Broken Mage Read Online Free PDF Page B

there
was still a steady draw on his power. If he could use a magical
enchantment to replace the use of his personal magic then he could
travel much longer without having to rest, and in the eventuality
of an attack would have a longer reserve of magic to draw
on.
    A thrill of excitement ran through him
at the prospect of the new project. His staff continued to send
pictures of him as an old man in the cavern but Thad dismissed
them. This was his last project before he left.
    Thad’s first thought was to make it
much the same way he had made the illusionary horse back in the
duchess’s castle. Not real, yet with enough substance to serve as a
replacement leg. A normal illusion took very little magic to create
and even less to hold in place. All it really needed to do was bend
the light to make people see what he wished. Adding substance to
the illusion used five times the magical reserve but if he could
have something that looked and functioned like a real foot it would
be worth the added strain.
    He had made illusion enchantments
before but he had never had one that was attached to a specific
location. In this case his leg. His first attempt was an utter
failure. It was easy to make the illusion look like a booted foot,
but another altogether to make it move with him. The problem was
the illusion’s movement had to be pre decided. That was easy if he
made calculated strides but the second he made a turn or a short
step he found himself falling painfully to the floor.
    He tried different ways to make it work
but in the end he had to give up on using an illusion alone. The
only other idea he had was to use an adaptation of the spell he was
already using to keep himself up. It was simple, like the
enchantment he had used on the battle vestments of the Farlan
soldiers; it sensed movement and reacted with a predetermined
amount of force. The first time he had used the spell he had winged
it but during his time wandering the dark tunnels he had perfected
the technique.
    It wasn’t hard to enchant a thin sheet
of metal to use the same spell. The hard part was attaching the
metal to his stub so it worked correctly. The only way he could
make sure it stayed in place was to force the metal to clamp around
his stub. It took a few tries to make sure the metal cover didn’t
cut off circulation but after a few tries and using some cut strips
of lizard skin as padding he had it finished. The only real
downside was that the enchantment would only work for a short
period of time before it would need to recharge.
    Thad’s first reaction was to make a
dozen or so of the cuffs but that would take up precious room. Not
to mention the time it would take to change them out when their
power expired. The solution seemed simple to Thad though he wasn’t
quite sure how it would work in practice. He could simply place the
same enchantment using different gems as cores with the same body.
The problem was how to make sure they worked independently when
they were needed and not all at the same time.
    The first try he tried to simply link
the gems placed in the metal, and add a second enchantment to
regulate the amount of magic used. The basic thought was that with
more gems the spell would be able to last longer. It worked but
still left the problem with recharging, with them linked they
didn’t recharge individually but as a group, making it much slower
just like with the output the lead core was the only one that
absorbed the magic.
    After countless different methods he
finally struck the right design. He placed the gems in a circular
link with each one having its own unique link to the body. It also
required them to be linked to a central core but its only real job
was to switch from one core to another when the power level dropped
below a predetermined level. He had tried the same thing countless
times in other forms but in the end they all had to be linked in a
circular pattern with only one link to each other and one to the
central core.
    He