Beyond?

“And the Master governed over all magic. No spell bore a secret to him, as he saw it all. Only his beloved younger brother had a comparable power. Together they spread the Empire's rule far beyond the horizon.

Armies were shattered by their will, mountains moved by their wish, even the earth itself reshaped by a thought.

The Empire would've been eternal if the One hadn't betrayed the Other. But the One had found what his brother would never understand and so they fought and fell and the Empire with them.”

-The forbidden Chronicle.

***Free City States of Nict, Capital***

***Azir***

I have a headache, this is probably how it feels to have your head split by an axe. Taking a training session inside the mana stream every day is hard. Fortunately my mother is helping me to control the stream in order to not get burned to a crisp.

Trying to remember the feeling inside the stream, her words flash through my mind. “It took me about five years to master my sight.” I take the cushion and place it on my face. Five years of headache! How can I get anything accomplished when I do this daily?

Sitting up in my bed, I tear the cushion apart. Training with my father, handling the new technologies which I introduced, training my sight and going to university. I can't have headaches on top of that!

Getting up, I put on some random clothes and leave the bedroom. My target is Stella's laboratory, no need to worry about my looks. Stella can prove her medical knowledge to me. At the second floor I stop in front of the door to her lab. Do I really want to know how it looks inside?

But the headaches are driving me crazy, so I knock on the door and steel myself. After waiting for a few seconds I knock again and wait, the third time I knock louder. Strange, she said that she is in her laboratory. Did something come up and make her leave without informing me?

I use mind magic to access the mana net and find her position. The net tells me that she is in our house. The user interface in my vision blurs and I rub my eyes with my forearm. Using mind magic while having headaches isn't a good idea.

Pressing down the handle of the door, I open it and enter. “Hello? Anyone here?” There is no answer, so I walk further down the central corridor and look into the rooms to my left and right. The setup of this floor is the same as my laboratory, just the facilities are different.

The first two rooms are filled with bottles, dried plants and other raw materials. Nothing spectacular. The third room though contains some cages with small animals. Probably Stella is using them as guinea pigs for her experiments.

The fourth room is filled with plants. One of them actually turned its blossom in my direction upon looking inside. The thing isn't exactly small and so I back out slowly.

Inside the fifth room I feel a little more at home, as I find it filled with a few big artefacts of various sizes and forms. But no Stella, I sigh and continue on my way.

The sixth room is locked, so that leaves only one choice left and that's the room at the end of the corridor. I walk into a big room with a surgery table in the left corner and a working table at the window to the garden. There is a big mirror to my right and various bottles are lined up on a shelf beside it. A few of them are bobbing like something is brewing inside them.

But that's not what's troubling me, the troublesome point about this room is that the surgery table is occupied.

“Ah, the Creator pays us a visit.” Ivy is on the table and smiles at me, totally ignoring the fact that Stella is bent over her with a sharp nasty looking knife. It's bloody and Stella is fiddling and pushing around inside Ivy's chest! A nasty looking tool is spreading her ribs apart and a set of infusion needles are supplying potions of various colours into Ivy's arms.

“Don't ogle her! Pervert!” Stella glares at me. “Why are you even here? Normally you stay away from my laboratory.”

I sit down on a nearby chair. “Like I could get turned on from looking at a maimed body!” Then I turn around and look into the other direction, waiting until they are done with whatever they are doing. “I just wanted to ask if you have anything for headaches.”

Stella answers pointedly. “I have to close her up first, then I can take a look at what I have.” For a while nothing happens, then I hear a crunching sound. A few slimy noises add into the mix and in the end a whizzing sound adds even further to my discomfort. A bone saw?

In the end the noises stop and Ivy's voice urges me to turn around. “Look, look. The Sup... Stella embedded my mechanical part deeper in my chest. Now I look almost like a normal person. This'll make my efforts in discovering organic behaviour much easier.”

Turning around I find out that Ivy is healed and cleaned up. Fortunately she is clothed too, that spares me another remark from Stella. Though Ivy is wearing a deep cut maid outfit. Her real body is now almost completely gone, just a small metal gem protrudes from between her collarbones. The wonders of healing magic...

It was really fortunate that I made her from a rust free iron and gold alloy. I can be wasteful with materials since I have an almighty Supplier at home.

Stella steps to a bowl beside the surgery table and starts washing her hands. “So what is your problem?”

I grimace. “Headaches! Healing spells don't work, I already tried that.”

Stella tilts her head in thought and walks over to the shelf, there she picks a bottle with small, white pills inside and gives it to me. “Just one a day, they are strong. Recently you often have headaches, what are you doing in your family's mansion?”

I smile wryly. “My mother decided to teach me more about our clan's ability. She helps me with my training and the method isn't pleasant at all.”

***Free City States of Nict, Capital***

***Adala***

“They are mobilizing their army.” Saana looks with a grim expression at the latest reports. “They are even rebuilding their fleet. This looks grave.”

I shake my head and lean back on the sofa. “The civilian population has no idea what's going on. I don't think that Nict intends to go to war. The incident with the Black Magicians alarmed them and now they are preparing for a possible attack, maybe we are too hasty to assume that this is directed against us.”

Eliot isn't of my opinion. “Even if it's not directed against us, this incident woke the rulers of Nict up, we can't afford to take this lightly.” He pauses. “What if their newly gained interest in the world causes them to send their fleet farther to the north. Their ships will surely land at the ports along the coast. Then they'll learn about our war. Do you think they'll ignore the opportunity to attack us?”

Nikita speaks up. “I don't think that the situation is that far out of hand. Everything we've seen shows that the people of Nict have a huge disinterest in the world. If Nict was interested in expansion, then they could've taken the southern nations long ago. Excuse me if I say this, but the longer I stay within Nict, the more I believe that our southern allies sold us bullshit when they informed us that Nict is planning a war against us.”

Padma nods. “I compared their historic records of their wars with what our so called allies told us. Note down that I strongly doubt that Nict changed them before our arrival. Those are public historic records. The civilians would complain if they were edited by the government.” She looks around. “The interesting part is that if you believe their records, Nict has far more reason to attack the southern nations than us. The only ones who benefit from a war between Nict and Dwem are the southern nations.” She starts counting with her fingers. “Our past relationship with them may have been hostile, but we mostly ignored each other while closing our borders. The southern nations however attacked Nict several times in open warfare. That's why when you travel to Nict's southern cities it feels more like you walk through a castle than a city. There is also the point that the southerners acknowledged Nict's attempts to make peace for the first time in history. It stinks, to say the least. I say it's best to lean back and wait.”

Saana massages her temple. “If you put it like that it sounds logical. We can't stop Nict and the barbarians, even if we wanted to. Yesterday the Great Shaman sent me a report that our troops at the border to Nict will be relocated to the front. That'll leave us utterly defenceless.”

Nikita crosses her hands in front of her chest and shrugs her shoulders. “There is another point. If Nict intends to attack us, they are acting utterly stupid.” She smirks. “If they really prepare for war against us, they would've silenced Dwem's observers within their country, namely us. We are a target, they would need to take us out first to ensure that we don't warn Dwem. Instead they let us be, to watch their preparations. They are not even trying to hide them.”

After a while I come to the conclusion that Padma's and Nikita's reasoning is very good, though it leaves a bitter aftertaste. Spinning the story further means that our good and noble allies in the southern nations aren't so reliable after all. Something which we suspected, but having certainty is sometimes worse than being left in the lurch.

.