As I stared at my newly enchanted belt and staff, I couldn't help but admire my handiwork. While my renditions were a little cruder than Voxea's runes, it still looked rather passable. The amount of deviation between the two was very little if any.
Voxea began to take a critical look at my handiwork as well. As she squinted at each rune and ran her finger on each line and pattern, I noticed the intense amount of focus she gave on each rune. I know I was a novice and I technically had a bye about the quality of my runes, but I still felt a little nervous for some unexplained reason.
Voxea finally stopped appraising my work and did a short nod. "You did good for a first timer. Seems to me you have a bright future when it comes to learning magic".
"Hehe, thanks. By the way, why was it easier to carve the runes the second time?", I asked Voxea. While it was a nice surprise that I could write the runes a lot faster, it was a little weird that my speed increased immediately after the first attempt. If anyone had answers for this crazy magic stuff, it was probably the maji turned majimonster in front of me.
"Likr everything we've discussed so far, two reasons", Voxea teased, "The first time you write a rune, any rune, you're not only etching it on an object, you're etching it into your soul. This learning process is a little painful, but it makes it so you can study and recreate the rune whenever".
"My soul"?
"I'll show you how to do that later, but the other reason is because enchanting magic items is usually quite difficult because of the conflicting aethers", Voxea explained to me. "Imagine an item's ability to hold enchantments is like an empty cup and the enchantment is the liquid that can go into the cup. Your staff is a rather large vessel that's able to hold quite a number of different enchantments, however the initial liquid inside of it doesn't really like to mix with other types. Whenever you enchant your staff in the future, you will have to put considerable effort in adding into it", she explained with a serious look.
I nodded at her explanation and made a mental note to limit the amount of enchantments I put on my staff. Hopefully I won't have to worry about it that much in the future.
"Regardless, for the final step, you'll need to channel aether into both items and bring them together like a dragon to a drajule. This part is relatively easy and shouldn't take that much effort, just channel aether into one hand, suffuse into the belt and then cycle it back into your body and into the staff. Simple, right"?
I shot her an incredulous look, but shrugged and decided to just give it a shot. I was about to put away the ice needle for later, until I realized it had disappeared from my hand. It must've melted after it was done, but that was aside the point right now.
I took my belt in my left hand and my staff into my right hand and began to do what Voxea instructed me to do. I first channeled my aether into the belt and felt as the aether flow into the runes and back into my body. I then took that aether and channeled it into the staff. I could feel a connection being established between the two and objects and that it was growing stronger and stronger each cycle of aether flowing between them.
The two objects began to glow brighter and brighter until in a flash of light that almost blinded me, the two objects became one. In my hands was now just the magic staff from earlier, but coiling around it was snake skin ingrained into the structure. By instinct, I twirled the staff a bit and positioned it around my waist. The staff immediately morphed into my snakeskin belt, but now it came with an iron buckle with the shape of an evergreen imprinted on it and the those three runes I carved into both of the objects.
"Fashionable yet functional. Just like I said", Voxea said while smiling at me.