Chapter 1273 — The Truth Behind the Truth
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 4
The apprentice froze on the spot, as though unable to believe what she had heard. Eyes wide, she stared at this Great Astromancer renowned throughout the Empire's academic and social circles—so stunned that she quite forgot how rude it was to stare so at her own mentor. "You mean... Master Sodalim? So the one you finally chose was Master Sodalim?! How truly surpri—ah, yes, I'll go and inform him at once! Is there anything else you would like me to convey to Master Sodalim?"
"Nothing to convey—he is my defeated foe already. We argued over a single question for thirty years, and it is time that fool faced reality," Lady Velania said with a cheerful laugh, her smile brighter than ever. "I shall slap the truth of magic's wave nature right across his face, and then, just as the wager we made when we first quarreled thirty years ago—he must jump from the highest tower of the Hall of the Shining Vault!"
The young apprentice instantly realized her earlier judgment had gone awry: "...Eh?"
But the Great Astromancer was already glaring: "What are you standing there for?! Go!"
The little interlude in the Silver Empire did nothing to affect Kamael's test site. The experiment that had torn away the veil of truth was over, and the humming within the arcane energy source gradually subsided; but the bands of light and shadow left upon the alloy plate remained as a witness, imprinted forever upon the metal's surface. Kamael stepped forward and passed his hand over the plate; a dim blue glow spread across its surface, and the microstructure within the metal shifted accordingly, passing from an active to an inert state.
In this way, even when returned to a normal magical environment, the patterns upon its surface would remain stable and preserved.
"We have at last unveiled a truth of the utmost importance... now at last the many phenomena of magic in its propagation and transformation have solid theoretical grounding," came the low humming from within Kamael's body as he turned toward Milmina. "My lady, if magic is confirmed to possess wave properties, then my formula for the magic field... my lady?"
Milmina seemed not to have heard Kamael at all. The "Goddess of Magic" still stood blankly beside the experimental apparatus, head bowed, staring motionless at the bands of light and shadow on the alloy plate. In the pair of eyes visible beyond her veil flickered a faint pale-violet fire, so faint it seemed ready to gutter out at any moment—and this unusual state finally drew the notice of those around her. Windsor Mapel, who had stood apart and scarcely spoken, stepped forward at once, tense: "Lady 'High Tower,' are you all ri—"
She had barely spoken half the sentence, her foot not yet lifted, when Milmina's eyes suddenly flickered. The "Sovereign of Magic" seemed to wake from a great dream, or to have just returned from a long journey no one else knew of; she raised her hand and examined her fingertips, and from beneath the veil came a murmuring whisper like one speaking in sleep: "Wave nature... confirmed. So my essence is... a ripple."
In the next instant Milmina's figure suddenly shifted from solid to intangible. Beginning at her fingertips, the whole body of the Sovereign of Magic was swiftly enveloped in a watery, rippling sheen and dispersed in every direction—Kamael had not even time to reach out his hand before the former Goddess of Magic vanished from sight before everyone's eyes.
That a former deity should conceal her form before mortals was, of course, nothing remarkable in itself; but having witnessed the scene with his own eyes and sensed the unusual magical fluctuations around him, Kamael understood that this was no "concealment" or "spatial transference," but something... far beyond imagining—something perhaps only Milmina herself could comprehend.