Aster Fall, Ch 9: Redfrost Pine Enchantments (Patreon)

A couple of days later, they stopped for the night near a grove of scattered redfrost pines. A lone merchant wagon was the only other traveler on the road here, heading in the opposite direction. They waited for it to pass before they cut off into the grove, which was far enough away to give them some privacy.

After everyone was settled in, Sam set up his work table and returned to his enchanting practice. Caelus, the distant blue moon, was a quarter of the way up in the sky, marking that it was halfway between dusk and midnight.

To the side, he flicked a talisman that he’d been working on, listening to the note it made as it burned away in the air.

It was a new rune, the eighteenth from the simple column. Of the ones so far, he’d identified runes for color, voice, sound, image, sight, harp, flute, shout, music, shape, obscure, vibration, silence, soft, loud, heat, and air.

The last two were probably some form of self-heating enchantment that was bound into the original, which was designed to keep the wearer comfortable.

Several of the runes were variants of runes that he already knew, which had sped up the process of learning them. He wasn’t sure why there were variant runes, but he had the feeling that if he understood the song that went to them, it would all make sense.

It probably had something to do with tilting them toward one affinity or another, like projecting sound compared to hearing it.

At any rate, his knowledge was expanding.

The notes he could hear that were unique to each rune were still hanging in his mind, like stars in a galaxy. He wasn’t sure if it was really a sound or some part of the rune’s innate magic that he was interpreting as that.

Its inherent concept.

It was something that he was starting to understand in a broader way, even after just a few days of working with the new runes. The more he understood the concept of a rune, its path of magic and truth, the better he would be able to use it.

It was the essential truth of it that underlay its existence in the world.

At the moment, as a way of understanding each of the runes, he’d come up with a new game for Altey, which let him practice at the same time as keeping her busy.

He’d taken a collection of different elemental woods, each of them a rectangle about two inches long and less than an inch wide. Then, he’d inscribed all the runes related to sound that he knew on them, a distinct one to each, and strung them together into a necklace.

When she touched a rune with a bit of her mana, it created a note.

It was a sort of musical necklace.

Based on the amount of aura he’d infused and its harmless nature, it would last for a week or so before the wooden slips crumbled.

Altogether, it had runes for sound, shout, whisper, music, harp, flute, soft, loud, silence, and voice, with differing elemental affinities from the woods they were made from that changed the quality of the sound they produced.

It was perfectly noisy and awful, which meant that Altey loved it.

She spent all day playing with it, infusing tiny pulses of mana to see what sort of sounds she could make. The road around her echoed with ghostly whispers, booming shouts, airy harps, shrill flutes, and other random things.

His mother was already exasperated.

He grinned as he turned back to his work, his job as older brother complete for the day. In his defense, it was good magical training.

She got to practice infusing her mana in a way that had a realistic effect, reinforcing the basic concepts that would be useful to her in the future. With a bit more practice, she would probably unlock Mana Control as soon as she had her Class Day.

He started to inscribe the eighteenth rune onto another nimbus willow leaf, studying its structure as he let the echoes from it resonate in his mind.

It slightly resembled the rune for shield, but it was a bit different. It took three deft movements of his stylus to finish inscribing it again, and then a few more to surround it with a simple support structure.

When it was ready, he infused it with a point of essence and tossed it away from his work table, watching more closely for the flow of energy.

This time, as the rune ignited, the energy in it flowed outward, forming into a sort of silver-white bubble, and then it shattered, popping like a soap bubble with a soft tiiiingg as it faded away into the air.

He rubbed his chin as he looked at where it had been, recalling the form it held as he let the sense of it flow through his awareness.

Time began to pass around him, and he felt the two traits that he’d gained months ago nudging at him, accelerating his thoughts and helping him to fall into the flow of the rune’s meaning.

Craftsman helped him fall into a working trance where time felt like it didn’t matter, letting him concentrate for long periods without getting distracted.

The words of the World Law echoed in his mind as he called the trait up again.

“You will find it easier in the future to fall into a working trance and to endure long hours of labor. You will also find it easier to relate to other Craftsmen, gaining a natural Charisma bonus when speaking with them.”

The second trait, Mystical, was more enigmatic and perhaps even more valuable. “You will find that it is easier to understand natural forces in the future.”

He wasn’t sure how the trait was helping him, but it was true that understanding the runes was moving quickly, at least for the simple ones.

He switched to python hide for the next talisman, and then to a sliver of redfrost pine wood, watching how the energy changed as it moved through affinities. The results left him a bit puzzled.

Unlike the other runes so far, this one wasn’t changing when he used different materials for it.

He leaned forward, his elbows on his work table, as he observed the flow of energy in the air through all of his senses.

The meaning of it was just...there. He poured his attention towards it, reaching out with his essence to touch the concept behind the rune.

Then, like lightning striking as he crossed over some unnamed barrier, the name and meaning of the rune rumbled through his mind.

Barrier.

The rune formed in his mind, outlined in crystal flame as it shimmered there, demanding his attention.

He held himself still, breathing in time with the flow of the rune’s meaning as he touched it, turning it this way and that. It was more abstract than shield, focused on other concepts.

Shield was for blocking damage. This one was for...blocking other things.

It was the first of the runes he’d seen that might lead him in the direction of how to block Analyze, a fragmented gift arriving in the midst of the night.

It wasn’t enough by itself, but it was a step in the right direction.

His hand flashed out, carving the rune in the air as crystal flame trailed after his fingers, as he tried to inscribe it into the wind on a sudden surge of inspiration.

The crystal flame crackled, holding its shape for just a moment, as he felt the beginning of a translucent barrier forming, and then it flowed away.

His depth of understanding still wasn’t quite enough to hold the meaning of the rune in its entirety with just his will. A new nimbus willow leaf appeared in his hand as he took advantage of the moment of enlightenment and began to inscribe it again.

This time, his rune had more depth to it, a quality that seemed to pervade the symbol and make it more than just a series of lines and swirls.

The meaning resonated, like the work of a sculptor whose touch was ineffable and inspiring, adding just that extra something to the work that made it a masterpiece.

He had touched upon the concept behind it and the rune was starting to come to life.

As he inscribed the rune, he spent longer meditating on it, feeling for the meaning that was unique in it. It wasn’t just a note in a melody now. There were other layers past that.

The runes were representations of natural power, truth in a condensed form. That was how they channeled mana to create an effect.

As he focused on studying the rune, the air around him occasionally rippled with ethereal currents of energy as his aura and the world interacted, forming translucent barriers that faded away again a moment later.

---

With the rune fresh in his mind, he fiddled with a piece of redfrost pine, turning it over in his hands as he poured crystal flame into it.

It was a couple of times larger than the usual slips, and he’d selected it from the best quality wood he could find around the clearing.

Redfrost pine had a blue-red hue, as if blood had frozen inside a deep blue glacier and then given rise to a tree. In the depth of the wood, there was a rich sanguine hue, which turned sky blue as you looked over the grain.

It changed with the weather, and the wind turned cold enough, the edges of it would fade to a translucent white, like arctic ice.

There was something ineffable about it that made it hard to comprehend, similar to a rune. He was coming to realize that just like a rune, the world itself existed in layers of understanding.

Perhaps that was what ability tiers helped you to access, putting you in touch with deeper and more real forms of power that could be molded to your will, if you had the capability.

His talons tapped along the wood as he continued to turn it around in his hands and purify it with his aura. The blood and ice colors of the wood were intensifying as he did, and the grain was becoming smoother, less visible.

When it was ready, he chose not to use his stylus to inscribe it. Instead, he used his talons directly, slowly carving the barrier rune into the center of the wood. His talons were as sharp as blades, and the work proceeded quickly.

His stylus felt like an extension of his body when he used it, but it was still a tool. His talons were truly part of him and infused with the purest form of his aura.

CraaaAAack.

A moment later, the rune rippled on the surface of the wood, and then the entire chunk of wood exploded into fragments, sending chunks whistling away until they crashed into a hasty Essence Shield.

For just a moment, a translucent barrier gleamed where the wood had been, its presence more clear than before.

He let out a deep breath as he picked up the next piece of wood, a smaller one this time, and pulled his aura in tighter. Then he began to purify the new material.

In the end, his stylus was a tool. A useful one, but it was still a layer of separation between him and the meaning of the runes, isolating his aura from them.

He needed a more direct experience.

Even if it resulted in explosions.

For a while after that, the evening peace of the forest glade was lit by the cerulean glow of his crystal flame as he purified and inadvertently destroyed one piece of redfrost pine after another.

But with each section, he came a little bit closer to fusing his aura with the meaning of the barrier rune.

If he could get it exactly right, it would be a sign that he understood the rune well enough to balance the energy with his own.

Perhaps that could actually be called the first level of mastery.

He didn’t know if any other Enchanter used this type of system to understand their work, but it felt like the right path to him. If he could learn how to engrave a rune with just his aura, he could hold the concept of it in his crystal flame.

Then...where he could go with it was unknown, but it would be one step closer to the level of a natural rune, like the lightning runes that existed across the Storm Plains or the Song of the Earth from when his father gained his subclass.

Another explosion craackled through the area as the piece of wood he was working on shattered, turning to dust in his hands. Splinters flew away from his skin in a glowing, sanguine cloud.

Fortunately, there was a lot of wood in the grove.

---

Sam’s work to understand the runes continued as they traveled for that day and the next. He’d collected hundreds of pieces of redfrost pine to use. Something about its colors appealed to him, especially how it changed to a translucent white.

It reminded him of his crystal flame, so it had become his new favorite base for testing ideas.

Fortunately, there were nearly endless forests to discover on the Storm Plains, and the proportion of it to other types of trees was increasing as they continued down the road toward Highfold.

It was a popular tree in the mountains, and that was where the city got its name.

The elevation of the land was slowly increasing as they followed the road, cutting up gradual switchbacks in the rolling hills that went up more than they went down.

Behind him, when he turned to look, the Storm Plains were visible for dozens of miles.

The rivers of mana, swathes of grass, and dense forest groves were scattered across the land, as haphazard as a child’s set of toys as they followed a rhythm that was entirely their own.

They weren’t that high up in the mountains yet, but the view was even better from here than it had been from the walls of Cliff’s End.

The sight of the land stretching away in front of him made something in his spirit relax, as if the world had suddenly become a little lighter.

Above, the clouds drifted in a spiral of purple-white, silver, and rose gold, backlit by the midmorning sun.

Ahead of them, the mountains rose ever higher, climbing in a series of jagged white and blue peaks like a dragon’s teeth as they formed the Western Reaches, the tallest mountain range in the interior of the kingdom.

Up there, all sorts of monsters and beasts were common, from griffins and wyverns to frost titans and icescale wyrms. Those were the monsters that embodied the ice and wind and the sere frost of the sky.

There were also other elements, but the Western Reaches were known for their cold.

He glanced down at his belt, where his dimensional bags were, and nodded slowly as he considered what else his family might need to be comfortable there.

Heating stones, perhaps even self-contained enchantments on their clothing, more defensive amulets.... Maybe other things.

Along with his work on the simple runes, he’d also been starting to work on message amulets for all of them, an idea he’d had for a long time now.

With his growing understanding of enchantments, he thought he’d finally figured out a way to transfer the enchantment from a message scroll onto an amulet and to make it permanent, with a monster core as the base.

With the right inscription, he might even be able to link them together, to create a sort of communication web between all of them, and a way to signal if the amulet lost contact with its owner.

That way, if Altey or anyone were in trouble, they would all know it.

He didn’t think Highfold would be a directly hostile location, but that didn’t mean he trusted it completely.

Once they arrived, perhaps he could open a business selling similar enchantments to the people there. Offering solutions to common problems was a popular service.

It would be better than selling weapons or enchanted armor.

That would get a lot of attention he didn’t want and there was something in him that rebelled against the idea of providing his enchantments to someone who might use them against him.

Selling things to help people survive in the wilderness and that might improve their lives was better.

Maybe he could also sell some smaller, more casual things, like the toys he’d made for Altey, if people were interested in enchantments to change the color of their clothes or an amulet to project their voice over a crowd.

Ideas flickered through his mind as he took in the stark peaks of the mountains that pierced the sky.

---

The effort to engrave the barrier rune with solely his talons was gaining traction, but he ended up setting it aside for a bit the following day to work on something that wouldn’t explode on him.

He wanted to test the functionality of the rune against different spells and abilities.

When he was finished with the base material, it was an elegant rectangle of redfrost pine that he’d purified until it glowed with rich hues from deep inside.

On the surface of the pine, there was a barrier rune surrounded by an intricate support structure and storage runes.

This was a proper enchantment, unlike the talismans he’d been fashioning from leaves. He’d used the best of his abilities to create something that would bring out the concept at the heart of it.

He gave the enchantment a nod as he reached out and tapped the activation point at the corner of the pine slip, holding his breath as he waited to see what would happen.

A translucent, shimmering dome appeared around him, rotating slowly through the air. Unlike a shield spell, it felt thin and nearly invisible, as if it were barely there.

There was a hint of frosted blue to it, which came from the redfrost pine’s Ice affinity. Without that, it would have been completely transparent.

He stood up from his work table and walked toward the others, heading for the circle where they were gathered around the campfire.

“Krana, could you try and Analyze me?”

He doubted it would be so simple, but every success has to begin somewhere. This test would generate more ideas.