Albert regarded the young girl curiously for a moment. He had rather dismissed her at first, since he hadn’t been able to sense much magical potential from her at all. But now, water magic practically radiated off her in waves. He’d never seen such a sudden shift in apparent magical potential in his life, and couldn’t help but wonder just what manner of arcane secrets this strange little girl might have learned from her renowned father. “Very well.” He said at last. “I’m not sure how much help you will be able to provide, but you certainly deserve to know about the situation we are facing. Awa here will explain it to you. Despite her youth, she is the most well-versed among us in magical lore.” Kaia nodded in satisfaction and slid her sword back into its sheath, the droplets of water all around her falling to the floor in a brief smatter of rain as she did so. Albert noted curiously that the powerful magic he had sensed vanished just as quickly as it came, leaving only the barest hint that it had ever been there. “Well…” Awa began awkwardly and cleared her throat. “Let me just start by saying that a lot of what I’m about to tell you are things that we’ve only learned quite recently. The past few years I’ve been studying lore that had been lost. Things that were forgotten, or even knowledge that was banned by the goddesses themselves. My family has funded numerous archaeological expeditions to ancient cities, old temples and even once inhabited caves to study carvings and paintings and ancient clay tablets. It’s all very recent research, so I’m not completely confident as to the accuracy of all my conclu…” “Get on with it.” Kio urged with a small sigh. “Right, yes, of course. Well, the point is, as near as I can tell, human civilization on this world dates back almost eighty thousand years. Most early civilizations seemed to be ruled by shamans, primitive mages harnessing the primal forces of the elements to perform what would by today’s standards be considered very minor spells.” “What about these goddesses you keep talking about?” Kaia asked. “That’s just the thing. As far as we can tell, the goddesses aren’t native to this world at all. The few surviving inscriptions we could find from the period suggests that two sister goddesses arrived from… elsewhere. No two inscriptions seem to agree where. This would have been somewhere between twenty-five and thirty thousand years ago. These goddesses radiated powerful magic, and with their presence in the world human mages grew stronger and more plentiful. For a time, they worked together to guide the people and forge civilization into something greater than the scattering of tribes and city-states that had existed up to that point. But the goddesses were as different as night and day, and soon they could no-longer abide compromise and cooperation. That was when the eternal war started.” “Well, clearly it wasn’t that eternal if it’s not going on any more.” “I suppose not. Your father rather ended it. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. During the long war, the Sunlit goddess discovered the four Cradles, natural formations that serve as the source of elemental magic on this world. After studying the Cradles, she created four powerful artefacts designed to resonate and harmonize with the power of the Cradles, and gave each to the most powerful elemental mages in the world, creating the kings and queens of the elements. They turned out more powerful than even she had imagined, because they didn’t just channel the elemental forces better than anyone else, the very presence of one of these kings or queens and their artefact upon this world caused the Cradles themselves to grow more powerful.” “Sounds like she should have won the war pretty easily after that.” “She would have, but the Starlit goddess managed to steal her designs and create perfect copies of the four artefacts. But she needed four bloodlines to wield them, so she created the portal device to seek out and retrieve suitable candidates from outside this world.” “That would be the same one that transported me here, right?” “Exactly.” “So, what happened next?” “Well, from this point on we do have pretty good records of the events. The Starlit goddess summoned four wielders, she called them her princes and princesses, and used them in her battle against her sister. But she didn’t fight openly. Instead, she figured out a way to use the power of the four Cradles to create a cage in which to seal away her sister. Her sister found out about this new weapon, and sent her armies to try and stop the princes and princesses from completing their task. But after a harsh and bloody conflict, she was defeated and sealed within the magical cage, and the Starlit Goddess returned her champions to their own world. This was followed by ten thousand years of calm, but without the influence of the sunlit goddess magic waned and civilization stagnated.” “That doesn’t sound… ideal. So, what happened?” “Well, in time, the cage started wearing out and breaking down. When the Sunlit Goddess finally broke free, the war that had been essentially put on hold erupted once again. But while ten thousand years had passed in our world, much less had passed in yours, and so the Starlit goddess summoned her champions once again.” “Wait, are you saying my dad was here twice?” “He was. The first time he was very young, but the second he was a grown man. He came to realize that the goddesses themselves were the cause of the great war, and so he hatched a plan. After convincing the kings and queens of the Sunlit Kingdom to join him, he lured the two goddesses to Halfway Bay under the pretence of a diplomatic meeting. There, he and the king of water slew the goddesses, ending their rule forever and laying the foundation for the republics. His companions chose to stay here and aid the formations of the republic, becoming the first starlit magi, but the hero Adam instead returned to his family, as you know.” “All right. I suppose that catches me up on the ancient history bits and all, but it doesn’t actually tell me what the problem is.” “I’m getting to that. You see, at first, the republics thrived. The power of the goddesses seemed to have vanished with their death, leaving nothing behind but a sort of puddle of raw magic that cast Halfway Bay into eternal twilight. The twin republics grew powerful together, and under the guidance of the seven magi we have achieved magical and technological wonders no-one had ever dreamed of on this world. It was a golden age of reason and elemental magic…” “It was, huh?” “Yes, unfortunately, it turns out the death of the goddesses hadn’t banished their magic at all. All it had done was diminish it, for a time. Over the centuries, the ‘puddle’ at Halfway Bay has grown larger and larger, spreading the eternal twilight across the world and radiating ever-increasing amounts of magical energy. Two thousand years ago, new types of magical creatures started evolving over the course of mere generations, sometimes causing chaos and mayhem where they appeared. A thousand years ago, horrific monsters spawned from pure magic started forming in the area of perpetual twilight, and we had to fortify the entire area with manned garrisons to keep the beasts from rampaging across the republics. And just within the last century, the amount of magic in the world has gotten so high it’s causing many of our magical devices to fail, sometimes catastrophically. Engines break down. Measuring devices get overwhelmed by static. A number of power plants have overloaded to the point of detonation with devastating consequences. And now, the twilight is spreading faster than the mobile garrisons can keep up with. We’re fighting a losing battle against the twilight beasts, and we don’t know how much longer we can hold them back.” Kaia held up a hand to bid for silence as she felt all this new information slotting into place inside her head. The goddesses, the war, the new crisis… There was something about it that bothered her just a little bit… And then it hit her. “She knew! The Starlit goddess knew!” “I’m sorry, what?” “She knew that having both her own power and two sets of magi wielding artefacts would fill the world with too much magic! Think about it! Why else would she send her champions home after she defeated her sister? It would have been much safer to establish their bloodlines here, loyal to her.” “That… That’s a very interesting theory. But if her sister was sealed away, there shouldn’t have been enough magic to cause this level of difficulties.” “But enough magic to make things harder to control. She wanted to rule, right? Better to make sure humanity isn’t too powerful, then.” “There is some logic to that. But I’m not sure it helps us.” “What about this device that was used to seal the Sunlit goddess? Could it be used to seal away this… Magical puddle thing.” “I had the same idea, but I haven’t managed to figure out a way. It was designed to seal away one type of magic, not two at once, and even if the goddesses were sisters, their magic was very different from one another’s…” “Well, it’s an idea, anyway. I’d like to see your research after this.” “Really?” Awa burst out, in the excited tones of someone who wasn’t used to people taking an active interest in her work. “Of course. Maybe I could provide an outside perspective. You’d have to explain some of the basic principles to me, but once I have a proper grounding I might be able too…” Albert cleared his throat loudly, causing both girls to jump slightly. They had rather forgotten they weren’t alone in the room. “Sun preserve me, there’s two of them.” Kio muttered with a roll of his eyes. “While I do find your confidence encouraging…” Albert began, ignoring Kio’s remark. “…there is also the matter of the imbalance.” “Oh, yes, of course.” Awa said. “You see…” But by now Kaia’s mind was running a mile a minute, new bits of knowledge and information swirling around her head, forming new connections and theories at a dizzying pace. “You said a magus wielding their artefact amplifies the elemental magic of the world.” She said, interrupting Awa’s explanation. “But this world only has seven magi, or had up to now, I suppose. The lack of a second water magus would mean there would be less water magic in the world than the other elements. I imagine that would cause a lot of problems for a society built around the use of elemental magic.” “Well now…” Albert said, sounding genuinely impressed. “You’re exactly right. By the time we realized how imbalanced the power of the Cradles was getting, the two groups of magi were already an established and necessary part of our society. Thankfully, now that you’re here the imbalance should gradually resolve itself over the course of a few generations.” “I already told you, I can’t stay here! I’ll help with this current problem, but then I’m going back home.” Miriam, the starlit magus of fire, spoke up with a cheerful, sing-song tone that managed to be gentle, friendly and faintly worrying all at once. “Technically you wouldn’t need to stay here for more than nine months or so, my dear.” It took Kaia a few moments to parse what that statement meant, and when she did she flushed bright red. “I, ummm, I mean, I guess that’s true, but… I… Let’s… Let’s just call that plan B for now, OK? I’m sure we can figure something else out.” Kio snorted in amusement, but managed to look at least a little apologetic when Kaia glared at him. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, Kaia put those thoughts out of her mind and spoke once again. “Look, the main problem right now is the monsters and failing technology and all that. Especially now that I’m here. If an active magus brings even more magic into the world, that means that my arrival will only speed up the process. We can worry about this balance thing when we’re not actively in danger of getting killed by rampaging magic monsters, all right? Awa, I want to see your research notes. All of them.” “Oh! O… Of course! I moved my workroom here to the castle when we started working on the summoning device. Come on, I’ll show you.” Awa tried to act serious and dignified as she took Kaia’s hand and led her out of the throne room. The fate of the world was at stake, after all! but she couldn’t quite suppress the smile on her face or the skip in the step. After all, this was the first time anyone who wasn’t at least twenty years her senior took an active interest in her research. Albert watched the two young water magi run off. “Well, she’s certainly enthusiastic.” “She seems really fired up about this, did you notice?” Mora remarked. “She’s been pulled into a whole new world and everything she knew has been turned on its head and she just leapt on the chance to help. It’s almost as if she’s been waiting for this.” “Well, she was raised by the legendary Godslayer.” Willow remarked, tugging absently at the yellow silk of his sleeves. “He might have been preparing her for this.” “Without her realizing it?” Albert asked. “If even half of the legends about the Godslayer are true, I wouldn’t put it past him.” “I think she seems like a lot of fun!” Jarak said with a grin. “Agreed!” Miriam cheered. “We’re all doomed.” Kio grumbled, rubbing at his temples to stave off the tension headache he felt building up.