Another Stupid Spell

Chapter 4

Happy birthday.

I've realized that the orc calendar is good for seasonal planting, but not great for keeping track of annual events. So I adopted the Kingdom calendar, used by both the elves and the humans. It's going to help me track dates and times much better. The Kingdom calendar splits each season into three parts: Early, Mid, and Late. Each part is split into thirty days.

This is Late Summer of the year 2717, day 17. And because I can't be sure, but I want to celebrate anyway, I've declared this to be my birthday.

I'm not really celebrating my natural birth, although it may have been around this time of year if Shaman remembers rightly. I'm celebrating my rebirth, or at least my mental rebirth.

My name is Sorch Stonebender, and I'm a very smart orc.

With the help of my friend Shaman, I've developed a new spell. I call it Augmented Intelligence. The amount of intelligence that is gained is greater than the old spell, and the amount taken back by the curse is far less by comparison. The augmentation lasts longer as well. Eventually, Shaman and I figured out how to make it work as part of my daily routine.

It took several days of tinkering with my sleep patterns, using the old Enhance Intelligence spell to get me to the point where I could understand and cast the new spell, and figuring out how my amulet attuned to a spell for the day. But eventually we did it. I was able to keep enough brain power overnight, so that the first spell I cast in the morning was Augmented Intelligence. The amulet imprinted to it, and any additional castings of it were far more potent.

That was the key. With the new spell imprinted to the amulet every day, I just had to cast it once more at night to keep the cycle going. Even without imprinting, casting the old spell over and over again to feed the Voodoo Engine was helping as well. All of those tiny intellect gains add up.

I end up needing a lot of rest. A full night's sleep, my normal mid-day rest period when I'm working, and another rest period in the Shaman's hut before I study the spell book. We're all eating a little better due to Shaman's keen bargaining skills, and contacts that he's maintained in certain non-orc communities. He deals with one orc sea captain in particular, because he cheats us less than anyone else. The treasure that we shared from the Silverfish's lair has been put to good use. The healthy resting patterns and better diet have really helped me to progress.

There was a wonderful side effect of this healthy living: The Bashers stopped coming around the Voodoo Engine. There were no more beatings. I had supposed that because we were healthy and well fed, and because Shaman was helping to provide for the tribe's needs now, the smart orcs had less of a reason to be targets for angry warriors. But after thinking about it a while, I suspected that the real reason was my new confidence. I would look them in the eye when they passed. They knew that I wasn't afraid. Perhaps they suspected that my confidence was because I was more dangerous. Either way, the smart orcs worked free of bruising and terror, and the Voodoo Engine was humming along better than ever.

But was I really more dangerous? I think so. I've done the calculations. I can cast three non-intelligence spells without risking the new routine, or five spells if I'm willing to fall back to the old intellect enhancement for at least a couple of days. Any more than that would be a permanent drain.

To be honest, that isn't much of a problem right now. Because I have to dedicate mental energy to an Augmentation every night, I can only realistically prepare a couple of the basic spells, and a couple of the new advanced spells. It isn't a question of intelligence, it's simply a matter of rote memorization and experience. I'll need to master new techniques and find new mentors in order to do more than that.