Side Story: The Bases of Magic 4 - Transmutation

They enter the biggest room of the enchantment quarter. It’s where Uklag spends most of his free time, the walls are filled with scrolls and all over the room stand crafting tables with all kinds of tools. “Transmutation in its theory is very easy.” Uklag says and grabs a few pieces of excess metal, making a small pile on one of the tables. “You change one thing into something else of similar mass. Things like shape or density is left to the mage, but more complicated shapes get more taxing on your mental fortitude so you may want to avoid them whenever possible. What you also never want to do is transmute without runes because unlike Spontaneous Summoning you don’t get to choose how much power you invest and without runes you have to invest a ludicrous amount of power and concentration to do even the simplest of tasks.”

Uklag takes a piece of chalk and writes runes around the pile. “Generally speaking you can do anything to draw the runes but I would suggest you take something that isn’t easy to remove, you don't want to be close to damaged the runes.” To demonstrate he wishes his thumb across one of the runes on the table, “It makes the whole process unnecessarily taxing. Personally I like to carve my runes into something, generally hard to get rid of, but this will suffice for an explanation.” He redraws the rune and starts to channel magic into the pile.

“The thing you will have to remember is that transmutation is guided by the mind, as such you have to be focused on the task.” He says as the pile of metal transforms into one solid block of wood. Catherine looks somewhat impressed this far. “Didn’t use much Transmutation back home I assume?” Uklag asks, “No, it is not a particularly far spread magic, people usually only learn the basics to become enchanters.” His apprentice says.

“I guess so. Well, Transmutation isn’t particularly useful in the field, generally it needs preparation time and while you can make swords out of dirt, for example, it does take a lot of time to arm a regiment this way and depending on the mage the metal might be of inferior quality. This brings me to another very important rule of Transmutation, something animate can’t be transformed into something inanimate and vice versa. The exact reason for that is unknown but many scholars over the ages have theorized that it has something to do with souls, which makes sense to me.

While transmuting several inanimate objects into one is no problem, taking several living beings into one can have some funny side effects.” Catherine tilted her head slightly, “Like?” Uklag smiles and looks back two months, “When I originally took over this location there were a lot of rats around, what I then did was transforming all of them into deer’s. This had two side effects: One because I merged several souls together the dears almost all died, none of the souls could get a firm grasp on motion control after some initial panic made them all think alike. Second the few that did survive, I guess one of the souls came out on top, started to eat and act like they were still rats, I had changed their bodies but not their behaviour.”

Catherine listens to all of that without changing her expression in any way. “Okay.” She accepts the information without question. “One more question, if you need something of similar mass to make something you cannot make a deer out of a single rat, that is clear to me, but can you make a single rat or even a couple rats out of a single deer?”

Uklag smiles, “You can easily make one rat, you just have to find other uses for the remaining material. Several however poses the opposite problem that merging has, in that you have to split a soul into several shards, the result is that the being that comes out is often unable to live, unless you have a particularly strong soul.”

The room grows silent as Catherine thinks about everything she has learnt this far today. “Then to go unto the final lesson for today.” Uklag says his smile widening, “My master discipline, Enchantment.”