Daybreak:Alpha Chapter

Chapter 12 - The Storm Front

"You can't cast? At all?" Kaede remarked in astonishment. The spoonful of soup she raised before her mouth lay forgotten as she stared at the balding forty-some-year-old intelligence officer sitting across the table.

"Believe me I've tried; even pretended I could, back in my younger days," Lieutenant-Colonel Hans-Canaris Oster chuckled at himself. "But no, not even a spark. Just made me look silly."

"I did tell you that the Lieutenant-Colonel was a commoner, not a yeoman," Pascal commented before taking another mouthful of his own dinner. He then nudged her over telepathy: and you are being rude.

"Sorry..." Kaede broke off her stare and looked back down. "I don't mean to be..."

"That's quite alright," Hans grinned back with a natural smile that easily foretold of his future life as a jolly old grandpa. "I've met plenty of other commoners who were surprised. It's certainly very unusual for an officer without any magical ability to advance beyond Captain."

"You must have worked really hard to get there," Kaede looked back up in admiration.

"I won't deny that I've always been envious of the yeomen though," he admitted. "Commanding officers from platoon to battalion level are all expected to fight alongside frontline troops and ward them with defensive spells. I can't cast any of them, so I've had to climb the ladder without a single command experience, which is not easy, believe me!"

Kaede nodded back firmly after swallowing another mouthful. Career building in the military expected a range of experiences in different roles, with tactical leadership in combat situations being the most important. To rise through the ranks without ever being a frontline commander was like... trying to run a marathon in crutches.

"It also doesn't help that I can only stay in the military for fifty years at most, while the mages have well over a century before they reach retirement age," Hans added, with a gradual sigh that exposed the lingering bitterness underneath his begrudging acceptance. "Still, complaining about it isn't going to change my birth. So I got over what I don't have and focused on what I do."

"Then you've got to be one of Weichsel's best analysts if you rose this high on staff experience alone," Kaede thought aloud, to which the Lieutenant-Colonel simply shrugged.

Pascal slowly shook his head as he continued to casually stir his soup.

"Every time we get an important report he deduces more possibilities than the rest of us staff combined..."

The young Major then looked back up and firmly met his senior eye-to-eye, as though issuing a challenge:

"--Nevertheless, Sir, I would be just as good had I two decades of experience, or even just one."

"As an analyst? You'll need more than just a few years," Hans smirked back as he tilted his head and propped it with his left arm, his own bowl already miraculously emptied. "Remember, my biggest lacking also gives me an advantage of sorts: unlike you, I don't have to spend thousands of hours learning to cast spells and maintaining that expertise."

"And that's a lot of time you can focus on studying Weichsel's enemies," Kaede realized, prompting a happy, almost-smug nod from Lieutenant-Colonel Oster.

What's that line again? She tried to remember. Know your enemy and know yourself, and you shall not fear a hundred battles...

"For an analyst, it's important to keep up to date with news from around the world, and not just the big headlines either," Hans explained. "It often helps to understand people, especially leaders, from their more... everyday dealings; much better hints towards their preferences and ideology than just their spotlight image. However, scouring through that much news also takes a lot of time."

In other words, he's been info-stalking everyone that's important and building profiles on them for years...

"So do you know what makes Pascal tick then?" Kaede joked with a beaming smile.

"Talk to me afterwards," Hans whispered back openly with a wink.

"Sir I must admit: conspiring against me with my familiar is not a good way of acquiring my support," Pascal grinned a little himself. "Though I am surprised that you did not request a vice brigadier position for this campaign. Brigade command hardly cares about one's ability to cast spells."

"This campaign will make or break the General's candidacy for Marshal," Hans replied, finally lifting his head off his propped hand and sitting back upright. "I owe General von Manteuffel everything I am today. I'm not about to abandon him in his hour of need."

Kaede found herself a bit astonished. It was hard to imagine the stone-faced General being a gracious superior. But then, he must have some virtues to gain the staunch loyalty of his subordinates -- enough to make Pascal worried about his growing influence within the army.

"And of course, if he manages that, you would have a good chance of achieving generalship yourself," Pascal noted warmly.

The flattery was most unusual for Pascal. The Lieutenant-Colonel noticed it immediately as a shade of caution crept back into his brown eyes.

"I doubt I'm ready for that even if the Holy Father finds me worthy," he replied modestly. Then, with a shrug: "I'm not anywhere near as capable as Hermann von Mittermeyer; and I certainly lack the connections."

The name was legendary enough for Kaede to recognize it immediately. Hermann Mittermeyer began his career as a mere stable boy to the young Ferdinand I von Drachenlanzen, the founding King of Weichsel. After saving the King's life in an ambush, he became one of Ferdinand's aides, where his tactical insight would propel him through the ranks to eventually become a general -- the only commoner to do so in Hyperion history.

His legacy would also cement the nation's meritocratic military traditions. Furthermore, he established a precedence for being the first non-yeoman commoner to be given a hereditary rank of nobility, though only after he married a noblewoman to ensure that his descendants had magical affinity.

"How much does it help to be able to specialize solely on one discipline?" Kaede asked.

The aphorism 'jack of all trades, master of none' could easily describe most Weichsel officers. Their training standards split a person's limited time, energy, and focus between learning martial arts, spellcraft, leadership, tactics, and more -- many of which were simply unnecessary in a position of high-level command. But the conundrum was that without experience as a spellsword who led from the front, those who focused the most on generalship skills also found it the hardest to actually become a general.

It was one of the greatest downsides to pre-firearm militaries. Guns were easy to learn and use; swords and bows took years to master.

"You already know what it takes to train in the martial arts, especially with multiple types of weapons," Pascal began. "Learning how to cast spells is even more repetitive."

Placing his spoon back down, Pascal extended his right arm over the table, fingers extended in a casting gesture.

"Remember what I told you about refinement and spellcrafting?"

"Yeah," Kaede nodded, recognizing this as another one of Pascal's tests. "Mana is the free spiritual power adrift in our surroundings, produced and scattered by all living beings. Mages can absorb this mana through magically conductive nerves, then transmit it to the soul to be refined into ether. Ether is malleable spiritual power, which serves as the fuel for spellcrafting. The caster must then use their nerve system as conduits to form an internalized spell array by channeling ether through it. Complex or long-range spells also prefer the use of a casting focus to condense the magical output before releasing it into the air."

"Correct," Pascal acknowledged before continuing on to explain. "Trying to control the flow of ether through the nerve system is no simple affair. Human biology simply was not designed for such finesse. The only way to manage is to purposefully send the ether to different parts of the body, often many locations at once. This flow must also be kept firmly controlled, since overloading the nerves will burn them and lead to temporary paralysis. The nerves tingle as the ether courses through them, which gives the caster some sense of timing. This is important as more complicated spell arrays will often require ether to be rerouted to different paths halfway..."

Of course, this all means that mages could feel and somehow direct the ether within their bodies...

"--Doing any of this requires high concentration and internal focus, which is hardly possible in tense situations like combat," Pascal went on. "Spells must be mastered to cast them swiftly and with relatively little effort. Such mastery can only be accomplished through repetition. It takes hundred, thousands of times -- hours and days spent doing little else other than casting the same spell over and over -- for the process to be familiarized enough so that creating its array becomes embedded in muscle memory."

Kaede nodded back. The concept was similar to how some people typed complex alphanumeric password on a keyboard so often their fingers intuitively remember which keys to press, even after they had forgotten how to spell out the password on paper.

"Reminds me of how, back as a kid, I thought magic erupted from just shouting some mystical words while making dramatic gestures," Lieutenant-Colonel Oster chuckled to himself. "Which is just silly, when anyone actually sits down to think about it."

"The Ancient Draconic spellwords we use exist solely as mnemonics to help expedite the learning and memorization process," Pascal clarified. "Furthermore, mastered spell words must be cast periodically and often in order to retain that familiarity."

"...And then these spellwords are pieced together to form more complex spell effects that fit the needs of the situation, right?" Kaede asked.

"Precisely," said Pascal as his raised hand went back down to his spoon. "The Dawn Imperium first invented the concept of Adaptive Spell Construction, which gave them an absolute advantage in magical superiority for about a century before the rest of the world followed suit. The concept is that most spellwords are 'effect words' that creates a single supernatural effect. Multiple effects can be grouped together for a single spell. 'Form words' like Field or Sanctum define the structure of that effect -- could be a ray, beam, wall, area ward, emanating field, and so on. Meanwhile 'meta words' like Catalyst and Phalanx are used to modify the behavior of the spellcasting or spell effects."

"And with that, even an average spellcaster who has mastered two dozen or so spellwords have hundreds of permutations to choose from in how they use them," the Lieutenant-Colonel finished.

"Then what about spells they haven't mastered?"

Pascal's left hand then reached into an extradimensional pocket and pulled out a thick book in response to Kaede's question.

"We can still cast them. It just takes a lot more effort, time, and concentration."

Taking the offered book and flipping to a random page, Kaede came across a human physical diagram. Within the figure were color-coded arrow lines, drawn to trace the flow of ether when constructing the spell array. A paragraph-long description of the effect preceded it, while complex, written instructions followed the diagram.

"Witness - Tier 2 Intermediate Divination spell," Kaede read to herself. Turns an object or non-magical creature into a scrying sensor, allowing the caster to hear and see through the entity. Clarity may vary depending on the entity's own sensory, if any...

"Spellcasting is divided into six tiers and six disciplines," commented Pascal. "The tiers are just a rough guideline of the spellword's difficulty. The disciplines -- sometimes called 'schools' -- are: alchemy and enchantment, which manipulates either physical entities or mental states; conjuration and evocation, which creates physical or magical phenomenons; plus divination and illusion, which discerns or hides information about reality."

"So you can see, just learning to cast spell is like a profession on its own, let alone all the other skills a yeoman or noble cadet needs," said Hans. Although his eyes were no longer on Kaede or Pascal, but directed across the room where a tense, almost-distraught signals officer was reporting in to General von Manteuffel.

Pascal had noticed the same occurrence before he reached over to take back his spellbook.

"Kaede go to the HQ and fetch me the maps and reports that are on my table there," requested Pascal.

Ignoring any Western dining etiquette, Kaede took her bowl with both hands and drank what remained of her soup in large gulps before standing up.

Back to work then.

She completely missed the glare Pascal sent her as she turned towards the door with bulging cheeks.

...

It wasn't until after Kaede left when the Lieutenant-Colonel commented in an amused whisper:

"Think her presence at the meeting might help your ideas?"

"Maybe. Maybe not," Pascal quietly replied. "But I have certainly learned not to underestimate her knowledge. It might be premature, but simply the experience of following tactical discussions would do her good."

He then turned back around to face Hans with a broad grin:

"Nurturing talent is an important part of leadership, after all."

----- * * * -----