"Haven't gotten to that chapter in the book yet, but if I had to guess perytons emerged sometime after most of the legends got established and were better at hiding than other critters, until around then. I'd say it was a complete coincidence - somebody would have thought of mashing up a bird with a deer eventually - if it weren't for the names matching. That could just be the guy who published the book knowing someone who knew about critters and suggesting the term, though."

"That would make the most sense, I think...although most likely not before the art of creating medallions was lost." He stops for a moment to consider. "I should look into seeing what anyone's best guess for when exactly that was, is."

"Fifteenth or sixteenth centuries A.D.," May says. "A little later in Asia. There was a war between two factions of critters and the knowledge was a casualty. It's possible individual makers of medallions survived longer."

"...There could be written instructions left somewhere. In someone's tomb or forgotten library or abandoned workshop or something. I wonder if anyone's thought it a priority to check to find out." He purses his lips. "Even if they don't now they probably have at some point in the past...I wonder if it would be possible to create a spell to reconstruct destroyed nonmagical objects..."

"Maybe. There were some rune meanings that seemed like they could have been gesturing in that direction. What language are you planning to cast in?"

"Probably English. My native language is actually Polish and I'm not as fluent in any other languages as I am in those two."

"Oh, lucky you, I'm going to have to make do with high school French. If my grandma had lived longer she might have taught me Japanese, but no dice."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Yeah. It should be okay, though, my impression hasn't been that fluency per se is terribly important and if we're doing it right we won't need to invent incantations on the spot, just say them without stuttering. Oh, for the spreadsheet, I couldn't type ninety eight percent of the runes I got through so they're all page number in the dictionary and letter - first one is 6-A since there's the front matter in pages one through five, and on from there."

"Fixing that seems like a worthwhile project at some point. Even if it turns out printed runes don't work, if you printed a sheet with runes printed on it in grey, tracing over them would probably be easier than drawing them from scratch."

"Or a stencil," May agrees. "But if copies do work I'm just even more disappointed in the pathetic existing magical community."

"Agreed."

"Even if we have to write every one out by hand we can still eventually make custom objects and carry around cases of scrolls. I'm excited."

"My sister and her...friend...weren't interested in learning a dictionary full of runes and an extremely complicated percentile system, but I imagine they'd be willing to scribe scrolls for a commission."

"Should be easy enough for people to do without knowing all the underlying principles. I'd want to check them over, of course."

"Of course. Stencils or greysheets or what have you should render mistakes rare, but given the warnings..." he grimaces at the book.

"Yeah, I'm too young to die."

"Color me intrigued."

"There's so much to do."

"God, yes, it's the best feeling, I will never be bored again, you know?"

"Exactly. I mean, I wasn't exactly bored before, there's all kinds of things in the world to occupy one's time with if you know what you're doing, but this--" He breaks off, grinning. "Reading about magic can't compare to having it at your fingertips."

"I think it's still arm's length. We haven't done any. Yet."

"But we will."

"I for one intend to start a magic school and use its students as cheap scribing labor."