Entry #6, Day 40
At long last, I've more thoroughly cracked the art of enchanting. Though I assume this subject has been covered by others in the past, I'll go on to cover it again briefly in this entry, so as to smoothen the transition into the topic of incorporating dark magics established thus far into enchantments and, more importantly, golems, a subject near and dear to my heart. Through my recent advancements, I have indeed managed to create autonomous agents from magic and material alone, ones who can obey commands and perform acts.
First, I had to gain an understanding of a component of magic I hadn't yet looked into, namely, how a spell can function without a constant influx of power being put into it. The answer, as I had found, was quite simple. Emotions become magical energy, and magical energy is drawn out and shaped by emotions, before being commanded by thoughts. In order for a spell to function for more than a single moment, emotion is required.
When I cast a spell such as Black Flame, in that moment, a flame is created which contains a portion of my hatred, what I had not realized until now, however, is that there are ways by which that hatred can be sustained without my intervention. A stable, emotional force left inside an object, which independently ebbs and flows of its own volition, lastingly sustaining the magic. In the moment I had achieved this, I had rapidly began to understand other aspects of magic in short order, and, paired with my other spells, I had soon created my first true golem.
Made from Royal Crystal, its limbs driven by Prestidigitonium, and all of it controlled by the Black Crystal of SC3, it was capable of obeying verbal commands of varying complexities, fluid, lifelike movement, and, curiously, a demonstration of habits that I myself have. Whenever I would command it to, for example, push a box, instead of pushing it with their snout or forehead, as I had seen other workers do it instead, more awkwardly pushed the box with its right shoulder, something I had only seen done by myself.
To prove the budding theory I had further, I had it perform several other tasks, all of which were met with my bumbling, clumsy methods, climbing stairs, striking objects and the like, all performed as though I had simply been there doing it myself. Curiously, however, the golem was utterly unable to do several things, the most important of which being that it could not learn like I learn. While it could perform dynamic tasks, remember information that it is informed of, and the like, it would never improve, and it could not improve in a task.
This leads me to believe that spells, when cast, draw their autonomous and undirected functions from their user's subconscious at the moment of casting, and not a second after that. To test this theory, I had filled several boxes with diamonds, rubies, and sapphires respectively, and had them shuffled so I would not know which box is which. When I cast Black Flames at all three boxes, two were reduced to slag and ashes, but the third box's contents were spared, owing to my love of sapphires excluding them from the flame's list of targets.
The important thing to note from this is, this means that the flame itself had made that decision, with no input from my own eyes to direct it. The flames had simply known that I did not want the sapphires destroyed, and, through some unknown method, realized that sapphires had been in one of the boxes, and, therefore, left them unharmed. Though this did not prove definitively that my magic draws cues from myself when acting intelligently, it strongly supports the theory.
When discussing golems specifically, additional testing revealed a fatal flaw, namely, the fact that they can be trivially destroyed if their emotions are disrupted. I performed a test in which a child pretended to cry in front of my Domination-empowered golem, at which point the golem visibly became unable to sustain its desire for control, and collapsed, dead. Thus, any creation born from my darker emotions must be carefully designed, such that it cannot be slain by my own personal weaknesses. A golem, unable to experience any emotions that did not go into its creation, can behave erratically when it draws cues from me when it was created which indicate emotions that it does not possess.
In short, the strength of enchanting is the ability to create relics of powerful magical potential, whose weaknesses are those of the mind, and of emotion. And the weakness of enchantment are those of its creator, at the moment of its creation. I believe it was a famous individual from my homeland who once said; "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles." In enchanting and golemancy, this is doubly true. The weaknesses of your creations are the weaknesses you once had. comprehend those weaknesses, and your spells will never fail unexpectedly when you set it to a task.
My personal favorite uses for this new method of spellcasting are to create small, durable golems, who prestidigitate for movement, and thusly leap about at high speed. I've never been good at golf, but perhaps now would be a good time to practice. If nothing else, I'm absolutely talented enough at dodgeball to make up for it. When the rocks throw themselves, it's doubly simple to send them flying about at my command. Though, one thing I've been concerned about, currently, I have no method to command a golem from afar. This is something I believe I should strive to remedy. Maybe some sort of voice amplification? I'm certain such a spell exists.
Perhaps I could use this new magic to produce a project I've been pondering on for a while now. If I'm making a giant crab out of stone and crystal, would that make it a Rock Lobster?