Chapter 24 – Life 6 – Year 195 – The Ministry

The Ministry of History was always going on about how we should learn from the people of the Pre-Apocalypse to shape our current society. But honestly, some of the stuff they ‘learned’ about the past seemed to just be completely made up. Moving pictures, sure, Light Casters could do that easily enough. And supposedly they had some kind of thing called ‘electricity’, sort of like Mom’s powers but more controlled, that could make things happen auto-matically. I suppose those little black bricks the Ministry calls smart phones might have actually done what they say.

But then they go on and on about “airplains” that were used to travel the *entire* world in a matter of days? Ridiculous! Even our best Air Casters took weeks to go around the Five States, not to mention down to the tropical territories down south. And that was one person, imbued with magic! Those heaps of metal the History people parade around are supposed to have sent hundreds of people flying around without any magic at all? One historian tried to tell me that it was powered by a special fuel, but he had told me just a few weeks ago that all the ancients’ fuel was LESS explosive than it is today! Something about Fire Essence changing it, I dunno the specifics. But when I told him that, it was beautiful seeing him stumble around. His face even turned red!

Honestly, while the Pre-Apocalypse people didn’t have to fight monsters all the time (supposedly), they don’t sound so great. Clearly, they were *bored* if nothing else. They had to invent all these stories about wizards and ro-bots and yeah, even big monsters that destroyed cities! Why spend all that time IMAGINING things happening unless nothing interesting was actually happening? I mean, they even had stories of Apocalypses happening! Not quite like the one that actually happened, usually they were about some kind of weapon that could cause explosions that were… poisoned or something, not that that makes sense. But still, imagine living before the Apocalypse and deciding to use all those fancy ancient gadgets to make believe an Apocalypse happened anyway! You wouldn’t do that unless you were very, very bored.

To clear my head from that weird dream I had, and not wanting to talk to my mom’s servants, I decided to go to the marketplace. They traded in not only history stuff, but also monster parts. Most of them were from York, since they had a lot of Metal monsters that were valuable to Metal Folders. But there was stuff from DeeCee, GreatLake, and Ohi too. Ohi in particular was doing very well for themselves right now. Some enterprising group of people had figured out how to kill their Combustion Ants without actually detonating their Fire-Powder sacs. That stuff was quite interesting, it turned out that Fire Folders could absorb it like it was actually on fire, and it give them quite the boost. I heard one girl say that drawing in the stuff felt like she stood in one of the fire pits for several hours, but this powder could be absorbed all at once.

Sadly, even though I thought I was being pretty low-key while going to the market… “Oh, hey! You’re High Caster Martina’s daughter, right?” I sighed. Sadly, Mom was pretty famous for combining her Air Essence with Life Essence, making the never-before-seen Lightning Essence. I was happy for her to be sure, but she was always busy fighting monsters, and that left me and the servants she hired to take the brunt of people wanting to speak with her. I decided to try and be polite, but firm. “Yes, I am. Unfortunately, I’m pretty busy at the moment, so if you’ll excuse me…”

Sadly, the glimmer in the man’s eyes grew. “You are?! That’s great! You see, I’m with the Ministry of History and-“ I tuned him out after that. I knew exactly what he was going to say, I had heard it a hundred times by now. Yes, Mom’s powers were *superficially* similar to Pre-Apocalypse electricity. But no, she could not use those powers AS electricity. We had tried a few experiments to collect her powers in some kind of ‘battery’, but the damn things always exploded every time. Still, that didn’t stop half the Ministry from asking around, sure that there was some clever trick that would let them turn on a bunch of nearly 200-year-old technology. I decided to be a little less polite. “Look, man, I’m sure whatever new test you’ve came up with is very clever, but I am *NOT* the gal to ask about this. If you’re really, really sure about this, you have to go through the official channels. Asking me in the street isn’t going to get you anywhere, just like I told the last 5 guys who tried this. Bye.” I speed-walked away while the man was left stammering.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

As I was walking towards the exit of the market, though, something caught my eye. A shiny blue carapace on display in front of a stall. The line was a tad long, but I decided to wait in it. I wasn’t sure why, but something about that blue coloring reminded me of something… I eventually got to the front of the line, and the stall owner blinked a few times looking at me, clearly having recognized me from the pictures of my mother before realizing I was too young to be her. “Aaand what can I do for you, young lady?” I pointed at the big blue thing behind him. “What is that?”, I asked, somewhat bluntly. He turned around and then chuckled in recognition. “I see you have a good eye. That, my friend, is the carefully preserved armoring of an Evolved beetle. These beetles come from the coast of GreatLake, typically specializing in Earth, but this one combined it with Metal. It makes a rather special type of metal, known for its durability and blue color, that we call-“ “Tài”, I said in recognition. The man blinked. “Er, actually, we call it ‘Mithril’. Some people call it ‘Titanium’, too, but that made the history folks mad because it’s ‘inaccurate’ or something. Where did you hear… ‘Tie’, was it?” I was only half listening to him.

Tài. 钛. It was a word I had only heard and seen in my dreams, but it came to me so suddenly, so easily… Now I realized why the carapace looked so familiar. It was exactly the same as the metal that the swordsman I had been dreaming of used. It wasn’t until just now that I realized that, while I clearly understood every word of those dreams (those I remembered, at any rate), they were all in a completely foreign language. Was that… normal? For someone’s mind to come up with a completely self-consistent dream language… no, I don’t think that was normal. Not to mention, I had never bothered to look for this blue metal before, but the dream had shown it perfectly. I suppose I could have seen it out of the corner of my eye… but no, the more I thought on these dreams, the more they crystalized in my head, and the more I realized the truth. There was something magical going on, and it wasn’t the Six-Essence kind of magic.

I rushed home, briefly assured Mom’s servants that I was okay, and proceeded to look for something in particular. A ‘pencil’, something that the ancients used to write, somehow still able to make markings on paper with ease. On top of that, a book from the Pre-Apocalypse that I had picked up on a whim. It was mostly faded. In something that the Ministry would have yelled at me for, I began to write all that I could remember from these dreams.

An Empire that separated people into camps. A young man with a sword. He was a Metal Caster, though they called it something else. The secrets of High Casting were kept from him, but somehow, he figured it out anyway. He kept his abilities secret, but he was still noticed, and brought to a beautiful city that rivaled even York City. Then, something with an evolved snake that could use sand, something… scary. But he also learned something from it. Exile to a different city, one in ruins. Isolation. Fighting, lots of fighting. A single sword, one he put his whole life into. Why would he do that, wasn’t he a Metal Caster? But then the sword turned a deeper blue, almost purple. And then, a fight. Two Emperors… no, one Emperor, one villain who made an army of skeletal creatures. He said something that chilled the swordsman… and then killed him in a single last-ditch attack.

I tried to convey all this in writing, but the dreams (memories?) flowed faster than I could write. By the time I wrote one scene, I would have remembered and forgotten 3 more. What the hell WAS this? I read stories like this on occasion, but this one was totally real! I could completely see this happening, in real life, just somewhere far away! I hadn’t heard of anyone having this power, except maybe a Light Folder, but even they surely couldn’t spy on one person across the ocean for decades…

There was something else, too. Vague impressions that the swordsman was ALSO plagued by realistic dreams. I couldn’t remember these dreams, but I could remember him speaking of them to his Emperor. If this swordsman was real… did he, too, have this power? Who did he dream of? Did that person dream, too? Where did it end? This was giving me a headache. After deciding I couldn’t remember anything more to write down, I decided to try one more thing. Something in the early memories of the swordsman, when he was just a Metal Caster, had a bit of resonance with me… and after a bit of practice, I had a small metal sword in my hands. I was a Metal Caster, too.