FEB 12 Thursday.

I copy another page as I translate more text from the book I'm working on. It's been five weeks since I temporarily took over for Ruby and I'm chugging along just fine. I look through the next page and read through it for a while before I start translating it, once the page is done I copy it and move on to the next one.

After I finish the book I check the time and get up to leave the library, I'm done with my shift. It doesn't take me long to get home and go about my chores, feeding Entropy and tending to all my plants.

Once I'm done I walk into my workroom and sit down at my desk, I have a rune I want to play around with more. The spell I made a week ago is useful but I want to make a few variations of the spell I made. I start by modifying the spell I already have to stick to something and move with it.

This is more complex as I don't intend for it to be an enchantment but a spell to cast on myself. I have a good base to work with and this spell isn't the most complex, but it still takes me two hours to get it right. When it's done I test something before casting it.

I gently stomp my hoof on the wood floor and listen to the thump, I draw out the matrix and cast the spell on myself. Once the spell is done I stomp my hoof again and this time I hear nothing. I stomp on the floor several more times each time with more force until I hear a noise.

It takes more force than I thought it would to make any noise with my hooves. The spell is very simple, it just forms a silenced area around my hooves to keep them quiet. This does have a few downsides first, it's a spell made to be cast on a pony.

It would take a good amount of modification to make it usable as an enchantment. Second, it takes more magic than I'd like as I needed to add two more runes to have it form only around my hooves and form an area to affect not just my hooves but also a small zone around them.

This spell will be perfect for stealth, not that I have much use for that kind of stealth, at least not yet. I move on to my next idea for this rune, this will be an enchantment with a few small modifications to the original spell. The changes are so small that it doesn't take me more than an hour to finish.

The main change is to limit the effect to only the border of the invisible bubble. This will block all sound from the outside and inside at the same time. While testing it I got another idea and added another small change, I made it only block sound from the outside and not the inside.

I set the zone to only three feet and enchant it into the same small sapphire that I used last time. I test it by activating it and throwing things inside the area of effect. They land and I can clearly hear them hit the floor, I place my head inside and throw something outside, but I hear nothing.

I weaken the spell's effects so that it just dampens all noise but doesn't get rid of it entirely. The small sapphire I'm using for this is overkill for such a weak spell and a very small sapphire or ruby, like the ones on my bracelet, would be enough to keep this enchantment active indefinitely.

This would make it really cheap, which is good for my idea. I add one last thing to the spell before I start optimizing it, I add a very weak illusion to give a very transparent look to the bubble so you can actually see it. Once that's done I spend the next two hours just improving the spell.

I'm making something that all parents would thank me for. In the city, or a lot of other situations, a foal could lose sleep from there being too much noise around them. But with this spell, you can leave a small gem near a sleeping foal to block out all unwanted noise while still being able to hear the foal if they cry out for you.

This should help many tired parents finally get some sleep. I can think of a few other spells that do this but all of them are too complex for small gems. And the best part is that because this spell is so easy and weak I don't need to include the runic context in the spell's instructions.

Whenever I give something to Celestia I normally include the runic context to make the enchantments and spell more efficient for those casting it or enchanting objects with the spell. But this is so weak that even without the context it would basically make no real difference.

The reason I'm not giving out the runic context is that this rune can be used for some less-than-legal things in the wrong hands. I rather not risk it, so they won't be getting the context, they could still use the rune but this will make it much harder to do.

And if they had another way to find it then me including the context or not doesn't make much of a difference. I copy the spell matrix and its single rune onto some paper along with a description of how the spell works and a few things to test before releasing it to the public.

I disenchanted the gem I was using and returned it to a shelf before leaving my workroom. I walk out and see that it's fairly late at night, I have Entropy take us to the forest and back once before asking her to bring the latter to the palace. She does so and vanishes for a minute before returning.

After that, I make both of us a late dinner and take a shower before heading to bed.

time skip

FEB 14 Saturday.

It's the weekend and I'm spending my time working on a few hobbies while training and preparing for a few other things. Right now I'm waiting for my magic to refill by practicing my space sensing. I've gotten to the point where I can slowly move my forelegs while still maintaining my concentration.

It's still hard but I'm making progress. After my magic refills, I go back to copying the Companion Vines's magical flows. The green flows of magic wrap around my body as I form my life magic into the right ebbs and flows, this has also seen progress.

The magic I gain is still less than what I expend, but It's to a lesser degree than before. I stay in that position for the next three hours trying my best to keep it all stable and working correctly. I have to make sure that the flows don't move into the wrong position.

I have to form them in the correct construct without letting them stray off. I feel a flow shift as my attention shifts away to something else, the thing that distracted me is Philomena teleporting into my apartment in a flash of flame. She lands next to me and offers a letter in her beak. I take it and give her a berry before she leaves, I open the letter.

Dear Shade. Thank you for yet again adding more work to my schedule. Jokes aside, this is a very useful invention that many will find a great relief. I noticed that the runic context is not included and after looking over the spell I agree that it's probably for the best that it stays that way.

Beyond that I hope you'll have a good trip, please remember to be careful and keep Entropy with you. Remember to find a guard if you need help.

Signed Celestia.

This letter is in response to me planning out my trip. I've decided to travel to a medium-sized pony city called New Trotten. It's a smaller coastal city with several shipping routes and a fishing industry, I picked this city as it's on the larger size of cities while not being one of the large cities.

And it has a higher population of Griffins than any other city in Equestria, it has several things to do and the best part is how fast I can get there. It's primarily a trade city so it has several train routes there and by train, it would only take me one day to get there.

I would leave in the morning and arrive after dark. It's about the same distance I traveled to Ilinalta from here, so it won't take long for me to arrive, giving me plenty of time to enjoy my trip. I've booked my trip for the twenty-first and informed both Daisy and Celestia of my plans to take a vacation.

I only told Celestia about my plans to travel and where I'm going, just in case anything happens, but I very much plan to stay out of trouble while there as I rather not stress while on my vacation. I had to sign a few forms Daisy gave me yesterday, and I'll be doing a little more work so it's not too backlogged when I return.

I hope it's like last time, a calming and quiet trip, then again the bear incident last year was not that quiet or calming. Regardless I'm excited to see some new sights and hopefully, find a few interesting plants and books to take home with me.

I leave on the twenty-first but my vacation starts on the twenty-third to give me two extra days off, Blaz recommended I do this as many at the library also do this to give them some extra time. I'll be returning on March eighth and go back to work the next day.

I plan to take Entropy with me, she'll probably spend a lot of that time either in my shadow or under an illusion. I have a few things I need to prepare for my trip and the first is a safe way to carry my bits with me. I need to bring a good amount if I want to buy things and pay my expenses.

So I need to keep that safe from both thieves and my own potential incompetence. And I'm not entirely sure how to go about this in a good way, the best idea I've found so far is to enchant my saddlebags in some way to make them more durable or secure.

The cloth that makes up my saddlebags is fairly durable so I should be able to enchant it, even if its effect is weak. I stand up and let the magic around me disperse as I walk into my workroom with my saddlebags. I take out my rune notebook and start looking through it to find a rune to work with.

I flip through several pages and note down a few runes on some loose paper as I compile different potential runes. I then start looking through these rune’s context looking for one that would fit my needs the best. When I'm done I'm left with a single rune that should be perfect.

A rune for locking. I can't get very fancy with how weak I need to make this but I now have a good idea of how to go about this. I start on a very basic spell to keep anything it's used on locked and closed as best the spell can with how weak it will be. When I'm done I grab my saddlebags and start enchanting them.

The saddlebags have several pockets with metal buttons to keep them closed as I walk. I enchant a specific metal button to activate or deactivate the main enchantment when tapped two times. Then I enchant the saddlebags to keep all the pockets locked closed.

I link the enchantments and try it, I activate the enchantment and try to open a pocket. I can't open it with a gentle pull so I keep using more force. It doesn't take much to force it open, anypony could force it open but I would feel it if they did it while I'm wearing my saddlebags.

It should get me to notice if anypony tries to take anything from me without my notice. Once I'm done testing it I turn the enchantment off and head to my main room to continue my practice.

Author's Note

Thanks for reading.

Also we have a cover now, YAY!! :D