Prelude to Peace

Eruditio - The Letter

Eruditio

The Letter

Alexandra studied her lab table carefully, making sure that she had all the right tools to begin her experiment.  Like most of the population of Dawn’s Rise her skin was pale from living under the Great Crystal Shield, which protected the city but allowed very little sunlight to pass through.  Though she was a bookworm by nature, she was still strong enough, and athletic enough to hold her own in a sparring match with many of the young rune warriors who served her family.  She had done just that the day before, during her battle training.  But today she was alone to study and research whatever she wished.  This particular experiment was a special one, though her family looked askew at it.  Even so, she found science fascinating, though her cousins teased her sometimes for it.  They weren’t mean, but they still acknowledged that it was an unconventional path of study as opposed to magic, which was the staple of her family.  Even so, the Eruditio revered knowledge in all of its forms, often living with the unexpected consequences of their research.  Most didn’t share her eagerness to study science, but Alexandra’s passion for learning was respected and admired by her peers.

            Vials with many different colors of liquids floated in the air before finding their place in a rack on the wooden table.  A book on the lectern stood open to a blank page that it had turned to on its own.  Alexandra had enchanted most of her tools with a spirit echo, a high level spell that gave them the ability to move on their own.  They worked according to what she ordered them to do, and rarely caused her any problems.  The more experienced she became with these spells, the better they worked.  Sometimes, they even anticipated her orders and did things on their own, making the task that much easier.

            The girl moved about her workspace with care and concentration, her dark brown hair held back in a bun to keep it out of her way.  She wrote the steps of her experiment down in the book, then she pointed at a flask filled with a yellow liquid and it poured itself into a large beaker filled with a rust colored solution.  She turned to look at the steps she had written down, afraid she had poured too much of the yellow liquid, only to find that the words on the page had changed drastically.  The letters had rearranged and the words were now gibberish that hurt her eyes to look at.  Worried, she looked from her experiment to the page. Her mistake startled her and she jumped.  The sound of her failure was like a small firecracker going off in the room as the flask on the table exploded. 

Alexandra managed to raise a magical shield just in time to block the spray of chemicals and glass, and she quickly scolded herself for enchanting the ink wrongly.  The spell had been flawed somehow, as had her measurements, and this carelessness had ruined her experiment.  She moved over to the cabinets and began looking for another inkwell, but soon realized that she had run out and forgotten to buy more.  She would have to go into town before continuing.

            “I see your not having much luck, cousin,” a boy said as he walked through the open door of the lab.  His name was Rubio and he was eleven, the same age as Alexandra.  He was from a branch of the Eruditio family that lived in the east.  His parents had ruled the fortress city of Breaker’s Hold on the border with the lands of the northern Potentis clans, but they had died a year earlier during a berserker raid led by powerful Potentis lord named Malstien.  Rubio had been sent to Dawn’s Rise by their regent to study under the rune warriors that made their home in the city shortly after his parent’s deaths.  He wasn’t very tall, but he had a strong build like all of the young warriors in training.  The dark brown hair of his topknot was held in place by two long, blue dragon shaped pins.  He was from a long line of sword masters from the east, whose walls and people had been magically imbued with the strength of the earth over long years of study and experimentation.  Through the powerful magic inherent in the Eruditio bloodline, and many brave sacrifices, they had been able to hold back the fury of the Potentis for generations.