Chapter 61: Chapter 61 Flux across a surface

Nathan’s math lessons with Stella had been going well. They’d started doing two sessions a day. The first was right after lunch, in the training yards. While the rest of the Heirs practiced their weapon skills Stella and Nathan sat down on a bench and worked through more math.

The second was in the evening, after they’d both returned to their suite. Nathan noticed that Stella was returning earlier than she used to. She was driven in her desire to understand what Nathan had to teach, and to learn light and lightning. He just hoped that it would work. That he wasn’t giving her false hope. As they advanced through the curriculum that Nathan remembered, he grew less and less worried about that. Stella was finding many uses for this math in her magic already.

Stella had taken to calculus like a duck to water, though at the start they’d kept the practical examples simple. Newton's laws of motion. Vectors and differential equations were a stumbling block, but as soon as Nathan started introducing ideas of a vector field and flux across a surface it smoothed out.

It turned out that Stella could simulate a vector field by channeling unformed mana through a space, shaping its flow with force constructs. Instead of relying on two-dimensional drawings or vague descriptions of water moving around a space, she could make her own vector field, including point sources and sinks. Getting the math right was a lot easier when you had a visual diagram moving in front of you.

That was the big breakthrough. Nathan had difficulty figuring out what she was looking at without destroying it until she figured out how to combine a bit of air and earth mana to suspend conjured sand in the air, moving it around in the flow. Once she figured that out they spent some time going through the different kinds of structures and figuring out how to make sense of the various mathematical formulations.

It helped that Nathan was primarily trying to help Stella understand the ideas behind this sort of math. The goal was to teach her to understand Maxwell’s equations, not necessarily be able to do the minutiae of every random line integral known to humanity.

It was already helping her magic. Nathan had learned a few of her skills because she could not keep quiet when they ranked up. It seemed her [Mana Manipulation], [Magic Intuition], [Delicate Manatouch] and [Robust Spells] had all seen big benefits. She was in the habit of celebrating and hugging him every time something ranked up, then jerking away as she remembered that he might break the enchantments on her robes.

Thinking in terms of mana fluxes and stable flows had also helped her to make a few new spells. The most notable was a beam of air, flame and force that shot out from a sort of stabilized fireball that Stella channeled in front of her. She was over the moon after that, and named it the [Flame Lance].

The next big Insight Nathan needed to communicate was how to fit electricity and magnetism into this towering house of cards that they were building. He had tried communicating it on faith, but that wasn’t going well.

“You’re saying that lightning is just this charge? And it creates a vector field just like my mana can? But I can’t see it?”

Nathan sighed. “There are two different fields. Electricity and magnetism. They’re related, but different. Charged things make an electric field, magnetic things make a magnetic field.”

Stella frowned. “Ok, sure. But if I want to create a charge to make lightning then how do I do that?”

Nathan waved a hand vaguely. “The insight that we’re building up to is that a moving magnetic field makes an electric field, and a moving electric field makes a magnetic field.”

He spent a bit of time explaining how to think of electric and magnetic fields in the same math as they’d been using - fields and fluxes.

But it wasn’t getting across, and Stella was getting frustrated. They were almost there, and she was having trouble connecting the math he’d taught her to the reality of lightning and light.

“If I accept this because you say it, it doesn’t help me understand what’s going on. I’ve poked magnets before, but that’s not the same. I need something I can feel.”

Nathan nodded agreeably. Stella was a visual learner, that was for sure. “Yup. Let’s take a break for the afternoon and pick back up tonight...”

Stella wasn’t done, and she let loose a yell of frustration. “I’ve spent so much time learning your math, and now it can’t help me at the end! I think of these fields as mana fields, but that’s not what lightning is! So stupid.”

Nathan got up, holding out a hand to hoist her off the bench. “It’s ok. We’ll figure it out.”

She looked up at him, nose scrunched up in annoyance. “Will we? Because it seems like a pretty big leap to get from the pure math of fields to being able to make lightning mana.”

Nathan had a sudden urge to pat her on the top of the head, but resisted it, growing serious instead. “Have faith. Faith in yourself, to figure it out later. Let’s give this a break for now. I’m amazed you’ve come this far so quickly. Even if we get stuck here for a while, I’ve got some ideas to help you through it. Believe me - we will figure it out. Even if you don’t believe you can do it, I do.”

Nathan felt his [Earnestness] flex, like it had almost-but-not quite developed. He missed being ‘disadvantaged’ sometimes.

Stella pouted a bit, trying to hide her embarrassment at being praised. She opened her mouth to be flippant, then reconsidered. “Thanks for teaching me. I’m not very good at being patient.”

“I’ve taught worse. It helps that I’m just teaching you, and not fifteen others like you. You pick things up quickly, and don’t hide it when you don’t understand. That’s the most important part.”

“Nobody else is like me, I always get bored in class because everybody else is slow. You’re good at teaching people.”

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Nathan smiled, remembering his own school days. “There are others like you, and I’ve taught them. Hell, I’ve been the gifted kid in class. You’re doing good. We'll get there.”

Then they joined the rest of the Heirs at combat practice.

—

That afternoon, Nathan visited Beatred’s again. He was trying not to go too often - but he needed to pick up his special order from her. Kadid’s great-nephew Erlan was tending the front of the shop, and let Nathan into Beatred’s workshop.

All of the gun paraphernalia was hidden behind some screens that blocked the back third of the room. Beatred was in front of that putting the final touches on Nathan’s order. She was leaning over a cylindrical drum, busy fastening down some magnets to a stationary plate on one end.

Beatred looked over at Nathan, then looked back to the hand-cranked generator he’d asked her to build. It was about a foot and a half across, with cloth-insulated wire wrapped around four spokes that stuck out of a rotating axle, almost touching the magnets.

The smith glanced back at him. “This thing looks ridiculous. Nathan, what did you have me build?”

Nathan had based the drawings he’d given Beatred off a youtube video a few years ago where somebody had built a generator for a wind turbine. This looked pretty close, actually.

He walked over. “It’s a way to make very weak natural lightning. How it works is another Insight. I want to use it to help me teach Stella how lightning works. I hope those magnets are pretty strong.”

Beatred nodded, gesturing at them. “They’re a forge-helping tool, great for picking up iron shavings. Helmug makes them himself. I have extras, just like you asked for. Here.” She handed him an extra one, and Nathan picked up the strip of metal before tapping it against a few nails in the table.

Yup, magnetic. Pretty strong too. Maybe I should try to find this Helmug if he can just whip out magnets like this. Later. Got a lot on my plate for now. I bet you could make some kickass compasses out of this. You know, I just realized I haven’t seen a compass on Davrar.

“Beatred, do you have compasses?”

She looked at him strangely. “What’s a compass?”

Nathan gestured at the magnet he was holding. “You suspend a small magnet in oil, and it points north.”

Beatred blinked. “It does? I don’t think that’s right.”

Nathan frowned. “Can we test it?”

A discussion later, Nathan was staring at a splinter of strong magnet… not spinning. It was suspended in a dish of lubricant that Beatred had lying around, and was just sitting there. “Huh.” He picked up the little dish and spun it around. The magnet spun with the dish, then just… kept spinning.

Weird.

He looked up at Beatred. “How do you know which way North is?”

She looked at him like he had grown another arm and was scratching his crotch with it. “We look outside. North is the direction where the mountains have snow on them.”

Nathan shook his head. This wasn’t why he was here. But he couldn’t resist it. He sat down and thought for a moment.

Either Davrar has no magnetic field, or it’s super-weak or something. Maybe the planet doesn’t have a spinning ferrous core? I remember that the Earth’s magnetic field has switched its orientation, and it might have gotten much weaker during that period. Maybe that’s happening now on Davrar?

I dunno man. File under the ‘cosmology’ category. I think that’s over in the serological pipette drawer in the new Mind Palace. Along with Endings, the night sky, the sun, Davrar’s systems of classes and levels. Heck, magic itself. Hmm. Maybe I should subpartition that drawer. Bigger issues are bigger pipettes. And Davrar itself and all my hints about what it is are the pipette gun.

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