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"Well, come to Arriroba. Does not snow there at all. Barely even rains."

Lily laughed. "I\'d like to visit. It sounds like a cozy little village."

"It is," Mirian said. "Maybe too cozy. And a bit primitive. Everyone gawked at the first glyph lamp that they installed in the market square. And I don\'t think they\'ve installed a second one yet. At least it has the standard spellward protecting it from myrvite attacks. One day, maybe it\'ll get a rail station. I am not a fan of the long walk from Madinahr to my village."

They crunched through the blanket of white snow on their way to class, and despite Lily\'s concerns, there was no ice to slip on. After the plaza, they parted ways, Lily on her way to Alchemistry, Mirian on her way to Artifice Design.

True to her word, Professor Torres was there early.

"Any word from you-know-who?"

"No," Torres said simply.

Then Mirian brought out her completed spellrod, which Torres examined. She used an item of her own design that had various metal prongs and glyphs on it to conduct some sort of test. "Simply channeling mana through a student product with no precautions is suicide," she said. "Not that I don\'t believe you\'ve done it right. It also gives me more quantitative data on the components. I can look for inefficiencies in the mana channels or problems in the crystal capacitors. Or flaws in the glyphs."

Mirian watched her use the device curiously. Of course, the testing device had to be magnitudes more complicated than the rod she\'d just made. She wondered if Torres had designed it from the ground up. "Your use of parallel mana conduits on the sixth circuit is wasting mana. It becomes bottlenecked by the capacitor and the subsequent smaller channels after it runs through the uliman glyph. Glyph inefficiencies are minor, but present. The crystal capacitor supporting your force shield spell appears to have a flaw degrading performance. Otherwise, this is good work."

Only three problems? Now that was high praise.

"Let\'s see your next plan."

They went over it together, and this time, Torres had a lot more to say. She wasn\'t an expert on illusions, which meant she knew about twenty-times more than Mirian did. By then, several students had begun to trickle in, so Mirian took her seat and Torres prepared for her lecture. Mirian busied herself in the back on new sketches and designs. She\'d also written down the titles of three more textbooks that her professor had said might be useful, though Gods knew when she\'d find the time to read even more books. The stack of books on her desk in the dorm was already monstrous and threatening to tip over.

Torres gave a modified version of her presentation. What Mirian had told her seemed to have changed it considerably, though the basic framework was the same.

She walked in early to Castner Hall, where Illusion Spells 281 was being held. Apparently, the hall had once been a lavish manor of a rich noble before the Academy took it over. It had been completely remodeled on the inside so that the rooms were proper classrooms, but the entrance hall still had some of the original luxury. Elaborate crystal and silver chandeliers hung from the ceiling, while the sides were decorated with glass banisters. Along the hall was a series of modern stained-glass portraits framed by mirrored glass. It was, like most of the buildings of the Academy, strange in its own special way.

The classroom, thank the Gods, was significantly more subdued. Professor Marva was not.

Most of the professors wore their university coat with trousers or a dress in somewhat matching colors. Professor Marva wore her jacket unbuttoned, revealing the high collared shirt beneath. It was striped with clashing oranges, blues, and yellows, with white frills running down the center. Her pants were equally garish, dyed red, yellow and white. She wore a beret decorated with at least five different kinds of feathers. It seemed like clothes that would better fit a court jester, but she seemed quite at home in them. She was also one of the few people Mirian had seen in Torrviol with red hair and green eyes. In fact, Mirian strongly suspected the illusionist teacher was using… illusions. She didn\'t say anything though.

Mirian was a little embarrassed to be in a 200-level class; most of the students were third or fourth years. She had to start somewhere, though. A few gave her strange looks, but she ignored them.

"Welcome," Professor Marva said to the class once they were settled. She had a rich, deep voice that was pleasant to hear. She proceeded to tell the class what Mirian already knew: that if you were in this class, you better have spellcasting basics down, and you better know how to perform spells with a mental component. Then she went on with a very poetic introduction about how illusions were the key to seeing the world as it really was. Mirian was disappointed that the first class was lecture-only, and they wouldn\'t actually practice illusion spells until the next day. Still, it seemed Marva was a proficient illusionist, and certainly knew the subject.

In Spell Engine Alchemistry, Mirian made sure to repeat her conversation with Nicolus. This time, she noticed Calisto eying her suspiciously as she did. Again she wondered what the history was between the two. Not enough to actually ask about it, though.

Combat Magic was run by Professor Runer, the only professor on staff who was Akanan. He\'d been with the Academy forever, though, and though he probably wasn\'t as old as Viridian, he had to be close. She\'d seen him marching with the professors during the exodus last cycle, so she was sure he wasn\'t in with the spies. Again, the class was full of younger students, but that was just going to be how it was. As with Marva, the class was mostly lecture and introductions. Then she was off to her next class.

At the end of Artifice Physics, Mirian approached Professor Endresen with the conundrum she\'d discovered. "Professor, why do illusion spells with a mental component require more mana?"

Endresen\'s blue eyes lit up and she smiled. "What a wonderful question! Right up there with the Divir Gravity Anomaly as one of my favorite problems. Do you want the textbook answer, or the real answer?"

"Well, both," Mirian said.

"The Mental Component Equation Imbalance Problem is now traditionally solved by adding a multiplier to the spell cost. The multiplier varies per person, and seems to be anywhere from 1.2 to 3.3, leading to a variable mana inefficiency. This has been measured repeatedly, and could be considered a finished problem. But that\'s not very satisfying, is it? After all, the outputted spell measures the same as the unmodified cost, which is to say, as you\'ve discovered, that mental component spells uniquely seem to be demanding a higher energy input. But the output stays constant. The textbook will tell you this is simply the nature of mental component spells, and the energy is \'used up\' in communicating to the brain of the caster. The multiplier seems to correlate somewhat with experience in casting the spells—it is, as they say, a \'skill issue.\' But obviously that\'s not very satisfying either, is it? The general consensus among physicists now is that matter and energy are neither spontaneously created nor destroyed, merely transformed. And yet, what does that mystery mana become? Not heat or electric energy, or the brain of the caster would be fried. And it becomes nothing else our devices can detect, it seems. So the real answer is quite exciting: we don\'t know yet."

She ended this speech with a big beaming smile, like she had just given Mirian a big birthday cake.

"No one knows?" she said.

"I did say that would happen in this class. It happens quite a lot, as it turns out. If you just read textbooks, you tend to think that the world is solved, and now the task at hand is to pass a test proving you know it. That\'s not just true in physics, either. The world is full of unsolved mysteries, and only the truly inquisitive will even realize there\'s a mystery to be solved. Isn\'t that exciting?"

Mirian did not find it nearly as exciting as Professor Endresen, but she thanked her. It was interesting, she had to admit, but just like Professor Jei\'s own magical research, Mirian had more important things to figure out.

Last cycle, she had started reading newspapers to figure out what was going on in the wider world. The Akanan attack surely had to do with something, and \'there\'s a secret buried in Torrviol\' was not going to satisfy their Prime Minister, Senate, or general population as casus belli. She tried reading different newspapers this time, each delivered by train from the larger cities south of them. Again, there seemed to be little news of wider affairs. Again, she read about a Persaman revolt being suppressed some days ago, with Akana Praediar and Baracuel working together. It reaffirmed her suspicion that she needed to get Nicolus to tell her what he knew.

***

The next day, Mirian again met with Torres before class to go over her designs. When she went to illusions class, though, she was in for a shock. When she entered class, she saw a man standing behind the podium, formally dressed in the Academy colors, beard neatly trimmed and hair combed. She did a double take, then stepped outside the classroom to make sure she\'d walked into the right room. When she saw several students already in the class muffling their laughter, she realized: ah. Right. Illusions.

Most students that walked in had the same reaction as she had, though a few seemed to have been alerted to the professor\'s antics.

Professor Marva was committed. She—or he, today—started the lecture with another little speech. "Welcome," he said in a deep baritone. "I am still Professor Marva, and this is still Illusions 281. The poor illusionist relies entirely on spellcraft. If the goal is to change how you are perceived, there are more ways than magic to do that. Certain divination spells and artifice devices can detect the energy signals of an illusion spell. Illusion spells take mana to maintain. If the same effect can be achieved by mundane means, it should be."

Mirian expected him—or her, or they—to end whatever illusion they were using, proving their point, but Professor Marva did no such thing. Instead, it was straight into the lesson. They partnered off and practiced minor illusionary object spells, giving each other feedback on how effective the illusion was, paying attention to little things like if it was missing a shadow or not, and then later trying to disrupt the image with a minor spell while the other partner tried to maintain it. It was engaging enough.

The rest of classes went about the same as they always did, with Combat Magic this time meeting at the range for its own practical session. Then it was time to make real progress.

Nicolus, Nurea and Xipuatl were in the study room. Thankfully, Nicolus had managed to ditch Calisto. Or maybe Nurea had stepped in. "Mirian! This is the guy I was telling you about. Xipuatl."

"Close," Xipuatl said, and Mirian impatiently waited for the conversation to play out as it had before making her own introduction.

The Sacristar heir was still providing dinner during the sessions, so after a few hours they set the books aside and took a break. At Nurea\'s insistence, they cleared the books off the table entirely so they wouldn\'t get honey glaze or biscuit crumbs on the books, which Nicolus rolled his eyes at.

As they ate, Mirian made her move. "So what do you think of the long term prospects for Baracuel and Akana Praediar?" she asked. "We\'re allies now, but could that change?" As she said this, she looked at Nicolus, but glanced over at Sire Nurea as well. Both still seemed relaxed.

"Oh sure," Nicolus said. "In, like, a hundred years. Right now, they both need each other. We need Akana Praediar\'s factories and spellforges. They need our help in securing the fossilized myrvite that runs it, and the infrastructure. With the spellwards and rail, there\'s finally a way for goods to be shipped safely across Enteria. If the Akanans piss off Baracuel, they\'ll find they have to go by sea lane. I\'m sure you remember Viridian talking about how fossilized myrvite attracts leviathans. They could ship it all by boat, but I hope they like warding off sea serpent attacks."

"What if they had a technological advantage? Something that changed war? Like, what if they thought they could conquer Baracuel?"

"Technology is always changing war. No one\'s ever as prepared as they should be for the next one," Xipuatl said. "Akana Praediar would have a key advantage in a war, though: their productive capacity."

"Yeah, but they need the fuel to run it. They\'d be cut off immediately when war broke out. If Baracuel started taking unsustainable losses, they\'d pull up the railroad tracks and smash the spellwards in areas they were going to lose. Then the Akanans would have a logistical nightmare. It wouldn\'t even just be needing to either repair the tracks or ship everything by wagon—both those things require the very fuel they\'d be running low on. Meanwhile, they start getting harassed by the local wildlife. We all dismiss myrvites as harmless these days—" Mirian didn\'t. She\'d had to fight those damned frost scarabites. "—but without the spellwards, they\'d start raiding whatever they could. And all that yummy magic would be hanging out in giant stockpiles in the military camps. It would be a lure for every hungry myrvite within miles. Some of the nastier ones might even start coming up out of the Labyrinth. Plus, I bet the factions in Persama might suddenly find mysterious benefactors handing out weapons, and then Akana has to deal with an escalation of the guerrilla war. Nevermind what would happen to Zhighua." Nicolus leaned back in his chair, picking at a piece of chicken stuck between his teeth with his fingernails, which made Nurea wince. "What would happen in Zhighua? Nothing Akana Praediar would like, I\'ll bet."

Unlike their arguments about magic, Xipuatl just nodded along. "That all sounds about right. What makes you ask?"

Mirian shrugged. "Something I overheard. Someone was saying they caught an Akanan spy in Torrviol."

Nicolus rolled his eyes. "That sounds like a rumor. I\'m pretty sure that dude they caught breaking into the studies building was just a criminal. Syndicate, maybe. Probably not though. But even then—nations spy on each other. They\'ll all deny it, but they all do it. The newspapers and the politicians like to crow about it every time someone gets caught doing it, but allies have been spying on each other since the days of Viaterria."

Xipuatl pushed aside his plate, which Nurea took and placed back on the wheeled cart. Silently, she handed out damp towels to each of them. "We should get back to work," the boy said.

Mirian couldn\'t think of a way to ask anything like \'well what if there was a secret door in Torrviol the Akanans want so they sent these giant airships that no one knew about and attacked anyways?\' without sounding like an absolute buffoon, so it was back to studying.

From what she could tell, neither Nicolus or Nurea had any idea the attack was coming right now. They had to know something, though. Or, they were going to figure something out, long before anyone else did. Mirian just had to keep pushing to figure out what.