Technomancer: Genesis - 99 From Dust to Dus

Hestia looked at a peculiar wall it seemed to contain different coloured dust. There were red, white, and blue coloured dust inside the containers. She went toward them slowly.

“What are these, Ezra?” she asked curiously.

“Uhh. Those are failed experiments.” Ezra answered shyly.

“Failed experiments?”

“Well, they are what happens when I infuse my magic into crystals. As you can clearly see they disintegrate into fine particles. I tried to do things to them inside the chemical lab, they are what’s left. Mostly all of them are tested by Anton.

“I don’t exactly know what kind of material they are made up of. They are insoluble in water, other solutions or other acids, they don’t corrode, they don’t react to electricity or heat. Crystals, in general, are indestructible we tried at least 1000 newtons on it and no cracks whatsoever, but a little magic aura can decimate it? Weird. We’ve tried different chemicals to react to them but we get nothing. It’s not radioactive, it doesn’t produce alpha, beta or gamma rays. As for its half-life or decay, I have no idea at all.” Ezra was mostly talking to himself than to Hestia.

Hestia just nodded but didn’t understand the main points of Ezra.

“Anyway, I think that they are not made up of matter at all.” Ezra looked at a distance, “Well matter that we know of certainly. They don’t seem to contain any substances found in the periodic table at the very least. It seems that they only react to magic aura. Hmm, I need to start developing a term for magic aura. That placeholder is getting tiring to hear.”

“Wait, did you say that they are what happens when you infuse magic to crystals?” Hestia asked.

“Well yes? Uhh.”

“You mean to say you can use crystals without cores?” Hestia said shocked.

Even Erela raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone who can do that in the whole empire,” Erela interjected.

“Yes, but I destroy them in the process,” Ezra continued.

However, Hestia bit her lip. She remembered her first time in the elemental chamber.

. . .

“Hestia, my little one. Are you alright?” Kaizer asked his daughter after she went out of the chamber.

Hestia was gasping in deep breaths. She was drenched in sweat.

“Yes, papa,”

“Here. Drink some water,” the emperor took a waterskin and gave it to Hestia.

She drank a lot of water and for a while, only the gulping sound of her drinking echoed on the walls of the Bibliotheca.

When she finished, she spoke again.

“Papa, I feel different, it feels like there is heat that is swirling in my stomach.”

“Yes, my princess, that happens the first time you get into the chamber. Remember you are not allowed to use magic for a while. Around a month until your condition stabilizes ”

Hestia nodded obediently, “Yes papa, I won’t use any spells.”

The emperor grabbed another book from the half-empty shelf.

“We got this idea from this book. Again, this is loosely translated, we don’t understand everything fully.”

Kaizer dropped the manuscript on the table and it echoed with a large thud.

Hestia read the title. “Ars Arcanum”

“The Caelesti Fulmen were not selfish with their knowledge. In their book, they conclude that the purer your magic aura the easier it is to gain cross affinity to other elements.” Kaizer paused looking puzzled for a while. This was met by curious stares of Hestia.

He continued. “But if this was so why is it that the all of the Elementalists have an equal probability of becoming Rex Imperia? I am stating this fact that before our house came into power, of course. The spread of who the next emperor came to power was relatively even between houses of Earth, Fire, Water and Air. Why then did the Caelesti Fulmen come to this conclusion? Isn’t it that the more probable houses to get a seat were Fire since they were, in theory, purer and thus learn other magic aside from fire faster?” the emperor seemed to be talking to himself more than to Hestia.

He then looked at his daughter.

“However I think that the purity they may be referring to is not the purity that we discuss at length in our regular textbooks. You know this Hestia am I right?”

Hestia nodded. “Yes papa, I was taught fire excelled at magic purity, earth with range, wind cast speed, water in mana capacity.”

“Well, I think this fact is for the fables.” Kaizer declared.

“It does not seem so at all. In a sense, they just have a proclivity for that because of the spells they use. This is just my conjecture of course. But there seem to be plenty of things we don’t know about magic.”

Hestia scratched her head. She didn’t understand what her father was getting at.

“Anyway, these are just the ramblings of an old man.”

“You’re not that old papa!”

The Emperor chuckled at this statement.

“The way to test true purity of magic is one thing, my dear. Here hold this.” Kaizer handed her daughter a crystalline stone.

“This is a magic crystal am I right papa?” Hestia asked.

“Yes, it is. Now since you just went out of the purifying chamber use your magic and infuse it into the crystal.”

“But everyone knows you can’t do that, papa.” Hesta looked at him bewilderedly.

“Just do as I tell you little one, Oh and point it over there we don’t want you to burn these books down.”

“Okay, papa.”

Hestia aimed at an empty space away from the shelves. She infused her magic and pushed it toward the crystal. To her surprise, the crystal erupted a streak of fire. It was a foot long and then it disappeared.

“Wow! Papa did you see that!?” Hestia was ecstatic.

“Yes, yes, my child,” the emperor chuckled.

The crystal, however, began to crumble and split into find clumps, some of it became fine particles but there two distinct blocks of crystal.

“Awh, it broke, sorry papa.”

“Don’t worry about it, that’s certainly is expected, your magic is actually purer than your brothers and sisters, they didn’t produce such fine particles after testing their magic,” the Emperor smiled.

“Is that good papa?” asked Hestia.

“Of course, at this rate, you can learn three elements by the time you are sixteen that is of course if you do not slack off.”

“Of course, papa! I’ll become stronger than you!” Hestia wore a determined look on her face. Then suddenly she wore a curious look. “Papa what if I don’t want the crystal to break? Can I do that?”

“It certainly is possible, the Caelesti Fulmen called it harmonic resonance with the crystal. We still don’t understand what that means though. I for one can’t do it when I try to infuse my magic to the crystal it seems to suck my magic and then disintegrate the crystal.”

“It’s a waste of crystals though, isn’t it, papa?”

“Perhaps we can understand how they work in time, my child.”

“Papa, I have another question,”

“Ask away my darling.”

“When you did the test the first time, did you get the same results as mine?” Hestia asked.

“Well, I did slightly better, I broke the crystal into three and had more fine particles.” Kaizer snickered.

“That’s not fair,” Hestia pouted.

“The world really isn’t, for example, it is documented that the Caelesti Fulmen royal family when they took the purity test, they would utterly decimate the crystal into fine dust, leaving no blocks at all. They didn’t even have to undergo the purity chamber for this. This was inherent in their constitution”

“Wow, they must be powerful!” Hestia exclaimed. “I wonder where they are now though.”

“We don’t know my child, but I do have a guess,” Kaizer answered his daughter as he looked away at a distance.