Melody of Mana

We were all called down to the assembly, held in one of the larger halls of the building. Once everyone had arrived and found their places Dean Lorrae moved before the students. He looked over us, letting his eyes rove between our slightly concerned faces.

"There has been a declaration of war upon our kingdom by the so called Shadow Empire. We currently know little in the way of information beyond that, but I am told that diplomats are meeting to arrange the rules by which both sides will conduct this conflict." Sound in the room died as shock descended upon the students, many seemed not too bothered, while a few were nearly visibly shaking from this announcement. "As such we will be changing our schedules to match the current situation. All students not currently enrolled in Combat Spellcasting will have a once per week lecture on the very basics of self-defense. All those who are capable of casting healing magics and are not in an Advanced Healing course will be given a once weekly class on basic battlefield medicine. It is my sincere hope that these will not be necessary, but it is our duty to best prepare you."

After the dean stepped down he was replaced by one of the other teachers who continued with the organization. For today all classes were being canceled in favor of a series of lectures on school safety and emergency procedure. We would also be getting talks on how this development could more directly effect us.

We were separated into smaller groups first. Professor Sasha, our Etiquette teacher was in charge of my particular group.

"In the event of an attack on the academy, you are to evacuate through the standard emergency exit located in the center hall of the school."

Our school was basically a big plus sign, so finding that location would be easy regardless of where you were. There was a large circle in the very center which, in the event of an emergency could be caused to change into a spiral staircase. This ostensibly led out to a safe location, one which we were not told of, just in case.

"I should hope that it is not needed, but I'll be showing you some secondary emergency exits. These are specific to each group and are not to be shared with your classmates until and unless you must use them. Also, since we'll be putting our protective enchantments on their highest setting all students will be required to add mana to them."

We were taken around by Professor Sasha to the emergency exit locations, these were hidden well behind cabinets and art pieces. Opening one was fairly easy, all one had to do was place a hand upon the exit and push a small quantity of mana into it. This would set off alarms in the school of course, and they had their own protections on them. The most notable of which was a complex series of runes around each exit that was supposed to prevent ingress to the academy. These doors would get us out, but only out.

As for adding mana to the school's defenses, that was simple enough. Every morning just before our first class there would be a professor waiting near the exit to our dormitories. A small array on the wall there would allow us to put mana into them and record how much we did. There was a daily minimum of three runes worth, not much for me, but quite a bit for some of our weaker students.

"So... what does it do?" I asked as I took my turn trying out the array.

"The full scope is undisclosed, obviously," Professor Sasha intoned. "I can tell you that it projects some form of shield around the academy though, that stops at least projectiles and most harmful spells. It's incredibly expensive to keep going, but in times like these... well, we're one of the most defended locations in the country, second only to the royal palace."

I had my doubts about that. There were probably some military installations that had superior defenses. This was where a lot of noble heirs were though, so whatever we had to keep us safe was probably quite substantial.

Once Professor Sasha had finished with us we were taken to meet back with all the other girls. I recognized the priestess that was here to speak to us as from the Order of Lovers. She stood in the center of the room and waited for us all to arrive. There was a bit of chatter between us as one group after another joined us, slowly filing in.

She began by giving us a lecture on the realities of war, particularly the danger associated with being caught in the siege of a city. Sexual assault and rape were not uncommon in these situations, and it was therefore important that we know, and understand what to do if the city were attacked. Escape was to be prioritized, to either a protected or hidden location. If that was impossible we would need to determine if fighting or surrender was the superior option. In either case we needed to make sure our opponents knew that we were casters.

The last part was important for a number of reasons. First was that most of those who would be any real threat to a magic user were magic users themselves. Establishing that we were likely nobles, or related to nobles would make them more likely to want to capture us unharmed as bargaining chips. Similarly this protection was also offered to their side. A nobleman wouldn't often wish to harm the daughters or wives of an opposing nobleman, for his opponent might respond in kind.

The other reason was also purely practical. Pairings of magic users often produced children who were magic users, and the limiting factor in how many of those children could be made was on the number of women, not the number of men. Since a country could live or die on how many mages it had, nobody wanted to waste those potential children. This as well would buy us at least a modicum of protection. So long as we didn't pose a threat, we were likely to be spared, and kept in far better conditions than a normal prisoner would.

It seemed that they brought in the priestess for this lecture as a matter of policy. The Order of Lovers dealt with most matters concerning sex in this world and consulted for any talks on the matter. The various orders also tried to negotiate rules for war in such times. Of course those weren't always followed by the soldiers on the ground, but in theory there were supposed to be agreements on how war between countries would be conducted.

The former Empire of Ermath had not wanted to agree to many rules, particularly in the case of non-magical individuals. They had a policy of enslaving most of those they victimized though, which they used to justify their actions. From my discussions with Kala I understood that this was a real point of contention between them and the orders, and had led to them being rather hands off when Ermath got brought down.

The Shadow Empire was a bit of an unknown to those who lived in our country though. The priestess giving the lecture indicated that they had in the past followed most or all of the policies that the orders had put forward. For this war it was still unclear how they would behave, but we could consult with one of the priests when all of that was settled.

After a brief break for lunch we received our new schedules. Our additional classes had been fitted onto our normal week, adding them as super-late on a rotating day. It was inconvenient, but my guess was that was the only way they could work them in without completely redoing everyone's schedule.

Kala had an additional lecture to attend, but my day ended early. That was a welcome break at least and would give me more time for my current personal project. Upon my return to my room I collapsed onto my bed and fell into a meditative state, accessing my core.

I was slowly, slowly working my way through the guide and help sections that were built in. The going was slow, complicated by the fact that I didn't have time, or the proper note taking abilities for it. There were some serious issues and I really wanted to beat whoever wrote these pages.

Issue number one was that the whole navigation of either 'help' or 'guide' was bonkers. There was no search function (so far as I had yet discovered at least), it wasn't even divided up into pages, just one massive mountain of text for each of them. Sure there were sections, and even a table of contents, but that was practically useless, since whoever had decided what went where had a system that I was guessing made sense only to him.

It also seemed to be written for someone who already understood the material. There was jargon and directions that only made sense with context strewn through the guide. If you didn't know where things went in what section the help page was useless too, because it was divided by action and issue rather than ALPHABETICALLY LIKE ANY SANE PERSON WOULD. Add to that the random comments like 'this doesn't work well, but it works' and 'I need to fix this later' that were just jammed in and it was like reading somebody's personal notebook.

I couldn't even take notes. If it was possible in the core I hadn't yet reached the directions on how. If I tried to in the real world I'd have to write in English, revealing that I understood these sections, or in the Common Human Tongue, and there was no chance that I was writing some of the insights that I was gleaning in any way where someone could get hold of them.

All of those issues aside I was learning things. Rather than play around with light like most of our classes were doing the writer of the guide began with moving parts. These were simple motions, isolating one part and having it spin or move forward and back. The directions may have been filled with jargon and nonsense, but once you made it through that they were at the least precise. What did what was clearly defined in the runic system. There was even a definition page included which had the numerical values used for defining things. As far as I could tell things like the speed of light and the like were correct, and listed in metric. There were measurements for that, temperature, force, and a whole list of others.

I also learned some of the issues that who I assumed was the ancient elf king was having. According to the notes there were several things he'd tried, and failed to do. It seemed that the cost of light increased with frequency in such a manner that high energy/dangerous forms like x-rays, and gamma rays were for most purposes infeasible. Some elements were also listed as highly difficult to make. Metals and the like were known for being very hard, but so was anything with a crystalline structure. He seemed to have tried to make a few heavy radioactive substances too, all of which he'd thought he'd done, but in quantities he couldn't detect.

There was a special note on antimatter. It looked to be impossible, or at least nearly impossible. An experiment was described that was trying to make one positron. The definition was given and everything was hooked in only for the spell to consume mana endlessly. All attempts after that had been canceled, there were easier fruit closer to the ground to pick.

After some time reading through the guide and coming up with my own mental exercises to do I was jolted back to the outside world harshly.

"Miss Alana! Are you okay!?" Emma was shaking me lightly and yelling.

"Huh!? Emma, what happened?"

"Are you well? I called to you several times but you didn't answer. I can call for a priest..." She seemed genuinely worried.

"Oh... no, I was just in my core. I'm fine."

"Well you gave me quite a scare there. I thought you might be hurt."

"No I'm fine, really."

"If you're sure miss. Dinner is soon by the way, you mustn't forget to eat."

"I won't, thank you." I rose as Emma gave me one last look and hurried off to her other duties. I really needed to find a way to keep aware of my surroundings while reading.