Ernest Helmingham

### Dislikes:

Expectations, pedestals, idolatry, envy, lip service, anything superficial, etc.

## Family members

### Ancestor(s):

Lord Astaire

**Ernest Helmingham** is the main character of the Language of Love short story. He is a student at the Department of Archaeology of the Clock Tower. He is in love with Candis Etherauletta.

## Profile

### Background

Ernest is an average and unremarkable student at the Department of Archaeology. He works as a researcher and translator at the Office of Philology, which studies thaumaturgical languages.

He is technically a "Lord candidate", being a descendent of the current Lord Astaire, the Lord of Archaeology. In reality, though, he's just part of a humble branch family with no interest or influence in politics. He is on familiar terms with Lord Astaire, though, and refers to him as "Gramps".

He is friends with Candis Etherauletta, whom he is also in love with.

### Personality

A hopeless cherry boy who’s madly in love to the point of stupidity.

In the past, he used to be a cold-hearted magus befitting of the Archaeology department. Feeling the futility of communication, he isolated himself from others and shunned society. Thanks to the power of love, however, he has reformed and turned into an innocent and pure young man who simply fawns over his crush. Occasionally, however, he demonstrates remnants of his old self and can seem surprisingly cold.

Due to his long past of actively avoiding conversation, he’s now terrible at socializing. Whenever he talks to a stranger, he gets hyper-nervous and worries about what to say. Depending on the person, it can take a while for him to warm up to them. Overall, one could say that he lacks the ‘common sense’ of conversation.

The thing he hates the most are people who judge others before making an effort to get to know them. This includes both negative and positive judgement. Stuff like idolatry and hero-worship just don’t sit right with him. Love at first sight, however, is surprisingly okay in his book.

## Abilities

Ernest is a mediocre magus with next to no practical abilities. He has a very small amount of magic circuits and barely passed self-defense class. He was granted the Fes rank due to his ability to pronounce Divine Words, but it is not a reflection of his actual power as a magus.

### Magecraft

Ernest's magecraft uses Divine Words, a thaumaturgical language from the Age of Gods.

It is a Thaumaturgy from ancient times, when words played a heavier role in spellcasting. Nowadays, the purpose of incantation is primarily self-hypnosis. Using their words as a guide, they instruct their body and circuits to produce a predetermined effect. Divine Words, however, speak directly to the World and command it to produce phenomena. It is said that all Mythologies have Divine Words, but they are unpronounceable with human vocal organs.

The Helmingham magi are archeological scholars who recovered words from one such lost language from a certain mythology and developed a secret technique that allows them to reproduce the necessary sounds. They do not, however, have the full language at their disposal and must make do with whatever words they can find or decipher. Each generation tends to add a number of newly found words to their growing vocabulary. Since the words don’t require connecting to one’s circuits, they do not need powerful or developed circuits to perform High-Thaumaturgy like most magi families. This also helps them keep out of politics, as they don’t need to care much about matchmaking and breeding for greater circuits. Overall, they are a very academic-only family that cares not for power or politics but instead only knowledge.