Magic and Exposition

'𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯? 𝘐𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘢𝘴 𝘮𝘺 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦...'

"There's a war brewing?" Omni asked.

Krave opened his mouth to reply, then shut it, making a few grunts then sighing, "Yes, from what we know, there will be a war in a few months," he admitted.

"And this wasn't important enough to tell me about it?" The golem asked with slight hostility.

"Well, you're an unknown; I didn't know if you could be trusted or still can," Krave explained with a wave of his hand.

Omni studied the old demon for a moment and came to a realization, "You're getting paid so much because of the war, aren't you?"

Krave nodded, "That cub personally came here with a bag of money and told me to research 'War Magic,' without even specifying what that meant! There's a rumour that the gnome kingdom has been building some siege golem for war, so I got excited when you were found," the old demon brightens up, "And what a find you are, think of the applications of Harmonize, especially in wartime!"

The golem in question folds a pair of its arms, "So you've already decided that I'm going to participate?" Omni asked with annoyance.

That caused Krave to cool down, "W-well no, but I was hoping-"

"Give me time to think about it," Omni interrupted, "Settling in and re-learning magic is the priority. I also won't join something I know nothing about; I expect you to explain everything you know about the currents of politics and whatnot."

"So you're telling me there's a chance! Haha!" Krave recovered his mood remarkably fast, "Certainly, I can fill you in, some of it is classified, but you don't seem the type to defect once you've started working."

Omni coughs at that but says nothing.

With the graded papers sorted away, Krave brings Omni down to the newly refurbished basement to begin lessons. There's ample open space in the middle, with runes forming a circle and several dummy targets set up. "We're going to start simple; each target is imbued with a different elemental energy. Based on what I've seen you do so far, it should be a fair assumption that you have the means to see energy flows, so we'll begin with checking your affinities," Krave explains while sitting at a desk with several blank pages ready to take notes.

"Correct," Omni states, activating Energy Vision. The room springs to life in colour, each target dummy is enveloped in a different colour, the runes on the floor a dull grey-white, and Krave himself barely giving off any colour.

"Let's begin with the earth-aspected dummy. Do you know any spells, or are you limited to just manipulation?"

"Manipulation."

"Alright, the simplest spell is the bolt-type, gather energy into your palm while holding it facing away from yourself, and chant '☜︎✌︎☼︎❄︎☟︎📪︎ 👍︎⚐︎✌︎☹︎☜︎💧︎👍︎☜︎📪︎ 👍︎⚐︎💣︎🏱︎☼︎☜︎💧︎💧︎📪︎ ☹︎✌︎🕆︎☠︎👍︎☟︎.'" Krave instructed.

Omni twitched as Krave spoke the language; it felt jarring to hear. The golem took a deep breath that wasn't a breath because it had no lungs, then tried to replicate what it heard. It didn't remember anything like that written in the books.

"☜︎✌︎☼︎❄︎☟︎📪︎ 👍︎⚐︎✌︎☹︎☜︎💧︎👍︎☜︎📪︎ 👍︎⚐︎💣︎🏱︎☼︎☜︎💧︎💧︎📪︎ ☜︎✠︎🏱︎☹︎⚐︎👎︎☜︎" Omni chanted while aiming a palm at the earth-aspected dummy. As it chanted, shards of stone materialized and began to gather in a ball in front of its palm before compressing down into a single solid piece. Instead of firing, however, the ball exploded, sending shards of stone every which way, leaving Omni with a sense of Déjà vu.

Krave laughed as the shards fell to the ground, stopped by the circle of runes, "Impressive, perhaps your memories are still knocking around somewhere. You got the first three words right, but your last word was wrong, and as you may have guessed, you told it to explode," he explained while making notes, "Still within what I expected, though. Let's move on to the other elements."

They repeated the process for each dummy, Omni successfully firing bolt-types of each element, but some were noticeably far weaker than others. Krave quickly filled out the first page with notes and began on a second. Interspersed with the teachings was information on the war.

According to Krave, the information guild has gathered a decent amount of info. They know so far that the Human and Gnomish kingdoms have banded together to launch an offensive on the entirety of the Grimora continent. While seeming like a silly idea, Humans have the advantage in numbers. They proliferate like cancer, and the Gnomish has technology rivalling the Demons, so each kingdom on Grimora has agreed to take the threat seriously, beginning a call to arms for their citizens.

Krave rolled out a map and called Omni over to take a break, pointing to the smaller continent.

"This is Grimora, and in the center is Labyrinthine City, or Formeldr; the name is interchangeable. Directly south of us is the Dwarven capital city Mount Diel'derose, named after the ancient dragon inhabiting it. West is-"

"Hang on, ancient dragon?" Omni interrupted.

Krave nods, "Yes, as far as we know, the ancient dragons have been around since people started making records at the very least, probably much longer before that. Not many of them are left, most left the main continents, unsatisfied with the conflict."

"But you said all of Grimora is working together against the brewing war."

"Certainly, but that's against an external foe; whenever there isn't some outside threat to bring us together, we still have our spats. It usually doesn't escalate into full armoured combat, but the ancient dragons couldn't stand politics; I can't blame them," Krave explained with a chuckle.

The golem nods and bids the demon continued.

"Right, as I was saying, to the west lays Shrevl, the Demon capital, you should go there someday; it's like a neverending party when the sun goes down," the old demon laughs and gazes at nothing in particular with a longing in his voice. "And that's it for Grimora," he adds.

"What, just three?"

"Don't scoff at it; Grimora is quite large, and each of us has quite a few cities dotting the landscape other than the capitals. Then there's all the towns and villages, the floating islands still being explored, and the uninhabitable northeastern volcanic region. Oh, and I suppose I should mention the forward operating base the Humans have set up at the northwest edge of the continent."

Omni nods along, memorizing the map before looking at the much larger continent of Asdea, "So what's the layout of Asdea then?"

"So, starting from the center of the continent again, we have the elves' Verdanhome where the World Tree resides. From there, the northeastern peninsula you see here that's the closest to Grimora is where the human capital Sanctuary resides, it used to be worthy of the name, but that last few generations of royalty have been nothing but greedy," Krave explains with disgust in his voice, "Southeast from Verdanhome is the Gnomish capital Volkland, they're already on bad terms with the elves since they cut down all their trees to build factories and made the land sick with pollution. While their technology is almost equal to us demons', they technically pull ahead because of their disregard for the environment and working conditions," Krave continues with equal disgust.

"And finally to the northwest of Verdanhome is the Lizardfolk capital Sil'thuna, most of their territory is swampland, and they have close ties with the elves. Their royalty claims to be descendants of the ancient dragons, which Diel'derose hasn't bothered to comment on, so it's uncertain." Krave finishes his explanation then looks at Omni for a few moments.

"There's also a rumour, or, well, nothing more than whispers, really. Or ramblings of drunkards that nobody believes, thinking they simply went insane from losing their crew. But I think otherwise, how coincidental is it that multiple survivors from separate shipwrecks each tell the same story?" He asks, tapping his chin.

Omni just looks back at Krave, rolling its hand urging him to continue.

"Hmm, well, maybe after the war, we can look into it. The most consistent bits of info are; an island surrounded by an impenetrable maelstrom, massive stone hands reaching up from the depths, and a keening call that causes pain to those regardless of if they cover their ears," Krave explains in a tone of someone clearly trying to excite the listener.

Omni would roll its eyes if it bothered to shift its eyelids open, but it didn't.