Shana woke up at the crack of dawn, the insistent call of duty almost overwhelmed by her chronic lethargy. A shock of fear was enough to dispel the haze clouding her mind, the fear that if she were to keep slumbering, unkinder hands would pull her up from the depths of her rest. Her roommates were already out of their beds, dressing up and ready to take on the morning chores.

She took her time, knowing that they would inevitably overtake her, and that the rest would relegate her to lighting the fires and emptying the chamber pots, all the things that one would construe as unpleasant. That was her lot.

While she donned her pitch-black dress, on a whim, she summoned her system sheet.

Name: Shana Black

Class: None

Title: None

Level: 3 (2%)

Attributes

Power 1

Endurance 2

Coordination 2

Intelligence 1

Wisdom 1

Charm 1

Unspent points: 0

Spell points: 0

She ignored the last line, like she had been taught to do since she was young. No changes yet, she observed. She didn’t know what she expected. Perhaps the Gods would have taken pity on her in her sleep and gifted her a point in Charm or Power?

She’d heard tales of heroes being gifted points in the heat of battle, just enough to turn the tide and win the war. Her favorite was that of the peasant girl given fifty Charm by a friendly fae, enough to have a prince fall in love with her.

Head maid Manalia would cane her if she tried to spread stories of fae, and the rest would just laugh at her for imagining that the Gods would take pity on her by gifting her with attributes.

After she finished dressing up, she endured a litany of chores from the middle-aged head maiden before being sent on her way further up the manor for chamber pot duty.

Around the corner of the hallway, the twins, Safina and Moria, strode out. Shana quickly stepped out of their way, far enough that they’d have to veer considerably from their path in order to shove her aside. They obviously did not like that, judging from their snorts of derision as they walked. Dressed in vivid bright blue and red respectively, matching their gem eyes, they strutted around like they were true Reizenbrahms in blood when all that set them aside was the color of their eyes.

Blue and red, both primes. It was considered good fortune to aid them. A kind word here or a discounted apple there, small things to honor the Gods who made the gem-eyed human race. Safina and Moria were universally well-liked, so much so, in fact, that the lady of the house doted on the two of them especially. They had raised the two youngest Reizenbrahms since birth, and were second only among the servants to Manalia herself, slated to take over as head maids when the middle-aged woman grew too old to keep up.

“Blackeyes,” she heard the nasally voice of the yellow-eyed Karina say, arms folded and sneering, duster in hand. “Am I to assume that you are on holiday, walking as slowly as you are? Can’t you see the rest of us hard at work?”

Shana gave her an apologetic bow of her head. “I’m sorry.” And that was all she would say as Karina continued to hold her up from her work so she could feel better about herself.

That was also her lot. To get hurt for the amusement of others. Just as her eyes absorbed all light, so too would she absorb the pain and suffering of others, to ease their burden.

The rest of her morning went by in dreary silence, Shana losing herself in the drudgery of her tasks. When all the fires were lit and all the chamber pots cleaned, she made her way back to the underfloors to break her fast and await further instructions.

“You, with the black dress,” a voice called from behind. Shana winced. She had almost made it to the stairs, too. She turned to see the healer of the house, Reza, with her child in her arms. “What is your name?”

“Shana, my lady.” She bowed her head. “Is something the matter?”

Reza walked towards with purposeful steps. “Do you know how to take care of a child?”

Shana nodded eagerly. “Yes, I took good care of my younger siblings back home and—”

“Yes, well, he isn’t your younger sibling,” she interrupted. “He’s my son, so for all intents and purposes, that makes him worth your life ten times over. Do you understand?”

Shana gulped, but nodded her head. “Yes, my lady.”

“I want him fed thrice a day,” she began. “He takes naps during midday. For a few minutes every now and then, I want you to occasionally put him down on his stomach so he can try to move on his own a little. Do you follow?” Shana nodded, and the healer continued, “That said, keep him in your arms at all times otherwise, and be conscious of where you place him. You cannot, and I repeat, cannot place him anywhere dirty. That means dusty, grimy or anything that could see him afflicted by some disease.” Disease? What disease could one contract while being on the ground? “The chef knows what sort of food is best for my son, so you must only ask for him during feeding times. Understand me so far?”

Shana nodded.

“Good.”

She waited for a moment, for the bronze-skinned young lady to hand her the child. Slowly, and reluctantly, she did. “I’ll take good care of him, promise.”

“I want you to write on a parchment with hourly reports of your time with my son,” she continued. Shana’s heart grew cold. “Do not disappoint me, or worse yet, make me angry. I will no longer be this nice if you do.”

Shana looked at the little boy, and the retreating form of the Goldman girl, taking solace in the fact that her occupation with said child would spare her from other chores. With a smile, she turned around and nuzzled the young infant’s nose. Today was turning out to be a bright day.

Hopefully, she’d find someone who could actually write. She would hate to disappoint the lady, and by admitting that she only knew her system words, she would most certainly land herself in an ocean of trouble.

000

“Do you have a method ready?”

Reizenbrahm had summoned me to his study to talk, and he hadn’t wasted a single moment getting down to brass tacks after briefing me about the guards keeping an eye on his daughter.

“Do you have the human sacrifices lined up?” I asked, if only to antagonize him a little.

His head inclined downwards while he looked into my eyes. His traffic-light green eyes, half-concealed by his brows, glinted with the sunlight from his window. “You have until three days. I need results.”

“Oh, most certainly.” I grinned. “And what of the timelines for the other things I promised you? Your eternal youth and your delusions of grandeur regarding world domination?”

His green eyes narrowed in silent contempt. “Keep talking, Reza.” He said through gritted teeth.

Or what, I almost decided to say. What could he possibly do to me, knowing that I was his daughter’s greatest hope for retaining her sanity? He was just an angered parent, formidable in his own way, but still beholden to my cooperation.

And after Sentencing me to this task, what did he really have to fear? An idiot, ruled by his emotions. I’d scoff at him, if it didn’t promise some sort of retribution, something I’d rather do without if only to withhold my dignity.

“Will you dismiss me, or shall I walk away from you?” I asked. “I have a job to do after all, a job you forced on me no less.”

“Leave,” he said, baring his teeth close-mouthed. “You may think yourself untouchable, but it does you no favors to burn bridges. It is up to you to prove to me that you are more of use to me than not.”

That was all just empty hope. I knew what he had in store for me. A man as guileless and transparent as him could hardly hope to hide such a thing from me.

However, it was important to maintain a certain amount of consistency in my attitude, to slowly try and win him back rather than immediately acquiesce to his draconic demands. After all, I had already done so once before, when I’d accidentally allowed my true emotions to take precedence as I pleaded to his more rational side.

I needed to act the part of the wayward child, to slowly come around to his side seemingly through great effort on his part. In doing so, I would play to the part of him that wanted to be fair, just, and forgiving. If I betrayed no amount of irritation and indignance at something someone in my position would consider an unjust imposition, he would only be warier. Thus, I had to be difficult. It wasn’t hard for me, seeing as how I had every right to be just that.

The hard part would come when I had to pretend that I was on his side.

I could still turn him around, still salvage the situation, but once I did, I wouldn’t be taking any more chances. I would escape, and make my own life.

Without another word, I left his study, and navigated the labyrinthine halls of his manor, all the way to the underground dungeons of his. I’d read about their functions in the library, of the hallowed role that Judges retained in Aellian society.

They were inquisitors, confessors and interrogators. By using that infernal ‘skill’ of theirs, they could leverage the magic of their oh-so holy system to force prisoners to speak about secrets kept close to their hearts. They were no better than ‘madness practitioners’.

It was hypocrisy of the highest order.

I brought a lit candle down to the dark cellars of Reizenbrahm’s prison facility. The modifications I’d done to my eyes allowed me to take in my environs in a most peculiar half-light, almost black and white as far as I could tell.

The layer of tapetum lucidum in my eyes, which allowed me to pass as a half-gem-eyed human, came very much in handy in many parts of the Reizenbrahm manor. Aellians didn’t have to rely on adequate illumination to make out their surroundings, so they had candles interspersed at long intervals, just enough for them and them alone to see.

It was just as well that these aristocrats didn’t pay all that much attention to their help, else Losinda would already have realized that I was truly a full-blooded ‘mainline’ human, if she had paid close attention to me the first time we met.

When I finally made it down to the dungeons, the room was already somewhat illuminated, probably by whatever light source the guards downstairs possessed. Reizenbrahm had already assured me that they were kept in the loop, although no doubt constrained to a similar supernatural bond as I was.

An Oath, if my memory didn’t fail me, which it absolutely wouldn’t. All Classes categorized as ‘noble’ would eventually confer such a skill, to allow the user to bind a person to a certain set of conditions, so long as that person received something of at least half the amount of value. How the system could ascertain what ‘half’ of indentured servitude entailed, I could not rightly say. There were still so many mysteries of this world that I had yet to unearth.

This would, however, be the last time that I would be caught unawares. I would make certain of that.

I turned a corner and met with two more men. One was noticeably older, and groggy if his darkly circled eyes was of any indication, and the other was shifting ever-so-slightly, most probably unsure of this arrangement.

They were probably utterly loyal to Reizenbrahm, bought off by the promise of gold and acclaim no doubt. While I couldn’t approve of selling your soul to the highest bidder, I could understand pragmatism. They probably didn’t have a choice in the matter.

“Gentlemen,” I nodded. They did not respond. “Have you the keys to our dear Janina’s cell?”

The older man took the keys from his belt and showed them to me, still not speaking. Without much further ado, I took them from him and opened the door to the cell, entering it to see Janina, chained to the floor, no doubt by her own father.

How pitiful. After losing the love of her life, she lost her mind right afterwards. Of course, it was through no fault of my own. Perhaps if I had… simply not existed, then she would not have felt the urge to brutalize me, and suffer the consequences of the attempt.

She whispered nonsense under her breath, feverish in her devotion to whatever madness plagued her mind. I crouched over her to listen, to try and make out some form of pattern to her gibbering, but I found none. I was far too sane to do so, but I suspected that even if I was Immersed in an appropriate level of Chaos, she would still be unintelligible to me.

After all, she had far too little insight into otherness to offer me any level of valuable observations.

Twice now had I been in her shoes, and twice had I pulled myself up from such recesses of madness. That she could not was only evidence that I was superior in every aspect. The poor little Goldman who thought she could speak back to her betters…

…Who knew she could speak back to her ‘betters’, actually.

I chuckled. What an incredible innocence.

“Know you the name of your demoness?” I asked her, whispered into her ear. She turned to face me, those royal purple gem-eyes widening impossibly at the sight of me, no doubt taking me in with all the sparse light that this dim underfloor had to offer. “Tell me her True Name, and perhaps we can begin?”

“She— she, she she!” She broke into a laughter. “How can I tell her name when she won’t speak it!”

“Is she here?” I asked.

“Is she?” she parroted. “How could I know?”

How could she? Her Wisdom was hardly high enough for her to make sense of the insensible, to see meaning in the meaningless.

I looked around with purpose, summoning what little I could remember of that self-same state of mind that she was afflicted by.

Shadows in the darkness, shifting shadows of an almost humanoid shape. They darted around the room, dodging my sight. I heard whispers of shouts, roars of silent murmurs. I concentrated as well as I could, bringing to bear every bit of my uplifted state of mind, until I was certain that Janina’s demoness walked among us.

A form most unlike Janina darted into my view, squat and big-bellied, wearing a striped suit of some sort, possibly a leotard, a shape highly different from Janina’s own toned and muscled frame. What little I could perceive of her was not enough to make her out in her full breadth, only the avatar she chose to present herself as.

“Not yet!” She held her index finger in front of her mouth, as if to hush me, and disappeared once more, like she was never even there to begin with.

“Not yet!” Janina parotted, confirming that what I saw was not simply a remnant of my own madness, but an indisputable fact. Truly, I could never have enough confirmation that demons were real, and I appreciated every such example. “Not yet, she said!” Janina laughed. “When is yet, then?”

“She means to strengthen you,” I said, if only to play to the poor girl’s ego. “And I am here to help her achieve that.”

“Really, now?” Janina struggled against her bonds, the metal bending and creaking with her efforts. I almost considered knocking her unconscious on the spot, but doing so would no doubt reverse whatever progress we had made.

“Do you still hate me?”

“Hate you?” Janina repeated. “Hate you?! How?! Why?!”

I resisted scoffing. “Your enmity. Do you remember it?”

She rolled her eyes. “I remember being fearful and knowledgeless and fearing of what lay beyond that place which we all call all the things that are all normal!” she shouted. “But now I see the inherent beauty of that thing— there! You see it?” She stuck her tongue out, towards the ceiling. “That! That thing!” To humor her, I looked, and predictably, only saw the ceiling. I looked back at her and nodded knowingly. Even if she wasn’t adapting properly to otherness, I could imagine the beauty that she was laying witness to, that evidence of higher truths, laid bare for her and her alone.

It was almost enough to make me want to join her, seeing her in such a state. I had to remain strong, however, for the sake of Us. For the sake of Farhaan and me.

Us.

I clenched my teeth and pulled myself away from that sway of madness, remembering once more that such a state of mind, such knowledge, would do me little good in the plane that I existed. Certainly, otherness had its place, but not this place. Absolutely not this place. To buy into the idea that such an alien madness could help me in all manner of life would only render me weak and helpless, like Janina on the floor.

I was tired of being weak.

‘Not yet’, I remembered the words of Janina’s demoness. This implied that I only lacked the qualifications to consort with her. Once more, I reprioritized finding a way to commune with her kind, hopefully so I could speak with my own demonic analogue.

For now, I had to fall back on my first plan of action: figuring out a way to break my sentence.

Ritualism, in the metamagic cluster of spells, was one that I now believed was poorly named. Certainly, it required an air of ritualism to draw utility from it. As far as I could tell, its creator designed it to draw power from deviancy itself, to charge itself on all the things that conventional wisdom deemed taboo. For my purposes so far, that was enough. Now? Not so much.

I needed more. More importantly, I needed more than just garden variety ‘Ritualism’ to channel enough energy to transfer a sacrifice’s attributes to another, so in designing a more efficient and powerful spell, one that could helpfully let me break out of my current situation, I would also be helping Reizenbrahm deal with his daughter. That was important, because it helped me keep in line with my criminal sentence.

Like always, whenever I was in need of a new spell, I consulted my mental catalogue of memorized glyphs. They unfurled before me in my mind’s eye, unknowable shapes held taut and intelligible by my heightened cognition. No. To say that my mind was powerful enough to keep them in their true forms was folly. I merely kept them… abridged, in a way. I kept them human, human enough for my purposes at least.

And I summoned their true forms through these human avatars whenever I wished to invent a new spell. This took an enormous amount of Intelligence and Wisdom, no doubt, but it was still a pittance compared to trying to keep their true depths in my mind.

I cycled through a dozen different permutations every minute. Will and Chaos were the primary glyphs, but it was missing a third, a third that would allow me to not only manifest glyphs, but also power them independent of Intelligence or Wisdom requirements.

Even if the trade-off for swift power was time and preparation, I would most certainly take it. Preparation for large-scale effects certainly had their place after all.

“Ma’am.”

My thoughts collapsed in on themselves, and it was all I could do to not let out some harmful effect as I turned to face the cretin that had interrupted me. “What?”

The guard who had addressed me, an older gentleman, merely nodded. “Ah, excuse me. I was… merely worried is all.”

How foolish of me to assume they understood the gravity of my work. It was my fault entirely for not explaining to them that their input was absolutely useless. “Shut up,” I said to him. “And unless I specifically tell you to open your moronic mouths, do not stop shutting up.”

He gulped.

“Understood?”

He nodded. I would have asked him to verbalize his understanding, but that would just waste even more time.

Thankfully, my intelligence allowed me to start off from where I had stopped. I almost decided to use this pause to ask the guardsman what time it was, but that would only lend further credence to his interruption. I needed to teach him a lesson, and that lesson was to keep mum while I was thinking.

No. No more brute-forcing, though. If this pause had netted me anything, it was that I could approach the issue from a smarter angle, rather than one of total trial and error.

What was most important? A form of Ritualism, a spell to manifest glyphs, that relied on an energy-gathering system that was more efficient, and with a higher capacity. One more controllable, too.

Which ones had I eliminated thus far? Many. There were hundreds of modes for manifesting glyphs that hardly held a candle to what I wanted, to the task I sought to put it up to. What did the halfway successful ones have in common?

What… did they have in common?

I wrinkled my eyebrows as I thought, comparing all my greatest failures to each other. So many of them existed in such a state of abstraction that they could not possibly be viable in our mundane plane of existence, but they did have something in common, something that was at the very least translatable to my own reality.

Circles.

Eureka.

“Yes!” I shouted as my mind settled in a state of absolute elation, almost comparable to that sweet and terrible bliss of falling into madness. I had done it. I had cracked Ritualism.

Spell creation complete! You have invented an entirely new spell! You are awarded +2 Wisdom and +2 Intelligence. You may name this spell. Remember to share your findings in a World Obelisk for additional rewards.

Level up!

I closed my eyes and basked in the absolute glory. “Circle Magic,” I whispered, christening the result of my mental labor.

The more I mulled it over, the more I understood of this form of Ritual metamagic. Most important to me was the upper limit to which I could power a spell, and the answer was… farther than I could even see with my limited amount of expertise.

This implied that there would be a learning curve, but such a thing was nothing to me. I welcomed it, in fact!

As for the specifics of the magic itself, it required me to transcribe glyphs into geometric shapes, most notably circles. In fact, all the shapes seemed to require that I make them circular on some level, if not in exact shape, then in the end result.

My legs were beginning to burn with exhaustion, having stood for so many hours. I sat down and traced patterns in the air with my finger, trying to figure out a basic framework from which I could translate these complex glyphs into circles.

The answer was, underwhelmingly enough, multiple circles, arranged in such a pattern and in such varying sizes that they could only mean one and one thing only.

That wasn’t even getting to the spaces in which I had to inscribe glyphs to make them work, not the true glyphs, but dim, two-dimensional and static mockeries of their true forms, all so the Ritual itself knew which effect to bring forth to the world.

And of course, I was left to do all the leg-work to figure out exactly what rules this magic played by.

I grinned. Then, I chuckled, a chuckle that turned into a laugh.

Ah. Learning was so very, very fun.

000

Shana shivered as she held the paper containing the reports of the day on one hand, and Reza’s baby boy on the other arm. He had been a pleasure to look after. Even if he cried and roared like a child possessed, it was at the very least better than tending to her normal chores. Right now, that very same babe was tucked in bed, sleeping soundly. It was such a marvel to behold, watching such an innocent little soul live its life in blissful ignorance of the wider world.

Still, she was nervous, for one very good reason. Karina had pressed the purpose of that paper out of her, and insisted that she be the one to write out her report. Shana could not protest, her illiteracy preventing her from doing anything of note with it, so the task was left to Karina to scribe her day with the child.

It was hours after night that Reza, smiling ever so slightly, entered the room and approached her in the bedroom that she was allotted.

“Shana,” she began. “I trust that you have taken good care of my child.”

Shana nodded eagerly, and made to ‘read’ her report. “Yes, ma’am. In the early morning, I changed his diapers and fed him his breakfast, the self-same recipe that the chef provided me, the one you told me to procure, and then—”

Reza chuckled. “Just hand me the report and be on your way. Thank you, so very much for your help.”

Shana shook her head. “It’s really no need, ma’am! Later on, your child—”

Reza snatched the paper from her hand. “Really. Get out of my bedroom and—” She read the note, her brows furrowed. “I dropped the baby on its head and sealed the crack on its skull shut with my tarry tears?” Reza’s expression turned into a grimace. “And then I fed it tarry milk from my blackened teat?”

Shana immediately dropped on all fours, pressing her forehead on the ground. “I beseech you!” she howled. “Please forgive—”

“Shut up, you imbecile,” Reza responded. “And stand, right this instant!”

Shana wasted no time getting up as fast as she did.

“How can you not read?” Reza asked. Shana almost cried in relief there and then. “Do you not have a system sheet?”

“I know my— I know my system words, ma’am,” Shana hiccupped, wiping her tears away. “I just… I just don’t know the others!”

“Ridiculous,” Reza spat. “Simply ridiculous. Now, where was that idiotic wretch who wrote those things about my son?”

“Ma’am?”

Reza grabbed her by her dress and pulled her closer, her strength brokering no resistance whatsoever. “Don’t play coy with me. I care not a single whit how you are treated in this house. Simply point me to the unlucky fool who dared write such things about my son or god help me, I will…” She stopped and took a deep breath, and once she exhaled, all her stress seemed to leave her. “Just point me towards them. Do it now, or I will take out my anger on you. Do you want that? Because I can assure you, it will be the last time anyone takes out their anger on you.”

“Karina,” she blubbered. “Yellow-eyed, a little shorter than me. Her hair is black!”

Reza pulled Shana with her, out the door, and shoved her forwards. “Take me to her,” she commanded. Shana almost wanted to run away, but she could do naught but walk, knowing that the mistress was no doubt fast enough to catch up to her no matter where she ran.

“Punish me instead,” Shana whispered, not understanding why. Not until she really considered the situation, and realized that it was totally natural for her to want to take the punishment for someone of prime-colored eyes, especially with black eyes of her own. “Punish me instead, ma’am.”

Reza did not even grace her with a response.

Shana brought her all the way to the ground floor, and to the rooms of the help, where Karina stayed. Just as she entered the room, the others looked up at her in clear disdain.

Karina spoke first. “Blackeyes, what are you—?”

Reza pushed her aside and approached the yellow-eyed maid, not even stopping to talk. Instead, she pulled her off from her bed by her hair and threw her to the ground, where she kicked her in the stomach.

Karina coughed and wheezed while Reza crouched before her. “If you ever try to write such filth about my son again, I will kill you.”

She stood up and turned away from the downed girl, and looked straight into Shana’s eyes. The girl’s own eyes shined gold at the reflected light. “You may report to me verbally, but if I sense even a hint of deceit…” She let the threat hang in the air, and merely walked past her, leaving Shana alone, among the others.

She ran out of the room and returned to her own, where she cried into her mattress.