Letter enchatments

'He clearly left things in my hands. All that talking about Celestial Spirit Magic not having potential and planning my education was a big bullshit. It seems like I have to take what I want myself. Let's go to director!'

In his office she asked if her relation with Gran Doma gives her right to use training grounds that belong to the Magic Academy. She heard only something about she has to return with document saying that Gran Doma gave her permission to use training grounds she can get only if she has a student card, teacher card, be council member or is a trip from another country which is here to admire greatness of Fiore's civilisation. Hearing this Lucy changed her pose to that of sexy girl concerned about what Grand Doma will do when he'll hear that his student can't use training grounds. Worried director changed his attitude in 5 seconds. She said her thanks and made her way towards library.

Library in the world of magic is very complicated. It's not easy to organise knowledge about different kinds of magic. Let's say that you have a book about Celestial Spirits Magic. It should be Celestial Spirit Magic, right? Nope. Celestial Spirits wield all kinds of elemental magic, so knowledge related to them should be with books about basic elements. However silver and golden keys are magic objects so knowledge about keys should be with books about magic artifacts and technology. No one really know what to do. And on top of that despite some books being in a library sometimes you need to have certain level of authority to read book.

Lucy was looking for books about magical alphabets having good resonace with light atribute and that narrowed the scope of search to books about elemental magic, books about letter magic, books about enchantments and books about languages. In short she could spend hours looking for right books in four departaments. If she wanted to find something she needed to start right now. Even if departament of elemental magic was vast it was obvious that something about runes with light atribute can't be found in a subdepartament of earth magic, but it's possible to find it in subdepartament of light and dark magic. There's another reason to look for books about light magic. For example gale force reading glasses can make user read faster if user are able to strenghten the effect with wind magic. Runnes with light atribute combined with light magic probably would have much stronger effect. Of course it's not that simple to learn new kind of magic. Instead of looking for something fancy she decided to look for something basic in departament of letter magic.

Her choice was a book about basics of enchanting words. Enchantments in form of letters are indirect form of enchanting objects. She know something about it. As a mage manipulating letters she knows how to change letters in book and even rewrite demonic scripts. The problem is she didn't master that ability beyond manipulating normal unenchanted letters.

Even letters in book of END could be manipulated only because letters alone were unmagical. But at the same time entire book was magical. How this is possible? Enchantments have the power of influencing forms. In this world everything material in existence has its form. Changing form of object changes its properties. Normaly we do that by affecting matter. That's what Lucy does when she manipulates letters. However direct affecting letters and words with magic is different. Magic influences forms and makes matter following forms. And despite books, words and letters having different forms letters and words in books consist of the same matter as books. So... If you put magic book under spell, spell affects dirrectly form of entire book and indirectly words and letters, but affecting letters normal way still affects form of entire book changing effect of the spell.

Letter magic enchantments works different way. To make spell work one has to influence forms of letters and words. Next step is to arrange influenced letters and words in adequate order to affect forms of space or objects. That's theory. Ups of this method are its stability. As long as you're able to influence letters and know way to arrange them into desired enchantment you don't really need to work on increasing variety of techniques cause a lot of them can be formed with letters. You just need to plan new formation of letters. Downs come from form of letters. Letters that became separate object are vulnerable to dispertion methods. Two-step enchatments are also much more time consuming, not to mention complexity of systems of letters one need to arrange to make it work. One mistake would make everything useless.

Lucy had to admire Freed's skills. His letter magic style of fighting was possible only due to incredible ammount of hard work. Even now she couldn't hope to perform it one day as good as him but to get some insight into ways of enchanters it was perfect.

...

Training grouds were a few little fields with dummies destined to destroy them. Nothing special at all. Usualy the ammount of destruction never crosses any lines so earth mages comes here to make repair one a week. She has chosen her place near bench and started to read.

Letter enchantments were created arond two hundred years ago as a way to avoid downsides of pure enchatments. There were enchanters who were able to create a lot of proper theories but weren't able to master greater ammount of spells due to lack of control. Every spell was different way to influence object and required different way of controling magic. To adress that problem some of them formulated the theory of two-step enchantements to make turn magic of multiple principles into magic of one principle. Next step was to use that theory to create a spell. Casting first magic barrier based on letter enchantments took them five years. It was not because letter enchantments are really this hard. The problem was that to know that their first spell works they had to train themselves to be able to enchant letters, create perfect theory of letter enchantments, perfectly plan entire barrier based on that theory and cast it as a whole. And all of that despite not having many ways to verify their progress.

To start her adventure with letter enchantments the book recommends she has to recreate that great alchievement. First step was to learn used symbols. That alone was easy. Second step was to learn to make enchanted letters. But that's hard. Probably she will spend months before being able to cast every single letter. Of course there are some tips and even the whole instruction. However reading it and performing it are two different things.

...

Lucy didn't know that she's observed by a student. Student was a boy with brown hair, black eyes and curious smile. He was bored so he decided to walk around a bit here a then and then he found something. Precisely girl writting on the dirt. She is writting the same letter again and again. Who would consider himself as normal writting on the ground for nothing? Of course she's doing it on purpose. It's strage, but if something is strange, it can't be boring! So he thought he's saved. He only needed to do one thing:

"What do you do?"

"I'm training."

"By writting?"

"You could say so."

"Why?"

"I want to learn letter magic."

"What is letter magic?"

"Letter magic is manipulating and making letters with magic power."

"Let me try"

Lucy stopped to look what this boy wants to do. The boy concetrated some magic power in his hand giving it weak brown glow. He placed this hand on the ground forming seven letters at the same time. He then said.

"Is this letter magic?"

"No, you just... Was that earth magic?"

'His control is quite good.'

"Yes, this is my magic. But I made letters with magic. You wanted to say that's not letter magic. How this is different?

"When I use letter magic I form letters with magic that have to consist of magic."

"But you're just shaping dirt."

"Because I didn't mastered it. I started today."

"And how would your shaping dirt turn into magic letters?"

"I... don't know. But what else can I do?"

"If I were you I would first try to concentrate unnecesecarly huge ammount of magic and try to form letter."

"Can you really do this?"

"I'm not sure. Let's try"

He gathered some magical power in his hand and to form it into a letter. He slowly compressed it harder and harder. His magic power really formed a letter. But at the same time it looked like a carved stone.

"Huh? He actually did it!"

"So this is letter magic?"

"I can't deny it consist of your magic so yes, in fact you performed letter magic. Despite depending on unorthodox way. What's your name?"

"Ren"

"Lucy. I'm glad to meet you. You see... I can't deny that it's a form of letter magic, but it's not what I'm looking for. I already can do that without any atribute."

Lucy took out her magic pen and quickly has written thirty letters forming whole known alphabet on the ground of the language from the book she was using to learn.

"Those are real, but letters I want to form have to be at the same time enchanted."

"I don't know how to enchant letters so I won't be able to help you, but... Can I join you?"

"Sure."

She used her letter magic to copy book and gave that copy to him.

"Take it. Open page 67. You will find there instruction of enchanting letters. But you should be warned that will take a while. Most of us can't learn new magic in one day."

Ren nodded. He knows that he will get bored again but knows also that boredom can't be really helped. Who would be not bored reading books? Especially books we have to read olny because adults ordered us to do so. For knowledge? Never mind. You're gonna forget most of it anyway. For now he has a new friend. That's something more fun than just walking.