Chp.11: Magic and mathematics
After saying goodbye to her departing brothers, Maldor had returned to her usual work. With her magical knowledge from her time in the Academy of Magic, she had a lot to do.
After deciding to partner with Zamor, Haku had entrusted her with the mass production of dragon's essence, the same potion Sisna sold in her shop; not to sell it this time, but to use it as a weapon. Maldor had been happy to do this and had even improved the potion, making it more durable and lessening the side effects. Not only that: she had also begun to experiment and create many new potions and spells that could be useful in the future battle against Carrion. For example, she had created a potion that was capable of toughening the skin making it as hard as dragon scales for a short period of time, by mixing a few potions of various types and her blood. Or she had created amulets and magical items enhanced with runes and, of course, a few drops of her blood, which enhanced not only the physique but also stamina, agility and coordination.
Anything she created would be extremely useful in the battle against Carrion, so Haku had built for her a small laboratory. In reality it was just a hole in the rock carved with a combination of runes and earth magic, but it was enough to work in peace. Maldor liked that task and knew how important it was, so every day she holed up inside it and began to work. Her day was essentially divided into two parts: throughout the morning she produced the potions or magical objects she already knew, thus creating large quantities of them, while during the afternoon she experimented in the most varied ways, trying to create something new.
By now the fight against Carrion was close and Haku had already told her that there was no further need to produce anything, but Maldor had preferred to continue anyway. After all, she never knew: maybe by continuing to experiment, sooner or later a new potion or spell would come up that could make the plan easier. Most of the magic known to the newcomers had been discovered by accident; one could never know what secrets were kept in the abyss of knowledge. Any mage's first job was always to try and study new things: this was what she had taught her students, and it was what she had always advocate. Never assume to know everything and always question everything.
However, she had recently reevaluated his thinking slightly. She had begun to wonder if there wasn't a common language for everything. After all, she had noticed that different things in the world seemed to respond to similar laws. For example, everything was subjected to what the newcomers called the 'universal centralization', always being drawn towards the center of the world. And everything used mana in the same way. And the pressure and temperature rules were also always the same. In practice, there were universal laws. As a result, it was natural to think that there was some sort of super-law governing everything.
In reality, it hadn't really been her idea. Like many other things, the suggestion had come from Haku. Her brother had asked her to give him a general explanation of what she knew, and she had been happy to do so; several times, however, Haku had asked her if there wasn't some sort of correlation between the various laws that governed the world. That wasn't a bad question: after all, some forces worked together in many cases, for example that of pressure and temperature. Thanks to that constant questioning, both of them had finally come to the same question: if some laws were related and worked together, then why shouldn't that have been true for all laws? What if the laws they knew were just remnants, little sparkles of a bigger super-law that governed everything in the world? A sort of 'law of everything', the explanation of all things. Haku had been intrigued by that possibility: discovering this super-law would have meant obtaining total understanding of every principle that governed the world, and would have allowed not only to understand the present and discover the past but also to predict future events with extreme precision. It wpuld even be possible to understand the movement of the stars or the reason of the appearance of the second sun. It was a wonderful prospect, but sadly Haku was too busy at the moment to bother trying to solve that question. Furthermore, he believed that their current understanding of the world was still too fragmented. After all, to discover the super-law that governed the world, they would first have had to know at least a good part of the principles of the world itself, which was currently not within their possibilities.
Maldor, however, wasn't of the same opinion. Haku believed that to fully understand a system it was necessary to know it in its smallest parts; for example, to understand how a forest worked, someone had to explore it and learn all the various interactions between the living creatures within it. But Maldor didn't think so. If the super-law was truly universal, then it should have been present in every corner of the world, even in its tiniest parts like a stone. Which meant that by studying the stone, she could work out the super-law. Taking the example of the forest, it was sufficient to study only a few groups of animals and understand what their basic needs were (what they fed on, when they reproduced, what their survival techniques were, etc.) to predict what the behaviors of every single other animal in the forest. After all, if all carnivorous animals stalked their prey, then they would have techniques for hunting the prey, while the prey would have techniques for defending themselves. While the drawing she would get of the forest would be very simplistic, it would still be enough to understand how it generally worked.
Therefore, Maldor had begun to experiment on her own to solve what she had very simplistically dubbed 'super-law theory'. A large part of her experiments were aimed precisely at finding something that would allow her to solve this question. Maldor was sure that if super-law really ruled the world, then there must be something, a universal and infallible language, with which it was possible to explain all things and finally understand the super-law. And Maldor, after much experimentation, was sure that she had identified this universal language in mathematics.
The math she and her siblings had known most of their lives was very simplistic; in reality, the newcomers applied it in various fields. They used geometry to study the architecture of buildings and to calculate naval routes and distances. No other science had as many applications as mathematics. So Maldor wondered: what if there were more? What if mathematics could be applied in any field, to describe all things? If so, that would have meant that the universal language was none other than numbers.
Some newcomers had tried to theorize something like this in the past, but obviously they were immediately singled out as a heretic; after all, what fool would have thought that the gods weren't the engine of the world, but that mathematics was? But Maldor didn't fear the judgment of the gods; indeed, as Haku had repeatedly pointed out, the gods were probably their enemies, so making them angry wasn't certainly a problem for her. And so she started experimenting, using the thing she knew best: magic. By applying various mathematical formulas to her spells she was trying to identify one that would allow her to predict the consequences. However, she still hadn't succeeded. But after all, it was too early to throw in the towel: she had only been experimenting for a few months, she would have had to do it for at least a year before being able to get results.
Maldor intended to experiment that day too, but when she arrived at her laboratory she discovered to her surprise that she had a visitor. Isaac was there and waiting for her. "Hello, Maldor" he greeted her.
"Uh...hello, Isaac" Maldor replied. Even though the human had long ago stated that he wanted to be her friend even if she was a dragon, she was still nervous when she spoke to him. It all seemed so surreal to her. "What are you doing here?"
"I heard yesterday was your birthday. Misune told me" Isaac replied, and he pulled something from his pocket. "I'm a little late, but... here. You can consider it a gift from me"
Maldor's eyes widened in surprise, and an instant later those same eyes began to sparkle with excitement. She had never received a birthday present in her life. Technically, she had never even received a gift. The most she had had was a piece of meat that one of her siblings had given her after a hunt. She had never received anything concrete, lasting, that symbolized another person's affection.
However, when she saw what Isaac was holding, her enthusiasm died. "Is that... a necklace?" she said, seeing that what the mage was handing her was just a string surrounded by dozens of colored beads. She appreciated the gesture, but her dragon pride made it hard for her to be happy. To dragons, their bodies were perfect; there was no imperfection and nothing more could be added to make it even more perfect. Wearing clothing or jewelry was an insult to a dragon's magnificence. Normally, if someone proposed such a thing to a dragon, it would have been torn apart by its claws. Maldor held back because she knew Isaac hadn't done it meanly, but she was still quite annoyed.
Isaac smiled at her. "Don't worry, I know how dragons see clothes and jewels. I'm not that ignorant. This isn't for embellishment" he explained. "It's a magical item. I have infused each pearl with a high level protection spell. If you wear it, unless your enemy is a level adamantium mage, you will be protected from as many attacks as the beads"
"Oh, that's it!" Maldor exclaimed trying to hide her relief. "Well... thank you. It really is a wonderful gift"
Isaac shook his head. "It's nothing special. It's just a little thing I made during the night"
"It's still welcome" Maldor said with a smile, then doubts occurred to her. "Um... and your birthday is...?"
"Ha ha! Don't worry, my birthday is in the winter. You don't have to think about it" Isaac replied. "But thanks for the concern. If we're all still alive this winter, I'll let you know at least a week before"
Maldor giggled in amusement. She lifted the necklace and looked at it in all its glory. The beads were made of simple glass and had very variable colors, but what immediately caught the eye was the central bead, much larger than all the others and on which some runes were engraved. "Did you use what I taught you to have one of the beads continuously absorb mana from the environment?"
"Yes, it works on the same principle as the invisibility rune you always use. Every day it absorbs a little mana from the environment and then distributes it. This way it will never run out" Isaac replied. "That's why it's bigger than all the others. The other beads contain only the mana needed for the protection spell, while the central one contains all the mana needed to replenish the others after they've used their magic"
Maldor was eyeing the smiling necklace, but suddenly she stopped. Her eyes widened and she began to brush her claws against the beads. "Yes... you're right. The central bead must contain the mana necessary for all the others... but also the one necessary to create the energy to transport the mana into the others... and the one necessary to perceive that the other beads they have no more mana" she said in a whisper. "So...in total the central bead must contain the mana for another sixty beads, plus the mana needed to move along the thread, plus that to sense changes...a large amount of mana placed in one place, but which then it is distributed or converted into energy..."
"Um... Maldor? What are you saying?" Isaac asked not understanding what the dragon was doing.
In response Maldor approached him and showed him the necklace. "Think about it! The mana contained in the large bead is distributed to the other beads, and we can use an arithmetic operation to determine how much mana will go into each bead. If we assume that the central bead is a 60, then in the other beads there will be a 1 We can sort mana mathematically. But then… maybe we can use the same principle to convert mana into energy!" she exclaimed in a trembling voice. "Perhaps, with some arithmetic, we can correctly determine how much mana is needed to generate a certain amount of energy! And not only that... we can also work the formula in reverse, using the amount of energy gained to determine the amount of mana initial... and then... of course! If we can use arithmetic operations to calculate the energy, and then we can use geometric operations to see which direction the energy moves to generate the spell, then we can correctly predict how it will work! How stupid I was! I was trying to figure out the correlation between magic and math using the spell itself, but actually I had to look for its root in its foundations! It was obvious, how could I not think about it? Mana and energy are the basis of any magic, so it was them that I had to focus on, not the magic itself!"
"I still don't follow you..." Isaac admitted a little embarrassed.
"What I'm saying is that we can calculate the amount of energy starting from the amount of mana and vice versa! There must be a formula that allows us to combine these things! A certain amount of mana corresponds to an equally certain amount of energy, and this it's an indefeasible principle!" Maldor eagerly grabbed some papers and started writing some numbers on it. "Isaac, I'm going to need you here today! I'm going to need every incantation and spell you know to test the truth of this theory and figure out what the right formula is!"
Isaac was about to tell her that he actually had other plans for the day, but seeing how excited she was he decided he'd preferred to please her. He decided he would consider it an extension of the birthday present. That's what friends were for, too, right?