A Quiet Rune Scribe

It's been two weeks and I've truly gotten into the flow of my routine. My days are starting with my morning run and then working and going about my day. Right now I'm on one of my days off Tuesday and Wednesday. Which might seem like a weird choice. But the library is open on the weekend, so I work the weekend and take the mid-week off.

I'm spending my day on a practice field. I found it while wandering the city a few days ago. Tt costs four bits per hour so it's not that expensive but I have to tell them if anything breaks and clean up after myself or be fined or pay them to do it for me. I came here to test a few spells.

The first being an ice spell when formed it allows the caster to form and shape a few pounds of ice. I'm using this spell to create an ice spike an inch of two thick and eight inches long with points at both ends. And then grabbing it in my TK field and launching the ice spike forward using as much force as I can aiming towards the target on the far side of the field.

As the spike impacts the target the ice spike shatters after imbedding itself a few inches into the target. Shards of ice scattering on the dirt field. I walk over to the target and inspect it. The packed hay is impacted with shards of ice intertwined with the hay jagged shards cutting and small shards buried deep inside.

After looking at the target I walk back and take another shot and after several shots I stop seeing the target now filled with spikes. I pant, now drained of most of my magic I sit and rest for a while, before gathering the mess I made and leaving the test range.

As I walk down the street I start moving back to the library and after arriving. And after heading to my room I close my door and move to lay on my bed and get comfortable before dozing off and falling asleep.

When I woke up it was evening. I blinked my eyes slowly as I made my way into the kitchen and checked my cabinets finding some bread and a few carrots along with two potatoes. After some thought I grabbed the potatoes and my knife, some oil and my pan. And started preheating it then cut the potatoes into thin slices and add oil to my pan and finally add my potatoes.

While my potatoes fry in the oil I grab the carrots and peel them then cutting the ends off. I then split them down the middle and repeat that. Cutting two carrots down into eight carrot sticks and adding them to a plate I move back to my frying potatoes and flip them.

I then grab my bread and slice off two pieces, adding them into my pan to toast. After a few minutes I remove my toast from the pan and also drop it on my plate at the same time I add some salt to my pan. I keep flipping my potatoes and cooking them until crispy and soft before adding them to my plate. I wash my knife and pan as it cools.

I finish washing my pan and sit to eat my makeshift dinner as I read a book on the runic language. I start to take notes on different runic matrix arrays picking out small bits and adding them to my ever-growing list of runic experiments to conduct in the future.

After I finish eating and wash my plate I settle at my desk and start practicing drawing my spells out. I draw and cast my candle flame spell and hold it there as I move my hoof and try to draw out another spell. I get to drawing the second circle before I lose my focus and my first spell fails, and the small flame flickering out while the runes dissolving.

I repeat this many times over the next few hours as it turns dark outside the sun being replaced by the moon as I continue to practice trying to cast two full spells at once making some progress but never succeeding. At this point the magic I'd gained from my nap was running dry so I stopped.

I walk into my shower and turn on the water letting out a sigh as I let the water wash over me. I clean my body using some soap and I dry off with a towel before heading to bed.

After waking up I grab my bag and start heading towards the market district. As I walk down the street I pass several restraints. But after a while I don't find any that look good, I continue to the lower markets. As I walk through food stalls I spot a stand selling fried bread with some type of sauce.

As I approach, I smell the frying bread and the sweet scent of maple "How much for two?'.

The pony flipping the bread stops to look at me "Two bits each."

I nod, giving him four bits and taking my sweet treat with me. I continue down the street glancing at different items and after a while I finish my food. As I am near the edge of the market. Most stalls here are less trafficked and less busy. I was about to turn around, but as I turned I paused.

Not far away I see a gray diamond dog sitting on a cloth in between two stalls. Their head down as they shift through their things and place them around their surrounded gems of different cuts and colors scattered about. I approach and stop in front of them. Their attention now on me. I bend down to inspect a large piece of amethyst.

As the light reflects through its body I put it back down where I found it and I turn to face the diamond dog seeing their red eyes "Do you have any rubies."

The diamond dog looks thoughtful for a moment before answering "A few" as they reach into their bag pulling out several rubies of different sizes and placing them on the cloth. As I look through them, I see a good-sized one with a decent clarity, its size being about a two by two-inch cube.

"How much for that one" I say while pointing a hoof towards the gem they look at the one I'm pointing at.

"One fifty for that one" I pause, that's cheap for a ruby especially one that size. And using a ruby will be much more effective than many other gemstones. I won't have many bits left but this will be worth it.

"I'll take it." I say while grabbing my bits as I do so the diamond dog looks excited with their short tail wagging slightly and a large smile on their face.

I pass my bits to them and wait for them to count it all. After a minute they nod and pass me the gemstone "thanks."

I give a nod back as I put away my new gem. And as I start walking out of the market heading home my thoughts wander. I got really lucky crystals come in different grades when it comes to magic depending on the size and clarity. The crystal can also hold more magic along with absorbing and releasing more magic faster with less waste.

The least powerful crystals are things like cloudy quartz and jade. The middle quality being amethyst and clear quartz. High is rubies and sapphires. And the best is diamond. My original plan was to buy a decent-sized amethyst with decent quality. This ruby can probably hold three to four times the magic more than the one I wanted to buy, it's also cheaper than them.

As I make my way into my room. I close my door and put my bags down. With some excitement I move to my desk and place the ruby on it. I only have one chance, if I mess up my enchantment the crystal will crack or shatter so after taking a few moments to calm myself I start practicing the spell for the magic reserve.

After spending an hour practicing holding the spell while I draw the smaller matrix inside it. I complete the spell three times without messing anything up. I take a break to go eat my remaining carrots and recharge my magic and after half an hour I'm ready.

As I move the ruby to be right in front of me I start drawing the spell being careful to go slow and be as accurate as I can for the best quality after some time I finish the spell and start on the enchantment matrix. This one being smaller but simpler as I complete both and gently pick up the ruby.

holding it up I see the matrix fade as I push magic into the inner matrix. The outer part fading as the magic is bound to the crystal. The inner matrix fading soon after and dissipating after a minute. I close my eyes to concentrate and try to push my magic into the gem and feel the magic sink into the gem and compress. After I empty my reserves I open my eyes, and smile wide as I see a small red spark softly glowing in its center.

time skip

It's been three days since I successfully enchanted my ruby and during that time I've been dumping all my excess magic into it. And it should be enough after today so tonight I'm going to try unlocking my affinity.

As I go through my workday, I'm jittery and excited. At lunch even Blaz and Daisy notice although they didn't ask why. After finishing my workday I immediately return to my room and grab my crystal. After draining my magic once again, I spent the next few hours recovering. And by the time I was ready it was dark, the sun having set.

I stand and walk over to my desk grabbing my notebook and flipping to a blank page while grabbing a quill and inkwell. Moving to the middle of the room I place my things down and ready my ruby. I start by drawing the outer circle almost as large as me and the other only slightly smaller. I start to fill out the empty space with an uneven mix of runes and numbers.

As I finish the last number the spell uses much more runes than numbers in this spell. leaning more towards a pure symbol matrix although it's technically a mixed matrix, After finishing the spell I stop to prepare myself. I'm going to have to control a lot of magic and I do not want to lose control of this spell.

After a moment I start pulling the magic from my ruby and direct it into my spell as I do so the glow of the ruby that has built up over time begins to drain at a visible rate. The power flowing into the spell as the matrix starts to glow brighter and brighter almost to the point of being blinding.

The spell is now ready. I move my hoof to its center and wait after a moment, the glow dims by a large amount. And in front of me I see two orbs start to take shape. Slowly glowing threads intertwining into small white spheres as I watch the left sphere slowly turn darker and eventually almost black the final color being an almost black dark purple that seems to absorb all the light around it.

I glance at the other sphere that begins to take shape after writing a hasty note on the first sphere's color. I see the second sphere slowly start to turn a bright green and after a second. I realize it's the exact same color as my eyes, a bright green reminiscent of emeralds.

Then all at once the spell collapses. The ruby having run out of magic. The spell and the spheres dissipate into motes of light before vanishing entirely. As I sit in the dimly lit room. The only source of light being a candle on my desk. I move it over to me and start writing notes on the colors I saw.

After finishing I move to my desk bringing my things with me. I flip through my book finding the page with my notes on affinity types, and I start going through the list before finding one that matches. The bright green sphere being the affinity for life its main properties is to boost spells for plants and healing.

After writing that down I continue flipping and after going through almost my entire list I find it the dark blackish purple. Space affinity this one's got almost nothing written about it. Not even what it helps with, and after some thought I realize the only ponies you see using any form of space manipulation whether that being teleportation or changing somethings dimensions are really powerful beings. Like an alicorn or Discord, and while some ponies do use it on some smaller scales most are either powerful regular ponies or pinky. And the less you think about whatever pinky does or how she does it the better.

But that also leaves me somewhat stumped. As for my life affinity I could try healing spells and controlling and growing plants to train my control and precision and maybe healing wounds directly after I get some practice and learn more. I would rather not try healing myself right now.

But with space I don't really know where to start as I doubt that the library will have spells on space magic as even in my old world where we have much higher levels of math space was a high-level subject. I do remember some useful things but not enough to create a spell without a lot of time so my only path may be using the raw form to manipulate space directly for any other pony. This might not be an option either as most here won't have any knowledge about the fabric of space.

From what little my notes copied from the book said about this affinity. It's mostly theory about what one could attempt to do with such an affinity but nothing on how to use it or what for so I'm just going to have to experiment while being very careful and try and find out what I can do with it.

After writing all my thoughts down I started to change my schedule for training and research. Over the past few weeks, I've read almost every book about alicorns and their history. So I'm taking that off my schedule and replacing it with healing and plant-based magic.

I'm also going to start spending some time after my morning run trying to control a few small plants in the park as I doubt any will notice a few plants growing faster, but first I'll have to learn how to convert my magic. I should also look for books on ways to train my life affinity before I start messing around with it.

I remake my schedule and take a few more notes before continuing with my nightly ritual. A shower and draining my magic. Deciding to recharge the ruby in case I ever need it before climbing my way into bed and letting sleep claim me.