Administrative notification: Mana anomaly detected at coordinates 58.190, -40.791

Serlvrenalliacta sighed as she read the notification, her breath leaving a cone of frost across the stone floor of her home.

"As expected, there it is again. Exactly seventy-point-four-nine hours after the last one."

"Where is it this time? Should I investigate?" asked her mate, Kranakellicium.

"It's far out over the ocean, in the frozen north. You would not make it in time."

"Then what are we to do? This cannot be permitted to continue."

"We can do nothing. Even Bruleggiamlixanax, with the aid of [Hecate's Power], was unable to probe the previous anomaly. We must accept that no System skill is capable of interacting with them. Fortunately, they have proven themselves safe, even when in close proximity to the weak or the young. With their short lifetimes, the drain on the ambient mana is below what regenerates naturally."

Kranakellicium snorted, the heat melting the patch of frost and leaving the stone glowing a dull red. "Even I can see that with each occurrence, the anomalies grow in stability. And yet each occurrence lasts for an identical time, despite that fact. Not to mention the exact time period between each event."

Left unsaid was the obvious conclusion: that the anomalies were not natural. And worse, that whoever was responsible for them was learning.

"Why must this start so soon after Erryn had left us?" complained Serlvrenalliacta. "I don't recall signing up for this stress."

"Nor did any of us."

As the dragons grumbled, out in the far north, far from any landmass, a crack grew in the air, five metres above the floating chunks of ice. The mana of the area rushed towards it, flowing freely through the fracture as if it were a drain. For around nine minutes it hung there, fixed in place, before it once more snapped shut. The ambient mana in the area had plunged, but it soon began to recover. In a couple of days, there would be no sign there that anything had happened.

And on the other side of the crack...

"The shape alterations reduced the power requirements by ten percent, but we still need to find another thirty percent of savings before we're able to extract more energy from the reaction than it costs to sustain."

Half a dozen individuals in white coats were staring intently at various displays, the largest showing a view of a metallic sphere, no more than a metre across, into which tens of rods were stabbed. A blue glow around the sphere, seemingly emanating from the air itself, faded away to nothing as the equipment powered down.

"Even so, we're getting closer. Start the reset for next week's test, and we'll experiment with the frequency variance. Did we pick up that feedback signal again? If so, see if we can trigger a resonance."

"And to think we were laughed out of last year's renewable energy conference. There's going to be a sea of red faces at the next one, that's for sure."