Enchanting

Off the top of his head, he could think of many different ways, but each one was vaguer than the last and was too fleeting to put to use.

'Maybe I'm thinking about this the wrong way. It's Old Man Travis' Imprint, not mine. I should think about how his Facet can do this, and then work from there to my Facet.'

Old Man Travis' Facet was Metal, easily the best Facet for his line of work. Strong, resilient, and versatile in the form of tools, Metal could do many things, and take on a form that can do many more.

Even a bumpkin like Fate knew that Metal could be used to cut, create, contain, build, defend, conduct heat and electricity, and several other things.

'Wait, contain? That could work.'

Most cages and prisons used metal bars for their sturdiness and strength. Enchanted metal could hold even an Arch-Mage, weathering the strongest attacks the prisoner could levy against it.

But wands didn't work that way. An uncategorized Will Stone could be used by any Mage at any Stage, it was the very same Imprint Fate was making that held it back. Fate needed to find a way to reduce the necessary power (or quality of Mana) the Will Stone needed to function, or else a Journeyman could use their entire Mana pool with no results.

So how would Metal be able to do that? Well, if Fate's line of thought was correct, he could section off pieces of the Will Stone so only a small portion was being used, then use metal's conductive properties to alter the level of Mana a Will Stone needed.

But of course, for this to work, he had to know on a fundamental level how to do this. That was the hard part. Sure, metal was good at conducting heat and electricity, but how could Fate use that to change something else to take in something else?

At his current level, he couldn't, plain and simple. But, since his Facet was Negativity, maybe he could jury-rig an Imprint that turned that negative into a positive. What if he could just switch off that impossibility altogether?

Anyone with even a basic understanding of math knew that a negative multiplied by a negative was a positive. Well, the metal being unable to make a Will Stone accept Seed-level Mana was one negative, and the other negative was his very own Facet.

So, if Fate was correct, all he had to do was make an Imprint that worked on his current knowledge. Metal cannot, in fact, change what something else conducts, at least as far as he knew.

Then, he would make another Imprint, an exact copy of the Metal Imprint, but made from the Mana of Fate's Facet. Then he'd have two Imprints that do the same thing on the surface, but when combined should theoretically do the exact opposite of what they say they do.

When he got to this point, he started on the first new Imprint, his Mana tracing patterns that were thick and solid, smooth and sharp. His closed eyelids hid the slight glow from his blue pupils as the Mana took shape.

He poured his understanding of Metal into the patterns as he worked them, like a mold being filled with molten metal, as he breathed in and out slowly.

Unlike creating Spells, an Embodiment doesn't need nearly as deep of a comprehension to create enchantments. Instead of knowing one's Manifestation to such a level that one can create Spells from scratch, enchantments are similar to learning Spells that already exist.

One doesn't need to know the exact way water can use pressure to cut, they just need to know that water can do so and be able to express that in the language of Mages; in other words, Mana.

While this sounded like learning Spells and creating Imprints was easier than creating Spells, and this was true, easier than something else didn't mean easy in general.

Creating Spells was akin to a genius that knew their subject so well that they could answer any question about it, while learning new ones and creating Imprints was like a college student creating a thesis to earn their Bachelor's degree.

Also, not nearly the same amount of understanding was required to create an Imprint, because the Imprint itself helped. Learning a Spell was still much harder than creating an Imprint for this very reason.

What were the patterns one created when making an Imprint? There was only one word that described them best: anchors.

Unlike Spells, which worked entirely off of your comprehension and your Skill, Imprints worked mostly off of feeling, with understanding taking a back seat. The patterns Fate was making now were the tangible, physical versions of these feelings.

They anchored the logic and reason of one's Facet in imagination and perception, allowing an Imprint to do things a Mage couldn't yet do with Spells. In many ways, an Imprint was just a weaker version of a Spell.

Spells could be permanent just like Imprints, as evidenced by Sedra reattaching Fate's arm earlier that same day, but since they were rooted in one's unshakeable knowledge of their Facet, they could exhibit power much greater than most Imprints.

Of course, Imprints could piggyback off that same Spell to exhibit greater strength, but even then, it would be weaker.

After all, if you knew every little detail and could answer exactly how your Facet could do something, which is what a Spell essentially was, how would adding thoughts and feeling to that cold hard logic improve it?

Fate winced as the Imprint failed less than a second in, fizzling before disappearing entirely.

He still needed to learn some more about Metal and Negativity to make this work. His thoughts were in the right place, that he could tell, but he didn't understand the two Facets to a passable degree for the Imprint to carry the rest of the weight.

He sighed and started again. The only thing he could do was practice, and practice some more.

In a flash, his shift was over. Old Man Travis and Kravoss waited for Fate to finish his current attempt before the older man turned his attention to one of the wands, and the Imprint within.