we switch to the more interesting part of our work, the spells.

"I. I think this is right. What do you think?" He passes me a drawing of a part of the spell matrix, specifically the matrix for the movement spell we're working on. He's not making an overly important part of the spell, just some of the math needed, and I make sure to double-check his work. Still, he has some skill in being a rune scribe and is slowly improving with time.

"It is, good job, you are doing well so far." I smile and encourage him, he has improved and did the math for this part of the spell well. He shows one of his bigger smiles and moves the page back to keep working on it. I decided to break the silence a little and try to start a conversation. "So, have you ever been to Griffonstone? I'm going to guess yes." I add with a little humor.

He stops and looks up from his work with a slightly raised brow. "Umm, yes. A few times actually, but not recently. Why do you ask?" He asked back while reading through the notebook. I gave him some more and took many notes for later study.

I shrug. "No real reason, I took a trip there for my vacation a few months back. It was... Well, interesting if nothing else." I chuckle at the wild time I had. "Great views though, the top branches were just spectacular," I commented happily and opened a sketchbook I brought to show him several sketches I made while there.

He looks happy for a moment and smiles at the drawings, but slowly grows more and more confused, before becoming a little nervous and uncomfortable. "O-oh, I didn't k-know." He mumbles quietly to himself and I grow confused at the quiet comment.

"Didn't know? Didn't know what?" I ask back, but that seems to make him more nervous.

"W-well, I um..." It seems he let that slip out unintentionally and now looks both embarrassed and a tiny bit... frightened? He also starts speaking in Griffon and lowers his tone to be more quiet. "T-that you know nobles from there?" :Ah. Well, fuck. How did he guess that?:

He continues to be pretty hesitant at this point. "N-nobles are t-the only ones who are allowed up that, high. S-so you know... N-not that I'm asking about them, or anything!" He explains quickly later looking even more uncomfortable when talking about nobles, it seems I got us on a bad topic. I also didn't know about that fact, I was always with the others in the diplomatic party so it never came up.

I look at him and try to come up with an excuse while also trying to get him to calm down and relax again, after a moment I come up with something. I start laughing a little at his reaction, and I wave him off and smile, "It's fine! I just had an opportunity to go there and took it because I was curious, I don't know any nobles or anything. That just sounds stressful." I half lied to wave his concerns away while making a weak joke out of it.

I'm not sure why he reacted so much from a simple question, it's not like I'd have minded answering if it didn't involve what actually happened. Plus, I didn't even have to lie all that much, I don't have any noble friends or acquaintances in Griffonstone. He still looks uncomfortable and nervous about the topic so I change it quickly. "Anyway, what do you think? I still need to improve my shading a bit, the mountains don't look quite right."

That seems to somewhat snap him out of whatever this brought up and he even perks up a little bit when I ask about my art. He looks over the drawings again and after a long moment seems to settle his thoughts, I don't ask about it though, it's simply not my place and he looks happy to avoid the topic. "Umm, y-ya. I think you could try holding it like this while drawing." He demonstrates for a few moments and things gradually return to normal from there.

We work for a while longer and even make some decent progress on the needed spells, and we also start to sketch out some designs for the limb itself. But inevitably things wind down and he stops his work to draw out a basic Temporise spell in the air with his magic. He's a little slow and takes a moment to double check his work, a good practice, but he does cast the spell successfully in the end.

I nod with a smile and some pride. "Good job, it seems you're already branching out to new spells, just make sure to stay safe." I give him more encouragement. He normally asks about what spells to learn but this one he's done on his own, he is progressing well. "Maybe one day you'll be a proper Journeygriff runic caster," I add and he looks a little bashful at my praise.

He also smiles and his mood has properly recovered from the incident before. "I wouldn't say that, it's just a basic spell. Plus it took me two weeks to get it right, being a Journeygriff is a far-off dream, but maybe someday." He looks a little longing and that determined glint in his eye is back once again.

He never seems to tire when it comes to magic. "I thought the same thing, but here I am. Keep at it." I glance at the time and it's around the time we normally stop. "I think we're done for now. To the cafe then?" I ask as we both start to pack our notes up.

"N-no, sorry." His tone is disappointed and apologetic. "I have some things, and well, ya. I'll see you next time though?" He asks a leading question and I nod while keeping my smile. "Goodbye Shade, and... Thanks again for all of, this. It's, so exciting." He smiles down at the part of the spell he completed by himself today.

I wave him off again with a hoof. "And as always it's no trouble. Have a good day, Avalon. Also, make sure to study those woodworking notes, we might actually be able to make an attempt soon if you do." I'm not even lying, most of the spell is done or soon to be, and we'll be able to start carving the pieces needed and getting the gems soon enough.

He looks even more excited at my promise. "Really!" I nod again. "Y-Yes! I'll see you around, a-and, I'll make sure to send a letter!" He promises before hurrying out of the library and into the evening. I could also leave, but recently I've thought about looking into some medical spells and decided to find a few books and keep reading.

I only know four healing spells, one for muscles, one for blood loss, one for bruises, and one for burns. So, I preferably want something outside of those injuries, and one thing that requires more advanced knowledge is scanning spells. That's also what I want to look into now that I have a good amount of skill.

A few weeks ago I relearned the last spell I had and now I'm firmly a Journeypony caster, before that I was still very slowly relearning all my spells. Now that I can cast any spell I know instantly I don't need to really draw spells out anymore, even for enchanting.

I also now have the skill and confidence to learn a spell and instantly cast it without learning to draw it out first, and that gives me access to more possibilities. I could have learned these spells before now when I first advanced, but I prefer the steady and stable approach with my magic.

A lot of higher-level spells can't even be cast by drawing them out, some are simply too big or complex to make that efficient, and some actually specifically require to be instantly cast to work at all. Scanning spells related to healing are often like this, they need both advanced skill and instant casting to use properly.

Yet another reason runic casting is at a disadvantage when you start out, but as you advance the differences between the two branches of casting are minimal. Back to my interest though, I want to learn a few basic scanning spells to actually know what's wrong with somepony beyond my practical knowledge and skill.

I find two good spells, one for the intestines and another for the lungs, I sit down at my table again, and Entropy naps to the side of my work, while I start reading through the complex spell matrix and instructions. I find many scanning spells basically use runes and large amounts of magic to force at least part of the scan and collection of information.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, but in a way, it makes you lazy. At the base, all runes and spells are made from knowledge and facts about reality and how it works, but the more complex the task the more knowledge you need, so you fill the gaps with more magic to compensate.

But the problem with just using more magic to fill in the gaps is that you just come to rely on pure magical power at some point. Take teleportation as an example, it's very magickly intensive, but if ponies had more knowledge about the subject they could cut down on the magical cost a lot and make it more usable.

They don't though, those who have the magical power to cast it often don't want to spend time researching it even more, and those without the power see it as an impassable mountain and ignore it. In the end, it results in most never trying to solve the main problem, lack of knowledge.

I finish with the first spell and copy a few notes before grabbing a blank piece of paper and visualizing the spell in my mind. It takes several minutes of intense concentration so I don't mess anything up and several failed casting attempts, but after an hour of work the spell is cast with myself as the target.

After a moment the matrix flashes and I sit very still for a few minutes before the spell fades away having done its job. and after looking through the book again it seems to have found nothing concerning. This was the lung scanning spell, both scanning spells can't tell me much, but they will be able to find anything like an illness or injury.

Most medical scanning spells can only really tell you if there is a problem, roughly where that problem is, and sometimes depending on the problem it can be described specifically. But that's often the domain of more advanced medical scanning spells.

The results I got left the paper completely blank, which means the spell found nothing, but also could mean I messed it up. I took a while to look through the text again to make sure I did everything properly. I form the spell matrix in the air instantly but as I'm studying the spell I hear a small gasp as a purple pony moves next to me and closely looks at the magic spell work. "OH! What are you casting?"

I'm a little stunned at the interruption and my mind takes a moment to recognize the mare at my side asking the question while watching the spell matrix in the air. :Ohhh, here we go again I guess: I feel a remnant of panic rise in me when I see her, but unlike the last times we met I am much more calm and collected.

Maybe it's some mix of having been to Ponyville multiple times, or my more relaxed attitude about changing things, but the result is the same regardless. So after a moment I smile a little and tap her on the shoulder while backing up to let her better look at the spell matrix I'm still holding in the air.

"Nice to see you again, It's been quite a while hasn't it?" I greet the mare plainly as she turns to me with a smile, a smile that turns to slight confusion as she stares at my neck before looking up further to meet my eyes. "Hello again Miss. Twilight ." I greet again while staring down at the smaller mare.

Author's Note

Thank for reading this little story. :}
Current year is 994

Anyone asking for more Twilight? Well, too bad, you're getting it anyway.