Capítulo 14: Relieving Withdrawal
Hearing that last piece of information, some things clicked in her head, but then only more questions arose.
The reason she thought she recognized the girl earlier on was because she'd seen portraits of the Empire's founder before. They were all depictions from over a thousand years ago but, although plenty of her traits have changed, the base was still the same.
Those old portraits showed a woman who appeared far more human. Her ears were slightly pointed, but not extreme. Her skin had a pink tinge, but it was closer to a blush than the vibrant pink Dahlia had just seen. And the eyes, while still being a deep azure with specks of gold, had regular human pupils back then instead of the alien-like eyes from earlier.
Also… it was over a thousand years ago! That frail and tiny looking teenage girl was that ancient?!
Seeing some of the confusion on her daughter's face, Sabrina sighed and filled her in.
"Empress Kallisto back during the war and formation of the empire had a 90% purity bloodline. While that is nothing to scoff at, the amount of changes someone undergoes through the last 10% are substantial. In fact, even the difference between 99% and 100% can be shockingly large. The Empress you saw today now has a fully pure maenad bloodline so it makes sense she seemed a bit different. Also, along with that purity, she's now basically immortal."
Dahlia considered that. She was aware that higher purities caused significant changes, but she wasn't aware that they would be quite so extreme. Her being as old as she was also made sense. Nymph based bloodlines were well known to increase longevity and increase resilience to illness. If she avoided conflict, Esmé could potentially live forever. But something was still bothering her.
"I thought the founder had a schema similar to a typical sorcerer's foundation. One that focussed on her bloodline with a bit of channelling on the side. I couldn't tell much, but what I saw today was definitely construction based. It's totally different from the history books. Also, didn't the empress die? We have a different empress now that's six generations removed from the founder."
Sabrina nodded sagely. She felt pretty good knowing more than her daughter. It didn't happen often and she was now thankful they restricted the books she could read based on the outside world.
"So, what you read isn't exactly up to date. You're right about the current empress though. The reason Esmé Kallisto's title is 'Grand Dowager Empress' is because she stepped down from the position. Well, at the time, she faked her own death. This is actually related to her schema by the way.
After running the empire for a few hundred years, she had continued to try and improve her magic but she came across a bottleneck in her schema that she couldn't bypass. The foundation's limits had been met. Instead of settling for having reached her prime, she staged her own death, went into hiding, and then completely restarted her magic from scratch.
Apparently she designed a theoretically limitless schema that she could always improve as she grew older. She was gone and presumed dead for seven centuries before she finally came back with a now pure bloodline and an absurdly powerful schema. That's when she claimed her new title as well. She doesn't actually govern the empire, now she's more of a political advisor, secret service director, and military general. She's involved in nearly everything."
Dahlia was reeling a bit from all that.
'That girl was strong enough to demolish kingdoms over a millenia ago back when she considered herself "weak", and I just saw her at her modern strength thinking she was just some random knight. I'm lucky that I didn't mess up and get myself killed!'
Shivering a little at the realisation, she decided to be a little more careful with Valentina's cohorts in the future. For all she knew, they might all be monsters in their own right! But this also explained why Valentina didn't wave her hand and say 'Fuck you, I'm the Archduchess and I do what I want!' It was that she was talking to one of the few people in the entire continent that could boss her around.
Thinking about that, Dahlia felt a weight she didn't know existed lift off her shoulders. Valentina hadn't left her behind for just some random job She really had no choice. Just coming to terms with it that way made her a fair degree happier. The fear that she had been arbitrarily abandoned was removed before it could even take root and become an issue for her.
Now with a bit more pep in her step, Dahlia looked over at her mother and tilted her head questioningly.
"Alright, it makes sense and all, but I think you filled me in now. Plus, now you know what happened to your surveillance. Is there anything else you need or are we done?"
The Baroness smiled at her daughter's perked up attitude. She preferred her begging and crying, but seeing the juxtaposition could be quite charming too. She figured that she would remember this moment and compare it to her expression later; such a comparison would probably make the whipping even more enjoyable. Snapping out of those thoughts, she just shook her head.
"No, I think we're done. You've already ruined every chance of the impression your father and I asked for, so heading back in will probably be worthless for you as well. I really don't care what you do from now until we leave. Your father will be furious but… well that's inevitable by this point. You just do what you want and savour your time now, that whipping I promised you earlier wasn't a joke, so look forward to it~"
Seeing her walk away while chuckling to herself, Dahlia's heart sank.
'Right. Of course that's still going to happen. Considering she hasn't even touched me in over a week, I bet she's not going to hold back either.'
Trying to put the dread to the back of her mind, Dahlia decided to take up her mother's offer and just do what she wanted, and that was… play with magic!!!
In the same way that Sabrina was suffering withdrawal symptoms from beating her, Dahlia was suffering withdrawal from not getting to use her aspect even once! Looking around the Count's garden, she noticed it got denser to the edges before finally turning into a secluded coniferous forest.
'Perfect! With the garden bushes in the way and it being so dark, I doubt anyone would stumble across me there.'
Walking over to a location that stood out to her, she finally sat down in a dark wooded region. Even the lights from the mansion could hardly be seen at this point and Dahlia came to realise that, other than being lost, she had just located a small recreation of her aspect in real life.
Unfortunately, she had no schema to play with at this point, but when people first became familiar with their aspect, they typically didn't have a schema either. Magic could be performed without one, but it was always highly limited in what it could do.
Spells cast without a schema to back them up were typically called cantrips and for people born into poor conditions with no proper education, Cantrips were often all a commoner might ever be able to cast. In other cases, they might create their own schema, but without proper knowledge, those schema tend to be weak and bottleneck very early on. It's because of this that there can be such a huge inequity between the classes as well. The poor can't rebel when there's such a huge power difference after all.
Setting politics aside, Dahlia began focussing on feeling her own mana within her body. Some of this wasn't too new to her. After all, once someone first developed their magic organs earlier in life, they could detect mana and manipulate magical items. What was different was that this mana was directly inside of her body, swirling around like a turbulent, whirlpool filled river.
What was also new was that, unlike magic items or passive ambient mana, what she found inside her body was textured differently. Where regular mana might be comparable to plain, clear, and tasteless water, what she found in her body was a fair deal different.
The water analogy wasn't just a simple comparison; mana really felt like liquids as they could even be perceived similarly. The mana inside Dahlia was murky and slightly more viscous. It was cold and smelled like licorice and mint. Honestly, handling mana so different from the water-like stuff she was used to felt weird.
It took longer than expected to finally get a sense for how it flowed within her, but after some time, Dahlia stopped meditating and opened her eyes, now feeling slightly more acquainted with her body. Where before her magic organs were passive and couldn't be felt, similar to a liver or kidney, now she could feel them running throughout her body, more similar to the sensation of a beating heart or heavily breathing lungs.
It was both uncomfortable and refreshing at the same time. After taking a moment to adjust to the sensation, she took a deep breath and tried to let the mana naturally form.
This is how people developed their simplest cantrips. They weren't formed from intent, but rather from the natural shape of the mana. Where more advanced magic dedicated itself to mana manipulation, cantrips just let the mana take its natural course. Think of it like the difference between kicking or throwing a ball or just letting it drop from waist height. The latter's results are unspectacular, predictable, and highly reliable.
After a few seconds passed, Dahlia felt a weird sensation. Mana started to form from her fingertips and it felt like her skin was secreeting an oil. As more mana pooled out, the three elemental attributes of nature, dark, and space all seemed to fight each other in a show of dominance, causing the mana to roil like boiling acid before it calmed down and only the dominant nature element remained.
Now alone, the nature attributed mana flitted about, now less viscous and almost approaching a vapour. It leapt around like a little flame and slowly coated her hand before solidifying and taking form. Growing out from her skin in a slightly horrific looking process, bark and leaves began to form on Dahlia's hand while some vines also spouted and trailed down. The process only took a few seconds but for a brief moment, it was actually a bit scary!
The growth was rather invasive and Dahlia felt her skin tearing from it all. If she weren't already used to pain, she likely would have been screaming, but she kept her mouth shut to avoid drawing attention to herself. By the time it was done, she looked down at what had happened.
Where her skin once was, a layer of wood and bark had replaced it. Her sense of touch was practically non-existent but she could still move her hand, so that was good at least. The leaves that formed appeared to be just a byproduct and nothing more. They were cute and spade shaped, but otherwise she didn't form an opinion on them. If anything, they had sharp edges but the cuts left behind were shallow. Finally, the vines she had formed were a little interesting.
Like the wood and bark, the vines had grown from her skin as well, but unlike the rest, she actually had a sense of touch through them. As a rather impulsive experiment, Dahlia bundled up her dress and shoved some cloth in her mouth as a gag, just in case she needed to scream, before she refocused on the vines and grabbed one with her other hand.
'This is really dumb, isn't it?'
The answer was yes.
Taking a couple quick deep breaths, she steeled herself before pulling hard on the vine and she was immediately thankful she had gagged herself as she muffled a bloodcurdling scream. Although she never experienced it, she assumed that this is what it would feel like to directly rip out a bundle of nerves.
The vine was rather tough too so it wasn't removed in a single fluid motion. It took a bit of a struggle before it finally tore away, leaving Dahlia sweating and panting from the idiotic stunt she just pulled. There wasn't any bleeding, but an intense pain was still lingering from the stump of the removed vine.
Figuring that was enough experimenting, Dahlia focussed her mana and directed it to gather back into her body and as it did the bark and vines retreated. Looking down at her now normal hand, there were a few important things to note. Pink baby skin could be seen coating her hand, as if it had just healed from an injury. Chances are, that's exactly what had happened.
The sensation of having skin torn was fairly familiar to Dahlia and when everything grew, it didn't just feel psychosomatic but like she was genuinely being harmed by the magic. When the mana from the undamaged sections retreated, it seemed as though it repaired her skin, though leaving it in this soft and sensitive state. Looking at where the vine was, this further illustrated that point. The point it had grown was the only part of her hand damaged. A small round chunk of skin was missing with blood now dripping down her finger.
'Huh, noted. So as far as I can tell, that was actually pretty strong for a cantrip which must mean I have high mana affinity… it would have been nice if someone told me sooner, but at least I know now. Considering what happened with zero direction, I feel like I could probably isolate the effects and they would still be cantrips.'
She went over a small checklist of what had happened and then nodded.
'Wooden bark to act as something defensive, and vines to tie things up or act as sensory organs… the leaves might be able to be used to cut things, but I'm not sold on them yet. Honestly, other than the stupid amount of pain, I'm quite pleased with that first experiment.'
Some more time went by and Dahlia repeated the cantrip casting process two more times. Once for the darkness attribute and once for the space attribute. The events in each case were a little less varied and intricate than the nature mana, but that was likely due to them not being as dominant in Dahlia's aspect.
The darkness cantrip created a small flickering black flame that seemed to use cast shadows instead of light. As a result, the area around the flame would remain dark, but someone in the darkness could look out and see just fine. Dahlia found she could lightly manipulate the flame, but for the moment held off on doing any more.
As for the space element… Dahlia has started to truly hate it. She imagined that the giant fissure in reality Esmé had made was also space attributed. Something like a rift in spacetime or an alternate dimension or something. Meanwhile, when Dahlia activated her own space cantrip…
She immediately fell over and threw up.
The moment it activated the world spun and an overwhelming sense of vertigo overtook her, even worse than when she had her nightmarish hallucination. She wasn't stupid and knew that if weaponized, something like this could be incredibly potent, but from what she saw, the mana seemed very volatile and difficult to use. The journey to use this element would without a doubt be filled with trial and error, with each error leading her to be on the ground heaving as she was now.
Retracting her space attributed mana as fast as she possibly could, the world kept spinning a bit even after the cause was gone and she cursed the unruly magic under her breath. Deciding that she wouldn't do any more tests for the time being, she prepared to tidy herself up before heading back to the debutante.
Suddenly however, she heard rustling of bushes and a couple hushed voices approaching and she jumped into the nearby bush, hoping that she hadn't given herself away. Fortunately, it seemed she was undetected. Unfortunately, the two individuals stopped in the small clearing she was just in.
She was freaking out, worried that some huge secret political plot would be overheard by her and she'd get entangled by it. Maybe an assassination attempt on the Archduchess! Or maybe even some terrifying conspiracy to turn the debutante attendees into sacrifices for a dark god! Absurd and extreme theories were running through her hyperactive and paranoid mind before she heard it.
'God damnit, they came here to fuck.'
REFLEXIONES DE LOS CREADORES 
AngelAsphodel
AngelAsphodel So, with this chapter, some glimpses of Dahlia's magic have finally been seen. I hope this lights up fun and imaginative ideas in your head! Honestly, I'd be curious to hear feedback and thoughts on the magic system and how you think things work or if there are things that stand out. This is my first time creating a magic system after all.
Regardless of everything else though, I hope you're having a wonderful day!
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