217 217 New Spells
Since the Fae was asleep, Wolfe decided to work on the next of the basic utility spells that were on the list. [Elemental Attunement] allowed the use of elemental spells that you didn’t have an affinity for but at ten times the normal mana cost.
From what he could tell, that was close to what it took witches to use elemental magic, so it would negate his advantages, but it should be worth it.
Or so he thought until he actually started working on the spell and realized that there was a difference between ‘create’ and ‘use.’ He still couldn’t create and activate a water spell, but now he could use one that was already drawn without needing a witch around.
The spell was incredibly useful for keeping wards and utility spells available and charged, but as a basic utility spell, it had its limitations. At least he could keep the entire Den up and running now, even if everyone else decided to return to the Covens.
Not that he had any fear of that. This was a good place, and at least some of these witches wouldn’t willingly leave him behind and return to the Fortress Cities.
Once that bit of utility magic was learned, Wolfe moved on to the last few that were deemed essential for his first year’s education. The list was short, and it looked like the first tasks for a young Magi had been to decorate their own room and to contribute to the home’s upkeep.
The last two spells that were on the list were [Return to Tidy], which would clean a room and return preset items to designated locations. There were a lot of variations of the spell, but the easiest seemed to be the one using Wind Magic since he couldn’t use Time Magic to simply rewind time on the objects so that they returned to their home locations.
The concept of Time Magic caught Wolfe’s attention, and he looked into the notes in the spellbook to see if there were any hints about it and how to form an affinity for Time Magic.
All he could find was a single note left by a Lumix Family Elder. [For those not of the Chronos Family, the use of Time Magic, regardless of affinity, is not recommended, as it will take directly from the user’s longevity instead of the item’s.]
It seemed that using Time Manipulation in large doses would age a Magi immensely if Wolfe’s calculation was right. Even in his small room, much less the whole Den, there were hundreds of items that would be affected during a cleaning spell.
Simply cleaning the room with Time Magic would age him by half a year. Unless there was a way around that, Wolfe decided that it was best to keep away from that sort of spell, even if he formed the affinity.
The inscription for the wind magic version of the spell was simple, and Wolfe decided that he wanted to test it out right away. He made the bed to the same tight and tidy standard that any high-end hotel would be proud of, then organized the closets and the table, which was usually covered in random items.
Once he was satisfied that the room had never been cleaner, he activated the inscription and set the positions of all the clothing and furniture in the room, as well as the ingredients in the reagent box.
Wolfe felt the spell settle into his mind since he hadn’t written it down anywhere, and that meant that it was ready for him to mess up the room a little and test it out.
He tossed the small collection of clothing that the room contained on the floor, messed up the bed and rearranged the pillows. Enough that it would only take him five minutes to clean up if the spell didn’t work, but enough that it would be obvious how and if the spell worked.
Wolfe reactivated the spell, and a swirl of wind spread around the room, opening drawers, folding clothes, putting them away, making the bed, and gathering all the dust and dirt from everything, including the dirt from the bedding, which hadn’t been washed today. It deposited the dirt in the waste bin with a thought from Wolfe, and the winds died down, leaving the room pristine.
It looked like Wind Magic, or Air Magic in general, was the go-to for most things domestic since it was also the basis of the [Preservation] spell that kept their stored items from spoiling or rusting.
Next up was to make that spell an amulet. It was just Air Magic, which the Witches could use well enough. All the Elements were part of Nature, which was their domain, though they were naturally attuned to living things. So, they could use all Elements with varying success, not like Wolfe, who had to have an affinity to some degree, but who could create the Elemental spells directly without using living things as a medium.
The realization made him think that their magic wasn’t really all that different. They had just found a workaround to use Nature Magic to emulate the other Elements, the way that he had been wondering if there was a way to use Time Magic before he realized that there was a backlash.
Or perhaps it was the nature of time? If the magic just rearranged time, then the total would have to come from somewhere, and only certain Magi were capable enough to reassign where the spell took the imbalance from.
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That was one of the final utility spells done, and Wolfe looked at the final one on the list. [Whiteboard] made a magical object that could be drawn on with fingers or other solid objects and would leave a designated colour behind.
It was exactly what it sounded like, a simple magical whiteboard that could be used to test modifications to spell inscriptions or leave notes. A thought and a wave of his hand would clear it if there were a mistake, so it was the perfect way to practice new magic.