■ Periodic report from Mud-Black to Mooncaller
I believe I have already reported our safe passage through the barrier and our arrival in the New World, but I must tell you, the technology here is uniformly remarkable to behold.
Items known as thaumaturgical devices─like combinations of the Church’s technology and the sorcery of the witches─are prevalent, and the carriages here are drawn not by horses but by floating spheres. Wizards soar through the sky on their thaumatheria, and the city is brilliantly illuminated even at night.
I created magic so that anyone could use the power of sorcery with ease─but I must admit this New World is well ahead of me on that point. The use of thaumaturgical devices requires talent in neither sorcery nor magic, nor need the user consume any of their own mana to activate them. They operate by slowly draining the mana stored within, and can be refilled once empty, which renders them extremely compatible with the Abyss Sorcerer and his infinite well of mana.
As for the horned Exinov, our investigations have determined that they are humans with horns, and nothing more. They have no special abilities to speak of, and are in that sense no different from the beast-eared ones called Ignas. Both these groups do harbor beast souls to some extent, however, giving them greater physical capabilities than the people they label Nurabehn, which surely plays a role in their position as the ruling class.
We have decided to bring home with us a number of Nurabehn who wish to emigrate, unable to bear the oppression inherent in their society any longer. Several craftspeople who make thaumaturgical devices, as well as merchants who deal in them, have also decided to join us. Please prepare a suitable reception for them.
■ Reply from Mooncaller to Mud-Black
I’m jealous! The New World sounds like so much fun! I’ve been trying to move things around so I can get over there myself, but it’s looking like it’ll be a while yet.
It’ll be an amazing boost to have those experts come over here! But isn’t it going to be a huge loss for the New World in the long run? Do they just not care about their secrets getting out? It’s not like I don’t believe you or anything, I just want an amicable trade relationship with these people is all.
■ Immediate reply from Mud-Black to Mooncaller
Perhaps I should have mentioned this first, but we’ve gone to war with the rulers of the New World.
+++
“…Wha?”
The office of the headmaster of the Royal Academy of Magic of the Kingdom of Wenias─that is to say, Albus’s office─stood in the center of the corridor that connected the Academy to the royal palace, where Albus had her personal chambers.
Lately the thing she most looked forward to as she strode down the corridor to her office was reading Zero’s letters, which she did the moment she sat down at her desk. Their correspondence was carried out using an extremely valuable magical item known as a witch’s letter, a set of two paired sheets of parchment that allowed the users to exchange written missives at any remove with no delay. Whatever Albus wrote on her letter appeared on Zero’s, and when Zero erased the words on her letter, they disappeared from Albus’s as well.
Meaning that the delegation has gone far beyond opening trade relations with the New World─they’ve opened hostilities. We are, at this very moment, at war.
It was then that Albus learned a person’s bewilderment could exceed tolerance to such a degree that they were left unable even to cry out in shock.
How did this happen? What does she mean, war? Wait, nobody’s died, have they?
A plethora of questions and doubts floated into her mind then dissipated.
“Zero’s periodic report came in today, didn’t it, my lady? What did she have to say?” Holdem had come into her office without so much as a knock.
Albus looked up at him. “Well, the thing is…” The words caught in her throat, as if her body was physically refusing to either process or share the information.
“What?”
“Well, the letter… It…”
As Albus stumbled over her words, Holdem cocked his head and walked over to the desk, plucking the letter out of her hand. It started with Zero’s report, followed by Albus’s reply, then ended with the pronouncement that they were at war. Holdem read through from the top, but when he got to the last line his reaction indicated that he literally could not believe the evidence of his own eyes.
That can’t be what it really says. I must have read it wrong.
Holdem was just as befuddled as Albus had been─there was no anger, no panic, no outburst. He simply raised a very practical question: “So…do you think we should send a support unit?”
“Oh, uhh…” Albus’s stalled brain finally began to grind into motion once more. The delegation she sent to the New World had started a war. Which meant that Albus, as the one who sent them, had plenty to do on her own end. “Can you get me the Mage Commander, the Knight Commander…and Thousand-Eyes? I think this calls for an emergency council.”
“Sure does. Uh huh, right, yes. First, we need to hold an emergency council.”
Slowly but surely digesting Albus’s words, Holdem departed the office. Albus turned back to the witch’s letter, only to find a startling postscript had appeared at the bottom.
■ P.S.
Gather everything that originates from the New World in the northern reaches.