A/N: Sorry that this turned out to be full of magic theory. Somehow the characters didn't want to talk about anything else. I'll write the next part in the POV of the knights, which should be more interesting.
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"I see what they mean by this place is unnatural," Cato said.
The mine was cut straight into an artificial cliff face. No strata in the rocks or water existed to explain the gravel filled ledge and the hole the mountainside. The First hadn't bothered to conceal it at all, they just left an unmarked hole in the mountain.
And it really was in the middle of nowhere. The mountainside ascended steeply upwards, topping off with a glitter of snow capped rocks many kilometers away. The tops of the mountains brushed against the cloud layers and looked like giants shrouded in misty cloaks under the morning sun.
"All right, we suspect the crystals are the ground version of the firestorm," Cato opened a crate, "let's take a set of readings. "
"Why are you unpacking the magic sensor now?" Tarral asked, "aren't you going to use it inside?"
"We need to establish a baseline reading, when we aren't disturbed by the magic in the mine," Cato explained as he and Landar set up the device. With a very gentle hand, he placed the needle like tip of the swinging arm on the roll of paper.
Landar screwed the sensing head of the magic sensor into a modified crystal power box. "We're doing a calibration?" she asked and Cato nodded.
He unfolded a strip of extremely expensive crystals. These magic crystals had been painstaking shaved from large single crystals down to a series of weights. Standardization experiments had shown that individual crystals did not differ in power output if their weights and surface areas were the same. And that the box was the same and properly evacuated of magic in the same way, the list of control conditions to get good readings was nearly too many to count.
Not to mention that cutting a set of crystals to jewelry grade only to consume them was an expense that few others could afford. Even Cato had to trade in some favours to the jeweler to avoid breaking his bank. He could afford it out of pocket but the money could better used for other things and a few introductions to the daughters of high society was free.
Once the crystal was affixed onto its pedestal a carefully calibrated distance from the sensor then Cato shut the door and screwed it tight the standard two and a half turns. He nodded.
Landar activated the rollers and the spring arm, which jumped to life and wobbled a slow steady line across the moving paper with the sharp pencil head. The enchantments had been calibrated too, for consistency in rolling speed. All the minor details that many people overlooked had to be accounted for if this experiment was going to work.
The box glowed a little in magic sense and the line dropped flat to one edge of the paper, signifying the baseline signal of the box walls.
"Next," Cato said as he opened the door and took the second, slightly larger crystal that Landar handed him. The line jumped up a little bit higher than the previous crystal.
At the mine entrance, Quinn and his party of knights watched them burn a small fortune to obtain a few squiggly lines and shook their heads in disbelief.
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"We'll take a reading about every ten meters," Cato said, "just mark the spot and we'll measure the distances and angles later. Calibration again inside the mine and once more outside before we leave. "
That left two spare sets of calibration crystals, just in case.
The needle twitched upwards as they entered the mine entrance and continued to head ever upwards as they approached the center of the void. The crystals had long been removed and only a rough stone floor remained.
"I think that's a pretty good confirmation that there is a magical concentration here," Cato said after the calibration was done. The box pumped the magic out and the needle dropped back to baseline despite the concentrated magic outside. "It seems pretty obvious to suspect a link between the concentration and the presence of these crystals. "
"But the crystals are gone," Landar pointed out, "why is there still a concentration?"
They looked around the chamber. "A good question," Cato said, "maybe this is like just before a Firestorm? We've removed the fire, but the conditions, meaning the mountain, is still here. So it might create the crystals again if the mountain gets bigger. "
"Or perhaps the crystals are still growing," Tarral said, scuffing his boot at the stone near the center of the void.
There a tiny glitter in the rock chips. They shared a glance and then the entire party of knights joined by Cato and Landar was scraping away at the bits of rock scattered over the floor.
That revealed the true floor below the covering. It was glittery, with tiny tiny facets of crystals buried in the lumpy uneven stone. They were even growing on some of the chips.
"We are standing the middle of a crystal growing region, then," Cato said, "luckily, it's not fast or deadly like a Firestorm. That explains why the First left some crystals behind. They didn't leave anything, it just grew once the First stopped mining the place. "
"I think this is good confirmation that the magic we're detecting here is causing this crystals, it fits what we know of magical weather. So, we just have to use it," Landar rubbed her hands, "do we build our own mountain?"
"That seems rather inefficient," Cato smiled, "let's go look for some more clues. "
An hour of searching proceeded, turning up a few more spots growing crystals but none as big as the patch in the center. Cato took samples and was examining them, trying to find some relationship with the concentration of magic detected.
"I don't think our sensor is sensitive enough to do this," Cato said, looking over the calibration graph again, "I think this big patch has a slightly higher concentration but it's still within error. We'll need to get a new... Landar?"
Landar hummed and tapped the power box they had re-engineered for their sensor. The faraway look on her face as she played with her ponytail idly was familiar. After all, Cato had looked like that a few times himself when he was deep in thought.
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Cato ventured, "thought of something?"
"How do we extract power from crystals anyway?" Landar asked, "think about how the crystal evapouration chambers work. The walls pump the magic of the box out, to deplete the inside of the box of magic. This costs some power, which we know as the minimum power required to run a box. Then the crystals inside evapourate to fill the void, which we then pump out again, only this time we get to keep some of the magic coming out. This is like the power draining spells that can take power from other spells, only we're now taking it from ambient magic. But why does moving ambient magic out of the box cost power, but moving the magic evapourating from crystals give power? Are the two magics different somehow? That was just how we noticed the effect when trying to liberate the energy in the crystal, but what explains this effect?"
Hm. But magic behaved like a gas, yes?
"I think it's due to the gradient," Cato said, "if I'm guessing this right, if magic moves around inside spells like a gas, if all of that was right, then this just like a river. Water flows downhill. So does magic. If you move magic from a high concentration to a low concentration area, then you get to keep some of the power, like running a stream through a waterwheel. If you move magic uphill, from a low concentration to a high concentration, that's like pumping water up to a house, that costs you power. "
"It doesn't explain how power accumulates here though," Landar said, gesturing around the cavern, "isn't this moving water uphill?"
"Indeed," Cato nodded, "but that can be explained if normal non-magical matter exerts an influence on magic. For example, in cold wet and dark places, miasma gathers. Fire likes very high heat. And perhaps magic that forms crystals is attracted by the huge mountain here. "
"So you're going to light a fire to collect magic?" Landar asked skeptically.
That sounded rather suicidal, someone else could try. Oh, but magic behaves like gas, doesn't it? Why would magic not be a physical thing? Just not interacting with normal physical objects?
Cato frowned as he thought, "the question is, if magic concentration is a thing. If magic itself is a thing that you can move around, then... why not just box it up and take it away? It doesn't have to be in crystal form, does it?"
Landar snorted and looked at their sensor. She hefted the calibration box, "well, help me set up this box and we'll see if we can't scoop out some magic. "
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The answer was, they could. After three trips into the mine, and using the box to pump the magic out once they were outside, Landar was now carrying a box with a net surplus of magic. A small surplus but it was a proof that the concept was viable.
"This is like carrying water uphill to pour on the waterwheel," Landar said, huffing as they put down the box again outside the mine. The box grew a little bit brighter in the magic sense. The needle obligingly twitched upwards a notch once they reconnected the sensor rod to the delicate needle.
"Yes, completely inefficient," Cato added, "there's no way we're going to make a box light enough to actually make a profit if you move the box with magic. We need a different way to move the magic out. "
"Hm?"
"Since we can carry the magic out in the box, like scooping up the magic, that must mean that you can use acceleration spells to move the magic. Or perhaps moving walls of magical barriers. Non-disruptive barriers like the walls of the box. Just without the wall. " Cato mused.
"You're forgetting that non-alchemy spells degrade too quickly. We've earned what, less than a unit of power? With the depth of the mine, we'll still be spending more magic to get the magic out than we earn back from it," Landar said, "moving faster costs magic, making a bigger wall costs magic, moving slower also costs magic through the spell's leaking, we don't earn enough. "
"Hmm. "
They pondered for another long while, looking at the knights cooking the evening dinner. A large luxurious hunk of preserved meat was roasting slowly over the fire.
"We can continue this over dinner," Landar licked her lips.
"Wait," Cato stopped her, still staring at the hole in the mountain, "magical barriers like this box and the disruption barrier all block magical effects. This includes things you wouldn't normally consider magical effects, right? Like magic sense. You can't sense a crystal that I've put in the box, you only see the box. What if the attraction force of the mountain is the same? If you built a really long box that reached all the way into the mountain from here, then you could put magic into the box at the center of the mine, then pump it out up here. This wouldn't work if the gradient still applies inside the box but barriers block magical forces. The question is, does it block this attractive force from normal matter?"
He took out a spare sheet of paper and drew the long box, like a straw stuck into a lump of shaved ice. "If you pumped magic into the bottom at the same rate as it left the top, you can control the density inside the box to be somewhere in between the high magic end inside the mine and the low magic end outside. Then both active faces power themselves. "
He tapped the sheet and muttered, "but how to do this experiment... we're going to have to come back with a really huge box or just an anvil and raw iron and make the box here..."
Landar walked up behind him and looked at the diagrams. She just laughed and pointed at the hole in the mountain. "Remember what you told me?" she said, looking at Cato holding his drawings of boxes, "you don't have to enchant the threads. Just enchant the ground!" Landar gestured at the tunnel walls, "we have a box here already! We just need to put up a non-alchemy wall and factor in the rate of attrition. For an experiment, that'll do. "
Cato grinned and nodded, "I admit I forgot. Indeed, that sounds like a plan. We'll have to enchant the entire tunnel but I think you have enough power, no?"
Landar smiled triumphantly. Then she thrust out a skewer of salted meat. "But we're going to eat first," her stomach grumbled a little.
Cato took the skewer gladly. "We'll start after dinner," he agreed.