0:095 on the 1st day of Winter

As I left the training yard, part of my mind was still on my observations of my sister's fire magic. Perhaps it was a powerful need to distract myself from my problems but I wanted to set up an experiment as soon as possible. I headed out and made my way to the workshop. It was a day off so, despite arriving late I was the only one there. I went into the storeroom to retrieve what I would need. I set up an apparatus with a large glass jug and a small glass bottle to add fire mana in small controlled increments.

Baldor and Uote came into the workshop then. They gave me a friendly wave, which I returned, before they came over to say hi.

"What are you doing here on a day off?” asked Uote with a smile.

"I was going to ask you both the same thing." I said.

"Flood says we are heading into the mines to test the drill in two days. We're just here making sure it's ready." she said. "What are you doing with the bottle?"

"A bit of an experiment on fire mana. Would you like to join me?" I asked.

Uote looked at Baldor with a hopeful expression.

"Your part is finished and all I need to do is update the notebook." said Baldor. "Go for it."

She gave a nod and we got to work.

I had her get a small candle with a long wick that I then tied to the copper wire. The jug’s cork stopper already had a brass valve. I pushed the copper wire through the cork and then fixed the cork in the jug. I made sure it was as tight as I could get it and then Uote checked my work. I explained the experiment as I wrote things down.

"We learned from the book that Flood assigned that if you take a fire core and a fire conjuration channel the mana will act as a fuel for the ignition of fire spells." I said.

I opened one of the drawers in my work desk and got out a fire core. Then I slotted it into a firestarter tool I had made from a salamander tooth.

"Fire needs three things: fuel, heat, and air." I said as, with the valve open, I touched the firestarter to copper wire to test that it worked. The candle lit in the bottle just as I wanted it to.

“I want to know how flammable fire mana is compared to, say, methane.” I said. “Normally, we would do this experiment by slowly adding more fuel to the mixture until we got it to combust. But fire mana works differently from a gas. For example, we know it can be channeled through copper wire. Which is really weird.”

She pondered that for a moment then replied.

“So, you're going to add more fire mana to the bottle until the candle lights?” she asked. “Seems simple enough.”

“Yes and no.” I said. “The problem is there isn't an easy way to measure exactly how much fire mana we are adding to the jug.”

I took out the smaller bottle.

“That's what this is for.” I said.

We worked together to rig up the bottle with a method to mount multiple copper wires suspended within.

I then retrieved a magic device that used air mana to expand a volume of air. It looked like a pen and was made with the wings of a bullet betal, a kind of longhorn beetle that propels itself in short bursts to ram or skewer its prey. We used it to clean dust out of hard to reach places in equipment. With one hand on the bottle’s valve I touched the expander to the copper wire and air started rushing out. Now we have something close to a vacuum.

"Test 1, charging one copper wire." I said as I touched the fire starter to the bottle’s copper wire and… nothing. Good. As expected.

"Nothing." I said.

"So far so good then." said Uote. "We’re ready to start."

I took the bottle over to the large jug and attached it to its valve.

"The copper wire holds one unit of fire mana, However much that is.” I said. “When we connect the bottle, the air from the jug will rush in and contact the wire. We should see a small spark of fire if one wire of fire mana is sufficient to ignite the candle.”

With everything connected and checked I slowly opened the valve. Both bottles suddenly glowed with bluish purple light. I flinched then pulled Uote away from the bottles. When we were a fair ways off I let out a long breath.

"I'm sorry about pulling you away like that.” I said. “That was really unexpected.”

She scowled at me and pointed to the cabinet that held the safety gear. We put on heavy leather gloves, thick aprons, and iron face shields with small quartz lenses. We walked back to the experiment but the glow was gone.

"What do you think happened?" she asked.

"I don't know." I said. "But I want to see that glow again."

We covered the bright leaf lanterns in the room to make it darker and then repeated the experiment with exactly the same result. When air was added to the bottle, there was a purple glow in both bottles that quickly faded. The light took about a mark to fully disappear but, looking at it within the glass, I finally remembered what it reminded me of. A neon light from earth. The buzz wasn't the same, this was more like soft white noise with lots of crackling and popping. But the glow was as if the air was being ionized.

Stolen novel; please report.

The air in the jug had to be replenished after each test because of the smoke. It had a strong, harsh odor kind of like car exhaust but not quite. But there was nothing to burn in the bottle except mana so where was the smoke coming from? Was I burning the coper. I checked and nope. Despite some oxidation, the wire was unmarred.

I wrinkled my brow in confusion. Air only ionizes under extreme temperatures. Like within a bolt of lightning extreme. I took off my glove and put my hand on the wine bottle. It was a bit warmer than before but not much. What the heck was going on?

"Clearly the fire mana is not acting as a fuel or at least it is doing something else too." I said as I turned to Uote. I explained to her the glow just before my sister's fireball spells.

"If we assume that the purple glow we just saw was the same one that precedes the fireball spell then what could we conclude?" I said, tapping my finger to my chin.

"The reaction was incomplete." said Uote. "It almost made a fireball spell but maybe there wasn't enough mana?"

"Probably true." I nodded. But that didn't explain why it looked like a neon light. I closed my eyes and tried to remember everything I could about neon lights. They worked by using high voltage electricity to ionize gas. Well, ionization is a process that pulls the electrons off of atoms and has the byproduct of light emissions. If that's really what is going on then the purple glow is a plasma of mostly nitrogen and oxygen ions. Then I realized something. Neon is used in lights because noble gasses don't form chemical bonds. Ionizing nitrogen and oxygen would allow them to recombine into all sorts of oxides like nitrous oxide and nitrogen dioxide. That oxidation would be highly energetic, maybe even enough for a fireball.

"It burns nitrogen as fuel…" I said dumbfounded.

"What was that?" asked Uote. I had to think how I would explain just how crazy this was without using terminology or concepts from Earth.

"What color is lightning?" I asked.

"Blue or purple, I think." she said.

"Right, what I think we just saw are like the conditions within lightning, but much slower." I said.

Her eyes went wide at that.

"Basically, I think that the fire mana is breaking apart the air itself to burn for fuel rather than acting as the fuel." I said.

"Interesting idea, but how would you test it?" she asked skeptically.

Then I remembered that the copper wire corroded. I looked and sure enough, there were traces of green copper oxide where I had placed the firestarter and all along the channel. I smiled as I knew exactly how I would test it. I opened a drawer and rummaged through before finding an iron hinge that had been left over from another project.

"I can't prove I'm right but I can at least prove that fire mana is not a fuel." I said as I placed the hinge on the floor, then retrieved the fire starter tool. I touched it to the iron and waited.

"If I'm right about the purple glow then I expect this iron to quickly rust." I said. “If I'm wrong then it will simply get hot, without any rust.”

It took about two measures to see a visible change in the metal. The rust spread out from the point of contact but also collected at the edges of the material. After five measures the hinge started to glow a dark red. Rusting is extremely exothermic, meaning that it generates a lot of heat, so it's not too surprising. I stopped the test at that point and turned a new page in my lab notebook. I thanked Uote for her assistance and got to recording the results.

This wasn't some revolutionary discovery. Fire mana was used in metallurgy all the time. But I did manage to disprove the model that was in the textbook. It was a ray of truth on the mystery of magic. It was also a fantastic distraction from thinking about the way my life was going.

***

0:070 on the 3rd day of Winter

I wish this world had coffee. The silence and dark of the tunnels under Cinder were making me want to go back to sleep.

“How far are we going?” Asked Hroadant.

He and I were currently pushing our supply cart from the rear.

“We're in for a forty measure walk from the entrance.” said Flood.

“That puts us near the outer edge of the mine, no?” asked Baldor.

He and Uote were pulling the cart from the front.

“Just past it.” said Flood. “They didn't want us disrupting any of the tunnels that are actually in use.”

That was a bit concerning, the underground was patrolled by the mine guard but their parameter didn't extend much past the mine. Beneath the surface on Root was very different from Earth. Magic meant that a bunch of monsters and animals evolved to dig through the ground extremely efficiently. There were lava worms, and giant naked mole rats that made underground colonies, and a million other creatures that dug permanent or semi-permanent tunnels through stone. That made for a crisscrossing mess of passages that us humans could clear out and use. I have heard it said that you could walk from here to the capital without seeing the sky.

So when he says that we are going to a site just past the edge of the mine, he means that we will be very close to areas where those very monsters could live. Great. I had no problem staying awake now. To pass the time I struck up a conversation with Hroadant, Uote, and Baldor about the materials for the cold steam portion of the enchantment on the mana drill. Apparently the gale roc was fairly rare and you had to get the beak intact to keep any efficiency.

There was a loud boom and crack that echoed through the tunnel. Conversation stopped abruptly and we all waited to see if more noises would follow. Then we heard voices calling from far off. We couldn't make out what they were saying but they didn't sound worried or upset so after a measure we decided to keep going. We eventually passed through a cave with dozens of workers moving ore into large bins. We saw an earth mage lift a bin full of rocks that must have weighed twenty tons without magic. To my eyes it looked like the rocks were stage props made from styrofoam. I offered him a friendly wave but his hands were full so he only gave a curt nod in reply.

After that our group was quiet for a while.

"Why do you think there are so few mages?" asked Baldor. He wasn't asking anyone in particular but just seemed curious and wanted to break the silence. He was technically a water mage but was so weak that he could barely levitate a teacup.

"It's in the blood." said Hroadant with a shrug.

"I hear mages used to be super rare." said Uote. "Two hundred years ago, a city as big as Cinder would only have a few tens of mages in it. Now we have hundreds."

"Ya, but why. Everyone has a core don't they?" said Baldor.

"They say that awakening can be triggered by stressful situations" I said. "Maybe the war has awakened more mages."

"You are half right." interjected Flood with his lecturing voice. "Magic is a blessing from Ohm. If there are more mages it means more people have been found worthy of his blessing. Bravery in battle is certainly one way to be found worthy but by no means the only way."

He was referring to the god of magic. Ohm was venerated by lots of mages as his church taught that magic could be beautiful as well as powerful, both constructive and destructive. He was mostly a ‘great power bringing great responsibility’ kind of god but not everyone ascribed to that philosophy. There was also a strain of Ohmists that saw magic as a sign of a divine mark of superiority. These mage supremacists often saw and treated mundane people as fundamentally crippled or simply worthless. Flood had never struck me as that extreme but he had made a few offhand comments that made me think he was at least a bit magist.

"We're here!" said Flood checking his map again. "Start unpacking the tools. No slacking off, we have a lot of work to do."

I looked around at the tunnel. There were several marks on the wall denoting our location underground to folks that knew how to read them. Flood took us about thirty paces past the marks and scratched a big X on the wall with some chalk. I held out my bright-leaf lantern to try and see a bit better. This part of the tunnel was much wider, perhaps ten meters across but nothing really stood out to me. Well, I had better get to work.