One:
Léandros Foster huddled in his worn coat outside of the only public-school building on the street level of Sector Seven. He was tucked in an out of the way corner and hidden safely away from the prying eyes of both staff and students. He couldn’t actually afford to go there, as all education past the age of 10 was considered voluntary, and even though the sector was supposed to pay for all schooling up to the age of 16, well it was up to the discretion of each caseworker, and Christmas bonuses had to come from somewhere. However, this being a public school meant Leo wasn’t technically trespassing, as the building was considered public property. But things like laws and justice had rarely stopped any of the enforcers before. So, the out of the way corner it was.
The window to the year 12 classroom was cracked open, and the sound of the teacher’s voice drifted faintly to his ears. He’d found that if he strained hard enough, well, sometimes it felt like the sound wanted to reach him.
He knew it seemed silly. A fanciful daydream at best, and foolish at worst, but he liked the thought that the knowledge wanted to reach him. It made him feel warm, accepted. He could handle being stupid sometimes if it meant he got to hold on to that feeling of warmth.
He chided himself. No, not stupid, don’t call yourself stupid, he repeated one of his mantras. He’d read in a pre-Integration psychology book that negative self-talk could manifest into negative self-value, so he was working on curbing the habit. So, not stupid, but foolish? No. Childish? Not quite. Juvenile, then? Yes, perhaps just a little bit juvenile. Because if believing in impossible things made him stupid, then he supposed all cultivators must be stupid too. The thought made him smile, then stifle a laugh. Anyways, it made him feel better about eavesdropping on the lessons he hadn’t paid for if he believed the knowledge was reaching back out to him the same way he so desperately sought it out.
Today, the class was learning history. It was the history of the Cold War, the nuclear apocalypse, the resulting Rending of the Veil, and Earth’s integration into the wider universe. It was a history that everyone sort of knew, but only in vague terms. The same way people knew about ‘The Great Depression’ or ‘The Fall of Rome’. Sure, everyone agreed they happened, and the results were observable, but the details were never really clear until you dove into the history books.
On his lap Leo had his most prized possession. A large, heavy notebook with a clasp and a lock. It had hundreds of pages, and even though the leather was faded, worn, and battered away by the ravages of time, it was the best gift anyone had ever given him. For Leo, if a pen was his sword, the book was his shield, and the many scuffs and indents on its soft cover could attest to how literal that sentiment was for him.
Holding the notebook open to an already half-filled page, Leo took careful, painfully small notes about the lecture. This way, he could save as much paper as possible. His pen scratched away in meticulous shorthand as he listened intently.
“…year 1956, one of the idiots from one of the pre-Integration nations who won the politics-pageant that elections used to be, and became a global leader, decided it would be an excellent idea to press the little red button. What had, until that point, been a tense but cold war, quickly became hot. Very, very hot,” a woman was saying. Ms. Goulding was Leo’s favourite instructor. She made everything interesting, didn’t take herself too seriously, and always stayed on topic, instead of straying off on meandering or self-aggrandizing tangents like many of the other instructors Leo had been subjected to.
“History classifies this period after the first nuclear missile was launched not as a war, but as a man-made, global calamity. The devastation was apocalyptic in both nature and in scale. This event – later known as The Great Annihilation – had consequences on a level that nobody at that time even had the language to predict. Not only did fire rain from the sky, not only did the oceans become the graves of billions, not only was the land awash in radiation, but the small pockets of surviving humanity began to descend into chaos. Instead of unifying, consolidating the little flora, fauna, and infrastructure that remained, instead of mobilizing and rebuilding-. What was left of what could generously be called ‘civilization’ at that point was mostly anarchy.
“Then came magic,” Ms. Goulding said, and the students erupted into conversation. Leo grinned. It was a distinctly Earth human word for the incredible powers displayed by cultivators, and practitioners from the greater universe. It was a word from fantasy, and history. It was a concept that was unique to Earthlings, or as the aliens called them ‘Terrans’, and was a term that the cultivators did not appreciate. It was controversial.
Leo loved it. Magic. A fantastical, mystical concept that he’d read so much about in the pre-integration books. Something that could do the impossible. Wave a hand and bring warmth to the cold. Illuminate the darkness with a single thought. With a breath and a gesture turn a barren patch of land into a primordial garden filled with fruit and herbs, birds and trees, flowers, and butterflies, and those chubby, fluffy bumblebees he used to spend hours watching through a small, dirty basement window. Magic, it was a word that meant possibility. Eventually the students settled down enough for the instructor to continue.
“Some call it mana, some qi, some ether, but regardless of what it’s called, the moment the first tiny motes of magic seeped into the world from the freshly pierced barrier between Earth and what has now come to be known as ‘the Veil’, our world changed forever.
“The Great Annihilation; the same event that made the world so much smaller and so much deadlier, was also the catalyst for an incredible event that nobody could have foreseen. The chaos, the death, the unstable energies in the atmosphere; all of this together was necessary to create the perfect circumstances for the Veil to rend. The Rending of the Veil was the event that introduced magic to the mundane world by flooding the Earth with the energy from beyond the Veil. The place we refer to as simply ‘the Beyond’.
“Remember, mana didn’t come all at once. Like an avalanche gaining momentum, after the first rend – the Great Rend - many more tears in the Veil quickly opened. The breaches then expanded, and the world changed. The more mana, the more changes. What had once been burnt-out nuclear wastelands became verdant fields, or mystical deserts, or mana forests. It wasn’t just the landscape that changed either. All life changed. From animals, to plants, to tides and weather patterns. The more mana in the environment, the more changes take place on the planet.”
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Leo hadn’t realized the Earth was still undergoing changes. He supposed half a century and some change wasn’t all that long for the world to have completed the transition from mundane planet to, well, whatever the end of the cultivation journey looked like for a spontaneously ignited celestial body. However, while Earth’s ignition was a topic he’d heavily researched, he had yet to stumble across the idea of ‘World Cultivation’ past the fact that Earth as it was now was known as an awakened world. Even with the meagre information available to an unignited ward of the state, surely something that important would have been mentioned somewhere. It made him incredibly curious about the process of planetary cultivation. He made a note in his book to look into newly ignited worlds when he had access to more information, or at least less restricted access to the same information. Tamping down his frustration at the roadblocks to his curiosity, Leo made a quick note in the margin of his notebook as he continued to listen in to the lecture.
“...here is where we come to the point of our lesson today, students. It wasn’t just the flora, the fauna and the environment that changed; mana changed humanity too. When people became suffused with mana, it seeped into our skin, our organs, our bones. Mich like radiation, it worked its way into our bodies and transformed them. Mana channels were formed, mana cores were created, and humanity gained the potential to wield superhuman power, and to wield mana in ways that had previously been considered only the realm of myth and fantasy.
“Of course, none of those first survirors understood that. It wasn’t until the emissaries from the Coalition’s Council and the Institute came, almost a month after the Ignition, that everything was explained. With the introduction of mana, the greater universe became aware we existed. Though the Coalition’s annexation of Earth, and our subsequent integration came some time later.”
The teacher paused here. The sound of her gentle pacing that had been growing clearer and clearer to Leo’s senses abruptly ceased. Leo tried to imagine why she’d stopped. Tried to create the image of the classroom in his own head.
He pictured what he thought she might look like. Maybe she was someone with pale pink skin, or tanned skin, or darker skin, like his own. He thought about her pacing, then pausing in the middle to turn and face her class. Dark, or light hair would swish or bob about her as she moved. Maybe she was wearing a smile. Perhaps she had kind eyes as she peered at the students. He supposed he would never really know. He’d never jeopardize his listening spot just to confirm his ideas.
So lost was he in his imagination that the sound of her voice almost startled him into making a noise. An incredibly foolish reflex that he thought had been beaten out of him years ago.
“So, students,” she asked. “Why are we rehashing ancient history?” She stressed the word ancient with some amusement. Hyperbole? Leo theorized. Perhaps she was enjoying wordplay, though Leo had little experience with humor, and didn’t know if she believed the 61 years since the ignition would count as ancient, since different people had different perceptions of time. He shook off the errant thought as something for later consideration. “Anybody? Any ideas? Just call them out,” she implored the class.
“Ignition.” “Ignition day!” “Core ignition.” “Ignition.” A jumble of voices mumbled, shouted, or promptly stated.
“Correct! For most of you, today is your ignition day. Glass stars all around!” She announced ike they were a year 1 class that still needed the manaforged baubles as incentives. Not that Leo had ever received one. “The day the veil was pierced is also known as-”
“World Ignition,” Leo barely mouthed the words to himself.
“-World Ignition,” the teacher said, confirming Leo’s thoughts. “World ignition, much like core ignition in a person, is when what happens?” She asked the class.
“High levels of external mana saturation permeate a world’s core causing it to ‘ignite’ and allowing it to manifest and interact with the leylines that are then spread throughout the world.” The nasal voice who began speaking was one that Leo had often heard answering many questions, in many different classes. “This allows a world to ‘cultivate’ and to be able to produce its own mana. In World Ignition it is the world’s core that begins to produce mana that is then channeled through the planet’s leylines and into the environment. When people with ignited cores begin to cultivate it’s their mana cores that collect, refine and produce more mana. It’s also how people with ignited cores gain control over the process that allows cultivators to manipulate mana throughout the mana channels and veins.”
“Above and beyond, as always,” praised the teacher. This was all information Leo only kind of knew about. He knew about mana veins, about cores, and about world ignition. He just hadn’t known the how of it all. Mana saturation, he thought. What an interesting concept. He scrawled it down in neat, tight calligraphy in his notebook and made another note to come back to it later. It seemed pretty important.
A quiet beeping caught his attention, and he looked down to check the time on his innocuous, little, plastic watch. It was from the Single-Standard store, and was about the cheapest digital watch he could get that actually had a timer built in. It had cost him a lot of dignity, and a not insignificant amount of labour to buy, but it was one of the best – if only – purchases he’d made in his young life, and he was proud of it.
The alarm told him he needed to start packing up if he wanted to meet his caseworker at the meetup point on time. At the thought, a tingle passed over his left arm, and he sighed in resignation, absently scratching at it. He knew the scratching wouldn’t actually do anything. But this had only been a tingle, not a throbbing or a burning, or heavens forbid a pulsing. Just a tingle. He’d be alright, he just needed to be careful for the rest of the day. Deep breaths, stay controlled, pack up one item at a time. He’d be fine, probably.
“Just be grateful you trained your right arm to be just as dominant as your left,” he mumbled under his breath. It had taken a lot of hard work, but three months with a bone fracture, and no access to a healer, or any medical care had forced him to prioritize learned ambidexterity. “Needs must,” he muttered as the last of his items was placed gently in his bag.
“… and good luck to all of you on your ignition day.” Leo caught the tail end of the lecture. He knew as well as the students in the class how important today was.
It had taken a nuclear apocalypse, and the rending of the veil to flood the world with enough mana that the world ignited, but even then, there was never any guarantee. The world could have stayed dormant, like so many mundanes did. It could have simply flooded with mana that did nothing but spread and dissipate, leaving those few who were unlucky enough to ignite as powerless as they were before. No, complete saturation, even oversaturation was no guarantee that one had the spark. That one would ignite, and that even if they did, that they’d survive the process of a mana baptism. The world could’ve been a dud. A dreg world.
He could end up a dreg.
The thought felt fundamentally wrong. Like something in the world, or perhaps in himself instinctively rejected the very notion. Dreg. It felt like an expletive even just in Leo’s mind. He would not allow himself to think like that. Not today. No. Today was the day that anybody between the ages of 16 – 18 in Sector Seven could undergo core ignition, for free, at the Coalition Campus. Today Leo would either come out the other end as a cultivator, or he would remain mundane.
Leo had made himself a promise a long time ago, one that he intended to keep. A promise that he would be more. Leo would not be mundane. His life depended on it.