“-ot be possible for a child”
“-Special, more power than I’ve-”
I could hear some people talking but I could barely make out their voices and strained to listen.
“She almost destroying the whole castle. I’ve never seen an awakening like that.”
“Yeah most are just a small burst of power and then passing out like she did. Her mother told me she was ranked as goddess, even modified her memories and placed seals on her power with a blessing from Terran to try and prevent this sort of thing from happening.”
“Oh my. are you su-”
I wasn’t sure I heard correctly, my head is killing me. Must be dreaming.
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Fuck my head hurts! I open my eyes and nearly puke. The world is awash is different colors than couldn’t possibly be natural, It takes a moment before I remember what it is. Magic. This must be aetheric sight, the ability to see the flow of natural mana and the magic of spells and living beings. I look around the room I’m in and notice that there’s enchantments on almost everything, from the lamps to the walls, even the carpet and the bed I’m lying on.
After a few minutes of looking around the room I turn my sight inward and look at my insides and see why it is that my body seems so much stronger than it should be, my nervous system is practically glowing like the sun from the mana flowing through it. My bones, muscles, even my skin has been heavily infused with mana, every cell is filled with densely packed mana. I must have done it through instinct even before I could consciously use my magic. For a few minutes I then look at the condition of myself and see that, though I’ve been eating well my body needs more nutrients to grow properly so I get to work.
I think about the books I’ve read and find it funny that they all say that it’s not possible to enchant living things, but all I have to do is enchant my DNA for what I want to do, Infusing the body with magic is just a natural instinct by those that have enough of it. Like enchanting but without any special abilities aside from enhanced natural functions. Why do I know all this? That seems to be something I ask myself a lot. And now that I think about it I shouldn’t be able to see things this small with my aetheric sight at all. Whatever.
As I finish my modifications, I notice that there’s another person in the room. Gramps is sitting in a chair next to the bed reading a book.
“Hey gramps, I’m hungry you don’t happen to have any food do you?” He looks startled for a moment before he responds.
“Haha Kiddo you gave me a scare. I’ll have someone bring you up something. Not surprised you’re hungry you’ve been out for almost a week already.”
“Oh wow, I guess that makes sense though. That much mana flooding my body so fast overloaded a lot of things.”
“Do you remember anything?” He asks with a worried expression. I take a moment to look at him with my aetheric sight before replying.
“Yep. Magic.” I carefully get out of bed -I feel great for having been out for a week- and walk up to gramps and put my hand on his chest and close my eyes to concentrate. I can see why he is so sick, not only is his mana is working incredibly hard to repair massive damages to his lungs and heart, his whole ribcage looks like it had been crushed at one point there’s also some kind of foreign mana that’s definitely not his, it reminds me of death for some reason. I infuse his system with my own mana carefully doing what I can, trying to isolate the foreign mana but I can tell that it’s just been too long since the injury to properly heal it, like he said he really is dying just really slowly. After a few minutes I open my eyes and find everything is blurry, I must have started crying, gramps has his own eyes closed and is breathing slow heavy breaths with a peaceful expression on his face. He opens his eyes and looks at me and smiles, I just give him a hug returning it he says quietly.
“Thanks Kiddo you really are something special”
After a few moments in silence gramps clears his throat
“Uhm well let's’ go see about getting you some food then”
“Kay”
We exit the room and head down the hall, it seems to be about midday judging from the sun. Down a flight of stairs and around a corner we go through a familiar set of doors and are in the sitting room once more, and Eledora is in the same chair she was when we first arrived.
“Ah so the little princess has returned from her slumber haha” she laughs at her own joke, I do too. I had read a few books about princesses falling into a deep sleep only being able to be awoken by their ‘prince charming’.
“I don’t think gramps is my prince charming haha and there’s no way I could be a princess, I’m just some commoner little girl.” Gramps and Eledora give a bit of a forced laugh and share a look before gramps asks about getting some food for me.
“Absolutely. Herven could you get the young miss something to eat from the kitchen please”
“Of course my Lady”
Eledora pours me some tea as she inquires on my condition.
“I’m actually feeling really good, better than I think I ever have before actually.”
“You sure gave us a scare with your awakening”
“Yeah I’m sorry about that, I felt weird after reading that book, I probably shouldn’t have done the training session but I had no idea that I would react like that.” I glance outside and see that there’s a small crater where the training yard was and there’s no trees left at all and all the grass is gone as well. “I’m sorry about all the mess to, after you invited us to stay and everything, I’ll do whatever I can to make it up to you Lady Eledora.” She just waves her hand dismissively.
“Don’t worry about it little one, It’s just some trees and some grass no harm done. And as to making up for anything, how about after you eat something you go and rescue the other children from their training.” She points to the far side of the yard where they are all getting beat up by their own version of gramps’ dolls. I giggle, I remember having troubles fighting one on one with them.
“Kay sounds like a plan then.” We sit and chat for a little while and then Herven arrives with the food. I eat it all and ask for seconds, and if I could have at least three times as much as he brought if that's okay. He looks shocked and turns to Eledora.
“Are you sure you should eat so much kiddo? you were in bed for almost a whole week.” I nod.
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“I’ll be fine, my body needs a lot more nutrients because of all the mana that I can use now. Plus I made some alterations to my ability to process foods and drinks, I’ll be able to absorb almost 100% of everything I consume.” Everyone just stares at me like I have a second head or something.
“I know, enchanting living beings or even using magic beyond sending mana through the body to enhance it or heal shouldn’t be possible but it was one of the many things that I remembered about magic when I woke up. I’m sure it has something to do with why I can’t remember anything before I started journeying with gramps but I’m not worried about it. I’m patient things will work out in the end I’m sure.” There must be a good reason for the memory block so like how I had grown accustomed to not asking questions of gramps I’ll just let it go and hope I get my memories back one day.
“W-well if you're positive, Herven you can go ahead and fulfill her request.”
“As you wish my Lady” He bows and heads to the kitchen.
“So Kiddo, what kind of magic do you remember?” Gramps asks me.
“Hmm well, that’s a bit tough to answer see, All the spells I read about when I went through the temple libraries, They were all wrong, wasteful and just poorly done spell formations. I remember things like that. Oo.” I pull out the little herb pouch gramps gave me. “I remember how to do this.” I make a quick but complicated spell, binding it to an enchantment on my person. A small black circle opens up underneath the pouch barely above my hand. The pouch disappears and then the circle does too. Both gramps and Eledora just gasp and gramps starts stuttering
“Th-Th-That’s Beyond Incredible Kiddo Oh gods spacial magic has been lost for nearly a millenia!”
“I know, I read about it. Why hasn’t anyone copied the enchantments on items like the herb pouch.” I ask as I reach back into the sub-dimensional storage to grab the pouch again. Handing it to gramps so he can look at it closely.
“You can see the enchantment on this Kiddo?”
“Yeah I can see the enchantments on everything actually, the window there has reinforcement and anti-magic, as well as thermal protection and a few different types of light filters. There’s enchantments on a lot of things in the house, lamps, doors, the walls, carpets, even the bed I woke up on earlier.” Gramps hands the back the pouch, I just throw it over my shoulder and it disappears again.
“Kiddo don’t go showing of that spell there to the world a lot of people would try and kidnap you to learn your secret, and since I think you're likely the only person that can use your aetheric sight like that they would try and use you to make things for them.” I giggled when he said ‘kidnapped’ since he gave me the name Kidd. He just got extra serious though not seeing the pun like I did.
“Of course gramps. Hmm is my aetheric sight really that unique? For some reason it just feels natural to me.”
“Yes dear it is indeed.” Eledora chimes in “See, enchanters have to make tools so that they can make smaller runic formations on items and even then they have troubles because they are not able to go below a certain size.” She pulls out a small dagger and sets in on the table in front of me.
“That dagger has the smallest enchantments that can be done, this was made by the best elven craftsmen known in Everloss and they are the best enchanters known in the whole world.”
I pick up the dagger and look at the runic structures, they are huge really. I can’t believe this is the best out there. There’s only four enchantment on the whole thing and it takes up all the available space on the blade and some on the hilt. Reinforcement, self sharpening, magic piercing and freezing. All mediocre quality in my opinion as well. I take a look at the sheath for it and see that it just has Reinforcement and opposing effects to counter the blades effects so it isn’t destroyed when being used to house the dagger.
“Lady Eledora do you mind if I fix the enchantments on this?” Her eyes go wide.
“F-fix? Whatever could be wrong with them?”
“Well no offense to the craftsmen who made these but they're just really poorly done, sloppy, inefficient, far larger than necessary and only mediocre in strength. Seriously I feel like this was made by a six year old.” I list off the things that I see wrong with it. Gramps bursts out laughing.
“HAHAHAHA if Eindar heard you say that his old heart would give out on him HAHAHAHA!”
“You old goat that's not funny. Kiddo, honey I know your aetheric sight is really good, and you can use spacial magic but the man that made that dagger, Eindar is almost 2500 years old and has been enchanting for nearly his entire life, I mean you no offense but I do not believe you can make it any better than it is.” If I didn’t think back on what I had said as gramps was laughing I might have been offended.
“It’s no trouble I realise it was very rude of me to say that I’m sorry.” I say somewhat abashed
“Here Kiddo try this one then.” Gramps pulls out an ordinary steel knife. “Go ahead and enchant that with the best you can. Eledora are Metelai’s enchanting tools in his study?”
“They should be yes Herv-”
“It’s Okay.” I interrupt her. “Remember I said I enchanted myself? that’s the other problem, why should you need any tools to do the actual enchanting?”
I start to work on the ordinary knife, it’s only about four inches long, first reinforcement, making it far stronger than ordinary steel, then self sharpening. Magic absorbing and piercing, freezing and heating that will quickly alternate on contact with the blade. To finish it up I carve in addition runic lines to make it so it gathers ambient mana and then a limiter so it won't overcharge itself through the passive function or absorption abilities. Topping it all off with a full charge of mana. If I had some silver or gold, even some gemstones, preferably something crystaline I could fill the runic lines with it to make it even more efficient and effective.
“Done.” I hand it back to gramps.
“Huh, I can tell that there’s magic to the blade but I can’t see a single trace of any runes, and I have pretty good aetheric sight. Let’s test this out.” He pulls out an identical knife and presses the blades together, the one I enchanted starts to cut through the other one like it’s butter before the non enchanted blade just shatters.
“HOLY SHIT!” Gramps yells clearly shocked.
“Watch your language you old goat there’s a child present. That was very amazing though.”
“Kiddo do you realise that you just made this knife -cost me ten coppers- worth at least two maybe three thousand gold?” Wow I might just have to become an enchanter then. Nope I don’t want to give anyone super weapons.
“Really that’s pretty awesome. But I don’t think I’ll end up selling anything I enchant, too many people would likely use the items for things I don’t want them to be used for. Power corrupts and all that.”
“Wisely spoken Kidd, but use this to your advantage, once you're older and we get you outfitted with armor and a weapon you can make ‘em as strong as you want. Also one of these days I’ll show you the hazards of too much mana being used in one area at the same time. Enchanted items tend to let off less wasted mana.”
“That’s true, Oo more food!” Herven comes back with a few plates stacked with all kinds of different delectable dishes. I start shoveling it down as soon as he sets it on the table barely managing to say “Thanks” between bites.
Gramps and Eledora chat about the knife I enchanted as I eat, while stuffing my face I gather the shards of the broken knife and put it in my storage since everyone else forgot about it in their excitement. I’m about to start on my last plate of food when the three other kids stumble inside and sit at the table. They look beat, literally. I glance outside and see the three dolls they were training on in pieces off in the corner of the yard. I’m not really hungry anymore so I slide my last plate over in front of them.
They start eating right away then the boy looks up and notices me, promptly getting up from his seat followed quickly by the girls. They bow their heads and the boy says.
“I’m sorry for being so rude to you before Lady Kidd, I understand that you are far stronger than me and regardless if you're of noble or common birth it matters little when you are clearly deserving of a noble title.” The two girls chime in with “Sorry Lady Kidd” when he’s done. I’m slightly shocked by the apology but recover quickly and accept it.
“It’s no problem, we’ll have to get to training you guys a bit more seriously though” They nod and retake their seats and continue eating. Obviously exhausted.
“I think that’s enough for today, when you kids are done eating why don’t the four of you just go out and play like the children you are?” says Eledora.
“Okay gramma we’ll show Kidd our fort in the woods” Says the boy
“That is a good idea Stavin, no weapons though, I do not want you children to hurt yourselves playing at being soldiers.”
“Yes gramma” They quickly finished up their food and Stavin invites me along.
“Come on Kidd I think you’ll like this.” I get up to follow them but gramps stops me.
“Here Kiddo since you made it you can have this, I don’t have much use for it anyhow.” He hands me the knife I enchanted. “Thanks gramps.” I drop it into my storage and wave at the adults and catch up to Stavin and the girls.