Eyes on her plate, she said, “Yes, well, as you know Ruby and I have been working on a project for the United Congress for a few years now.”
“Something about clean energy, right?”
“Exactly.” Glancing up from her plate, she hesitated. Normally this was where she hedged on the finer details of their work, but there was no need to do that with the sovereign present. He was, after all, privy to even the most confidential details.
“So…” Margot stared at her with wide, curious eyes as the tines of her fork slid neatly into a chunk of lightly pickled cucumber.
Atria cleared her throat and looked away from the sovereign, whose dark gaze remained fixed on his wife, as if he intended to account for every bite she took. “So,Ruby and I did our internship with the m-siphon liberation organization way back when we were in graduate school, and it got us thinking about how they are basically magical batteries.”
“Gods, but at what cost?” Margot’s expression contorted with a mixture of disgust and dismay. “Those poor people. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be slapped with a stasis spell, trapped in some container, and then drained of my magic until I either died or went insane.”
“Exactly,” Atria replied, her food momentarily forgotten as she leaned forward, palms braced on the edge of the table. “It’s vile. But thetheory…M-siphons work because bodies are conducting magic through m-paths, which the siphon then redirects. In that sense, thepersonis incidental. What matters is that they are creating their own little pool of energy, right? We all do it every day without thinking about it. See, Ruby and I had the thought that a lot of other people have had: What if we could harness raw magical energywithoutthe need for a living conduit and use it to power everything from your phone to whole cities?”
“How? Technology can’t harness atmospheric magic in any functional amount. Isn’t that why people have had to settle for use of m-siphons in the first place?” Theodore’s voice was a low rumble from across the table.
Her gaze snapped over just in time to see him pop a bloody chunk of meat past his lips.
Yeesh!
“Correct on both counts.” She reached over her plate to grab her glass of wine. A gulp or two was needed to help her suddenly dry throat. “Magic is too… the best way to describe it isslippery.Only organic materials can channel it, and even then it comes with considerable risk — ask any witch. However, we realized that there was something nobody had bothered to consider before.”
Swallowing a bite, Margot asked, “What’s that?”
“M-weather.”
When they both stared at her, eyebrows raised, she let out a slow breath. “Okay, so you know that m-weather happens all the time, yes? It moves unpredictably, and sometimes it gathers in what we would compare to… say, a tropical storm. Under the right conditions, it can gather energy and create m-events, sometimes in the same places over and over again — which you obviously know about, given the city’s history.”
“I read Calamity’s book,” Margot replied, a little breathless.
Atria’s eyes flicked to Theodore. “It, ah, didn’t exactly frame the elves in the best light.”
Amongst the riveting tale of how Calamity — the elemental who claimed San Francisco’s fog — was born in a disaster that nearly wiped the city off the map in 1906, there were many chapters dedicated to the tyrannical rule of Theodore’s father, Thaddeus II.
She didn’t know why she expected him to scowl. Perhaps it was because he seemed so stern in all his public appearances, or maybe it was because she, like anybody with a brain in their heads, knew how dangerous elves were.
Whatever the reason, Theodore did not scowl. Hewinced.“Yes, well, we rarely come out looking like the good guys in the history books.”
“Not without reason,” Margot chimed in.
He nodded. “Not without reason.”
Lifting a chunk of bean fritter to her lips, Margot urged, “Go on.”
“Well, we had the thought that if the ability to harness the magic in the atmosphere is limited by the need for a conduit, and if sigils can only do so much before fizzling out, then why not see if the creation of clusters — those spots where atmospheric magic begins to pool together — can be harnessed? It’s already being gathered in one place, after all, and that’s half the reason a conduit is necessary. If we could make a sort of… lightning rod where the magic is then diverted into containment unitslikem-siphons, then the problem is solved.”
Ten years of research and development, hundreds of interview requests, and a collaborative team that spanned every territory culminated in that one painfully simple concept.
Lightning rods.
Well, more like cutting edge organic computer batteries strapped to lightning rods with duct tape and precise sigilwork, but close enough.
An endless source of clean energy was all around them, one that took less storage and created less pollution in its containment than evensolarpower. Magic was highly combustible and if harnessed correctly, even a small amount could keep a city’s lights on for years. M-storms had been historically viewed only as disasters in the making. Elementals were born from them, but no one bothered to take a closer look at their utility beyond passing curiosity and disaster mitigation.
Until she and Ruby came along, of course. Not only could they use the destructive force for the world’s benefit, but they could also simultaneously track the birth of beings historically ignoredandeliminate the vile practice of using people as magical batteries.
It was the white whale of the green energy field and they’dcrackedit.
Margot’s fork lowered slowly to rest, tines down, onto her plate. Even Theodore had gone very still beside her.
