"Thank you." Morek placed a chair on the other side of my desk and straddled it. "You are a lifesaver."
"Do you want me to get you fresh caff brews?" Shovia asked from where she had remained by the doorway.
I turned to look at her. "I'll wait for you to return before I begin. You need this almost as much as Morek does."
She wasn't happy with me at that moment. "Please, don't. I really don't care what grade I get on the comprehensive refresher. It's not like the Spy Corps won't allow me to join because of a low score on this drakking test."
"True, but you need a passing grade."
"I'll pass." She waved a dismissive hand and walked away.
"You heard her." Morek leaned back in his chair. "Let's get to it."
I sighed. "Where do you want to start?"
"The basics," he said as if I was daft for asking. "All that drak about what makes Aurorys crazy. I'm not good with physics or math."
"Aurorys is not crazy. It's magnificent and challenging and unlike any of the other planets in our system, but it is also the only habitable one."
Morek shrugged. "How do we even know if the other planets are inhabited or not? It's not like we can travel to them."
"It's true that we cannot reach them, but there are other ways scientists can determine that. We know that the other planets don't have the right combinations of gases in their atmospheres to support life."
Morek winced. "Do I need to know how they determined that?"
I laughed. "No. You only need to know the basic stuff about Aurorys. It starts with its core. It's composed of a highly turbulent mixture of metallic hydrogen and helium, and that results in a powerful but erratic magnetic field. Its interactions with the solar wind create the near-constant auroral displays that bathe our planet in ethereal lights."
When Morek looked at me with glazed-over eyes, I knew he needed a simplified explanation. "Think of Aurorys's heart as a giant, swirling pot of soup made of two special ingredients—hydrogen and helium—that have become metallic, like liquid metal. Just like how soup bubbles and swirls when it's boiling, the planet's core is always moving and churning. This churning creates a huge magnetic field around our planet. Imagine holding a giant magnet that's constantly wobbling and spinning. But unlike a regular magnet that stays steady, our planet's magnetic field dances and changes unpredictably. When this wobbly magnetic field meets the stream of energy coming from our sun, called the solar wind, it creates the beautiful lights wesee in our sky. That's why we can't have flying vehicles, only hover-cars."
"So, how do birds and dragons fly?"
"They can feel these magnetic changes naturally, which allows them to fly safely through the ever-changing skies."
"That's why Elu created the bond between dragons and riders and gave them exclusive control of the sky." Morek pumped a fist against his chest. "Elucians are the chosen children of Aurorys."
"I wish that were true, but since we are less than two percent of the total population of Aurorys, that claim will be hotly contested, especially by the Shedun and probably by most of the Sitorians."
A grimace twisted Morek's handsome face. "The Shedun can all go back to the hell that spawned them, and it would be my pleasure to escort them there."
He was such a warrior at heart, and I admired that, but I also cringed at the vehemence, even though it was justified.
More accurately, the ratio that I had mentioned was true of the Daian continent's population, and not all of Aurorys, since it was unknown whether anyone lived on the mythical continent across the Addolian Ocean. A pre-division myth claimed that Dolis was home to fallen gods, and current science even confirmed the existence of another large continent on the other side of the planet based on mathematical calculation of mass and rotation, but since navigation across the ocean wasn't possible, the existence of Dolis would forever remain a mystery.
I often wondered about that myth, though.
It had to be rooted in truth or it wouldn't have made it into Elu's canon, but since Elu was supposed to be the only god, with Elurion and Elusitor being just artificial constructs representing the one true god's dual nature, the scholars had to come up with a reasonable explanation. The claim was that the myth was anallegory for the afterlife, and that Dolis was where souls dwelled in peace and harmony in the presence of Elu and were treated like gods.
All souls eventually made it to Dolis, including sinners, but only those whose good deeds outweighed their sins on the Day of Judgment were allowed right in. Everyone else had to go through various levels of atonement and purification in the seven hells, the length and severity of their punishment depending on how far they had fallen.
It was a good explanation except for the reference to Elu's forgotten brethren.
Who were they, and why were they forgotten?
Some scholars said that the term brethren referred to the original riders who'd made the pact with the dragons. They were Elu's chosen and had elevated status in Dolis, but the problem with that was that they were not forgotten. Other scholars solved that by claiming that the forgotten brethren were all Elucians, who had a special place in Elu's heart.
Did I believe the explanations?
Not really, but I didn't have a better one that did not doubt the veracity of the myths altogether or that did not involve blasphemy by hypothesizing the existence of many gods, some of whom had apparently fallen and been forgotten.
