Corvis Eralith
The harsh scrape of the chair legs against the stone floor echoed in the large Basics of Artificing classroom as I slumped into a seat at the very back. My muscles felt like lead, my mind a frayed tapestry still vibrating from the delicate, terrifying surgery I had performed on Alea's very mana core only yesterday.
Unsealing her artifact hadn't been artificing; it had been bomb disposal in the heart of a nuclear reactor.
Beyond the Veil had shown me the intricate lattice of protective spells woven into her core, layered like razor-wire tripwires around the seal itself.
Disabling one could trigger three others which would then cause a chain reaction. It had been like playing a terrifying, nerve-shredding minesweeper, played with stakes infinitely higher than a lost life—a cascade failure could have obliterated her core entirely.
The memory of Alea's trusting gaze, the raw vulnerability she had shown earlier, only amplified the residual tremor in my hands. I had instructed her to keep flying, to avoid any sudden surges or stresses that might destabilize the fragile equilibrium I ha imposed.
'Don't crash the plane I just jury-rigged,' was the unspoken plea beneath the technical phrase. The gamble was colossal, resting entirely on my shaky shoulders. If luck held and Dicathen didn't implode first, she could ascend to Integration, a true shield against the coming darkness.
But the other Lances… Aya might be swayed by loyalty, Mica by practicality, but Bairon's pride and Varay's ingrained duty to her name as a Lance were fortress walls. Breaking their seals wasn't just risky; it was potentially suicidal exposure.
The classroom door banged open, shattering my grim reverie. Gideon Bastius stumbled in, looking perpetually ruffled, his wild hair a testament to chaotic genius or chronic insomnia.
"Good morning, pretentious students of Xyrus Academy!" he boomed, his voice dripping with the kind of sarcasm that could etch glass. He scanned the room, his gaze lingering briefly, almost dismissively, on the scattered students. "Seems being the necessary age isn't so necessary anymore, eh? Director Goodsky decrees rules bend like cheap tin when it suits!" He snorted, a sound like gravel in a pipe.
"Hence, we have a new addition to our esteemed ranks of future tinkerers and potential fire-starters."
He launched into one of his signature self-aggrandizing monologues, extolling the virtues of his own inventions while barely masking his contempt for the curriculum he was forced to teach.
My attention drifted, exhaustion warring with the ingrained habit of cataloging threats and opportunities. Then, movement at the periphery. The new student Gideon had vaguely gestured towards slipped into the empty seat beside mine at the back row.
I turned my head slightly, taking her in. Green hair, vibrant as new moss, caught the light filtering through the windows. Large, round glasses magnified intelligent, curious yellow eyes that darted around the room with nervous energy.
Her posture was hunched, fingers fidgeting with the strap of an oversized satchel overflowing with scrolls and odd metallic bits. Emily Watsken. The name surfaced from the depths of my memories, accompanied by a cascade of associations: brilliant, socially awkward, the true mind behind the image projection artifact. Canon nudged reality.
"Hi," I offered, the word feeling thick on my tongue. My usual reserve was compounded by fatigue and the lingering dread of the morning.
She jumped, startled, then whipped her head towards me. "Hi-I meant, good morning!" she stammered, her voice pitched high with nervous excitement. She practically vibrated in her seat.
"I am Emily Watsken! Nice to meet you, it's a pleasure really, a huge pleasure!" She executed a deep, jerky bow that nearly sent her glasses flying. "Please be my friend!" The plea burst out, raw and unfiltered.
The sheer, desperate earnestness was both jarring and strangely familiar. Not from personal experience, but from the pages of a story. This was Emily, unleashed. "Nice to meet you too, Emily," I replied, managing a small, weary smile. I extended my hand. "I'm Corvis Eralith."
Her eyes widened impossibly further behind her lenses. She seized my hand in both of hers, shaking it with frantic enthusiasm.
"Yes! Prince Eralith! I already know! I actually know a lot of things about you!" Her words tumbled out in a breathless rush, cheeks flushing. "Your work on the atmospheric mana stabilizers for the greenhouses in Elenoir! The modified purification artifacts you suggested for the aqueducts throughout Zestier! Your last mock battle in the classroom of Professor Glory!"
The sheer depth of her knowledge was… unnerving. She wasn't just aware of my public role; she had dissected technical specifics most nobles wouldn't comprehend.
"Thanks?" I managed, slightly taken aback. "I don't quite know what to think about that level of reconnaissance, Emily. Anyway, was it Gideon who strong-armed the age requirement for you?"
I gestured vaguely towards the front where he was still holding forth.
Her head bobbed furiously. "It were both Professor Gideon and Director Goodsky! Professor Gideon saw my models for a projecto of mine, and Headmistress Goodsky… well, she said my 'unique perspective' outweighed bureaucratic limitations."
She beamed, pride warring with lingering awe. Then, she leaned in conspiratorially, her voice dropping to an intense whisper. "Prince… ehm… may I ask… how did you conceptualize the harmonic compression for the radio? The way it isolates the carrier frequency without dampening signal integrity… it's… elegant!"
My eyebrows shot up. "You know I was involved with the radio?" The project was public, but my direct role as the inventor wasn't advertised. Gideon had been the public face.
Emily nodded, her green hair bouncing. "Professor Gideon spilled the beans! Well, sort of. My parents have been in talks with him since I have created the blueprint for the image projection artifact so I kept asking about the core frequency modulation principle, and he got flustered and muttered something about 'that infuriating prince and his knack for elegant solutions' before shooing me away. It wasn't hard to deduce!"
She grinned, a flash of triumph in her yellow eyes. "I pestered him for weeks."
Ah. That tracked. Annoy Gideon enough, and secrets tumbled out. "I see," I murmured, a flicker of amusement cutting through the fatigue. "Well, the idea was simple enough: find a cheaper, more accessible way to communicate than expensive, single-use scrolls. Accessibility was key."
"Simple?!" Emily gasped, her voice rising enough that Gideon paused mid-rant and shot a glare towards the back. She ducked her head, lowering her voice again, but the intensity remained.
"Prince, making something revolutionary and accessible? That's not simple, that's genius! Super smart!" Her hands fluttered excitedly. "When I found out, I begged my parents for one immediately! We got one of the first batches! And you know what? My family… we're merchants mostly… but because we saw the potential early, we invested heavily in the relay tower production…" She trailed off, searching for the right word, her enthusiasm momentarily checked by the weight of the change.
"It… changed things. For us."
She was painting a picture of a family elevated, moving beyond established merchant roles into something new, empowered by the technology I had seeded. The ripple effects of my actions, visible in this earnest girl's life.
"Bourgeoisie," I supplied quietly, the term feeling anachronistic yet perfectly fitting the nascent class of capital-driven influence rising in Dicathen's late-medieval framework. "That's the term for it. The rising merchant class wielding economic power."
"Bourgeoisie?" Emily repeated, rolling the unfamiliar word on her tongue. Her nose wrinkled slightly behind her glasses, then smoothed as understanding dawned. A slow, brilliant smile spread across her face.
"Bourgeoisie. That's a strange term… but… I like it."
She said it like a talisman, a name for the new world her family was stepping into, a world she, with her brilliant mind, was poised to help shape.
———
The low murmur of Gideon's grudgingly delivered answers to the front-row students faded into a background hum, a dissonant counterpoint to the frantic ticking clock only I could hear inside my skull. Every passing moment felt like sand slipping through an hourglass nearing its end.
Windsom. The Asura's presence was a storm cloud hanging over Xyrus, unseen but felt in the oppressive weight on my chest. I needed him to reveal himself to Grey soon.
The waiting was corrosive, leaving me stranded between two godly powers, unable to warn the one person who might truly understand the peril. And time… time wasn't just scarce; it was bleeding out.
The need for a new Ineptrune, something to counter the inevitable, gnawed at me. My pencil moved almost autonomously across the parchment, sketching the brutal geometry of sea mines destined for Dicathen's coastlines—blunt instruments for a blunt invasion.
"Emily," I said, the word cutting through my grim reverie and the classroom drone. I kept my eyes on the mine schematics, the harsh lines a stark contrast to the delicate work I envisioned. "Could you talk to me about that image projection artifact of yours?"
The sharp intake of breath beside me was audible. "May I? Really?" Her voice vibrated with pure, unadulterated excitement. She didn't wait for confirmation.
Words tumbled out in a torrent—harmonics, light refraction matrices, mana-sensitive photonic emitters, the crucial integration of illusion-deviant magic to stabilize and layer the projected image. It was intricate, brilliant… and fundamentally familiar.
A magical movie projector.
But as she described the core principle—capturing a scene's ambient light and mana signatures and reprojecting them through a focused lens—a spark ignited in my exhausted mind.
Beyond the Veil.
My existing tattoo allowed me to see mana, but it was an internal perception, a layer overlaid on my natural sight by my brain interpreting the signals from the tattoo. What if… what if I could externalize that perception?
What if I could combine Emily's capture technology with the design of Beyond the Veil? Not just see mana, but record its flows, analyze its patterns externally and enhance my own resolution?
The implications exploded like shrapnel in my thoughts. A contact lens-sized image capturer designed only for mana, etched with the same intricate sigil as Beyond the Veil, layered directly onto my eye.
The physical lens could handle the light refraction and projection; the sigil, powered by Against the Tragedy, would interface directly with my optic nerve and the sight portion of my brain, merging the external projection with my internal perception. The issue of seeing the projection wouldn't be a problem—magic and biology could bridge that gap.
"Emily," I interrupted her passionate technical soliloquy, turning to face her fully. The urgency in my voice cut through her enthusiasm. "Can I ask you to help me with something? Something… significant?"
Her response was instantaneous, her yellow eyes blazing behind her lenses. "Yes! Everything, Prince!" It was the fervent loyalty of a disciple offered to a prophet, humbling and slightly unnerving.
"Considering how perceptive you are," I began, choosing my words carefully, "you've probably deduced I don't utilize mana like conventional mages." I expected understanding, perhaps curiosity. Instead, she gasped, a sound of genuine shock.
"What do you mean? No, that's… impossible! To be such a revolutionary artificer… you have to be a mage!"
The denial was fierce, born of her deep belief in the intrinsic link between magic and creation. But her brilliant mind processed the contradiction instantly. Her eyes widened further, filling with dawning awe.
"Are you… are you telling me you've found a way to create… an artificial magic system?" She whispered the last words, as if speaking heresy.
Yes. She had pierced the core of it with unnerving accuracy. "Sort of," I admitted, the weight of the secret settling heavier. "It's embryonic. I can siphon ambient mana effectively, store it, even channel it in crude ways. But control? Refinement? It's… limited. And instead of sensing mana internally, I…" I tapped gently beneath my left eye.
"See it. Visually."
The awe on her face transformed into pure, incandescent wonder. "That's… fantastic!" she breathed, the word imbued with reverence for the sheer audacity of the concept. "What do you need me for?" She leaned forward, hands clasped tightly, vibrating with the energy of a coiled spring ready to unleash its potential.
"We need to miniaturize the capture core of your artifact," I explained, sketching rapid, rough diagrams in the margin of my mine plans. "Condense it into a transparent lens, shaped to fit over my eye. The sigil interface will be my part. The light and mana capture… that's yours."
Emily froze. Not from hesitation, but from the sheer intensity of focus that washed over her. Her eyes glazed slightly, looking inward at the intricate puzzle.
Seconds stretched, filled only by Gideon's distant grumbling and the frantic whirring of Emily's thoughts. Then, a sharp, decisive nod. "Consider it done." The certainty in her voice was absolute. "I have… so many ideas already. The substrate could be fused quartz infused with mana-conductive—"
"Materials aren't an issue," I cut in, a flicker of relief mingling with the frantic energy. "An associate of mine," I said, thinking of Vincent Helstea's vast, discreet network, "has access to virtually anything we might need. Rare minerals, purified beast core dust, specialized alchemical solutions… name it, he can procure it."
A grin split Emily's face, wide and brilliant. "Perfect! Then we—"
But her next words blurred into the background hum. A sudden, profound stillness settled within me. This collaboration, this merging of Emily's genius with my desperate need and unconventional tools… it felt like aligning cogs in a vast, unseen machine.
I had no inkling, then, that this seemingly technical partnership wouldn't just refine my sight. It was poised to shatter the lens through which I viewed reality itself, forcing me to confront the terrifying, unfathomable depths of the Meta-awareness I carried like a dormant beast within my mind.
I had no idea what beast I was about to unleash on the world.