Chapter 7 – Laplace's demon
The sun had barely risen, and Lord Doe was already awake.
He wore his usual appearance at the academy: a middle-aged man, long black hair, and blue eyes so deep they seemed to see into more than one time at once. His clean face contrasted with the bestial nature he carried beneath his skin.
The manor was still asleep in silence as he made his way to the classroom. Today would be his first lecture of the year: Introduction to Ancient Magic. As always, he prepared everything himself.
The classroom was a large semicircular auditorium, with capacity for more than a hundred students. Walls were adorned with ancestral arcane inscriptions, symbols that whispered softly when one got too close. Light came from delicate vitreum globes, floating silently beneath the vaulted ceiling.
At the front, a glassboard waited to be written. And behind the desk, a single chair, where Doe now sat, eyes locked on the clock.
— "Nine o'clock. Where the hell is that boy."
Students trickled in, filling the seats with a mix of excitement and restrained respect. After all, it wasn't every day one got to learn from a living legend of Albion Academy.
Doe remained silent. But his blue eyes, fixed on the clock, were more intimidating than any reprimand.
Five minutes passed. The tension was palpable. Not a single student dared to ask why the class hadn't started.
With a quiet, deep sigh, the lord stood up.
— "I am Lord Doe, one of the Eight Lords of the Imperial Academy of Arcane Arts of Albion. Professor of Ancient Magic."
He gave a slight, formal bow. The gesture drew looks. It was rare to see someone of his stature show courtesy.
— "Today, we begin by understanding what ancient magic is. And what sets it apart from modern magic."
Before he could continue, the side door of the auditorium opened with a soft creak.
A young man entered, breathless. Cane in hand, deep eye bags, hurried steps. His eyes, blue like Doe's, though more faded.
— "Sorry I'm late, professor. I couldn't sleep," whispered Emryr, approaching Doe.
Then he turned to the students and gave a bow identical to the professor's. Same gesture, same posture. Like a silent signature.
Doe kept a neutral expression. But a slight smile played at the corner of his lips. He was used to his assistant's eccentricities. And always found creative ways to punish them.
— "Well, my dear students... since my assistant has finally decided to grace us with his presence, how about we demonstrate the differences between modern and ancient magic... practically?"
Excited murmurs spread. Some chuckled. Others looked at Emryr with curiosity and pity.
But a few, the more observant, frowned. Lord Doe had never had assistants. Not that anyone knew. Now, that tired, almost disheveled young man would face a Lord in a duel before a hundred spectators?
Doe and Emryr took their positions at opposite ends of the arena. The Lord with the posture of someone who had already won. The boy with the posture of someone who'd rather be sleeping.
— "Three. Two. One."
Doe snapped his fingers.
From the shadow beneath his feet, thorn-covered vines shot forward in a straight line, flying like black spears toward Emryr.
— "Inertia denied," said the boy, raising his cane in a controlled arc.
Four blue points appeared in the air. The vines slowed as they crossed the spell's field, freezing in place mere centimeters from his skin.
Doe snapped his fingers again, and the thorns multiplied, exploding into fragments.
— "Predictive Analysis. Force vector."
With a flick of his wrist, Emryr analyzed and then reversed the vectors. The projectiles changed course, flying back at the same speed they came.
Doe smiled faintly, forming a wall of spiked shadow around himself. The fragments struck it and vanished like dust.
— "The difference is clear," he said, turning to the students. "Ancient magic requires no effort. It responds to presence. Modern magic... requires Analysis, calculation…"
While he spoke, Emryr was already preparing his next move.
— "Transfer circuit. Force vector. Compression."
The temperature dropped slightly as heat gathered in a single point before him. A fireball emerged, unstable and vibrant, as if it could level the room at any moment.
— "Your style is reactive. Smart. But vulnerable to continuity," said Doe
He smiled a bit, ready to put an end to this.
Doe didn't raise his hand. He whispered. A word without syllables. Something that never belonged in any language.
His shadow expanded like living ink. swallowing the entire floor.
The lights dimmed.
Not because of magic, but because the room forgot how to be lit.
They were being erased.
The board emptied.
Chairs creaked.
Shadows simply disappeared.
A student dropped their pen, then blinked, confused, as they realized it was never in their hand.
Another opened their notebook, only to find half the page missing.
Doe's magic wasn't an attack.
It was oblivion.
Emryr staggered slightly as the spell stripped away the logic anchoring his casting.
— "You call THIS a friendly duel? Using that damned thing?" he shouted.
But he did not panic.
He calculated.
— "Predictive Analysis," he whispered.
Six rings of light spun into being.
They whirled around his cane, glowing with cold precision. Within them, motion, vectors, probabilities, coefficients, derivatives.
He aligned the numbers.
He anchored his formulas.
And then, calmly, as if declaring a simple theorem.
— "Paradox of Causality."
He was rewriting what was being forgotten.
One variable at a time.
One forgotten premise restored. One law of cause re-anchored to its effect.
The causal chain restored.
The lights above surged, then stabilized.
The sigils that had vanished returned, flickering back into place.
The world stuttered.
A student's ink reversed its path, climbing back into the tip of their pen.
The lecture notes rewrote themselves, backwards, then forward again.
And in the center of it, Emryr stood. Eyes open.
Glowing blue.
He was, at that moment, the demon of laplace. The one capable analyzing uncountable variables, and able to rewrite them.
The universe blinked.
The paradox was set. The erasure failed.
The world hesitated, reality itself adjusting to what had just occurred.
Doe froze, eyes locked on him.
His expression shifted for an instant. Something between recognition, discomfort, and... old guilt.
Then he murmured:
— "You still know how to do that. Even without remembering who you are."
Doe averted his gaze for a second. As if witnessing it was like looking at the portrait of someone long buried. Part admiration. Part grief. Part fear of what was yet to come.
A shocked murmurs from the back:
— "That's in the end, was not modern magic, neither ancient magic…".
— "Then what is it?"
No one answered. No one could understand that alien clash, that was not made of any type of magic that they knew.
Emryr had already returned to his side of the classroom, cane in hand, posture feign calmness.
But his hands trembled, his head was about to explode, his nose was bleeding. And his eyes, flashing blue, still carried the echo of something the world had purposely forgotten the name of.
He grabbed the lilac decoction that he held on his belt, drinking the entire vial.
He slowly recovered, eyes returning to the faded blue, but hands still shaking.
Then, Doe turned to the class.
— "Forget what you think you saw."
That was all he said about it. With a piercing gaze.
He walked back to the center of the room and gestured to the board.
— "As you've seen... ancient magic is an extension of nature itself. It has existed since the world took its current form, before language, before math. Ritual, elemental, symbolic magic, pure forms of will shaped by gestures, intention, and ancient echoes."
He walked a few steps as he spoke, his robe swaying gently.
— "Before Nostradamus, there were no formulas. No calculations. Only symbols, offerings, rhythms, words, and gestures. The world responded to presence, to rite, to myth."
Doe traced an invisible circle in the air, and small golden sparks followed his hand.
— "An ancient mage danced with the world. He was part channel, part conductor. Magic flowed through him like wind through the leaves. The price was unpredictable. The control, minimal. But the impact... visceral. Brutal."
He stopped, eyes on the students.
— "Ancient magic was not a science. It was a religion. It was instinct. It was fear."
He paused. Then, with a slight smile, turned to his assistant:
— "But four centuries ago, everything changed. Nostradamus, the father of modern magic, broke the cycle. By turning rituals into logic, and essence into equation, he silenced the whispers of the ancients."
And with a light gesture, as if passing the floor:
— "And since we're speaking of modern magic, why not hear from the specialist himself?"
His tone carried something of a challenge, but also respect. A demand wrapped in provocation.
— "Emryr. Explain to them what modern magic is. Explain how you see it."
The boy took a deep breath. Dropped his shoulders. Looked at the hundred faces before him, many still stunned by what they had seen.
— "Modern magic..." he began, his voice calm but steady. "Is a consequence. A symptom of the universe trying to understand itself."
He walked toward the vitreum board, slowly tracing a point of light with his cane.
— "Imagine the universe as a massive simulation. Not artificial... but cerebral. Like a brain. Each variable, each particle, each force field... is like a neuron. They interact. Connect. Fire. And when they do, they form a chain of causes."
He drew a spiral on the board, which began to spin slowly.
— "Causes, when properly structured, generate effects. That's what we see in the world: the effect of all combined causes. But this effect isn't random, it follows reason. And reason is governed by parameters, magnitude, direction, duration... what we modern mages must calculate to cast a spell."
Some students were now watching attentively, mesmerized.
— "Now... when those causes organize over time into repetitive, predictable, effective structures... they become formulas. Mathematical formulas. Rules. Natural laws."
He paused.
— "Modern magic is, therefore, the ability to find those formulas... and overwrite them onto reality, but only when reality agrees. The universe has rules. And even using formulas, we still operate within what it allows."
— "It's not altering the natural flow, but redirecting it, convincing the universe itself that what we're doing makes sense."
He raised the cane. The spiral stopped spinning.
— "What we call reality... is nothing more than the truth that won. The one written first, or written stronger, by the universe."
Silence.
Even Doe watched, without comment. Only the shadow of a hidden smile.
— "That's why we manipulate variables. That's why we pay prices. That's why we suffer collapses when altering too much of the natural flow. Because we are arguing... with reality itself. And it doesn't always like being contradicted."
The spiral dissolved with a soft puff of light.
— "And if we're good enough, if our calculations are perfect... we can convince it that it's wrong."
Emryr finished, with his subtle, signature bow.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then, applause. First timid. Then stronger. Not out of obligation, but something closer to awe.
And yet, something didn't fit. If Emryr had just explained that modern magic can't contradict the natural flow...then how had he done exactly that minutes earlier?
Some students seemed to notice the contradiction. Others simply felt that something was off, without knowing exactly what.
Doe, still with arms crossed, narrowed his eyes.
— "You explained it clearly... almost too clearly," he murmured.
Then he turned to the students, his voice firmer now.
— "But remember: modern magic doesn't undo effect, nor cause, neither ancient magic can. What you saw today... is not something you should try to repeat, and is not something that you can…"
He turned to Emryr, now with a more serious glint in his eyes, and a restrained pride.
— "You have a knack for teaching. And you've improved a lot. Now come... and help me."
Thus began the school year at the Imperial Academy of Arcane Arts of Albion.
And outside the auditorium, in the little window of the side tower, a gray-feathered raven watched them.
It didn't peck. It didn't move. It just observed.
And behind those eyes, other thing was watching.
It followed everything in silence. The pieces on the board were moving.
And smiled slightly.
The game had begun.