--- Hemetia's Perspective ---

"This place is disgusting. How long has it been since you cleaned the floor?" Master Bloodstone asked angrily and rhetorically.

Hemetia answered anyway. "I swept this morning, but the broom is used up and doesn't work anymore."

"The broom or you? Just get this place cleaned up or I'll have to beat you again."

"Yes master."

The girl with a hematite core was a slave owned by the man with a bloodstone core, and her primary task was the cleanliness of his abode. Her mother before her had the same job for the same man, but she died in childbirth. It was lucky for Bloodstone that he had impregnated his slave; it saved money on having to go buy new ones if you could make more yourself.

The floor Hemetia was meant to clean was made of cobblestone, and though dirt was effortlessly able to be seen between the rocks, it still needed to be swept so the loose dirt wouldn't get tracked into bed. There was other debris too, like errant hairs, food crumbs, dead bugs, lint, and other things to sweep out as well.

She had no materials to fix a broom, nor skills to do it. She had been shown how to sweep, but that was it... but since she spent so much time working, she knew how each part of the broom looked and felt. Just outside the door, there were tufts of unattended grass. Maybe it had some shoots. Those were thicker and longer than normal blades of grass, and they looked similar to the reed-like sticks the broom was made of, so she went to look.

She pulled up some normal, long leaf blades too, to use to tie the newly added shoots to the broom, but they were green and soft, and the grass-string was too weak and brittle. She found some of her own hairs that had fallen out, and used those instead. It was much stronger, though the midst-of-repair broom still wasn't useful until the shoots dried a few days later. That just meant she had to sweep for more time each day to make up for the quality of work.

She continued on like this for weeks, and began to notice something. The shoots she had learned to dry and add afterward weren't getting worn away anymore. Thinking about it, the shoots had both grown faster and more abundantly, and dried faster than when she did it the first time, too.

But there was another problem. Using the same broom so much for so long, the handle started to get worn and splintery. She hurt herself using it, and though the brush part was rather useful now, it didn't really matter if it couldn't be held without getting splinters and callouses, so she made a new hand-brush of just grass shoots tied together with long, thin grass, just as she had tried to do before, that now worked. Maybe the grass just grew stronger or she was luckier? She wasn't sure.

Her knees hurt from being on them all day sweeping the entire house amongst other things, but it didn't cut her hands, so it wasn't that bad. But as she continued working, she had a thought- what if she split the grass shoots (that seemed to dry themselves as they were cut) in half, so a finer brush could be made? It didn't take her long to master it.

She really did want a new broom though, since it used less effort and let her reach more places. A part of a nearby outside tree was dead and not too high up- she could probably climb the tree to reach it. She tried, and after a couple falls, was able to succeed. The kitchen staff wouldn't let her use a knife to smooth the branch into a proper handle, so she used a small sharp rock from outside. It wasn't particularly skillful or effective, but what else was there to do?

However, Hemetia realized something as she whittled. The broom handle she was working on had increasingly efficient strokes of wood shaved off, even if she didn't go over the entire thing herself. She could start on the bumpiest parts of the stick where twigs had grown, and the bends in the wood got shaved off too. How funny! But it saved her a LOT of time, so what's the complaint?

After adding her fine broom brush onto the now-handle, she was able to get all of the dust, crumbs, grime, and everything else with nearly a single stroke instead of several. Cleaning the entire house only took a short time instead of half the day.

A couple weeks went by, and she found she didn't have to sweep anymore- the house was clean and tidy without her even having to do anything.

--- Kitchen Staff Perspective ---

I did what I was hired for. A portion of food and a place to sleep- what else could someone want? It was a good deal. I was very skilled at following instruction and doing as I was told, and luckily Master Bloodstone could get the ingredients I needed in order to prepare the meals he requested.

That cleaning slave, well, one of the cleaning slaves, the sweeping one? She began acting strangely one day. She'd sweep out the dust like she was supposed to, but then she started picking at the grass and pulling at her hair, I think.

Then she got stranger and stranger. What was going on with her? Acting like that... she must be insane. I don't want to say anything in case I'm wrong...

I knew I was right. That girl did do something. She must be possessed too. Before I told Master, I had to be absolutely sure. I paid close attention to dirt and crumbs on the kitchen floor. She had that broom with her, that she made herself. Once she entered the kitchen, the floor was clean. The crumbs and dirt disappeared on their own. She began to sweep, but I saw through it. She wasn't sweeping; the possessed lunatic was lying.

I told Master.

--- Duke's Perspective ---

Another magician uprising! There was one a few years ago, and now one more. It was often slaves and the like that forgot their station and acted like this... but they were useful when they obeyed. My teachers told me what to do, and I did as I was instructed.

The same thing that my father, his before him, his before him, until time not remembered had done. I looked at the magician's core, now embedded in a necklace along with a few dozen others that looked the same except for the cores being different types of stone. Ruby, granite, rose quartz, jet, wulfenite, howlite, and now hematite, just to name a few.

They were all made examples of, but people just don't seem to understand. Insanity leads to disobedience, and disobedience can spread from one to another easily. Then entire villages go insane and become possessed, and have to be purged for the sake of society. I was very glad my instructors taught me all this, so it wouldn't get that bad again.