A Quiet Rune Scribe

MAR 20 Thursday. I make my way through the park as I run past a tree, I've been going on a morning run most days for years now and it seems to do me well, I find it helps me clear my head and relax some.

I make it to the other side of the park and turn around, I used to do one lap through the park, but since I started working at the library I've grown, as it seems I've hit my teen years, I've been eating more in the past year then before, and have grown an inch or two.

I make it to the other side of the park and rest some before walking back home, as I leave the park Entropy lands on my back, she comes with me whenever I go running she mostly follows me or explores the park, she's almost three months old now.

The only difference I've seen in her is her feathers that are getting darker, before they looked almost identical to normal crow feathers just darker, now though they're starting to absorb light like her egg did, this isn't a problem right now but if it continues she'll start drawing unwanted attention.

The good news is that this process seems to be very slow, it's taken three months for me to see the slightest difference, and I spend almost all of my time with her, so others probably won't notice for a while, that gives me some time to find a solution, I'm thinking some type of illusion.

I enter my apartment and Entropy flies off, I head into my work room, I have a few things I want to make today, I grab my tools and bring them over to the Iron Oak in the main room, I'll need some wood so I'll be harvesting some branches, I saw two thicker branches off and help the plant heal.

I decompose all the excess, then I spend some time drying out the wood, I've gotten better at this over time and it only takes me half an hour to finish, I take them to my work room and start cutting the branches down, after an hour I have two, two inch thick and seven inch long wood blocks.

I place one block on my shelf and place the other on a desk along with my tools, I start whittling down the block, I thin it out and round it out with some sandpaper, after an hour I have a solid wood pen, I place my tools away and clean up my desk for the next step.

I made this for an experiment, I have always drawn my spell matrixes with my hoof, I want to see if I can use another source of magic to do the same thing, I grab a small ruby and enchant it to hold magic and place it to the side, I'll need a custom spell for this.

But I only need it to condense and release the magic at one point, I use two runes for this, a rune for concentrate, and a rune for release, these runes are almost perfect for this spell, concentrate is not ideal but it will work fine, the spell takes me until noon to finish it.

I link the new pen and ruby together and try to use it, I activate the link and let magic into the pen, and immediately realize a problem, I forgot to give the pen a way to stop drawing, but before I start modifying the spell I test it, I drag the pen through the air.

And an odd glowing line is carved into the air before letting it fade after a moment, I repeat this a few times and notice that the color is definitely odd, its color is white but it has a rainbow sheen to it.

This confuses me for a moment, but then I realize, the gem is feeding the enchantment with magic it's gathered from the environment around it, this means that the pen is using a random assortment of magic affinity types to draw this give it the odd effects.

I spend another hour fixing the spell, adding the ability to turn it off by tapping it twice like most other things I've made, I start by drawing a basic heating spell, but half way through the lines start disappearing, my best guess is the magic being used in the matrix.

When I draw a matrix all the magic used is my own, that magic is stable as it's from one source, but this magic is a mess of different affinities and not all combine well, when I use a gem to power an enchantment the magic gathered by the gem is condensed inside and released for an enchantment.

The difference between enchantments and a matrix, is that the enchantment is bound in a stable state on a object letting it use all types of magic without problems, but while a matrix is still being drawn the mass of conflicting magic types makes the magic unstable, that's why it disappears so much faster.

That's just my best guess though, I'll need to look into it later, this effect is small and wouldn't be a problem for anything but runic magic, as when a spell is being drawn it's very delicate and can be unstable if done wrong, I spend the next hour studying the pens magic.

I write down everything I learn in one of my notebooks, I've found some things out but this will need more study, the magic the pen uses is mostly condensed natural magic, this is where the white color comes from, the rest of the colors are small amounts of many different affinities.

With a little extra effort I'm able to draw the heating spell fast enough to cast it, and the results are the spell working and then rapidly breaking down, I won't be able to cast any spells fast enough to use the pen to make spells so I honestly don't know what to do with it.

If I separate out all the affinities out of the magic it should work fine, but that will require a lot of work and finding the right runes and math, and for something this small it doesn't seem worth it to spend all that time, I'll still probably look into it I'll leave this project alone for now.

I still have a few hours left before the day ends so I start work on the next project, that being training Entropy's teleportation, the method I was using is no longer useful, so after some thought I decided on the next step, I modified the shield we have been using, to block some of the light passing through it.

You can still see the inside it's just harder, she still sees me place a piece of meat inside when we start, I see her sit outside the shield for a while before disappearing, I turn off the shield and see her eating the piece of meat, she took much longer to teleport this time so we'll use this training method from now on.

It's eight by the time we are done, so I move over to the kitchen and make us some food, we eat in silence while I organize all my notes from today, after eating I drain my magic by breeding wheat, I've found a problem that I may encounter when breeding the wheat.

I need to make sure the wheat is still edible and tastes decent, I've looked through ways to test both and the best method I've found, and it depends on what it's used for, most in this world seem to breed wheat to increase its size, they don't seem to be able to test it's quality besides how it looks and tastes, so I'll be doing the same for now.

I'm planning on grinding up some of the grain every week or two and making some bread, it's not a perfect test but it seems to work well enough for this world, and I can try finding a better way to test it later, after draining my magic I take a shower and go to bed.

time skip

MAR 21 Friday. I get out of bed, after getting up I see Entropy teleport out of her cage and lands in front of me, one downside of teaching her how to teleport has been the fact that she can follow me anywhere and I can't really stop her, she's still bribable though.

I open my bedroom door and check on my plants, their all fine and the environment enchantments have been a success, as all three plants have been just fine without me, I move to the kitchen and make us some breakfast, fruit with a little meat for Entropy and I fry some fish and make myself a sandwich.

We eat and I leave for my morning run, it takes an hour to finish it and get back home, when we do get back I spend some time meditating on the space around me as Entropy trains with the new shield, I still haven't learned anything from watching her.

I feel her distort the space around her as she moves, we spend the next hour like this before stopping, I move over to the workroom with the wheat plants, I start breeding them, I grow several small plants in a pot then pick out the best ones before repeating the process.

I'll need a way to grind down the wheat, so I'll be going through the market today and try to find a solution, I see some light rain outside so I head to the front door, grab my saddlebags and put on my cloak, Entropy sits on my back as we leave, I walk down the stairs and out the building front doors.

I walk out into the rain feeling the light patter of raindrops on my cloak, Entropy doesn't seem to mind the rain either, she just sits on my back as I walk, I take my time moving through the streets as I walk to the markets, when we arrive I see less stalls then normal but even with the rain many are open.

As I walk I keep my eyes open for anything that could break down grain, I stop at a stall with several herbs and spices and see a mortar and pestle, it's made from a dark gray stone, I look it over and find it to be sturdy, the only problem with using this is it would be slow.

But after giving it some thought I buy it, after that I make my way through the market buying things I need at home, before I'm finished the rain starts picking up and I decide to head home early.

We make it back to the apartment, we are both fairly wet so I dry myself and Entropy off with a towel, I spend some time putting away all the food, I take my new mortar and pestle to my work room, I place them on my desk and get to work.

I want to enchant both to speed up the process of grinding down the wheat, I look through my notebook and find two symbols that should work fine, I want to enchant the mortar to be more durable and make the pestle grind things down easier.

For the mortar there are a few spells I can use that already exist, but I'll have to make one for the pestle, I use two runes for this, a rune of crushing and the other a rune of breaking, I'll need to make this enchantment weak enough to not damage the mortar.

I spend the next two hours making the spell and enchanting them, when I'm done I grow some wheat seeds and collect them, I try grinding them and the process is fairly easy only taking an hour to make a pound of flour, I collect the whole grain flour and place it inside a jar.

I clean everything up and take the jar into the kitchen, I haven't used the oven I have yet so why not make some bread?, I start with some water and flour and add some eggs, after adding some yeast I bought earlier I mix everything thoroughly, I don't have a baking pan but my solid iron pot will do just fine.

I place it down and let the dough rise, I spend an hour training Entropy before adding the dough into my pot and placing it in my oven, I don't have anything to do, so I just spend some time drawing, I draw Entropy as she sleeps on a branch of the Iron Oak.

I don't finish when I smell the bread, I check it and then wait a little longer before taking it out to cool down, I mostly finish my drawing by the time the bread is cool, I cut off a piece and add some butter, it's got a decent flavor, I spend the rest of the rainy day eating bread and drawing.