Armand’s First Letter. Amelia’s First Letter. Cathy’s First Letter.

31 December 1025, L’École du Sorciers, Toulouse, Provençe

To my dearest cousin, Armand

Armand,

While the rapidity of the Iturian Circuit has proven its worth over the past week, our flurry of messages has left me quite fatigued, and my little ones are quite out of patience with me. My students return this coming week, what’s more.

From now on I believe I shall leave the day-to-day testing of the circuit to Jérôme and Maximilian, and resume a more measured rate of correspondence. Not once a month, as before; but as I too delight in our ability to converse more readily, I propose to write you once a week, on Wednesdays. If you were to do the same, perhaps on Saturdays or Sundays, we would then be able to have a regular conversation without wearing ourselves out.

Naturally, I would expect you to write immediately in time of crisis.

Over the past week we have established that our current circuit is able to convey a package of something over five pounds, of no more than certain dimensions. Maximilian believes that the weight limit is due to the level of magic provided by the nodes in each terminal, while the size limits are due to the physical proportions of the terminal, which limit how far the spell extends from the nodes.

You will notice that this letter arrived in a box of pasteboard of just the right size. This is quite sufficient for our personal correspondence, and it will also suffice for sending small, lightweight objects. I have included a small bag of bonbons for Amelie and your daughters; please let me know if they arrived intact and edible.

Now, moving on to our future work: there is much to do before we will have a product to bring to the Courier’s Guild or anyone else.

We have anticipated that experimenting with larger Iturian circuits across the Abyss will be time-consuming, due to the need to construct the entire circuit in one place and transport one terminal across the Abyss for testing. Why in one place? Because the pairs of nodes in each relay must be thaumaturgically linked, must be formed from one larger block that is separated in two. When the two nodes are formed properly, the linkage remains; otherwise, the linkage decays over time. Were we to cut a block in two here in Toulouse and send one half to you by fast packet, Jérôme tells me that the linkage would be quite gone by the time your received it.

Thus, we must build a circuit and send one terminal across the Abyss “the slow way”, as Max has taken to calling it.

But Jérôme conjectures it might be easier than that.

In all of our successful tests the bulk of each node has been a large block of material formed to serve two purposes: to gather magic in a greedy way, and to link the node with its fellow in the relay. Jérôme suggests that we might separate these functions, using a large block of unlinked material to gather the magic alongside a smaller block that links provides the intent to link the node to its fellow. He guesses that in such a node the size of the gathering block would determine the quantity of magic gathered, and hence the range and capacity, while the linking block might be quite small—say, well under five pounds.

If so, one half of the linked material for a pair of nodes could be transported across the circuit we now have, instantaneously; and thus you would have it before the linkage decays. We could thus build one terminal of arbitrarily large size, while you build another, and be testing the result in far less time than it would take to transport a finished terminal by packet or sky-skip.

Jérôme is working on this notion right now; and wishes you and Dr. Tillotson to verify that the two of you can build a working circuit. And then, provided his notion plays out, he will send you the linking blocks needed for a single terminal. He and Maximilian will form and enchant one terminal while you and Dr. Tillotson construct the other; and if it works we can readily experiment with higher capacity terminals.

We agree that any circuits we sell should have terminals that are built on the spot and fixed in place; and this will be far easier to accomplish if the linking blocks are small and easy to transport.

Let us know when you and the good doctor have succeeded!

Meanwhile, Max and I wish you much joy in the new year, and rest happily in the certain knowledge that you and Amelie wish us the same.

Your tired and irritably cheerful cousin,

Amelia

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Photo by Jarred Kyle on Unsplash