Inside the Mage Tower, in a bright, spotless classroom.
White light surfaced in Roland's palm, and a luminous symbol formed from magic power took the shape of the oracle-bone character for "cleave."
As he demonstrated at the lectern, he explained with easy confidence.
"Watch closely, everyone. I'm going to start transforming it..."
As his magic power circulated, the character changed into bronze script, then seal script.
From the Zhou Dynasty onward, large seal script had developed, also known as Zhou script, Zhou seal script, Zhou writing, and historian's script. Later, the Qin Dynasty built upon the achievements of six generations to unify the realm, and established small seal script on that foundation.
The overall trend was toward standardization. Both the structure of the characters and the thickness and length of their strokes became increasingly uniform.
Using the material he had compiled, Roland explained all this as the "design rationale," then continued, "I've just demonstrated the changes in the structure and strokes of Seris characters.
"In this process, magic power participates in the complete symbolization process. It serves as the link between magic power and linguistics, through an encoding system constructed from 'image-symbol.'
"From a linguistic perspective, the relationship between sound and meaning is arbitrary. In fact, the relationship between symbols and meanings is arbitrary too. Even in mature, stable languages, the meanings of individual words often change through established usage.
"For example, princess, gentleman, cavalry...
"When casting spells, we must pay attention to their original meanings and the paths of their evolution. So how can we express all that information in its entirety?
"I believe we should add a measure of time and analyze each character...
"This is the fundamental form of Seris runes.
"The key to the development of Seris lies in history. It is an evolution along a