After the tournament, Spellsword Academy quickly settled into a normality when most students studied to remedy weaknesses shown and in preparation for the half-year exams. After those, the month-long winter break, which outworlders tended to call Christmas leave, despite Christendom only making very marginal inroads this side of the gate. Two weeks sufficed back on Earth, where no student looked forward to one-way trips taking a week to reach their homes. Some wouldn’t even make it to family and friends at all, and those either stayed with new friends made or simply spent the month in the dormitories.

  The remaining month saw Ai and Ioha doubling up on classes, with both opening up a status display, each with satisfied grins on their faces almost every evening. Exams turned out just as boringly easy as Ioha feared, but then again, they were designed for starry-eyed teenagers and not for people joining the workforce at decision-making positions.

  As for the nights, Ai and Ioha spent them in secret. Sure, they spent a few in bed, but those weren’t the secret ones. There were hints and suspicions from the autumn, things they had seen and things they had heard, and now both of them were hunting the impossible. This was their tenth secret night. A cold training field was their companion, hiding place and laboratory combined in one.

  Ai sat down, fatigue spreading on her face. “Why can I heal your shield but not you?”

  Things they had seen were non-volatile effects altered by external interference and independent effects acting on scripted instructions. “Because you need to cast a healing function, not a healing effect,” Ioha said. He couldn’t understand why this was so hard for Ai. She matched his maths. He knew that from university. She was the one who found out how to create a non-volatile effect prepared to self-destruct if you cast a specified independent spell at it. “I’m not a shield, so you have to throw a pre-scripted layered independent healing thingie at me first and then trigger it with an independent key.” ‘Thingie’ might not be the best description, but apart from self-healing, Ioha didn’t understand how healing spells worked. Self-healing was instinctive, but healing someone else was a deliberate act, and he simply couldn’t learn, no matter how much he tried.

  “Thingie?”

  She just had to. “Yeah, thingie.” He went to work on his own invention. Inventions depending on a new understanding of independent magic none of them would be able to explain to someone born here. It was a matter of maths, or rather the concept of functions and programming languages.

  Things they had heard were a girl playing a flute and the monstrous combat healer explicitly stating she could heal remotely. Combined, they proved that you could affect independent effects you had cast – if you cheated.

  “But why your shield?”

  “Because I set it up to trigger on your spell. It’s programmed to take your single-layer effect as an argument.” Ai might match his maths, but she never dabbled in programming as a hobby. “Look, the people here believe you can only take values as arguments, so they’re applying a hammer to every problem. We both know you can swap value for a function or whatever you prefer to call your dynamic data.”

  “Show me!”

  Ioha cast his defensive trap again. According to their teachers, he was now unable to change the effect. His next independent spell, what he decided to call a key, held a starting command as well as a colour code. In rapid succession he cast three of them, and the trap lit up in green, yellow and blue. “See?”

  Ai nodded. “I think I understand. Keyed trigger plus a value?”

  “Yeah, it’s just for my proof of concept.” He scratched his chin. “Sure, I need to redefine how that trap works, and that will take a lot of time, but conceptually I should be able to exchange that colour value for a set of instructions or even a triggered effect depending on the state of the trap when they combine.”

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  She nodded again. “Cool!” She got back on her feet and dusted off her skirt. “Yeah, I think I get it. You know this changes everything?”

  It was Ioha’s turn to nod. “Told you this world works like a game. Games are maths. Applies to the implementation of magic here as well.”

  Ai shook her head. “Maths in your head. It’s patterns for me, but works the same way in the end.”

  Patterns? Sure, patterns should work. Kind of maths-like, he guessed. The important thing was that this world followed rules. You just had to learn them one way or another. “OK, try healing me with a pattern thingie.”

  Ai stuck her tongue out at him. Then she cast a green hollow cylinder at him, the colour only for the coolness effect, Ioha guessed. It wrapped around his arm. She looked at him, tilted her head and flicked her fingers. The cylinder lit up, and one by one the shallow scratches he’d cut on his arm vanished. Damn, when she finally got it, she just went all superior on my arse. Damn, she’s awesome! He looked up and watched her bouncing around in a happy dance. We just changed the entire world, and she’s jumping up and down on a muddy field. Yeah, the super legendary tale that will be told through generations. He snorted and guffawed. Then he sobered up. There was one more. The combat healer. She might not fully understand why her remote healing worked, but he had no reason to believe it didn’t. And then he turned serious. Outworlder casters, at least some of them, will get how this works. This world’s in for a nasty surprise.

  “It’s still inefficient, though,” Ai said when she grabbed his arm and prepared to go back to the dorms.

  “How so?”

  “Three or four times the cost in aura because both spells need to contain the information about the injuries you could have and not the ones you actually have.”

  He hugged her closer. “Injuries? You told me it was damage.”

  “For transfers, yes. Active healing works on injuries. Totally different thing.”

  Before he shook his head, Ioha recalled why he needed to make a difference between shields and fields. So same for her then. “You should just send your patients damage into the sky.” He still disliked watching her when she transferred the pain to herself.

  “Yeah, I wish. Impossible, though. It’s a transfer ability, and I’m at one end of it.”

  “So transfer to you and then make a damage arrow?”

  She pressed herself under his arm. “Too good at self-healing damage. I’d need to be worse, but then I’d never transfer to begin with. But sure, possible in theory.” She looked up from under his shoulder. “Would be really cool, though. Playing ping pong with damage.”

  She just had to come up with a visual like that. He snorted, seeing an endless chain of damage rushing between soldiers on the battlefield. Yes, it was horrible, but he couldn’t stop laughing. Under his arm, Ai complained. He was heavy, and his shaking must be uncomfortable.

  “But you can attack with damage?” Ioha said when he remembered Ai’s manhandling of his family jewels during their first real date.

  She tilted her head. “They stopped hurting, heh?”

  “Get on topic!” But he couldn’t help smiling.

  “Hmm, self-healing injuries isn’t automatic, so it kind of gives me a weapon I can use as long as I’m physically injured first.”

  “I don’t think I like hearing that,” Ioha said and grimaced.

  “The love of your life hurting and all that?”

  She really needed to stay on topic. Besides, she got just a little too close with the love of his life part. “Don’t like it, OK?”

  “OK, OK! Anyway. Self-healing damage is automatic. I haven’t tried, but I believe I’d self-heal damage even in a coma.” She shrugged. “Look, I’m getting really good at using magic, but I don’t understand half of what I’m doing. I don’t like it. The better I get, the more holes in my head.”

  Holes in her head. Yeah, forgot about that. “Love you. Don’t worry. Theory’s not there for me either.” He bent down and grabbed her. Up she went.

  She shrieked.