Yesterday’s events had really traumatized Orchid.

He’d been shaking in bed unable to fall sleep until his mother came and sang him a lullaby while stroking his head. Despite that, his sleep had been restless and he’d woken up many times in the night feeling as if something was pressing down on him. Eventually the sunlight streaming through the window was enough to destroy all his attempts at continuing to lay in bed.

His muscles screamed in agony as he slowly stretched, the spar having left his body a wreck. Not wanting to meet Deirdre if he went to the castles hospital, he unwillingly took some salve from his personal reserves.

This particular healing salve was a military grade concoction commonly known as the Fiends Kiss, its effectiveness was superb, relieving pain almost immediately and accelerating the healing process. It was also cheap and simple enough to make that even relatively inexperienced alchemists could create it, but because of its strategic use the government carefully regulated two of its core ingredients, making sure that supplies of the salve came through the Military only. It was because of this that he had to trade a specially crafted hair-cleaning device to Ilse for two small bottles that she sneaked away during her practice sessions.

The salve was a horrible sticky mess that burned as it touched his skin, stinging horribly for a minute before it turned into a calm cooling sensation as his pain receded.

Having sorted his body out he walked into the study and collected the three untranslated scrolls, planning to spend his day on them.

On his way downstairs, he picked up his still sleepy sister. Sun refused to let go of her favorite doll or move so he carried her in his arms as they went to wash up. Drawing some water from the barrels kept in the yard he filled up a basin and helped Sun to brush and get ready.

After they were done Sun held up her hands begging to be carried. Picking her up he said.

“I really wonder who spoils you so much. So what do you want for breakfast brat?”

“Meat!”

“You can’t keep having meat all the time Sun.”

“Meat?”

“Apart from meat what would you like?”

“Meat!”

“No I mean except meat”

“Meat!”

“You’re going to only say meat, aren’t you?”

Hearing this she started to chant meat in a sing song voice, happily pulling on his collar with one hand and waving her doll with the other.

Walking into the kitchen he put the singing girl into her chair before walking to the Chiller and taking out the Bacon he’d purchased. Seeing the mana storage of the Chiller was getting low he channeled some more into it before slicing enough for the two of them.

“Sun I’m going to the neighbors to get some eggs so be a good girl and sit here for a while.”

“Meat. Meat? Meat? Meat! Meat!!!”

Aren’t you tired of that yet?

* * * * * * *

Knocking on the door he called out.

“Rock, are you there?”

A short while later he could hear heavy footsteps and the door was opened by a very tall person.

“Hello Rock, do you have some eggs?”

Nodding, Rock headed back inside.

Rocks real name was Eizen Heinrich Gerhard von Hintelbach, his father was a Major in the military and his mother a scribe in the Finance Ministry. Being the grandson of a Baron he had inherited the Von Hintelbach name, but the name was too annoying to pronounce and due to his own taciturn nature, they had all agreed on the moniker of Rock.

Orchids own family was rare in using their yard as a training ground, instead of raising livestock, so they had come to a deal with the neighboring von Hintelbachs. They would raise some extra livestock for Orchids family and in exchange could come and use the training area whenever they wanted.

Coming back and giving Orchid half a dozen eggs, Rock stood in silence, looking at them.

“Had Breakfast?” Orchid asked.

A shake of the head.

“Hungry?”

A nod.

“Alright. I’ll give you breakfast.” Turning around Orchid continued. “In any case, I was going to come and drag you to The Professor’s place. I have some new scrolls which I want to translate. I’m confident that one of them is a formation diagram for gathering some sort of fire, I recognized some of the glyphs. The second I have no idea, but the last one would interest you, it’s Earth Spells of some sort, at least 3rd Grade.”

“Interesting” A soft voice came from behind him.

“I know, right?” Orchid was excited. “I think I really got a treasure from the Pavilion this time.”

Once they were back in the kitchen Orchid added some more bacon and prepared some fried eggs on toast to go alongside it.

Rock was quietly playing with Sun, listening with a serious expression as she was showing off her new pendant and talking about Orchids messy prank.

* * * * * * *

“We’ll drop Sun at Grandma Ren’s place and then go to The Professor.” Orchid said as he was locking the front door.

Grandma Ren was a well-respected retired veteran who lived nearby. She was a local legend, responsible for the existence of the little capital itself. She had been one of the first residents after her retirement and had supported the king in his efforts to retake the government by organizing and supporting all those staff who came to live here. Now that things had calmed down, she ran a small care-center for the young children of the families whose parents were working or stationed far away.

Rock picked Sun up and put her on his shoulders. As they walked the Kale siblings chatted cheerfully while Rock listened and occasionally added small sentences in response.

After dropping Sun off at Grandma Ren’s, they left for The Professors house.

The Professor lived in one of the largest residences in the little capital, his Grandfather and Father being the previous and current Chancellors of the Kingdom.

The four-story villa held a large library, stocked with many texts on language and foreign affairs. Outside of the Royal Library it held the greatest collection on those subjects, which was why Orchid chose this place to do his research on the scrolls.

The guards at the gate let them through with only a cursory inspection and a maid came to meet them in the entrance hall.

“Young Masters, Master Derek is currently attending a lesson with his etiquette tutor. If you would be so kind as to follow me to the parlor.” The maid led them into a small room off the main hall that was heavily decorated with gilded furniture and strange Beast sculptures.

After she left Orchid grabbed a fruit off the table in the centre of the room and laid out the three scrolls. Gesturing Rock to come over he said “What do you want?”

“Apple”

Tossing him an apple he pinned the scroll of supposed Earth Spells open and started studying it with Rock looking over his shoulder.

“It’s a dialect of ancient Imperial. I think western, probably pre-consolidation.”

“Post.” Rock refuted him gesturing at a word. “Saveille. Name of a post-consolidation city.”

“Origin of the Spell?”

“Indications of intent.”

“Location specific Spell? No, these three glyphs are Geographical assignations”

Rock nodded. “Initial intent”

“So, they needed it for the city specifically, but the spell wasn’t dependent on the local geography. This line could be translated as ‘sustained operation’ so it must be a continuous Spell.”

“4 corner formation. Enclosing guides.”

“Interesting, it’s meant to be something like an upgraded Earthen Barrier Spell, something at the level of a small city.”

“Not a barrier. Offensive in nature.”

Looking at Rock in surprise Orchid scrutinized the formation on the scroll again.

“Oh! It’s an attack spell to break the formation that was defending the city. See here, this must be their analysis of the defense, 4 elements at the corners. This would then be their method to break it, a series of earth ….”

Seeing Rock shake his head he paused.

Rock drew some Mana and set up a simplified version of the defensive formation.

“4 elements. Single element spell would be suppressed too much.” Frowning Rock let the formation dissipate before saying in frustration. “Failed attempt? Part solution?”

“No, it’s not a failure, this phrase is ‘Success. Success. Broken’. How did they do it?”

Orchid went out of the room and collected some paper and ink from a maid before starting to scribble their ideas. They went through all three scrolls jotting down whatever came to their minds. The Earth spell scroll they decided was a formation breaking spell, but how it worked was unknown to them. The formations scroll was a theoretical analysis of a type of formation that strengthened materials, but they couldn’t translate the type of materials or the conclusion of the treatise. The final scroll was completely unknown to them, their frustration had built drastically not being able to even identify the language it was in.

“This can also be translated as ‘Disrupted’ not necessarily broken.” A dry voice came from behind them.

Orchid jumped in surprise while Rock just calmly turned to nod in greeting.

“Why couldn’t you have warned us when you came in?” Orchids exasperation was clear in his voice.

“I did, you were both too absorbed to even notice me.” The Professor replied “This word ‘Klekten’ can be translated as both break or disrupt.”

Frowning at the Earth scroll Orchid tapped word the Professor had pointed out.

“Professor, didn’t you mention a theory about something like instability?”

Tilting his head in thought The Professor placed his fingers against his temple. “Recent research has shown that without supporting formation chains, a formation made up of multiple elements can gain certain instabilities where the elements bind together.”

I can never get over how easy he makes recalling information look. It’s impressive beyond words how he can so casually remember all these things. Wait. Disrupt? Impossible.

“Was this a way to magnify the instability?” Almost breathless with excitement, Orchid started sketching his idea. “I don’t get the foundation of the Spell, but if this was to disrupt the defense, then it wasn’t totally shattered, they probably made a gap in it. That would be enough for anyone attacking.”

His friends looked at the sketch studying the lines he’d drawn.

The Professors eyes widened and he pointed at the scroll.

“That whole line indicates that this is a subtle attack, not based on power. The binding was just dissolved.”

Rock raised his arm for attention.

“3rd Grade makes sense. First large scale mana conversion and containment. Second, targeting weakness. Finally, blindly firing the collected Earth element into the target.”

“Fascinating.” The Professor said. “This is basically a giant cannon of elemental magic. The key to it all would be the targeting in the second stage. The target would constantly be fluctuating. There must be a key to analyzing magical structures in here somewhere.”

“This could change our ability to understand unknown formations.” Orchid breathed, his jaw hanging in pure shock.

Seeing the same dumbstruck expression on his friends he slapped them on their shoulders.

“What are you waiting for? Grab some paper, we must study this carefully. The other two can wait.”

Gathering around the scroll they discussed their new ideas and started to deconstruct every aspect of the magical glyphs, text and diagrams that were contained within it. Calling for the maids to bring a large number of books on the post-consolidation ancient Imperial language, The Professor dove into the information trying to translate every single word on the scroll. Rock kept casting Earth elemental Spells using the key words that they could decipher. Orchid focused on the defense formation and tried to reverse engineer the targeting spell by recreating the instability within it.

Time passed without their knowledge as they were lost in new theories.

“How you find translation so interesting I never understand. All three of you are meant to become men of action, that’s why you’re going to the Academy. How can you all be so boring?” A young lady’s voice came from the door, completely breaking the studious atmosphere they had built.