A smartphone's many functions are produced by countless electronic components working together. Roughly speaking, you can divide it into several functional modules: a storage unit, a cache unit, a computing unit, a display unit, an information-capture unit, a signal unit, and a power-storage unit.
All these functional units are integrated into one—touch one and you move the whole. Take it apart at random and you're very likely to crash the whole thing.
But Skyl didn't have to care about any of that. He could directly extract whatever functions he wanted from the phone.
"I need eyes that watch the world for me." Skyl pressed his fingers lightly over the camera, and the camera twisted free of the phone's shell, becoming a transparent crystal sphere with two pairs of long, hard, iridescent crystal wings. Three bright iron rings floated around the ball, like planetary rings.
"You shall be called Watchers. Like flocks of birds, you will fly day and night and bring me a wide field of view." He whispered the words, and the transformed camera quickly duplicated itself. In an instant, their numbers swelled to tens of thousands. They rose into the sky, radiating out from the Palace of the Midnight Sun, fanning across all of Winterhold Hold.
People working in the city and fishing by the sea heard a faint yet vast humming in the heavens—the sound of beating wings. When they looked up, they saw thousands of dim shooting stars beneath the clouds, streaking off in all directions.
Skyl pressed his fingers lightly to the phone's screen. "I need an atlas on which the world can be shown."
The screen curled away like a strip of soft silk, peeled itself off, and spread out in mid-air, turning into a pitch-black mirror, ten feet long and six feet wide.
All across the land, the Watchers' ring-bands began to glow. They radiated magic, transmitting the images they gathered back to the mirror.
The mirror lit up. Mountains, lakes, seas, cities, and open country across Winterhold Hold appeared on its surface, the displayed range expanding ceaselessly, spreading outward from the centre. It was like watching a flame catch and burn, driving out the darkness inside the mirror and revealing the world's myriad colours.
"Is this what you meant by a sandbox?" Brelyna asked.
"It's still a bit empty right now," Skyl said.
What he was actually building was a geographic information system, gathering all kinds of geographical data for Winterhold Hold. It would need to be analysed before it could give its administrators intuitive insight.
He drew the computing and storage units out of the phone. "I grant you an eye that sees through the affairs of the world. Let us know everything that lies in the Watchers' sight."
A pale golden arc of lightning fell into the mirror, and layer after layer of spectral images rose up from it—each layer a different geographic data dimension: terrain, river systems, oceanography, vegetation distribution, heat distribution, and so on. Then these layers were integrated into one.
The original photographic imagery vanished, replaced by a three-dimensional geographic sandbox of Winterhold Hold—already close to a game's graphics display. Various natural resources were evaluated and marked: for example, the northern bay off Winterhold showed the presence of large fish shoals, with an estimated catch of 1,400 tons of fish; the southern mountains displayed forest coverage and the distribution of game, and so forth.
With a sandbox map like this, whoever ruled the hold would be able to see its development potential at a glance—and plan production and expansion with ease.
"A marvellous magic, Mage Skyl," Brelyna said.
"It's still nowhere near its full potential." Skyl continued dismantling the phone, extracting the signal receiver and transmitter and combining them into a tiny pin-clip that could be worn on a collar. "This little item has to be handed out to everyone in the hold. Citizens, jarls, mages, criminals, even travellers—everyone wears one."
"What does it do?" she asked.
Skyl handed her one. "Try it on."
The Dunmer mage smiled as she carefully pinned it to her collar. "Does it look good like this?"
"Doesn't matter. It's not an ornament." Skyl pointed at a point of light that had appeared on the sandbox. "Look. Your information is already showing up here."
A new information option had appeared on the map: Population.
At the moment, the only registered "population" was a single light point in front of the Palace of the Midnight Sun—that was Brelyna. The light was all alone, and had no detailed information attached: no name, no rank, no picture.
"All that has to be filled in later," Skyl explained. "Once everyone is wearing an identity pin, the population distribution of the hold will be fully recorded. Then we can start assigning roles: farmer, fisherman, craftsman, caster, official, noble, soldier, and so on. You'll be able to deploy people through the sandbox—box-select them manually or use the population panel to pinpoint them exactly. Mark out a zone as farmland, then assign farmers to clear and plant it. The identity pins will notify their wearers, and the Watchers will guide them."
Brelyna looked a little distracted, but still offered praise. "A clever idea. With a sandbox like this, power really does look like a game. If only politics were really that simple."
"This sandbox will sync to your personal terminal," Skyl went on. "Every member of the Tower of Tomes has the right to view it—but only you will be able to make appointments and allocate resources."
"In that case, wouldn't I be the one acting as the lord?" she asked.
"You can discuss it with Korir if you like," Skyl said. "But your authority comes from me. Even if you rule alone and make every decision yourself, it's allowed. You don't need to worry about resistance or challenges. Just do what you think is right."
"Your favour truly unnerves me," Brelyna said with a soft laugh, lowering her head. "I'll set up two councils, one in the classrooms and one in the College, to deliberate on public affairs. The College council will be called the Outer Cabinet, chaired by the Jarl of Winterhold and the Master Wizard, with nobles and casters serving as councillors. The classroom council will be called the Inner Cabinet, chaired by me, with members of the Tower of Tomes serving as councillors."
"Suit yourself," Skyl said with a wave. "I'll keep refining the gameplay systems of Winterhold Age. You know what I'm really after. I don't care about the rest."
"More mages. More knowledge."
"Exactly. So I'll leave Winterhold's administration in your hands, and let J'zargo handle recruitment for the Tower of Tomes—that way you won't get pulled in two directions."
Brelyna spread her hands in an easy gesture. "As you arrange, so it shall be."
Seeing how pleased she looked, Skyl couldn't help but smile as well. He put the sandbox away and handed it to Brelyna, watching as she carefully stowed it.
For the next few hours, the two of them continued strolling along Winterhold's streets, all the way north to Hsaarik Head, where they stood looking out over the vast sea. Snowflakes rode the bitter wind, but none of it could pass through the magical barrier around them. Heat and cold meant nothing at all to mages at their level; they only needed to enjoy the beauty of the natural world.
"It's said that the Nord hero Ysgramor landed right here," Brelyna said, her gaze distant. "Thousands of years have passed. The unending waves have gnawed away at the lustre of that glorious epic. Mage Skyl, we, the retainers of the Tower—can we really carve out a place of peace for casters here in this brutal arena built by the gods?"
"As long as I will it, we can," Skyl replied.
He wasn't boasting. He was simply stating a fact.
"Ah, my Magnus—my sun." Brelyna couldn't help laughing again. Her laughter wheeled like a gull over the freezing northern sea, her voice like shards of ice chiming together. "It's because you're so proud that we're willing to follow you."
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