Tuesday evening…
No.
No. This isn’t it. Joey flips through periodicals at a pace no other human can even try to keep up with, and she attributes it to her speed reading skills and near-eidetic memory. She’s still coming up empty on explanations of what could cause this cluster of drakensouls and half-dragons to occur all at once. She’s done the math with the population sample she has, and it’s well outside of predicted standard deviations and probabilities.
The math doesn’t lie. Something impossible has happened.
Szivak’s theories on the drakensouls are insane. Ergath’s completely lacks scale. Why has no one done a full, comprehensive report on the physiology of drakensouls?! The sound of a tap at the door breaks Joey’s focus, and she looks down at her watch–it’s about nine at night. She’s been working the entire day researching, even during her normal working hours, in between rounds of chemical distillation and other routine efforts. She sits up and away from the various academic journals she pulled from the Archives, and rubs her cheeks.
She still doesn’t have a complete picture of what they are, and why they are. This is maddening for someone who could have gotten an entire Ph.D. in dracology to complement her Arcanist zoology degree. She would have only needed a few more classes during her grad studies, plus one academia-altering thesis paper. Maybe there’s still time for that, afterwards. But she’s got one massive mystery to solve first.
That tapping is getting impatient–most likely Kyle, especially at this late hour. She loosens the clasp on her wavy red hair that she never undid earlier and pushes away from her desk and laptop. This research can wait a little while longer. “Be right there,” she announces before shuffling over the hardwood floor and the throw rug near the couch. That beaten-up couch is never going to go away, barring a natural disaster. She unlocks the door and Kyle is standing there, out of breath. “Why are you wheezing?”
“I ran. From one end of the facility to the other. I think you’re going to want to read this,” he says after he pulls out a binder that looks like an academic journal. “You remember asking me about the drakensouls and looking into whether there were any other reports of unusual stuff going on nearby at the same time? Well, I think I might have found something of interest.”
“Kyle it's nine at night. You're still on this, too?” She is surprised at this unexpected fervor.
“One of the brightest students I know told me that someone broke Awakening. Which is as dire as it sounds, so, you know. I decided to help her out as a friend. Not just as a colleague,” he says with a soft smile.
“Flatterer. So, whatcha got?”
“Mana storms.”
“Eh?”
“There was a report about a month ago of a mana storm off of Mount Syren. It's near the flank of a magical biozone. It's not in the zone, per se, but close to it. The event scared the pants out of researchers by the Maiden forest biozone, there's not usually enough mana to create the charge needed.”
“Okay, first off, do you even know what a mana storm is?” Joey asks before beckoning him inside.
“It’s like a thunderstorm, but the lightning isn't lightning. It's pure mana in an elemental plasma form, but looks similar enough that most normies–er, sorry, non-magical people don't even notice the difference. They form over magical biozones where there's enough ambient mana in the air and it condenses into storms. Now, it still follows the same rules of normal thunderstorm development, but when they do form, it supercharges everyone and everything with mana in it. It can also lead to mana arcing, and can be dangerous. Come on Joey, you know I know these things! It's first-year academy stuff, it's like I'm taking earth science all over again. But, with magic!” he says with an exasperated face.
But, he's also excited. He's talking at his normal verbal barrage rate like he does when he's talking metallurgy or arcanist metamaterials. “Okay. So you're saying that a mana storm formed where it shouldn't. I'll bite. Why? And how does it relate to drakensouls, or normal half-dragons?”
“This might take a while.” She grabs a set of mugs and starts a couple of cups of coffee while he plugs in his laptop to her TV screen. The display switches to a few files he has open, and he taps away at the keyboard. She's glad she's been able to inspire him to become an actual academic, rather than just an armorer. Though, she has to concede his work is impressive–he’d built a homebrewed magitech armor set at sixteen. It had been dangerous, but a few fixes later, it was a stellar accomplishment for someone so young. In the meantime, she'd been searching for samples in magical biozones, while he'd been formulating new magical metamaterials. He could publish someday…if she could get him properly trained in presentation.
And get him to wear a tie of some kind. She doesn't know how his lab coat gets so dirty all the time! “Coffee, how do you take it again? Cream?”
“And sugar.” She adds both, and then hands him the mug gently while waiting for her own.
“Alright, so, let's hear it. You ran all the way here. The question is, why? You must have found something big. Or something you think is big, but you need my input to solve a piece of it.”
“First, let's understand why mana storms form. They're formed by the ambient mana in mage biozones, but not all of them have enough mana crystals near the surface. Some form from the magical biomatter itself, usually at a reduced scale. You see this all the time across Europe, Australia, and most of the US. Now, what does a mana storm do, you ask? It's dangerous for mages. It can trigger mana poisoning if severe enough and exposed outdoors, it's why a number of these places have shelter-in-place facilities and warning markers.”
“Okay. I follow so far.” Kyle's done his homework this time, even if it isn't his expertise. “Mana storms are dangerous, or can be. So what?”
“There's a theory that with enough ambient energy, you can crack a hole right into the aether. The stranded lands. Which we also know terrifyingly little about. Anyway, not important. What matters is that I found something very interesting. Look at this compiled report for our area. This is a record list of mana storms over the last ten years.” He pulls the list of readings and other Arcanists working outside Asqualia, and she takes a sip of the completed coffee. She follows the numbers line by line.
But then she sees it. And it's something she never would have known to look for.
“Is this accurate?”
“Doubled.”
“You're telling me that in the last three years, mana storm occurrence has doubled.” She doesn't even know what this means. Magical creatures could normally shrug this off, even in extreme cases, but the occurrence rate is…strange.
“No. If you look at the historical trends for the last hundred years, it's tripled.”
“Okay, so, no one's even noticed? What's causing more of them?” she asks. “This would require…oh let me see, quintuple the magical biomass, or the presence of mana crystals that exceed the area’s density averages by a factor of two. You're sure these–”
“The biozone grew, Joey. And it started three years ago.” She looks at him, wide-eyed. He nods solemnly. “Magical biozones have shrunk for the past hundreds of years on a historic downtrend. Humanity wrecking the planet, in a nutshell. No one has seen a biozone grow fifty percent in three years. And the growth started around that old mining facility at the edge of town, right dead center of the mountain.”
She almost drops her coffee mug. “Kyle, how big is this? What's the relation? I mean I get that this is a surprising finding, but–”
She stops. She's seen this theory. Amaranth had commented on drakensouls and half-dragons, and theories of when the transformation process starts, all the exact triggers. Usually, it’s a natural process. But there were always exceptions. Ambient mana was a theoretical factor, but because there were so few dragons and mana storms were relatively infrequent, data would of course be spotty and hard to come by. “I pulled some research from Professor Vertimer. He commented that a massive dose of ambient mana, like a mana storm, could in theory prematurely trigger Awakenings. Kyle, you said you heard that a half dozen people Awakened. What other data do you have?”
“They aren’t the only ones. Grand total over the month? Close to twenty. I got data from the local municipal office, after Snags clued me in on this.”
He taps in a few more commands and shows the screen when he's ready. “Census data predictions for this area, given the people of age and with known genetic markers from voluntary interviewees, peg us at about five to six a year. Average.” He shows the data of the number of reports of Awakenings. She almost drops her coffee again.
“Dear Gaia. Two dozen inside a month? But, when–” she scrambles for words. “What's the correlation? This could be a coincidence –”
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
“Last year, twelve. Double the predicted average, and add a percentage to account for people who don't like their bio-data being shared. The year before, ten. The last mana storm occurred just under two weeks ago and passed by Opechea Falls. The Awakenings started a couple of days later, if what I've read is correct. And no one has made the connection.”
She sets her mug down because she can't believe what she is seeing. This is an academic find of the year. Of the decade.
Hell, even the century.
“Kyle. We have found the finding of our lifetime. And I don't even know the why just yet.” she grins wildly and gives him a high-five. “There's a connection to the storms! There has to be. Kyle, if this is the case, we can…I mean half-dragons alone are impressive, but if there's a link to the emergence of drakensouls, we have found something no one has ever seen! I have so many questions left!”
“Hey, your tail is showing.”
“Yah! Damn it, got too excited!” She missed the telltale sign of her transformation starting, and wills that bottlebrush red furred tail away. She can't go do research with that showing!
And usually, she was so in control of it, too! Kyle chuckles softly and she looks at him dejectedly. “Hey, don't make fun of me. I'm part of a marginalized community of magical Kin.”
“Joey, being a kitsune sounds cool. Like seriously I don't get why half the magical world doesn't see it the way I do! I mean winter would be completely bearable out here in Colorado with a layer of fur!”
“It did not help in Missouri,” she says with a contented sigh. “Summers sucked. Plus I think you have a thing for fur or something.”
He looks at her blankly. “No, I don't.”
“Uh-huh. That was the quietest I've ever heard you talk,” she says with a sly smile.
“Nah, you're reading too much into that.” She knows that's the case, but it's still fun to mess with him on occasion. “So, questions. Half-dragons I get…but why are drakensouls coming through? It's supposed to be purely random based on what I've read!”
“Sounds like we've got some research to do. And maybe survey Mount Syren, that's a fascinating thing, the biozones growing too! It can't all be a coincidence! We need data!”
“Um, we can't.”
The way he says it gives her pause. “Why?" She asks with an arched eyebrow.
“Because before this, I asked Snags if he knew anything unusual about the mine. Turns out, someone blew up the mine on Friday. There was some kind of massive battle outside the facility, and now SAF is investigating with a full team. I heard it might be the Talons had set up shop there, and someone just took a giant wrench to their plan, whatever it was.”
She grabs her cup of coffee and takes a sip before collecting her thoughts. “What in the hell is going on?”
If she still had her tail, it would be bristled on end by now. The Talons are bad news in this quaint little town. Blowing up mines at the epicenter of a series of unexplained mana storms can only mean one thing:
Trouble is brewing. And the big kind. “We’re headed down to the archives. Jack gave me a pass to go in there whenever I want, and we're digging for answers.”
“Uh, we are? It's Tuesday night trivia. Claire's gonna be pissed at us if we drop out.”
“Well, I think she'll forgive London's finest if we go crack the mystery of the century, instead of killing brain cells with bad questions and even worse alcohol. Come, Watson, we must do some sleuthing!” she declares, and he lets out a groan.
“Guess we're not sleeping tonight, then. And I thought I was Ron to your Hermione.”
“Fates Kyle, you can’t get over the fact that we dated for a hot five minutes,” she groans. She had almost forgotten about that in the way that it was a bygone era.
“Best five minutes of my life,” he quips. It almost brings a smile to her face.
----------------------------------------
Joey pushes the archives door open after swiping the badge reader with her ID. After a short while, she and Kyle have a stack of journals trying to find out more about the mana storms. Everything anyone had ever written about them.
It's surprising how little has been written about them. More surprising is their research into the mine and some of the town history, with a couple of quick searches of the arcanet. “Okay, priorities. First, I want to know what in the actual hell happened on Mount Syren on Friday. You have contacts at SAF, use them. I want to know what was so important there that someone blew up the top of a mountain to cover up something. The second thing I need is the history of all the biozones in the area that we have accounted for. I need to know if any other mana storms have cropped up since. I also need you to look at the nature of mana storms, and if anyone else has researched their impact on mana-based organisms. The academic world is severely lacking on this subject, it seems!”
“Wow, you’re psyched about this. There’s the Joey I know!” he says with a smirk.
“Well, I do have you to thank for a massive research project now, even if you stumbled on it by accident. Me, I’ve got to do some research on the drakensouls. How they came into existence, the Ascension events–everything and anything we can find. I know the numbers are small, but if this stuff is related, what we think we know might be just the tip of the iceberg. This could be a publication highlighted by London! Brentson! Any university in the world could take this and run with it!”
“But, what about the biozones? Them growing in size to an effective area over double their original area? We don’t even know what’s causing that!” His exclamation raises a relevant point. “Joey, let’s assume this is a chain of events. Drakensouls emerging, along with half-dragons, is the end result. Caused in part–in theory–by the proximity of the mana storms. Storms are caused by, again in theory, enlarged biozones. What’s causing the biozones to become larger? Why now? There’s a lot to prove here! And how it relates to the drakensouls, which should be random! There should be no pattern at all!”
“That’s why we’re attacking this from every angle. You dig into the physical sciences, I can look into the biological sources. There must be something that helps us advance our understanding of this phenomenon, we just need to look at all the sources!” She doesn’t waste time and peers through more of the academic journals going back further–the half-dragons, to be specific. She knows there’s a lot more documentation on them than drakensouls, and while the end result is the same for Awakening, the appearance of wayward dragons’ souls is still poorly understood.
She spends more time looking at various publications from Warthog University, then London, then from Brenston, and Salem. She is scribing notes as fast as she can type them, then scanning them for future perusal. Anything new or with recent dates, she prioritizes. She needs the cutting edge of research on this one, to supplement her own understanding.
The hours click by. She glances down, and sees her wristwatch is now past midnight. She’s got work in eight hours, and she just can’t put the academics down. “Kyle, how are we doing over–” She sighs in defeat when she is greeted by the sight of Kyle, face down on a desk, and nodding off with his hands curled instinctively over a page of old journals and maps of the area. “C’mon, it’s not that late,” she says with a contented smile. “Lazy bones.”
“Gimmie five minutes. Then back to it,” he mumbles.
“You’re going to fall out of that chair, and crack your head on the tile floor. Maybe we can call it a day.” He slowly rises out of the chair, and one of the maps falls to the floor. She picks it up and glances at it.
It’s the map for the town, right at its inception over a hundred years ago. There’s not much to look at–it’s a topographical map that is by all means atrociously out of date, and not really useful to their needs. Except–
“Kyle, is this map right? There’s a biozone right by the edge of town that isn’t the Maiden forest?”
“Huh?” He looks at it and frowns. “Nah, that’s no biozone. That’s been bulldozed for decades, there’s a small housing development, all sorts of quaint houses now. It's been gone for a long time. Even magical biozones do disappear if the mana crystals disappear, or the magical organisms, depending on which is more prevalent in the area.”
“So, we don’t know why it’s gone?”
“Nope. No clue. Could also be just an out-of-date thing, bad mapmaking–”
“Mages don’t make bad maps, Kyle. Dragons can fly, for Fates’ sake,” she states with impatience. “I want to check this out.”
“It’s suburbia,” Kyle states again like they’re wasting their time. “Why are you so interested in this, compared to all the other threads we’re looking at?”
“Biozones don’t grow fifty percent in radius within three years. It shouldn’t even grow three percent a year–hell most of them are shrinking, thanks to pollution and people tearing the forests down. Thankfully, we have pocket planes–but that nastiness does filter through.”
“Okay, but you’re going to be disappointed Joey when we go check it out tomorrow.”
“Want to make a bet on this? I want to see what a dead biozone looks like, and take some readings. What if whatever caused this could cause an invigoration of other zones? Would that not be a place to start? And if that were the case, what would be the stimulus to create it?”
“You think there’s something external to this madness?”
“There has to be. This surge of drakensouls and half-dragons seems artificially induced, it’s too much happening at once. And with the Talons blowing up a mine, we need to ask ourselves, why are they doing that?” He finally relents and throws up his hands.
“Okay. Let’s drive out tomorrow. I still got my car parked at the long-term parking garage, I just hope no one stole the rims off of it yet,” he adds with a grumble. “What else are we going to do in the meantime?”
“Find more on the drakensouls. I need to go back to the source. 1917. When they first came back after six hundred years of annihilation.” She motions to pack up, and he follows along reluctantly.
Joey doesn’t know why it’s important yet, but these events must be part of something big that is going on. There are telling signs from what Kyle’s told her that indicate these items may all be related–possibly. But they need more data to start making truly sound theories. She’s almost at the access door when she hears a ringing in the faintest corner of audible range, and hearing it causes her to stop and look around for a second. “Problem?” Kyle asks.
“Do you hear something?”
“Nah. The lights, maybe,” he says nonchalantly as he points to the fluorescent lighting. She peers upwards, eyes narrowed. It…could be.
But when does lighting sound like a crystalline chime? She’s exhausted after a long day, and thinks nothing more of it when they badge out for the day.
Tomorrow should hopefully be more productive.