Chapter 24 - Slow times - 1

Finallyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

Third week of February. I think. Ten days after Mom and Ophelia’s… discussion? Clarification? Nine after the Yiburis’s acceptance in our tiny surprisingly growing family.

Quick, quick, launch a MIDAR scan!

Seeing how eager you are, let’s start with a quick scan. I’ll make a longer one run during your sleep, then a last one during the whole week. There we go…

…

Flashscan done. Inputting data, calculating… done.

So, I did a scan of the area we’re in, its geography, its leylines and signs of civilisation. Go browse it, I’ll start the next scan already.

Thanks Psaï.

You’re welcome.

I started looking at the data the flashscan provided us, manipulating the map in my head with consummate know-how. How many maps had I read during the war? Too many.

When asking a question about the war, the answer was always ‘Too many’ or ‘Not enough’, or their variation. But I’m losing myself.

So Valince is there… Alongside a big forest, not far from the sea…

…

Wait. The sea…

Yup. It’s surprisingly familiar, isn’t it? Nearly as if you made it yourself, right?

Fuck. This thing, it was the lava sea?

Seeing the perfectly circular curve the scan got, it’s very likely.

So it became a sea?

An ocean, mom. A circular hole with a radius of 500 kilometres isn’t just a sea.

Can… can we not talk about it?

Ah. Yes, of course. Don’t think about it, okay? We’re right here, right now. The past is in the past. She answered lovingly.

Beside the woman-made ocean, a piece of info I was going to shut in the back of my head for now, the remaining data proved interesting.

Ashenmark, the country I was born in, was protected by deep and high mountain ranges in the West and South, with some sleeping volcanoes mixed in for good measure.

North was the forest, then tundra, then frozen lands as far as I could see, which wasn’t that far. East, the ocean.

Ashenmark was somewhat small, roughly 600 kilometres by 300, and few cities could be seen from space. Four, to be precise, Valince nearly not visible, which was normal since it was quite a tiny city.

There should be villages here and there but…

Can’t see them with a flashscan.

Yup.

The three other cities seemed much more developed than Valince. I would have said, two with roughly 50 to 100 thousand inhabitants, and one with more than 150 thousands. Way, waaaaay bigger than Valince.

I’ll need to ask why Valince was turned into a city. we’re not far from a river and land seems fertile, but it’s way too cold to just put 5000 souls here.

Surely a matter of special resources.

It often is, that or strategic importance. But we’re on the verge of nowhere, so it's gotta be resources.

To my deep surprise, I couldn’t see traces of ashes anywhere. No. Worse, I couldn’t see traces of dead forest or anything. The earth was scarred, with craters and obvious remnants of lava flows, but the forest, the greenery wasn’t marked.

Psaï.

Yes. That’s not possible in 70 years.

In fact, too many things shouldn’t exist or be the way they are if only 70 years had passed. How long, Psaï?

...Calculating…

…

Morgana, if I’m right, you’ve been dead for at least 300 years. The data doesn’t make sense otherwise. This was said in a soft voice, bewilderment mixed in it.

300 years… Fuck.

I always knew some time had passed, but 70 years and 300 are different scales entirely. I shuddered a little, as if a gap I was going to step over had suddenly widened. Drastically.

Yet, in the end, 70 years or 300… No, there was no difference. I had let my past behind after all. It may feel a bit more vertiginous now, but I was committed to this new life of mine, however strange it was.

70 or 300, I don’t care. I love this strange new life after all. I smiled at Psaï in my head, and I felt her smiling back at me.

***

So the likely reason for the rather low mana density is as we thought, eh?

Yes. During the volcanic winter, the sun couldn’t pierce the ashen clouds, and Mana couldn’t be replenished. The leylines, however, kept spouting mana and, one day, they ran out. The pump broke. Even after 300 years, they’re not back to their full capabilities yet. I can’t calculate how much time it will need to restore them. And then there’s Entropy’s corruption to take into account too. It may slow the process down, or pervert it.

What’s the mana density around the leylines? The mana density was always higher around leylines.

0.1

That’s better but still…

Yeah. Fun fact: it seems that all the cities of Ashemark have been build on or near leylines. Even Valince, which is why…

Why we have 0.02 mana density, when it can plummet down even to 0.001 at some place far away from leylines.

It’s interesting, we never got to study mana dispersion back then since there was always a lot of mana everywhere, but here, in a mana-starved environment, we can clearly see how it spread… fascinating.

It is indeed, and you will have all the time we want to study it.

I’m eager. Psaï, as a part of me, had inherited my... reckless boundless curiosity. As you may imagine, I could empathise with her.

***

Beside the MIDAR coming online, another interesting thing happened during those few days. Well, not exactly happening.

One of Ophelia’s courses had been focused on something I was starved for: Shi theory.

“Today we’ll talk about one of the subjects needed for Shi to Shi battle, this being, the different types of Shi there are out there.”

“Types of Shi? “ Exclaimed Vivianne, as eager as always in the face of new knowledge.

“Yes, types of Shi.” And Ophelia started creating a sphere of Shi in front of her.

“Now, look at my Shi. I’m sure you can spot a difference with yours.” She asked playfully, a smirk on her face. Ophelia was the kind of person to smile a lot.

“It’s yellow!” Exclaimed Noa with excitement.

“Exactly, it’s yellow. This isn’t just some cosmetic difference to my Shi, it actually impacts how it works. But before explaining that, can one of you explain why my Shi is yellow?”

This time the children were clueless, but it only widened Ophelia’s smile. Until she realised that the children were feeling a bit down because of that.

She quickly intervened. “You brats, don’t feel down because you don’t know. It’s not something we teach at your age normally, neither is it common knowledge, got it?”

They nodded together but still sported a scowl.

She isn’t used to dealing with children. It’s cute mufufu~~

We aren’t either.

Bah. After four months of seeing Mom and Dad do their things I think we’re not as clueless as before, right?

Right… Psaï did not seem convinced by her mother’s argument, but she did not add anything.

“My Shi is yellow because of my emotions. I, in particular, for yellow, because of happiness, excitement and hope. As a general rule, your Shi takes a colour based on your average dominant feelings, and mine are those. In turn, this, as I said, changes the way my Shi behaves. For example, yellow Shi is very good for both Internal and External infusion, as it is full of energy. While doing Shaping and Projection, the Shi changes faster, and extends faster when doing Extension. It also gets back together faster when it gets partially broken. The downfalls are that it’s pretty exhausting to use, more than green Shi at least, and tends to not be as rigid as green. It bends easily, even if it gets back to shape as easily. Also, when it’s completely destroyed, it takes a lot more time to generate it again, in particular if you’re alone.”

As she explained, she showed each of the Shi’s particularity to the children. The way they reacted, the deep focus on her words and her exposition, it made her happy.

“And look, it reacts to my emotions. When I’m feeling an emotion that is resonating with my Shi, it reinforces it.” Her Shi was indeed glowing brighter than before. Was it what she meant about reinforcing it?

“And other colours?” Asked Vi with hungering eyes.

“There’s a lot of them but I’ll tell you about the most common, or those people here have. We have light blue, the colour that Marc’s Shi has. It represents peacefulness, calm, tranquillity and relief. You may have noted that Marc’s Shi is way slower than yours, a lot heavier too and, overall, very stable. That’s Light-Blue’s properties. A very good Shi to have as a frontliner.”

She took a handful of seconds to think about her next explanation.

“Elody’s Shi…” She seemed to remember something. “...Elody is the woman with white hair, okay?”

“”“Yes.”””

“Elody’s Shi is White. White is part of the rarest colours. It represents purity, ascension, asceticism. It’s extremely dangerous, as any who are touched by White Shi and bear impure thoughts of emotions are burned to be cleansed. The problem is that most people are impure in the face of White Shi and, as such, White users must be extremely careful. Aft-”

“What are the other rarest colours, teacher?” Vivianne interrupted Ophelia, her thirst for knowledge making her behave impolitely.

“...Sorry.” She said, realising what she had done and bowing her head under Ophelia’s gaze and raised eyebrows.

“I can understand your curiosity, but try to keep it in check, okay?”

“Yes teacher.”

“Okay. The other rarest colours? Besides White, there are three. Black, Grey and Purple.”

Once again she took some time to think before speaking.

“Black Shi represents despair, pain, death, silence and cosmic nihilism. Bearers of Black are often suicidal or apathetic, emotionless husks that bring death around them as if they were the eye of a storm made to kill. It’s also the most dangerous of the colours, as Black Shi doesn’t exhaust the wielder at all, instead it eats life around the user to keep them going. Grey represents absolute determination, mad resolve and unbreakable will. Grey Shi is unbreakable, literally, but also very rigid and slow to change shape, and from all the colours it’s the most exhausting one. It also has a… a grinding property, it can corrode all other colours of Shi, even Black and White, but this makes it improper to be used for Infusion and, for what I hear, corroding other Shi is very painful for Grey users, and the more the other Shi are resistant, the more painful it is. Then Purple. Purple is… madness. Corruption and Fundamental Flaws…”

She frowned a bit. “You don’t know about the Fundamental Flaws yet. I’ll teach you that later. But the point is, Purple is bad, even worse than Black, as Purple is unpredictable while also being powerful as hell, being one of the rarest colours. There, you’re happy now, lass?” She asked at Vi, who nodded back with a smile.

“Good. Other, more common colours are Red, for rage and passion, Cream for love and Deep-Blue for sadness.”

“And how do we make our Shi change colour?” This question was from Crisnée, surprisingly.

“You don’t really make the colour change as much as it changes to adapt to your own state of mind. Maybe in ten years, my Shi will be Light-Blue, who knows? The point is, it’s what you feel in your head the most that make Shi change, and it’s pretty difficult to force yourself to be happy, for example, right?”

“Yeah…” Crisnée nodded, once again lost in her thoughts, surely about all the Colours and whatnot.

“So as you can tell, Colours aren’t that much about being changed than being an extension of yourself at a point of your life. However, if you want to actively change your Shi, I have something else for you…”

“You do?”

“Yes!” And her smile brightened.