Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (50/?) (Patreon)

My question didn’t linger in the air for long.

In fact, it was almost immediately reciprocated, but not by the owl, Buddy, nor any other voice. Instead, it was reciprocated by a long, dull droning sound; one that shook the entire building to its core. A sound that was as otherworldly as the noise generated by a warp drive revving up to full power.

This was soon followed by thousands of distinct large thumps, as heavy, leather bound books smacked across an untold number of desks, tables, and plush leather armchairs not too dissimilar to the ones found in Mal’tory’s office.

Except instead of the dark, brooding, and foreboding atmosphere of that Victorian-themed nightmare, there was a certain magical nature to the whole scene. The presence of a thousand or so foxes flipping through untold pages at blistering speeds definitely helped to offset the otherwise bizarre and ominous nature of it all.

“Radio.” The owl parroted back, in exactly the same tone and enunciation I’d used.

“Radio.” The room of foxes responded back in unison, their page-flipping continuing for a solid few minutes before it all inexplicably came to a stop as suddenly as it began.

With a resounding thump of tens of thousands of books closing all at once.

“Radio not found.”

The whole library began producing another long, dull droning. As the foxes that had appeared with books in tow, all ran off back into unseen and unknown corners and crevices, completely disappearing from even the EVI’s sensor feeds.

It was now just Buddy and the owl resting atop his head that remained. The owl in particular quickly took charge once more. “Radio.” He repeated. “Subject matter classification-”

“-Communication.” I quickly interjected, taking literally no one except for Buddy completely off guard, the armored fox cocking his head from side to side; his face locked in a perpetual expression of confusion and curiosity.

“That’s what this whole trade boils down to, doesn’t it?” I asked rhetorically, garnering a tentative nod from the owl in response. “Artificial means of augmenting communication, all in an attempt to address a problem that plagues all civilizations. A problem that becomes all but a guaranteed issue for any would-be organized group wishing to maintain any hope of cohesion beyond the sightlines of a town or village. Because the moment when you set your sights on organizing, controlling, and maintaining people and lands beyond the sightlines of your hall, keep, or castle, is the moment when you realize that we’re all fundamentally limited by the same thing… our ability to get information from one place to another. For the greater the extent of your claims, and the further you expand your reach, the more difficult this task becomes. So for an empire as expansive and as grand as the Nexus-” I spoke in a half-condescending, somewhat sarcastic tone, realizing well that doing so wouldn’t incur any faux pas’ with the library. “-this becomes a pertinent issue.” I paused, taking a moment to regard all eyes in the room before continuing. “I know this… we know this… because we’ve experienced the same growing pains back home.”

There were no gasps of surprise this time around, as the captive audience of foxes and the lone owl seemed captivated rather than shocked.

In fact, even Thacea’s expression remained similar enough to the owl in composure. Though I knew that was more than likely the result of her stoic poker face, and was most definitely not representative of what was probably brewing underneath the surface.

“I’m sure we had some parallels in this regard, I’m sure the Nexus wasn’t always capable of long distance communication using crystals. I’m sure someone had to have had the brilliant idea of running the distance between two towns. And I’m sure this eventually evolved into relying on the endurance of a horse, the speed of a pigeon, and the skill of a courier as time progressed. However, there had to have been a breaking point. A point where your ambitions grow beyond the limitations of these crude, analog, and primitive means of addressing the physical information gap. A point where these systems become fundamentally inadequate if you wish, hope, and desire for more. So whilst the Nexus dabbled in solutions to this issue utilizing magic, with their crystals and teleportation spells, we instead branched off into a completely different path; a road less taken.”

“A road not defined or limited by the skills of a mage, but created, maintained, and refined by the sacrifices of generations of scholars and researchers.”

“Because we didn’t have the abundance of mana to work with, nor were we born with the innate gift of mana-manipulation. Heck, our world doesn’t even have any mana to begin with. We were, and still are, a mana-less people, with no less of a desire to expand, progress, and push forward our reach as the Nexus clearly did. Our ambitions could not be tempered by the supposed reality of our situation. Our sights were always set upon the next hill. Our hearts were always drawn to the next horizon. Our destiny was always to cross the distance of oceans. Regardless of if they were oceans of water or oceans of stars. It’s not in our nature to sit idly by, and we definitely were not willing to accept the limitations imposed upon us by the natural world. So we pushed forward. Each generation dedicating their lives to the observation and study of reality, and each generation making gradual, consistent improvements by harnessing everything from the world around us, using our understanding of its rules to construct a reality we wanted to see, all in service of our own aims.”

I took a deep breath at the end of my preamble, just in time for the building around us to once again drone and creak loudly, giving the owl pause as he addressed me just as the noises settled.

“So in a similar vein to how magic and the magical arts were constructed to observe, understand, and to eventually manipulate the fundamental forces of the universe, so too did Earthrealm do this with another set of fundamental cosmic paradigms?” The owl shot back questioningly, his eyes burrowing through my opaque lenses not with predisposed doubt and scrutiny, but with a fiery curiosity barely contained behind those spheres of amber.

“Correct.”

“And you do not call this magic?”

“No, in fact,  that term is exclusively used for impossible flights of fantasy; reserved for the realm of fiction and the imagination. Only now are we seeing that it is, in fact, a very real reality. A reality that we were not able to actualize, for reasons that are now very clear to us.”

“So if not magic, then what? What is the name of your systematic study of the fundamental forces?”

“We call this discipline: science.” I began, accentuating that last word in particular. “And we call the practical application of the principles derived from its scholarly endeavors: technology.”

A long drone punctuated that answer, the owl purposefully pausing as if to seemingly listen to it.

“And this is how you discovered and harnessed the radio.” The owl tentatively responded. “It is another one of your systems of technology, derived from these roundabout observations founded in your science.” He concluded.

To which I could only nod in reply. “Correct. So in a similar manner to how the Nexus has uncovered the secrets of magic utilizing their innate gifts, so too have we uncovered the fundamental principles which govern our own reality, using tools and ingenuity to bridge the gap where our physiologies could no longer take us. We discovered that reality can be broken down further than the observable world, and that anything and everything is composed of constituents imperceptible to the senses. Senses which evolved only to be good enough, imbuing us with as much fidelity that was needed to facilitate our physical survival and nothing more. Yet we, as sapient beings, could never be satiated with just good enough. We discovered proof of a reality beneath the one we see, the building blocks of the world we touch, feel, and interact with on a daily basis. We discovered the microcosmos, the constituents of the world on a scale so small that a single grain of sand’s basic components can be counted in the quintillions.”

I took a moment to breathe, before slowly and methodically, I began shaking my head.

"But that wasn’t good enough for us. That just wasn’t enough.” I continued, my voice carrying with it the bottled up passion and excitement of five thousand years of unrepentant progress. “We were hungry, ravenous, and above all else furiously curious for more. So we kept digging down, deeper and deeper, smaller and smaller still, because we knew above all else that if the microcosmos was real, then it had to end somewhere.”

“And eventually, after centuries of searching, we finally found it. Within the science we dub physics, we discovered what we call the fundamental forces. The basic fundamentals that could not be broken down into further constituents except by virtue of mathematical extrapolation. These four fundamentals, which I shall be sparse on for now, act as laws determining how the fundamental building blocks of reality itself interact and decay. And it was within one of these fundamentals, what we refer to as electromagnetism, that we unlocked the ultimate potential of communication… the radio.”

I paused once more, as I rummaged through one of my pouches in preparation of what was to come. “For within electromagnetism, we learned that there existed invisible and imperceptible… waves of energy. Waves of energy derived from and emitted as a result of other properties of the fundamental physical building blocks of the microcosmos. Suffice it to say, we harnessed these invisible waves of energy. We learned to imbue them with information using tools and machines capable of sending and receiving these waves of energy. These… radio waves as we call them.”

“This… etymology is surprisingly straightforward.” The owl finally responded, adding his two cents after intensely scrutinizing every word that had come out of my mouth thus far.

“Yeah, our scientists tend to be a lot more… on the nose when it comes to naming conventions.”

“With all of this being said, Cadet Emma Booker, I do require proof of this concept. Do you have anything which we may observe which could serve as evidence to these claims?”

I grinned excitedly, before pulling out the same earpiece I’d given to Thalmin earlier. “I thought you’d never ask.”

I outstretched my hand towards both Buddy and the Librarian, revealing an unassuming device that the pair looked at with varying levels of scrutiny. Buddy in particular was practically shaking with excitement, though it was clear the owl was holding him back from going all in.

“This is the most straightforward example I can come up with on short notice.” I began. “It’s a two-way variable-range transceiver. Now, I want you to try…” I paused, before using one of my other hands to vaguely gesture at the air around it. “... sensing for its mana-streams, or lack thereof. As far as I know, everything magical in the Nexus requires mana to function right?” I recalled my back and forths with Sorecar, and all of the artifces and magical implements the Nexus was capable of producing en masse.

“Correct, Cadet Emma Booker.”

“It’s logical then to assume that a communications device such as the minor shard of impart or anything within the status communicatia would likewise require mana to function. Either in the form of a-”

I paused, turning to the EVI for support.

“EVI, what were the mana battery things Sorecar mentioned?”

“Mana Ducts for the siphoning of ambient mana, Mana Ampoules as a portable mana-battery analogue, and enchanted cores.”

“Thanks.” I spoke internally, before continuing on seamlessly with the owl.

“-mana duct, mana ampoule, or some form of enchantment, correct?”

“Correct.” The owl nodded in response.

“So with all that being said, I’d like Buddy to take a good sniff of this, see if there’s any mana trickery or magical shenanigans going on. I want to prove that this tool of communication, this Radio, can work without mana.” I offered, causing Buddy to crane his eyes up towards the Librarian expectantly, just waiting for the go-ahead.

A nod of approval from the Librarian was all that was needed for Buddy to absolutely go nuts, as all that pent-up energy went towards his more than eager attempts at data-collection. Though to be fair, data-collection was probably what I’d use to describe this whole scene in my report, because in truth all this really amounted to was copious amounts of sniffing, and the occasional gentle booping.

“NO MANA FOUND! SO MANY UNKNOWN MATERIALS! METAL AND NOT-METAL! CERAMIC AND NOT-CERAMIC! AND A SQUISHY!” Buddy exclaimed, panting excitedly as his forepaws buzzed in a little dance that caused the owl to clack his talons hard against his helmeted head, bringing him down from that overexcitable high.

“You’ve proven your point, Cadet Emma Booker. The artifice in your palm is indeed not imbued with mana, but is in fact, constructed of a great number of other unknown materials.” The Librarian nodded approvingly. “So how do you wish to use this artifice to provide proof to your claims?” He just as quickly threw the ball back to my court.

“Right, so, the earpiece has an effective range of about… four miles, five if we’re pushing it. Though I’d prefer if we found a space where there’s no obstacles in the way in order to maximize the-”

That low dulcet rumbling returned, as the whole room once again began shaking to its core. This time, the very atrium we were standing in suddenly expanded, stretching impossibly long to the point where I actually felt nauseous and disoriented by the sudden shift in perspective. I felt like I was in one of those weird reality-bending VR sims, or one of those MC Escher paintings where the geometry and architecture of a room was just wrong. Before me lay an atrium that was now stretched about five miles in a single direction, with a mysterious shadowy fog artificially obstructing the render distance in any direction but forward.

“Will this distance be sufficient?” The owl asked, pulling me right out of my brain fog.

“Erm, yeah, that’ll do.” I managed out, before kneeling down to Buddy’s height. “So here’s my plan, I’ll affix the device to Buddy’s ear, and he’ll go down five miles in that direction.” I pointed down the impossibly long hall. “Then, I’ll speak into my own internal radio.” I pointed at my helmet’s mouthpiece. “And if everything works well, then you’ll have your proof.”

The owl nodded once, before taking off, pulling with him Buddy’s helmet, giving me full access to his furred head.

The excitable fox was barely capable of holding still as I began the awkward process of putting the device onto an anatomy it wasn’t meant for. However, with a bit of effort, and a lot of finagling with the excess silicone straps, it finally fit snugly in place.

Taking a step back, I couldn’t help but to smile as the little thing looked almost like something out of a star-fighter game. All he needed now was a single eyepiece to complete the look.

“Alright. Ready?” I asked, to which Buddy nodded eagerly, before turning to the owl for final approval.

With a nod from the librarian, the little thing zipped to my right, going behind a bunch of bookshelves, before suddenly, and without warning, appearing right down the newly elongated hall.

“Did he just teleport-”

“That is outside the scope of this discussion, Cadet Emma Booker. Now, please proceed with the demonstration.” The owl spoke with more than a hint of eagerness.

“Alright.” I let out a breath. “Here goes nothing.”

I blinked towards my right, the gesture being enough to activate a secure channel. A stylized image of an earpiece popped onto my HUD completely green and with full bars.

“Hello Buddy, can you hear me?” I spoke, as to my horror and dread I realized I suddenly blew it again. The first words through a radio in the Nexus… or more accurately, in the library… would now forever be recorded as Hello Buddy…

Buddy, however, almost immediately defused that train of thought with a series of excitable cackles that came in loud and clear over the airwaves.

“I CAN HEAR! I CAN HEAR IN MY RIGHT EAR! THE VOICE IS COMING FROM THE ARTIFICE ITSELF! LIBRARIAN! LIBRARIAN! EMMA WAS RIGHT! THIS IS A COMPLETELY NOVEL FORM OF MANA-LESS COMMUNICATION! AHAHAHAHA!” The rest of Buddy’s rambles were a collection of indistinguishable noises that ranged between outright cackles and pure unadulterated wheezes of excitement.

“So it would seem.” The Librarian spoke with a surprising degree of composure, though his eyes betrayed a look of a 20th century entrepreneur having discovered yet another marketable discovery. “Now, I must clarify a few things, Cadet Emma Booker. For the purposes of Category, and not so much Weight.”

“Alright. I’m all ears.”

“Is this… communication, limited to a realm?”

“What do you define as a realm?”

“For the purposes of this exchange, it is a plane of existence bounded by earth and sky.”

“No.” I grinned. “Radio waves travel way beyond the confines of earth and sky.”

The owl, for the first time, visibly shifted at this. Something was happening behind its eyes, and it now remained silent, a conversational cue I was learning meant that it was my turn to bridge the gap.

“It actually goes beyond.”

“Purposely, or as a result of its natural characteristics?” The owl questioned sharply.

“Both. But nowadays, we intentionally beam these waves of energy back and forth, not just within the confines of our sky, but to bodies beyond its reach.”

“To bodies beyond the sky that binds you?” The owl looked at me once more, eyeing my arms, then Thacea’s wings.

“Yes.”

“For what purpose?”

Here was my chance.

“To communicate beyond the confines of what the Nexus might consider a single realm. To communicate with bodies likewise bound by earth and sky, or no sky at all. To communicate with others like me that inhabit the heavens and beyond. In short: to communicate to those beyond my realm. And isn’t that what Status Communicatia is all about?”

Buddy at this point had all but stopped moving, his tail laying perfectly flat, as several more foxes emerged from the woodwork, congregating around our little gathering like followers of some illicit cult.

“And your people, inhabiting the heavens, clarify: how, why, and for what purpose?”

“I’m afraid that is beyond the scope of this exchange.” I answered promptly and without a twinge of hesitation.

The owl, instead of seeming offended, hurt, or in any way indignant from that response, merely stared at me with respect, before nodding once. “That it is.” It spoke, not pressing the matter further.

“But with all that being said…” The owl continued, edging towards a new point. “There is one discrepancy that delineates this novel method of communication from the Status Communicatia.”

“And that is?”

“Your methodology, relying on this fundamental force of nature. It is still bound by the limitations of physical distance is it not?”

My heart skipped a beat at that, taken aback by the owl’s comprehension and dissection of the concept it’d just learned. “Any physical force of nature is bound to the limitations of its laws. This wave of energy, radiowaves, travels at a set speed, and is received at a set distance away, between two points in a given space. Therefore, the distance covered must be covered physically. A delay in time will be observed due to the infinite nature of physical space, especially the space that exists between different points in a physical space. Moreover, the Minor Shards of Impart relies on a methodology that is not bound by physical space. As novel as your explanation is, I am afraid that the information I can provide will be limited to methodologies bound to similar extents, of which there are many within the Nexus.”

“So you want our equivalent of a means of communication that manages to skirt past the fundamental limitations of physical space as a limiting factor in communication?”

“Correct.” The owl clarified, leading to a silence that even he seemed to believe could not be filled.

“We have that too.”

The foxes around me began coming in even closer now, each of their eyes transfixed on my vocoder as if waiting for the next big reveal, the next exchange of information that hasn’t been seen or heard of before.

“Explain.” The owl urged.

“In our race to expand across the heavens, we came across the issue which you speak of. The fundamental limitations of relying on a methodology inherently bound to the rules of the physical space it must physically bridge. This was unacceptable to our government, especially given our governing laws on the welfare of the state and its citizenry. A state must be capable of reacting, responding, and extending its reach within its own designated borders without fail. Traditional communication using radio waves would be insufficient to these ends. We learned that lesson across our tentative first few steps across the stars. Thus, we created another method. A way of skirting around this physical limitation. We came across what we refer to as quantum entanglement, and using that principle, created what is now known as subspace communications. A method of communicating that completely circumvents the limitations of space, binding two particles in two points in space together by an unseen tether, whereby the movement of one elicits the movement of another. These small shifts can be manipulated. And thus, like radio, can be used to transmit concepts using encoding and deciphering. All of this, without needing to physically bridge the gap. All of this being instantaneous.” I paused, taking a huge breath after that spiel, turning to the owl expectantly. “Will this be sufficient?”

The whole room, whilst already quiet, seemed to grow even quieter as I finished my brief explanation of a concept that would require the EVI to step in to properly explain. Yet despite my surface level understanding and explanation, something within the owl’s eyes seemed to click, as it ‘smiled’ in a way only a bird could manage. “Yes. Sufficient enough for your query, at the very least.” The owl spoke with a certain satisfaction in its voice. “And your proof?”

I paused at that, letting out a large sigh in response as I simply shrugged. “Unfortunately, QE systems aren’t as portable nor as readily available as radio. As such, I don’t have one on hand.”

But just as soon as those words left my mouth, did another idea slam against me with the force of a truck.

“EVI.”

“Yes, Cadet Booker.”

“Pull up a partial proof of QE. Nothing that can be turned into something legitimately useful, nothing that could be used for practical application. Just… proof of it. And maybe not even the whole proof.”

“Purposefully block out vital aspects of the theorem?”

“Correct.”

“Affirmative. Uploading results to DATAPAD01.”

I immediately unlatched the datapad from my belt, before turning it towards the owl expectantly and with a smirk underneath my helmet. “But I do have this.” I quickly corrected my course with the owl.

It was clear the librarian didn’t need any prompting to begin devouring the contents on the screen with his eyes. As they began darting from up and down the light-mode enabled device, prompting his pupils to squint somewhat as he adjusted to the light.

It took about half a minute, but after a solid few moments of deliberation, the owl eventually turned his attention back squarely on me.

“Earthrealm… and your kind, are utterly fascinating Cadet Emma Booker.” The owl responded with a certain glee in his voice, as a table was immediately pulled up in front of us. At around the same time, several books began flying from the shelves, landing right in front of Thacea, as if the owl understood what our dynamic was from our first visit here in the library. “Even after all that has transpired, and the trauma that has been incurred upon it, the library reacts with nothing but adamant appreciation and wishes to reciprocate fairly and accordingly.”

Thacea, to her credit, took only a few moments to readjust to the situation. Despite her frazzled appearance, her thousand-yard stare, and her ruffled feathers, she took to the mission like a trooper. Her hands began flipping through the available pages, but reeled back as a few suddenly were drained of ink just as her hands grazed them.

“To clarify, Cadet Emma Booker. Would you wish to exchange the information of the radio for a Nexian equivalent now, or would you like to incur a deficit from the library, garnering credit on your card for this information later? I wish to ask as your inquiry was focused solely on the Status Communcatia and the Shards of Impart, and not the Tethers.”

I raised my brow at that, seeing that several books around Thaceea had gone blank, save for what was presumably the one on the crystal I requested earlier. “So, I’m assuming that right now the only book that’s readable is the one on the Minor Shard of Impart and the Status Communicatia?” I attempted to clarify.

“Correct, Cadet Emma Booker.”

I took a deep breath, looking at all of the information laid out in front of me, and the potential to learn it all now.

“Emma.” Thacea interjected, her voice barely a squeak compared to the vocal range used between me and the owl thus far. I turned to her, as she gave me a look that I immediately understood. “The topic of the Tethers is known to me, and thus we may discuss this later.”

And that’s why you always bring an expert to haggle with the locals.

“I’ll hold off on that for now, thanks.” I shot back with a smile towards the owl, but not before giving Thacea an appreciative nod.

“Very well.” The owl nodded, as several books were pulled back for now, leaving just what we were after.

Thacea didn’t need much prompting as she began diving deep into the books in front of her, starting with one that was open to a page that displayed a prominent diagram of what I immediately recognized as a shard of impart.

The Avinor went to town on reading it immediately, her eyes darting across the page, as I noticed that several of the fox-crowd had slowly begun pulling back into the shadows from whence they came.

I sat across from Thacea, plopping myself down on one of the leather armchairs that surprisingly was able to support my weight.

Letting out a long, tired sigh, I took a moment to shut my brain off for a moment, enjoying the silence of the library, occasionally interrupted by the flipping of pages.

Twenty Minutes passed, as Thacea’s gaze remained transfixed on that first book, flipping back and forth between several pages as if to cross reference what she’d just read.

“Emma.” She finally spoke, her eyes staring right at me as she flipped the book, pointing at a diagram of a crystal, before flipping the page to reveal an image of a familiar crystalline dragon.