Melody of Mana

The core was an interesting piece. Each line and orb I added expanded the crystal structure slightly and formed a web within it. I could see and feel these in ways that were rather unusual, and could tell that the whole thing was sort of impossibly complicated. I could also see where signals would run down each line and where the orbs met looked like a switch.

I was never all that into computers, but I'd had a friend who was, and between him and the insistence of the school librarians I began to recognize Boolean operators in the structure, if only because signals could be sent down the lines. The first I saw was an 'and' operator and it just went from there. Soon I was seeing 'if's and 'not's here and there.

This isn't to say that I could actually tell what this whole mess was doing, I couldn't, but I recognized that it operated on the same principles as a computer from Earth. It also let me conceptualize things as operators, a task that once done meant that I could just make the operators. That was some kind of weird bardic hack I think. I understood what one thing was, and what it meant, and what it did, so I could just put that through rather than a single line or junction.

Professor Hern was absolutely correct too. If we made any mistake the spell itself seemed to light it up with a bright red and a slight nagging feeling. It must be checking against something else that everything was where it was supposed to be, and then telling us. That was a really neat little safety measure.

I built and built until I suddenly found myself thrown out of my mindspace. I was again kneeling in the little circle, waking up with all the others. My knees really hurt too. Professor Hern was there waiting for us, he seemed to be going over paperwork while he waited. As we came out he looked up.

"Everyone stay where you are for a bit longer. I'm going to check on your progress."

He went person to person, giving advice. Nobody had managed to screw it up. Most hadn't gotten much done though and he told them that they needed to keep at it. Eventually he came over to me, placing his hand on a particular point on the circle.

Immediately we were back at the core. I could feel him there too, looking at it. After a few seconds we popped back out and he looked at me.

"That's... how did you get so much done?"

"Sir?"

"You look like you've been working on it for a week or so. What happened?"

I just shrugged. "The structure just repeats a lot, so I made the repeats instead of the basic structure... if that makes sense."

"You've a free period after lunch tomorrow do you not?"

"... Yes sir..."

"Good, come to my office. I'd like to talk about this a bit."

Shit. I knew I'd screwed up somewhere. I didn't know if they knew what all those junctions were for, or what they were doing, and that concerned me. What would they do if they found out? I began to thoroughly consider how I would answer questions that I knew were coming.

After our final class of the day I stumbled back to the dorms with Kala, she'd convinced me that I should absolutely try out the baths. Seemed to be a bit of a thing with her, but I needed one anyway. Sitting on the floor for an hour concentrating after all the rest of the day had been unusually physically draining, even if it took almost no mana.

Upon informing Emma of my plan she brought my clothes and towels and the like. She and Kala's maid insisted on joining us, even though neither of us thought it necessary. It looked like they were supposed to at least escort us and assist with the washing... I was told it was a multi-step process. I didn't really feel the need for them to do that, but when in Rome I suppose...

The idea of Rome was actually quite accurate. The baths were, in a sense, extravagant. First you undressed and washed at an area not unlike a shower, only buckets were used instead of faucets. From there you moved into the baths proper. These were more like heated soaking pools, there were a few different temperature pools depending on what exactly you wanted, from very hot to just slightly warm.

The maids helped at the washing stations to get our backs and help with hair, which nobody sane in any world did a full wash on daily. I felt my nerves melt as Emma ran a cloth covered in hot water over my back. I was happy to let her do that, though both Kala and I refused to allow much more than that, instead releasing our maids.

The soaps were simple, but well made. The foam from them pleasant as I scrubbed myself. Once that was done and I rinsed we headed towards one of the pools.

"Hot? Medium hot? I don't really want cool." Kala looked between the pools.

"Medium. I can see how much steam the hot is putting off. While it'd be nice to soak in that, we wouldn't be able to for too long." Kala pouted at my statement, but joined me anyway.

We were not alone. The medium was the most popular of the three. The water was still hot, quite so, but it wasn't sauna hot. There were three or four older girls with us chatting as we joined.

"You two new?" One asked, leaning over.

I nodded to her as I settled in.

"Excellent! What do you do? Who are your families? Are you betrothed?"

Kala and I looked at each other, and she went first.

"I'm a priest, my family isn't really of note, and no."

"Bard, and the two others are the same for me too."

"Oh wait, are you the girl who shut down that prick Johnathan?"

"If he's the one who tried to scream at me during the exam registration then yes."

"That's great! I'm Lapia by the way. That boy was trying to court my sister, but now that he's failed his entrance exam... Oh! Is it true that Rooke dressed him down in front of everyone too?" This girl seemed to really hate that guy. I took a few moments to wonder what he'd done to piss her off so bad.

"That's totally true. It was brutal," another girl from my year, Lora, said as she came to join us. "I was there. If Rooke spoke to me like that I think I might die on the spot."

"You don't want to go down that route, trust me. Rooke is... well, he's not bad if you're trying to learn, but if you slack off even a bit he'll rip you to shreds." Lapia leaned back as she spoke, seeming to carefully consider her wording.

We chatted about the different teachers for awhile. Apparently Magnolia was good, if a bit of a flake. While he knew his stuff, he often got sidetracked and led you down a weird path. Lapia had a good amount of experience with him since she was a bard in her third year. There were only three girls that year, and none in the year ahead of us. Apparently sometime soon we first year bard girls would be getting a lesson from some of the older ones.

As things went on I found myself slipping down deeper into the water, letting the heat take me. Kala poked me after a bit, making me wake from my stupor. After sticking my tongue out at her I sat up straight and paid attention. Not long after that I returned to my room, falling out cold as soon as I hit the sheets.

My next day consisted of general classes on spellcasting and bardic magic. Professor Magnolia began by handing out a list of spells we had to learn as part of his program.

"Sir, why do we need to learn to summon paper and ink?" Lora pointed towards the list that she'd been handed. "At least one food item as well?"

"Ah, because they are vitally important to the work that most bards do. Paper and ink end up being what many of my students produce for their fellows, and are also important to a lot of clerical work. As for food, well... It's highly useful for when you're traveling, or to feed yourself in an emergency."

"Okay... how do we become familiar with those though? I mean, I know what paper and ink are kind of like sir, but probably not enough."

"Good question! We'll be having demonstrations on their creation. It really is quite interesting..." He spent most of the rest of his lecture wandering from one tangent to another on that subject.

After lunch there was no getting around my meeting with Professor Hern. I walked to his office, still trying to work out what I would tell him. I settled on the truth, to an extent. Lying might be found out later, and if I just told him that I wouldn't answer some of his questions now, it would probably work out better.

Professor Hern's office was quite unlike Professor Rooke's. The fact that the madman had somehow added a forge to it was the first hint. Everything was overtaken by tools and projects. Everything seemed to have a place, but there was just so much of it. I found it claustrophobic.

As I came in I saw Professor Rooke sitting in one of the guest chairs. He motioned me to the one beside him as Professor Hern settled in behind his desk.

"You know Rooke, there really is no need for you to take valuable time out of your day for this..."

"Alana is my charge, so it is of course my responsibility to oversee any important meetings she has. Certainly you wouldn't gainsay me that?"

These two had smiles as they spoke, but they couldn't cover their rivalry. Each seemed eager for information, happy to learn something that might surprise them. It was like being a small fish between two giant sharks.

"Fine, fine. Unless you have some objections Alana?" Professor Hern looked at me with a glint in his eyes.

"I'm happy to have Professor Rooke stay." Having someone who could oppose him was useful. In fact the idea that these two might end up getting in each other's way and spare me did flit here and there.

"Fine then. You said that you realized that the structures in the core were repeating, and that helped no? My understanding is that many bards have realized this, but without some deeper understanding of them they can't reproduce the whole blocks. They can see, but not understand, not know really. We wizards face a similar problem in that we don't know what they are as such.

"If you don't understand, then I don't think I should explain that right now."

"Care to expound on that Alana?" Rooke was giving me a rather more harsh look than I'd like. Professor Hern had apparently decided to join him.

"I'm not saying that I won't ever, but not right now. My first teacher told me not to tell people too many conclusions that I came to if they were outside of the usual, and I wouldn't want to disobey him in that. I need to think about what I say and if it could cause any large upsets."

Neither of the two seemed happy with that explanation. I had to give it to them that they'd at least held off on immediately coming down on me though. Professor Rooke in particular seemed to chew over the words for a bit.

"This isn't the first unusual thing you've come up with is it?"

"No sir."

"The flamethrower, why it doesn't work quite as well for other bards is one no?"

"A couple of my spells. That is one of them."

"I'd really like to know that though Rooke. The girl could speed up our training significantly if she'd tell us." Hern seemed to want to press the issue. By the look on his face I knew that Rooke showing up had been squarely to my advantage here.

"I agree, but her insight could have a large effect. Ruminating on it isn't a poor idea. Alana, what would you need to feel comfortable explaining your little secret to us?"

"I think I first need to understand what it will do to magic item creation in general. As well as knowing what effects it could have that I don't intend. Basically I need to learn a lot more about magical item creation before I divulge that."

"I understand, your concerns Alana, and while it will personally be a pain... Well, we'll see to it that you learn as much as possible about magical items, wont we?" Hern looked over as he spoke, getting a smile from Professor Rooke.

That night I got a lecture on what they understood as the basics. They knew that the structures formed things that would only pass on a message if it was powered a certain way. On the other hand they didn't know the purpose of that. They had all the pieces they needed, but nobody had made the leap that it was doing very basic math and making true/false declarations on if/then statements.

There were a few theories that included those elements, but theory alone wasn't knowledge. It is for that reason that people had been trying to prove things for a long time. There were some hiccups though, primarily in that there was no way to get at the raw information easily. Even if you could, it was still a monumental quantity of data to try and work by hand. There seemed to be some odd blockage as well in transferring it over, but I figured I'd get on that later.

I was also instructed to finish my core as soon as was actually possible. Causing me to frown the whole way back to my dorm.