Ivory spent the next half an hour actually thinking about whether this was feasible or not; his inspiration came from the knowledge that wireless charging pads existed back on Earth. He’d never charged his phone in such a way, nor did he know how they worked, but he had the secret cheat ingredient: magic. Of course, whether it would work was another thing. iPhones didn’t exist in this world; could magic even augment it? He wasn’t as concerned with the towel—which would serve as the charging pad—since towels were a thing here.

Pleased by his own justification for why this could work, he moved on to part two: the actual magic. Even though he was now considerably higher level and had [Elemental Control (Lesser)] and a myriad of other Skills, it took him a little while to produce a few sparks from his fingertips, compared to his nigh-instant results when he was playing with water in the bath. He attributed this to the fact that he really did not have any idea whatsoever about electricity: neither how lightning ‘happened’, nor how it was transported through a plug in a power point. [Conceptualise Magic (Lesser)] wasn’t helping, but [Magical Inspiration] was: he figured it was because he knew, generally, that electricity is generated in power stations and that it gets to houses through power lines.

After about five minutes, he managed to produce a little spark from his fingertips.

“Fuck yeah.”

He knew that he needed to be careful when practising with this new ability. With great power, yadda yadda. Regardless, he decided his favourite way of practising was to generate a spark of electricity when he clicked. He wondered if he might get the [Sith Lord] class, with time.

Now that he was comfortable making this basic display of electricity, he decided to actually get to zapping this towel to see what would happen.

As he was getting the towel out of the bag, he had the realisation that he was actually trying to enchant the towel. Now he was beginning to doubt himself as the realisation of what he was actually trying to do hit him: he was aiming to enchant a towel with electricity to power the iPhone. How would the towel know to charge the phone? What if the whole thing just overloaded and broke? Then, he’d be screwed. Well—better to try and see what happens.

Before he unfurled the towel, he decided that he should shock himself to actually see what it felt like. He knew that the police had to taser themselves to actually see what it was like before they could legally use one, and this logic made sense. Ivory put his right index and middle finger in the palm of his left hand, and braced himself as he discharged some electricity into his palm.

“Balls!” he shouted. It felt like those joke pens you could buy back on Earth, that would shock you when you pushed down the top of it, except this was a lot more sharp. He couldn’t imagine what it would feel like if a proper lightning spell were to hit him. You’d die, surely?

Ivory unfurled the towel from its ball and lay it across the floor in front of him. He sat cross legged on the floor and placed both his hands on it.

“Alright, what am I doing here. I’m electrocuting this towel in the hopes that it can store it. Here goes.”

As he began releasing electricity from both his hands, he realised he should have actually tried this before—he went straight from electricity from two fingers to two whole hands.

Ivory’s hands lit up with white light, and could hear a multitude of different sparky-zap sounds. It was as if he was holding the electricity, not actually firing it off: akin to holding a ball of fire, as opposed to hurling it off. He’d remember that for when he inevitably practised fire magic.

He pushed the electricity and his mana out of his hands and into the towel, hoping for the best.

For the best part of a minute, nothing happened—the towel didn’t even catch fire, which he expected to happen. He stopped his spellcasting and realised what he was missing.

Ivory resumed his zap-hands, and then focused on his [Mana Stream]. The electricity and mana now poured forth from his hands and into the towel. He knew it was working because the little ‘bits’ of the towel—the terry cloth—were now fully erect; the hair on his arms were similarly standing on ends. He halted his spellcasting again and was shocked to see that the towel was still electrified. He hesitantly poked the towel and was surprised when he didn’t get a shock, however he could sense that his magic was still present in the towel.

“[Detect Magic].”

The towel lit up a pale white, tinged with neon blue. The question was, how long would it stay electrified? 30 seconds was the answer.

Ivory grabbed his iPhone and turned it on. 2%. How had it lost charge by being off?! The pressure was on, now.

He placed the phone in the middle of the towel and folded it equally over it. Before he repeated the process, he realised he could be using his wand!

He activated the Charm of Zont and the acorn morphed into his wand. He placed the tip of the wand on the top of the towel, approximately above where the iPhone was buried and channelled the electrified mana through the wand. The end of the wand shone electric blue as he felt his mana wash over the towel.

He felt the mana loss this time. It wasn’t a huge loss of mana; but it wasn’t insignificant. For a few moments, Ivory worried that he had made a furry ball of electricity and cooked his iPhone—the towel turned the same electric blue as the wand, with sparks flying everywhere. Realising he’d definitely erred in doing this in a wooden inn, he held the magic for a few more seconds before stopping. All in all, he had ‘charged’ the towel for about 30 seconds.

Nervously, Ivory put his wand on the ground and went to unfold the towel. Nervously, he put a probing finger on the towel just to check whether he’d electrocute himself. Thankfully, it just felt… fuzzy. Like when you rub a balloon on a carpet and put it on your arm—that feeling, except magnified by five. It didn’t hurt, but he could tell that the thunder god in charge of this operation was being merciful, and any arrogance would cost him.

Committing more seriously, he unfolded the towel, revealing the iPhone still there and not fried. Both of his arms felt like they’d been put through a very, very low power electrical socket—Ivory didn’t mind and, in fact, it probably did him some good to get more accustomed to the feeling.

Daring not to sweat in anticipation in case he cooked himself, Ivory tapped the home button with a trembling finger. The phone was still on—good—and forced himself to look at the top right of the phone, to see whether this exercise in wild magical practice bore fruit.

“2%. Man, fuck—” he moaned, before his eyes locked back on the little symbol that was now present.

There was a lightning bolt there. It was charging!

If Ivory had processed this, he didn’t act like it. He stared at battery percentage for another minute, and saw that two tick up to a three. Now it hit him.

“That’s definitely a first. Wonder how long it will keep charging?” Ivory thought aloud. He brandished his wand once more.

“[Detect Magic].”

It was difficult to parse the information the spell gave him, as he had to read between the lines to get the answer that he actually wanted. He gained some interesting information—such as the fact that the towel was holding the electrified mana—but it did not tell him how long it would remain charged. He committed the results of the spell to memory, and decided to have a freshen up in preparation of his celebratory dinner to pass the time before he checked again.

As he slid into the bath, Ivory realised that the god of thunder he just made up truly was benevolent—he didn’t even consider the fact that he was just playing with electricity, and had just gotten into a bath. That could have been an unlikely end.

He opted not to practise any water magic this time: this would be an exercise in relaxation. Ivory was marinating for perhaps an hour before he got out. He made sure to dry himself far more thoroughly than usual, as he was now playing with power that had the capability to seriously hurt or even kill him. He cast [Detect Magic] again and compared the results.

It was a bit easier to interpret the information the spell gave him this time, but it was still confusing nonetheless.

“It’s… the towel’s used about half of the mana. Now, what about the phone…”

Ivory undid the towel again—his arms had already developed some immunity—and the phone was, thankfully, still whole. This time, though…

“27%? Far out. That’s something I never have to worry about again!”

Another thought struck him. Had he created an artefact? An exceptionally low-grade one, admittedly, but an artefact nonetheless. Unless other artefacts or mechanisms ran on electricity—which he doubted—this thing was pretty useless. It could be a decent weapon in a pinch, if he employed some school-time towel whipping tactics, he supposed. This incredibly useful artefact needed a name.

“Shocktowel? Battery Towel? Towel of Charging? That’ll be a work in progress…” he thought.

Ivory pocketed his phone and decided to supercharge the towel. Well, not supercharge, but put charge the towel for longer. If 30 seconds equalled about two hours of charge, if he committed around three minutes a day, he’d never have to worry about his phone—or towel!—running out of battery.

After three minutes Ivory was out of breath. Maybe three minutes a day wasn’t a good idea after all—he’d used a considerable amount of mana doing that, and even getting close to running out of mana isn’t a feeling he wanted to experience again any time soon.

It was getting close to dinner time, so Ivory put his phone in the Shocktowel—that’s what he was going with—and headed downstairs. Ironically, he must have lost track of the time: his party had already started.

“Ivory!” Rex bellowed jovially. “We almost began to worry! To miss out on your own party would be a terrible thing. Take a seat, take a seat.”

Ivory hadn’t a chance to respond. He was being veritably thrown into a seat at one of the centre tables, next to Mannus.

“Practising some grand magic, I can only assume?” Mannus said with a smirk; he knew Ivory too well.

“I think I made an artefect,” Ivory replied, looking humourously abashed.”

Mannus didn’t even look surprised—he just rubbed his eyes.

“Of course you have.”