Transliteration

These wings give flight, but all the wonders I desire rest on land.

* * * * * * * *

Professor Iya kept his stare on Iago a moment longer. “Come by my study in your next lectureless day.”

Iago let go of Eulylia in that moment and brought his hands back into his pockets. “Yes, sir.”

Professor Iya nodded once and turned his focus to the rest of the lecture hall. “And to all my students present: welcome. Energy Transliteration is the subject of this quarter. Please leave if you are in the incorrect room. Innatiers and natural humans are to obtain special permission from Ayren in order to take this course. I am usually notified of such exceptions, and I have not received any such notifications for this quarter.”

Among the sea of vibrant hair colors, two scholars lacking streams of ivory hair parted from the crowd and looked up at Professor Iya.

“Uhm,” one hummed, his hair a dark brown, “where would the Hall of Natural History be? I thought it was supposed to be in a glass building?”

“The other side of campus.”

The scholar nodded in understanding and pulled his friend, a girl with chestnut hair, toward the door.

“Wait.”

The two stopped mid-step at Professor Iya’s demanding boom. The girl gulped before turning to face him.

“You’ll be late to class going that way. It’ll surely be a third hour’s walk this season, if done briskly.”

The two friends glanced at each other, confused as to what other possible way could get them to class.

“Come up here,” Professor Iya ordered, casually gesturing them closer to him. “I know Professor Cobella. Quite a wonderful woman, but with a terrifying temper for those tardy. Will probably poison you to the Academy Hospital so that your lesson is learned. Let’s not get on her bad side—at least, not on the first day. Come now. Hurry here.”

The two scholars climbed up the stage and approached him, hands gripping each other as if they were approaching their death.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” Professor Iya eased as he waved his hand in a circular motion at the wrist, splashing about the air in the empty space beside him. “Someone gets lost every quarter. You’ll get there on time. Don’t fret. Exactly why I address class eight minutes earlier on the first day.”

Mist formed beneath his rotating hand. As the mist condensed further into a thick fog, he looked out to the crowd and fixed his eyes on another near the front. Her hair was a warm citrine yellow with tips in ivory and black, eyes matching the same pitch of darkness.

“Lady of the Aves clan,” Professor Iya gestured her toward the stage.

The harpy jumped back a little, not knowing how to react to receiving attention from the entire hall. “I—Zuki, professor.”

“Zuki. Could you do a favor for a fellow classmate and offer one of your feathers?”

“I… oh, of course,” she fumbled, and rushed her way up the stairs. Zuki’s steps were light, as if she was hopping her way up. Iago mentally laughed at the energy that bounced out from her usual shyness.

“Any feather will do,” Professor Iya added. The clump of foggy air beside him had now become a cloud the size of a pillow.

Zuki nodded and split her wings open behind her. What was originally at a length that reached from shoulder to knees now doubled in size, revealing a majestic design of green, yellow, and ivory speckled with red. The swing lifted her own light body up for a bit before the air around her settled down. She tipped her wing forward for Professor Iya to pluck a feather out from her.

“Thank you, miss,” Professor Iya said, taking an ivory-tipped black feather. He tossed it upon the cloud and made a different, pulling motion with his hand. There, her feather grew, its interlacing barbules now clear and visible as its surface reached a width that could cover a sizable coffee table. Zuki folded her wing back, all of its feathers condensing and turning with the wing’s resting shape behind her, and she rejoined the crowd.

“Hop on,” Professor Iya ordered, turning to the misplaced scholars.

They dared not budge.

“I’m terribly scared of heights, professor,” the girl whimpered, clenching onto the other’s arm. Her grip stretched her friend’s sleeve and dug into his skin. Those who paid attention could tell from the young man’s face that the girl was inflicting quite a bit of pain from her own fright.

Professor Iya chuckled and shook his head in the most apologetic nature. With another movement of his hand, he lifted the two off their feet and plopped them onto the feather himself. Fear overcame both their faces.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, offering a smile. “Yet, however terrified you are, you will be horrified of Professor Cobella. Mortified to your bones. She is unbelievably unforgiving.”

The cloud gradually elevated, body glowing a faint blue-hued light, holding the feather of two scholars.

Professor Iya continued, now yelling toward the ceiling, “Hold tight onto the feather’s stem and don’t look down! When the cloud disappears, the feather will glide through the rest of the descent!”

The cloud reached an open window right under the high ceiling.

“Stem! I said the feather’s stem!”

Both boy and girl let go of their tight grips onto random barbules that interlaced around them. The boy gripped tightly onto the stem in front of him, and the girl, unable to reach that far, hugged the boy for her dear life, instead.

“There we go! Cobella should notice before the two of you fall face forward upon the ground! Let me know if she doesn’t!”

With those last words, the cloud sped out the window. The hall could hear the girl’s scream drift away.

“Oh, poor girl,” Eulylia whispered.

“Lucky guy,” Iago laughed in return.

“In any event,” Professor Iya said, whiffing himself in the air to turn his attention back to his own students. “Energy Transliteration. All of you should be able to explain, in molecular detail, what just happened on stage. You.” He made eye contact with a man with the hind legs of a deer, tail of a lion, and eyes of a wolf.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

The chimera scholar stared back wide-eyed. “Well…” he started to say. “… Kinetic energy was released to gather energy particles. Uhm… High concentration of talented energy attracts natural water particles to form the cloud. Displacement of energy at a high enough magnitude also displaces heat, creating liquid vapor.”

There was a pause, and as Professor Iya said nothing, he felt pressed to continue explaining.

“Th-the feather was placed on the cloud… because any energy that disperses will seep into the empty body of the feather rather than the natural body. Physical side effects will occur when pure kinetic energy is transferred into natural humans unattended. Because Zuki was a morphic breed of the Aves clan, her feather held higher capacities for containing auric energy. Also… the feather’s stem acts like an empty pipe for releasing extraneous energy into the air before letting it channel to the two bodies. Also… uhm, the cloud was blue because kinetic energy is blue when it is channeled after transliteration, and auric energy is polarized… hence, water adhesion?”

Charming violet eyes blinked twice in the center of copper frames.

“One should refer back to previous lectures in basic physics before next class.”

The chimera looked down, a bit embarrassed, as Professor Iya hovered over the crowd with his head tilted in disappointment. A merman beside the chimera patted his back and told him to cheer up.

“For one,” Professor Iya sighed, “was it the concentrated energy or the displaced energy that created the vapor?”

A few others in the hall chuckled.

“Oh? Funny, is it?” Professor Iya asked, voice a bit louder and quite a bit more unamused. The hall fell silent. He hovered back to the front of the hall and turned around to address everyone. “I expect fully written explanations from each and every one planning to stay in this class by this time next week, answering the exact question I had just posed.”

More silence, other than some fidgeting in discomfort.

“Perhaps another lesson to be learned from this exchange is to not make fun of another’s errors when you could have so easily fumbled in the same way.”

Iago glanced over at Eulylia, but she did not glance back and instead kept eyes on their professor.

I almost laughed then, myself. He bit his lips together in efforts to behave.

“Situate yourself for notes.”

Immediately, all the scholars raced to find seats among themselves. Iago found a seat beside Eulylia as the sounds of parchments being moved around and feather pens being prepared for notetaking echoed up the high ceilings.

“Let me, then, introduce myself. I am Elsavir Iya, Disciple of Ayren, and Head Chair of the Branch of Intertalent Studies in the Academy.”

Eulylia inhaled a soft gasp.

“Quite an ironic title,” Professor Iya decided to comment as he reopened his rusted book. “I have no need for chairs, myself.”

Iago leaned in toward Eulylia. “You know him?” he whispered.

“Elsavir Iya,” Eulylia whispered back. “He received an Academy Award from Adrion three years ago when he proved that the probability of a conversion in pure talented energy for both organic and inorganic matter is dependent upon the subject’s natural density and originally ordained talent capacity. His multiple meta-analyses have also pointed out that innatier bodies correlate with higher talent capacities than emittier bodies.”

“… is that important?”

Eulylia offered him a soft glare as Professor Iya spread out stacks of lecture handouts to every individual scholar. Each stack landed gently upon the desk before each body in perfect order.

“Ayren has called Elsavir the Scholar of Modern Sciences and Talent Transliterations.”

All of what Eulylia said went over Iago’s head. He nodded as if he understood, but in reality, he only understood that receiving an Academy Award was a rather big deal—they are only awarded at most once every twelve years to one individual under each branch of study. That, and, Iago supposed, he also understood a basic understanding of what talent transliteration was: the study of translating the language of one talent into the language of another.

But in order to do that, one had to first know how to alter the energy wave within a talent into energy wave of a pure form. Pure kinetic energy. Pure morphic energy. Pure psychic energy. That energy could then be translated into a specific kind of talent, but such transliteration usually required the workings of two people with two different talents entirely.

If anyone could have the capability to translate talent, it would make sense that it’d be one from the Eiyean clan. They were the only emittier clan that was both kinetically and morphically talented.

“Energy, like any study in Aideyll, has its own language,” Professor Iya started. “When studying Aideylli, one must be taught the variance of tongue different countries once practiced prior to the Silver War. Likewise, a complete understanding of the language of channeled energy, talented energy, requires an understanding of what common tongue calls emittier talent, gifted to certain human breeds. This understanding stems from your Physiology of the Talented Human lectures.”

Professor Iya hovered around the hall, overlooking the scholars who took unnecessary notes on the basic introductions of the course. The sight of it all made him want to shake his head, but he ignored it and instead, glided past the second-rate students to another side of the hall.

“The language we use every day in Aideyll is Aideylli and its logographic system. The language of sound is of dotted notes and their symbolic placement among lines.”

As he spoke, a piece of chalk moved light and brisk against the towering board at the front of the lecture hall, transcribing his lecture.

“The language of mathematics—both the concrete and the abstract—is of numbers and its conjunctive symbols. Those who have delved into history-related muses will have indeed learned of other languages composed of body movement, alphabets, and the like, many of which still exist today in parts of Oblivion. Those in biological muses will, no doubt, have started studies in the language of genetic information.”

Iago temporarily droned out his voice as he skimmed through the class handouts. Syllabus was simple enough. The reading list was quite long.

“Nevertheless, regardless of what language we speak of, each holds the capability, with enough dedication in study, to be translated into others to invoke a similar meaning—so long as it is relevant to both languages, of course. This class will be your first to delve into such reasoning in exchangeable energy. Key word here, is exchangeable. As emittier, it is imperative to understand the language of such talents you have come to utilize every day like the breath of your lungs and the action potentials of your mind.”

Professor Iya found his way back to the front of the room, and turned to face his students once more, an intelligent smile upon his lips.

“By this time next week, should you wish to not drop from this class and extend your studies another quarter, finish the first three texts on our reading list. Those who cannot find the time to comply need not return. I expect nothing less from those who have been accepted by the Ashenborn.”

“I hate reading,” Iago whispered to Eulylia. “Will you be a dear and read to me?”

“No. Shut up and pay attention.”

Iago sighed and looked back down at his reading list. The first three sounded tedious, but also simple enough:

The Essensia Dictionary of Aideylli to Aunian: A Beginner’s Reference, Iya, E. and Envra, C., 2nd Edition, 243 pages

A Study on the Limits of Talent Transcription, Iya, E. and others, 5th Edition, 165 pages

Decoding the Path of Movement: The Scholar’s Guide to Tracing Emittier Energy Particles, 2nd Edition, Envra, Z., Vizare, K., and others, 512 pages.

And then it hit him.

On the parchment titled “Energy Transliteration, Final Prompt,” the words read, in the heaviest black Iago had ever seen:

Full translation of the final text in our reading list into channeled talent energy. Presentations due final examinations day. If student is not an emittier, see Elsavir for alternative details.

Iago referred back to the reading list and dragged his vision down the list of twenty-three titles: A Definitive Proof of the Law of Separation of Natural and Magical Energy, 8th Edition, translated text, Aideylli, 141 pages.

Iago took a deep breath and exhaled as steady as he could. He had half a mind to drop this class and walk out. He placed his stack of parchments back down on his little desk.

“Are you alright?” Eulylia whispered in a soft hymn as she scribbled her own notes.

Iago nodded, slow and contemplative.

“I will now introduce the proper notations in the language of pure talented energy and its counterparts as written in Aideylli.” Professor Iya did not turn away from facing his students; the chalk simply wrote everything as if on its own accord. “These are, of course, not to be confused with the language of pure natural energy to be delved into later this quarter.”

Symbols only vaguely familiar to Iago were scribbled beside a string of familiar Aideylli words beside it.

“For those who have studied Aunian, you will recognize these symbols as a collective subset of the basic radicals that compose the Aunian logographs. If lost, refer to your lecture handout. Additionally, text number one from your list of required readings charts the basic transcriptions in its first chapter, to be used as reference for your independent studies. You are expected to learn this on your own if you have not already—this is not a course to guide you on Aunian, but on the language of talented and natural energy.”