I remembered the glass lamp that Kol had brought with her. Unlike the crude wooden torches we used, the demons seemed to have learned how to use things like animal fat or wax candles to light up their homes and businesses at night. The princess said only a few places, like the palace or important roads leading up to the palace, were lit all night, but that was a good enough indicator of how far ahead the demons were on the technological scale.
Electricity would let the humans leapfrog the demons by several hundred years worth of development. There were a lot of other things that I could help invent to bring the humans up to speed, things like refined iron and steel, but they would not be enough. A few humans could not resist a medieval kingdom. At least, not with pointy sticks and thicker armor. No, we had to make use of the greatest advantage that we had: magic.
The real reason I wanted to develop electricity, was so I could create electric spells. In fact, I would probably make more magnetic spells, too, since a lot of the experiments that I would have to do for now would help create ‘knowledge’ for magnetism as well.
While we were at the encampment, the humans told me they’d found a strange object while on a hunting trip to the marshes. What they’d found was a piece of amber, which reminded me of one of the oldest experiments around electricity. And so, I took the piece of amber, rubbed it on some monster fur, and brought it close to some feathers. The feathers stuck to the amber, giving me my first demonstration of static electricity.
I did some more experiments with static electricity, playing with things like human hair and the strange fabric that the princess’ clothes were made of. I even brought out some of the red gemstones I’d taken from starred monsters, but they didn’t seem to have any electromagnetic properties. Still, I was able to prove some of the things that I already knew about from my previous world. Things like how static electricity was the flow of charged particles from one charged body to the other. Rubbing two insulators together in dry air made stronger static electricity, and the two differently charged objects that were rubbed together develop an attractive force because of their equal and opposite charges.
Next, I wanted a way to make a lot of static electricity very quickly. No point rubbing amber on fur forever, after all. So, while waiting for the various tribes to arrive at Bek Tepe, I gathered some sand and began making glass. The process of glass-making was messier than you’d expect, but with some tinkering with air and fire magic, as well as clay kilns, I was able to fill up a mold with molten glass, which I then cooled to make a glass globe. The globe wasn’t the smoothest globe I’d ever seen, and the glass wasn’t particularly pure or high quality, but I figured it would get the job done for now.
I brought the glass globe to my tent, which had by this time become a sort of laboratory. Kelser came to assist me in my experiments, and Kol hung around sometimes, observing what I was doing and asking questions. I didn’t want to give too much away to her, but since she didn’t even know any magic, I figured it was fine to show her the experiments. The real question would be if I should teach her magic, or not, and that was a question that I had not settled on an answer for just yet.
I cut up a bunch of wood and built a small contraption to hold the glass globe up. My heart jumped into my throat when the globe got loose and almost fell to the ground, but I caught it with magic hands. I fixed it more securely to the contraption, and in such a way that it would spin when I moved the wheel that was fixed to the side of the machine. Kelser had been a big help in getting everything to fit and come to shape, but he did wonder if what I was doing was really all that necessary. If I wanted the globe to spin, couldn’t I just hold it up with magic hands and make it spin that way?
I told him that I could do that, yes, but it would be much harder to spin it as fast as I wanted to, and I wanted to be able to demonstrate a few things about motion and machines for the future. Now that we had a way to make the glass globe move, I gathered a bunch of resin, which was a good non-conductor, and piled it up next to the machine. I stood on the resin and told Kelser to start making the glass move. I touched the glass globe with my hands and waited for a little bit before asking Kelser to stop.
Princess Kol, who had been gawking at the whole scene for a while now, asked if the experiment had failed, since she didn’t see anything. I pretended that she was right, and wondered aloud if the problem had something to do with my elfin body. I asked her if she wanted to give it a try, and she walked over excitedly. I was still up on the resin and extended a hand towards her as if to help her up.
“Ah!” shouted the princess as she snatched her hand back and recoiled a few feet.
I laughed. “Thank you for the demonstration, princess. The experiment was a success!”
I had all three of us try out the electrostatic generator or friction machine, while running a few more experiments on using other objects instead of my hands. I was able to increase my ‘justified knowledge’ of the properties of various insulators and conductors, and of the differences between insulators and conductors in how they dealt with and stored static electricity. I knew I needed to do a couple more things, but the lack of technology at my disposal meant that it would be a while before I truly mastered electricity.
But for now, just a few days before the solstice, when all the human tribes had arrived at Bek Tepe, I decided to invent a few new spells. First, I tried to create static electricity with magic. In the end, I had to break out a stone slab and charcoal to work out some things regarding Coulomb’s law, which especially helped solidify my understanding of negative and positive charges. I put aside the written equations, took a deep breath on a dark night, and stood right outside my tent with Kelser and Kol standing by my side.
A few other people had begun crowding around me as well, as word had gotten out about my strange contraptions and the new type of magic that I was trying to create. Kelser, who was the only human who had learned a little bit about electricity from me so far, had apparently gone around telling people that I was making a spell that would help me spew lightning from my fingertips. I had to make him go back and tell people not to expect such a powerful spell after a few days of experimentation.
I took a steady pose with my legs, aimed my hands up high, and concentrated. The crowd waited eagerly around me, wondering, despite my warnings, when lightning would come out of my fingertips.
The moon was bright. The red star was pulsing. Wind blew, rustling my clothes and my hair and carrying the silence of bated breaths into my ears. I closed my eyes. I gathered my knowledge and my wisdom, and focused. And waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
Somebody coughed. A child shuffled around. People whispered, what was going on. Kelser stepped up to me eventually, asking if I was alright. I hadn’t moved in a long time. He was right to be worried. I exhaled, loosened my stance, and smiled at Kelser.
“It’s done,” I said.
“What do you mean?” asked Kol with a frown. “What’s done?”
“The spell!” I answered.
“The spell?” repeated Kol, “what spell?”
I smiled. Kol hadn’t seen me invent spells before, so she didn’t know what to expect. She’d been incredibly surprised to learn that the spells everybody had been using were invented by me, and had high expectations after seeing fireballs whizzing through the air or great pieces of stone being tossed around at frightening speeds.
“This spell,” I said, as I stepped forward and touched the demon princess before she could run away. Her eyes widened as I approached, but she clearly hadn’t been expecting me to suddenly rush towards her.
My hands made contact with her skin, and the demon princess let out a loud yelp, before falling comically to the floor. I grinned as I looked over the dazed demon princess, and swept my gaze towards the crowd. My grin grew wider and the people in the crowd shivered. I raised my hands and started walking ominously towards them.
“Hello, friends,” I said as I chased the panicked crowd. “Come give old Cas a hug!”
Even if he is not teaching Kol, he is sill helping her gather general knowledge and justified knowledge, that helps her magic anyway.
I hope Cas knows he is helping the human become the winners in the future race wars. And they already prove superior to magic-wielding Elves even without magic.