Do you even know how hard it is to brew potions and enchant things as a rickety wooden spider-thing? There is an Argentinian phrase for this-- "atada con alambre". No, I don't know what or where or when an Argentine was or is, I only read about it in a book I found, it sounded rather Stygian. But I digress. My stories are constantly in the process of falling apart, just like my body, held together with spider silk and spit and considerable effortful acts of will. And I am expected to perform delicate operations, combining Horehounds with Gold Ingots and Skulls with Nacre Shells, transforming this bit of garbage or spent magic gem into some other weird ingredient, brewing it all up in a leaky alembic which half the time explodes turning me into stone and giving me poison diarrhea, all without even having fingers? Just splintery chelicerae?
Fine. Fine. I get it. In another life, I could have had it worse, I might have been a short-order cook. But at least I would get to stay inside! But the Powers That Be decree that to enchant a thing I must then head out into a dangerous wilderness, find some magic-spouting orifice, and then then rub the potions I have made onto my weapon, while howling over it the appropriate spell-chant. But at least after all that, I will have a slightly more impressive bow, right?
The. Or. Et. Ick. All... Y?
But here is what happened instead: I headed out on my very first aim-improvement mission, visiting the Acid-spewing noxious pustule of a Wash, the E-Moch-Nahr, stuck my foot in, and began the process my long arduous studies have assured me would work. Bow? Check. Combat Clarity juice-boxen? Too, check. Sharper Vision mantras? Check again. I was ready! So let's do it, let's spin this magic whirligig up.
The whirligig immediately sputtered to a halt. There was no whirligig. I just mean, the ritual -- it failed. I were spinning plates on poles, which it very much felt like I was, they would be crashing to the ground.
The enchantment simply would not take. The acid pustule bubbled: "would you like to make your bow deal Acid damage instead?" I argued with it, you're supposed to give me Accuracy enchantments! But the magic spring fell silent, like a meadow sprayed with DDT. Accuracy was NOT on the menu. Exasperated, I decided -- you know, I've come all this way, I'm still learning things, OK, let's make my arrows acid-tipped! The Font is practically begging me to, acidity is, after all, its telos and its purpose. But wait, did I bring any Acid Affinity potions? I began searching my-- well, not *pockets*, but the nooks of my tangled being where I stash junk I carry around-- and with a sour face, I had to concede, I did not plan on *this*.
I stopped to think. Did I do things in the wrong *order*? But I'm a member of CHAOS! CHAOS! CHAOS! So that's a given, yet it never has been a problem before, before I did this thing just now for the very first time. OK, so maybe there WAS some missing varia--
It was at this point that a hideous being leapt into the Egg Field in which I had been standing these long minutes with all eight of my eyes trained upon my task, having forgotten I was sore exposed on a frozen plain in Stygia. I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. The hideous being-- I refocused three eyes to glance at it sideways, and decided, based on its splattering of viscous slime, to call it Xyklothumenai for short-- she reached inside me with her tentacle and grabbed my heart, draining it of magic!
Well, she tried to grab my heart, my body is a mess, as I have said, so she yanked rather hard on my Malpighian tubule, but it still worked. She yanked several more times before I could even process what was happening. Was I hurt? Not physically, no-- but my pride! I'm really rather fragile, literally and in every sense, so I skittered home as fast as my eight legs could take me before this Wyrm Master decided to do some actual damage. But the real brain-twister was this: what made my internal reserve of arcane energies so desirable, anyway?! We were AT A FONT! OF MAGIC! She knew how to tap THAT, I am sure of it! Xyklothumenai, you're a menace. Now I am scared, and it may be days before I try to enchant anything again.
And this, in short, is why Enchantments are bad and we should just go back to pelting each other with rocks.