JUL 4 Friday. I move out of my bed and move to the kitchen, and after making some food and tea I move over to my workroom, I had an idea last night and I want to test it, but I'll need to be very careful, I've wondered over the meaning behind my cutie mark many times, and I realized something my cutie mark is a spell matrix, so what will happen if I tried to cast it?

But I don't want to just cast a spell that may just be random numbers and runes, I rather not have an explosion happen in my apartment, so I need to cast the spell with the least amount of magic possible, and have several protections in place, and for both I'm going to need a few gems.

I sit down at a desk with my notes and a small ruby, I start with the enchantment to hold and gather magic, I spend a while removing the part of the spell that gathers magic, once I'm done I enchant the ruby and spend a minute making sure everything is working correctly.

I feed it a small amount of magic to make sure it's working and start work on the next thing, I spend some time drawing out my cutie mark and copy it to a piece of paper, the next step is protection, so I grab a medium ruby and enchant it to hold and gather magic before spending some time filling it with magic.

After a while recovering my magic I start on the shield spell, I'll need a new shielding spell for this so I start with the base spell and work from there, I make the shield better at containing what's on the inside of the shield, I also add protections against fire just to be safe, it should contain any fire or smoke now.

I enchant the medium ruby and spend some time shaping the shield to the correct size, I stand up and grab my wood saw, and move to my main room, I spend a while cutting down the Iron Oaks main trunk, once I have it cut I move it to the side and start growing a new tree.

During this process I make sure not to damage the Companion Vine, when the new tree is large enough I place the vine back on it and start processing the tree, I remove the branches and leaves to be decomposed, during this process the saw struggles slightly to cut the trees main trunk.

It seems that with the Companion Vines help the Iron Oak had absorbed a lot of life magic, the fact that the enchanted saw is having any trouble cutting it proves that this harvest of the Iron Oak is tough, to the point that it might be as tough as a few types of metal.

I don't need all the wood for this project, after drying out the wood and rendering it down I have a two-foot-long, three-inch thick wood post, I also have a few smaller wood blocks that I was able to cut out from the rest of the trunk, after cleaning everything up and decomposing all the scraps I take the wood to my workroom.

I store everything besides the wood post, I move the post to the center of the room and stand it up, I take the medium ruby with the shield and place it on the floor a few feet away, I take some time to make sure the shield will cover the upper part of the post and activate it to test it.

I then spend an hour drinking tea and recovering my magic fully before proceeding to the next step, I cast the sticking spell, it's a basic spell that does what the name says, sticking something to something else, I use the spell to anchor both the post and the medium ruby to the floor, that should keep it in place.

The final step is to enchant the small ruby with my cutie mark, when I'm done I place the ruby inside the shield and activate the shield, I then start slowly feeding magic into the small ruby while watching the process, nothing happens for a while, but then in an instant I see the ruby flash so bright it blinds me.

I have to cover my eyes as the inside of the shield is engulfed in fire, when the light fades I'm able to open my eyes, and I'm greeted by the sight of a burning wood post, I'm lucky the shield is still intact, but the inside is a complete mess, the ruby is shattered into hundreds of pieces.

The wood post seems to have withstood the magic, but not the fire, it's currently burning slightly, but the shield blocks air so it should die out once it burns through the available oxygen, I wait a minute before the fire fully dies out, I ready a water spell and once the shield is deactivated I cover the wood post in water.

After the smoke clears and the post is no longer smoldering I face my next problem, there are no windows and this room is enclosed, there is nowhere for the smoke to go so it's just on the ceiling, I also can't just release it into the city, I rather nopony think there is a fire.

I could let it settle but that would take a while and somepony might smell the smoke after a while, I grab my notebook and leave the room trying my best to trap the smoke inside, I need a way to fix this as fast as I can, I don't have a spell to clear the air, but if I cut a lot of corners and sacrifice any form of efficiency I can make something fast.

I spend the next half hour trying my best to make a spell with the purifying rune, and an air rune, it's far from well made, to be blunt this spell is a complete disaster, but it should work, I enter the workroom again to see that a lot of smoke has settled.

I draw the spells matrix and push my magic into it, it takes far more magic than it should but after a few minutes the room is clear, :god this whole thing is just a disaster, then again I did try and cast a spell that didn't make any sense,: I spend the next two hours cleaning the entire room.

When I'm finally done making sure everything in the room is clean and intact I relax some, I take a moment to look at the post and the remains of the ruby, the post is burnt but still in one piece, and the ruby is in hundreds of pieces, that I've collected, I store the gem fragments and move the post to the main room.

I decompose the post down and move back to the workroom, I sit at my desk and start writing down notes about what happened, I'm pretty sure the spell was unstable and when I pushed magic into it everything went out of control, I'm just lucky the shield contained the blast, I didn't feel or hear anything so I don't think my neighbors noticed either.

I'm not really sure if I learned anything from all this, well I guess I learned to get better safety measures for the future, not that I want to do this again, when I'm done with my notes I put everything away, I don't want to do any more testing today and I'd like some fresh air.

"Come on girl, we're going out," I call out to Entropy from the main room, in a few seconds Entropy flies from my bedroom and lands near me, I take a quick shower to wash out any soot before grabbing my saddlebags and leaving with Entropy, I walk through the streets until I reach the park.

I spend a while drawing while Entropy flies around the area, after a while I get a little bored of drawing and remember that I have something I need to do, I call over Entropy and take her home before leaving again, I make my way to the same building I meet Stone at.

I rent a sparring room like he suggested, when I enter it's the same type of room we normally meet in, it also has several racks filled with different types of weapons, I don't really know where to start, well what type of weapon do I like?

I'm not trained in any of them so I can just pick anything, after some thought I just decide to try the things I like the look of, I try out a few staffs a short sword, and even a polearm, I do find one weapon that I like but it's not exactly practical, the greatsword, it may just be the monkey part of my brain but I like the idea of hitting something with a big sword.

But like I said it's not really practical, I can use it easily as it doesn't matter how much it weighs, but carrying around something like this in public is just not going to happen, I try to think of a solution or even an excuse to choose this weapon as I like it, and I do find one.

I can hold and move three things at the same time with my field, if I hold three things my control suffers some, but I can control two things at the same time with minimal loss to my control, so my idea is simple I'll pair the greatsword with something else, I spend a while trying to decide on the right combination.

And I decide on a dagger, one blade for heavy damage and weight, and the other for speed and exploiting openings, then again I don't know anything about combat so we'll see what Stone thinks of my choice and go from there, for now I spend some time swinging both around for a while.

It's a little hard to swing the greatsword, but then I realize what I'm doing wrong, I'm holding the whole blade in my field, I adjust to only hold the handle and swing it again, it's much faster now, but after a few swings I stop, my control degrades after several feet and I rather not hit myself with a large piece of wood, so I decide to not try anything else until I meet with Stone.

I don't have much else to do so I put everything back and start making my way home.

time skip

JUL 9 Wednesday.

I walk through the same building I've been in so many times now, I walk through the familiar hallways and enter the right room, and like most times I come here I see Stone practicing with a sword, he turns to me and nods, "Shade, enjoy your week?"

"Ya I did, I also did what you told me to and tried out some weapons."

"Well don't keep me in suspense colt."

"I tried several things but I decided on an odd choice, and I don't know anything about combat so I thought I'd run it by you first," he nods for me to continue, "Well I decided on both a greatsword and a dagger."

Stone didn't seem to reject it instantly, he seemed to think it over for a few moments before nodding, "It's definitely an odd choice, but it makes some sense, using both will give you a good amount of options, and from the size you are right now you'll grow enough to use a greatsword even without your magic."

"The only real problem is that I don't know any styles to teach you, but I can teach you how to each separately, so we'll start with the dagger and go from there."

I gained a smile hearing his answer, "Don't smile yet colt, You're training in two weapons which means I'm going to train you twice as much."

I lose my smile some but nod to him, "Well come on colt, we're heading to a training room for some training weapons," and much like last time I don't trust the smile he has.

Author's Note

Thanks for reading.

And you can blame the weapon choice on my crippling addiction to dark souls, shoutout to the Abyss Watchers, now if you'll excuse me I have to fight the nameless king.