“Prince Uther, in what kind of trouble are you going to drag me today?”

  In an annex building of the Academy, there was a dusty room filled with books, papers, and mysterious gadgets, which were piled high, forming strange and unstable looking structures. At a workbench, a man in his fifties with an unkempt short grey beard and wearing a loose jacket full of pockets was assembling something with tweezers and a magnifying glass.

  “Professor Locan, it has been almost one year, you can’t still hold a grudge about that issue with the Royal Archive.”

  “I almost lost my job!”

  “You can say that, but I helped you recover the book.”

  “You were the one that stole it in the first place!” Replied Locan with exasperation.

  “It may be, but today isn’t I that have a problem, it is her.” Uther pointed at me.

  “Good day, professor.” I greeted him with a curtsy.

  “Good day, Gift. I hope you were able to instill some common sense into him this past year.”

  “Unfortunately, I had no luck in this department.”

  Professor Locan Havak was an eccentric genius even by the standards of the Imperial Academy (usually referred just as Academy since there was no Empire anymore). He made his career studying creatures known as Mechanical Abominations, that were machines in the form of animals or monsters that could be found almost everywhere.

  Officially he had been the tutor of Uther, but since I was curious and eager to learn, the professor unofficially tutored me too. Over the years he had been involved, kicking and screaming, into Uther’s shenanigans a good number of times.

  “Look, I just returned from an expedition to find half of the country destroyed and monsters everywhere. Could you two, please, not drag me into any more trouble?"

  I was aware of how this would play out, so I came close to the professor and with my most diplomatic voice said:

  “Professor, we all know that you will cave after a couple of hours of Uther pestering you. What do you say if we skip all that annoyance part and go straight into the helping part?”

  Locan froze midmovement. He then dropped his shoulders, let slip a defeated sigh and put the tweezers over the table.

  “Fine. What’s the problem?”

  I then repeated the same story I had told Uther, only adding a little context here and there since he was not present during that horrible time. He was interested in my story, but the moment I reached the aftermath of the Armored Sorcerer’s death, he almost fell from his chair. After that he listened to everything with rapt, almost maniacal curiosity. I finished my tale with our recent encounter with the Troll.

  “Gift, this is very important: Are you sure you saw that “wall of text” directly, from inside that space, and not only through the rip, that flickering thing as you say.”

  “Unless I hallucinated the entire event, yes, I am certain. I could see in all directions, and it was ridiculously large.”

  The professor was caressing his beard, lost in thought.

  “You know what that was?”

  “I think you saw the Rule.”

  “The book from the Church of the Eight?”

  “Not that, the real Rule. That book is a fairy tale with some cherry-picked snippets of the Rule that were reinterpreted, redacted, altered, and embellished past the point of anything close to the source material.

  “The Rule is the law of reality in written form; it describes everything and everything must follow it. Everything. Anything that exists, action and reaction, cause and consequence. Everything is in the scope of the Rule.

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  I taught you two about it!” He complained a little hurt.

  “I … I thought the Rule that you were talking about was a metaphor for nature. I never imagined it was an actual text written somewhere.”

  Uther got a random book and pretended to read it, like that had nothing to do with him.

  “Anyway, there were few methods one can use to see the Rule. That flickering with Breacher and the Seal, your interpretation of what happened is scarily accurate. This phenomenon is even called “contradiction”, and it happens when two parts of the Rule predict different outcomes for the same action. It causes a rip in reality as the Rule tries to find a compromise, and through it you can see the Rule, but I never heard of any account of anyone entering that space… It should be impossible.”

  “You know what happened to me?”

  “Not yet, but I would like to do some tests. I hope you two are free today.”

  ***

  “Where is that damn spider?” asked Locan rhetorically as he searched his mess of a laboratory.

  He found her behind a shelf and with some difficulty placed Itsy on the workbench.

  Itsy Bitsy was a mechanical abomination in the form of a spider the size of a big house cat. Not only was she the size of a cat, but also had the personality of one, like someone had mixed up her brain and her body on construction.

  She was the professor’s pet and had been with him for a long time.

  “Ok Gift. Try talking to her.”

  I looked at the mechanical spider, four of her glass eyes turned and slightly retracted as she focused on me.

  “Hi Itsy, how are you?” I asked, without any idea of what else I could say.

  She looked at me for a few seconds, then lost interest, jumped away from the table and returned to do what she was doing before, which was probably nothing.

  “It looks like it doesn't work with her” I said apologetically to the professor.

  “That was expected, I just wanted to confirm. Now, come with me.”

  Locan guided us through the labyrinthic buildings of the Academy until we arrived at a zoologic in the biology area. The Academy was basically a small city inside the old city walls, even bigger than the castle. Sometimes I forget how big the Capital was.

  Most of the enclosures were empty and neglected, overgrown with signs of deterioration, abandoned for decades or maybe even centuries. The ones inhabited were grouped in a cluster near the entrance.

  There were various animals, but mostly rather mundane like cows, rabbits, and chickens. I suspect they were used more for food than for any research.

  The professor asked me to try to talk to them and I did with a growing dose of embarrassment, as none of them showed any reaction. Locan remained unfazed, just scribing the results of my humiliating tests in a notebook, while Uther was unceremoniously laughing at my expense.

  We walked past the regular animals until we reached a big enclosure that looked new, with reinforced bars and even a protective magical device that was glowing with a faint blue light. In that habitat, there were three black dogs, with lean, almost emaciated physic, and glowing red eyes. They growled as we approached, emitting fleeting flames with their breaths.

  “These hellhounds were a tentative of domestication by one of the professors. Her research had, let's say, mixed results.” Explained Locan as one of the hounds let lose a breath of flame in our direction that was stopped by a magical barrier. “Say “Hello”, Gift.”

  “Well ... hello dogs ...” I said avoiding getting any closer to them.

  This time, I felt that incongruence in my voice.

  The hounds stopped growling immediately and stared fixed at me. They then started to wiggle their tails and jump up and down, like puppies after missing their owner for a week.

  “Mistress! Mistress is here!”

  “Mistress, let's play!”

  “Yes! Let’s play! Let’s play!”

  The three hellhounds talked overly excitedly. This change in behavior caught me off guard, but made me happy, nonetheless.

  “You three are ... very good dogs.” I turned to the professor. “I didn't know hellhounds could talk.”

  “They can’t.” Locan said matter of fact while taking notes.

  “What?” I asked confused. “They are talking, can’t you hear?”

  “No, I can’t. To me they are just barking.”

  “To me too.” Added Uther. “It was the same thing with the Troll, I could see you were understanding him, but to me he was just grunting.”

  Except for Uther, I had no witness to my interactions with the monsters, so this information that only I could understand them was new to me.

  “Try giving the hounds some commands” suggested the professor.

  And then I spent the next hour giving orders to the hounds, what they enthusiastically interpreted as play. We started with basic dog stuff like “sit” and “give the paw”. Later the professor suggested progressively more complicated commands involving math or fine coordination.

  “You just did in one-minute what Professor Lancaster, after four years and a few dozen healing potions, could not. I would love to see her face...” Locan wiped an evil grim and continued: “Your ability to speak allows you to issue more complex commands because of the clarity of communication, but they are still limited by the creature’s base intelligence. It seems you can’t command a creature to do something they would be incapable of doing under normal circumstances.

  “Based on all the experiments and your previous interactions, we can assume your ability have the same limitations of the Seal of the Forgotten Gods, meaning, it only works with abyssal creatures.

  “I suppose you developed some form of innate magic, like the one's dragons and other mana infused creatures have. This is rare, but not unheard of. We need to do some mana flux analysis and some medical exams. Innate magic in humans is unnatural and very taxing on the health.”

  Locan asked for some favors, and I spent the rest of the afternoon been probed and prodded.