Chapter 28: 028 Settled In

On a lark, I actually incorporated myself, just to see if that would give me the qualifications to store gold in the US Treasury or in the federal reserve bank. It didn't work. I actually made Mr. Graham laugh when I called to complain about it and he told me I would have to be an internationally recognized organization or my own country for it to happen. They still have my nine million in gold, too. Oh, well. I knew I wasn't getting it back anyway.

I bought a very large safety deposit box at the bank and filled it with coins. I had purchased coin collector cases for storage and they were designed to fit into safety deposit boxes. It was perfect. If my calculations were right, there was about a hundred million dollars worth of gold in there. The numbers in my inventory barely moved. Mr. Graham was right, though. I would destroy the economy if I cashed in anything more than I already had.

Of course, I had completed two large construction jobs on government buildings and paid through the nose in taxes. I had to keep up my end of the bargain by improving the country. At one point, I had a flash of Divine Sight that made me send a set of four Clarity pendants to the white house as a gift to the president and his family. Anonymously, of course. I did not want them tracking me down and forcing me to make them for everyone in the government. What a mess that would be.

I included a note about what they did and being blessed and all, and the dangers of wearing it all the time. It took two months before I caught a glimpse of him and his wife wearing them, which meant they had passed all the security tests finally. I assumed he gave the other two to his kids; but, I wasn't going to bet on that. I haven't had another flash of Divine Sight, so whatever gave it to me before had worked out or I was too late. Either way, I would never know.

I finally had a brainstorm about putting multiple enchantments together. It was actually twofold. One was the rings I always wore. They were constantly touching and never interfered with each other, which got me thinking. It told me there had to be no over enchantment effect when making the item for them to compound. The second was it needed something to contain the over enchantment and stop them from interfering with each other. Only then would similar effects occur at the same time.

Of course, making the damn things thick enough to hold a full enchantment without leaking added a significant amount to the weight of base metal and it wasn't practical. The same went for trying to add the safety enchantment to the intervening metal pieces. Thick steel pieces enchanted to catch the overflow between small gold pendants looked ridiculous and made them almost quadruple in thickness. It was not a viable solution at all.

Then I stumbled upon something that I had been using at work for a long time for minor repairs. Epoxy resin. The two part compound was phenomenal and created hard and durable surfaces. It also completely covered anything you put it on with a clear surface, unless you added color to it. Needless to say, I started experimenting.

I was between jobs at the moment and the guys were getting richer and richer from all the early completion bonuses we were getting. We took three whole months off this time, mainly because it was during the holidays, and everyone enjoyed it. I had even been invited to Christmas dinner by my parents. It was an actual invitation and I wasn't being dragged along by Jenny.

I printed up a fake adoption certificate, dated for that night, and put Damon II as my first name. During a lull in the party while everyone was relaxing, I took my mother aside and gave it to her. Her eyes watered as she stared at the official looking document and I thanked her for inviting me into her home after so long. I hadn't stepped foot inside the house since the day after I had come back.

Mom put the document aside and reached up to pull me down into a hug. She squeezed my neck tightly and cried as she continuously whispered. “My sweet little boy.”

Things got better between us after that night. I was invited over for dinner whenever Jenny was, too. When spring rolled around, we even had a weekend camping trip where everyone was invited. I was the life of the party with my instant fire starting tricks and magic show. No one questioned why I wore eight gold rings on my hands, either. I supposed they thought it was a bit eccentric of me.

The best part was when Crystal had fallen while playing with the other children. She cried and cried in her mother's arms until I went over to her and Diane handed her over to me. I took her over to a park bench, slightly out of sight, and sat down with her on my lap.

“Let me see your boo boo.” I said to her and she looked afraid for a moment. “You know I can do magic, right?” I asked and she nodded. “Well, if someone gives me a kiss on the cheek, maybe... just maybe... if she loves me enough... I can magic the hurt away.”

Crystal's eyes nearly bulged out of her head as she stared at me. “I love you lots, Uncle Damon!”

I smiled at her. “Then kiss away.” I said as I gave her a hug and pressed my index finger's ring to her thigh, just above her badly scraped and bloody knee.

Crystal pressed her face hard into my cheek and gave me a kiss while I used the once an hour Minor Healing spell. The ring glowed blue and took nearly ten seconds to work. Luckily, she held the kiss and didn't see the glow.

“I think it worked.” I whispered and Crystal stopped kissing me and looked down at her still bloody knee. Tears came to her eyes again and I chuckled. “That's just what's left.” I took out a tissue box from inventory and popped it onto her lap. She chuckled at the sudden appearance and I pulled a couple of them out. “Now, I just have to spit on it...”

“EWW!” Crystal said loudly and then giggled.

“Okay, okay. Magic water?”

“Yes!” Crystal said and held her leg out so I wouldn't get any on my lap or her shoes.

I used the Water enchantment on my pinkie ring finger and a small stream of it came out and rinsed her knee off. I used the tissues and wiped at the blood and there was nothing underneath it.

“There, see? It's all better.”

“Yay!” Crystal said, kissed my cheek again, and hopped off to go run after the other children again.

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I immediately switched out both used rings for new ones, wiped off the wet tears Crystal had left on my cheek, and went back over to the gathering after storing the tissues.

“Thank you so much, Damon.” Diane said. “It pretty much breaks my heart when she hurts herself like that.”

“Is it the tears or the wailing that does it?” I asked with a smile.

“Both.” Diane said and leaned against me, so I put my arm around her shoulders. “What did you say to her?”

“I told her I would magic the pain away for a kiss on the cheek.”

“That worked?” Diane asked with a chuckle.

“Apparently.”

“It's too bad you can't fix everything like that.” Diane said.

“I'd need bigger kisses.” I responded and she laughed.

After that trip, my life settled down into a routine and I was quite happy. My days were filled with working, sleeping, visiting with friends and family, experimenting, enchanting, and wondering how the hell I was going to get multiple enchantments to work. It took months and months of failed experiments for me to finally find the bleed point between similar pendant enchantments where they wouldn't interfere with each other.

It was an inch. A whole goddamn inch.

A one inch round pendant would have to become a one inch cube to have two Strength enchantments on it and have them both work. Any closer and only one would work. I had no idea why that was, at least until I tried making the pendants smaller. The over enchantment lit up the safety steel plate almost completely and the Strength of +2 the small square granted me was pitiful. I tried making a cube an inch apart and the damn thing didn't work. It wasn't until I made it four inches apart that I had a successful +4.

“Son of a goddamn bitch!” I exclaimed. “The smaller the item, the farther away the bleed on the enchantment and the more overlap it has!” I shook my head at the revelation. “No wonder there's no enchantments on chain mail shirts. The links would have to be about six inches apart to hold the enchantment!”

I sat back and looked at nearly a year's worth of experimentation. All my grand ideas to enchant smaller for both concealment and stacking were blown out of the water. I could make them bigger and lessen the distance; but, then the things would be huge and would stand out like a bright flashlight in the dark.

I looked at the normal pendants and the cube they would have to be, which gave me three sides for different enchantments. Or at least, it could. I remembered that different enchantments could touch and their bleed over didn't affect each other. I smiled as I gathered up enough pendants to make a stack an inch high. I didn't need an empty cube between them and could fill the space with other enchantments.

The pendants were only one millimetre in thickness, slightly more with the bit of gold covering it, so let's say 1.2 mm. Since 1 mm is about 1/32 of an inch, that meant I could fit about 27 pendants into a one inch cube. I used a micro-caliper to confirm this and I sat there, slightly stunned.

I can have twenty seven enchantments inside a one inch cube pendant! I thought in surprise. Jesus, I have to try it!

I searched through the tome of enchantment and picked as many small enchantments as I could find. All the stat boosts, ability boosts, and individual abilities like Clarity that could be put on pendants, I marked down and recorded into a list, just so I wouldn't make a mistake. The last thing I needed was to get halfway through the stack and repeat an enchantment and ruin everything.

It was the most ambitious experiment I would ever attempt and just as I touched the top pendant of the stack to start engraving, my alarm went off.

“I was just getting into the mood.” I said and sat back from my granite workbench. I looked at the clock and sighed. It was midnight and I had work in the morning, so I stood up and stored everything that I had taken out of my inventory. I started to walk away from the bench and suddenly had a flash of Divine Sight. It showed me standing in a pile of rubble and a familiar glowing circle under my feet. I hit the emergency button on my cell phone and then disappeared.

I was going to be summoned tomorrow morning while I was at work.

“Well, fuck.” I said.

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