320 One Studen

Alani Encles[1] did not expect very much out of life. A safe, warm home, good friends and good food was enough to make her happy.

Her people had fled here from the deep Eastern seas, having struggled against Ti'ela-dras and lost too much over the recent years. When even their island started to sink, they followed the call of a distant hope and arrived at a vast land, the likes of which their little oft-flooded islands could never compare. Unlike most places, this wild frontier had plenty of room, enough that they were treated as settlers, not refugees.

It was a dangerous place, to be sure, but the seas were dangerous in their own way too. People learned to swim, to sail, to cope, and to live with the dangers. Never had people ever turned the sea into a friend; she remained mysterious, aloof, and as ruthless as she ever was.

The Wilds, however, proved to be very warm friends once they accepted you. Alani loved lying back on the flank of a bear-sized wolfcat, who likewise enjoyed the warmth of her family's hearth. This particular wolfcat was named Wind Blowing The Leaves Into The Open Sky With A Nice Spiral Pattern. Alani just called her Windy, for short.

Windy wasn't her Comrade. She stayed with Alani's family, but was better described as part of the household than the Comrade of anyone in particular. Unless maybe she was Alani's Mom's? Something like that. Whatever the case, she and Windy enjoyed a non-binding companionship that usually involved snoozing by warm fireplaces and the occasional grilled fish. Windy was considered rather old for a wolfcat, already past fourteen years and having borne many litters in her time. She was easily a great-grandmother wolfcat several times over.

As for Alani, she was now ten. Yes, now. Today was her tenth birthday.

Predictably, Windy was the first to bid her [Happy Birthday.]

[Thank you!] Alani put both arms around Windy's furry neck. [Where's everyone?]

Windy hesitated. [I can't tell you.]

[Oh?] Alani's lips twitched. [I'll try my best to pretend to be surprised.]

She tried, she really did. But when her Mom and Dad and elder brother burst out of the kitchen with little candles decorating a stack of pancakes (her favorite breakfast), she had to admit, at least to herself; this was exactly what she'd expected.

Not that she was complaining. She was safe, she was happy, and she was in good company. Alani was quite satisfied.

After breakfast, more people came by with presents and well-wishes. Most of them were from the Encles Clan, uncles and aunts, cousins, neighbors and old friends. Those, too, she expected.

What she did not expect was for Remian Vin to show up with a sober look in his eye.

"Uh… hi…?" Alani managed, not sure what to say. That serious face of his… did someone die?

Straight out, Remian said, "I want you to join my school and save the world."

Alani's mind was completely blank. "Huh? You have a school?"

"Not yet. But I'm about to start one and I want you to join it." Remian told her in that way-too-serious face.

"But… I'm in your mom's school. And I'm Head Girl." Alani reminded. "If you want help with something, you can just put in a mission at the Adventurer's Guild, you know."

"I know." Remian nodded. "Apparently, I'm the Adventurers Guild Master."

"You are?!" Alani gaped.

"Yeah. I just found out this morning. They never elected a new one."

"Congratulations… I think?" Alani scratched her head.

"Anyway, it's going to be a special sort of school and I want you in it." Remian repeated.

Alani squinted at him. "Does your mom know you're poaching her best student?"

Remian didn't skip a beat. "She'll find out soon enough, I think?"

"But why me?" Alani asked. "Does this have something to do with saving the world?"

"Not exactly." Remian grimaced. "It's more like 'grab everybody and run for your lives' than 'save the world'."

"Ah. I've been through that." Alani nodded.

"Also you're familiar with operating airships, and doing so in a leadership position." Remian added. "Right, Head Girl?"

"I guess? Sort of." Alani admitted. "But wouldn't Mindy be a much better choice?"

"Mindy's great, but she shouldn't have to do everything by herself. Also, her abilities are different from yours."

"I'm just ten years old. I don't HAVE any abilities."

[Oh, really?] Remian reached out to her psionically.

[Okay, fine, but everyone else around here has Psionic abilities too, you know? It's hard not to, if you spend enough time with a Tier 4 Wild. There's nothing special about me.]

[Don't be too sure about that. Why don't you join us and find out?] Remian invited.

Alani still hesitated. [You really wanna save the world?]

[I would if I could, but right now, I'll settle for just saving my own people.]

['Grab everyone and run', huh?]

[That's the plan.]

[I'm in.]

***

So he said, but the plan really had five Phases.

"First, we need a full-scale transition from magic to technology. The goal of this phase is to maintain our current standard of living without the use of mana." Remian said. "The second phase is to build spaceships. Third, we need an efficient form of access to space, like a space elevator…"

Alani raised her hand. "Teacher, I have a question!"

"Yes?"

"Where is everybody?" Alani asked. "Where's the rest of the school?"

"This is it." Remian told her.

Alani looked around. Other than herself and Remian in a newly cleaned building of the Three Pines Black Ruins, there was nobody else there.

"Just me? I'm the only student?!" Alani gaped.

"And I'm the only teacher. For now." Remian nodded. "We're just getting started."

"Right…" Alani trailed off. "Second question!"

"Yes?"

"Why can't we use mana?"

"This world's mana is already depleted. That's why the Quarin left."

"But didn't mana come through the Rift?"

"That's from dead worlds that the Spectres already destroyed. Elsewhere, they're actually called Star-Eaters, and if we let the Rift keep growing, bigger and bigger ones will come through and eventually they'll destroy our whole world and eat the sun." Remian shook his head. "Let's keep the Rift sealed, please."

"What does 'elsewhere' mean?"

"It means other worlds. See all those stars at night? Our sun is just one of them. Every star is a sun. Out there there are worlds like ours who might call one of those stars their sun."

"Ah. Right." Alani nodded.

That was it. She didn't choke, didn't show even an ounce of disbelief. She seemed to completely take it in stride.

"Can we get mana from those worlds?" Alani asked.

Remian grimaced. "They're too far away, and we can't get to them. I think the dragons can, and maybe the Dragon Empire is sneaking some in from Elsewhere, but the rest of us don't have anything that can reach those other worlds."

"Oh." Alani paused. "What about Chaos Magic?"

"Messing around with Chaos Magic is actually very dangerous. It's quite common for entire cities to get blown up because someone messed up." Remian winced, thinking back on how he had blindly experimented with it before. "Actually most of what we call Chaos Magic only gleans power from the eddies of Chaos Energy, not Chaos Energy itself. That's what the Quarin did."

Alani's hand shot up. "Who are the Quarin?"

"The Black Ruins Civilization."

"Ah." Alani looked around. "Can we do the same thing? Or would it destroy us like it did them?"

"Well, they're not destroyed. They actually abandoned this planet due to depletion of mana, and they still occupy some thirteen stars in this star cluster. Their civilization is based on a mix of magic-reliant technology, so they only go for worlds that have mana." Remian paused. "The ruins we're in now actually seems to be a factory town for magitech components. It seems we have a main power transmitter station and a Chaos Eddy Collector Array, but the buildings themselves aren't much use without the equipment that did the work. We don't have the magical power, or the know-how to build those. Short of magitech, our only means of using Chaos Magic is to do it manually, at personal risk. That takes special talent to avoid blowing yourself and your whole house to bits. It's not something everyone can do, so it's not going to help the whole world."

"But you can. You have that sort of talent, right?" Alani asked. "I've seen you do stuff with magic that nobody else could do."

"Maybe I can, but everyone else can't, so that's not going to help much." Remian repeated. "And it's risky and dangerous, even for me. I won't be able to safely use it without a lot of careful experimentation and self-discovery. That could take years, and we don't have the time."

Alani paused. "What if we made another Rift? This time, to a Quarin world? A small one, just for the mana?"

"I only know of one Spatial Node on our world, and the world it leads to has already been destroyed by the Spectres. As for making a new Spatial Node… even the Conglomerate would have difficulty doing that. It's easier to just build a Warp Gate."

"Then, what if…" Alani hesitated.

"It's okay. Feel free to ask." Remian invited.

"What if we spied on the Dragon Empire to find out where they're getting their mana crystals from?"

***

Over at Fal'Herim, for some reason, in the middle of the hot afternoon, Tim suddenly sneezed.