A Quiet Rune Scribe

MAR 17 Sunday. I make my way through the city moving higher and higher, I'm heading to the palace for a meeting with a certain princess.

I had to leave Entropy back at the apartment, she was not happy about that but with some bribes and scratches she was willing to let me go, after that I grabbed the things I would need for today, first my notes on the anti pest enchantment, second my new copy spell.

I walked to the entrance of the palace and like the last two times a guard leads me inside, we move through several hallways and arrive at a room I've been to before, although last time I was here I was panicking over a rock, we enter and I see Celestia sitting at a table.

"Mr. Evergreen, it's nice to see you again".

I bow "same to you princess", I sit opposite of her at the table, "I have the test results you wanted me to look over" I say placing them on the table.

A smile blooms on her face, "thank you" she spends a few minutes looking through my notes before placing them to the side.

"I also have this for you" I then place the new spell I've created on the table, she raises a brow but doesn't look very surprised, she looks through the spell's matrix and my notes on the spell before speaking.

As she reads the smile on her face grows, after a few minutes her horn glows for a moment as she casts the spell, she then grabs two pieces of paper from nowhere, she quickly writes something on one piece of paper before copying it, after seeing the spell work properly she finally speaks.

"This is amazing work" she takes a closer look at the spells matrix, looking through the numbers and symbols, "it's well made, almost any unicorn should be able to cast it", she takes a few more moments to drink some tea as I wait quietly.

"Although I am curious as to why the spell uses the mimicking symbol?"

"Yes it's a little out of place, but I couldn't find a better rune so I made do with what I had", she nods at my explanation.

"You did well for not having any exact matches, what do you want to do with the spell."

"It's yours now princess" I answered bluntly.

"I guessed as much, what I'm asking is what you want in exchange", she playfully deadpans back, the smile never leaving her face.

"Nothing, I don't really need money, and like I said in the past I don't like attention, so let's just say it's free?"

She lets out a laugh "it's a rare day when I have to find a way to pay somepony for something free, you're a hard pony to pay you know."

"Well as I said I don't need bits, I don't even know what to do with all the bits I have let alone more" I take a sip of tea and tasting the familiar tea gives me an idea, "well this tea is worth a fair amount so let's just call it even."

That gets another laugh "very well if you insist, thank you Mr. Evergreen."

"Shade is just fine princess, if that's not too forward of me?", I've talked with her a few times so I don't think this is too forward, at least I hope not.

"It's not, I find many are too formal with me, and you can call me Celestia if you want."

"Of course princess", I say with a cheeky tone and a small smile "your letter said you had something to discuss with me?"

She gives me a look before answering, "yes I wanted to see if you'd be interested in a project that's being worked on."

"Really? I'm still an amateur at making spells, I'm not that confident with working on higher level things", I say trying to emphasize my uncertainty.

"Yes but you seem to have a knack for finding creative solutions, and this project is mostly a small thing that's hit a rough spot, it also doesn't involve spell creation", I think over her words and decide to accept, and if I find that this will affect the future too much I'll just say no and pretend to not have the knowledge or skill.

"I suppose I could at least see what this is about", she passes me a few pages, the project is small and I can see why she wants my help, this project is to breed a new strain of grain that will be sold to farmers for a steep discount.

The specific goal of this project is to have the new strain grow better in rocky soil, there are a few regions that have less then quality soil making them import grain from other regions of equestria, they want a strain that will grow better in rocky soil even if the yield is lessened.

The pony that has been doing this is just growing wheat and selectively breeding them slowly, they basically just grow wheat and leave it in a corner until it grows and picking out the best ones, the problem is nopony want's to do this so the pony working on it right now is an older earth pony who wants to retire.

So somepony else needs to do it and because I have the life affinity I can do it in a fraction of the time with better results, "I can definitely do this all I'll need is the right soil and the some seeds from the plant, I also have one other request."

"Thank you I'll have a guard bring it to you before you leave, and I'm willing to grant a request as long as it's reasonable."

"I'd like my name to remain out of any of this."

"You really don't like attention do you, but that is reasonable so I'm willing to grant it, how long do you think it will take you to finish",

I spend a moment thinking over it "well it depends on how much magic the plant requires to grow, but it is wheat so probably a few months maybe a year at most, I can also get a little more specific with the end result so is there anything else you'd like for the plant."

"I know many things but plants aren't my specialty so what would you recommend?"

"Well how much snow does the region have a longer winter or a higher altitude?"

"Some of both depending on the specific area."

"Then I can also breed them to handle the cold better, but I can't think of anything else that would be of immediate concern."

"Perfect once again thank you for helping with this, but I think our time is almost up."

I check my bracelet and see that it's been a little over half an hour since we started talking, I turn back to her looking at my bracelet, "a clever place to put an enchantment, but I have duties to attend to, it was a pleasure speaking to you and I hope we'll do this again."

"Same princess have a good day", a guard walks me out of the room where another guard is waiting with a few bags, they lead me to the gate and pass me a few bags of soil along with a small bag of seeds, all combined it wasn't too heavy but it still took me a while to bring it all home.

After placing the bags next to my front door I see Entropy who flies over and lands on my back, "I wasn't gone that long you know?", my only response was a caw, but after some scratches she seemed placated, I'll need to clear some time every day to breed this wheat but it will still help me train.

And if I spend some time fully learning it's magic flows I can speed up the process, still this is a long term project but it's worth doing, I place the soil and seeds on my shelves before spending some time feeding both of us, as I haven't had lunch and Entropy is always hungry.

After we eat I start on something new, I realized a problem when Shining showed up a few days ago, my apartment is full of expensive things and currently the only thing protecting them is my front doors lock, crime may be rare in the city but it still happens so I need more security, so I'm going to be making some protections for my house.

And I already have a large gem enchanted to hold magic, the large ruby I used when camping is just sitting there so why not use it, I move into the workroom and grab the large ruby before sitting at a desk, first I remove the shield enchantment leaving the magical reserve.

I then start going through my notebook looking for a spell I can use, I have something pretty close the spell lets you engulf an area in a shield but only a small area, I'll make a better shield later for now I just need something that will work until I can research a better shield.

I modify it slightly making the shield weaker but letting me determine the area it will shield, and after two hours I have the shield done it's not as strong as I'd like but is more than enough to deal with a common thief, I spend another hour shaping the shield to fit my apartment.

The shield won't let any other things inside except me and Entropy, I'll need to turn it off to let others inside but I'll fix that later, and I'm not expecting visitors anytime soon, the ruby is already charged from sitting around and the shield won't take more magic then the game regenerates so It won't need to recharge.

I place it on a shelf in the work room before moving onto the next thing, I grab the book Celestia gave me, I've been reading through it and have found a few things, like the fact that I'm an idiot that can't see what's right in front of him, why? well I missed something so damn obvious that I hate it.

When I grow a plant they need two things, my life magic and soil, I don't add water something that plants need and this whole time I've been unknowingly compensating by using more magic than necessary, THIS WHOLE DAMN TIME!, as you can imagine this is a little annoying.

But I guess that's what you get when learning about a magic branch with whatever book you can find in a massive library by yourself, though it's not all my fault as none of the books I did find mentioned this, and even with water the process is only a little faster.

It’s a small boost but a welcome one, an odd thing I've found is that using water only helps grow plants without much magic, from what I can tell the more magic a plant has inside it the less of an effect adding water has, I don't know why, as magical plants seem to need just as much water.

My best guess is that like me when a plant grows they can also use their life magic to use less water, this is my best guess but there is a few things wrong with it, I'll have to try researching this later, although I don't have high hopes considering the fact that those same books didn't mention this whole mess.

I take two of my pots and fill them with rocky soil, I place them both on a desk and plant a wheat seed in both, after a while I have two wheat plants each with stalks and seeds, the cornels look smaller then the ones I've seen at the market, probably from the previous breeding attempts.

I leave them alone and move over to my other desk, I open my notebook and grab a small ruby, I enchant it with the same environment spell I used for the Juniper Berries it's not perfect but it will do just fine, after that I spend the rest of the day learning the magical flows of the wheat.

When I'm done I write what I felt down, I want to try comparing the starting wheat to the finished one to see if their magical flows are any different.

After I finish this I head into the main room to take a shower and make dinner, I feed both of us and head to bed early.