Blessed Book

As I began to make my daily allotment of extracts I remembered the mornings we made the blessed formula book.

The morning after we had successfully taken the ship, the elf came up to me. “You are our captain now. We voted last night. I noticed that you are an alchemist as well as a gunslinger. Where is your formula book?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I could not find it on the previous ship and I am not willing to go back for it. I can start from scratch.”

“I know the process, from my master, of making a magical spellbook that holds ten times the spells of a normal spellbook. I do not yet have the magical power to create such a book but together I think we can.”

“What spells are required?”

“Secret page.”

“Can you cast it?”

“No, can’t you?”

“No, I am an alchemist, we do not get access to that spell.”

The male looked abashed, “I spent all night making the book that was to be spelled too.”

“Why don’t we start the process? It will take us a few days at least to imbue the book with the magic, and by then we might reach a settlement that has a wizard to cast the spell for us.”

“I like the way you think,” he grinned.

He handed me the book and I started pouring in power like I do with my daily extracts. The book started levitating, just slightly, above my hands. “Is it supposed to be doing that?”

“No,” The elf said, “it never did that for my master at least.”

“Perhaps we should stop for the day then and continue tomorrow?”

“Right,” The elf said taking the book and walking away.

The next day, I again imbued the book with energy and again it levitated. The third day it did the same thing.

On the fourth day, Lagorutphen came to me distraught. We had seen land on the horizon that morning but when he handed me the book I could tell that something was wrong with it. The pages had developed an off color of rot.

“You have healing magic right?” I asked

“Yes, but the spells do not work on the inanimate.”

“Would you at least try?” I implored. All this work we had done so far. It could not be for naught.

Lagorutphen put his hand on top of the book and began summoning up his magic while I tried to figure out what else we could do. The book jumped and started levitating again, “I think I fixed it.”

The color of the pages did not change and they were brittle. I tried to hand the book back to Lagorutphen but he did not want to touch it again.

The next day I took my blessed book to a local wizardess, at the settlement we found along the coast. She put the spell onto my book but advised me, “The book seems extremely fragile; perhaps you should start the process over and create another, more durable book.”

This book has been with me ever since and has never given me any cause for concern since.