“Smart thinking. Casting a spell like that helps, I wanted to see if you could figure it out on your own.” Bethany’s smile was very pretty, with deep dimples. Mike met it with one of his own and ended the spell.

  “I did feel it. The mana flows…” Here he hesitated. Bethany had treated him with kindness so far, especially considering her station so far above him. But Mike knew he couldn’t let the truth out. “I found mine. How do they work in the enchantment?”

  “It might be outside the scope of my agreement to train you on them inside you, but Aric should be able to.” She glanced around, checking if we were alone. Dropping her voice lower, she leaned in closer to Mike. “It is an easy way to handle those low mana problems he said you had.”

  “So,” Bethany continued at a normal voice, leaning back. “As you can see, some of the spell symbols are carved into the material itself.”

  She pointed at the few one the blade and handle of the sword. Mike focused, forcing himself to view the mana flowing through the sword.

  “But some of the meridians and symbols are internal. What about them?”

  “That is exactly what I was getting to, show a little patience.” Bethany’s smile removed any of the rebuke for her statement. With the hand not pointing to the symbols, she pulled something out of her pocket and held it up. To Mike, it looked like a complicated fountain pen made out of a single diamond. It caught the light, refracting a rainbow of colors across the desk.

  “This is a spectral stylus. Once you manage to control your meridians, which I will teach you, it becomes an extension of your mana and your will. That allows you to scribe beyond the physical, into the mana of the item itself.”

  With Mike focusing to try and sense the mana in the sword, he felt the change as Bethany activated the stylus. Color flowed up it, filling it like ink in water. The clear crystal became a dark purple, with flecks of silver floating in it. It still caught the light, flashing and dancing.

  “Its beautiful,” Mike said without thinking. He cursed internally at his lapse in pretending he was mentally controlled, but Bethany didn’t notice. Mike was surprised to see a blush climbing up her cheeks as she tucked her face, trying to hide it.

  “Thank you. That is what my mana looks like. I’m happy with it.” She took a deep breath to center herself. “Once the mana is infused, you can…”

  Here she lowered the stylus until it rested against the tabletop. Mike detected nothing odd about it until she moved it down further, cleanly penetrating the table. She moved it, enscribing a symbol below the surface without damaging the table at it. Bethany was writing on a level beyond the purely physical.

  Once the symbol was done, she drew a line, then let another symbol flow, connected to the first. Mike recognized them as ones dealing with mass, but wasn’t sure how they related. Once the second symbol was done, she withdrew the spectral stylus and let it return to its natural crystalline color.

  “That is it. I just enchanted the desk.” She gave a small laugh, hiding her smile behind her hand like she was embarrassed. “Go on and check it out.”

  Mike laid his hand on the table. “Identify.”

  Plain Table Of Extreme Heaviness

  This wooden table has been enchanted to weigh 8.2 times more than the materials used.

  Gripping the edge of the table, Mike tried to lift it. Even with the training he had been doing and the point thrown into his Strength, he couldn’t budge it.

  “That is… much more efficient than the broken one in the sword, master.” Mike stepped back, studying the meridians and symbols she had carved into the table. Inside the table? Behind it? Beyond it? How do I describe this?

  “I am better than whoever they had enchant this sword. Especially since that isn’t what it is supposed to do.”

  “Right. Master, you never did explain what it is supposed to do, and how it went wrong.” Mike looked back and forth between the two symbols Bethany had used, and the multiple on the sword. The two symbols were on the sword, but there were others, in a complex web.

  “Oh yes, we got distracted. They are supposed to make the sword lighter for whoever holds the sword, while making it heavier for whatever they hit.”

  “That is a powerful enchantment.” Mike tried to think how that would work with the physics he had known. Having the sword have two different weights at once didn’t make sense to him, but he gave a mental shrug and moved on.

  “It is, but it is also a difficult one. Whoever enchanted this one didn’t have the power to make the meridians wide enough.” Bethany gestured to the enchantment and shook her head. “You can see how narrow they are.”

  It was obvious once she pointed it out. The channels of mana she had used on the table were robust and thick. The ones on the sword were thin, faded almost. Mike nodded.

  “Good. The power you can push through your own meridians to empower your enchantments is a big part of how strong an enchantment can be.”

  “Could you fix this one?” Mike asked, looking at the sword.

  “I could, and do a much better job. Just look at how sloppy that energy transference rune is.” Bethany shook her head. “But that is not what they are paying me for. I’m here to teach you how to do this.”

  Bethany slipped into lecture mode for several minutes, going over the linkage and connections of the symbols carved into the physical form of the sword and its less tactile magical nature. Mike listened with half an ear, nodding when expected to, as he focused inside. The knowledge of how to scribe the spells he knew into a grimoire came almost instinctively as he learned them. Would enchanting be the same?

  From what he felt as he listened to Bethany, Mike was confident he could enchant the spells he knew, the ones he had one hundred percent, if he had the tools do it, one of the spectral stylus. Mike was about to ask Bethany about it when a knock on the door frame interrupted him and Bethany both. They turned to the doorway.

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  “Pardon this one, but Master Aric has requested that the slave Michael resume his duties.” The servant in the doorway was wearing brown, showing he was one of the general slaves. He stared at his own feet as he spoke, not raising his eyes.

  Bethany sighed. “Yes, thank you. Dismissed.”

  The slave bowed without looking up, then turned and departed. Bethany turned back towards Mike. “I can’t distract you too much. Please take another item from the chest, do what you do, and we can go over that. We’ll have to speed this up, I only have an hour left today.”

  Reaching in the chest, Mike felt around as he did before, trying to sense what was in his hand. This time he pulled out a small piece of metal, six inches across. The symbols carved into it had to do with sound. For some reason, Mike felt it was incomplete.

  “Identify.”

  Communication Plate

  One of Two

  Any word spoken when holding this plate will reverberate from the other. Range of four hundred and ninety four yards.

  “So that is why this feel incomplete. There is another in there somewhere.” Mike scribbled the information on the paper he was given.

  “You picked that up already? You have real talent at this.” Bethany looked Mike up and down. “The symbols on this one are duplicated on the other. One of the goals is to make them almost exact copies.”

  Bethany continued to lecture on the communication plate for several minutes, calling out innate functions and spiritual resonance, things that Mike understood much quicker than he anticipated. This teaching was giving words to concepts Mike knew on an instinctive level.

  After several minutes, Bethany cut herself short in mid-sentence and told Mike to pull another piece from the box. He set the plate aside and reached in. This time it was a loose bundle of sticks, each one six inches long and mostly straight with the dark bark still on them. If not for the symbols carved into them, Mike would have thought them normal sticks.

  Firestarter

  Snap sticks and drop into tinder. Burns for three minutes.

  “Boring,” Bethany said as Mike wrote down what the window said. He noted on the paper that there were three less than the bundle held. While Bethany was talking about the simple enchantment on them, Mike held three and slipped them into his inventory unnoticed.

  Never know when those will be useful.

  The next several items Mike drew forth were all stones that had light enchantments on them. Each had a different luminosity and time they could run, but it was the same enchantment on each. Bethany got irritated when Mike drew the third similar stone out, knowing that he already understood the enchantment. It wasn’t exactly the same as Torch, which created flame that gave off life, but it was close enough that Mike thought he could mimic it without much difficulty.

  He slipped one of those stones into his inventory as well. More utilitarian items followed. A hairbrush that was enchanted to make whatever you used it on smell like lilacs. A small gem that was held in the mouth to clean teeth. Another platter like the ones that summoned the gladiators’ food, but this one conjured something called xevora fruit. Even Mike, as fascinated with magic as he was, soon grew bored.

  When Mike pulled the next item from the chest, he knew it was the last. It was a bag, one that reminded Mike of the messenger bags from back on Earth. Inside there were dozens of white balls, each an inch across. As Mike pulled one out, Bethany hissed and pulled back.

  “Woof, those are rough. Be careful handling those, that enchantment can be… unstable.”

  Mike held the plain white ball between his fingers, examining it. Physically it was carved out of a smooth, pale stone. The fine grain made it seem more dense than it really was. There were no symbols carved into it, but dozens crowded it in the spiritual view, with meridians making a fine web.

  Blasting Orb

  Stable

  When broken, releases massive magical force.

  “I didn’t get a lot of detail on this one. It says it is a blasting orb and releases a lot of force.” He looked at Bethany, who was nervously leaning back away from him. “It also says it is stable.”

  “By whose metric?” Bethany said, but she seemed to relax. She looked in the bag and gave a low whistle. “Damn, there are dozens of the things. If they are all stable, that is amazing.”

  “What does the enchantment do? It is… intense.”

  “It is a containment field for mana. Part of the enchantment is forcing it into the stone, pushing it into the meridians. The amount of power it contains is dependent on the skill and strength of the enchanter.”

  “It did say these contain a massive magical force.” Mike reached in, touching several more while casting the spell. They were all the same, stable orbs with massive magical force inside. He also moved a dozen of them to his inventory while doing it. After a minute of casting the spell and seeing the same window, Mike gave up and just counted the rest, putting the number left after his pilfering on the sheet.

  “That is the end of this chest. Do you need anything else from it? Master?” Mike caught himself at the end. He had been slipping into a familiarity with Bethany that was not allowed.

  “No, let’s pack it up and stow it.” Bethany hadn’t noticed any lapse, or at least gave no sign of it. She grabbed the sword, hefting its weight with both hands, and sunk it into the shadow of the open chest. “We have little time left, we should get as much as we can.”

  “Are you going to be back tomorrow?” Mike eyed the stack of chest piled against the wall. There were at least thirty of them, and he was certain most held more than the one he had just opened. The meridians on this one were weak and narrow.

  “Yes, I am to train you until further notice from morning to afternoon. Then your alchemist teacher is in from nightfall until it is time for you to sleep.”

  “That is good to hear, I have enjoyed learning this master.” Together they loaded up the chest and moved it against the wall. Bethany was stronger than Mike had expected, her thick robes covering a well-muscled frame. She was able to lift and carry the next chest herself while Mike placed the first against the wall.

  This one was much better enchanted, with over three times the space and twice the weight reduction of the first one. Bethany cooed over its enchantment work, demonstrating to Mike how the meridians both moved through and contained the space within the chest.

  The first item they pulled out was a breastplate that looked like it was made of brass to Mike. He sat it on the table, but hesitated before casting his spell. He studied the symbols, traced the meridians, and made a decision.

  “This chest plate… when it is struck, there is a burst of flame. Am I correct master?”

  “Damn good work.” Bethany smiled at Mike. He smiled back, staring into her deep brown eyes before he caught himself and looked away. “That is excellent. You’re a natural at this.”

  Mike cast Identify and saw that he was correct. The enchantment on the plate said it had a cool down of sixty-one seconds, which surprised Mike. He hadn’t seen a cool-down like that on any of the enchantments, so he asked Bethany about it.

  “It is just like when you cast spells, meridians can get over taxed and need a rest. Usually an enchantment is designed to be maintained from ambient mana, but this one draws it in and stores it until triggered.” She touched a few symbols in the center of the chest that Mike was unfamiliar with. “These here are the mana battery. They draw in and hold the mana, but need time to refill.”

  “And where are the trigger symbols master?”

  Bethany moved her hand down further, to the navel. “These here govern the trigger. Depending on the symbols you use, you can change it to a word, a gesture, timing, all kinds of things.”

  Leaning over the chest, Mike studied both groups of symbols closely. They were unfamiliar to him, none of the spells he knew incorporated them. These were purely part of enchanting. Once he thought he had it, Mike opened his mouth to ask another question, but a window popped up, interrupting him.

  Congratulations! You have familiarized yourself with a craft enough to be able to select it as a Profession!

  Two open Professions slots.

  Do you wish your first Profession to be Enchanter? Note: This decision cannot be changed!

  Yes, Mike thought to himself. A new wave of power passed through his body, causing goosebumps to break out. He had to bite back a laugh as the power settled within him. One step closer to getting out of here.