《Ars Alogia》 Entry 1 - Instructions to Myself 17th Light beneath the tenth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/001 - Instructions Dear self, I doubt I will ever have need of this journal, or if I do, I would likely not be in the position to make use of it. Nevertheless, I will be placing several spells within this book as contingencies as I think of them. I have already begun by protecting the text from discovery with layered glamours and building a sympathetic link between myself and it. If you are reading this, you might be in danger. Whatever anamnestic charms I will have managed to place on here no doubt convinced you of the authenticity of this book. I urge you to disguise your vigilance from anyone of suspicion and, if this book becomes truly necessary, become suspicious of anyone you feel unduly trusting of. I cannot anticipate your every circumstance so the full burden will ultimately fall under your own caution and judgement.If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. My name is Maico, the eldest son of Umari the Enchantress, and the Magister Vrulath. I am one of currently four siblings including our twin brother who lives with Father, our younger sister who regularly visits from the academy on a monthly basis or more, and the youngest, little Tori who clings to our Mother like a barnacle. I would place some faith in our mother¡¯s and aunt Ekelyn¡¯s ability to deal with threats by themselves so suggestions of their ineptitude should be placed under more scepticism than the contrary. Our sister Anora is also highly talented at various fields of sorcery and may be counted on for her competence. Even if many of the wards have failed, you must still trust in Mother¡¯s protections; she is a master enchanter and a blood mage, something very difficult to affect with illusory or subtle magic. She likely has at least three more hidden wards beneath every protection I might strip from her workings. Should the need be dire, I have placed the Gaudium Dolore spell in the back of this journal, but I hope never to have to use such a blunt curse to counter domination. It is especially useful in rooting out and subverting all manner of conventional compulsions, as well as their perpetrators. The simplest way to counter any influence placed upon us is to maintain an isolated kernel within our mind and then to use the clarity of thought it preserves to identify oddities and irregular logic. You must pay particular heed to any sense of dissonance or contradiction in your memories. Do not make promises, do not offer what is yours, and do not talk about mother¡¯s apocrypha to anyone. The people around you might not be who you think they are. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 2 Entry: 2/002 Dear self, Since I will be writing this journal on the unlikely premise that it might become necessary to restore my mind, I should offer a brief explanation of my paranoia. To be blunt, I was most recently inconvenienced by a trio of Quislings, which are a type of minor imp creature that are naturally adept with illusory magic. They managed to incapacitate me, effectively kidnap me for several days, and successfully created a simulacrum to impersonate me by using memories pilfered from my mind. Having stolen my identity, the imps have also stolen my wallet before prancing off with an Augur and several dozen Glit. They somehow managed to dispense several unregulated enchanted items without any of the clients noticing. I am only allowed to practice with enchanting under my mother¡¯s license as her apprentice so this is a serious matter that needed immediate reporting to the authorities. I can only be relieved that the Quislings didn¡¯t try to forge an official guild seal, but we will be forced to refund whichever customers had been serviced by the simulacrum, and even compensate them depending on the individual items.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. It was my fault that it happened. Mother was away with Tori and had left me alone with the shop for a prolonged period. The little devils managed to escape an artefact they were bound into while I was appraising it for a client just as one of the lesser warding charms broke by chance. In the end, they were only scared away by my sister Anora sending word of a surprise visit, that and the simulacrum having enough of my memories to realise they would not be able to either deal with her. She found the house empty and discovered my person in the nearby woods hiding from all civilization. If you cannot remember what had happened to us then I am glad, and I made Anora promise to erase her own memory of the specifics. Suffice it to say that I was unavailable for the time the Quislings were attempting to take over my identity. I have sent several reports to the guild and constabulary since then in order to mitigate the issue of multiple imps being loose in the area, a simulacrum active in identity theft, and trying to appease the enchanter¡¯s guild to avoid having my official apprenticeship revoked. I¡¯m mostly frustrated that none of the people entering the shop or purchasing items noticed any oddities or that the enchanter seal was missing from all the items they bought. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 3 18th Light beneath the tenth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/003 Dear self, Business has been slow since the incident, when it comes to new customers that is. I¡¯ve already handled three people who had been serviced by the Quislings. Erhin was one of them, and he was overly apologetic about not noticing that I had been replaced when he brought his old shovel in for maintenance. He was wringing his hands guiltily the entire time waiting for me to apply the guild seal and refused the refund I offered him. The other two weren¡¯t half as understanding. The first was mostly just annoyed that he had to have his item inspected at all, but I understand that his departure was delayed and he had his schedule disrupted on his way through. The second was an, unfortunately, local woman I was unfamiliar with who demanded compensation for the so called indignity she suffered in carrying around a subpar item. The earrings were completely safe and functional and only lacked the official seal so I eventually managed to boot her out of the shop with just the sealed earings and the refund required by guild policy. She was so abrasive the entire time I nearly considered tampering with the youth glamour on the things.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. Anora had left a few days ago and Mother isn¡¯t even due back into the realm for at least another week, so I¡¯m alone with the pixies for now. It¡¯s mostly time for me to plan the workings I want to place on this journal in the future and how I will explain the loss of a dozen artefacts in profit and the general funds the Quislings stole when she gets back. I¡®ll need to phrase it gently, for my own sake. My personnel funds are quite lacking since the incident. The majority of the stolen Glit were mine. They and a few loose coins we keep on hand for the shop were the only ones the imps could get to with how much warding goes into our locked boxes and rooms. I had to improvise ingredients for the glamoured ink I use for this journal as I couldn''t go out and buy any. I think my next batch will have to manage without as much blitterleaf dust at least for the next while. And I need to find a way to get a few glum of mournjoy from somewhere. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 4 - Into the Woods Entry: 2/004 - Into the Woods Dear self, The wild sprites seemed rather agitated today. You might note their distress when they are unusually well hidden. Distraught sprites will maintain their glamours even when dancing around in the open, which they will also do less of when feeling threatened like they seemed to be. Even the curious ones refrained from approaching me without the accompaniment of several other sprites. The woods surrounding our house have naturally thick undergrowth, but clear paths are beaten between the trees where forest animals pass through, trampling and nibbling on the flora. The local breed of giant jackalope are also effective at ravaging the foliage. This all means that you can easily get lost following the silvan trails while thinking them paths. The road to the nearby town is very deliberately marked with chalk rocks along its length. An enchanter¡¯s shop is placed out-of-the-way for a reason and the surrounding woods have been known to occasionally enchant underprepared travelers. The chalk path helps ward off spirits who like entrancing people or sending them astray.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. I write you this because I found the carcass of one of the jackalope near one of the glades close to the house. It was not even a dozen paces from the clearing. There are not a lot of beasts nearby that might hunt the hornyhares, or those that do would not leave one half consumed. It is possible that there might be a monster traveling through the region. Happily I managed to gather several wild herbs in the woods. Magic is more pliable when using ingredients gathered by your own hand, so being too poor to purchase them might even help you improve your craft. I gathered a swath of Morrowgrim, a few Jolly Darlings, and enough Blithweed to fill a bell. I might be able to make something with all of it, but I can definitely figure out a way to make it worth selling. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 5 19th Light beneath the tenth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/005 Dear self, I think those Quislings got us better than we had thought. I woke up this morning hanging from a tree in the garden outside, chilled to the bone. It¡¯s a wonder I didn¡¯t fall from the boughs in my sleep. Anora might be a powerful adept but she is still inexperienced with affluent magic, and it is no wonder she missed a few smaller details with her tendency to avoid delicate work. I¡¯ll need to see a professional to figure out how many lingering suggestions are still nudging me around. There isn¡¯t really anyone like that nearby, so I¡¯ll just have to deal with whatever happens while waiting for Mum to come home and hopefully she can handle it.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Following this I went around doing the groundskeeping. Funnily enough I seem to have forgotten all about the house chores before now so that just another suggestion of impaired cognition, undoubtedly. People wonder why they call it illusory magic, but if you¡¯ve ever had your mind invaded you would know how illusory our perception of the world truly is. Illusions are more than just tricks of the light and hypnotic imagery. I prefer to work glamours personally; delving the mind is not in among my strengths. Firstly there are the house sprites that need feeding. They gather around this region with the other sprites, mostly because of aunt Ekelyn¡¯s claim over the land but we need to bribe them with cream and sweet treats to get their help around the house and in the garden. The garden luckily has survived without permanent harm. The Anadlerutsprouts lost a few leaves but will recover before we have need of it. I had to remove a few swelterwort weeds sprouting despite the encroaching cold and burnt my hand when one of them spontaneously burst into fire. I found an abandoned burrow nearby filled with a few embers dotting its interior and surrounded by an area of unusual warmth. Something was likely looking for a place to hibernate through the coming winter. The hole was only half dug so it was still deciding on where to nest and might have been chased off by the pixies. I collected the embers in a warded jar, so the swelterwort will die off soon unless I missed another source of fire aspect somewhere. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 6 20th Light beneath the tenth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/006 Dear self, I managed to avoid waking in some wilderness this morning. I had bound my ankle in a charmed twine last night and woke this morning cheek-first on the floorboard. My bound foot was still touching the bedpost. The house sprites vanished my bowl after I brought them some cream. They¡¯ve gotten more mischievous ever since the Quislings, and I suspect the entire event inspired some rogue wit into them. I reviewed the wording on the wards for any loopholes where they enter the yard. The contracts were precisely written and haven¡¯t faded yet from any of the boundaries. Aerzen Whirlstorm came in today with his children. Apparently he had bought a spinning top. This is the first item I had to re-appraise that had any problematic effects. It was a seven sided teetotem with an enchantment to allow it to spin endlessly, or for a great long while at least. It¡¯s largely earth aligned so it¡¯s limited in what surfaces it works best on. It also has a sympathetic bonding charm similar to work I had been experimenting with that makes it draw closer towards anyone who speaks encouragingly or positively towards it. This was from the simulacrum as the teetotem had never held anything other than the spinning enchant. It is surprisingly complex as well.Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work! It is especially drawn to people who have done regular interaction with it in multiple ways and over several periods such as those who pick it up or set it spinning manually. It will also tend to move away from sounds of any negative or aggressive tone of voice, as well as negative intent, or just when someone asks it to go away. It will always try to return to whoever it is most bonded to after a while, even if it had been told to go away. The problematic part comes in that it is an unsealed enchantment, meaning it can still absorb intent from its surroundings, and grow. Theoretically it might develop some kind of personality or become a nkisi, becoming a toy that is also a companion to a degree, but it has the potential to develop into anything with the right circumstances. It¡¯s recklessly made, compromising safety to fulfill a whimsy, pursuing a fantasy at the risk of a nightmare, and it is exactly what I would have done had I been less inhibited a person. It ultimately posses a negligible risk but goes against what the guild allows, so I have to seal away that potential. It¡¯ll just be a spinning toy that follows you around. It feels almost like I¡¯m neutering the little thing. The process will take I while so I had to send the Whirlstorms away and told them to come return tomorrow evening. The two children gave me such soulful stares when asking why; I told them that it was incomplete and I had forgotten to add a little trick to it still. Now I¡¯ll be out another refund and whatever materials the spinning toy will siphon off me. I still have to offer Aerzen compensation for the ¡°dangerous¡± item as well... What would make those kids like the teetotem more than they already do? Those brats better appreciate whatever I end up making. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 7 21st Light beneath the tenth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/007 Dear self, I did add a little trick to it so that it spewed sparkles randomly and squeaked at various tones when it was near anyone it was bonded to. It almost feels like a language of random squeaking. Figuring out how to make the squealing sound pleasant was a chore as I had never made a vocal glamour before, but I kept it simple so came out well enough. It¡¯s harder to mess something up that¡¯s simple, and a simple thing done well can draw a surprising amount of appreciation when you consider how much people have to labour to get others to like more ambitious works. The hard part was the lattice regulating the deviation between squeaks, so I guess I¡¯m just as guilty when it comes to overcomplicating the things I make. The toy is so layered in magic now that if Mum ever saw it she would spell my tongue to taste foulness for a month for how much uncoordinated effects there are in theunfortified opus. Sensible craftsmen would turn it into a wondrous item before attempting to do so many enchantments.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Little Selthen and Erelise sure did like it though, and Aerzen accepted the additions as compensation instead of the Glit I would have owed him. I had to insist on the refund though. I don¡¯t want the inspector examining every bit of goodwill I receive when they come frowning at me and berate me for not testing the warding scheme before an appraisal. I did end up using all of the Jolly Darlings I gathered from the woods the other day, and finding the Jingsnicker between all our warded jars took a lot longer than it should have. These things are so disorganized anyone who saw it would think we were witches instead of enchanters. I¡¯m the closest thing to an alchemist in the house and even I don¡¯t know what most of these are for. I got a letter from the Guild, so we know that the inspector is coming tomorrow. He¡¯s a respected diviner so you¡¯ll soon find out exactly how those Quislings got loose, and whose fault it is. Mother won¡¯t like it that an outsider was inspecting her workings without her supervision, but I don¡¯t have a justification to refuse him. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 8 - Apocryphal Ink Entry 2/008 Dear self, I¡¯ve been figuring out the glamour recipe for the journal I¡¯m using. The way I designed the workings it won¡¯t be too hard to add everything else I have planned that isn¡¯t included yet. I might make a simplified version of this for sale. Mother will no doubt have a few pointers in how I can give the book more protections, how to infuse it with anamnestic workings, and what the best way would be to bond it to myself. I might be a little presumptuous, but I have decided to name it Aprocryphal Ink. *Aprocryphal Ink: A loop of Mercury A vial of unhardened Amberglass A glum of Marrowdrim blood A drop of Mournjoy One loop of Stargleam Enchanted water, must be purified Any text equivalent to the intended manuscript A swath of Blitterleaf(glamour) One loop of Nightgloom essence A mote of Nurn , if available The intended manuscript A small bottle of Absinthe The first issue is hiding the manuscript behind the image of another text, for which I have used my herbology book. This will deflect suspicion from the text, and a method I much prefer over making the book seem simply empty. In order to achieve this I needed to transform the original text into a spell construct I could use in glamours.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. You must first consecrate the text with enchanted water to create a sympathetic bond with its contents. The consecration ensures that the image of the texts become infused into the released vapour and ash. The book must then be immolated in a smokeless fire beneath a charm made from a vial of unhardened Amberglass to capture the simulacrum from the book. Combine the Marrowdrim blood, which is a red sap-like substance, with Absinthe at equal proportions. Sip a mouthful from the mixture and hold it in your mouth while meditating on a symoathetic charm with yourself. Blood magic might be used alternatively. Spit the mixture back out and then mix in the Mournjoy and the Stargleam. The intent of this is to create a bond attuned between yourself and the ink, so that it might recognise you without adding advanced identifying spells. Ideally this is aided with a mote of Nurn siphoned from you. The identity stored within your fate is the most immutably tied to your recognisable self as far as I know. The Marrowdrim recognises your blood, which might include your descendants or siblings. The Mournjoy resonates with your empathetic self, meaning someone who might strongly emphasise with you might be resonant as well, which happens with some romantic partners especially. The Stargleam is simply used to exclude anyone who wasn¡¯t born beneath the same stars as you were. To make the ink, crush the Blitterleaf into dust and mix it with the Nightgloom. The Blitterleaf acts as the base of the glamours which contain the hidden manuscript as well as the text used to obscure the contents. The Nightgloom helps to ensure secrecy from attempts at divination and various senses. You must now admixture the Blitterleaf and Marrowdrim compounds, the unhardened Amberglass, and add the remaining ash from the text while chanting minor glamour charms to structure the imagery. The bowl of prepared compounds must then be placed within a grounding circle and have the mercury added while charmed with a working for etherealization. This process transmutes the potion into the glamoured ink by purifying the physical compound and transforming the material into ethereal constructs. This has the visible effect of turning the solution completely transparent. I suspect it is colourless, but I have not yet had the opportunity to show it to anyone and ask. It also etherealizes the physical material, which means volume is constant regardless of mass. It also seems to be near weightless. I believe the Opus is stable so replenishing the ink only requires adding more of the Blitterleaf compound and infusing it with power. The final step is to take the intended manuscript and tip the bottle of ink over it until it is completely covered. The ink will visibly glamour the manuscript until it is identical in appearance with the original book. Your personal manuscript will only become visible when the book is opened and you focus your mind on the sympathetic connection you have towards it. Writing requires the original ink but is otherwise as normal. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 9 22th Light beneath the tenth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/009 Dear self, I seem to have forgotten to replace the charmed twine last night. I woke up within a cleansing circle of all things, the chalk that made it still resting between my fingers. It was a strange formation using a lot of archaic glyphs. It might have been connected to an Ancient magic. As far as I can tell it is meant to ward away some very specific magical influences, but I¡¯ll be leaving it well alone until I can get someone who can interpret it to analyze its purpose. The diviner came today as expected. He was an owlish man named Axl Rashplume. Having a tall anthropomorphic owl walking around town must have been a strange sight even among a population of kobolds. Sure, kobolds shapeshift into various things, but they can¡¯t actually hybridize their forms when shifting between short anthropoids and small animal forms. I¡¯m probably the only thing for leagues around to look as exotic as he does. I inherited a rare strainof albinism from my mother¡¯s latent troll blood, which includes draining the colour from my vision apparently, as well as my appearance. In any case, Rashplume came over an stared very seriously at all the wards surrounding the house and the workshop. He had a habit of pointing out minor details and critiquing them in a patronizing way. He liked explaining things without being asked and just assuming he was teaching me something I didn¡¯t know.Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. I could swear I heard him make some unintelligible cooing sound while staring very attentively at one of our doorknobs. When we came to the binding wards in the workshop he became statuesque. I could only see his massive eyes shift minimally. The binding wards are what protect against whatever might be inside any unknown artefacts when we unseal them for appraisal, so they are crucial for handling the stuff some people drag in here for analyses. I once had to appraise a flavour charm that had somehow degraded severely over time that it was cursing feral hunger into dozens of people in proximity to it. That¡¯s why you should not use an artefact after the seal had faded. When he stopped staring at the binding ward he informed that a fragment of divine essence had somehow lodged itself randomly right into a critical regulator of the oxalis. There was news of a few divine spirits storming through the region so it¡¯s not inconceivable that they got violent with each other and spread ethereal shrapnel over the place. Apparently it was aligned with a domain of Fortuity which might have something to do with how it breached the warded boundary surrounding the house. Fate aligned magic is among the most difficult to counteract. The important part is that it wasn¡¯t our fault after all! The Guild has no way of penalizing me for an Act of Asura. I did end up getting a minor suspension from Axl while I¡¯m under review for a complaint that woman with the glamoured earrings made about me, which is slightly unreasonable. The only reason they did it at all was because Axl was already here inspecting our warding scheme and decided I deserved it for some reason! Now the only work I¡¯m allowed to do is dealing with the enchantments the Quislings sold, and I¡¯ll have to send anyone else away! Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 10 23rd Light beneath the tenth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/010 Dear self, I went into the woods today again but didn¡¯t find anything except a few Jolly Darlings, which I almost never have a practical use for. There were a few patches of what might have been herbs but they appeared to have been eaten. If there is something consuming this quantity of enchanted forest herbs then it will cause me problems very soon. The Jolly Darling are safe though, since they are actually a rather unpleasant mushroom if you try breaking or eating them. Anything other than smelling or licking them provides a noxious experience if you don¡¯t know how to prepare them properly. I found a young kobold hanging around the property when I came back despite it being after closing hours. Our shop only operates publicly in the morning before noon and anything after that requires a prior arrangement like I had with the Whirlstorms. I only found him because of the wards alerting me, but he was bound and tangled between three tree trunks by a network of spiderwebs. The sprites hopefully amused themselves doing that and won¡¯t feel like doing something worse soon. The kid was quite nervous when I brought him into the shop, so I wanted to go easy on him despite him coming outside of my working hours. He had an enchanted necklace with a stabilization charm. Luckily, it was one of the ones the Simulacrum had handed out otherwise I would have been spending the afternoon frustrated at my suspension. The kid had manifested his transformation and was having trouble controlling it. The matrix was grounding his native power to prevent instability. Apparently, he was hiding his transformation for the past few weeks and no one knew. When I saw him transform into a tiny pony during the appraisal I think I could understand. Knowing his sisters they would just give him a moon of trouble if they found out. He was a little mortified from his embarrassment but it was so silly I couldn¡¯t help laughing at him.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it Seeing the necklace I figured out how that Simulacrum was improvising enchanted items without access to my manifold, and as I suspected he was taking unsealed items lying around the shop and melding them somehow into a coherent effect. I don¡¯t know how he managed it with so little issue, but it did mean that this necklace for example was slightly less effective than a purposely made working. I took out a swath of Marrowdrim blood to help attune the boy to the enchantment which will help the grounding effect support his native power. Since this was one better left with its owner I told him to come back tomorrow so that I could work on the item further. Since he wants to hide its purpose from his family I suggested adding a foci to the working to give it a demonstrable purpose since he already had the matrix it would need to function. He might not have actually wanted to come, but he was responsible enough to come over for a boring check-up after receiving the Guild message even though he didn¡¯t technically have to, which tells me he is more mature than I honestly thought he was from the last time I saw him. He did scurry off as soon as I told him we were done for the day though. I had to look around the area the sprites caught the boy in. It was strange for them to invade the warded path towards our house and attack travelers. I found digging marks nearby that scratched at one of the tree roots. The tree itself was protected from relative harm by the sprite magic in the forest. There were a couple of glowing embers pressed into the ground in the digging marks so I suspect it was the same critter that dug the nest I found the other day. They way it was right underneath the webbing trap the sprites made suggests they were trying to keep the boy away from it rather than senselessly assaulting him. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 11 24th Light beneath the tenth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/011 Dear self, The pony kid was generous enough to actually come while the shop was open today. Rashplume had arrived in order to ¡°observe¡± my work after patrolling around the area for the Quislings and made the poor boy tremble in discomfort. The boy¡¯s little sister had decided to tag along since no one had known about his enchanted necklace before yesterday, since he managed to pay for it out of his own pocket somehow. The little girl was jealous and demanded to play with the grounding charm as well, but I cheerily informed her that the item was specifically bonded to its owner¡¯s spirit and was useless to anyone else. As for its apparent lack of function, the boy had explained that I hadn¡¯t yet finished the job with me keeping a straight face in the background. I do not know what Axl made of what should be blatant deception to his eyes but the owl was happy to watch in silence. Adding the foci was easy. I thought using a radiance foci would be the most useful so I prepared a simple working using Levinspark as a base and anchored it to the grounding matrix in the necklace. Overall, I tooka limited stabilization charm and turned it into a decent instrument to cast cantrips with. Now all that¡¯s left is to allow the thing to attune to its master overnight and have the boy come back in the morning to have the final seal applied. He¡¯ll be flinging out motes of light and making luminous images before the year is out and none the wiser to why he had the thing made in the first place. It¡¯ll even teach him to control his energies better so that he wouldn¡¯t need it eventually.Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. After dealing with the children I went about other things with Axl shadowing me. Since he was here anyway I asked him about the cleansing formation I had been compelled to make. As far as he can tell it is used to prevent scrying and passive sensing from a specific spiritual entity. It is likely that the Quislings intend it as a way of hiding from a spirit that they knew would be after them if it sensed them. We have no idea which spirit it might be protecting against though. We set off into the woods to track down the critter that¡¯s been roaming around here. I brought a pixie along to help us locate the thing. Since it was likely attuned to fiery elements I prepared a smothering spell to subdue it should we find it. We followed an invisible trail with the guidance of the pixie, and we passed by another path of ravaged plants with a smattering of embers strewn around. Axl collected the particles with some imterest and went on a rant about the ambient aspects and the ecological effects of rival elementals with too much proximity, nothing I didn¡¯t know before. The critter was some form of lizard large enough to leap at me.I tried to approach it cautiously but it sensed me through my concealing glamours and bolted. It spewed a hand full of irritating sparks right into my face and nearly blinded me. I was about to smite it with the smothering spell when Axl tackled me to the ground and let the thing escape. It turns out that not only was the critter not an actual monster, but in was in fact an endangered creature from some exotic region in the mainland. Axl said it was a Darcinderaht, a fiery lizard that likes to eat ash and prefers arid climates. I might have hurt it with my smothering charm so now we have to figure out a way to capture it safely and findout how it ended up displaced all the way from its distant home to our lovely island. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 12 25th Light beneath the tenth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/0012 Dear self, The Flatterlight boy came to get the seal for his necklace quite early. I caught myself almost actually calling him pony kid, which I¡¯m sure he wouldn¡¯t appreciate much. His eyes do look a bit like horse eyes too, which isn''t too odd for kobolds but is very appropriate for his second form. His actual name is Lalen Flatterlight. It felt harder to give him his refund than it did anyone else so far, since I put actual work into his item and I wasn¡¯t actually required to. I might have forgotten that I wasn¡¯t getting paid. I¡¯m almost out of Glit now with all the refunds I had to give out. I made a paralyzing potion for the Darcinderaht. The paralytic consumed my entire supply of the Blithweed. Axl got into contact with a preservation group for advise on the critter and to find a way to send it home. I can¡¯t read any of his body language properly but he seemed a little excited from him eager movements. He certainly didn¡¯t want to do anything slowly today. We didn¡¯t end up finding the critter. All the marking where the critter passed through were old. We¡¯ll have to try again tomorrow and I might ask someone from town to help with the grunt work.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. It might cause a problem if the Blithweed poison fades overnight. I¡¯m not a magical adept like Anora so all my internal spell have a very short alacrity. Higher alacrity like mine is expected in the youth, and it reduces as you age and mature. The benefit is that when you¡¯re young you can throw spells off every other hour without issue, but it also means that any spell you create has almost no duration other than its own instant effect. Older magicians can¡¯t cast regularly but they make up for it easily with how long their workings last and how powerful they are. A master adept often still has spells they¡¯ve prepared months or decades beforehand still ready at their convenience. Because they can prepare spells to work into future spells it¡¯s a compounding effect and a lower alacrity is considered a mark of experience. I need to counteract my high alacrity by binding my workings into material components, which is why I originally got into alchemy. The other consequence is that since my alacrity is so much higher than Mum¡¯s that she makes me deal with all the trivial, high quantity work while she does more advanced work once a week or so. Often more, but she never makes more than one a day. Since I haven¡¯t worked with Blithweed before I don¡¯t know how long the potion will remain potent. We can¡¯t make another one since we¡¯re out of Blithweed, and you won¡¯t be able to collect more until we deal with the Darcinderaht. You¡¯ll have to test a drop of the potion carefully before going out on the hunt tomorrow, and think of another plan if it has lost its effect. Testing potions is a delicate process as the potency of potions is largely tied into its whole, which means that the potency can be drained into a single drop when spilled making the rest useless, or usage of any portion of it reduces the overall effectiveness of the remainder. You can¡¯t think of potions as a mass of liquid with some effect, but as a tangible manifestation of a singular intent which does not treat its host liquid as divisible. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 13 - Forest Hunt 26th Light beneath the tenth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/013 Dear self, There was frost covering the world when dawn came. You¡¯ll be seeing winter spread in the coming days. It came a few days early so it will be a very cold few months this year. More immediately this meant that we had to hurry with our hunt for the Darcinderaht before any frost spirits began tormenting it. Instead of trying to risk the Blithweed potion by testing it normally I took a drop of my blood and infused it with some vitality that allowed me to control it. Moving it into the potion I could feel my hold over it loosen and vanish as the potion took hold. I used the blood to form a temporary bond with the potion that should allow me to sense when it takes effect. If I hadn¡¯t done that there was a chance it might have warped the potency unpredictably after the fluids bonded without guidance. I set up a sign by the door in case anyone came to the shop as I was closing earlier than usual. Axl and I wanted to avoid any issues so I recruited farmer Erhin to help with the grunt work and generally be useful. He counted it as his favour to me. I once again took a pixie to help us track the critter down. Finding one is as simple as capturing one in a cage and then bribing it with freedom and treats to help you out under a contract sigil. Difficult, but simple.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. Traveling through the woods we passed by a nest of nasty sprites already weaving webs of frost and magic. Some few among the trees were starting to have their bark harden with iced crystals. You might even see the pale blooms of ice leaves before the month is out. The damaged markings the critter was presumably responsible for were especially prone to frosting. The spirit of the forest seemingly deemed the foreign creature as the highest priority threat at current, and the ambient magic is targeting the invasive presence directly. We found a gathering of sprites surrounding a bed of embers filling the bowl I used to give them cream. The Darcinderaht was tightly bound in fairy twine and seemed to be rather helpless. The spirits had clearly decided to prank the critter in their wrath to protect the forest from its minor vandalism. It turned out that we didn¡¯t need to hunt the Darcinderaht as much as negotiate and bargain with the fairies for its release. Axl being the most sympathetic towards it, and me being presently lacking in resource, we had the owl exchange a good few shiny trinkets and Glit for the Darcinderaht. I got my bowl back too now that the sprites didn¡¯t need it to lure their prey with. I fed the paralytic potion to the critter to sedate it and had Erhin haul it on his shoulder. Axl spent our trip back examining the creature¡¯s health while I guided us home and released the tracking pixie. It proved to be a surprisingly hefty lizard, and burdened even farmer Erhin¡¯s strength. It likely weighed half of what I did while being shorter than my knee. Axl and I set up a small confinement circle to hold the Darcinderaht during its stay in our house, and to help keep it cozy and warm. I had to mix up some Embernap from the embers the critter¡¯s been coughing up everywhere and mixed in the Swelterwort just to have a way to get rid of the stuff. We all shared a meal and I exchanged news from around town with Erhin. Axl was still searching the region for traces of the Quislings, but he¡¯ll soon have to move on after he¡¯s set up a finding ward or two. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 14 - Darcinderaht Entry: 2/014 - Darcinderaht Dear self, The Darcinderaht is a powerful reptile with strong affinities towards fire and ash. A healthy Darcinderaht is capable of spewing a cone of sparks and embers to ignite predators and scare off rivals. They tend towards impressive weight for their size and have an incredibly tough hide. They are herbivorous, as they prefer finding enchanted plants and turning them to ash so as to infuse the magical essences with fire aspects and aid in their absorption. An adult Darcinderaht will grow throughout its life if it is fed in abundance and older specimens have been known to exceed a span in height alone.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. A Darcinderaht will have a strong aversion to cold and will sicken if exposed to elemental cold regularly or when consuming anything with a strong aspect of cold. When becoming ill they will gain an intense fever and will behave erratically. Such Darcinderaht will be unusually aggressive and might behave strangely and in contradiction to their normal nature. If they become very sick their appetite will increase while their ember attack weakens with their lessening fever, and they will also run or hide more often than trying to defend themselves. Most illnesses might easily be fought off by bathing the creature in hot ash and regular exposure to strong sunlight. They are prized for their ember breath, which is infused with a daylight aspect from their tendencies towards sunbathing. There are also several kingdoms that use components of the Darcinderaht in cultural rituals, which has contributed to their gradual decline and their current endangerment. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 15 27th Light beneath the tenth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/015 Dear self, Most of today was spent dealing with our new resident Darcinderaht. It had gotten sick from something in the forest and developed an unbearable temperature after we fed it some food yesterday. It was also acting strangely but only in a passive delirious sense. While the species is herbivorous, they are capable of digesting small quantities of meat if not done repeatedly, and often resort to such after a period of famine or when ill. I suspect that the Jackalope carcass I found a few days ago was caused by the critter as a result of the earlier stages of its current sickness. We¡¯ve been feeding it various ashen foods made from charred fruits, leaves, and woods and observing its preference. Axl is waiting on a message from the Rangers Guild regarding its preferred foods and any special treatments for its sickness. I am the most capable of preparing a cleansing compound in the local area but other than using Swelterwort which, being a weed and less than ideal, I am uncertain of which materials I should use to bolster its constitution and purge the toxins from its body. The best I have done thus far is feeding it a solution made with Absinthe, which is only effective because of the amount of intent I am able to infuse into the alcohol.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Jeriel came in this morning with another artefact I am responsible for. This one hadn¡¯t been made, unfortunately, but is an entirely unknown item Jeriel had appraised. It is unfortunate because I have no reference through which to analyze it apart from its superficial effects. Concerning magick, thereare always multiple methods through which one can achieveultimately indistinguishable results, and so it is impossible to make truly accurate speculations on the workings solely based upon their function. You might create flames, you might conjure flames, you might incite fire, you might materialize flames, you might reify flames, but to the eye all these result in identical effects. The implications of each method are vast in how mutable they might be, but their variability makes them inscrutable. All that being written, you will have to appraise the workings in full tomorrow as I could not analyze all of its components in one evening. While Jeriel has informed us of its function as well as the results of its prior appraisal by the Quislings, we can place no trust in these and must proceed through all the precautions as normal. A mind affecting enchantment like this one can easily cause undesirable effects even when seemingly being beneficial both initially and otherwise. The nuance of the mind lends itself well to malignancy being hidden in plain sight and broad daylight. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 16 28th Light beneath the tenth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/016 Dear self, That mental compulsion came up again this morning. The charmed twine I was using somehow dissolved in a puddle of an unmentionable solution mixed from Dreaming knows what. I found myself awoken by the too bright morning next to a few emptied bottles of absinthe, apparently having celebrated the coming month end during my slumber with the Darcinderaht. It seemed jolly enough that I suspect it participated in merry making of its own. It seemed that way at least when I woke up cuddling with it and having my skinbe scalded over my arms and cheeks. The headache lasted the entire day. I have no idea how my body could have subsumed so many volumes of absinthe without going a little more than colour blind, but I do not think I can look at another drop of the stuff without getting nauseous. My drunken delirium somehow ended up with making a decent cleansing compound for the Darcinderaht using charcoal of some powdered sort. I think I remember some mention of pure charcoal being absorbent, so it must have absorbed the unwanted aspects from the critter into itself. Erhin tells me I wandered into town asking him how to properly make charcoal and spending some three hours making a fistful of it with him. I think I believe those people now who say that magic forms more easily when one is inebriated. I have no idea how I made that potion, I think Axl might have helped somewhere.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. News is that the Darcinderaht is no longer worsening, and is in fact stable enough to likely recover in a month or so. Axl said the Rangers Guild are sending someone to collect the critter next week. I think the owl has left town now that his business is over. He might have traded farewells with me at some point. I really hope no one came looking for service in the shop today, I certainly wouldn¡¯t know at this point. The sprites have settled again somewhat. It doesn¡¯t mean much, they are capricious as the moon people say, but the moon isn¡¯t a half as changing as fairies truth be told. A troupe of them was dancing around my head throughout the day, at least whenever I was outside. They might have tried something to trick my eyes but whatever it was would either be beyond my currently addled mind or incidentally invisible to my colourless sight. When it comes to glamours my vision is both useful in distinguishing them and annoying when creating them. I¡¯ve been told my creations have a very light and dark style which makes it apparent who they came from, and apart from making proper illusions I don¡¯t really mind. I can just use a little trick with essence if I ever need to correct a glamour in its colouring for other people. Writing this, I am increasingly satisfied with those Amnestics I wove into the journal, I wouldn¡¯t have been able to write this otherwise and I certainly can¡¯t read it at the moment! Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 17 1st Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/017 Dear self, I woke up this morning hanging from a tree branch again. Winter has arrived in full so there is a coat of white over everything. It wasn¡¯t nearly as bad yesterday but the elemental sprites tend to spread the coming of a season as soon as the date arrives. The sprites started throwing frost around as soon as midnight came no doubt. Fortunately for me, the house and garden is shielded from the worst of the weather, and completely warded the frost sprites away. I was only slightly dying of exposure instead of utterly. Since it actually is dangerous now to find myself sleeping outside come morning I charmed a bracelet and used some Duskblaze so I won¡¯t be able to go outside the house even if I tried. I had to warm myself next to the Darcinderaht and didn¡¯t step one toe outside for the entire day, at least as far as I could help it. Jeriel came in with a great annoyance. It took me a while to remember the medallion I had been appraising for him. It was a proficiency charm that operated through Subtle magic in order to grant expertise directly to the mind of its user. Since he had been waiting for much longer than I had promised I burned some components to use in a ritual to expedite the last few issues with the appraisal and sealed it. These kinds of items can be dangerous even unintentionally because they can drastically alter the subject''s behaviour. They not only make someone capable of certain skills, but tend to make them more inclined to use them and act in a way appropriate to someone who has them. There was a girl who once used a dancing charm to help her learn in a similar situation and she became obsessed with dancing, going as far as almost abandoning her friends and family before someone figured out what was happening and ripped the suspect earring from her flesh before she did something she would have deeply regretted, supposedly. These have the potential to essentially become a sort of mind control and moldthe subject to conform to certain behaviours and professions. The medallion Jeriel got enhanced perception and dexterity by augmenting how the mind processes the senses and controls the muscles. It¡¯s safe as far as I could figure but had a side effect of reducing one¡¯s ability to sense or manipulate magic, which Jeriel had apparently been unaware of. So it wasn¡¯t a complete waste of time to appraise the item again. He¡¯s using it to improve his knife and hunting skills, which it certainly would do. Another effect it had was an oblique silencing aura which was also detrimental to general social ability, so I advised that he not wear it outside of hunting and remove it as soon as he got back to town.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! Axl had left me a letter when he departed, as I hadn¡¯t been in a proper state to receive his personal farewell yesterday. His investigations into how the Darcinderaht came to be here found signatures of a rift in the region with connections to divine energies. At present that could mean almost anything, but I someone will have to find it, see if it¡¯s a problem at all, and figure out if we can do anything about it. He also gave me some advise on creating some personal wards which I might end up using. A lot of it is pretty basic and fundamental but I¡¯m starting to think that Rashplume is just the kind of man who places great value in a strong foundation and basic principles. It is pretty annoying how he tends to exposit on things in the middle of a sentence instead of getting to the point. I received a formal letter from Umari stating that she has arrived within the realm and will be here in a matter of a day or two. She also instructed me to prepare a bell of Aarthrium to prepare for her arrival. Mother only ever writes so formally to us when she is being very serious and very stern. She likely has heard of my suspension from the Guild already. She might get genuinely mad when she sees how little money the shop has left, and sees just how many of the material supplies I have managed to use throughout her absence. I think I have to impress her with my Apocryphal Ink or she might get creative with whatever penalties she is going to give me. I do owe her money already. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 18 - A New Moon Entry: 2/018 Dear self, As much as I would have liked to huddle inside until the new year I only have tonight to do the Nightgloom ritual this month. The New Moon is the correspondence that I have the strongest personal affinity towards so it¡¯s the ideal time for me to perform any personal rituals. Nightgloom can be collected on during a moonless night such as tonight and the ritual actually gains power during the winter. The New Moon on the last month of the year is actually one of the strongest periods for me personally to perform rituals throughout an entire cycle. So after drinking an improvised potion made from Embernap I set off to the glade we prepared specifically for celestial rituals. There a reflecting pool and a tiny obsidian pillar in the centre of the glade to help remove worldly influences and encourage a serene affinity. The ritual begins with placing several flowers on the edges of the clearing as offering to the spirits, which helps to keep any fairies from interfering. I brought a marble sphere as a focus to help with grounding the ritual. Normally I would take a sip of absinthe to help with the meditations but we¡¯re a little low on our stock of that recently. I place four candles at the cardinal points and light them. I then sit in the centre of the clearing by the reflecting pool and enter meditation to help attune with the night essence. Intangible essences such as darkness are especially fickle when it comes to attuning with them. Gathering Moonglance actually requires being inebriated to succeed for most people. While in meditation I chant various phrases related to darkness. The incantation continues with me voicing ¡°dark thoughts¡± I personally have. These are negative thoughts such as anxieties, concerns, apathy, and anything which inhibits me from taking action or causes me to abe avoidant in my mannerisms and behaviours. Anger, for example, isn¡¯t well suited since it usually incites people towards action, while some positively associated emotions such as contentment can actually also work using this ritual since they cause internal reflection and also do not necessarily incite any action or change.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. During this process the light from the candles dim gradually, and the chanting should be maintained until they are completely unlit. When this happens darkness gathers towards the clearing from the edge of the forestand creeps inwards. A sense of calm should be maintained during this process or the essence will fail to coalesce. I prepared a warded jug to contain the Nightgloom essence beforehand. The essence flowed into the jug as I tipped it over, and I sealed the container as soon as the essence stopped entering. There was a generous amount of essence gathering into the jug, so this particular ritual was highly successful. I am unsure but it might have been a result of my failing to perform the ritual last month, but it could also have been a result of the strong winter season that seems to deepening rapidly. As for my personal ritual, I brought a dream catcher I had personally woven a few weeks ago. I had placed the dream catcher on the obsidian pillar in the centre and focused my thoughts upon it throughout my meditation. I wanted to create an invocation to help me be more attentive to details and process senses more thoroughly. The intent seems to have taken hold in the dream catcher and will last for the month at least. As far as I am aware what I am attempting is a rather normal part of cognitive function, and a portion of the population naturally experience the effect I am artificially creating in myself. The ¡°sensitivity¡± is seemingly beneficial but is actually a trade off because the effect can labour the mind in some ways. In practice the effect drains the mind of a certain resource over time, which means that having this effect active will require me to manage my own thoughts more carefully, and might not actually end up being useful. The analogy I heard from a passing alchemist was that it was like identifying one tree as having a separate pattern from another. While the less ¡°sensitive¡± individual might potentially miss some small details, the ¡°sensitive¡± individual will always spend more time considering the trees even if there might be no need to, and will re-examine obvious details looking for discrepancies even if they consciously know that they have discovered everything about the object that they canconceivably learn. It is almost as if they do not fully trust their own lerception and are perpetually searching for flaws. I was warned that this effect is only helpful is specific cases, but might actually end up detrimental in general usage, so I might have to dispel it if it is too much for me to handle, which would be a big waste of my only correspondence ritual for the month. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 19 2nd Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/019 Dear self, The dreamcatcher I made in the Nightgloom ritual has been successful. At least I think it might be. I woke up this morning resting calmly in bed instead of sprawled over the floor somewhere. I could feel what might have been the urges that I am being compelled towards but they vanished as I woke up properly so I might have been imagining them. I feel uncertain if my mind has truly been made more sensitive and attentive to details as any influences that it might have over me are not easily discernible and my behavioural tendencies remain drastically unchanged. Since Mother has instructed me to prepare a bell from our supply of Aarthrium I have set up an infusion circle and let it set while I worked outside in the garden. An Oxalis involved in shielding the garden from colder weather needed minor reinforcement and I managed it with a few incantations. Altering an existing perpetual enchantment didn¡¯t require me to burn material components as creating one would have, at least when I don¡¯t need to significantly change anything about it. The protection charms are anchored to the ankle high garden wall which circumvallates the entire property. There are a dozen matrices evenly spaced across its length which act as the basis for most of the outer wards and charms surrounding the house. These need regular inspection monthly to address any flaws which might develop in them over time. The north-westerly one might need maintenance soon and you should work on it a week from now or so. The Flatterlight kids showed up back in the shop today spilling snow across the floor. Little Mim is still following her brother Lalen around with an interest in his charmed necklace. Lalen wanted advise on how to use the radiant cantrip I wove into the thing and I offered him a lesson for the price of a Glit Shard, which is generous enough since full tutoring on magecraft can easily go to as high as a Crownor more, not even mentioning that most magicians only accept payment in Augur and will refuse mundane coin. We don¡¯t do that though, which is helpful when dealing with all the people who come in with items buthave no other use or experience formagic.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. I showed Lalen how to evoke Radiant energy through his necklace properly and then how to focus it into a beam. He did it a little sloppily but I have a feeling that he¡¯ll shine that little light into enough eyes to perfect the technique. He might even use it for something practical like signaling at some point. I knew what he really came here for, but those big horse eyes of his just made me want to laugh at him as his sister pestered him. His older sister was likely making fun that he took a necklace of all things for an item. Rings are more popular among the men usually despite necklaces and bracelets being easier and cheaper to do. Since he was my first paying customer in a little too many days I eventually relented after I got over my amusement. It was as simple as slipping the chain from his neck while he was distracted and letting Mim try it out. He had a dumbfounded panic frozen on his face while I demonstrated to Mim exactly how useless the charm was for anyone who wasn¡¯t Lalen. I jokingly offered to attune it to her but when she actually considered it I told her what the service would cost and she realised I was outside her little price range. I did the entire sales routine with wondrous items and everything to distract her while Lalen was composing himself. They certainly both left the shop wiser than they entered. A magician never helps in the way you want them to; it¡¯s partof the etiquette taught at the Mysterium and everything. The Aarthrium only required an infusion of vis to become active. Other than a few precautions to avoid spoilage it is a simplistic process. Aarthrium is never stored in a condition itcan be used in, as it degrades quickly after preparation. Any of this batch Mum doesn¡¯t end up using will have to be thrown away as somewhat expensive waste. While that is the biggest issue you should be concerned with when using Aarthrium, the part everyone remember is that the preparation takes two days of infusion with occasional observation as it can easily spoil from impurities in the awakening process, which is why I was asked to prepare it even days before it becomes relevant. It also produces a smoke that stinks like rotting vegetables, so most magicians pay other to prepare it, or make their apprentices do it. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 20 - Homecoming 3rd Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/020 Dear self, The influence of the dreamcatcher continues to elude me; I woke up sprawled on the floor next to the front door, the handle just barely out of my reach. If all goes well I will only have to deal with this nonsense for one more day. The Aarthrium is fully active now and bubbles green in our cauldron. Letting the cold blow inside to rid myself of that horrid odour was worth the weak complaints from the Darcinderaht. I threw him some embers from the fireplace to make it up to him. The ranger sent to get the critter finally arrived, which is perfect timing because a blizzard swept through and blocked the highway with snow and ice. The nearby giants must have been playing a sport because there are glaciers strewn on the roads and a few trees were uprooted. The only way past is wondering through the wilds so the ranger is staying while the blockages are being cleared. I was happy to have him cage the Darcinderaht and carry it away after he gave me his badge and I confirmed it with an Augur. He did seem a little stressed which is understandable for a traveling man in this weather. The Guilds all make use of Augurs imbedded into their badges and seals so that anyone with even a single Augur can confirm their official authorization. They are why Guild approved enchantments are guaranteed to be safe as the seal cannot be forged and an enchanter can have their license revokes remotely and retroactively which affects the seals they have placed on their work if the Guild wants to do a recall. The same mechanism can be used to notify their owners of said recall like. Unfortunately for the Guild the Quislings didn¡¯t integrate their items with the network so the Guild had to notify affected individuals through an unreliable oracle.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Mother arrived finally. She and Tori didn¡¯t seem to have any issues traveling through all the heavy snow. Her luggage also exceeded what a traveler might carry in any weather whatsoever. Considering that the realm she had been visiting was supposedly frosted over for the last year I can understand if she is a little prepared already. Tori was playing with some glowing mass of prisms and rods and payed his brother barely any attention. He seemed engrossed in the puzzle so I left him to play with it. Mother was surprisingly less upset than I expected she would be and asked me various question about what happened. She went around the house and checked all the wards, reinforced a Matrix somewhere in the basement and started planning out a new spell lattice to surround the workshop specifically and anisolation lattice for the shop where customers enter. She used a drop of blood for me to help with the various protections. As a trained blood mage her enchantments are particularly capable of interacting with blood sympathy and protect her blood relatives in a targeted fashion. I remember her weaving some magic into our veins when we were children so that shapeshifters could never steal or replicate our full blood signature. After that she did a thorough cognizance of my subtle body to find any intrusions. The compulsions the Quislings wove ended up spreading through more than just my mind, which is worryingly capable coming from imps. We were able to extract an image of the remaining compulsions so Mom could start shaping the Aarthrium to help target the purging spell we will be casting tomorrow. I did hear some muttering about rough work implicating Anora, so she is likely getting a little lecture when she visits from the academy. Other than that, we isolated the divine essence from the Fortuity shard to find its signature. Axl could not do this since it would have morphed some of the enchantments if Umari herself hadn¡¯t personally removed the shard. It¡¯s the best resource we have to track down the nearby displacement rift assuming they are related somehow. Asuras battling nearby is a good way to open rifts depending on their aspects, and the shard might have splintered off from a clash nearby that caused the rift, or it might have traveled through the rift to reach here. Natural rifts are always somewhat connected to Chaos magic so there is the potential for literally anything to come out of them, malevolent or not. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 21 4th Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/021 Dear self, We ended up casting the purging spell using the Aarthrium quite early in the morning. By early I mean that I woke up with Mother circling my bed and drawing an unnervingly advanced ritual circle centered around me and lining it with trails of Aarthrium. When I lifted my head staring at her she just turned her eyes towards me and gave me a smile that had absolutely no reassurance within its confines. The initial ritual is used to conjure and project my Subtle body to be visible within Materiality. Direct viewing of someone¡¯s spirit to this level is uncommon even for sensing a willing spirit or your own spirit. It only happens through mastered enlightenment of some kind or unwieldy rituals such as this one. The experience of having your Subtle body being forcefully projected is not one easily described. If I wanted to say it in a way that¡¯s easy to conceptualized: it was like falling out of my body and being assaulted with images of collours, except I can¡¯t see colours and that is not how it felt at all. I do always hear other describe it with references to colours they cannot see or describe, so I think this is the most apt expression for it that I could have. The Aarthrium helped bind aspect into the native power of my Subtle body and left foreign essences unmarked. That being done the purging spell could be initiated. The Aarthrium acted as a protective aspect against the intrusion spell as it sought out all aspects of my subtle body improperly incorporated with my native power. There were also some fragmented pieces that needed to be targeted more deliberately as the Aarthrium infusion couldn¡¯t perfectly distinguish foreign and native essences or identify compulsions explicitly. The extracted enchantments removed from me were placed into a warded jar with a strong matrix to preserve the spell constructs within the mental workings. We should have a chance to examine it in detail further but initial inspection suggests the remaining compulsions involved removing traces of the Quislings from specific pursuers and to have me do a little of what I had been doing prior to when Anora found me, but fortunately little more than a suggestion to go into the wild remained. What remains now is having our Subtle body recover from the extraction procedure as well as the fact that it is saturated with Aarthrium essence. It might cause some risk of mutability for a while so I should avoid unstable workings if I don¡¯t want to catch a malignancy.The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. After that we had a breakfast with all smiles around the table. My face may have seemed a little strained after the purging spell but Tori didn¡¯t seem to notice. He went straight back to his prismatic puzzle toy after we ate and would return to it a couple of times every half hour between getting bored of the thing and using it to alleviate his boredom. He did show me a trinket he figured out while he was out of the realm, which was basically him showing me two incomplete charms he found and somehow stuck together into a functional item. It was a Dawn aligned charm and a Melody aligned charm that combined into a charm that sang bird song whenever morning came regardless of if you were underground or the sky was obscured. It was simple but he is young enough that he has an actual right to gloat about making something like this just by fiddling with the pieces until they fit together. Even proper magic workings tend to fizzle at his age with how difficult material anchoring is for children. Mother was dealing with some customers in the shop, they came over just to welcome her back from her trip mostly, when a blaring noise came from a few of our Augurs. It was a warning of a unauthorized seal having been exposed to them. Mother sent the customers away and triangulated a direction of the false seal. Mother took some items and we went towards town together. Mum¡¯s a senior Guild member and one of their enforcers so this work is within her capabilities. The Augur traces were more than a day old and done retroactively, which means a previously authorized seal had been revoked remotely and our Augurs only now recognized the falsehood. We came to the local inn and the people cleared the streets. Our Augur would be the only ones to give loud warning but the innkeeper had one that made a silent alert and we knew the perpetrator had been through the inn recently. Mother stamped her foot and cast a minor domain before we moved on the inn. We would have entered through the front but we heard a grunt and found someone tied up in vines trying to escape through a back window. It was just some traveler who had good senses and got spooked; we couldn¡¯t divine anything malignant about her and she wasn¡¯t connected to the revocation, so we eventually released her from Umari¡¯s trap. We did find someone hurriedly packing a case or two inside the inn and he dashed when he saw us starting into the corridor to his room. He leapt past us with a dispelling charm throw at us and then stumbled past anyone else and fled the building. He didn¡¯t make it three span before his limbs seized momentarily and vines sprouted from the ground and bound him. It turned out that official from the Rangers Guild was actually a poacher interested in stealing a Darcinderaht. He had ambushed the real Ranger and stole his badge for identification when he took the critter from me. Luckily there were storm giants throwing obstruction on the road and he was delayed here long enough for the real ranger to get to a Guild house and report his badge stolen. He must have been a professional criminal to even get the badge to be usable without being its owner, so the Guilds were very interested in his capture. The Darcinderaht just seemed happy to be let out of the animal carrier he had been kept in as he mewled at me when I brought him back to the house. Tori thought we had saved a baby dragon from evil and brought it home. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 22 - Reunion 5th Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/022 Dear self, I slept in late this morning. That dispelling charm the poacher threw at us yesterday had an unexpected interaction with the Aarthrium still infusing me. I got an irritating headache that might last for a few days and my limbs are less eager to move. We were a little too focused on the Guild revocation alert to remember the risks to my health. I just need to avoid any magic usage apart from general rituals until the headache goes away, I do not have enough control over my own powers to avoid causing an Incuria. The Whirlstorms came in with their Teetotum and another charm they owned to have Mother check up on the things, and she was giving me a stern glare after she came back from inspecting the Teetotum. It really did have too many workings for its own grounding matrix to properly support. Anora arrived today for a visit home from the academy. She was all smiles and cheers before Mum took her by the ear. They spent a while in the workshop inspecting the enchantment we extracted from me yesterday morning and having a loud lesson on magic and safety.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. After that we gathered together for lunch. Tori showed us his progress on his puzzle prism which he could now get to change colours when he twisted it. Anora exclaimed just as much over the beaming boy as Mother did. Anora told us news about the academy and how Father was doing. My brother Vaeril was progressing in his research with Animus Theory and measuring how the likelihood of Wild magic is affected by environmental factors. Anora sounded a little eager to please and how much she put up with Father¡¯s training regime. Anora helped us plan out and prepare to look for the nearby rift. I couldn¡¯t help prepare the divinations on the shard of Fortuity but I had a lot of recent insight on how the local flora might have been affected by the rift in certain areas which might be used to estimate where it is influencing the region. We do suspect it is a natural rift and as such hold a connection with Chaos magic, which should be dealt with earlier rather than later if it is causing a problem. The thing about Chaos magic is that it isn¡¯t bound to any Fundaments or Era so there is no system with which to regulate its potentiality. Chaos magic is the primal result of blending realities into one another, which makes it understandable why the products of chaos magic are always so uncertain. It¡¯s primal in nature so there is no control over what shards of reality are being brought to our own and natural rifts such as the one nearby have even less control over the powers of Chaos. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 23 6th Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/023 Dear self, Today came at me bright and early! The headache got me out of bed before the sun rose, and I spent a restless morning needlessly cleaning the house while everyone slept. I think only Vaeril and our father are morning people, so the rest of us like to hiss and claw at anything that tries getting us out of bed normally. Anora got up first and came down grumbling with her eyes still closed and her hair stuck to her face. Tori came right after that but he was eager to wake Mother as always and they came down together. I have never heard of a child that didn¡¯t have the energy of Dawn in them. Business was becoming more regular again with the esteemed enchantress Umari returned to her shop. Missus Quaen came in with her sewing needles. She suspected they were becoming less ethereal as they might have actually poked someone recently and there was a minor pricking involved. The ethereal needles are supposed to be fully intangible for anything other than the fingers gripping them and the cloth they pierce through. It avoids worry for injury and the chatter goes that it makes the sewing easier as well. Mother had me appraise them as it was the only actual work I could do with the Aarthrium still in me. The working had been nicked somehow and the magic was leaking out. This suggested it was damaged through contact with a separate enchanted item or something ethereal. Quaen said it might have been a few enchanted button she was working on a while back and Mother quizzed me on how we might prevent the same issue. I also gave Quaen some advise to avoid using items that hadn¡¯t been rated to work with other enchanted objects.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. After noon I was left alone with Tori as Mum and Anora went out dowsing for where the Fortuity shard had come from. He and I played with the enchanted blocks that had been in the family since me and Vaeril were two Cycles old. Each of the sides of the blocks were attuned to some Aspect and would attach or repel other blocks if the facets were complementary or oppositional. Tori and I had some inane fun stacking them as high as possible and trying to create a floating island of blocks between a couple of angular twisting spires. Making the island spin kept ending in disaster after a few revolutions and it would edge towards one side and crumble into one of our towers. Tori was also eager to feed the Darcinderaht, who is now named Rahph, and I had to keep him from bothering the poor critter too much. He was still sick from the cold Aspect in his system but the charcoal helped. He was getting concerningly tame with the way he mewled at me with those snake eyes every time I brought his food. Tomorrow you¡¯ll have to look at the herb garden and see if the plants need any more preparations for winter. The house magic is usually left to me while the protective wards have always been done by Mum, so I know all about the mystical secrets of chores. You will have to wait to properly do anything other than plan though, as we don¡¯t want to throw a dice and see if any Incuria that shows up with us casting magic might mutate into something beneficial or not. Incuria is the leading cause of failed spells in neophyte mages for a good reason, and not all of them are impermanent. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 24 7th Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/024 Dear self, A man came in with another one of the enchanted items I¡¯m being held responsible for. It was a protection charm against spiritual influences. The Aarthrium is wearing off later today but I was still in a bad condition to take risks in. Mother had to handle the sealing in my stead after I did a superficial appraisal. It¡¯s a sturdy enchantment rather than a delicate one so the examination was a simplistic process. Anora and I planned our search for the rift out a little more. The initial signature of the rift has spread across the surrounding areas which suggests it must have been opened violently. This is good news in terms of how easy it would be to close, but it also means that it will be hard to find as the echoes of its creation have already started warping and dispersing into the ambient mana. We¡¯ve a,ready found a tendency towards the west and south, but I suggested scouting further west as that is the region where I found the Darcinderaht lurking the most, and there were were more Dawdlium growing in that region than usual. Dawdlium does not have as much affinity with life and nature and is normally rarer or grows in places where powerful spells had been cast without proper grounding, so its growth might have been caused by the rift opening.If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. With the lady folk out in the woods it falls to me to give Tori his lessons on glyphs. It might be a good thing that he¡¯s smart but it annoys me tremendously when he gets everything right the first couple of questions and then just starts getting bored and loses focus. I need to actively try tricking him into making mistakes to get him to properly give the work attention. He would look so offended every time I said he got an answer wrong! It might have been evil but I just felt good when I get to point out his flaws. We¡¯ll have to wait until tomorrow to see if you have recovered from the Aarthrium without any complications. We owe Mother a lot of money and so you should start working on a lot more enchantments very soon. The only issue is that suspension we still need to resolve. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 25 - Consequences 8th Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/025 Dear self, I feel that it is difficult to thoroughly explain things to someone who does not know them if you yourself take them for granted. Reflecting back there are a lot of things in our journal already that I mention without explaining! I haven¡¯t even gone into what Anamnesis is despite how important it is. You do not know this yet, myself who lacks the context of our life, but the first day of the week is special, and the second such day of the month is even more so. It¡¯s a day for rituals and ceremonies. It¡¯s the day we go to meet Aunt Ekelyn! The event with the Quislings happened between such visits, so there was little chance for her to notice anything amiss and we have elected not to inform her. While we call her Aunt, she is actually Mother¡¯s adoptive guardian and she raised Mum after she was abandoned by the gnomes for being a changeling. Ekelyn holds demesne over most of the neighbouring forest and enough lands surrounding it to include our town of Tintinnabulis. Her aura has a large influence over the magic in the region and can even encourage and discourage certain behaviours or individuals. Children are generally more loved and protected around here by everyone and the native spirits are aligned enough with Ekelyn that they will enforce her protections over children here, even against their normally mischievous tendencies. Ekelyn runs an orphanage of course, so we all prepared gifts for her wards. We mostly make toys for them but a few of them have been demanding that I make them candies instead, which ends up being more work for me with how many of them there are and how impermanent treats are between children. Ekelyn is a mature Hamadryad bonded to a large oak. Hamadryads are different from normal dryads in that they bond to one tree specifically and become permanently tethered by that tree after they mature, so Ekelyn cannot travel much farther than the grounds the orphanage was built upon and she is vulnerable to any harm towards her tree. The old oak has a bole thick enough to build a house into and its branches make it taller than some of the towers at the Mysterium. It¡¯s always decorated on ribbons and the kids climb all over it if someone doesn¡¯t visit Ekelyn to chase them off every once in a while.This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. Tori kept pestering our aunt with his new puzzle toy and five other boys and a few girls crowded round as he demonstrated how it twisted and changed bizarrely right in front of your eyes. We had to have a serious discussion about the rift opening. We only let Anora in with the meeting because of how capable she is despite her age. She¡¯s already stronger than Vaeril and he used to be the strongest child in magic between us all. Aunt Ekelyn couldn¡¯t tell us anything about where it was but she could tell us about the Asuras who fought each other when it was formed. She says she thinks it formed before they started fighting here which could mean its creation sparked their fight or they jumped through it to reach here from their fight at a separate location. She can also tell us that the weaker of the two, who was aligned with an Aspect of Fortuity, was defeated in the end and the victor disappeared from all trace right after their skirmish ended. When dusk came we marched through the snow with the lot of the children and gathered around Ekelyn¡¯s tree. Being close to Ekelyn is the most comfortable place to be in any weather so winter wasn¡¯t a danger around the orphanage. Everyone took out instruments and played music while Ekelyn sang a haunting winter melody that spread into the forest. Icy sprites and wind fairies gathered and danced around and over our heads. There were multiples more invisible pixies with various Aspects dancing around the other fairies and making motes of ice and flakes of snow swirl around. The frozen trees rang with a tinkling like glass. An ethereal shape leaped by the forest edge and landed transforming into a white wolf with frosted breath. It approached our Aunt and laid a wreath of roses formed from ice by her feet. It turned around returning to the forest and all the fairies dispersed instantly. Ekelyn holds a lot of respect from the spirits and she regularly maintains relations with them. The town only settled here because of Ekelyn because it¡¯s actually slightly further from the main King¡¯s Road than most of the town build themselves near the highway. As for me I had to sit this one out. It turned out that an Incuria grew out of that dispelling charm the poacher had thrown at me and now I have a little issue with disrupting magical workings. It might end up being permanent but it won¡¯t be too hard to inure myself to it and turn it i to something beneficial if I control how it manifests. I did it for Pony Kid, so I can do it for myself. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 26 9th Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/026 Dear self, The forest leaves have completely turned to frost already. Other places see trees shed their leaves completely through winter but in Ekelyn¡¯s grove the nature of winter is attuned enough at this time of year to have ice grow as a living things itself through the plants. Tye trees are webbed with shells of ice and covered in delicate frost crystals in the place of their leaves. The herbs growing in the garden are also changed by the frosts. Being magical, they still grow, but now an spect of ice is threaded into many of them. We have to work more through the winter to keep the ice aspect from subsuming the plants into a completely crystalline variant of the actual ingredients we need. The spells to manage all that work best at dawn and as close to first light as possible. The new Incuria I have developed interfered slightly with the gardening magic, and the spells fizzled four times before finally working. One of them temporarily disrupted the weather wards and caused a gust of pressured cold blasting me in the face from the atmosphere. The wards are effective at warding the weather away in a manner that causes it to resurge with a vengeance whenever the wards fail to shield us from them. Now that Mother is back and I¡¯m mostly in a state to continue working again I asked her to help me create a strong Anamnestic linking between me and this journal. I¡¯ve already added some anamnestic charms to it but they were nowhere near what Umari the Enchantress can construct. You will have to implement the charms after we¡¯ve settled this new incuria but I planned out my ideas with Mother and she showed me flaws and gave some corrections while making some suggestions. The idea is that the Anamnesis will link with me passively whenever I am near and impart any knowledge I need to understand the text, its authenticity, and its nature. It is incredibly hard to falsify the sense of genuine authenticity that anamnesis can give you so it will ensure that you are able to trust our little journal no matter what happens to us. It will also give us the ability to read the text in any mental state and allow us to utilize any spells I add to the journal through basic anamnesis. The last part is the most limited so you won¡¯t be getting too many spells from the journal. Mother suggested I use the anamnesis to clarify a sympathetic bond between me and the text, which sill allow me to access the memory and mental state I had while writing any part of the journal while I am reading it. The book will act as a second store for my memories and identity.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. When the lady folk left on their scouting adventures again I was once more left with entertaining Tori. I had to stay today as well so that I might have time to sort out the Incuria I now have. I had another lesson with Tori on calculating glyphs while I meditated and tried to control the Incuria by wiling it to manifest. A problem I found was that is resisted manifesting without a working for it to suppress or disrupt. As I focused I found it becoming easier to manifest without a subject to affect, but how it manifested was less obvious at first. Tori¡¯s puzzle toy was made using a few glamours, and I noticed the object seemed less visually complex than normal, even seeming like a simple assembly of oblong blocks. To test my theory I took a glamour charm which transformed into a tiny animate bird and flew around. When I activated it the bird appeared hazy and faded instead of its normal detailed structure. The manifestation I believe was a sort of disruption of my perception of glamours, which meant the Incuria likely manifested in my eyes. I found it easier to perform normal magic again while the Incuria was manifested into my vision, and attempted to strengthen the bird glamour to counteract the disruptor in my vision. I partially restored the glamour to how I originally had seen it but when I showed it to Tori he said it was even more colourless than the glamours I usually make, becoming completely black and white. He then helped me try to restore the full detailed and coloured glamour while I simultaneously worked on making the glamour persist through my Incuria filtering it from my vision. It turned out to be a good say of practicing my control over the Incuria as well, and it seems like it would be a good way of better analyzing glamours in the future for flaws, which would help me in making better glamours as well as help me recognise glamours where they might otherwise seem completely natural. This is beneficial for me especially because I am already the best at recognizing glamours with the way my colourless eyes ignore the colours which are usually the easiest way for a glamour to convince you of itself. If I can control this way of using the Incuria I might eventually be able to use it as a general way of countering most magic workings and even dismissing my own workings faster for a better celerity. While countering magic is already something I can do with need, having a relevant Incuria with beneficial properties tends to augment the practice affected and make it more efficient or more effective at its purpose, as well as hastening effects. Some Aspirants base their career off of a beneficial Incuria they gained randomly while still neophytes. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 27 10th Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/027 Dear self, A gnome came in with a specialised loupe she used to inspect basic magical properties in gems and recognise the possibility of problematic enchantments even before taking them for a full appraisal like what we do. It was one of the objects I am responsible for so Mum left me to it. I need to get through these before I can have my general suspension lifted. Mother can actually remove the suspension herself as a registered Guild enforcer but thinking rationally none of us feel like there is any reason for her to make an exemption for me. The loupe had very complex workings, and with its purpose in helping to provide certainty it makes sense that a lack of an official Guild seal is especially distressing in this case, which is part of why I spent half an hour listening to a diatribe from an irate gnome and trying to calmly answer her questions. The full appraisal will take me two working days, which was expected by everybody. Mum sent me out to deal with the chalk path as well today. I had to play with the little bird glamour to ground my magic during, but it was a simple job of walking down the path into town and making sure the magic is still keeping snow from the path. The stones can glow an iridescent light when they become hard to see. The moving colours help, I¡¯m told, even if they mostly glow a white with the other colours being hard to see. I had to use a few cantrip to clear a few spots where snow began piling in and to adjust the workings, but there were no significant problems at all. Aerzen invited me for lunch while I was in town and I purchased some foods and ingredients from the shops in town.The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. We got another letter from the Rangers Guild about a different person coming to retrieve the Darcinderaht from us, including a token we will be able to use to confirm identify directly. Rahph is only now starting to show signs of getting better. He hot a lot more lively than he had been the previous days and paced around his confinement circle. He also vomited sporadically throughout the day. Considering he is a wamrth loving herbivore in a cold wintery environment that likely ate half a Giant Jackalope I can understand why he is expelling mass from his system. Magical being such as him tend to retain things they have consumed over long periods and do most physical things gradually, which is why he still has some meat in his stomach. Appraising the loupe was difficult with my Incuria still riling around. With the disruptive nature of the Incuria I¡¯m placing the enchantments at risk if I lose control over my rumination. I placed an added few layers of grounding to the item to reduce risk if something were to happen, but it also made it harder to affect the workings and slowed the appraisal process down. It¡¯s times like these working on an item for several hours that I wonder how mages got anything done without a proper Manifold to guide their practice. The Manifold is basically the primary thing performing work in magic with myself being mostly a directing hand at times. If I had to manage all the things the Manifold does for me I¡¯d find a mundane profession and give up on magic entirely. The Quisling Simulacrum may have gotten by without a developed Manifold, but he was obviously beginning to construct his own basic one with the melding his items were made with. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 28 11th Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/028 Dear self, No one came into the shop today. The morning felt a little more relaxing without something new to deal with. I continued with my work on examining the loupe. This one is intricate enough that I started using a little experimentation using various sample artefacts brought up from the cellar. I needed to see how it reacted in the presence of various materials and workings. I noted any changes to its lattice within the passive presence of other enchantments, direct interaction between enchantments, and even after some interference from some enchantments. If any of them caused it to react incorrectly the entire working might have needed restructuring, so it is good to be thorough. When it comes to enchantment small flaws that are apparently inconsequential might at any time grow into something new or unwanted. Enchantments that makes the process of enchanting itself easier are strictly forbidden by the Guild for example, because historically they have caused some outbreaks of a severe Aemuloric magic that spread and subsumed other enchantments and progressively enhanced itself. A supporting effect had transformed into a self-replicating Siphon that subsumed all other magic into itself. In the end it had taken a miracle to purge the enchantment before it spread from the small island it was thankfully limited to. Magic has not been used on that island since. I needed to periodically interrupt my work and focus on controlling my Incuria, which is a sign that I might successfully inure myself to it eventually, and turn it into something usable. I still used the illusion glamour to focus myself, and I have not yet been successful in controlling the disruptive power other than a few occasions that might have been as much luck as they were skill.Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. Tori alerted me that the colours were going wrong again, so I had to focus on correcting the image again before letting myself continue unknowingly with a flawed glamour. Doing a repetitive task correctly is more important than doing it quickly, especially when bad habits can easily form. Your foundation is important. It¡¯s just as easy to learn how to do something wrong as it is to learn how to do it right, but unlearning something is the hardest task between them. Anora found where the Asura had been fighting. Mother called me to join them with Tori to add a third pair of eyes. The rift does not appear to have opened near the epicentre of the fight, which is not completely surprising as we could only track down the location were the very last moments of violence occurred, specifically where the most climactic portion of the confrontation happened. The ground is marked by a sigil consecrated by an Asura. The victor. It was hard to spot but but Anora noticed that sunlight beamed down upon the spot even despite the constant gloom of winter. The mark itself was only a glowing line etched beneath the grass and was only outwardly visible as a few specks of yellow flowers growing out from the snow. Anora asked to return home with Tori while we investigated all the remnants pf the battle. She appeared outwardly neutral but I have this feeling that she seemed distressed even though finding the rift at the battle site had always been up to fortune. Mother did not seem to notice and the feeling passed instantly when I saw Tori talking about some toy blocks as she carried him off smiling. Having this site not be near the rift does suggest they had come through the rift before continuing their battle here instead of causing it from any conflict they had nearby. If any clash would have caused the rift nearby it would have occurred here where the violence was at its peak. The sigil appears to have been used to purge the power of the losing Asura as well as using the released energy to travel rapidly to somewhere else. We at least now have a better reference point from which to search for the rift, as it is bound to be relatively near the site we found. We will have to use more general divinations as we do not have anything we can use to make a more targeted scrying spell. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 29 12th Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/029 Dear self, The loupe didn¡¯t need as much work to finish appraising as I had expected. I was finished sealing the item barely two hours after breakfast, and that¡¯s without spending every minute on working on it. I went back to playing with the bird charm while checking up on Rahph. He seemed quite lively already and was actively marching around in his confinement circle and following every nearby movement with a snake-like stare of focus. I brought Anora aside to talk to her about the rift. She seemed confused at first that I would think she was worried about something but then she became a little defensive. She was keeping her secrets as usual. She¡¯s nearly four cycles my junior but she carries enough private thoughts to fit an old man. It¡¯s understandable that she¡¯s a little different, and most of her unspoken thoughts are buried long enough to lose influence on her life, but I think there are some that would do her better shared with others. The minds of mystics can be isolating things but they do not need to be, and I think she mostly doesn¡¯t share to avoid being anything other than a little girl. We were interrupted before I got into a more confidential discussion, and Anora grabbed onto any escape from an awkward topic. The bird glamour had its charm explode in my hands while I was distracted in discussion. A barrier sprang up around Anora but I was covered directly with a cloud of ethereal residue and it interfered with the confinement circle enough for Rahph to exit. The disruptive effect from my Incuria must have packed into the charm and ruptured into a strong enough effect to subvert the wards. We chased after Rahph while he skedaddled away. A good few frosty sprites began gathering towards him as soon as he crossed the threshold outside of the house property. I made to send a cantrip at the critter and Anora channeled some power into me which resulted in Rahph tripping and slamming spectacularly into the ground from his speed and then jerking backwards towards us in my rope grip on him. We dragged him across the boundary fast enough and a small crowd of sprites and some pixies gathered at the threshold grinning viciously at us and the fool Darcinderaht. We brought him inside and warmed up from the cold we had run through without preparation.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. Anora took a while to just confine Rahph again, check all the wards, and help me examine any damages and the broken glamour charm before turning to look at me and bursting out laughing. Apparently I¡¯ve been painted in some rainbow of colours by the exploding charm, which makes me look silly. The gnome woman must have gotten a strange sight from me handing her enchantment loupe back with the official Guild seal applied.Shedidn¡¯t mention it though and spent the entire time mostly silent and a bitstiff seeming. After that refund I needed a quick source of coin. I made a few Daylight potions with Andlerut and Noonsheen which should be popular in winter between the townsfolk, especially with how heavy the snow is getting already. I find myself enjoying the feeling of pure sunlight even when it is summer at times so it should be irresistible now that it¡¯s so cloudy and cold. I made a few Glit Shards selling one potion in town but the rest of the stock won¡¯t perish quickly either. They¡¯re quite small little bottles so I get a lot out of them. They also sell better than the Embernap potion might because they focus more on making you feel warm in your skin while Embernap potion mostly makes you warm in your core without much change in your skin where you can feel the temperature. Since we¡¯re a little impatient with finding the rift after so many days I took out a small bottle of Nightgloom to help me cast a tracking spell from the place where we found the sigil yesterday. It¡¯s an incomplete spell but it was near enough that I could reveal ¡°shadows of the past¡± with a few cantrips and follow the occasional figures in shadow around until we found something. Much like visions it revealed scenes from the last in the form of the shadows that were cast in those moments. The Asuras were clearly fighting close to dusk because the shadows were stretched towards the moonrise. Tall figures of gloom depicted a conflict between two figures; one wielding a spear or a pole of some kind and the other displaying a great shield that obscured most of their form and whatever weapon they were using. The shadows dwarfed ours, but as we followed the trail they shrank slightly and ours grew with the hour, until we stood at approximate heights. They were still taller than us though, but I do not think it a disproportionate difference. The lengthening shadows made it harder to find the umbral figures and it took us longer to follow the trail as time passed. We found the rift resting above the ground near a big rock thad been split with force. The ground was cracked below the rift and the nearest tree was covered in silvery leaves instead of the frosty white the others showed in winter. It was not a highly chaotic rift but it seemed to have a strong aspect of displacement which may draw objects from distant places through it much like the Darcinderaht had been, as well as taking things through the opposite way. The rift no doubt opened at multiple other places in the world randomly as a singular connected space between normality. It also lacked all the guidance structured a proper Gate would have which makes it practically useless for normal use. Examining its signature revealed that it caused over half of the ambient signature relating to nearby rifts opening recently, which implies that there is a second rift at the least. This one poses little direct risk and you will be able to close it easily. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 30 - Glad that鈥檚 over 13th Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/030 Dear self, I had a very dream through the night that had Rahph in it. The Darcinderaht was lazing on a wide rock beneath a cloudless noon. It had that unblinking snake stare as always which somehow swapped between making it look creepy or dumb looking. I didn¡¯t recognise any of the thin brush looking trees or the tall yellow grass, but it was clearly a natural place for the critter if it was so comfortable in circle of blackened earth that had somehow not charred the trees too badly despite how dry they seemed. I dreamed the sunlight being so warm and comfortable that I could do nothing except lie down and soak it in. Waking up back where winter ruled was somewhat unpleasant, and I stayed in bed a little too long. The morning brought nothing strange. Mum got a commission for enchanting a hat which might take a few days to finish. I took the potions back into town today and one of the innkeepers wanted to buy the Daylight potion to try and make a drink out of it. Anora and I took some supplies just past noon. It was actually quite a short march from out house to reach the rift. There was not a lot of power being transferred through the rift so it closed naturally with just a grounding circle stabilizing it enough to heal. The hardest part was actually keeping my Incuria controlled to avoid interference. Anora might even have been able to seal it alone if she exerted herself. There was a little mishap where a sliver of the rift nearly stretched outside of our grounding circle but I caught it early enough. The Dawdlium that started springing up all over helped with manipulating space to encourage the rift closing.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. I collected a few swaths from the tree that had developed silvered leaves near the rift. They might end up being interesting somehow, so I took them back to analyze their properties after exposure to the rift. With Anora helping stripping a few branches was quick work. She eventually did decide to tell me about what was on her mind, likely tired from all the occasional glances I shot her the entire morning. The sigil we found imprinted in the ground belonged to an Asura she knew of apparently. He was a war-like godling with arrogant and self-righteous tendencies from even before the Repentance, which is a minority among most living Asura. She had been concerned when we found the site of the Asura skirmish because she thinks he might be a danger to the surrounding if anything catches his interest here. A man from the Rangers Guild arrived at last. He was covered in snow and ice over his face but his badge reacted positively with the token the Rangers had mailed us and with Mum here there was no possibility that he was fooling the blood magic involved, even if he was a shapeshifter. He took Rahph, and Tori was sad, but it was something that should have happened a good while ago already. The critter was still stuffed into a carry cage, but it seemed nicer than the other one. He also smacked a weather charm onto Rahph which seemed to help the critter deal with the wet cold directly. They like roots and tubers best, so if I ever see another Darcinderaht I¡¯ll know what to feed it next time. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 31 - Well Wishes 14th Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/031 Dear self, It took a while to analyse the silver leaves I picked from the tree by the rift. They appear to have simply absorbed a degree of displacement Aspect from proximity to the rift. The silver effect is a visual effect of the displacement Aspect reflecting light. I showed the leaves to Mum. The commission she is working on is a hat enchanted to hold hair in a way that made it somehow more convenient for long haired people. I had thought that since it was supposed to use a variation of displacement magic to hold volumes of hair conveniently that she might have a use for the leaves, but she gave one glance at the things and decided I needed practice making wondrous items by using the leaves in a displacement item. I feel like she was just judging me for how I worked on the Teetotum for the Whirlstorm kids. Just to prove a point she showed me how she could already put the hat on and I couldn¡¯t see any of her hair sticking out at all, and she had putthe thing on with her hair let down all the way. She needed to work more on the hat in order to make it more aesthetic, not to improve the spacial workings. It¡¯s only flaw is that it made you look bald. Wondrous items only differ from standard enchanted items in that they are seeded with a subtle body to help them hold more enchantments with greater complexity as well as allowing more room for natural mutation and growth. They are a lot closer to a living magical item in a way.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. The Teetotum I had worked on, for example, worked perfectly fine without being made wondrous, but the amount of enchantments I packedinto it left too little room for error and made it vulnerable to external influences. It was like a bubble stretched to breaking. The Whirlstorms do not have a lot of magical things in their household, so in this individual case there is not all that much risk. I specifically made sure that the enchantment would collapse inward onitself if it was disrupted to avoid any violent reactions. I met with the innkeeper, Nyri Quietwish, and we talked a bit more about my Daylight potions. She had figured out how how to make a mixed drink by adding it to some of her mead. The result excited her, and I suspect the potion had a special synergy with honey in some way. Honey is a very bright and golden liquid after all, perfect symbolism for summer. We hashed out a bargain between us to trade the potions I made for a supply of Absinthe, and we would pay the other the difference in value. It would take me a while to make more of the potion, and my material supply is limited with Noonsheen only ever being gathered during summer. Nyri wanted to call the enchanted drink Sunbeam Aurora, which is as good a name as any. We had a farewell party for Anora in town. She had stayed a little longer than usual and she hadn¡¯t been visiting as often while Mother was out of Realm. Erhin and Jeriel had personally hunted a few giant jackalope to bring to the feast, and Nyri decided to provide small samples of her new beverage between the normal mead. I couldn¡¯t drink of course, with the Incuria still threatening to go wild, and Anora was still too young to drink despite being the guest of honour. Mum got a little carried away by letting a couple of people challenge her to a show of friendly combat, but she mostly cheated by surgically paralysing everyone¡¯s muscles. Jeriel took her down before things went too far and she took Tori to bed with a little too much sugar between his teeth. I did Lalen a favour by stopping him with a little stumble before he overused his grounding charm bragging about his toy laser. The horse-eyed little kobold wasn¡¯t entirely mature enough for the enchantment he got out of me but he had it nonetheless. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 32 - Anora Entry: 2/032 Dear Self, Anora is six cycles old and was born in 709 during the fourth week of spring. She is the third eldest and currently second youngest. Anora is the strongest Adapt in the family and started awakening a little before she was four. She manifests primarily as External, but secondarily as Subtle. Mystics like Anora are rarely capable of using any Ancient Magic as she is, and she holds memory from outside of her current life instead of the precognitive knowledge some mystics are known for, being more focused towards perceiving a specific past rather than the present or the future. Her gifts as a mystic have made her slightly more mature for a child her age, but I do not think she has grown arrogant or superior in any way. She avoids talking about whatever secrets her gifts have shown her, so I do not know the nature of her gifts beyond speculation.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Physically, she is the strangest between us in the traits she has inherited. Umari is a changeling, and Vrulath is a normal kobold with a great grandparent who was a gnome. Anora inherited large eyes and a bigger nose from the troll ancestry Mother has,but mostly resembles a kobold in her body structure. She also inherited gilded eyes from Aunt Ekelyn, who adopted Mother, which makes her eyes appear like sheer crystals without sclera or pupils in a bright blue colour to match our father¡¯s eyes. She is now studying at the Ehulreth Mysterium on the mainland. She only visits home so much because she can use the Gates by herself and doesn¡¯t need to pay each time she travels through them. Her studies focus on Affluent Magic, which is a very general way of saying everything as long as it¡¯s modern enough. She avoid frequent use of her Ancient Magic. She also spent a lot of time on studying history than I have, all the way back to the Repentance. I think she makes for the best sibling between us four, unless Tori catches up with her when he gets older. She¡¯s the only one who goes through as much trouble to stay in regular contact across large distances. I don¡¯t even get along with Vaeril as well as I do with her,and we¡¯re twins! Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 33 15th Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/033 Dear self, Tori woke us all up with a melody of singing birds. It was that little toy that sang and twittered whenever dawn came, except it soon became clear that the sound was coming from his voice, which should go without saying is not supposed to happen. He had a little fun evading us as we tried to pin him down while he impishly kept singing in bird tweets. He was clearly more interested in messing around with his voice altered than trying to solve the problem. He kept sending us these adorable smiles as he raced around, but they did not dissuade me from the chase. When we pinned him down Mum examined him to see that his voice has indeed been glamoured somehow with the same glamour tied to the Dawn Melody charm he had fused together recently. We might need to prepare something to remove the glamour from him directly but as it is it might be safer to let it run its course and fade naturally from his body. For now he will keep singing like a bird. Mother started working on a cure for Tori in between working on the enchanted hat she was commissioned for. We already tried my Incuria but it only made his bird song sound weird instead of dispelling it. I might be able to figure out a potion but I don¡¯t have the materials at the moment. I made three more of the Daylight potions for Nyri¡¯s Sunbeam Aurora. She¡¯s been selling a few of the drink already as an expensive luxury and gave me a few bottles of absinthe for our supplies. Tori decoded to come along into town while Mum was busy and wanted to show off his bird voice to everyone that would hear to the bemused expression of all the adults present.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. Mum wanted me to start working on what kind if wondrous item I could create out of the silver leaves I had collected from near the rift. She showed me how to make it into rift foil and went through the entire lecture about how to properly seed a wondrous item. My previous two attempts thus far at a wondrous item have mutated into failure, so she made sure to go over all the basic facts all over again. The most important part other than the various isolation and stabilization workings, is to have a prolonged flux directed into the item over a period, which makes it something impossible to do over a small period of time even if you had all the power in the world. The only way around that is wild independent manifestations which have no reliability of any kind. I also needed to decide which kind of item I could base off of a material with displacement properties. It¡¯s largely a passive property so I should avoid anything ambitious like teleportation and maybe stick to warping space slightly in some way. If I use it with a glamour it might be able to project illusions into the surroundings. Since it is the full moon we spent a few hours in the garden after Tori was put to bed. The Wistblume flowers opened only during the full moon and needed to be harvested tonight or we¡¯ll have none of them from this month. Mother also performed a ritual to gather Moonglance essence with some imbibing of absinthe. The Wistblumes were a string blue colour this month which is a good sign for the material quality. Moonglance is best collected during autumn so we only got a normal amount of Moonglance instead of the quantity of Nightgloom I gathered on the first of the month. Seeing the sheen of the moonlight glowing from within the wistblume gave me an idea for a glamour which I might work on tomorrow. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 34 16th Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/034 Dear self, I had another weird dream with Rahph in it. I¡¯m no mystic, but dreams are usually not this easy to remember. I was in that same clearing where the tall grass was blackened by fire all the way to the trunks of the brush-like trees. I was sitting in the bathing rock Rahph had used last time while he was rummaging through the ground and making a hole apparently for a nest. He dug holes everywhere. There were these mounds of packed dirt that he would claw into and then he¡¯d become covered in an unending stream of ants. They swarmed to his eyes but they flashed brightly and the ants burned away from the sensitive organs. The strangest part was the sun. There were no clouds and the day was warmer than I have ever experienced in the waking world, but the sun seemed so close. When I reached out to it my fingers passed behind the sun and it was just a glowing ball next to my head. It chirped when I squeezed it curiously. Rahph then turned his snake eyes to stare at me, and then opened his mouth andsang like a bird. Tori was running through the house again chirping loudly and obnoxiously. He sat still this time instead of making us chase him around and obediently swallowed a spoon of salt we figured would work. Spelled of course. He got his voice back and began an eager stream of words talking about his bird voice, pointing out the obvious, and telling us that he was glad it didn¡¯t actually last forever after he got bored of it somewhere around last night. Repeatedly.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Mum finished her enchanted hat. It worked pretty well. It swallowed any excessive hair when you out it on without any fuss but did let a good bun stick out so you wouldn¡¯t look bald. It certainly works better than a hair net. It¡¯s sitting on our shelf waiting for its owner now. For some reason I could recall a lot of the random details of Mum¡¯s lecture on wondrous items from yesterday and kept getting ideas for how to utilize them for my own wondrous item. It took the rift foil I had made from the silver leaves into town and asked missus Quaen to help me sew the leaves of material into a cloak. Mum had reinforced her ethereal needle from last time so that it wouldn¡¯t have as many problems working on magical objects or materials. It took a good two hours, which amazes me looking back with how Quaen worked that needle like lightning all the while chatting and letting her thoughts wander on aimless stories she has heard. Since the rift foil is appropriate for displacement effects I thought I¡¯d make an evasion cloak that would displace your figure and presence to confuse observers as to your actual location. It might get tricky because this isn¡¯t a conventional use of displacement effects and the relationship between the displaced image and the true position should be highly dynamic at the least. I might also have to displace the wearer¡¯s senses of themself so that they can act more appropriately to the position their illusion is moved to. It will actually need to be addressed more creatively than mechanically, as how I end up doing the displacement effect isn¡¯t crucial to the basic result but will affect a lot of the nuance of its use. It¡¯s perfect for a wondrous item because the workings will have to be highly involved and intricate and will even benefit from any increased complexity. Obfuscation is one of the things that will never see intricacies as detrimental. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 35 17th Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/035 Dear self, I had that weird dream again. The sun was definitely just hovering slightly above the big rock in the circle of charred grass. I tried to get to it but when I got close the rock seemed to enlarge into a hill and grow into a mountain as I tried to climb it. What was a rock ideal for lounging in the sunlight turned into a sheer cliffside with treacherous handholds. I gave up after I climbed higher than the clouds; whimsical dream logic somehow translated in the arduous climb up and down still feeling like an eternity in my memory even though I would never have so much willpower to pursue a Sisyphean task. Rahph was in the blackened clearing as always. It took a while to find him because his obsidian scales made him blend in with the charred grass and he was sitting as still as only a lizard can. Only his head was poking out of the hole he was lying in. He gave me a bird-like stare from the side when I came closer. With nothing interesting around my mind wandered out of the clearing into the surrounding trees. The plants were mostly bushes and the short thin branched trees every now and then. They reached low and got in the way but they were very spread out most of the time. There were a lot of thorny plants. I woke up just after a memory of slight pain in my leg and then looking down to see a tuft of prickly looking grass reaching my ankle. The grass had these seeds that dislodged to be carried away by passing animals, the issue was that they were basically thorns and hooked into my pants as I walked by, stabbing through the fabric into my flesh. There were thorn-like seeds in my soles as well when I lifted my foot for inspection.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. I did not feel rested at all in the morning. I kept losing focus on controlling my disruption ability, but oddly it became easier to use with a few hours of my unfocused state. I must have circumvented some sort of mental block in controlling it. The magical hat went right off the shelf as a couple people entered the shop. I didn¡¯t get to see who it was that made the commission, but it was some woman from another town. I made another batch of Daylight potions for Nyri, but my stash of Noonsheen is running low so I think I¡¯ll stop making more for in case I need the essence for something more urgent. Two people came in with more items I was responsible for. If I can get the last of these refund items sorted out and get my suspension lifted it would definitely help with making the evasion cloak I have planned. Working enchantments with a restricted manifold is a pain. The first artefact was a statue that might take me a few days to analyze, but the second item was a masterwork knife that had a newer working added to it to keep it pristine. From what I can see there had been a previous enchantment that had faded and the new one had been added over. The working is not entirely as integrated with the physical object as it should be and the older working is interfering with the anchor. I could perhaps use the Dawdlium we gathered recently to help with removing the faded enchantment without seriously disrupting the newer one. With my Incuria less controlled than usual I couldn¡¯t risk starting on the wondrous item formation for the evasion cloak today. I instead started by drawing a grounding circle to help concentrate the magic and keep anything from leaking out, or in. I also prepared a potion using Blitterleaf and Nightgloom and infused it into a gem of Amberglass. I used a lot of Nightgloom since I have so much of it from this month alone and it is a perfect essence for use in an evasion cloak even just for clarifying the intent. The Blitterleaf will help with the glamour component of the eventual cloak and might even complement the Nightgloom enough to allow both shadow and light manipulation for added potency with illusions. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 36 18th Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/036 Dear self, I didn¡¯t have that dream again last night. It felt strange how sudden my awakening was. I just had my eyes suddenly open and then I was fully aware and lost all traces of sleep. I just stared at the ceiling for a while pondering the strange way of waking up. It was earlier than I usually got up as well. I went to the workshop with no one else awake yet. Using a cognizance meditation for a while I realised my disruption Incuria was ready for inurement with my native power. I let off doing the full ritual for after noon so that I could have someone supervise the process in case of any issues. There weren¡¯t any customers today. I got to work on consolidating the workings on that knife from yesterday. I used a circle containing Dawdlium to target the faded old enchantment interfering with the current workings. Tethering the faded fragments of magic was a little monotonous as I had to re-examine the piece every now and then to spot tiny fragments I had missed. I had to also a start loosening the active working slowly so that I could pull the old one out from under it. It takes more time than skill and I have to wait for the entire thing to soften overnight. The statue was trickier. The enchantment is sealed within a ward that keeps me from inspecting. I worked on it for a while but couldn¡¯t figure out how to get past the wards. It¡¯s clearly from an older time when enchanters were preoccupied in not having their work interfered with. Enchanters used to be a lot more reclusive before the Guilds were established. I brought the last batch of Daylight potions for Nyri Quietwish in town. Tintinnabulis is built adjacent to the King¡¯s Road and travelers regularly come to town in order to rest on their journey. Depending on the race, people travel all year round through every kind of weather on the Road. The only month without relatively common traffic is the Seventh.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. There was a merchant in the inn selling news. Word is that the wraiths were dispersing from one of the old ruins. It might lead to some adventurous types trying to explore the place for old artefacts and ancient secrets from before the Repentance. We¡¯re close enough that it would bring in more people on the Road soon. In order to begin the process of creating the evasion cloak I first needed to infuse it with a great deal of intent. Intent normally doesn¡¯t help much with normal enchantment but it is essential during communion rituals and interfacing with any external Animus when shaping a working. The idea behind a wondrous item is to form an entire Animus for the item so a lot of intent and conceptual cognizance must be fed into the matrix of the item in order to initiate the formation of a subtle body. This is a long process that will utterly fail of it is ever disrupted prior to completion. We have an entire separate chamber within the workshop where I set up a stability formation spanning the entire floor and parts of the wall. This formation prevents mutancy but mostly it acts as a scaffold to keep the matrix from collapsing without my constant participation. I took the Amberglass I had infused with Nightgloom and Blitterleaf and placed it wrapped within the cloak of rift foil within the centre of the formation. Unlike many of my other projects, I cannot use many rituals for this enchantment as the external guidance would interfere with the Opus and cause warping. Most creational and higher magicks are similar in how external aid becomes detrimental. Creating an Animus like this offers the best results when the source of its origination is as pure and singular as is possible. The creation requires a constant input of flux, which would be from myself, but the stability formation helps keep a reserve supply and regulates input over a long period, preventing the stream of flux becoming too energetic or any cessation of flow. I¡¯ll need to re-infuse the formation nearly once every twelve hours for the next few days. The inurement ritual was more straightforwards. Inurement is the process of a form of magic being integrated with the dzala and the physical body to become a part of the individual. Personal Incuria are already partially inured into their host most of the time if they have any permanency, so all we had to do is guide the process further and prevent any complications. Afterwards I would have more direct control over the ability and it would become akin to an innate power under my volition. It mostly meant I didn¡¯t let out occasional disruption cantrips whenever I lost focus on my acuity. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 37 19th Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/037 Dear self, Today I dreamed of a smokeless fire that did not burn. It was a joyous thing, and it was whispering words I could not hear. I hope I don¡¯t have that dream again. I began the morning by re-infusing the wonderment formation, which I had done before going to sleep. The conflux seems to be going well and is quite steady. Even though a more energetic flux would be more effective, it would only be detrimental if the flow isn¡¯t kept consistent. I finished working on that masterwork knife by removing the old faded enchantment beneath the active working. Sealing the item also solidified the enchantment so I didn¡¯t have to harder the matrix again after loosening it. The traveler who owned the knife conveniently showed up this morning so it didn¡¯t even dust the shelves before vanishing.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. We spent some time in the garden pruning the plants and harvesting some of the herbs. I showed Tori how the Snapweed became more dangerous when it grew icicles. He loved toying with a bundle of Bubbleshil I picked for our cellar. He wasn¡¯t as careful as he should be and got the hiccups for hours after breathing in too much of the plant. After getting through the wards on that statue I found a problem. The statue was designed as a ritual tool to help with communion with higher powers. From the iconography I suspect it was intended for a specific entity by some old cult. The issue is that the workings has not only degraded over time, but it has been warped outside of Solacium which removed its targeted communion. I can clearly see that the connection to the entity it was intended for has been seared with some energy which might be the aftermath of some disaster on it¡¯s end of the connection within the higher planes. The warping occurred within the warding of the enchantment which prevented the Solacium from detecting the problem. The communion is a free connection that a y entity can access and even leads outside of the firmament. Any kind of entity could be peering into the world from this tether. I isolated the statue for now while we prepare a purging ritual to make sure there is no eldritch influence on the object before sealing the connection. None of us want a leviathan staring into the world and recognizing our faces. From what I could sense there have definitely been entities peering through the tether. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 38 - Kobolds Entry: 2/038 - Kobolds Dear self, Kobolds are a species of sapient humanoids with native shapeshifting abilities. Pureblooded kobolds rarely cannot shift into at least one alternate form. Over eight tenths of House Kobolds gain one form before adulthood and over a third develop multiple forms throughout infantile, child, and juvenile stages of their lives. One in nineteen kobolds possess an alternate form that they can shift into within hours of their birth. Kobolds with mixed bloodlines anywhere between their parents and great grandparents exhibit significantly reduced transformation capabilities without undergoing a bloodline awakening. Great great grandparent do not tend to measurably affect innate kobold abilities without having highly dominant bloodlines. Half-blood kobolds only develop alternate forms at am eighth of the rate pureblooded kobolds do, and never gain multiple alternate forms. The kobolds race originally developed from wilds kobolds, which are kobolds that are not humanoid in their primary form. Wild kobolds have some similarity to mimics and tend to blend in to groups of other species with their transformation ability. They tend to develop forms that resemble species their parents had common contact with, adapting to the fauna within their environment. Wild Kobold tribes started to develop primary humanoid forms about four hundred cycles ago at the earliest estimate, and they only tend to develop humanoid forms on an individual basis. There have been no known cases of any individuals possessing multiple forms of the same or similar species. While the House Kobold tribes almost always develop a primary humanoid form, they also tend to develop traits from other non-humanoid species integrated into their primary forms, which does not occurs within Wild Kobold populations. Kobolds have a shorter stature among the majority of Enlightened races and cannot transform into creature of significantly greater mass or volume than their primary forms. Common variant traits among House Kobolds appear mostly at the eyes, teeth, ears, limbs, or hair of any individual. Wild Kobolds who possess humanoid form are more likely to have no variant traits than a House Kobold would.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. House Kobolds are also completely covered in fine hair over their entire body, with the hair on traditionally hairless areas being extremely fine and translucent. The effect is that kobolds do not tend to appear as if they have hairy faces while they have a fuzzy coating across all of their skin excluding their palms and soles and similar places. Kobold culture traditionally celebrates gaining alternate forms. Any time a child gains a alternate form of any kind is an event celebrated more than any other time in that individual¡¯s life. Kobolds travelers avoid revealing their nature as kobolds and would remain shifted as an animal when traveling among Enlightened races except if they have no variant traits. Kobolds are capable of recognising others of their kind intrinsically when in skin contact, and non-humanoid kobold are capable of vocalizing speech with practice. Their alternate forms are possible by glamours integrated within their native power. This allows them to transform much more easily than creature that rely on transmutation, and the integration with their native power allows a more rigid glamour that cannot be dispelled as easily as more artificial workings. Every new form a kobold has is a glamour layered over the previous ones, which means their earliest forms become stronger as they gain more. One particular kobold named Pyrril Swivelswift was infamous as a ship¡¯s cat in the crew of a notorious pirate crew. He was said to have foiled several instances of mutiny among the pirate crew without revealing his nature as anything more than a mundane cat. He was also said to have seduced a maiden every time the ship entered port, and to have saved an imperial prince from rebels, as well as have stolen from the Highest of Swans and escaped with his life intact. The story is so old that we don¡¯t even definitely know what his alternate forms were beyond wild speculation. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 39 - Interloper 20th Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/039 Dear self, We took the morning to deal with the statue of communion. I helped a few customers in the shop while Mother did her own inspection of the artefact. I made sure to look around the house for any invasive influences and warded the chamber with my evasion cloak. It took me longer than normal to i fuse the formation as I had to clear my mind of any concerned thoughts lest they change the intent I was infusing the wondrous item with. Mother came back from her examination and told me there were traces of essence on the artefact I didn¡¯t mention from my own analysis. I looked at it but whatever she was talking about was invisible to me. She said it resembled the passage of an intangible entity into Materiality, which implies a more direct influence from the connection tethered to the artefact. It only marked a passage through the item but is useless to figure out what the direct influence was used for. Most Outer being are rather gargantuan and mostly incoherent in thought, so ai thought it was likely just some being feeling our world mindlessly through the connection with an ethereal limb.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. We purged the artefact using a cleansing ritual with harmony elements. Morrowgrim and Dawdlium was added for good measure in sealing the Outer connection. The item is currently completely incapable of communion, and we¡¯ll have to discuss with the customer if they want to restore the basic function of communion, barring the Outer connection. Eldritch magic is restricted, and it might even get last Mum¡¯s wards without effort depending on the specific case. It¡¯s one of the types of magic that don¡¯t need to conform to the normal rules. It was only later that I spotted a strange creature made out of light in the garden. It had floppy ears and a tail that extended to four times the length of it¡¯s body. I would describe it¡¯s body as some mix between a cat and a slug. It had no eyes. This was clearly an unnatural creature. If I sensed closely I could listen to the dissonance it caused within the Solacium. It ran away before we could catch it. Mother could not see it. Apparently something in my vision made it visible where it normally wasn¡¯t, and that same thing made the traces of its essence invisible to me. We now have an eldritch creature of some sort running loose in the forest and I might be the only one capable of seeing it. Mother suspects that it might be a Voidbringer, as they tend to be attracted to loose fragments of reality such as the unbound connection the statue was tethering. There are also a larger probability of smaller creatures among Voidbringers as their inhabitation of Limbo lets them survive more easily when they aren¡¯t gargantuan thing like leviathans. Why the Asuras are so tolerant of them is beyond us. While it is relatively small, it is an invasive creature within our Realm, and a higher order of being. The natural environment is under threat from it¡¯s presence. It might be drawn towards that second rift as well. Even if that rift is benign it won¡¯t be when a Voidbringer decides to consume the loose reality around it and gnawing a hole through the fundament. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 40 - Voidbringers Entry: 2/040 Dear self, Voidbringers are a class of Outer beings that generally wander between the Void and Limbo and like inhabiting the spaces between realities. Like a lot of higher being their subsistence is dependent on what from a mortal perspective can be considered the basic structure of reality and is to them just substance to be consumed. Many higher order beings are effective made of fundamental things such as space and time in the place of them flesh and bones. Many Outer beings interact with Materiality strangely when manifesting on our plane. They often appear as shifting masses of material which can be either organic or inorganic in appearance. Most such beings appear largely inorganic while the ones who interact with materiality more often are more likely to have an organic appearance of some kind. Outer beings also appear as dynamic manifestations of energy as what makes up their ¡°body¡± is merely a foreign shard of eldritch reality and their appearance in our world is merely the dynamic interaction between our mental reality and theirs. Outer beings are effectively each their own individual personal reality. They rarely appear relatable across multiple specimens. Similar appearing Outer beings are more likely to be a singular being manifesting through multiple avatars.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Voidbringer in particular feed on our reality more than other kinds. They are the equivalent to herbivores among their order of being as they feed mostly off of the more inanimate reality than hunting and consuming other eldritch beings like many others do. In this way Voidbringers are relatively passive and docile. They live primarily within Limbo, which is the border between what we would consider reality and the Void, and is where loose shards of our reality slowly dissolve into the Void. Voidbringers do not feed off of more anchored parts of reality and cannot harm most of what we would recognise as our world. What they are drawn to instead is loose threads of reality such as rifts, portals, pocket dimensions, and bridges between reality. Anything that isn¡¯t fully enclosed within our sphere of existence is vulnerable to them. They are also the reason it is so difficult normally to cross over into other planes such as into Paradise. It is possible to construct bridges between realities that they cannot consume if the construct is anchored i to itself strongly enough, but less permanent dimensions are increasingly vulnerable to the, and they are the strongest factor in access to pocket dimensions being largely temporary. A benefit that Voidbringers have is that they ensure realities do not collide into one another and ensure that realities remain separate. Incoherent realities such as primal chaos is the most appetizingto them, and so they are a major way in which such hazardous phenomena are prevented. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 41 21st Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/041 Dear self, I was back in that dream. Rahph was in his hole with only the end of his head sticking out of the ground, much as I had dreamt him last. I¡¯m beginning to have some suspicion of his continued presence in my dreams. The rock with the sun hovering over it transformed back into the endless mountain when I tried approaching. Instead of wandering into the surrounding wilds I decided to inspect Rahph¡¯s little hole. It also grew sizably with my approach, but instead of being endless it merely developed into a cavern mouth towering over me with Rahph himself dwarfing me with an imperious glare. He did not seem all that welcoming, but I approached anyway. He hissed at me like a cat, but since I knew it was a dream I ignored his threat. He spewed a slew of burning ember all over me. It didn¡¯t burn, and after glaring at me covered in his expulsion for a moment Rahph calmed down and let me by peacefully. It eas dark in the underground beyond. Cold, dark, and lightless.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. We spent the morning pouring through our inventory of items, searching for anything that might be useful against an interloper from an outer plane. Our plan was that I would bind the Voidbringer with a cantrip when I spotted it, and then we would prepare a concerted spell to imprison the creature. Sensing it back to where it came from might be a little difficult after we purged the connection it slipped through, but we are mostly focusing on devising an Opus that might actually contain the thing. Something that can travel through such a limited tether is bound to be adept at escaping confinement. We sent a request to the Guild for support. We might get some actual help if anyone happens to be nearby but we¡¯ll be sent some advisement at the least even for a minor incident like this one. Evasive creatures like this Voidbringer have a significantly reduced risk of causing self propagating hazards, and Voidbringers tend to create problems that consume themselves through their own damage rather than spreading them widely. It getting to that wild rift would have some prominent local detriments however. The evasion cloak at the least is working out splendidly. The wondrous body might even finish developing a little early so that I can start working on the Opus soon to define its effects. Enchanters don¡¯t normally place a lot of interest in the Opus over the workings, but this item will be requiring some complex constructs and a precise spell design. In my other work I let the constructs arise more naturally than I will be doing here. We¡¯re thinking of letting Tori be taken care of by someone in town while we track down that Voidbringer. Tomorrow is the closest time we can perform any significant ritual to deal with the entity or to track it down, so we can¡¯t waste a few days or we¡¯ll lose our most opportune time to resolve everything. There might even be several other entities who traveled through the communion artefact to some extent before it was brought to the shop a few days ago. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 42 Entry: 1/042 Dear self, Children are exhausting to deal with. We took Tori to stay with the Whirlstorms for the night and maybe a day or so more. Aerzen was only too happy to babysit for Mum. Aerzen Whirlstorm is a man you should always take on his word. You should only ever doubt him at your own peril. I remember when Erhin and I were younger how Aerzen would be the first to notice us looking for mischief near the town, and if we got him to promise he would never tell anyone what we were up to, but he¡¯d foil us in the most mundane ways by just moving some objects around or giving someone the right advice at the right time. His children were certainly the most well behaved in town. Seeing other children being so very polite actually drew Tori i to being more well behaved as well. The teetotum was working mostly as expected, but seemed to flop down on its side for no reason. I think it¡¯s something about how it tries to follow certain people around. It has seven sides divided by seven spokes along its length. Every time it landed a different spoke would be turned upwards to display the glyph carved along the edge. Objects with an odd number of sides can¡¯t land with a face turned upwards, so the local design for teetotums is pretty odd for being based on seven edges rather than the seven sides. Glyphs that aren¡¯t carved upon a proper face are a lot more popular than the edge glyphs, so it a local custom that surprises travelers. It almost felt like every time the little toy fell in my direction it would display ¡°Judgement¡±.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. I was stuck with the kids while Mum talked with Aerzen about stuff. Erelise was apparently jealous of Lalen for having an enchantment that gave him a light cantrip, and talked about he shouldn¡¯t gloat as much about it when he doesn¡¯t even have a second form yet like they did. That sound a little more petulant than how she said it, but it definitely sounds like pony boy is showing off more than he should. Honestly, I¡¯ll just end up laughing if he transforms into a pony randomly after using up the amulet. It was hard to go to sleep after infusing the evasion cloak formation again. There are strange creening sounds coming through my window that seem to stick in my mind. I¡¯m uncertain as to what could produce such an odd noise, but it¡¯s keeping me awake longer than it should. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 43 22nd Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/043 Dear self, The dream was different tonight. The day sky was gone and replaced with a starry night heaven. It was the new moon, so only the cloudy constellations were visible. The night was much brighter beneath a cloudless sky within this apparent untamed wilderness. The lack of civilization might have meant less competition for influence over the local mana for the more natural and celestial aspects. That cheeky sun was still here, not at any level of strength now that night reigns, but I found it being chewed on by Rahph. He appeared to like the taste of it¡¯s fiery radiance. This time I could approach him at an equal height. He was still taller than he was in real life, but I had gained more power within the dream. The little sun squeaked sharply for help, but I was more in the mood for some answers. Vivid dreams are not something to take lightly if you don¡¯t know the source of them, and I was no mystic like Anora. Rahph was clearly involved somehow, but I suspected it was mostly some coincidence on his part. This little star of smokeless fire had connected us for some reason, even without being all that powerful if its predicament is any indication. This dream realm was its doing even if the contents were formed from Rahph¡¯s mind. The little sun was poor at communicating. I mostly got some repentant empathy from it and some petulance, but I also got a name. Vamera. We didn¡¯t open the shop today, and the morning was spent preparing for the spells and rituals we may or may not find useful while capturing the Interloper. Surprisingly the Guild had sent news that some wizard or warlock happened to be nearby and interested in helping. Either would be ideal, or even a thaumaturge could work. They advised us not to attempt to banish the entity by ourselves and letting whoever was coming help deal with it. I am not exactly fully experienced so ultimately the ritual wasn¡¯t left to me. We did decide to incorporate a good bit of Nightgloom. Mum might not have an affinity to the stuff but the constructs she can incorporate it into is more than worth it. We will mostly be using Dawdlium to hopefully help contain the Interloper and we will use the Nightgloom as an ambient isolating agent to help keep the entity and any other possible interlopers from traveling too far away or proliferating somehow. After we perform the ritual it will have a constant effect and remain ambient until every Outer being is banished, which is actually a derivative construct based off of a ritual I use against rats, only applied a little more grandly.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. Tracking the interloper was a lot simpler than finding the rift had been. Its mere presence is constantly interfering with the ambient Solacium to a lesser degree and the areas it has affected have been decreasing in mana. It became harder to track the thong the closer we came. All generalized scrying tends to be more a curate used over distanced and over wider regions. Closer ranged tracking always takes more specialized, individual components to either tie to the agent or the subject, which we lack in this case. We ate lunch in the forest and spent hours wandering in circles in one particular area until we realised it had just been were the interloper had stopped to chew a little on a random rock. The rock looks really weird now, and seems to have a tendency to stay the same size relative to your perception to a degree now, which means staring at it too much while walking away or towards it will eventually give you a headache. When we found the thing it ignored us at first. The first few cantrips I tossed at it went straight through it like it wasn¡¯t there and the invocations failed to stick to it. When it ran at me I fell over in fright but it passed through me mostly harmlessly. I do feel a strange phantom pain where it went through me. It was ethereal and a slippery kind of eldritch entity so most of the normal methods we had to target it were ineffective. Because it isn¡¯t a living being and lacks blood Mum was incapable of using her best powers against it. The one that ended up working was a random Jolly Darling which I threw at it for lack of a better idea, but the invocation stuck after the mushroom disappeared into its body. I immediately told Mum that it seemed to work but she was already channeling through the invocation. We now have the interloper largely contained. Relatively. We piled five different kinds of bindings through the invocation and I think only one or two of them are actually having any influence. We could at least drag it around and keep it mostly confined to a circle. It keeps periodically breaking the binding without breaking it somehow, so every now and then it can move around freely but then it becomes contained again at the new location it shifted itself to. I don¡¯t even know how the confinement circle is being moved around with it when it does that, but it can¡¯t seem to move too far between when we check back in on it. It is still only visible to me, so only the circle is visible to anyone else, and strange distortions in how light moves through space when it headbutts something from my perspective. It¡¯s making those same weird creening noises that kept me up late last night. They sound creepy and seem even stranger when compared to the frankly adorable physical appearance it has. No one would believe me when I tell them it¡¯s sort of cute. It has no eyes, and long floppy ears that have split ends like a fork if you look closely enough. It¡¯s head is basically just a large nub extended from its torso and its tail changes in volume every time I look at it. The only part which unnerves me is its mouth, which opens from the lower base of its head nub and then stretched across the length of its body. I can¡¯t see it at all when it¡¯s closed, but it opens when he coils around an object and worries it. It might not look like it has teeth, but I¡¯m sure whatever weird parts it has in its mouth are doing things that I do not want to understand. It faces me sometimes, and then I feel like it can see me. It makes that phantom pain come back. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 44 23rd Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/044 Dear self, The dream began in much the same way as it had ended. Rahph had gotten bored of worrying the little ball of light, so it was free to float around again, or hide in the corner as he stared at it unblinkingly. I was again at eye height with the darcinderaht whenever I tried to approach him, which means he still has more control over the dream than I do, if a very undirected control. The moonless night remained, so the little sun, Vamera, couldn¡¯t rise into the sky and create daylight. It¡¯s radiance only shined like a lantern, and couldn¡¯t pierce into the surrounding shadows like before. Vamera seemed to be recovering from something. Its empathetic communications were becoming clearer, and I could now sense more detailed emotions from the little sun. Annoyance, petulance, frustration. There was a little bit of resentment there, but I could sense most of the negative feelings weren¡¯t directed at me anything near at hand, mostly Vamera felt frustrated at the present circumstances we find ourselves in. In this dream, I am the sky and Rahph is the world, so there isn¡¯t actually much place to hide away from Rahph if he had wanted to wander out of his hole. Vamera is the onky thing that was out of place, and the on,y other living thing within the dreamscape. I took the little sun away from Rahoh with me to explore the wilds around us. There was nothing defined in the world yet, so I had to let something emerge from the dream, and stumbling around in the dark is a great way of finding things you hadn¡¯t known were there. Vamera was my lantern. The trees and thorns were quite repetitive, but they became more interesting as I spent more time exploring through the sparse woodland. The most remarkable tree I could find was this extremely large one that was basically just a giant wide trunk rising like a squat tower with relatively few branches of leaves crowning its height.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. It was a really fat tree with its trunk being about as wide as it was tall, making its girth even more impressive than its elevation. It had no low branches and was to wide to cling to so I couldn¡¯t climb its trunk, but from how it looked from the ground it might even have a flat top which would be weird for a tree. Vamera scaled the tree side without issue, and danced among the leaves like a firefly in the dark. There was a curious amusement then but the tree seemed to be stranger to me than anyone else. The big tree had a lot of space around it, and there were none of the thorny plants close to it. It was the closest thing to an open space other than the ashen circle surrounding Rahph¡¯s sunbathing rock. I was much better rested in the morning compared to how I had woken up yesterday. My face had plummeted asleep after finishing dinner last night, and the strange creening noise has stopped sounding so disturbing to my ears. I had missed the ritual we had intended to integrate into the ambient mana. From what I could see it worked with how the mana was now roiling around the confined interloper, but we have to wait to see if there are other interlopers. The one we have captured at least has made fewer attempts at escape and became more lethargic for longer periods of time. The attempts it has made were worse than before in exchange. Tori is still staying with the Whirlstorms for the time being as we wait for anyone sent by the Guild to arrive. The interloper had nudged itself into the shop while a customer was there and I had to interrupt talking to them about their options for the communion statue in order to evict an invisible pest. I for one do not want to know what happens if you mix an eldritch creature and a shop filled with miscellaneous enchanted items and waited. That phantom pain flared up as well, and it is the most palpable in my knee which made me trip and fall in front of the customer. In between dealing with the entity raging unpredictably to escape I finished the infusion of the evasion cloak. It is now an actual wondrous item, and my best attempt at one yet. It does not have any Opus yet, so it only has the workings I will be using to empower its displacement glamour. We focus more on workings because the are the basis for the expected durability of an magical effect across its lifetime but for this the constructs that define how the Opus translates puissance into a manifested phenomenon will be the most difficult part of establishing the enchantment. With an inherent subtle body creating the workings necessary to base the item with are trivial at most. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 45 24th Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/045 Dear self, The dream passed uneventfully. Vamera began a sort of song using empathetic moods instead of melodies. It was like the emotional experience of music without any of the sound, if done by an amateur. The big tree I found the precious night had moved to the edge of the burned circle around Rahph. We returned the communion statue to its owner. It can now be used as an aide in communing with the spirits. We at least made some money back creating that invocation. Another two guys came into the shop today with more artefacts for me to deal with. I think these will be the last two after I actually get to doing them. They also bought a pair of enchanted rings from the shop. One for speaking and one for listening; they will be sharing apparently. I started manipulating the Oxalis for the evasion cloak. The complex way in which it has to displace the glamour it projects onto an appropriate location means I need to allow it to attune with its user and interpret intent dynamically. The Oxalis will help the item to interface with the user¡¯s aura to figure out how to displace their physical presence. I think I might be able to work a little with planar phasing to enhance the overall utility of the cloak. It will be pretty effective against people incapable of auric piercing when it¡¯s done.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. The people the Guild sent to help us have arrived. There were multiple individuals. They were divided between warlocks and wizards so they were ideally capable of banishing an Outer being from the Realm. They were all from a race of tiny people. Every one of them wore a hooded cloak which made them identical and they kept staying together. They examined the Interloper and asked me questions to try and figure out why it was only visible to me. They came up with a theory that it acted similarly to ghosts and that it ¡°appeared¡± through a sort of pseudo mental intrusion. They tested this by having one of them get intoxicated and having some inconsequential mental intrusion cantrips cast on them. It didn¡¯t work so we didn¡¯t learn much. The second theory was that it was related to magic disruption but we figured it was unlikely. The banishing was outwardly rather simple. The few wizards they had kept a reinforced containment circle around the creature to anchor reality and prevent further intrusion while the warlock thinned the firmament within to let the Interloper fall back into Limbo. We all jointly contributed to a ritual at the same time to invoking the Solacium into guiding our efforts. The ritual was actually the most important part. We could have done it on our own but with eldritch existences a little more certainty is always welcome. I still had that phantom pain in my leg. Whatever is causing the sensation is highly evanescent and ai¡¯ll just have to tough it out for now. The Nightgloom essence hasn¡¯t faded from the ambient mana. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 46 25th Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/046 Dear self, I got Vamera to begin squeaking in what were almost words. She seems to learn quickly but as of now she still sounds like someone who barely knew every fifth word in a new language. I suspect she was a full sapient being that was crippled heavily somehow, since a simple process of recovery would explain how she is developing her communication so fast. She must have been a kind of spiritual being to have taken refuge within the Illusory Realm, considering she seems heavily reliant on the dreams of Rahph and me. The only things I could get out of her last night was that she wanted me to help her, and that she would need it to fully recover. That¡¯s all I got from her pleading aura and her repetitions of ¡°me¡± and ¡°helping¡±. Those two guys who bought rings from the shop yesterday brought in an interesting artefact. It¡¯s a compass that appears to direct you on the best path towards reaching a location or object it is attuned to. The divination construct guiding it is incredible powerful, so it can tap into Fate itself to find the most fortuitous path not only in terms of direction, but the things you would encounter along the way if you started walking right then and there. Tis also means that the path it directs you to changes actively as circumstance change. It is limited to attuned objects with a second interwoven attunement with the one who attuned with those objects. This means I cannot personally use it to find any of the objects it has been attuned to, but it might easily be attuned to willing subjects so that you can find individuals using it.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. The other item was a much simpler ethereal sack that could contain heavy weights with ease, and without burdening the carrier. It uses a little bit of planar phasing to allow a greater volume to be contained as well but no where near what a bad with dimensional alterations is capable of. It¡¯s quite an understandable limitation as it is exceedingly difficult to create permanent dimensional spaces while avoiding making them vulnerable to Voidbringers and other Outer beings. The cloak I am making is faring well. I can sense it¡¯s magic growing. Wondrous magic has the great advantage of growing in power over time. I just need to guide the Opus into developing into effective functions and useful abilities. It will be done by next month, and I might even incorporate it into my Nightgloom ritual during the New Moon. When I showed Tori after we brought him home he said he could already feel it making my aura more mysterious and subduing my presence passively. The displacement glamour is working but is only projecting its image of me a span away, and it doesn¡¯t avoid projecting into other objects and furniture yet. Tori said he had fun with the Whirlstorms, and he said he wanted a Teetotum like I had make for little Erelise and Selthen. Our house was too filled with magical items for such an overburdened enchantment to survive, so I would have to disappoint him. He said the toy kept spinning towards someone and the falling onto one of its sides when it reached them. It was likely the magic struggling to function properly, but the kids supposedly enjoyed it. They would run away and let it chase them to keep it spinning for longer. The little squeaks it makes seems to have endeared it to them, and made Tori tell the other children of how he had a bird voice, which they apparently refused to believe, having not heard of it from the other townsfolk somehow. We¡¯re not sure how to find the other eldritch creature that seems to be nearby. We all jointly confirmed that the Nightgloom essence from the ritual Mother performed should have dissipated if there hadn¡¯t been another one, but that does not mean we know how to find it. Our current plan is to create a divination for the second rift as well as the eldritch creature to empower the evocation with multiple targets and hope those two are in the same place. If they are not in the same place the divinations will actually be less powerful than a singular one but our assumption is that the entity would be drawn by the rift. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 47 26th Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/047 Dear self, The big tree has become a little haven for Vamera it seems. She is drawn to how the closeness with a looming physical presence allows her small light to be more visible within the night-time dreamscape. Having something for her light to shine on does improve her presence quite well. She figured out how to speak almost properly while I was awake, so I learned a bit more about her last night than I have in total before now. She claims to be the very asura that was defeated nearby a few months back. The very one whose violent confrontation caused the rifts nearby. Her rival asura, Ahtu, became unreasonably upset with her when she wanted to bargain for a few concessions to allow him to pass through her territory somewhere. Seeing her as she is now, considering that she is an immortal being possibly revered by a few cults, really shows how hilariously pathetic her situation is. She had poked a really angry bear it seems! I can¡¯t believe an asura has been reduced to this so quickly, and in this era! These types of confrontations between asura has not been common for many centuries. Ahtu is clearly from an old generation of asura, which Anora warned me of. He must be a little set in his ways to be so quick to anger. Vamera needs help in reconstituting her domain before she can manifest a new incarnation. It seems like she bonded to me and Rahph merely because of fortuity, which is her strongest Aspect, so that is not surprising. She claims my Fate is a little aligned with chance and fortuity as well in a tangential way which makes me compatible enough to resonate with her powers. This all means that Vamera is now my divine patron, completely without my volition. Divine magic is highly Aemuloric, so that means she will be my only choice of patron unless I do something drastic about it. It is sort of annoying, but at least that gives me some resistance against any other attempts at interference from other asura. If she doesn¡¯t try to exploit me it won¡¯t be too much of a bother, and at present I am in a position of power over her in any case. If I get dragged into some cult worshiping her I will be finding ways to get her for this though. They will probably be gamblers or something equally undesirable.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. I worked on the evasion cloak in between handling the compass and the enchanted sack. Analysing how the sack phases matter slightly has even given me some insight into improving the Opus for my cloak. The phasing allowed the displacement glamour on the cloak to be projected more easily that it would have been if I had just been working on how it projects the entire morning. It is somehow easier to detach the projected image from my actual location if I use the effects in concert. I can now project my presence to be almost out of reach from my real position, the effect on the wearer¡¯s aura has intensified as well. Thinking on it now, I believe the Wondrous item has developed its own affinity towards phasing somehow, which is exciting. A Ms Jhunn Burrowire came in today with a decorative box enchanted to contain sound and melodies. I had to entertain the nervous lady while waiting for Mum since I still have my official approval suspended by the Guild. I helpfully appraised the item for faults and explained it to her as a distraction. It works sympathetically, which helps in keeping only the pieces of music you remember within the enchantment and to exclude the flaws left over from reality. It seems a good way to store memories if you want o look back on them fondly. As best I could tell it had merely begun struggling with its musical glamour so whatever is stored inside remains completely whole but cannot be played as well as it should. Some of the notes must have become silent. This is expected with a normal enchanted item as old as this, it is likely about as old as its very owner! We attempted a joint divination with the group of tiny wizards. I still can¡¯t tell them apart, and I am not sure if any of them are of separate genders. Their mannerisms is ridiculously similar. The spell failed overall, but I almost got a sense for the rift towards a northerly direction, which is away from Tintinnabulis. It was very vague, so it only suggested that the rift and the other interloper are somewhere that isn¡¯t south. There won¡¯t be anyone in danger at least. The phantom pain I got from the other interloper resurged today slightly. Afterwards it faded from a lot of where it had spread, but when it throbs now it seems more painful at the reduced surface it ha been concentrated to. It might be just that the surrounding pain previously had desensitised me to the core pain slightly and I am feeling what I have always felt except with a little more contrast to make it stick in my mind. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 48 27th Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/048 Dear self, Vamera became largely fluent in speaking last night. We can now properly communicate. The reason she created this dreamscape between me and Rahph is because of her attempts at recreating a domain for herself. Without a domain she holds no power within Materiality or otherwise. She had been drawn in by Tori at first, because he has an affinity for dependent manifestation that would be ideal for an asura like her. That would not have gone over well if she had succeeded, especially with how young Tori is still. Luckily Tori is very much under the aegis of the master enchantress Umari so Vamera had no hope of stealing that child from under his mother. I was the next best thing. I have a slight affinity towards happenstance, which is often the opposite of fortuitous, but it was related enough that Vamera could create lesser resonance between our subtle bodies. To create the dreamscape necessary in reconstructing her domain she needed a second bonding however. Which is why Rahph was roped in. There is no way to construct a domain within just my subtle body, so she needed to bond with a second individual to create enough space between them to form this domain. How she got past my defences was simple. A few days back when my disruption Incuria burst that little bird glamour and freed Rahph from his confinement temporarily, there was a miniscule window where my aegis was disrupted, and she could slip through into my subtle body. The time I had spent with Rahph physically as well as that disruption cloud made it easy to create a bond between me and Rahph that she could bridge between. Rahph is primarily bonded to me, even though I had never intended to bond with him. Vamera is only bonded to Rahph through her bond to me, which was very indirect for something so crucial in what she achieved. It just makes me realise that she really is an immortal asura, the moment of disruption she is referring to must have been incredibly small, and I do not think I have even heard of anyone even from the Mysterium who might be capable of that, no one except gods and monsters. I did get some Fortuitous essence out her during the dream, which would be useful in a lot of rituals especially. It the very thing that can lift an attempt the last span towards reaching success. I tried to discourage Rahph from digging at the roots of the big tree. It¡¯s one of the most distinctive things in the dream so I would prefer to keep it if possible and not have him burn it to a husk or something dreaming of food.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. The ethereal sack and the enchanted compass were easy to deal with this morning. The compass took the longest to analyse fully because of how intricate it is, but I had them both sealed and returned to their owners when noon came. I worked on how the evasion cloak augments my aura when I wear it. Passively it makes my presence seem less notable and gives a mysterious vibe to my aura to anyone that pays attention to me. When I think about it the cloak seems capable of interpreting my intent accurately and lets my presence be noticeable as normal if I so wish, or only for specific people. I might be harder to include larger multiples of individuals in the inclusion intent, and with larger inclusion of groups it may become easier and easier for unintended persons to also be included in on my presence. It might be useful to talk to a single person in a crowd without being noticed easily. The sense of mystery is irrepressible though, and even the people I have concluded in the aura seem to sense the odd vibe no matter what I do. Even when my presence is being suppressed people seem to feel like they are being watched or that there is something mysterious nearby without even needed to notice me directly. The displacement glamour seems related to the strength of the aura effect, with the glamour image of me becoming more noticeable as I become less so and vice versa. Tori says it feels like I am teleporting around him when I am switching the aura between my real self and the glamour standing next to him. I had some fun letting him chase me around and he kept catching the illusion of me instead until he caught on a trick to sense illusions. He became a lot better at catching me when he started focusing more on sensing than chasing. The next step will be to improve the phasing ability of the cloak and try to make the glamour more tangible. Eventually the glamour illusion and the wearer¡¯s true self would be interchangeable physically as well as in terms of their presence. We prepared another divination ritual with the group of wizards. We made it larger this time and integrated more ritualistic elements to help guide the spell and to integrate it somewhat with the ambient NIghtgloom essence. The Solacium already reacts somewhat negatively to most eldritch existences so with the Nightgloom from the previous ritual related to Outer beings this is the best we¡¯d be able to do without a dedicated diviner or a targeted invocation. I also contributed the small essence of Fortuity I received from the dream with Vamera, and happily it wasn¡¯t consumed in the ritual, so I still have some. Unlike yesterday the spell actually worked. In fact, it worked twice. Two of the wizards can now sense a tether towards a location to the north-east. It might not be an exact coordinate but we¡¯re using them as reference points to triangulate the exact location. We couldn¡¯t just approach either because the divination would have gotten more inaccurate the longer we waited from the time of the ritual, and generalised divinations like this one tend to become less accurate as they approach their target. We are currently packing some items that might be useful well we arrive at the site. We¡¯re dealing with an Interloper as well as a Rift, and those do tend to make the other a worse problem to have when they are in proximity. I really don¡¯t want to find out there are any more Rifts or monsters or anything after we finally finish dealing with this. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 49 Entry: 2/049 Dear self, Because of how little eldritch existences have in common with normal reality, and even each other, we tried to prepare a large variety of different spells. We prioritised anything that affects more fundamental aspects directly instead of aspects contingent upon the more complex upper layers of reality. Spatial manipulation was our first choice, with fundamental material manipulation being second. Spiritual magics were prioritised after those since eldritch beings are likely capable of winning in any confrontation based around the efficacy of souls. Our strongest weapon was not ourselves, but the world around us itself that might turn its energies against interlopers. If nothing else the ritual used to invoke the Solacium into banishing Outer being is guaranteed to succeed every time if we manage to perform it without interference. It might even succeed regardless of interference if the Solacium takes enough interest with the Interloper in particular. The warlocks had the best spells overall. We might find some sort of weakness if whimsy watches over us, but the entity¡¯s attributes might as well be arbitrary compared to our sense of logical physical laws and sensibilities. I prepared a shattering potion with Levinspark in the hopes whatever we end up facing has some vulnerability to physical energy. It would have been easier to use fire than lightning, but the latter has a more absolute chance of succeeding if there was any chance whatsoever. Mother had primarily brought spells of Illusory magic and spiritually affecting magics in case our opponent has any form of vulnerable mid or spirit. The group of tiny wizards have prepared summoning magic spells capable of sealing portions of planar space or ejecting things out of our planar space. They are also the most prepared to work their spells in unison for added effect. The trees near the location did not seem altered significantly. There was a gathering of the environmental mana in the surroundings that hummed through the hairs in my skin. The thickened mana made it harder to sense auras and was too aspected for me to use to my benefit, it only made me feel like it would be harder to project spells over a distance.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. The Rift was a hole in the ground. It seemed deep. The trees that immediately encircled the place seemed to have their branches bend backwards away from the pit. More than just a hole the Rift was eating into the ground and if you passed into it you would seemingly enter a space on the other side. It was like a burrow that went deeper than the soil it was dug from. What concerned us is that this was where the Interloper should be, but we could find no impossible creature in our sight. The only things we saw appeared normal like anything expected of Materiality. We saw no fractal limbs or hollowed figures mocking our rationality, we saw no shapes constructed in defiance of physical attachment or proportionality. We saw no Interloper. What we did see was concerning in itself; completely independent from what we knew should have been there. It was a rather large mole, one I recognise from the local fauna, and it was a monster. Empowered monsters are often the only ones that survive for long, and this one seemed to be siphoning energy from the interstitial planar space through the Rift. There was a pale mist flowing out of the Rift from the other side and the mole was bathing in it and absorbing a small amount of magic from it with every passing moment, and that rift had been open for some time. But it was a truly living thing, and we had a blood mage. As mother paralysed the creature with a basic spell I approached with a focusing token the wizards had given me to help channel their banishing magics. We would have attempted to close the Rift at the least, but the monstrous mole flashed into a pale mist for an instant and it was once again mobile. One of the tiny robed folk through an invocation token at the mole but it flashed white again and the projectile passed straight through it. I leapt and turned into a fog streaking towards me. We fled from it and decided to come back the next day. We weren¡¯t exactly adventurers and the monster might be able to harm us with its supernatural mist. It is best not to let a monster touch you with its powers if you know nothing else about it. The mist might have been cursed for all we knew. At home I felt that phantom pain resurge once more. It had spread throughout my entire body this time in a dull ache. It was of a lesser intensity yesterday where it had concentrated into one spot. But I feel a numbness spread wherever it hurts, though the pain is so slight. I feel it everywhere. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 50 - The Dream 28th Light beneath the eleventh Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/050 ¨C The Dream Dear self, This day had quite a different way of playing out than I expected. It started in the dream as you might have guessed, or at least it started as the end of yesterday at the least. Long story short I had passed out from the waking world suddenly in a hallway. It¡¯s a little hard to remember things from right before you fell asleep, so you will have to trust second hand knowledge in this case. You might look back and condemn me for not remembering my physical condition immediately, but frustrating as these things are we mortals often fail at the most basic of trials; even immortals do. I am no different, and you will not be either. Even Mystics have regrets after gaining hindsight, despite their foresight. It was just us three unsuspecting within a peaceful dreamworld. Me, the humble lizard that is Rahph, and the little goddess I decided to try teasing. I was bored, so I grabbed her and dangled her over Rahph and let him lunge at her fiery warmth. Her voice actually became less audible as her tone became more frantic. I could barely hear a high-pitched squealing. Rahph was still larger than he should be in the waking world, but his raised head only went as far as my shoulders and I could keep the shrieking Vamera away from his jaws if I jumped when he lunged. If anything, her frantic whining must have been as audible as normal to him because he only seemed to become encouraged. Annoying a wild animal is never a good idea in real life, and both me and Vamera became munched on when Rahph became too annoyed with me. That would have hurt a great deal more in real life. Vamera escaped faster than did as well so she could shout what I assume was some sort of satisfaction and watch me getting chewed on from afar. She was quite indignant for a while. It takes you a while to realise that something might be wrong just from letting time pass by without anything happening. You see, dreams are only a short part of the sleep cycle, even if their whimsical nature is able to make them feel as if the lasted ages, so if you spent as much time as this in a single dream you should now there is a reason out of the ordinary. The previous dreams had only lasted a few hours at any one time. This one lasted longer. It lasted much longer. A longer sleep also means you don¡¯t need to spend as much of it waking up or going to sleep, and thus you have more time for dreams. Being properly unconscious isn¡¯t normally something that produces dreams; unconsciousness harms your mind in the waking as well as the dreaming world. This was something more. The nebulous body that is my mind had become divorced from Materiality. I would praise Vamera for how quickly she turned from peeved to being sober. She was no mortal youth to mistake between foolishness and seriousness. She immediately got to examining me on a subtle level. Not to get into the fine details of subtle anatomy, but my ¡°mind¡± had become separated from my body due to intrusive interference. It was highly evanescent so only Vamera could sense it while to others it might have just been an inexplicable phenomenon without discernible cause. If you recall that is how we had perceived it prior to my passing out. My ego was still connected to my body, and my spirit remaining attached helped my ¡°mind¡± to sustain awareness without integration with m brain. There were shards scattered in the place my nebulous mind should have been attached to my vital body, and Vamera hadn¡¯t noticed before now because my spirit was as intact as could be.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. We believe it to have been an Illusory attack on an arcane level. They were crudely designed to circumvent the standard defences of the mind and then create a powerful invocation through which their owner would have been able to replace my intellect with their own domination without needing to damage my physical or subtle body. It was eldritch in nature, so I had no hope of countering it or even detecting it on my own. It would not have succeeded other than being harmful to me. It was exclusively capable of controlling creatures without a vital brain. On a fleshy being like me it would just render me completely unconscious without an interface towards the vital body to guide it. It would have been fantastic at manipulating Outer being who tend not to have very sophisticated minds or any reliance on a vital form, but on me it¡¯s reduced to merely being damaging instead of controlling. You can already sort of guess what had caused it. Having an asura at hand at such a time is a good way of avoiding any sort of consequence. Halting the progression of the shards was easy for Vamera, and I would have been well and hale in a matter of hours. We had caught it in time that I would be in no personal danger. The only consequence would have been that I spend a day without waking, and then everything goes back to normal and we maybe make sure no one has a similar problem. So I didn¡¯t tease Vamera about being weaker than me in the dream again. She got quite smug about having saved me, and you should feel guilty if you even entertain the thought of ever toying with someone who had helped you in such a way. We had a long chat about things with me being trapped in the dream for hours and hours. She seemed to brighten with time spent in company. I could see Rahph leaving the dream for once. Him spending so much time asleep is clearly a part of his species, he is lazing around no less time for having begun recovering from the cold. I eventually got around to more current events. She was interested in the fact that Ahtu left two Rifts unsealed in some sort of hurry. He does sound like a controlling type of person. Eldritch beings running around was also a minor cause of concern. The Solacium would have intervened if it was anything significant, so it wasn¡¯t of severe concern or anything. Getting to the question of the second Interloper, she suggested we observe the memory in case we could find the creature in Illusory space. We walked off to the edge of the dreamscape where the night sky began vanishing into white emptiness. Finding this edge was something much more deliberate than just wandering around in the dream would have been. You can only do this if you are dreaming vividly. She used her strength to recreate the scene where the monstrous mole was holed up in a dimensional pit. This involved more me allowing her to do so by removing the ¡°impediments¡± than just her normal power. She spotted the thing for me. It was hidden among the trees and rapped around the bark with coloured textures that made it seem as natural as the flora itself. There were about eight trees encircling the pit and every single one had a thin ethereal tendril tangling across them. It was insidious and crawled over the ground and between the shrubbery. It was invisible in the snow. The memory had an image of me frozen in the air leaping away from the mole. There were more tendrils wrapping around parts of the monster and starting to climb up my leg, even one of the tiny robed guys had a thread winding up their cloak. The creature might not have been large in mass and volume, but it was clearly efficient in how it used the little mass it had with extended threads of minute thickness and prodigious length. I didn¡¯t even know where the centre of its mass might have been. I now knew one thing; this thing is much more dangerous than just being cautious around an unknown monster allows. This thing needed to be dealt with. This was a very serious favour to ask of Vamera, but I needed to get awake immediately. The party from yesterday was preparing to face a monster, and they were going to go in blind without me. They wouldn¡¯t wait for an apprentice like me to go deal with something as urgent as a Rift synergising with a monster, they were leaving as soon as they could. Vamera did hesitate at helping at first, hastening my recovery was not without costs, but we both knew she would be needing my help for a while. She was as decisive as I could hope for after seeing that people might be in danger. That is how I woke. Still confused from a prolonged sleep and starving from a long fast without food nearby, but in an urgent hurry. I ran into the heavy snow clutching my Levinspark potion and yanking a bottle of Stargleam from the shelf. I was chanting the beginning of a ritual the entire way. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 51 - Alien Being Entry: 2/051 Dear self, My sprint through the forest was not an easy thing. The Rift was over an hour away at a normal pace. I periodically slowed from tiredness, but my haste and the biting cold spurred my limbs into fire. It became easier to ignore the hunger, though I do not know which of that or the winter affected me more. I Had only missed breakfast and lunch but already I was pained by the sensation. The running made it worse, and it was hard to keep chanting the ritual. I was using the bottle of Stargleam for an infusion affect. I intended to use the Stargleam to place a temporary charm on everyone who isn¡¯t the Outer being. I chose Stargleam in the hopes I could make its affect general enough to subject anyone born beneath the stars of our Realm to its essence. Knowing how insidious the Interloper was I had little faith in being able to target it directly in a timely manner. Anything I use against it would have to be across a wide area. I am not exactly talented in manifesting effects widely in an area external to my body. The best I can do is through my Levinspark potion and hope it strikes the entity and manages to damage it. While I knew that it has tendrils spread across an area I knew little else about it. The first thing I spotted was one of the little robed folk lying on the ground. I stumbled not them to quickly check their condition. They were fine but winded. I told them to start preparing the banishing ritual immediately and ran past without looking back. The Stargleam was already seeping into them. There was mist everywhere. Mother was ducked beneath a tree strangling the mole while another pair of the robed folk were helping each other up from the ground. I ran towards the mole fighting Mother and tripped. Getting back up felt like it took longer than my entire run here. I had tripped over seemingly nothing, but my theory is that I had stumbled over a tendril that reacted too slowly to my approach. Mother was raging a little against the monster mole, but she seemed fine dealing with it for now. It seemed more resilient than powerful as it kept slipping through fingers and ignoring attacks, but it equally dealt no significant arm. The mist it produced roiled in the environment doing not much of anything I could see.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. I let the Stargleam pour out and seek out subjects. The others were gracious enough to heed my shouted orders to draw in to the flowing essence. I then turned to the Levinspark potion apprehensively. I didn¡¯t know where specifically the Interloper was, other than it being drawn towards this area surrounding the Rift. Frantic and emotional rituals can often have empowering effects, so I wove a few very needed cantrips into the potion before throwing it onto the ledge near the Rift and hoping for the best. I couldn¡¯t decide whether to throw myself to the ground or not while watching the moment of that bottle sailing though the air towards an unassuming patch of ground. The amount of intent I had focused into that working had been worryingly concentrated. My only comfort was that the Solacium would encourage anything that might deal with the Interloper. Lightning cracked across the ground and spread throughout the area. Here was no waiting for a delayed thunder as the electricity struck trees ad earth and narrowly avoided me and the others. The intent had not been perfect, and a few very painful jolts sprung off from the larger mass of energy to strike at me, but the greater mass would have killed me outright. The thing had been revealed. It¡¯s webs of roots and tendrils writhed and shook violently. The lost their camouflage and even swelled from the power coursing through them. The partially ethereal things were woven around most things and even seeing them I could feel how they rapped around my leg and thighs. The wrestle between Mother and the monster halted as they both stared in surprise. The warlocks instantly started coordinating their banishing spell while the entity struggled to recover its stealth. The invocation token laid where one of the little wizards had thrown it at the monster the previous day. I picked it up and slammed it into the thickest bunch of tendrils near me as they hastened their spell. A great deal of resonance rang out as the entity vanished from sight in a thunderous flash. A thrumming sound continued for a few moments afterwards from the spell being augmented by the very Solacium itself. Writing all that down felt extremely cathartic. I basically collapsed afterwards from placing too much Vis into infusing that potion. The rest was dealt with without nearly as much passion. Containing the mole was still dangerous , yes, but after having the Solacium itself intervene in our banishing spell our other struggles just felt so much more trivial in comparison. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 52 1st Light beneath the twelfth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/052 Dear self, A great deal more had happened yesterday than I had bothered to write down. The little wizards were a little annoyed that they would not have a chance to study a second Outer being but were eager to have the mole as a new specimen. After we closed the Rift the monster seemed to become incapable of shifting into a being of mist as freely as it had before. Mother examined the mist it produced more carefully and concluded it was not likely to have anything other tan short term illusory effects upon anyone it was exposed to at the worst. It might have been used for misdirection and befuddlement charms, but she could not find anything serious that it might have been capable of as it was presently. The mole became a lot less aggressive without us attacking us, at least as soon as it seemed to get over the loss of its prised territory. They are keeping the captured monster near town while they figure out if they can keep it. Keeping monstrous animals requires approval from the Rangers Guild, and often a great deal of advice and oversight from them as well. The Interloper¡¯s web seemingly had illusory properties of its own, which was why the party had struggled so much against the monster, and why they were acting irrationally enough to try wrestling with it. The illusory properties of the second Interloper were likely what had aggravated the shard within my subtle bod to worsen so suddenly and bring me to unconsciousness after my first encounter with it. Instead of being a Voidbringer, we believe the second Interloper to likely have been an Otherling, which tend to be more predatory than the more passive Voidbringers are, at least as such things go among eldritch existences. It was adapted to lure and entrap its prey where the previous Interloper appeared mostly evasive. Otherlings as small as this one had been are rarer than they are for Voidbringers, so it might also have just been an unusual sort of Voidbringer. In more current events I was once again returned to the Dream for a longer period than usual. Hastening my awakening the previous day had been detrimental to my total recovery from the separation of my body and mind. I won¡¯t spend a day unconscious, but I will definitely be spending a few hours too long sleeping every morning. More than worrying for myself, I worried for Vamera. She had been diminished from her little radiant sunball to a flickering spark. I could sense she was mostly inert now and recovering from straining herself yesterday in waking me. It was difficult once more to hear her intentions and the moonless night seemed darker than it had before in the dream.This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. With the dream being longer and Vamera being unavailable for company I realised it was quite a lonely place. Other than Rahph there was no life in the dream, as the forest was merely an image of the world as Rahph saw it like the sky was from myself. In the waking world there was always twittering in the forest and the tinkling of sprites and pixies wandering near in the forest. There was a passive sense of life in the waking world that had not been recreated in the dream. I might have to fix that. Being left with my thoughts as I was now spun my head into dim contemplations. I realised only after entering the dream that the little essence of Fortuity Vamera had given me had burned itself sometime yesterday between all my frantic efforts to handle the other Interloper. I had none left now. I woke very much sick in the morning. I had felt terrible from pushing myself yesterday, so I hadn¡¯t noticed that I had taken ill after running through the snow without all the proper clothing or preparation and straining my body and magic at the same time. You wouldn¡¯t have been able to sense my aura if you had tried. Mother berated me for being reckless and rushing into things without consulting with other people. I might have a tendency to keep my own problems to myself sometimes. I did tell her about Vamera having taking residence in my dreams and all that I have learned from dreaming to her today. She seemed mostly baffled at all the things that had happened around here recently and groaned something about doing something. She said she was going to message Vaeril and have my brother send over some new magical thing that she says might help with Vamera and just dealing with the dream in general. I had never been all that proficient at Illusory magic after all. The good news is that my suspension had officially been lifted, which means I am allowed to work properly as an apprentice again and I can now use the Manifold again on things other than doing work I am giving refunds out for. I can start making my Apocryphal Ink and try selling it with Guild approval now. The most important event of today of course was the Nightgloom ritual I perform every New Moon I am able. The Dreamcatcher I made last month did not seem to have a noticeable effect. This month I thought to try something with actual dreams since I will be spending some time in a dreamscape for the foreseeable future. I did not get a lot of Nightgloom this month despite the season, which is expected from how I strained my magic the previous day. It¡¯s not ideal but I still have extra from last month. The workings had faded from the dreamcatcher by the time of the ritual, but the intent was still mostly compatible with what I wanted to create for this month, so I merely repurposed it. I infused it with Nightgloom essence once more while the Aspect was at its most potent and focused on the mental Aspect of dreams and dreaming and such. Rather than anything specific I tried turning it into an amplifier that I could use it for whatever need I have of it. It might lose some potency from a lack of definite purpose during the consecration, but I believe I can easily empower it further when I need to. It¡¯s deviated enough from dark essence that it could be integrated with other infusions of power without worrying about some fragile kind of purity. You need not concern yourself with purity when your working necessitates a lack thereof, so it will be much easier to alter later on if I have the requisite resources. The negative thoughts I had surrounding what happened to Vamera and the other recent events seem to have guided the dreamcatcher better than they gathered the essence I always do the ritual for. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 53 2nd Light beneath the twelfth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/053 Dear self, Infusing the dreamcatcher with an amplification effect related to dream had a consequence I did not intend for, nor do I understand it. The dreamscape seemed more somehow. The stars seemed brighter and the night seemed darker. All the trees increased in size and I suspect I would now wander farther before finding the edge if I was trying to get to it. The big tree was a lot larger, and now made the trees in the waking world seem a bit shorter, and just pathetic in terms of girth. It was wide enough to stroll around it. Rahph was also larger. He towered over me again for some reason. I felt less in control of the dream than I ever was before. The amplification effect had somehow amplified everything except my own influence in the dream. This is the kind of thing that can happen if you do not give a well-defined purpose for your enchantments. It can be surprising how often magic has the inverse effect to what you might have intended if you don¡¯t know what you are doing. Vamera was still just a small flickering light. It was a lot more annoying getting around in the dark without using her as a lantern. It makes me almost which I had left the dreamscape to be outside of my control and kept the day time Vamera created. Rahph does not seem inclined to mess with the sky and I do not have the affinity for daylight, or any skill with Illusory magic to work around it. My time in the dream was still a little longer than normal, so I tried experimenting with planting something at random. I just stared at a patch of ground and willed a seed to be planted there. It was irritatingly difficult, but I saw a little sprout forming. I¡¯m wondering what would happen if I cultivate a garden within my dreams. They might become magically potent or they might just remain imaginary figments without substance. I¡¯d need to ask around to find out if dream figments might have magical properties beyond mystical symbolism. Rahph spent most of the dream sleeping lazily. He sleeps when he¡¯s awake and when he¡¯s dreaming apparently. The Darcinderaht seems to be an extraordinary lazy creature. He mostly gets active when there¡¯s something warm nearby or if he smells smoke. I tested a little spark and he came over and ate the fire that was starting up. It might explain why such a dry ecosystem can survive without burning down if the fauna consumes embers before they spread. It¡¯s strange to think of a fire Aspected creature being a solution to wild fires instead of a major cause of them. As far as I could tell he burnt his territory in a straight line when he felt like expanding the circle, so the little land he does burn also isolates one part of the wilds from another part, which would also prevent fires from spreading across every area to a degree.Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. Mother did not have a lot of sympathy for my need to sleep in. She just rushed me down to the shop faster after I¡¯ve finally gotten awake. She lets me deal with the smaller issues that more people come to the shop for while she is in the back working on her own projects. Now that my suspension is finally lifted I need to make up a little for lost time. There were three people who came in today who only needed help attuning to their items. Attuning with an item is not even something you should be needed help for, let alone from an actual enchanter, but they came anyway. Even being paid I can¡¯t help but feel angry I had to spend half an hour just guiding one guy attune to a pair of shoes he bought because he fought they looked nice. I don¡¯t think there was a single part of the process he didn¡¯t need to be explained to in exacting detail. Can¡¯t he think for himself? After shop work I was given a project to complete. Mother wanted me to make an entire doll that could animate itself and make the enchantment a sustained one. I think this might have been her subtle way of telling me how much I did wrong with that teetotum. While I have given an object kietic animation before, it was always limited to simplistic linear movements such as the spin on the teetotum. I was even proud I could get the spinning toy to lean towards specific directions to control where it moved and now I had to work out the entire system of limbs and joints in a bipedal doll, while creating a level of balance and grace for it. I think Mother just wants me to show me what I can¡¯t do at this point. Tori finally figured out how to take his prismatic puzzle apart. I had almost forgotten about the toy. It must have looked interesting from how everyone else reacted, but I just saw a lot of grey shapes drawn on the inside. It gave me a thought to test out with the evasion cloak and according to the fully sighted people my cloak does look drained of colour like all my creations. It might be a little to my advantage generally, but I am told an entirely colourless object tends to stand out a bit next to colourful things. I think I might try making a transmutation with mercury to help it reflect the light around it and imitate shades of colour. It should not be too hard since the Rift Foil was originally silvery like a mirror before I made a wondrous item out of it, and mercury holds some similarities to it in appearance. It is the appearance I am focusing on in any case. The presence it creates in the user¡¯s aura can easily be influences by its appearance and how visible it is to observers. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 54 3rd Light beneath the twelfth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/054 Dear self, I think the big tree is still expanding in size. As it is now I could mistake it for a wide built watchtower if I ignored it¡¯s less impressive branches. It seems to have turned into my ¡°half¡± of the dreamscape with a balanced separation between it and Rahph¡¯s sun rock. With the gloomy darkness beneath the starry sky you could only faintly see the outline of things standing out against the shine of night above. Rahph seems to have taken to wandering now. He was eying everything interesting that caught his eye and strutting around instead of his usual napping. I had to batter him to get him to leave the little dream sprout I planted the previous night. He wasn¡¯t so much scared away as being pestered until staying wasn¡¯t worth the bother. I¡¯m still tinier than everything compared to how I should be and his chin towers over my head, so I¡¯m not even a fragment of the way towards intimidating him as I am now. Vamera was still a dim light. The easiest way for an asura like her to recover is to collect a good deal of fervour aligned with their Aspects. Her state right now is mostly my fault, so I tried to think of how to help in her recovery. My best idea is just to try random things and let Happenstance figure out the rest. Serendipity tends to occur if there are multitudes of possible eventuality through which it might occurs, so quickly trying one things and moving on to another wild idea is the best I can come up with. Even with that my affinity is only slightly aligned with Happenstance so there will be even less of the effort getting through to Fortuity to help Vamera. In the dream I wandered around and tried to have whimsy make me stumble upon anything at random. I stumbled upon a deep pit and fell in. Next time I¡¯ll just play a card game or something. With the winter time coming in earnest the occasional traveller passing through comes into the shop wanting to quickly attune themselves with an item that keeps them warm or dry. A lot of traveller who Gate in to our lovely island are surprised by how cold the winters are and end up being here without as much preparation as they should have. Tintinnabulis being of the King Road also means a lot of people pass by town and visit our shop in the morning after a night¡¯s sleep in one of the inns.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Only one person today needed help with a real problem. His glasses needed adjustment as they weren¡¯t improving his vision as much as they should. The enchantments keeping particles out of his eyes and the ones preventing bright lights from damaging his sight had warped into each other slightly and the vision enhancement was the most vulnerable to the degradation. The enchantments were tightly packed and it just took some strong reinforcement and careful shifting of the workings before it was as good as new. It was as easy as keeping the parts in place while I figured out how to put the pieces back into the correct places. It mostly took patience and a small tolerance for holding my fingers in the same position for a long while. It¡¯s the same as writing for a few hours where your hand begins feeling uncomfortable. I heard from Nyri that there are adventurers already coming to explore the ruins that had opened. With all the wraiths not even the necromances could help you explore them safely so there is a good chance for finding preserved artefacts anywhere I there if you fancy an escapade. I bought some more Absinthe from her while I was in town. The snow was beginning to pile up as well so the chalk path towards our house was getting narrower with short walls of snow on either side. I got back to working on my personal projects for the rest of the day. I tried experimenting with animating the joints for the doll in various ways. How I controlled the joints would determine in what ways it would be capable of moving, and I had to consider how much I wanted to imitate anatomically correct movement or let it bend in angles impossible for living beings. When I¡¯m finished fiddling with those I can start creating a lattice to control them as a network of limbs and then figure out how to handle coordination. For the cloak I needed to teach the Opus how to avoid projecting into unnatural positions or through objects when creating the glamour illusion. What I ended up doing is re-joining the illusion with my real body and then running around and posing in different ways. I just had to create a bridge of intent so that it could use my movements to learn from how to behave naturally in physical space. This is mostly the lazy way to achieve this and it gives me little control over the result. It might learn things differently than I expect, learn bad habits that I did not foresee, or it just might not learn how to adapt what I demonstrated to it with my running around to situations that weren¡¯t identical. To get a larger sample of constructs I asked Tori to wear it and run around as much as he wanted. He became very eager when I turned it into a game of me chasing and him evading. Even without the glamour illusion the cloak helped him avoid capture and even made him harder to notice, but not nearly as significantly as before. The largest benefit is that this will hasten the cloaks ability to interpret its user¡¯s intent in order to manipulate how it is projecting the glamour illusion. It might be useful to control the illusion as a fa?ade without needing to think about it to much, and have it stand differently to however your real body is standing. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 55 4th Light beneath the twelfth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/055 Dear self, The dreamscape is losing more of its dreamlike quality. The illusory world is gaining texture and substance. Likely from an unintentional effect the dreamcatcher has on this place. When you release a lot of power into a construct like the dreamscape without a direct way to control that power it tends to gather in things external to yourself. Just amplifying your power always has a chance of reducing your total puissance and control instead of enhancing your effectiveness. The big tree grew still wider and seems to be bloating in its centre. It resembles a pear in shape more than any normal tree you might imagine. Its surface is rough and marked by swirling patterns of flaking bark that might draw your hand as it does your eye. None of it protrudes enough for you to climb while grasping them, but they make leaning on the tree an uncomfortable affair. Physical sensation is now also less muted within the dream as it was before, and everything seems more tangible in every way if you pay them any mind at all. Vamera has brightened in the dream. Little sparkles of light seem to have separated off her and are now circling the branches of the big tree, which is the only reason you might even see the rich colour that the wood has gained. If you had experienced the dream before it would have seemed to you as if a fog lay across the landscape and the world was dimmed. Even vivid dreams rarely seem fully substantial. No one came to the shop today, so I worked in the garden more than usual today. We usually go about other things around the property in any case, letting the domain magic surrounding the house inform us of anyone approaching, but going back and forth between the garden and the shop takes time and takes me out of the flow of a task even if helping someone in the shop hadn¡¯t taken any time at all. We had a patch of Bubbleshil inure itself to the winter essence this year. It always happens at least partially during this season, but it developed beautifully and now it has crystal frost threading throughout every stem and leaf without a touch of green visible. I might try experimenting with it to see if potions made from it will have different effects to normal Bubbleshil. It would usually just cause hiccups if it wasn¡¯t altered with other magical essences but with frost already interwoven I don¡¯t know what might become of it. A troupe of sprites flew by me as I was working in the garden. There were perhaps fifty of them, almost all frost sprites, and being trailed with a few barely visible pixies dancing flurries in the wind. For some reason looking at all that natural beauty today prompted me to send a request to the Rangers Guild with a description of that big tree I my dreamscape. I might be taking for granted how significant it might be, or it might be nothing more than a common tree worth only a passing interest. Mother always says you should learn from your surrounding wherever you observe them.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. I worked on the Rift Foil in the evasion cloak today. Transmuting the leaves with charmed mercury was a simple process in theory. I practice it is dangerous if anything disrupts the material charm and lets poisonous quicksilver loose. Magical materials are always charmed during collection as a crucial part of what makes them useful, but mercury specifically ahs a strengthened charm for holding the liquid metal in a single mass. I move it around by letting the mercury stick to a cantrip I use for handling magical materials and keep it far away from any children. We don¡¯t even let Anora get to it. Mercury is widely used in various transmutation works, since its malleable nature is well suited to changing its properties and with a little sympathy changing the properties of any other material. It was especially effective in the case of the silvery Rift Foil. In this case I am glad the working consumes its material component. Afterwards I had Tori tell me what it looked like in terms of colours and entertained him by figuring out how to change the colours in interesting patterns. I usually extract the essence of an appearance when I bother to focus on how something looks, but for the cloak I wanted to have it tied to intention to have it be more dynamic in adapting to the user¡¯s needs. Channelling Tori¡¯s intent helped me make the item better at interpreting its user¡¯s wishes in the same way I taught it by wearing it and running around yesterday. It now seems to be able to turn a few extremely vibrant colours, which are counter productive for most uses of an evasion cloak usually, but I can use how it adapts those colours to figure out how to make colours that make it less visually apparent later on. I can now change the colours and only need to control what colours and patterns for it to change to. Instead of working on the joint movements for the doll, I decided to work a little on its appearance, since I had been working on appearance for the cloak today and I was in the correct mindset. The doll at first was very crude, merely being pieces of wood whittled into the general proportion of limbs and attached together through some flexible joints. None of us are artisans to any extent, so we normally take in objects made by others to enchant. But since I had some talent with glamours we began rafting the appearance of the items with glamour magic instead. It can take some effort, but I can easily make something appear like what an artisan might make using essences and imagination and make it mostly permanent. A well woven glamour is almost indistinguishable from true physical alteration except for the aura and sometimes weird interactions with illusory perception. It also means that a lot of our items appear drained of all colour except for black and white, the ones that don¡¯t need to care about what they look like that is. I gave the doll a roughly woman appearance. The hair didn¡¯t turn out as well as I hoped and seemed too waifish. I am experienced enough with glamours that changing one for me is easier than making one, so I mostly did it as a rough work for today before I go into being well formed. I find it easier to give items a good appearance if I¡¯ve already given them a rough appearance underneath from which to work from. It gives me an outline from which to craft the details without worrying about the overall proportions and the holistic effect. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 56 5th Light beneath the twelfth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/056 Dear self, Vamera was no brighter in the dream. Mumblings could be heard from her occasionally, but she seemed significantly unchanged. The little lights that had spawned from her had grown. They were twice their previous size tonight and you could see them dancing among the branches like pixies play in the elements of the world. Occasionally, you might see them float away into the wilds to explore and wander around the other trees. They¡¯re the closest thing to imitations of true life in the dream so far. Rahph hunted those fireflies with some eagerness. He would lay in wait, keeping his body still as only a lizard could, and then spring at any of the little lights that passed near his jaws. Several of them were caught between those scaled lips. All of them eventually escaped once more when he opened his mouth once more to cough them out. Eating did not seem possible within the dream, and fortunately no harm was possible. The little sprout had grown some, and now reached as high as an ankle beneath the branches of the big tree. The two leaves that had grown from the tiny plant were as black as shadow, and their tips were prickled with miniscule points of light as delicate as the stars above. I spent the morning playing a new game with Tori. My goal was to engineer a circumstance that allows for serendipity to occur regularly, if only in an insignificant game without consequences. I used a seven-sided teetotum as the largest element of chance. A normal unenchanted one. And I used the toy blocks enchanted to attract and repel one another in various ways as the rest. Every time the teetotum spins it would determine what type of block you could use, and you could add it anywhere you wished to create a tower of blocks. Being forced to use blocks at random had a chance of causing disruptive resonance between several of them which would usually result in a dramatic collapse of your precious tower. You never knew what kind of tower you would get and every now and then you¡¯d get lucky with a series of highly compatible blocks that stacked upon each other marvellously. Tori kept winning. I could never get far with the blocks before some part would disconnect. It was much the same when I played with them in younger years.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. We finally had someone come into the shop only an hour before noon. It was this scowling woman who came in with a bracelet enchanted to alter her appearance. She had a bad item as the enchanter she had purchased it from had assured her of a long duration, but it had begun degrading mere weeks after she began using it. The Guild is already dealing with him, but she still needs the enchantment done properly. She is a Dauthulscha, so I understand her need for a vanity enchantment to avoid people unfamiliar with her race staring. The sunken cheeks and deathly skin make people think ill of the Dauthulscha at times, and prejudice against strange things has never been a new phenomenon. Her people usually keep to themselves, but she is an adventurer who travels between foreign lands regularly. I myself might have reacted to her if I hadn¡¯t already met others like her during my time in the Mysterium. I apologetically informed her that reinforcing the glamour would take me until tomorrow but assured her that glamours are well within my capability. I even offered to enhance the glamour construct to improve the cosmetic effect. She did end up requesting me to make some practical alterations, but not anything truly cosmetic. She seems more pragmatic a woman than anything else, which is nothing strange for an adventurer. She is one of the first wave of adventurers coming to explore the nearby ruins that have become accessible recently. Not many are willing to brave the ruins during the blizzards but those like her who are might profit while there are fewer rivals. I did receive word from the Rangers Guild. From the message it was the same ranger who took Rahph away. I now at least now the big tree is called a Tunmtumm tree, however that is supposed to be pronounced, and is a slightly uncommon tree that tends to grow far apart from each other and seem quite solitary as a result. The store water in their wide trunks and can grow for centuries upon centuries without issue. Their branches also seem to become more impressive as they age, which would mean the big tree would have had a grander canopy of leaves if it had been the figment of an older specimen. I worked on how the evasion cloak handles phasing through Materiality. If I do it well I can make attacks pass through harmlessly the wearer if they are shallow enough, and I can reduce the physical presence they have in the world to make them lighter and their footsteps less noticeable. This is the part of its magic which should have had the greatest affinity with the Rift Foil it is made from, but I can¡¯t seem to figure out how to improve the phasing enhancements. The progress I had made before in the phase magic was mostly a product of the cloak itself as a wondrous item, but how they interact with the overall working is beyond me. The progress I made on the doll today was also less than interesting, mostly just being more adjustments on the animation of the joints. The lattice to coordinate the separate limbs requires more work on its foundation before I start applying it. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 57 6th Light beneath the twelfth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/057 Dear self, Anora arrived early in the morning today, which was a surprise for everyone. She hadn¡¯t sent a message beforehand and intended to arrive yesterday but was delayed somehow. Most travellers who come to the store arrive in the evening and then spend the night before seeking us out. Morning is not the usual time for new arrivals in Tintinnabulis. She was quite evasive about her reasonings, but those wide sheer blue eyes of hers made even Mother give up scolding her for traveling without any escort. We would have heard news of her coming ahead of time if she hadn¡¯t avoided traveling with a group like she was supposed to. She might be precocious but that¡¯s no reason to give a child of six cycles zero supervision. There are protected convoys she should have been traveling in. I woke later than I had planned in the morning. The dream had been more vague than it had been since Rahph began appearing in them, and the memories of last night¡¯s venture into illusory space had faded rapidly. I was a little later than planned when working on the glamoured bracelet for the Dauthulscha woman, so she came into the shop before I was finished. She became very aggressive then, threatening me. She even drew a short sword from her waist. I myself was shouting back at her when the woman started sneezing heavily and Anora came into the room hearing the noise. She might be the younger sibling, but she¡¯s a lot better than me at keeping a cool head and staying composed. What had been turning into a shouting match almost instantly fell into more normal conversation as Anora listened to the woman¡¯s complaints and sent me to fetch a tea for her throat. She ended up staying for lunch while I finished up her bracelet.This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. She wanted a more pragmatic illusion effect so I changed the cosntructs slightly to adjust for situations where she might want less or more attention. An adventurer like her can always find a use for evading detection. I also added an construct that had a similar effect that could make her face more or less visible and distinct without seeming unnatural s she could avoid recognition if necessary. The only other customer today was a man having issues with a warmth enchantment that removed frost and unfroze materials. He didn¡¯t need any help other than better instruction on how to use the item. There was nothing wrong with it. Past noon Mother grabbed me to have me inspect what she had been working on for the last few days. She wanted me to figure out as much as I could about the warding construct she had created to improve protection around the house. It was aimed at restricting unattuned subtle and illusory magic and had a sophisticated detection system superior to our current warding scheme. She had me find and pint out four flaws in the spell and told me afterwards that there were two more I hadn¡¯t spotted. The next while was spent with me trying and failing to find those flaws in frustration. I harvested the Frost Bubbleshil today and experimented with brewing it. It didn¡¯t become toxic or inedible fortunately, so I cold still create potions that were safe for consumption using it. The effect appears to have changed from just giving you hiccups and now forms chewy bubbles that cannot be swallowed and remain intact even while trying to bite through them. The bubbles emit a cold effect with a icy purity that would go extremely well with preservation effects. The cold being contained within bubbles also helps contain the frosty temperature in warmed environments for longer as a sort of insulation. I might have an idea for what to make using it tomorrow tat could be quite entertaining. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 58 7th Light beneath the twelfth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/058 Dear self, The dream was mostly unchanged from my last memory of it. The greatest difference was the starry plant sprout gaining in size. With the pinpricks of light, it has on the edges of its leaves it is easier to spot than any other thing beneath the moonless sky. It grew a second sprout beside the primary one as well, so the plant is spreading. If I find a use for the figment of a plant in the dream I and certain it can be made sustainable from how it is growing at present. Vamera and the dancing light entities seem the same as they were before. The little ones might have become marginally more energetic but Vamera is still completely inert. One strange thing is that where the little lights dance in formation at random places they now pulse their luminance as well in time with their movements. It¡¯s nothing sophisticated but it is a clear sign of awareness of some kind. I¡¯ll have to ask Vamera what she might know about them when she wakes as figments are as much an unknown to me as general Illusory magic itself is. Rahph has finally created a true dream construct with the influence he holds over the mindscape. He is still at eye height to me, so he ultimately holds the most influence over the dream, if an underutilized influence. He made a pit of fire. Just fire, burning endlessly. He must have gotten tired of the unending night my influence has placed over the dream and made this bed of flaming embers as a substitute for dreaming of sunlight. His charred territory also grew when he started making that fire. The trees just receded from his sunbathing rock as he made his bonfire brighter and brighter. It was just a dream, so the space literally just expanded around him. The trees at the edge of is blackened clearing are still the same ones. On this day, several complaints made the news of a few passing adventurers making trouble in town. The two customers we had come in both needed a few enchantments repaired and reinforced after being damaged by during fight between adventurers using enchanted equipment. It was apparently one adventure accusing the Dauthulscha woman I helped yesterday of theft, and they were ready enough for a fight that they started right in Nyri¡¯s common room. Several of her furniture was damaged and some broken.Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. It¡¯s not too surprising as the adventurers coming through town are the highly competitive sort racing to be earlier to the ruins that opened up instead of waiting for better weather. The blizzards have gotten stronger and we spend a lot of energy reinforcing the environmental magic around the garden and down the chalk path towards town. The townsfolk likely have it worse except for living so close to their neighbours. It is likely only Ekelyn and her orphanage can avoid having problems with the snowstorm, and even then, the children are likely blocked on to the orphanage grounds and miserably isolated. Anora went outside once today carrying what I noticed later was some Swelterwort. She came back to the house empty handed so she must have been ding something nearby. I gave her a long glare for avoiding chores in the garden to be sneaking around suspiciously away from the house. She¡¯s expected to contribute while she¡¯s at home. I had some fun experimenting with the Frost Bubbleshil some more. I added Jingsnicker into the mix to add an audible aspect to the potion effects. Eventually I came up with an actual potion making recipe that I then brewed several times. I only failed one batch after figuring out the combination of ingredients, and it was the second try, so I have a good amount of good quality product now. I even had Tori test the stuff after making sure it was safe myself and he quite liked the effect. It was only fair I shared a little with him since he gave me the inspiration for the idea. I also worked on the glamour for the appearance of the doll. I was first trying too hard to make it appear like a realistic depiction of a little girl, but it kept looking incredible creepy for reasons I cannot articulate. I instead went for a toy aesthetic with painted red circles on the cheeks and a largely shapeless head apart from the image drawn onto the face. I made the hair hard and wood-like and gave it lumpy trails that made it feel more like hair in an implicit way rather than being a realistic depiction of hair. With the evasion cloak I similarly worked on its appearance. I extracted an essence signature from trees, ground, snow, and a lot of things around the house. I then integrated those essences into the cloak and let it learn again by standing over random objects and in front of random places and guiding it into blending in with the background more. It didn¡¯t really work all that well as the Rift Foil leaves tended to create a distinct pattern similar to overlapping scales. I no needed to work on making the individual leaves blend in with each other so that were they intersect with one another becomes less obvious, as well as improving their ability to have complex texture within a single leaf instead of a single texture per leaf and complex textures needing to be spread across several leaves. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 59 - Sours And Delights 8th Light beneath the twelfth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/059 Dear self, I noticed Vamera brightened for some unknown reason. There were some more mumblings audible from where she hovered in the branches of the Tunmtumm tree. Other than Rahph literally flying around and seemingly swimming after the little lights tat spawned from Vamera there was nothing for me to occupy myself with, so I narrated my day to Vamera on a whim. She seemed to brighten when I brought the Bubbleshil up, and momentarily brighten whenever I talk about my experiments with the Frost Bubbleshil and the ultimate product. My suspicion is that it might be related to her Fortuity affinity, which would mean there was some degree of fortune involved in having gained the Frost Bubbleshil. It¡¯s understandable as having the Bubbleshil turn into Frost Bubbleshil was a lucky bit of happenstance that I just happened to be able to make use of. Unlike the silly games I tried playing with added randomness to the rules, the Bubbleshil was something truly out of my control arising from the chaos of possibilities that is the world. Gaining substantial benefit from what was merely an opportunity might also have contributed to having a connection to Fortuity. Getting something that requires a lot of luck in a situation where it is absolutely useless to you wouldn¡¯t be very lucky for instance, and it wouldn¡¯t be luck either if you could control the outcome. You might consider that true Fortuity involves a confluence between happenstance and opportunity in a scenario where such scenarios might actually be pursued. In many ways Fortuity would be when you make use of the opportunities afforded to you. Which would mean that you could aid Vamera by just being aware of what opportunities are available to you and following them spontaneously to where you might benefit from them. Our trek towards Aunt Ekelyn was made more difficult than normal because of the heavy snow. There are no proper roads towards her tree, so getting to the orphanage requires being familiar with the way through the forest. Anora had the biggest struggle hauling a large bag on her back which she didn¡¯t want to get wet from the snow. The children squealed at our approach. No doubt they¡¯ve been kept in-doors for the last few days with the blizzards. Even using a spell against the worst of the weather just walking to the orphanage was difficult for us, and most of these were around three or four Cycles old. We gathered in the main hall and let the kids run around excitedly while Anora took out a couple cloth woven toys. They weren¡¯t amazing, or magical, but it made me wonder how she got them. I Have not seen her have much opportunity to make them after being home and she hadn¡¯t carried much when she had arrived.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. The children caught on to the treats I had brought them. I had to usher them into polite rows while I handed out the candied balls I had made for them. It had turned out that Frost Bubbleshil combined with a lot of sugar turned into a very chewable treat that was impossible to swallow and hard to spit out. The cold flavour enhanced the sweetness for some reason as well. It was a perfect way of keeping the kids busy with just one treat each. That way I¡¯d have time to esca before they come ask for more. With a little inspiration from Tori¡¯s incident with having a bird voice I also incorporated Jingsnicker into the candies. It only made your voice sound higher or lower pitched at random, but the children were endlessly amused by their altered voices. The best was when one of the twins got their share. Their voices swapped so that the boy sounded exactly like the girl, and everyone thought it was hilarious. The frosty breath they all got was an inevitable side effect. It might have been a more interesting effect in summer but in winter it was little more than a deterrent to taking too think I¡¯m going to name them Bubbleshil Delight for now. We did get annoyed at the constant chewing eventually, which in hindsight should have been inevitable if I had thought about hearing that for longer than a half hour. We got a request from the constabulary in Tintinnabulis which both I and Mother answered. The wanted to us to appraise a delicate chain necklace with a filigree sphere of fine metal wires hanging from it. It was clearly an opened cage for something really tiny. They wanted to figure out who its rightful owner would be. Mother assed it using Subtle Magic to figure out who had the strongest Sympathetic attachment to the object. I mostly just observed to learn and to be a second pair of eyes in case of any obvious mistakes. We concluded that the cage itself was strongly linked to a specific adventurer while what traces remained of its contents suggested that they had a stronger attachment to the Dauthulscha woman who had supposedly stolen the filigree cage from said adventurer. It was nothing conclusive, as Sympathetic attachments are not the same as legal rights in any way, but they are slightly suggestive to how the constabulary needs to investigate the case further. The Dauthulscha woman claims that the cage contained a pixie which the other adventurer had kidnapped. The adventurer claimed both the cage and the supposed pixie as his property. There aren¡¯t exactly any laws in Tintinnabulis surrounding the rights that creatures at the level of pixies have, so after the evidence is gathered whatever judgement is ultimately made will set a precedent. It might even end up applying to how Tintinnabulis responds to slavery in the future, so its been as much the talk of the town as the ¡°adventurer menace¡± themselves. Mostly there are just some of the locals worrying if it will affect what they are allowed to hunt in the forest. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 60 - Duped 9th Light beneath the twelfth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/060 Dear self, Vamera started talking again today. She wouldn¡¯t stop actually. It was a little hysterical, but I think she was something between a panicking and extremely happy. That or relieved. It was mostly about the little lights, which seem to mean something to her. Physically she was still as waveringly dim as yesterday, but everything else about her was quite energetic. She kept floating off chattering away and I lost her in the trees. When I went back Rahph was sniffing at the starry black plant and scratching at the dirt surrounding it. I had to shove him off to discourage him, but he just opened his jaws and mouthed me. He was still much too large in the dream compared to his real height. I was also slightly smaller than I am in the waking world as far as I could figure, but with the foreign scenery I can only guess the relative height of the trees and my relative height in comparison. He dragged me back to his territory like I was some snack. Threw me into his constantly flaming bonfire and came cuddling next to me. He was sitting on my foot, so I could not escape, and if I got too distracted the fire actually started to feel scalding since I had no way of pretending I didn¡¯t know it was there. If it was a sudden event that lasted but a moment my surprise would have protected me in the dream, but pin someone down on the fire itself and they¡¯ll eventually start imagining the sensation. Chanting a focus helped keep my mind on other things, but whenever I slipped the full meditation into distraction the fire burned at me. It was highly unpleasant, but less so for the fact that fully imagining being burned is beyond most people¡¯s experience. I confronted Anora about how suspicious she was being today. She relented after a few guilty pouts and then took me a ways into the woods to show me what she was up to. There was a rudimentary ward around a clearing that ensured it was difficult to find for anyone who didn¡¯t know to look for it specifically. It even had a spell attached that clung to anyone passing through the barrier to erase their footsteps from the snow. Approaching footsteps were the most conspicuous as a result, but animals and people were dissuaded form entering if they didn¡¯t have a conscious reason to come to that spot in particular. It was done in Ancient magic, which means Anora was taking it seriously, and it also means basically no one else would be able to properly analyse it or be able to counter it easily.Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. It was the Quislings. Them and the stupid Simulacrum that looked like me. It took Anora a long while to calm me down after that revelation and bribing me with a set of rare alchemy materials was more giving me an excuse to delay my rage than what brought me to reason. It still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but if I must deal with it I might as well take something as consolation. She had met them at the Gate coming into the island, which is likely why her arrival had been delayed into the morning instead of what I would expect from travellers coming into Tintinnabulis. She vouched for them and was taking complete responsibility for the little imps. She even got them apologising quite frantically. I don¡¯t know how they evaded Axl Rashplume and his divinations, but the constabulary was still searching for them, and keeping them was literally harbouring fugitives. They only gave thin justifications for their actions. They apparently needed to hide from some war aligned asura and didn¡¯t care about the methods. Having the Simulacrum just keep silent in understanding was beyond awkward as well as enraging in a completely new way. I went to work on the doll with only anger filling my mind. I was furious. As silently furious as I can be. It worked too. I managed doing the framework for the control lattice in an hour so that a simple cantrip could control the limb movements and puppet the joints in unison. After that I was still angry and out of work to do so I went with the evasion cloak next. I worked on the sympathetic link between the wearer and the projection that allowed the user to experience the projection¡¯s surrounding as if its eyes and ears were their own. I found that the projection seemed to work well at all its functions including suppressing its own presence, even separated from the real cloak by multiple walls and across several spans of distance. The real cloak became less effective at supressing the user¡¯s presence as the projection became more removed from it but having them in the same room allowed both to have their presence supressed partially at all times, and effectively suppressed on a temporary basis by focusing on the enchantment. Only supressing one of the two remained more effective in keeping at least one unseen, which also helps with deception more than two partially supressed presences. It was easy to ignore my thoughts and just focus while I was angry. None of the aggressive intent even leaked into any of the items I worked on today. The only thing that came through was focus, and it was the type of focus you gained if you stopped thinking and started only acting. The cloak even seemed like its Opus has been refined a little from the exposure. After working on the cloak my emotions became too energetic to work on anything else. My affinities leaning towards being apathetic means I was not one of the people who could get a boost out of losing their head in intense emotions. Anora might, but even she generally goes for using the more balanced side of affinities rather that trying to get power out of enthusiasm or devotion or something. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 61 10th Light beneath the twelfth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/061 Dear self, The cheery moods emanating from Vamera were at odds with the dull surly one I entered the dream with. When she notices a change in your attitude she really does pester you incessantly, but she does eventually stop if she realises your mood is only worsening for being prodded and irritated. Somehow the silence she holds between lulls in her chatter feel more revealing about her than even her choice of words. She¡¯s nothing but a expressionless sphere of radiance but I could tell she was giving me the look. She also explained the little lightspawn that had appeared within the dream during her recovery. They were some product of her domain recovering, which is a very good thing. But the way it is recovering at present also means her domain will be a little too bound to the mindscape between me and Rahph, which has a little more permanence than either of our liking. It¡¯s nothing that cannot be altered, but not without cost. She doesn¡¯t know why it happened. It would have required a large infusion of unstructured power that held no tether to any other entity. Free power like that does not come out of nowhere, at least anywhere outside of the Transcendent Planes it doesn¡¯t. Her theory is that it might have come from some stroke of luck I had facing the Otherling being at the second Rift. It¡¯s speculation but she has no other idea for where it might have come from. None at all. We really couldn¡¯t think of any other reason for this to have happened. It does mean she might begin acting within Materiality once more to a very minor degree. Preferably with a vessel to avoid exhausting herself, otherwise the benefits to doing so would have to be very clear and very probable beforehand.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. A strong blizzard came in today. The now swirled into fantastical patterns upon the weather barrier. It made for an interesting sight within the cloudy gloom. I might have heard some laughter from somewhere in the storm. Frost spirits enjoying themselves no doubt. I just hope the storm giants aren¡¯t having sport with ice boulders again. I insisted on accompanying Anora to check up on her Quislings. For being trapped within the storm itself they were doing well for themselves. They had woven a frankly impressive tent with multiple rooms to house themselves in. The Simulacrum needed the most room, but he also had the least actual necessities. Being a construct of magic had its benefits on occasion. As for where they got all the supplies they seem to have used my money and might have stolen some of it as well. Seeing their skill with cloth also gave me some idea where Anora got those toys she took to the orphanage. They at least knew how to hunt the Jackalope in their dens between snowstorms, so they didn¡¯t have to worry too much about survival. They weren¡¯t exactly thriving, but that also wasn¡¯t exactly a bad thing. Ekelyn gave a ruling to the town constabulary regarding the issue with the adventurers. She clearly decided to stick within existing laws as she merely pointed out how they might be interpreted to apply to this case specifically. As in nature itself, there are no rights especially given to living creatures. Members of society were only protected by rights because they were what society itself was, so such rights were merely society serving itself. The balance of life and ecology is also protected by law, and the Rangers Guild enforces such balance aggressively no matter local preferences, but in this case the local ecology has been placed under no threat. Wild creatures like pixies may be freely hunted unless stated specifically otherwise. The law is very clear. Stealing the possessions of another is prohibited. The filigree cage was even damaged which is an added offense. The Dauthulscha woman would serve a night imprisoned and pay a small fine to the town for her crime. As for the pixie itself, there are no laws allowing for the ownership of living being within Tintinnabulis. The pixie was not lawfully property of the other adventurer and so there was no protection for his capture of it and no compensation is required beyond returning the broken cage to him. Any further inquiries are the responsibility of the Rangers Guild, who have already received a report on the entire affair. Ultimately, he left town after paying half the damages to Nyri¡¯s Inn. She had banned him on account of the sprites harassing him being a bother to the other guests. The matter is officially closed. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 62 11th Light beneath the twelfth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/062 Dear self, I talked with Vamera. I don¡¯t know why but going over the issue of the Quislings encamped a small distance from the house made me feel better. Instead of focusing on the Quislings themselves she was interested in whatever entity they were fleeing from. From the sounds of it she thought it might be any number of warlike asura. To hunt something as relatively inconsequential as a trio of imps is not something a asura would do if they were not inclined to hold grudges. Thinking on the effort they had gone to in order to conceal themselves from divination it is no surprise that whatever they are hiding from is unusually dedicated. That or they are carrying some incredibly valuable secrets or objects. Anora wasn¡¯t stupid, she would have realised this. And she¡¯s not one to be blind to how others would react to her actions. They must have been really convincing negotiating with her. It¡¯s surprising that they would have met her in the first case since she was the reason they fled from town originally. There is likely some secret they¡¯re not sharing that is motivating the current state of affairs. The blizzard continues to storm across the surrounding region. Mother is preparing reinforcement enchantments for any damaged houses. In high likelihood there will be a few townsfolk that come asking for the service after the storm blows over. Despite this the traders caravan was till leaving today. They were mostly Winterfolk so the snow bothered them less than most. Anora said farewell and departed with them. The farewell was mostly Tori clinging to her and telling her about all the thoughts he had throughout the day and some eager plans he has, as well as making some childish demands for presents when she next visits. Tori, out of boredom, demanded I show him my alchemy. He has a talent for learning and often jumps between interests as rapidly as clothes. He focuses best when learning new things as well, so he always does relatively well, but he also loses focus quickly and his dedication wanes with his interest.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. I showed him my process for making ambrosia, a crucial base component for many kinds of potions, especially ones which require any kind of volume. Despite he name the stuff is completely inedible, unless you¡¯re an ethereal being in some cases. There are several facets of alchemy which require at least some affinity in order for you to perform them yourself. Ambrosia for me involved taking some refined essences and a drop of absinthe and then enchanting the mixture within a cauldron until the volume increased to at least triple the original mass. Tori is of course completely incapable of creating ambrosia, and we can¡¯t know if he ever gains the talent, so I let him work with the batch I had made. I first asked him what kind of potion he would think he should make and talked him through how those might be achieved, then I showed him some Blitterleaf dusk and some Jolly Darlings extract and asked him to imagine what effects he could get from their attributes alone. What he came up with was a potion that transformed you into a prettier version of yourself, and I worked him through how he would make the potion himself. We spent a few hours on it and I kept looking for how the potion should ideally be made and what mistakes should be avoided. Strangely he almost needed no help from me after my initial explanation before we started with the brewing process. He even through in the correct amount of ambrosia without me explaining it at all. Frankly he ended up with he potion he envisioned made in the exact way I would have made it. It worked too. To an extent at least. It glamoured us and made our appearances improve, subjectively at least. The changes were mostly subtle, and I suspect it being based on our own perception of ourselves limited to what extent it could alter our appearance, as too great a difference between our appearance and our real perception of ourselves and it would create a dissonance that would disrupt the entire working, more aesthetically pleasing or not. What was interesting was that it apparently gave Tori longer red hair and wide clearer eyes. It made all my clothes lose any level of colour other than black and white, which makes sense. The biggest drawback is that the effect barely more than a minute. The potion was not strong enough to support the complexity of the working. The Jolly Darlings also seems to have interacted strangely with the ambrosia in this particular potion, which ended up with us being a little too giddy about the whole thing. I think a lot of the effect of ¡°vanity¡± might have had something to do with our minds being addled slightly as a side effect. The mental influence lasted much longer than the actual potion effect as well. In conclusion it was a magnificent failure overall and immensely satisfying to have made it. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 63 12th Light beneath the twelfth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/063 Dear self, Rahph had really taken to floating around within the dreamscape instead of sticking to the ground. You could be wandering anywhere among the trees and suddenly an oversized lizard with a ridiculously stupid look on his face would come drifting by on the imaginary wind. The way he turns his head like a bird to look at things only makes it look even stranger than it already does. He¡¯s been moving around like this for the last couple of nights already, but before he would still go lazing in his fire pool hour after hour. He must have finally realised that floating takes just as little effort as sleeping does. The only effort he bothers making now is when a Lightspawn drifts to close he would snap his jaws at them and waddle through the air to try to catch the escapees, which was all of them. I¡¯ve gotten a little too used to the dream lasting longer, so the last few nights have ended a little too abruptly for me. Less time sleeping in this case meant not only less time in dream, but a smaller proportion of time from my time away from the waking world. It takes some energy to sustain a proper vivid dream or vision, which means that the dreamscape relies on more than just me to exist continuously but adding to my stay there would take resources or become a drain on my health. When you get accustomed to having agency within the dream realm it becomes a pain to lose it. The difference between being limited to the waking world or having access to a mindscape is qualitative, and it has a potentially large effect on creative thought and introspection.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! Today was spent working on the evasion cloak. It¡¯s mostly complete at this point. It can project the image of it¡¯s wearer as a glamour. It can suppress the presence of either or both depending on a few factors. You can act through the projection much like it was yourself and altering the presence suppression made it seem like you were switching places between one and the other. It¡¯s ability to alter its appearance may also be used with both instances. The hardest part was completing the material phasing, which allowed for a lot of freedom of use when joined with the other functions. Phasing allowed the wearer not only to reduce their weight and tangible presence but allowed them to grant that tangibility to the projected image as a result through a simple permanent invocation. It was similar to turning the user partially ethereal in a way. Ease of movement was greatly improved with the phasing magic included, since movement becomes incredible simple when you are phased out of Materiality to a limited extent. The only downsides were its effect on aura. It was mostly an intimidation aura but could alert people if the wearer was observing them from nearby, even if they would not have sensed the wearer normally when not in possession of the cloak. The appearance alteration was also dysfunctional in the case of my personal usage, it kept turning into a colourless figure that didn¡¯t blend into more natural backgrounds. I would be the only person fooled by such a camouflage. I could use essence to add the necessary colour, but the effort it requires every now and then means it would be useless for more active usage. You don¡¯t want to be seen at all preferably, and a slip like that ruins the entire purpose. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 64 13th Light beneath the twelfth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/064 Dear self, Seeing Vamera gave me an idea, which I talked about with her. She was dubious but seemed willing. The starlight sprout seems to be developing well in the dream, though I feel like the dream seems to twist more often around where it was planted. The blizzard was still going today. Strong winds too. We keep mostly indoors this time of year, but the garden always needs tending. It¡¯s not a witch¡¯s garden so we have to go through more effort maintaining it. The only witches around here are those that are passing through. The Bubbleshil seems to be growing rapidly after I harvested some of it a few days ago. There might be some potency gathering there. A patch of the Blitterleaf died, which is bad news. It¡¯s not the sturdiest of plants. For today I was working on the doll construct. I finished the control lattice that coordinates the movements of its limbs, and the glamour placed over it is complete now. The movement working is very complex for a single charm, but with the lattice it means I¡¯m not putting too many enchantments on the same object, since every joint is enchanted with the same working instead of separate ones. I decided to imbed an invocation and a ritual into the glamour, so that it might be changed easily when we might want to adjust its appearance.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. Mother approved. The workings were a lot leaner than what I did with the Teetotum, so there is much less risk of warping from other nearby magic despite the complexity of animating the joints. Sometimes doing more can be done without adding to the required resources with just a little more thought and effort placed into the methods. We had Tori try his hand at learning how to do invocations with gestures and had him puppeteering the doll. It was a bit awkward, but the lattice working I did at least made it easier for someone with no experience in puppeteering, which none of us have. The final step was going into the ritual room and preparing something special. I used up a lot of Nightgloom again, but this time it wasn¡¯t to empower a ritual but to create a connection through to my subtle body. The material came from my subtle body after all. I also added some Stargleam to tie in with the Aspect of the night sky properly. I placed a circle of red soil and blackened ash around the doll for the ritual formation. Mostly symbolic, but we luckily have some small odd soil samples in the cellar among our innumerable other Materia. It¡¯s easy enough to keep a few small jars of dirt in a corner in case you need it for a spell one day. Vamera suggested I use red dirt, and we had some labelled between all the knickknacks. The final components were a small Copsewand from a tree outside to represent the woodland. A moonless night sky, trees below, and the ground were ash and char had a home. I needed to focus on the image here. Finally, a small drop of liquid Blithweed extract, smeared on my forehead, and a candle set alight with Dawnglitter and Duskblaze essence. The energies in the chamber swirled and overwhelmed me for a few seconds and then it was over. The doll was alive. Though Vamera seemed to a little dissatisfied with the appearance of her new vessel. She demanded we go into town tomorrow and get a proper dress for its body. She didn¡¯t like the bland cloth dress either. We usually get others to make the cosmetic parts of the toys be enchant, other than my glamours of course. Vamera didn¡¯t seem too fond of the idea of her clothes just being a glamour. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 65? 14th Light beneath the twelfth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/065 Dear self, Little of import occurred within the dreaming world, and less that bear repeating. The day awoke with a banging urgency as guest demanded entrance with the dawn. It was a rushed pelting with more furore than the blizzard storming. A hand at the door was a great alarm with the hand passed the ward. An omen. But it was a girl, and another. A woman in face, with a girl besides. The first was Alandara, who had a red countenance, and a red vigour. Her hair was red as well. The second was similar. A younger girl, dumb of eye and soul. Soulless, and dispirited she.The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. The first begged before asking. Save this sister mine! She exclaimed in hearing. The girl was a little detached from reality you see. A little off was she, with no soul. But living still, yet dead in spirit, the binding remained. A pity it took from me. To clear body of a soulless entity. The spirit needed finding, and we found spirits in plenty. All of it flowing. The husk was lain in slumber with linin and calm. For a time was coming soon but not yet came. We then left waiting, and a guest was given guesting. In town I took a doll. A peculiar sight. Quaen was in delight to lend her thread and bartered cloth. Not gown, but gowns were made this Light, and a doll was dolled. But the storm passed, and a sight came into town. A wagon most wonderous with sunlight alight it. Blinking trails trailing, it was painted with summer seasons and warmer fields. A witch had come. A sun witch. She wore a wide sun had, with sun shining from under it. Where rain fell above the dawn fell within, and it was as bright as noon. And Noonsheen she held. As young as Summer, contained within that glow of hers, and that spritely grin. But I was frost. I was Frosted Bubbleshil Delight, and a delight we had between day and night. And I sold much by day¡¯s light. A witch came to-day, with call to see my Bubbled Delight, and I sold her all I might. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 66 15th Light beneath the twelfth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/066 Dear self, This night I decided to wander the dream woods with Vamera. Inhabiting the doll had diminished her slightly so she was concerningly gloomy the last while. Everything else in the dream seems to have gained a little strength from the manifestation ritual between me and Vamera. The starlight sprout had gained the most from the flow of potency and had grown into a wide bush rising towards my knee. The Tunmtumm tree had been growing branches with leaves as well, which added a great deal of lushness to the dream. In the waking world Vamera was content to keep her doll form mostly inactive to spare herself the exhaustion of controlling for long. She mostly just watched through it¡¯s presence, but even that she couldn¡¯t maintain throughout the entire day. At least as she is now. I think the most of her focus seems to be on altering its appearance to something more pleasing. Vamera seems to be a very vain creature from how mush importance she has placed into the visage of her vessel. I a have already seen the facial glamour shifting into very unnerving seeming images before returning to its original doll face.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. The woman from yesterday was still staying in the guest room with her sister. The poor girl read an old and cursed book that had a shard of a demon within it. It was quite unformed as these things go, so her body is left mindless instead of a malevolent intelligence puppeteering her flesh. Her spirit was just floating on a tether to her body, still living but separated from her animus. As for the sun witch that had arrived into town yesterday. We bought a lot of Materia from her for our cellar. We got a whole jug of Mournjoy out of her, which was entirely worth the cost. Some of the children in town had gotten rumour of m Bubbleshil Delight and she heard tell of it. I¡¯ve been making a whole batch for her to take with and we¡¯re still bartering for the recipe. I might even make a few crowns with this one, she says it might be perfect if it could be kept for the summer seasons for next year. With all the Mournjoy we now have, I tried experimenting more with the Apocryphal Ink in my journal. The Sympathetic bond is immensely powerful by this point, and the Mournjoy I added yesterday compounded the effect. It was like I could remember every moment of the day from even the words I hadn¡¯t written down. I might not be good with poetic writing but even a small attempt enhanced the empathic link the entire text has to my mind through the anchor of a single entry. It might be worth it to do more of that kind of writing for the benefits, but it takes effort from me and I¡¯m not certain if I need the last bit of Sympathetic magic I can squeeze out of the ink. We used the full moon for the exorcism ritual. Mother gained a large amount of Moongleam this month as well. There was a tinge of frost essence within that the blizzards are likely responsible, and with the Bubbleshil being frost touched it was always likely another essence would also become so. I worry for the girl though, we did not have time to examine the state of her spirit after returning it to her body, and with the ritual we used there might have been essence infusing with her Subtle Body, causing changes in her Affinities. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~ Entry 67 16th Light beneath the twelfth Moon 3761 Cycles beyond the Dark 722 Years after the Repentance Entry: 1/067 Dear self, Alandara and her sister have moved into the local inn as of this day. The girl was confused mostly, though she seems to have vague memories of her times as a spirit. The astral form isn¡¯t exactly structured well to sustain the mind on its own. Mother is examining the cursed book that initiated the entire scenario personally. It contains Ancient Magic, which is no surprise really. These old powers always seem to develop their own mark on the world. Unlike most however, it is highly incoherent, which is rare for a surviving magic that has lived long enough to become ancient It was likely preserved in some way outside of the book itself or within some external protection. Much like how the Eldritch Idol only developed its connection to the Outside by first isolating itself from the Solacium. It is why these old and powerful artefacts are might usually only be found within some sealed tomb from forgotten times. The ones that hadn¡¯t been either degraded or never gained the space they needed to develop into something truly significant.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. I made two crowns selling the Bubbleshil recipe to the sun witch. It¡¯s a large prize for a simple recipe and I do not have much use for it anyway without a regular source of Frost Bubbleshil. It will be of more use to a witch than to many other, and in any case it is the Materia which provides the greatest difficulty and not the recipe itself. The sojourner might know some other witch with the right garden to grow the inured plant in, despite being a sun witch herself. She might even be able to do it without any other help if she has aa strange complement of affinities. Vamera figured out how to make an aesthetic appearance for her puppet vessel. She decided to go without a mouth for some reason, though it doesn¡¯t make speech any simpler in this case. Most of the attention was placed on the hair and other things. She placed the least importance in the face in the end, as that was where that unnerving effect arose most easily. With a clear distinction between a normal face and her lipless visage the unnerving effect vanished, and she could devote more into creating a beautiful alien appearance instead of bridging that uncanny divide between near perfect and perfect. Tori was quite impressed at her, and the way she spoke made him think her wise. He¡¯s been pestering her throughout the day, and she¡¯s been playing at being completely inanimate most of the time to tease him. It did make the times she chose to respond have more impact as far as I could see, and incidentally made seem that much more mysterious and mystical. Hope we fare well. Regards, Me. ~*M*~