Book 2, Chapter 18

The waves came in and broke upon the rocks. Out of the crashing waves came flying birds. It was more an impression of Birds, a beak here, some flapping wings there. Another wave and a similar display. It was memorising, but he flipped to a new page. As enjoyable as watching the show on some unknown beach was, there was no time for him to indulge in it. To get stronger, he needed to get through these books.

The next artwork was frankly perplexing. All the art was of Spheres. Perfectly round objects made of everything you could imagine: dirt, stone, metal, clay. There was an even a before and after picture of a dirt ball left in a field. It had rained and the dirt sphere had eroded away. There were small and large spheres and they were dumped everywhere. Pictures of the random objects in the middle of the forest. Some were so big they were visible above the tree canopy, others no bigger than a pebble rested in the crown of the trees. It included no description of the species, no sign of size, shape, or even the housing that the species preferred. Just pictures of balls in random locations. Why on earth was it even in the book? There was nothing that could be gleaned apart from the fact that there was one species out there which was weirdly obsessed with round objects.

The boys barged in and Adrian decided that study was no longer an option. Instead, he made a game of everyone showing him their magic. Three hours later, his understanding of magic had progressed a lot. Nowhere near enough to slot it into a nice theoretical framework. Instead, it was more like that thing you wanted to say but forgot just before sharing it. Afterwards you know it was vitally important but no matter what you try you can not quite bring it to your tongue then a day later you remember to discover that all it was was a reminder to get milk tomorrow. Of course, Emily had remembered anyway.

The major change to his assumptions was that he was no longer convinced that Earth, Water, and Air were separate powers. It went against all of his preconceptions of elemental magic, but it looked like they all used the same underlying flavour, so to speak. Matter magic was the label he applied within his head. Same force just implemented with a different flair to get the different results. Air gusts, earth movements, water jets all that motion came from the same source. The other, more minor adaptation of his model was that humans or probably interfaces could alter pure flavour when they utilised magic. Pulling or pushing the generic energy through the body and converting it invisibly before anyone notices. Then the flavours he saw was just one matter dyed to create a flavour then twisted further to deliver a specific outcome.

Five, fifty on the dot, he woke smoothly to a slight pressure in the temples and a dry mouth. The night had not been the most peaceful, too much drinking requiring a middle of night toilet break to relieve himself, too many people in the room snoring, and one had woken screaming after a nightmare. Sleep had been fragmented, and then when he managed it his dreams were plagued with thoughts about Tony. A man he had never met but had been cut down by an ambush. Life was so fragile and so easily ended. Once upon time all he needed to do was to worry when crossing the road. Now there might truly be a monster under the bed.

Billy was not up, so he knelt down and shook his shoulder. The kid woke instantly. Eyes snapping alert and his hand preparing to cast magic. Realisation spread through Billy’s eyes a moment later, and the magic that had been gathering dropped away.

Together they went down to the restaurant to find a large group gathered. Seven air specialists, eight if he included himself. Most of them were Air Mages like Billy, but there was one level seven Sailor and another level ten Storm Lord. None of them had a nonstandard interface. Apparently the more advanced interfaces disliked teaching air magic, which he fully agreed with. From his observations, it was weak compared to the other options.

Sucked up into the familiar image. An old man looking at him incredulously like he could not process let alone believe what he was seeing. The image panning down to reveal the spreading patch of someone who was peeing their pants.

I know all the classes are equivalent

That seemed to mollify the interface, because no more images hit him. Beyond the magic users were two dozen fighters. Steve and Graham being the ones he knew, though there were more than a handful more faces that he recognised from the various hunting parties he had run with.

“Ok,” Craig called out, “we think the Lucu has probably retreated to its cave by now. We don't know for sure, so we have got lots of extra security just in case. You all know that the plan is to gas the Lucu. Before that, we need to run some tests. We have set up a test site that we're going to take you all down to. Once there, we will get you to practice pushing gas down the pipe. Once that component is solved we will then measure the effective design with live animal tests. Conditions will be as close as possible to what will occur when the Lucu operation goes live. We have created a space the same size as the Lucu cave. I have taken elevation into consideration, and I have measured even the length of pipe between the stoves and the test cave. Everything will align as close as possible to operational conditions.” Craig paused briefly to breathe. No one said a thing.  The Lucu was a threat, everyone knew that, and this was a chance to end it without an enormous loss of lives. “I want to get this done as soon as possible, maximise the practice time before we go live against the Lucu so grab some packed breakfast and let's go. Lunch will be delivered later.”

Two of the servers from last night were standing at a table that was covered with brown paper takeaway bags. At some point, the supply of the convenience items would fail. Till that point, old habits die hard, and the bags were way easier than the alternatives; reusable cloth or picnic baskets.

The server, a young woman, looked more than a little annoyed to be up this early. “We only have sandwiches,” she paused “Faux Mayo Chicken”—She pointed to the bags on the left—“Purplish pretend beef with mustard”—The ones in the middle with a purple line on them—“and Finally Boar, and vegemite and cheese.” She waved at the last two. The difference was obvious: the Boar sandwich bags were far thicker.

Helping himself to one of all of them, he received a raised eyebrow before she turned her attention to the next in line.

Normally, vegemite and cheese did not appeal to him. Years of eating it for every lunch as a kid had spoiled the combination. But after over four weeks of not eating the traditional black spread, he had developed a slight craving. All but the Boar got shoved into the bad of holding. The bag would keep them fresh till when he needed them. Having a store of nice food would allow him to avoid the cardboard like ration packs which the traders almost gave away for free.

Why they walked, he got stuck into the boar sandwich. It was as nice as he had imagined and went down great after the moderate drinking the previous night.

They had set the test site up in a Bunnings at the edge of town. The guards led them on a path past the barricades and marched them down the center of the road.