Unruly Summon Chapter 8: Magic

"Good morning, Tom," called a cheerful voice, waking me up from a dream that thankfully did not involve a single dragon.

"Already?" I answered blearily.

"Oh? Do you need more sleep?"

"Yes, but I probably shouldn't, if it's already morning."

Sleeping in would just extend my jet-lag, so despite not having had a great night's rest, I dragged myself out of bed. Breakfast was already waiting on my desk, with my clothes neatly folded over the back of the chair. They'd even managed to find me some clean underwear.

"How long have you been up?" I asked, wondering when it had all been prepared and how long she'd been sneaking around my room while I slept. I was fortunate she wasn't an assassin.

... Actually, she was currently the only one in my room with me. An opportunity to ask a few more useful questions than how long she'd been up.

"Since first chime," she answered.

"First chime? I haven't heard any chimes?"

"Of course not," she said, stifling a little giggle. "It would be a bit silly if the signal to wake the serving staff up to get ready for the day also woke up the people they were getting ready for."

"Logical, but that doesn't explain how it works," I answered, taking my clothes behind the privacy screen.

"I just put my timekeeper under my pillow."

Oh, so there wasn't one large bell. There were individual timekeepers. Or perhaps a central clock, which broadcast a signal to smaller tools that went ding.

"Umm... Mary?"

"Yes?"

"Sorry for the odd question, but you're... happy, right?"

"Of course! I take my duties seriously."

"What does doing your job have to do with being happy? No, never mind. More importantly, you were calling me 'master' yesterday, but it's not like I bought you or signed anything. Presumably someone else did, and they've simply told you to act that way toward me?"

"Yes. My owner is Minister Dennis Banks." Her smile twisted into a cute pout. "I was really excited when he gave me his first ever explicit order, but then he said he'd have nothing more to do with me!"

"Only one? What was it?" I asked, wondering why that would be exciting.

Mary froze, her pout wiped from her face and replaced by a pained grimace. "Uh... uh..." she stammered.

"You aren't allowed to tell me?"

She shook her head desperately.

"Okay. Never mind, then."

She sagged with relief as the smile gradually re-emerged, while I tried to make sense of her response. Giving her an instruction and then telling her not to talk about it stretched the definition of 'one order'.

I pondered as I emerged fully dressed from behind my screen and sat down for breakfast. The explanation that made the most sense would be if the minister she'd mentioned had delegated his power, but it obviously hadn't been directly to me.

"Can you tell me the set of people other than Minister Dennis from whom you'll accept orders?" I asked between mouthfuls.

"Princess Stephanie, Lady Christine and yourself," she answered, apparently not having been banned from spilling that information.

But not Wendy? That was interesting. "And orders from Princess Stephanie and Christine have higher priority than mine?"

She froze up again.

"It's okay. If you aren't allowed to answer something, just say so. You don't need to feel bad about it."

It's not as if she needed to answer explicitly; the fact that she couldn't was answer enough already.

"Sorry..." she mumbled.

"Why? It's not your fault," I answered as I pondered my next move. Obviously she'd been ordered to hold her tongue over certain things, and even if that collar didn't inflict any sort of mind control, she still seemed incredibly averse to going against orders. Thankfully, whoever had been ordering her hadn't been particularly thorough, a fact I intended to make full use of.

"Have you been ordered to lie to me about anything?" I asked.

"No," she answered instantly, shaking her head so fast that it almost gave me whiplash.

"Have you lied to me about anything in the past?"

"No!"

"Have you ever said anything deliberately misleading, or omitted information you thought I would want to know?"

"No! Don't you trust me?" she asked in return, looking as if she was about to burst into tears.

Someone could have told her to lie about lying, but so far nothing she'd done had indicated the existence of any acting skills whatsoever. She looked genuinely distraught at the thought I might not trust her.

"I trust you," I answered honestly. It was hard not to. "But you're asking the wrong question. You should be asking if I trust that Minister Dennis you mentioned, since you'll obviously follow his orders over mine. I've never met him, so saying I trusted him at this point would be rather premature. You've obviously been in my room for some amount of time without me waking up. If he told you to stab me in my sleep, what would you do?"

That had apparently been the wrong thing to say. The smile had reappeared instantly after telling her I trusted her, then vanished again when I started talking about Dennis, but once I'd mentioned stabbing, she froze up again, shuddering, looking almost like she was in physical pain.

"I... I..." she stammered.

"Don't answer that. In fact, forget I even asked. Now, what are the plans for this morning?"

The shuddering ceased, but this time she took a little longer to recover, not immediately answering my question.

"A magic lesson with Wendy," came an answer anyway, Christine standing in my doorway. How long had she been there?! What had she overheard? "Once you're done eating breakfast, Mary will take you back out to the courtyard, and you'll meet her there."

"Not 'we'? You're not coming?"

"I'll escort you as far as the courtyard, but then I'll leave you in Wendy's care. I have my own training to do, after all, and even if she's not a war mage, she's enough to keep you safe."

"Fair enough," I agreed. "I'm done with my breakfast, so shall we get going?"

The three of us walked the corridors of the castle once more.

"Uh... Random question, but there aren't any dragons rampaging around at the moment, are there?" I asked.

"Indeed not. I almost wish that one was; it's one of the few ways that I can see the demon war ending without our complete defeat. Alas, even then, it's likely that the world would be plunged into an even worse state once the dragon was dealt with. But why do you ask?"

"I had a dream about a dragon last night. It was... oddly realistic."

"I'm sure it was just a dream. Don't let it worry you."

"It made my eyes bleed."

Christine stopped walking. "Pardon?"

"The dragon roared in my dream. When I woke up, there was blood over my face and pillow."

"What?! You didn't say!" exclaimed Mary.

"I didn't notice until you'd left and I'd calmed down. I could heal myself, and was too exhausted to do anything about it." Not to mention that the memories had blurred so quickly after waking, just like a regular dream. Despite the blood, it was really hard to think of it as important, which was rather suspicious in itself...

"That is... worrying," stated Christine, which I felt was obvious enough to not need to be said. "You say you fell back asleep after, and did not suffer a repeat?"

"Yup. Slept like a log until Mary woke me up."

"Very well. I will forego my training this morning and make some enquiries."

"Thanks," I said as we ignored the changing room and stepped outside, where Wendy was already waiting. "No armour today?"

"Not for your first magic lesson. Perhaps once Wendy decides you're ready for some direct experience of using defensive magic in combat, but that won't be today."

"Logical. Thanks for the escort, and see you later."

"Yes, you will. Please wait for me to return before you leave this courtyard. Given your experience last night, it's more important than ever that you're defended."

The knight did an about-turn and re-entered the castle. "Also, while I'm investigating your dream, I'll enquire with Minister Dennis about transferring official ownership of Mary," she added, still with her back to us. "It won't do for our hero to not be able to trust his own maid."

... Drat. She'd at least partially overheard my questioning. I needed to be more careful. Thankfully, I hadn't said anything particularly incriminating, and neither Mary's answers nor Christine's reaction had given much cause for concern. Hopefully... She said it was more important than ever I was defended, but what use was an armed guard if what I needed protection from was inside my dreams?

"Now that you're finally here, shall we get started?" asked Wendy. "You've proven perfectly capable of casting spells without any sort of background knowledge, but I think we should cover a small amount of theory anyway. The knowledge will be useful for the more advanced images."

I nodded, having no objection to that plan. Mary nodded too, obviously doing her best to listen in despite having stopped against the castle wall, instead of following me out into the courtyard.

"If you want to take part, come and stand over here," I called. "It'll be far easier."

"I don't have permission to leave my post," she answered.

"Sheesh. I give you permission, so get over here."

She beamed and came jogging over.

"Uh... As long as you don't mind," I added to Wendy. It seemed impolite to add a second person to her class without her permission.

She simply shrugged her shoulders before continuing as if the interruption had never happened. "Let's start with one of the biggest questions of them all. What is mana?"

She looked at me, obviously expecting an answer, which seemed rather unfair. How was I supposed to know? Putting together the fact that the divine translation blessing translated whatever she was saying to 'mana', which had some Earth connotations, combined with its use in the images of the spells I knew, I put together the best guess I could. "The fuel for magic?"

"Half marks. Mana is indeed the fuel for magic, but that's an answer to the question 'what is it used for?' rather than an explanation of what it is. Any further guesses?"

"Nope," I answered instantly. That would be like trying to answer the question 'what is light?' without ever having heard of a photon. I had no hope of making a guess based purely on Earth connotations.

Although, if her explanation involved thaums, I was going to laugh.

She didn't explain at all, instead turning to Mary and treating her as part of the class.

"Nobody knows," answered Mary.

"Exactly! Despite centuries of research, we have no idea what mana is."

"Oh," I responded, feeling somewhat let down.

"If you want to help us fix that, you're more than welcome," smirked Wendy. "Until then, the best we've managed is to measure its empirical properties. For example, we know it's pervasive; it's impossible to isolate any material that does not contain mana. It also appears to be unlimited; no-one has ever managed to cause an area to 'run out' of mana."

"Wait," I interjected. "If it's pervasive, why do spell images, or even body strengthening, involve drawing mana out of the air? Why not use what's already within us? And if it's unlimited, what is mana capacity?"

"Both very good questions. The answer to the first wasn't something I planned to deal with because it's not important, but the short explanation is that I lied. There is indeed one material that excludes mana: soul. As for your second question, what are your thoughts?"

Again? Thankfully, based on her first answer, I could hazard a guess. "Drawing in mana from the air takes effort, and, like a muscle, you can exhaust yourself?"

"A very good answer. Pretty much spot on, in fact; the muscle analogy runs deeper than you think. Do you know the difference between a sprinter and a marathon runner?"

Sheesh, this class contained more questions than answers. Thankfully, this one was easy. "A sprinter can produce great bursts of power while a marathon runner produces less, but can sustain it for longer."

"Exactly, and so it is for mana. We describe it as the breadth and depth of your mana capacity. Someone with deep reserves could perhaps fling out a cast of Ignis Pila—a basic fireball—once a minute more or less indefinitely. Someone with broad reserves could cast it a dozen times over the span of a single minute, but then may need to rest an hour before they could cast it again. Or they could cast Conflagratio once, a much stronger spell that someone with deep but narrow reserves could never manage. Obviously, as a hero, your reserves will be both wide and deep, and your 'muscle' will grow stronger at a far faster rate than us normal folks."

Mary nodded happily, as if she was being praised herself.

"That being the case, we need to start exercising that 'muscle'. Shall we see if you can pull off Conflagratio?"