Ingrid stood in front of the door to The Dean’s office. It was adorned with the image of a heron, a symbol of wisdom and knowledge learned through experience. To the right of the door was a comparatively unimpressive desk, a lightstone lamp to one side and an oil lamp on the other. In between the two lamps was an inclined writing nook on which a thick sheet of paper lay, the paper like the type used for her letter. Sat behind the desk was a small man with round blushed cheeks which supported huge rounded spectacles which magnified the man’s eyes. He was scribbling away at the parchment with a quill made small by the swollen fingers wrapped around it. Despite the thick fingers, the print was graceful and readable. He glanced up from his writing to look at Ingrid now standing above him gawking at his writing.
“Miss Sathauris I presume.” He wheezed. He returned to his writing quickly, finishing the letter and moving on to the next. The letters were neatly printed, almost like he was a machine, each stating the same summons to a meeting that Ingrid had received. The man glanced up from his writing again with an expectant gaze at her awaiting a yes or no in response. Ingrid snapped out of the slight trance she was in with a jolt and replied.
“Yes. That’s me. I was summoned here for a meeting with The Dean. Should I go in now?” As she asked, a student stepped out from behind the door to the office with streaks falling from his eyes. His back was straightened stiff and expression completely blank. He walked past Ingrid without a word, a black envelope with a golden wax seal held in his hands. The secretary looked up from writing the letters and gestured toward the door. The clock to the side of the round man then turned to 1:15.
“You can go now” He said promptly before quickly returning to his writing.
The distance between Ingrid’s feet and the entrance seemed to multiply before she even took a single step. The pit in her stomach grew from the size of a peach pit to a boulder. She could feel herself breathing heavier in her head, but her body wouldn’t let her panic properly. She wanted to run away. The ringing in her ears grew to a deafening roar. The only other sound being the incessant scribbling of the pen on paper. The panic started to overpower her body as her breathing grew labored. The heron on the door seemed to be staring at her, challenging her to pass through the doors, to come and receive her sentencing. For a moment it seemed to call to her,
“Miss Sautharis” it said. Ingrid gazed into the eyes of the heron calling her name again and again. “Miss Sautharis. Miss Sautharis? Miss Sathauris, could you please let go of my hand?” She looked down and found that she had instinctively put her hand on the secretary’s to stop the scribbling. Ingrid pulled her hand back slowly before mouthing the words “I’m sorry” and taking the first step.
The door itself was lighter than she expected. The handle was a long rod made of brass. It felt solid, like it and the door were made of one piece. Pulling the door slightly to the side, Ingrid poked her head into the office. The office was massive. The ceilings were nearly as tall as the Sleeping Spires with books lining the twinned shelves along the back wall as far as Ingrid could see. On the wall between the shelves was emblazoned a massive family tree climbing up the wall like vines up a wall, but the very bottom was blocked by stacks of books and paper. Each node on the tree had a miniature portrait and a name, not of the person in the portrait, but of the contributions they made.
A few faces stood out to Ingrid. The one labeled “Spellsealing” was Taeneth Kedam, grandmother of spellscrolls and runic technology. The one labeled “Escapement Mechanism” was linked to Mirthil Eilorara, artist and engineer who enabled the creation of the earliest timepieces which fueled her sculptures. The top of the tree spanned so wide that the portraits and names crawled all the way around the five walls of the room. The Dean caught her staring at the tree and laughed to herself slightly.
“It is a bit much to take in isn’t it? Don’t stare up there looking for me, you’ll trip over the mess I have down here.” Dean Kedam was standing behind her desk in a maroon version of her previous work clothes glancing back and forth between Ingrid and the swath of papers in front of her. Ingrid stood clutching her hands awkwardly and just stared at the Dean awaiting some kind of command. There was a stark difference between the commanding figure she had met in the courtyard and the woman before her now, though she couldn’t quite place it. The Dean stopped for a moment and matched Ingrid’s stare. “Well I suppose we should both sit, this is a meeting after all.” She quickly dragged the massive chair behind her toward her and sat down, gesturing at the chair before Ingrid. Ingrid sat down, hand folded in her lap in a mannerly fashion, and instantly felt extremely uncomfortable.
The chair was too cushioned and she could feel herself fighting it to keep her back straight. The desk was just slightly too tall so she couldn’t put her hands on the table instead. Her palms were sweaty. Ingrid looked at Dean Kedam who was looking at Ingrid. Clearly this wasn’t a comfortable situation for either one of them. Dean Kedam broke the silence once more, saying, “So Ingrid. I understand that your project, like many others, was affected by the magical fluctuation that occurred yesterday. I’ve dedicated myself to learning how every student was affected by the incident, and as you can see I am currently sorely regretting that decision… I…don’t think I need to repeat what you read in the letter. What’s your plan?” Ingrid simply stared blankly at Dean Kedam. Her mouth began to form words but they never made it out of her throat. What escaped was just a half whimper half groan that sounded more like she had just been stabbed. Her eyes wandered up the Kedam family tree as she searched for some kind of answer. Her thoughts began forming into some kind of solid shape. She would, if given the opportunity, take the limited data from her study so far and start again with improvements based on what she had already observed. The data, although incomplete, would be useful. But before she could present these thoughts, her eyes wandered across the tree again and saw a thin figure, silhouetted and without name. Ingrid’s eyes shot back toward the Dean and another thought took purchase in her throat.
“What’s happening with Leland?” She blurted. She looked at The Dean, now staring deep into Ingrid like the heron on the door. The vibrant molten gold of her eyes seemed to sear a hole through Ingrid’s skull. The gaze was so strong, Ingrid instinctively looked away. Dean Kedam sighed slightly before clasping her hands in front of her.
“He told you. I thought he would. I hoped he wouldn’t. I stressed the secrecy of the journey very heavily. Not like it matters since I was going to tell you about it in this meeting.” Ingrid’s eyes shot back up to the Dean only to see her stand up and begin to pace. There was an off kilter rhythm to the slight taps of her heels against the white stone floor. The tapping like a heartbeat as toe followed heel. Tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap. “How much do you remember about the origin theory of mana?” Shoot. Ingrid was drawing a blank. She mumbled weakly,
“Ley lines?” Dean Kedam turned on her heel to look at Ingrid.
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“Good. What else?” Ingrid quickly searched her mental library filled with botany to search for the basics.
“They run under key resource deposits” The Dean smiled painfully, clearly waiting for Ingrid to give her more than that. Ingrid scrambled to find more. “And they infuse them with mana which we can then manipulate?” The Dean sighed and said,
“I guess my professors are wrong to call you all fools.” She took a deep breath and smiled again, this time with less of a grimace. “A good rudimentary explanation. We believe that magic works like a river, eternally flowing to the sea. Once we spend mana, it returns to the source and flows back through the ley lines back to the deposits. Now, according to our theories, what we experienced was an interruption in that flow. W-” Ingrid shot up out of her seat, interrupting and shouted out,
“You believe that there’s an overconcentration of mana somewhere and that’s disrupted the regular flow of magic for us in Kamaaldor.” Dean Kedam shook her head.
“No, not in Kamaaldor. All across the world. Once regular flow returned this morning, messages from as far as the Loric Empire arrived, all asking if we know what happened. That’s how large of a disruption we experienced.” Ingrid’s eyes grew wide. She started copying The Dean’s pacing as she connected the dots. The ley line theory had been theorized to be based off of localized pockets of magic that went through ley lines. If the outage was for the entire world… Ingrid continued her thoughts out loud.
“That means that if the ley line theory is accurate, all of them are interconnected with a central reservoir. A reservoir that large must be insanely powerful. And if there’s a central reservoir that large then that saturated deposit of mana would need to have…”
“Enough mana to fuel a thousand academies for ten thousand years without experiencing so much as a single stutter.” Dean Kedam strode over to Ingrid, looking almost like she was gliding just above the ground. The Dean held Ingrid’s gaze intently, the molten gold in her eyes now almost bubbling over in intensity. She stopped inches from Ingrid’s face, now inspecting every facet.
“Ingrid, I’ve chosen you to be a part of a select group on an expedition to find this deposit. If our hypothesis…” Dean Kedam drifted off for a second, diverting her gaze slightly. It wandered over towards the giant family tree behind Ingrid, all the faces on it now seemingly staring at her. The gazes of those before her felt as though they weighed a million tons. She focused her gaze back towards Ingrid. “If our hypothesis is right, the deposit will only continue to grow and magic will only continue to stutter. There will be a meeting of the leading families of Kamaaldor soon. You will meet the rest of the group there.” The Dean turned on her heel and quickly returned to her desk, now picking up a thick red sheet of paper with a silver seal and set it down in front of Ingrid. The wax seal was stamped with a heron, preening its feathers, sitting in a nest that looked like a throne, made of crystal shards and swords. Ingrid took the envelope in her hand, her imitation of prim properness having faded as soon as she took her seat again as she hunched slightly over the envelope. This was an invitation to possibly the greatest botanical discovery in the history of magic. This hefty envelope was her ticket to a wall just like the one behind Dean Kedam. But a small voice tickled her ear, and escaped her lips.
“Where’s the other envelope?” Her voice was quiet, like she wanted to pretend she never said it. The Dean looked surprised, eyes widening slightly as she leaned forward in her seat. She must have watched the previous student leave. She asked a question back,
“What do you mean?” Ingrid felt her voice catch in her throat. It came out small, almost raspy.
“The black envelope. With a gold seal. I saw the last student walk out with one. What does it mean?” The Dean had a slight smile on her face, and uttered a silent ‘ah’ as she reached into a drawer and pulled out a black envelope with a golden seal. She shook it in the air before sliding it over in front of Ingrid, landing just slightly crookedly to the left of the red envelope. The wax was stamped with a different seal: the crest of the school. A blank human silhouette stood atop a sand dune holding a scroll that unfurled around the edge revealing the school's motto in ancient text. Dean Kedam returned to her sitting position and answered,
“That envelope is going to be given to everyone else. I prepared one for you in case you asked for it.” Though the Dean wasn’t entirely sure that she would. She paused for a moment, reminding herself of what was at stake. “This is normally the point where I would ask you what your choice is, but unfortunately you don’t get one.”
“Why not?” Ingrid asked. The Dean seemed to chuckle to herself a bit.
“It’s nice to see that our lessons on relentless inquiry weren’t lost on you.” The slight smile faded quickly, replaced by soft intensity. “You don’t get a choice because I am forced to make one. You asked me what I would do if magic never came back. This is my answer. We have been stagnant too long. Besides, you said you would do whatever’s next, and this is decidedly what is next.” The Dean clearly wasn’t asking, although she wasn’t forceful in her commands. The black envelope seemed to taunt Ingrid, the inky void of its surface seemingly swallowing the golden seal. She asked Dean Kedam once more, never breaking eye contact with the envelope.
“But what does the envelope mean?” The Dean sighed and picked the envelope up, staring at the face of the silhouette on the seal.
“It means you’re out. I said you don’t have a choice, but that really means that I don’t. If you don’t want to go on this journey, then I can’t force you. So if you open that envelope, you’re choosing to opt out. If you do, I can try my best to find a replacement, but I doubt I’ll find someone better suited for this.” Ingrid’s face contorted slightly in confusion. If she needed a botany student, there were smarter ones at her disposal, many more that were better at magic. She asked,
“Why me? You have an entire botany department to pick from. Surely there are others more qualified.” Dean Kedam nodded and stood up, her face in practiced faux agreement. She strode over to and bent over one of the many stacks of papers and pulled some out from the middle. She flipped through the pages until she found a correct one and tossed the binder full of papers and gestured towards it.
“Read.” She beckoned. Ingrid looked at the paper and began reading aloud in a slight mumble.
“Sample SL-03 is absorbing an average of 22% more artificially introduced mana than the wild breeds and 14% more than the control sample. Targeting the ovule of the flower seems to, upon initial observation, have increased its ability to absorb and store mana. Further research is required to determine the potential longevity and applicab- see, why do you want me if you could just ask this person to go. Factors that increase the absorption and retention of mana, that’s exactly what you need to test for if you want to find this reservoir.” Dean Kedam simply stood there with her arms crossed. She gestured towards the paper again, motioning Ingrid to flip the paper. There, on the front of the binder, was her name. Sathauris, Ingrid: Thesis progress overview. She looked back up sheepishly at Dean Kedam stood next to the stacks upon stacks of papers. Ingrid continued, “Still, I remember this trial. This sample failed. It didn’t last more than 3 weeks.” The Dean sighed, gliding back to her desk. Ingrid wasn’t understanding. She leaned closer over the desk and looked directly at Ingrid.
“You don’t seem to understand. Even if there was a more genius or more magically adept botanist with the exact same field of study, which there isn’t, I don’t need more genius or more magically adept, that’s what the other members are for. What I need is a group that will cover each other's weaknesses and I already have proof that you and Leland do that for each other just fine. You’re right, there are smarter botanists and more flexible prodigies, but you just happened to be two people who fit the bill near perfectly. So answer me.” The Dean leaned in further. “Are you going to make me find a worse fit or are you going to get to work?”
