image [https://imgur.com/Gey7MJV.jpg]
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Since our train was too damaged to take us the rest of the way, we needed to find a new method to finish the trip to Little Conberg city. Fortunately, Marek was a step ahead.
“I’ve talked with the Royal Guard. They’re willing to drive us there safely.”
“What about Tori and the lady?” I asked him.
“Not to worry. They’ll be taking those two straight to the Cathedral of Life. They’ll be safe.”
That was good to hear. Hopefully once they got to the church, they wouldn’t have to worry about people hunting them down anymore.
“The Cathedral of Life…” Yamin uttered to herself, sounding a little melancholy. “Mom, last time we heard about that…”
Miss Lauri put a counseling hand on her daughter's shoulder. “That’s been on my mind too. It’s been a few years.”
The sadness they both shared ported over to the rest of us.
“Is everything okay?” Marek asked.
“Y-yeah,” Yamin nodded. “I’m fine, I guess…” she said quietly, glancing at me, but quickly turning away.
Something was really bothering her, but it didn’t seem like she wanted to go into it right now.
Miss Lauri offered a perky smile to us instead, shifting our tracks back onto the journey. “With that mafia business over and done, how about we get to Conberg, eh? I know a great little café place where we can stop and get something to eat.”
I was super hungry from all that fighting. Breakfast never sounded so good!
~☆☆☆~
We arrived in Little Conberg city at a very early hour in the morning. The Royal Guards dropped us off in front of the city train station, since that was where we were originally going to get off anyways.
Miss Lauri’s niece had someone on standby to pick us up when we were ready, but the group wanted to do some sightseeing before that. We had a little time since the meeting wasn’t until later. Plus, I wanted to see this cute little café that Miss Lauri started bringing up.
Speaking of which, that lovely destination of baked goods and caffeinated beverages wasn't too far away. We had two options of getting there: a city street flooded with rushing businessmen, or a leisure walk along a park trail. The trail was longer, but it seemed like a no-brainer to get some stress off ourselves.
My goodness, the café was as nice as Miss Lauri claimed it would be. So simple in design, but that was nice in a way. The real treat here was the view. They let us sit outside on a balcony since it was nice out.
I was closest to the edge, so I kept kneeling backwards in my chair to peek over the railing. It was such a pretty view of a park just before the ocean. So many people were taking morning walks, some even bicycling around. It looked so lively.
“Hey, mom.” Yamin stood up. “I’m going to get another ice tea. Do you want one?”
“Oh, yes!” she nodded.
I wanted something from inside too. They had these really big cookies with glowing blue chocolate chips. I had to have one. Yamin told me she’d get me one if I was a good girl, which I was.
I followed her back inside. She pulled out her coin purse and got enough money for everything. I made sure to pick the cookie with the most chocolate chips on it. I even counted them all!
“Okay… Now we wait in line.”
The line wasn’t long, but the baristas were making drinks on the go. It was going to take a few minutes for some things to be ready.
*GRRRGGRR!*
*WVOOOOW!*
*BING!*
With all the noises from the machines, you’d think they’d be annoying, but something about listening to them was soothing. It was the simplicity of early morning culture, I suppose.
As if mocking my sudden clarity with pure contrast, all the noise suddenly stopped and the lights turned off. The only things illuminating the café were the big front window and a bunch of the radiant magical treats they had stocked.
“What the heck?” a guy behind the counter grunted. “Come on… Not again.”
“I’ll go mess with the fuse box,” a woman in an apron said.
“No, don’t bother. It’s not us.”
This must have been a power outage. Were these common?
“Hey! Brice!” A young guy in a greasy looking apron came in through the front door. “You guys lost power too?”
“What do you think?” The guy named Brice said. “Damn mana is drying up everywhere, I swear.”
Huh…? Mana drying up?
If my own history had anything to say about it, mana droughts were not a good thing. Last year was a good example of how much all life needed spirit energy to survive.
I walked up to the counter and rang the little bell to get his attention, hoping he’d clarify with some sort of explanation.
*BRING!*
“Excuse me, Mister Brice,” I waved.
“Huh? Oh, hey, kid. What’s wrong?”
“What do you mean that the mana is drying up?”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
He chuckled, then leaned over the counter.
“Don’t your parents talk to you about this stuff? The mana wells in the country are running dry.” He flipped a switch on one of the spinning displays to show it wasn’t turning on. “Everything runs on mana power here. Without mana, nothing works.”
Time out… Something didn’t add up there. What was a mana well, and why was it running dry? I’m not surprised that humans use mana to produce energy. It’s clean, it’s abundant, and it probably wasn’t hard to collect for them. But I’ve never heard of a thing called a ‘mana well.’
“What’s a mana well?”
“Ahh, you must be in preschool.”
How old did he think I looked?!
“A mana well is a reservoir of mana energy that is mined out of the ground. The planet only has so many of them before it runs out. Once it’s gone, we need to find a new source of energy.”
What? Everything he just said was wrong.
“No, you don’t understand.” I shook my head. “Mana isn’t just stuck in pockets under ground, it’s made in Elysium where it…”
Yamin put her hands over me and pulled me back.
“I’m sorry, we’ll be going now. Good luck getting the power back on.”
She dragged me outside and then turned me around.
“Hey!?” I announced. “I was trying to tell him that mana is infinitely made in Elysium. And I didn’t pay for my cookie!” I waved the magic cookie in the air.
“He won’t listen,” Yamin shook her head. “None of them will.”
She tried to take my hand and walk us back up the stairs to the balcony.
“But, he was wrong.” I said. “The mana around here can’t dry up. That’s impossible.”
“Yalda, just let it go. It’s a political thing. Half the country won’t believe you. Plus, even though you’re right, nobody can prove it.”
So, first of all, she was saying that these people believed that mana was just a finite resource in the planet's crust, which I could FACTUALLY prove was wrong. I grew up in Elysium, I knew that’s where all the mana came from. I have loads of data in my memory that proved it.
Mana is produced in Paradina, the moon at the core of the world. It floods the air of Elysium and goes through caves, transporting it to the surface. What’s likely happening is that people are pulling mana out of the caves for power, but might not be efficiently doing it.
“I’m gonna go ask Uncle what’s going on.”
“No, wait!” Yamin panicked. “Don’t get my mom involved in this! Please. She'll get freaky...”
Yamin was holding me back from going up the stairs, so I spawned my wings to startle her, then flew up the rest of the way. No way she’d be able to hold onto me after that!
“Yalda, nooooo!”
“Na na naa na na!” I taunted her.
“Oh crud…here we go,” Yamin face palmed.
~☆☆☆~
“Uncle, Uncle!” I flew above the table and landed in my seat. All the people on the balcony turned in surprise to see me fall out of the sky. “The power went out, and they said it was about mana wells drying up or something. What does that mean?”
The very moment I finished speaking, I could feel the air around Miss Lauri suddenly climb in temperature along with a vein popping on her forehead. She kept her characteristic smile, but an aura of suppressed rage brewed around her…
“Here we go…” Uncle hid his eyes with his hat and rested his chin on a fist.
“What’s wrong, Mel?” Miss Lauri spoke through grit teeth. “It’s not like humanity decided to bandwagon against scientific evidence or anything. Nope! Clearly infinite mana is just a lovely little myth!”
She was nearly screaming. All the curious eyes that were once on me for fluttering down now aimed at her, only turning sour and angered by her loud tone.
I think I might have struck a chord that was better off avoided…
“Maybe it might be best if we take this conversation somewhere else, no?” Marek gestured with his eyes at a bunch of people giving us dirty looks. Their hands were reaching for garbage items, preparing to aim at us as if we were trash cans.
“No…I won’t get mad that people try to discredit my field of study and all of magical science. Not me.”
“Woman’s seething,” Indena commented.
“Darn right I am!” There was a fiery passion in Miss Lauri’s eyes. This really offended her to the max.
“Uncle, what’s going on?” I tugged his coat.
Uncle put his hat back up and took my hand as he was preparing us to leave. “Here on the surface, Elysium, or as it’s known by scripture, the Heart of the World, is just a myth. Or at least, skeptical people like to push that belief. So instead, they believe that mana comes from hidden pockets they dig up from underground.”
What a bunch of hooey. Why would anyone push an idea like that?
“They call my moms work Infinite Mana Theory.” Yamin finally climbed the stairs and rejoined us. “Emphasis on the ‘theory’ part. She hates it because she studies geo mana streams all the time, especially when they connect with Nazalian ruins.”
That would explain why Uncle wanted her to come along with us. She probably knew a lot about the Nalnara portal network if she studied it for a living.
“Hey, where have you been?” I asked her.
“Paying for that cookie you took!” She had a mean look, it kinda looked like her mom, and by extension, Indena. I felt really bad for accidentally walking out with this thing. But hey, at least it was a tasty cookie. Totally worth the mistake on my part.
Anyways, by this point we were leaving the café, since it was getting a little uncomfortable to continue this conversation with all the mean faces around us. I didn’t know if we upset them by being loud, or they didn’t believe Elysium made all the mana in the world. Either could be true, maybe both. I didn’t want to stick around and ask.
“Something doesn’t make sense about all this,” I started. “Why is the mana running out here even though Elysium never stops producing it?”
“There’s probably something wrong with their infrastructure,” Uncle suggested. “Ever since we fixed Pylon 83, the mana production in Elysium has been just fine. I’m not detecting any anomalies either. Maybe a year ago they would have noticed, but now there must be something going on around the surface to cause an issue.”
“If one exists at all,” Miss Lauri clarified.
“A cave in, maybe?” I asked.
“Mana can travel through rocks, and would likely just end up carving out a new vein in no time.” Uncle said. “Something else must be going on.” Uncle turned to Miss Lauri. “You might be able to shed some light on this. Figuratively speaking.”
“I’d say so. But Mel, I thought you had a grasp of all this?”
Uncle shook his head. “We only patrol so far into those caves before we risk being detected by humans.”
Uncle’s always worried that we’d interfere with human development. He and dad figured it was best to let humans advance as much as they could on their own, rather than become dependent on our work. Despite that, it seemed like dad had done a few things for humans here and there. Unfortunately, it wasn’t always in our favour, like with the Family of Sai and their crystal hearts.
“From my understanding, nothing has fundamentally changed about the caves or how we collect mana power from them. So my only theory is that the mana is likely not reaching the collection plants.” Miss Lauri concluded.
“Like something taking it before it reaches us?” Marek suggested.
“Exactly,” Miss Lauri nodded.
It was very possible that something could be taking the energy before it reached the surface. But it would be impressive if they were able to control so many veins all at once. There was a lot of mana constantly being brought to the surface.
“We should make sure to bring this up at the meeting today,” Uncle suggested. “The Queen might have more info then we do right now.”
That was a good idea. This meeting was going to be a big thing, so I started keeping notes in my head of what we’d need to talk about.
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