Chương 6: Deciphering Messages

Taverish's two classes were very different for Chadwick. During the regular daytime classes with the other students, he had a specific target dummy assigned to him. In that respect he wasn't unique. Other students had to have special ones that tested their specific affinities. Chadwick's dummy was frankly boring. No matter what he did to it, it would climb by just the same amount. It had been adjusted especially for him to give an exact amount from each attack, with a maximum per hour.

As long as he threw something at it, the first pipe would climb. His directions were to mostly fill the first pipe. In about a month, Taverish planned to adjust it to show some progress in the second pipe. His fake dummy was deliberately set to make him look like a below-average student. It caused him some embarrassment as other students would snicker at his slow progress. It turned out that it was not just teachers who were inclined to ignore below average students.

The students themselves mostly just ignored him too. Some because he was a kid and they were mostly full-grown adults at this point. Many of them were from wealthy families. But many others because he was seemingly behind the curve. The students tended to be in groups based on their relative levels of progress. Those who were close to finishing. Those with 6 months or so left group. And those with a few years. Then there was Chadwick, on paper he looked like he would be living in the tower for at least five years.

Nobody wanted to risk becoming friends when they themselves would be a mage well before him. Students and mages weren't friends. That was made very clear. Any hint of familiarity or fraternizing was heavily punished. Nobody even dared call a teacher by anything but their title, except in the case of Sal. Who appeared to have the ability to do whatever he wanted within his classroom. The only exception to Chadwick being ignored by the other students was the odd trio that he kept seeing in the halls and in reshaping.

Judging from the outfits, one of the boys was a noble's kid. The other two never left his side. Being largely ignored by the older kids was fine with Chadwick, it had been the same in the village where only kids played with other kids. And Chadwick was undoubtedly the youngest student there. For the main classes with dummies, Chadwick was told to work on precision and control.

Firing the smallest particles he could, while trying to keep the speed as low as possible and using as many different types of materials as he could gather particles from. He sometimes brought his own materials in, but often just stole a few particles from around the room. As he got better, a piece of wood the size of a grain of rice was sufficient to keep him going the whole lesson. Since it didn't make any difference to his dummy how hard he hit it, the pipe would climb at the same rate.

It was his chance to learn fine control. That way at least his fake lesson wasn't a complete waste of time. During his one-on-one classes with Taverish, he had far more fun. He had a different dummy set up in Taverish's personal workshop. This one had ten pipes above it. His task was to apply the fine control he had been learning during the week, but to now give the single particles as much speed as he could. After a month he could fill the first pipe in just a few minutes.

The armor on the dummy was also getting small smoking holes in it where his particles struck. Which was good, because Taverish couldn't actually see the particles themselves. So it let him see where Chadwick's attacks were landing. He was already close to filling the third pipe within the hour time frame given for a normal class. Increasing the speed of the particles was getting harder. But the smaller he made them, the more he could affect them.

Taverish was mostly disdainful of him during the regular classes — all a part of the ruse — but gave Chadwick harder and harder tasks and seemed genuinely thrilled at their progress during their private lessons. He could add rotation to the particles, he could launch multiples at once. He could even cause them to launch from points external to himself. Though the more steep the angle, the harder it was.

They were even working on a combination of launching and reshaping where Chadwick would rip particles out of the dummy to weaken points, then launch those same particles back through the separate pieces of the dummy off completely. Knowing he was actually making very good progress made Chadwick not mind at all that his regular launching classes were an exercise in boredom and mild embarrassment. Another thing that seemed to alienate Chadwick from the other students was his chore in the evening.

Many of them came back to their rooms smelling of latrines, or covered in kitchen grease. But Chadwick just had ink on his hands. Elvera currently had him copying several books that were close to falling apart, she very closely watched his work at first. But, after seeing the first finished page she just gave an amused laugh and continued with her own work. One night she told him he could soon be learning an important tower secret. Once he finished the backlog of books she had waiting.

The secret was the code used for messages to and from the tower. A stone in her workshop would display an encoded message. She would sit and rapidly scribe out a message. Depending on who the message was for, she would then send Chadwick running to deliver it. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. One such message was the first time Chadwick ever met the head of the tower.

He knocked on a large wooden door and was surprised when it was opened by the Dean.

"Oh, young Chadwick. What are you doing here?" Asked the Dean.

"Message for the Chief Mage, Dean," said Chadwick, holding out the sealed piece of paper.

"Ah, I've been waiting on that, send him in, Dean," said a smooth voice. The Dean stepped aside and ushered Chadwick in. The Chief Mage turned out to be even older than the Dean. But instead of the long stark white hair of the Dean, he was mostly bald. Just wisps of darker grey hair sticking out. He looked close to death, extremely skinny and with dark bags under his eyes. The very image of a man who should be retired.

His voice however did not sound like an old man as he spoke, "so, our youngest student in quite a while. How is the tower treating you young lad?"

"Quite well Chief Mage, I think the food here is the best I've eaten in my life," answered Chadwick. The Chief Mage gave a long laugh, "it's been a long time since I was your age, but it's good to see you have your priorities in order. When I was your age, we had Chief Mage Squan in charge and he was not a believer in luxuries. The gruel was particularly unpleasant as I recall."

"I still sometimes ask the head of the kitchen to make me some," said the Dean with a wistful smile, "a reminder of easier times."

"May as well eat the bowl it was served in, tastes much the same. I believe we have some hard news coming in that letter, hand it over lad," the Chief Mage said with a gesture. Chadwick stepped up and handed it over. The Chief Mage immediately opened it, "more bloody wraiths," he seemed to grumble mostly to himself.

"Nothing the young lad needs to hear about I'm sure," said the Dean, "I'll just send him back down to Elvera."

"Hold a moment," said the Chief Mage and then looked Chadwick up and down. Turning to the Dean, "is he a trustworthy lad?"

"I believe he is Chief Mage. What did you have in mind?" Responded the Dean.

"Tell Elvera to move up her training of him in message decoding, if Elvera has to travel we need someone else here. I'm not going all the way there to do it myself, too many stairs," answered the Chief Mage.

"Makes sense, what with his ability to scribe already, I'll let Elvera know," said the Dean. The Chief Mage just waved Chadwick out at that. Elvera made him repeat every word of the conversation and didn't seem too happy about the whole thing, but she began teaching him right away. Not bothering to wait for the Dean to tell her officially. The code itself took him a few weeks before he could read it almost as easily as regular text.

Once he had that down and understood the system for who should receive each message and where copies should be sent in some cases, he found himself doing trips all over the tower and even out to the dock-house. He still sealed each message after he wrote it, but he wasn't really sure what the point was since he was the one that wrote it down in the first place. He already knew what was in it. Having to write each message meant he actually got a bit of a crash education in how the tower operated within the kingdom.

There were always mages on duty to visit the various cities and villages to look for new students. Each of them would report back routinely and Chadwick would pass those reports on to the mage in charge of managing those outside the tower. There were also mages that were permanently assigned to various cities and were an integral part of the infrastructure. Stone mages who helped with construction. Wood mages who created shingles full time. And enchanters who kept a myriad of things running smoothly.

The most interesting messages were various requests to Sal for how to plan out some piece of logic. Mages, presumably in another part of the country, would want to know how he would handle some piece of conditional magic with the least amount of effort. At first Sal just accepted his messages and sometimes gave Chadwick a reply to send. But then, one day, Sal suddenly asked him, "how would you handle this one lad?" Handing the piece of paper back over.

Chadwick just waved away the piece of paper, "I scribed the message, I already know what's in it. And I actually thought about it while coming down here. It seems like they just need to add a fifth piece to the wall in question and find someone who can handle a 20-point conditional. The only other option is to split it into two ten points and add a link between them. But that relies heavily on that link, easy for it to go wrong if someone moves it."

Sal chuckled, "so casually you say find someone to do a 20-point conditional. There are probably only three people in the whole country that can manage that. And two of them are in this tower. Send them a reply telling them to do the split method. But send them a special note to make sure the link can't be moved once it is created. A blacksmith can rig them up something to shackle it down. A big enough piece of iron for the link and they won't even need to worry about that."

Chadwick was a bit puzzled, he was already working on an 18-point and he was sure he would manage a 20-point soon enough. But he agreed to send the message. Before he left, Sal turned back to him, "for all future messages of this nature. I want you to have a proposed answer already written when you bring it down here. Assume nothing greater than a 16-point conditional can be done by those asking."

"Yes, Mage," responded Chadwick.

"Just Sal," he said with a scowl, "now scram. I have students coming." The only other interesting message that Chadwick saw came in through a special stone that he wasn't meant to look at. The stone in question was for communications from the king, directly to the Chief Mage. Only Elvera was allowed to decipher and deliver those. But, as soon as the stone flashed up a message he couldn't help but immediately decipher it, since it was practically just reading for him at this point. All it said was, "see me."