"It could also make people more educated and more free to spread ideas, unless there is somehow only one. But there's never only one of something like this, not forever."

"Myothis has been very educational. She posits that the power of an Archon comes from reputation. They gain strength and magic from being feared, loved, and hated. They seem to believe it. Lantry's theory of Edict strength is suggestive, too."

"That's observation, not theory. Edicts gain strength with age, but very slowly if they aren't talked about and gaining notoriety. I admit, it suggests something fundamental. Artifacts, too, gain power with age and reputation. Oh dear, I can't imagine this knowledge not being forbidden."

"That..... Is not really how things are supposed to work. If anything things break down when they age. For us, at least."

"What magic do you have? Just the invention and creation effect?"

"Nothing we call magic that wasn't eventually revealed to be - fake, wishful thinking, or only incidental to something else, like willow bark for pain. Or watching the stars for signs- We think now that the stars only have meaning because we think they do, so people panic about what mercury or virgo are doing, and then point at the selfsame panic in hindsight and say 'astrology is real', look, mercury gave a sign of war and there was a war! Stupid. We don't even call the Spark magic- It's not fashionable to call things magic, but it's not measured and understood either. Perhaps it should have been."

"I shall reserve judgement until I see it in action, and if it works here, where we definitively do have magic of a distinctly different kind, that may suggest it is not - but it does seem interesting. Much of our magic can be understood and - sloppily - measured, but we do still draw lines separating it from craft and technology - though the Forge-Bound foul that up royally, of course..."

"He'll go on like this for an hour if you let him," Kohl interjects, "So please interrupt if you'd rather he not."

"Oh, no, this is fine. So, what makes magic, magic? Mentally controlling it? Only some people being able to do it? A certain kind of energy?"

"Well, there are classes of magic. They all manipulate the same energies, as best as we can tell; Archons rarely consent to detailed inspection, so for most of their capabilities we're merely generalizing from a handful of examples. But Edicts and sigil magic - and the Spires - affect the same field of energy. Edicts can only be originated by Kyros, though they can be passed to another - possibly only a vassal, we don't know - to read and execute. Archons all have unique magic, which seems to be entirely intuitive and idiosyncratic. And extremely varied. But sigil magic, while its limits are poorly understood, can be used by everyone, and the basic structure has been charted. It does have a mental component - anyone can trace the correct shape, but it only produces magical effects if you know enough of the associated Archon's history and achievements to hold appropriate concepts in mind as you do it. A bronze-smith doesn't need to understand the properties of his copper and tin to work them together, so long as he properly does the things he was taught as an apprentice; a sigil mage needs to think correctly, not just act correctly."

"...Then yes, according to that framework, we don't have any magic except perhaps the Spark. Nothing that explicitly needs you to think correctly- Except some tricks of psychology, I guess. Never heard of any mentally responding energy."

"Do you have anything like the Spires? The Oldwalls? The obvious point of origin of magic is the Archons - and many of my colleagues conjectured that Kyros is in some sense just the greatest of Archons, the Archon of Edicts - but the magical effects of the Older Realms construction can't be denied, and they predate even Kyros, probably by many centuries."

"Definitely not. They look like someone's ancient, overbuilt infrastructure project, though."

"Hard to argue with that. Only this span have we gotten the first clue what they are for - Once Kohl had awakened multiple Spires, it became possible to transport from one to another in - well less than an hour. So perhaps they were a transport network, for whatever people ruled Terratus long before Kyros. Wildly, wildly overbuilt, though, no question. Then again, perhaps they only work because they loom large in the minds of the populace - ah, pun intended, my apologies - and if they were merely taller than any ordinary building they wouldn't concentrate enough magic to work. We know so little."

"It's really something... And the only response is to try to know more, isn't it? My home could have ended up like that. Ancient wonders, never to be understood or recovered? It feels humbling."

"I'd hope that if something destroyed Kyros and our civilization with him - and you could hardly do less and have it sitick - some of our Chronicle would survive to be found by our successors. Then again, perhaps their histories are written on the inner walls of the Oldwalls - I'm told glyphs are common. What was bringing your people to that point? With the knowledge and capabilities your tools imply..."

"We're just calling it the Great Frost, or the Last Autumn, or the Long Winter. Something like an edict of winter across the whole world, with many guesses and no certainty as to why. They say... Everyone is going to die. There were evacuation efforts, scrambling to build new cities in places that could survive. It was honestly amazing, how much we could get done in a season if we really had to but... Probably not enough, news totally broke down, Bristol certainly didn't get its evacuation done cleanly and who knows about the rest of England, let alone the rest of the world. And then I ended up here, somehow, instead of in an evacuation vehicle."

"I hesitate to say anything is beyond Kyros, but that does sound like it might be. Not that he would - 'Kyros doesn't want to rule a wastelend' and I can't imagine you could feed even a tenth of your people, in those circumstances. Up north one of the domains belongs to the Archons of Frost, and it is not a populous place. And that's with someone mostly benign controlling the winter."

"Actually, the hothouses were only the fifth or sixth worst part..." She scowls. "Lots of bad feelings there still. Don't want to talk about it too much."

"Understood. I'll resist the urge to write secondhand history of it," he says, lapsing into silence a little like a shushed puppy.

"How did your people - England? - fight wars?," Kohl asks.

If he's risking making an enemy, he needs to know the risk. And if he's contemplating asking for an ally against another enemy, then doubly so.

"-The. Oh. Hmm. Cannons and guns, for the most part. I an somewhat sure there's no real way to find them, though. And it's England yes, or alternately the British Empire."

"I don't recognize either. Unsurprisingly."

"Do you have...... Bombs? Essentially, bomb powered bows and ballistae and catapults? Long iron tubes, explosive powder. Also, ships with engines to move against the wind."

"Ah. Ours are usually magic, but I think I see."