“Have you heard about the new Gate opening up?” Bianca asked Syl.
Classes were out for the day, which meant the two of them were headed home now. To keep up appearances, they took public transportation, which was heavily monitored enough that the chances of someone taking action against the princess were near zero. That chance was further decreased by the fact that the bulk of students took similar paths out. Only prismatics and very rich families had the luxury to use private drivers, and even class 1s tended to take the trains back.
That meant that this particular rumor had spread like wildfire.
“It’s hard not to,” Syl replied. “Upper C-class, right?”
“Yes. It won’t even be that far from the academy,” Bianca said. “One of my professors is talking about a practical excursion.”
“That’s a class 1 course for you,” Syl said. “This early in the semester? All freshmen?”
“It’s a history class,” she replied. “I’m sure it’s not the only one that’ll go, too. The professors are either Graduate Reserve or already tactical-class or higher level magicians. It shouldn’t be a problem.”
Syl thought back to the warning he’d been given earlier that day. There were a number of chokepoints where he could expect enemy action—the Tournament Circuit tryouts, for instance, were sure to be a somewhat exposed period with a number of high-value targets. This was another one of them.
He had given Bianca a brief warning about it, but Syl didn’t trust the academy network enough to send anything further. His own incoming line was heavily encrypted, but intra-academy transmissions were almost all filtered through the academy network. Also, he had no way of knowing whether someone would be peeking over Bianca’s shoulder at her FCD, so he’d avoided any real details.
Still, he was sure she knew enough for his concerns to come through.
“The group that attacked our first day of practical magic is still active,” Syl said. “If I were them, a Gate would be a perfect point to target any students.”
“That does sound feasible,” Bianca said. She made a face before Syl could tell her that she was beeing too formal again. “If they’re as incompetent as they were the first time, though, we should be fine.”
“Do you know who’s going in?” Syl asked.
“A number of classes at different times, I believe,” Bianca said. “The Reserve is the one that’ll actually mop up the boss and close the Gate. Everyone else wants to get in practical exercise.”
“They want to show off what years of pre-academy training can do, you mean,” Syl said. “The only unprepared people are going to be there so that the class 1s can demonstrate what they can do to them, but it’s most likely for the sake of forming connections with professors who have actual power.”
“That sounds right,” Bianca said. “I haven’t had a live-fire practice in some time. A C-class Gates seems reasonably safe.”
“A lot of Gates seem reasonably safe,” Syl warned. “You never know what’ll happen until it does.”
“Then you should come with me,” Bianca said.
“I’m not in any of your classes. How do you expect me to?”
“The first-year Tournament Circuit team is going to go,” Bianca said. “About half of the team has already been drafted, and they’re planning on making an excursion. It’s GR and faculty sanctioned.”
“When will that be?” Syl asked. “If it’s still forming, then this is good timing for them. Refresh my memory on this one. A C-class Gate takes… a week? Assuming it’s detected, of course.”
“Nine days is the average,” Bianca confirmed. “Just in time for the new circuit team to participate.”
“So you’re not going with your history class, then,” Syl guessed.
“Of course not. You’re not in that one.”
“You make it sound like I’m going to be on the circuit team with you.”
“Uriel told me that you’re going to be applying,” Bianca said. “You should be.”
“You make it sound like you already know I’m going to pass.”
Bianca laughed. “That joke doesn’t work with me, Syl. If you don’t make it on, I’ll know that you failed just to spite me.”
“I would never do that,” Syl said. “Not when you’re planning on going Gate-diving.”
“I knew that would convince you.” Bianca beamed. “You were going to try not to make it, weren’t you?”
“In all honesty, I was initially planning on just doing well enough to be your engineer,” Syl said.
“The engineers aren’t going into the Gate.”
Syl sighed. “That’s that, then.”
At length, they arrived at their station and returned home, where Syl continued what he’d been working on during class. His home laboratory was limited even compared to what the academy had, but the resources were valuable.
“Still working on that pipe dream of yours?” Bianca asked him over his shoulder as he tinkered with an otherwise standard-looking tablet-style FCD.
“More of a pipe bomb than a dream,” Syl said. “It would be a major step forward in magical understanding.”
“I still don’t entirely understand what the point of this project is,” Bianca said.
“I’ve told you before,” Syl said. “Simple pre-programmed disposable spell activation FCDs. Current FCDs are pre-loadable, but those are customized to one user and still require careful tuning of the spell as well as both flux and mental load during activation. In essence, the only step a pre-loaded FCD skips is the initial spell process creation, and that doesn’t work with more complex spells anyway.”
“Will meeting your target here not have the same issue of complex storage?” Bianca asked. “As far as I can tell, the best usage you have is as a force multiplier for less talented magicians or even normals. You’re not usually one for that kind of movement.”
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“I’m not,” Syl said. “It does strike me that inferior magicians could use this as a crutch, but I don’t find that too disappointing. More magicians finding shortcuts might finally kick the prismatics out of stagnation. That aside, the actual use case is for myself. Many of higher-level spells that I can’t use involve a number of sub-spells with individualized spell processes.”
“So your goal is to use portable FCDs to daisy chain for spells? More complicated FCDs can already do that.”
“More complicated FCDs can take the load off for one spell,” Syl said. “My Horizon Breaker is one of those, but it can’t cast anything else. Having modular spellcraft would be a game-changer for me.”
“If you say so,” Bianca said dubiously. “Good luck with that.”
“Thank you,” Syl said. “I understand your doubts. It’s not like a generational genius like you would need it.”
“You flatter me,” the princess said. “You remember why I’m even still here, right?”
Blood everywhere. The smell of smoke and burning flesh. A crater where there used to be a city.
Syl winced. “Unfortunately. Have you made any progress on your front?”
“My mother is apparently still unwilling to provide ‘classified material’ to me,” Bianca said unhappily. “I do not know what she plans for me, though that much is expected given I can barely remember what she looks like.”
“Figures that even an active terrorist threat wouldn’t count as enough to break the rules,” Syl said. “We’ll have to make do with the military and our own resources, then.”
“So we will,” Bianca said. “I trust you.”
“Likewise.”
#
After the duel he’d had with Syl, Drew stopped sitting together with Uriel and the rest of the Reserve leadership at lunch. Syl retained the slightest shred of respect for the prismatic graduate student for that. He was clearly unable to control himself around someone he saw as lesser, an effect that was worsened by the fact that Syl had dusted him in an actual fight, so he’d removed himself instead of putting them both into an awkward situation.
Then again, it was also possible that General Violet had made that decision. She was a pragmatic woman, which made Syl assume that she hadn’t had much of a hand in Drew’s life growing up given how different they were. She recognized Syl’s potential as a student, even if she had no suspicion as to his true identity, and she’d known that sending him and Drew on a collision course was a bad idea.
The side effect of that was that there was one less annoying voice at lunch, which Syl couldn’t complain about.
“Your FCD is an interesting one, Auria,” Jennifer said, adjusting her glasses. She was an eighth-year engineer, and she’d seemed somewhat ambivalent on him from the start. Him still being here and Drew being gone had raised Syl’s value in her eyes, though, which meant she was taking him seriously now. “Not one you see a new student using often, let alone a class 3.”
“I’d appreciate if you used my name,” Syl said politely. “I prefer Syl, but Sylvester works if you find that too informal. I share my last name with every other war orphan, and I’m sure they like being reminded of their loss as much as I do.”
“My apologies, Sylvester,” the engineer said. “As I was saying. Your FCD.”
“It’s an Incarnate,” Waylan said. “I’ve seen some similar models in the dueling circuit. They’re a nightmare to go up against.”
“It’s a relatively basic model,” Syl said. “This one doesn’t have much beyond good flexibility, capacity, and the standard overcharge capture battery.”
“Basic is underselling things when it comes to Incarnate,” Jennifer said. “I’ve had the pleasure of working with a member of their teams once or twice, and the magical research they’re doing is nothing short of consistently groundbreaking. Which makes me curious as to how a first-year ends up with one.”
“Isn’t yours similar?” Syl asked, gesturing at the tablet sitting next to her.
Jennifer’s FCD wasn’t very suited for dueling, but it suited her well as an engineer. Syl had recognized the design when she’d taken it out today.
“This is a modified Incarnate that I got in exchange for my assistance on that one issue,” she said. “As futile as it was. It works perfectly for my purposes. It has higher efficiency and quicker response times for adjusting magical tech than anything on the market, and its additional features go above and beyond even the Reserve’s technology.”
“Futile?” Bianca asked. “What were you working on?”
“That’s classified.”
Syl sighed. “Maybe to some students. It’s not. Free casting, was it? One of the unsolved conjectures of magic?”
The engineer startled. “What? How do you know that?”
“How do you know that?” Uriel asked, eyeing him critically.
“That FCD,” Syl said. “It’s calibrated for your purposes, yes, but it’s got an edge to it meant specifically for creating unconstrained magical processes. That isn’t something that you would be doing if you were working on regular magitech, since an unconstrained process has no use in a regular spell process. Since you mentioned groundbreaking research, it can really only be that. Free casting is the only thing I can think of that would use that in any sense.”
“You can tell what an FCD specializes in just from looking at it?” Ashley, the sixth-year MP said. “I don’t know anyone who can do that.”
“I can do it with my glasses off,” Jennifer said. “Sylvester doesn’t have severe flux sensitivity, though. Unless I’m missing something.”
“I do not,” Syl confirmed.
“I’m a little behind here,” Waylan said. “Someone catch me up?”
“You don’t know about the fundamental unsolved conjectures?” Bianca asked. “Aren’t you a sixth-year?”
Waylan scratched his neck sheepishly. “I’m a duelist and a battle magician, not a theorist. I didn’t pay much attention in those classes.”
“A set of six unsolved problems that demonstrate humanity’s lack of full understanding about the magical arts,” Uriel recited. “Free casting, the one the engineers are talking about, is one of them. Early on, certain magicians were capable of using magic without an FCD at all, and there are some who still manifest magical phenomenae without using a device.”
“It’s unreliable, though, and not usable in the same way modern magic is,” Syl said. “Obviously, FCDs are one of many chokepoints in magic. Finding a way to use certain types of spells without having to rely on a device that can break, be sabotaged, or fall victim to human error would be a game changer.”
“Does sound like it,” Waylan said. “I’m sure Auria would love that.”
“I’m sure they would use it for the best,” Syl said.
Enough corpses to make a mountain out of. Bodies repurposed as bombs. Parents burying their children before being buried themselves.
Syl didn’t let his facade slip.
“We weren’t the only ones working on it,” Jennifer said. “There’s a lot of people who would kill to know how to free cast.”
“Why not just engrave the activation and spell processes into the air?” Waylan asked. “FCDs just handle some of the load for you, right?”
“They tried that in England last year,” Syl said. “Pretty large experiment. Used a paragon-class mage for it and everything.”
“You’re very up to date on magical theory,” Jennifer said approvingly. “Yes. Their approach was simpler than ours, but it didn’t work. The amount of calculations an FCD performs in a nanosecond outstrips what a human can do in hours. The level of precision required to manually shape flux into not only a spell process but also a proper activation one is simply too high. I believe they managed to get the start and stop processes for a simple movement spell to activate, but it was too unstable to activate.”
“Their process was flawed,” Syl said. “Free casting has two primary theory branches—casting magic that a magician’s body is already attuned to and casting a pre-defined spell. They took the worst of both. No human will ever execute a computer program better than a human would. Anyone working on the latter should know that, but their experiment seems to not have taken that into account.”
“You seem to really know your stuff,” Jennifer said. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, since you clearly have a connection at Incarnate. Let them know I send my best, if they still remember me.”
“You want to work there someday?” Bianca asked.
“Of course I do, Jennifer said, almost sounding affronted. “They’re one of a very few organizations actively pushing for the betterment of the world instead of just finding more ways to kill people with spells. I’m an engineer, not a warrior, and anywhere else, my ideals aren’t much more than empty words, but at Incarnate? There, I could make a difference.”
That actually warmed Syl’s heart. He hadn’t liked the other engineer much at first, but she was growing on him. Jennifer was very genuine in her passion for this. Whether or not that translated to her actual engineering was a different thing, but there was plenty of time to see to that.
“I’ll make sure the sentiment is passed along,” Syl said. “Maybe it’ll reach the ears of their leader.”
It will, he thought as Bianca gave him a knowing smile. It already has.