Frostbound

With my plan to finish the last task on my to-do list finalized, the only thing I had to do was make the apparatus.

And by make, I meant learn how to make. Which involved learning Formations from the ground up.

"Uncle Topher, why are you getting mad at books?" Anna's high-pitched voice sounded out from behind me.

"I'm not getting mad at books, Anna," the grinding of teeth and my forced tone betrayed that sentiment.

"It looks like you are," she oh so helpfully corrected.

To make the room that would help Refine my Body, I first needed to learn more about enchanting. I knew the basics and that was bare bones at best. My idea of enchanting was carving a single Rune on a thing and calling it done.

It was amateur and dreadfully uninspired. During my study, it said that was one of the first ways of enchantment discovered while also being the most basic.

Being told that I spent days learning to carve Runes and put them on equipment was the most basic hadn't been an ego booster.

With some free time, or time not spent fighting, I was working to fix my deficit of knowledge with as many books as I could buy. Which was a lot.

I had a veritable library surrounding me with piles of books stacked in my lodge. Even though I wasn't living with them, Austin was kind enough to give me his to use for the moment.

While I told Anna I wasn't mad at books, that wasn't entirely true. While I wasn't mad at the books themselves, I was certainly mad at the authors of said books.

Reading them made me feel like they all got together to hold a competition for who could be the most convoluted and confusing while still getting the information across.