Everything was black all of a sudden."Uh… Phoebe? Someone? h.e.l.lo?" Remian looked around. "Where am I?"
"Tu belna rakeo, nosh vontai subane." A clear feminine voice suddenly answered from nowhere.
"What?" Remian blinked. "I don"t understand."
"Qiu zhen meishu li, mu tau."
"Uh… I still don"t understand." Remian tried a different language. "Bahasa boleh, tak?"
"Ginoskeis? Drak nakour raz faus?"
Remian grimaced. Dumping language entirely, he tried to send out a Psionic broadcast in pure concept. [Who?]
And pure concepts returned. [Aide. Helper. a.s.sistant.]
[Where?] Remian asked next.
Another concept replied, and then he started to understand.
This was a sort of illusion s.p.a.ce meant for teaching. The "being" that spoke to him wasn"t actually real, and only existed here. "Her" job was to help the user of this illusion s.p.a.ce.
[So… you can teach me? You can tell me all about the Black Ruins?] This was asked in concept, not actual words. In doing so, Remian already "explained" his limited understanding of the Black Ruins to the "aide".
[Not recognized. Unable to a.s.sist. Checking online reference. Online access failed. No accessible network detected. Hardware damage detected. Warning: power drain critical.]
[What?] Remian was suddenly flooded with a whole lot of strange and complicated complex, but that last one blared like an alarm in his head. Basically, the power source of this strange device was almost drained and the device would fail to function soon. [How do I recharge you?]
[This device is already running on user"s mana. Drainage parameters will soon reach legal limits. Please rest and return when you have recovered your mana.]
[Wait… so you use MY mana? And it"s me that can"t supply you enough power?] Remian realized.
But at that point, the blackness receded, and Remian found himself staring at a worried-looking Phoebe back in the real world.
***
"I don"t like it." Phoebe said. "What if something happens to you?"
"What could it do? It"s just an illusion." Remian explained. "At most it"ll tire me out, but even that has safeguards, like the one that turned it off before I was drained too badly. I think it"s meant as a teaching device, like a book. Unless I drop it on my foot physically or something, I don"t think it"s going to harm me."
"But the way you read this book is directly with your mind. It"s sending thoughts directly into your head. What if something goes wrong? You could be hurt mentally." Phoebe objected. "And I can"t heal mental damage with life magic!"
"Okay, so maybe there"s some risk." Remian conceded. "But think of the possibilities! How much could we learn from this one device? We could find out what all of these other things are, what happened to the Black Ruins Civilization, and even stuff about the way they used Chaos Magic!"
"Is that what you"re after? Chaos Magic?" Phoebe frowned.
Remian froze. "No!"
But even as he said it, he felt that he might have answered a bit too quickly.
"Well, maybe a little." He relented. "I mean… it"s not something I can learn about just anywhere and I seem to already be using it without knowing. That being the case, I may as well try and figure it out properly. Right now, I don"t really know what I"m doing, and I"m half-afraid to use magic as it is. To me, learning about it is safer than not learning about it and using it wildly."
Phoebe paused, hesitating, then said, "Let me try."
Wordlessly, hoping he wasn"t putting her in danger, Remian handed her the headset.
After a minute, she took it off. "I can"t understand what it said."
"You have to speak wolfcat." Remian explained. [Like this.]
[Ah.] Phoebe put on the headset again.
After another few minutes, she took it off. "Remian, I don"t think this device was meant for children."
"What do you mean?" Remian asked.
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"Well, it seems it"s part of a set and the rest of the set is missing. It doesn"t have information about the ancient ruins or anything. It only contains information about the last thing it was supposed to teach about." Phoebe told him.
"And what"s that?" Remian asked, feeling disappointed.
"That…" Phoebe grimaced. "It"s a spell that I"m not sure I would dare to attempt. It seems very complicated, and definitely not something children should try. I"m pretty sure it uses Chaos Magic."
Remian perked up. "Really? What does it do?"
"It opens up a s.p.a.ce." Phoebe said in a low voice. "Out of nowhere."
"s.p.a.ce magic?!" Remian stared. As far as he could tell, only the most powerful mages dared to dabble with s.p.a.ce. "Like the s.p.a.cewarp drive used on the Cloud Nine? The one that supposedly twists s.p.a.ce a bit to make a long journey shorter?"
"No, that one tries to form brief tunnels of s.p.a.ce squashed together so that the Deutero Mothership flies around faster. This one seems to form a permanent s.p.a.ce in thin air." Phoebe said. "It seems to be used for secret storage."
"Wow. But what"s the point of storing anything there? Once you stop casting, it"s all going to go poof, right?"
"That"s just the thing. It doesn"t, or at least, it"s not supposed to. It"s supposed to stay there forever." Phoebe said. "That"s why… I think it"s Chaos Magic. It doesn"t draw power from you. It needs a lot of power and it"s supposed to draw that power from somewhere, just not from the caster."
"An unlimited supply of power?!" Remian gaped. "That… that does sound like Chaos Magic!"
"Then I guess you"ve found what you"re looking for… if only a small part of it." Phoebe handed the headset to him.
Remian"s hand tightened around the headset as he took it. "This… this is priceless! Can you imagine? If I could learn that spell… maybe I could figure out some of the principles behind it… and then… apply it to other uses! Imagine that! Everything that uses mana could potentially use Chaos Magic! Think about how badly the whole world wants to find mana right now!"
"I don"t think it"s that simple or that easy." Phoebe shook her head. "In fact, I have a bad feeling about it. I mean… just look at what happened to the Black Ruins Civilization. Something very, very bad happened to them, and I"m starting to think it might be a secret reason as to why Chaos Magic is taboo."
Remian thought it over. "I think you"re right in that the downfall of the Black Ruins Civilization had to do with Chaos Magic. I also agree that it"s probably one of the reasons why modern magic laws in just about every country forbid Chaos Magic. But those laws don"t apply out here in the Frontier, and the need for mana has gone ballistic. The whole world is so desperate for mana right now, it"s practically apocalyptic."
"And you think that just with this device, you can figure out the secrets of Chaos Magic quickly enough to save the world?"
"I think I could try to learn a little, at least. I make no promises as to how long it would take or if I would ever succeed. But I could try."
Phoebe bit her lip. "Just be careful, all right? And don"t overdo it. Your health is…"
"My health was never good to begin with." Remian acknowledged.
Phoebe paused, then said, "George has some ideas on that. If I started feeding you a lot of herbs everyday, would you take them?"
"Herbs? Sure. I"ll eat whatever you feed me." Remian grinned. "Especially since your cooking has been improving."
Phoebe snorted a half-laugh. "You said it! No matter how bitter!"
"No matter how bitter." Remian said, wincing.
"Okay, then." Phoebe nodded to herself.
"So… when are you starting this herb feeding?" Remian asked.
"Actually, I already started." Phoebe told him with a grin. "It"s just been done discreetly. Now, however, I don"t need to disguise anything any more. You asked for it!"
"Uh… okay…" Remian was already started to regret unleashing Phoebe on the herbs issue. "I"m… gonna stop here for today, go to sleep early tonight, and recover some mana. I"m taking the device with me. I can start learning the spell tomorrow."
Phoebe nodded. "I"ll let Ruth know."
***
"Why?" Alani had to ask the question when the next day dawned and more and more ships bringing supplies and reinforcements kept arriving at KarGoth.
"Thirty-five million lir." George answered, with his head in his arms.
"What?"
"35,000,000 lir. That was the lowest price a purple mana crystal was sold for at the Fal"Herim"s recent auction. It"s come to a point where except for the Dragon Empire, n.o.body"s selling mana crystals openly any more. Everyone"s either trading privately, or not at all. Mana"s been used all across the world for so long, people are already panicking over the shortage. In some places, there"s been rioting."
"What"s the point of rioting? If they don"t have mana, they don"t have it." Alani pointed out.
"Ah, but everyone"s pretty sure that their governments do, in fact, have mana, and are h.o.a.rding the crystals away somewhere for military use or something."
"That… does make sense."
"But even if their governments handed out all their secret stashes, what then? What happens when those stashes also run out, and everyone wants mana, and n.o.body has any, and nothing works any more?" George asked.
Alani scratched her head. "They either have to buy from the Dragon Empire at a million Dragon Coins (which means a billion lir) per red crystal, or they"ll have to power everything themselves. Use their own magic power."
"Which is going to be very difficult and falls far short of everyone"s usual consumption. Look at our own situation. We have dozens of airships now, but we"re only able to power a few. It"s the same everywhere else, except that more developed nations have been using mana to fuel all sorts of machinery, not just vehicles and transportation. At the rate this is going, it won"t be long before floating islands start to fall and a lot of sacred lands are flat out going to disappear."
"That sounds bad."
"A lot of our mining and factory equipment use mana crystals too. We"ve been powering them manually, and relying more on the Wilds recently, but without the Wilds…" George shook his head. "More than half our mining operation would have already collapsed."
"If that"s the case with us… what about the rest of the world?" Alani asked. "What have they been doing without Wilds?"
George summarized it in one word.
"Collapsing."