Sometime later, Eliza awoke to a groggy hazy covering her mind. Slowly raising her head, she looked around the room full of stuffed creatures in confusion. After a few moments, she remembered where she was and why she had passed out. As far as she could tell, she was alone.
She gradually uncurled herself, her muscles protesting after holding that position for too long. Almost immediately, she saw the first of the changes to her body, her hands. Her fingers had slightly elongated, and her nails had grown into sharp points. Additionally, her normally tanned skin had become several shades paler.
In stark contrast to her now pale skin was the dark lines etched into it. They wrapped around her arm, interlocking with each other as they traveled up her arms in a spiral pattern and disappeared into the sleeve of her robe. Eliza knew what they were, mana veins, essentially a paved road for the mana to travel through as it circulated around her body. This made casting spells easier and faster, and without even looking, she could tell that they were spread across her torso and legs as well. She could vaguely feel the mana moving through them now that she was aware of it. At one point in time, she had almost reached the point of developing them. That is until she got exiled.
A bitter taste lingered in her mouth. She had wanted them before, but she didn’t want to get them like this.
Taking in a deep shuddering breath, pushed herself to her feet, realizing that it no longer hurt to breathe. She took a step and stumbled forward, her leg propelling her farther than she anticipated. Readjusting herself, she took carefully measured steps toward the full-length mirror. Her mouth was unnaturally dry, and her stomach curled with every unfamiliar step. Her body was weird to move around in, feeling almost as if it wasn’t her own. Both of those combined told her that something had happened to her bones and muscles, but she didn’t exactly know what.
It took a bit, but she finally made it to the mirror. Appearance-wise, she looked mostly the same save for two major differences, other than the pale skin, of course. One was the mana veins that were visible across her arms and extending out of the collar of her robe. They circled up the back of her neck and disappeared into her hair, with the exception of singular tendrils splitting off from the rest to cross under her ears and stop beneath her eyes just below her cheekbones. The other major difference was the thin white horns poking out of her black hair on either side of her forehead.
She reached up with a slightly trembling hand and drew her finger across one, finding it to be smooth to the touch. Grabbing it, she tugged, and the horn moved with her head as she pulled it side to side, proving that it wasn’t going anywhere.
Her hand fell limply to her side. The more she looked into the mirror, the less of…her that she saw. Her breath caught in her throat as anxiety began to well up. She closed her eyes and stumbled away from the mirror, only to misstep and knock down some of the stuffed Demons as she fell to the ground.
She sat on the ground on trembling hands and knees, dragging in deep, measured breaths to try and calm herself. It took her a few moments, but she managed to reduce the trembling in her legs to the point she felt like she could stand again. Opening her eyes, she picked up a couple of the stuffed Demons and pushed herself to her feet. Making her way back to the pile, she started to replace them when something in the pile caught her eye, which caused her gut to drop.
Reaching in, she grabbed ahold of the handle of a weapon which she drew out. The fact that it was wrapped in cloth didn’t hide what it was from Eliza. A scimitar, one that she knew was commonly used by the large nation to the south of the empire. Her hands began to tremble again, and she replaced the blade where she had found it. She then covered it with a stuffed Demon so that she could no longer see it.
The room suddenly felt stuffy as she looked around it once again. She could almost swear that she saw the handles of several more weapons within the piles. Her chest felt tight, and she felt like she could hardly breathe. She needed to get out of the room. Staggering to the door, she opened it after a couple of tries before she stumbled out. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it, sucking in a deep breath of the crisp cold air. Tilting her head back against the door, she breathed until her racing heart had calmed a bit.
Once she was relatively calm, she started considering what to do. She had no desire to go back into the room, and even if she did, she doubted that she could fall asleep again. Isradine had yet to return, and she had no idea how long her transformation had taken this time. She needed to do something, anything, to keep her mind off of what was happening to her. So, she decided to focus on figuring out what she was going to do moving forward.
A familiar sense of calm fell over her as she began to list off the things she needed to focus on within her mind. It was important to familiarize herself with this building because it was likely that she would spend a lot of time here for the foreseeable future. It was also a good idea to familiarize herself with the Demons who worked around the building and learn more about what might or might not annoy them. The last thing she needed would be to unintentionally insult them and make them hate her. From the sounds of it, she would be taught things with Isradine and Demitrus, but she had no idea when that would occur.
Most of all, she needed to familiarize herself with her rapidly changing body. A flash of anxiety surged up at the thought, but she squashed it before it could threaten her new state of mind. She may not like the changes, but since the changes had already happened, it would be a waste not to reap what benefits she could. The thing that would help her the most with that was training. To put it mildly, she had fallen out of the habit due to recent events. The thought of starting a familiar pattern made it a little easier for her to breathe.
Decision made, she left the room and started wandering the house in search of a place where she could train. The house was silent save for the occasional creaking of wood caused by her as she walked. Each creak sent her heart pounding in her chest, worried that she might wake someone or something else up. She was surprised at how big the house turned out to be, as it took her a bit to find an open-roof square courtyard, different from the one that she had arrived in.
She descended into the courtyard and found the ground to be made up of soft dirt. Making her way to the center of the courtyard, she looked up to see that the previously glowing crystals that covered the ceiling of the cavern had gone dark. She sucked in a deep breath of the crisp, slightly damp, night air and then began stretching. It didn’t take long for her to finish, but she needed to get creative with her legs since several of the stretches naturally wouldn’t work the same way. After figuring it out, she stood back up, feeling remarkably looser.
As a final prep, she went on a light run around the courtyard to warm herself up. A light run turned out to be harder than she thought because her legs kept propelling her faster than she intended. Eventually, she managed to maintain a controlled, steady pace for a couple of laps around the courtyard.
Finally ready, she came to a stop in the middle of the courtyard, breathing slightly harder from the exertion. Then, summoning her Naginata, she began going through all the forms that had been drilled into her from a young age. The first time through, she had to adjust several of the forms to account for the change in balance and stance due to her legs. As a result, it took her quite a while to get through all of them. The second time was much faster, albeit she was still rather clumsy by her own standards. By the third time through, she had managed to hammer out most of the problems. And by the fourth, her surroundings started to fade away as she got immersed in the movements.
The blade hummed as it sliced through the air, the wind scattering around Eliza as the Naginata blurred in her hands while she twirled it around. In her mind's eye, she cut down foe after foe, causing the built-up anxiety and fear to gradually melt away as she lost herself in what had been passed onto her by her family. She finished off with the last form and came to a stop. Her heart pounded in her chest, and she dragged in large lungfuls of air. She was covered in sweat and was surprised because, normally, by this point, she would be exhausted. Instead, energy coursed through her body, practically begging for a release.
Within her, the mana responded to her emotions and made itself known, calling for her to use it. And with that call came the realization to Eliza that she hadn’t yet incorporated it into her fighting. Yes, she had used it in a couple of key moments, but that wasn’t the same thing.
Calling on the mana, it eagerly answered, effortlessly flowing through the new mana veins. Barely a second later, the mana poured out into the Naginata. She instantly stopped the flow and drew some of it back in. It wouldn’t do to inadvertently harm Isradine by using up all of their mana.
After controlling it, she began to go through the forms once more. The blade effortlessly cut through the air, a shimmering trail of black shadow intermixed with violet following in its wake. Whenever Eliza would reach the end of a set of movements, she sent a controlled burst of mana into the final move, which caused a blade of dark mana to leap from the blade into the air in the form of a shadowy arc. It would fly halfway across the courtyard before unraveling and hanging in the air where it had stopped. To her surprise, Eliza felt a weak connection between her and the mana. It pushed on the borders of her mind as if it was waiting for her instruction once more.
Eliza was nearing the end of her forms at this point and so decided to try out her theory. She moved through the last set and then reached out, mentally calling to all the ambient mana in the air to gather to her blade. And respond to her call it did, surging into her blade as she swung her last attack. She had her blade pointed to the ground parallel to her black leg when she started her swing. Her final move was an upward slash which she executed, the tip of the blade passing a mere hair's breadth from the ground.
However, before she even got halfway through the move, the mana leaped from her blade and into the ground to form a long dark shadow that extended nearly to the edge of the courtyard. The ground changed, thin purplish veins forming into the dirt where ever the shadow touched, and Eliza felt almost as if she could manipulate said dirt. She reached out with her mind and directed the magic within the ground. It shifted, beginning to move and-
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“What are you doing?” A voice demanded right behind her.
She jumped in fright, immediately spinning around to see Isradine floating there. Behind Eliza, the dirt that was beginning to shift resettled, and the mana, now undirected, began to slowly come back to her. A good 80% of it returned to Eliza, but the rest had disappeared somewhere through her training.
“Training,” she said, wiping her brow with the back of her hand and taking a deep breath to try and calm the pounding in her chest. A heart racing solely due to her recent exercise and definitely not in part because Isradine had suddenly appeared.
“That was patently obvious.” Isradine said in a deadpan voice, before asking, her tone becoming a bit lighter, “But why? You’ve hardly slept a few hours, and yet you're out here swinging your sharp stick around while imbuing it with mana. Couldn’t you have at least waited until tomorrow?”
“... I felt a little restless after this,” Eliza said, pointing to the horns that now adorned her head. “And these,” she indicated towards the mana veins that crawled across her skin. “...I also couldn’t stay in that room any longer. So I decided to ‘swing my sharp stick,’ as you so eloquently called it, to take my mind off things. Besides, I made sure to control the amount of mana that I used, so what’s the problem?” she asked, allowing her Naginata to dissipate and folding her arms.
Isradine silently regarded Eliza for a few moments, paying particular interest to her new transformations before sighing, “I see. I wasn’t angry about you using mana or training if that's how it sounded. Rather, my conversation with my grandfather was interrupted because something was possibly forcing you to use that much mana. So I told him something was happening and rushed over here to see you flinging it into the air. Forgive me if I sounded a little annoyed.”
“Sorry for causing such a worry; I only thought to experiment with the mana since I’m probably going to have to live with it for a good long while. I didn’t intend to interrupt your time with your grandfather. Is he rushing over here?” Eliza asked, worried that she might’ve sent the entire house into an uproar.
Isradine sighed again, “I doubt it. He likely already knew or was immediately informed that you were here the moment I left. He probably let me go because he enjoys watching drama.”
“I see,” Eliza said, sighing in relief. She highly doubted many of the Demons around the house would look favorable on her if she was to send them on high alert in the middle of her first night here. They may not be able to kill or even harm her, but they could do countless ‘harmless’ things that would make her life miserable if they didn’t like her.
While she had been treated well so far, she was under no illusion that it was for any other reason than her connection to Isradine, who was attached to her grandfather.
“What was wrong with the room?” Isradine asked.
“...What?” Eliza asked, blinking as she refocused on Isradine.
“You mentioned that you couldn’t stay in the room any longer. What's wrong with it?” Isradine asked.
Eliza slightly tightened her hand around her arm, “...What was the deal with the weapons?”
“You saw those?”
Eliza nodded.
“They were gifts from my grandfather. He wanted to educate me on different weapons that I might need to fight against. But what’s wrong with the weapons?”
Eliza clenched her teeth, a flash of anger flooding over her, “What's wrong with the weapons? What isn’t wrong with the weapons.” She growled.
“That… doesn't really explain anything. Mind elaborating?” Isradine said, taken aback by Eliza’s sudden hostility.
“How many souls are wandering because of your grandfather’s ‘gifts’” Eliza snarled, her voice rising in anger.
“Control yourself.” Isradine immediately said, her voice hard and cold. “I get that you're angry about something, but yelling doesn’t tell me anything. If you can’t control your emotions, I’m going to leave, and we can continue this later when you calm down.”
Eliza clenched her teeth, but still, she took a deep breath before she said in a steely tone, “And whose fault is that? Even I know getting this angry is irrational, but because I have to deal with this-” Eliza indicated to the changes that had occurred across her body. “-I hardly feel like I can control myself now.”
Isradine exhaled, “First, let's go sit down.” she said, floating to the edge of the courtyard and stopping next to the wooden platform. Hesitantly, Eliza followed behind. When she got there, Isradine indicated for her to sit down.
Eliza glared at her, waiting for her to speak. Isradine sighed.
“Work with me here. Like it or not, we’re both in this for the long haul. I would prefer our relationship to at least be cordial until we achieve our revenge.”
Isradine stopped speaking, and both of them stared each other down for a few tense moments. Eventually, Eliza sighed and sat down, massaging the bridge of her nose.
“Thank you, now. Can you please explain what you mean by wandering souls?”
“...In the Silverian Empire, if one dies in battle and isn’t buried with their weapon, their souls aren’t accepted into the next life and instead cursed to wander the land until their weapon is returned to them.” Eliza said, eyes affixed to the ground.
“And so, because of the weapons stashed in my room, all the people who those weapons belonged to are now wandering?”
Eliza nodded.
“...I see, and what would you like me to do about it. I can’t very well track down the graves of those people since I don’t even know their names.”
Eliza looked up at Isradine in surprise, “...You’re not against returning gifts from your grandfather?”
“A cordial relationship between the two of us is far more valuable than some study aids my grandfather gifted me more than 15 years ago. But that doesn’t tell me what you want me to do.”
“...There’s a ritual that can be performed by any priest of Alderan to send the weapon back to its owner if a body cannot be found.”
“..Well, for obvious reasons, that isn’t possible right now. Would you be content if we waited to do that until we’re ready to go after your uncle?”
That was a far better deal than she was expecting, heck she didn’t even expect Isradine to humor her. She hadn’t even been meaning to go off on Isradine like she did. It… just happened. Slowly she nodded to Isradine, feeling guilty for acting like a brat.
“Wonderful. Onto the second issue.” Isradine said, and Eliza inwardly cringed. Now that she was cooling down, many better ideas on how she could’ve handled this flooded her mind.
“As for the changes to your body. I can’t do anything about it. At some point, you’ll need to come to terms with it. Until then, how about we focus on the next steps one by one? Will that be alright?”
Isradine’s words pricked at Eliza’s conscience, and she nodded demurely, “...Sorry, and... thanks for being patient with me,” She said.
“Don’t worry about it.” Isradine sighed in relief, “I expected something like this when I sought out to make a contract with you. Plus, this much patience is nothing when you helped me escape from 15 years of captivity.”
“Right…so what is that next step you mentioned… how powerful are you or were you? I’m struggling to get a frame of reference with what I’ve seen.”
“How much do you know about Demon ranks?” Isradine asked.
Eliza thought back on what she had been taught. As knowledgable as her tutors may have been, she doubted they knew more than an actual Demon. Furthermore, She had been taught that the Demons were uncivilized bloodthirsty monsters with little to no structure. But everything she had seen so far in the Demon realm, while it was more…primitive in its expression, definitely wasn’t ‘uncivilized.’ If her mother were here, she would encourage Eliza to keep her mind open to learning more.
So she said, “The basics that were taught in the empire, but you probably know more since, you know, you're a Demon. Why don’t you explain it to me?”
“Alright, first, we have the Demon Soldier class. This consists of any Demon who doesn’t have much control over their mana and has few, if any, followers. Typically they're children or really weak Demons. This is the class you and Demitrus fall into, as well as most of the Demons you’ve fought up until now,” Isradine said, holding up a single shadowy tendril. The tendril then split into two.
“The next level is the Demon Count class. This consists of any Demon who can control their mana and have a decently sized following, A decently sized following is generally considered to be at least 100 soldier Demons. Minotaur and The Overmaster fall into this rank.”
“Next, we have the Demon Duke, which is much the same but with 10 Demon counts under them, and it follows the same pattern, requiring 10 of the previous rank with the following levels king and Emperor. In the Shadow Weaver clan, a Duke can saturate the environment around them with shadow mana and bend it to their whim. A king can do the same, but they can influence everything in a mile radius around them with the addition that they can access the realm of shadows. For your reference, Abernach is approaching Duke in rank, he has the followers, but his mana control is too lacking for him to be considered one. Grandfather and the other patriarchs are Demon Dukes, and the clan leader, last I checked, was almost a Demon King.
“Finally, Emperor class Demons theoretically could cover an entire kingdom in their mana, but it's been a really long time since anyone’s reached that level. So long in fact, that they’re basically considered myths at this point. Does that all make sense?”
“Yes, but where do you fit in all of that?” Eliza asked.
“I… was the next most likely to become a Duke class Demon. I have the mana control if I can get the mana, but in order for that, I need followers. It's not really surprising the ones I had went somewhere else after me being gone for 15 years.”
“And Salendal?”
Isradine scoffed, “He was the next in line. Though he must be more incompetent than I thought because even after 15 years, he still isn't a Duke.
“I see. I’m assuming my next step then is to become a Count.”
“That's right. However, right now, you should focus on figuring out how to differentiate between your mana and my mana. Right now, it responds so eagerly to you because I've directed it too. But that won't last forever. Followers come after you have the strength.”
“Very well," Eliza said, standing back up to go continue training, "might as well get started then,”
“Actually, “ Isradine said, stopping Eliza, “ It’s nearly early morning, and we have our lesson soon. If the instructor is who I think it is, you don’t want to show up to the lesson looking like that. He’s very…particular about cleanliness. So you should go clean yourself up before then.”
Eliza immediately understood, having had her fair share of particular instructors growing up. “That's fine with me.” She said, standing up and making her way out of the courtyard. It didn’t take her long to find her way back to the baths with Isradine’s help. Once there, the bath followed a similar process as before. Only it didn’t take her nearly as long as the previous one.
She got out to find that her previous clothes had been exchanged once again while she hadn’t been looking.
“When do the shadow servants sleep?” Eliza asked as she dressed.
“The shadow servants you’ve seen don’t need sleep since they are minor constructs entirely controlled by grandfather’s mana. You wouldn’t have seen it, but underneath all the shadows are some pretty complex glyphs carved into small wooden figures.” Isradine said, floating lazily in a circle around Eliza’s head.
“Wouldn’t that be pretty expensive mana-wise?”
“Not if you're smart about it. The simpler the task you need, the simpler the glyphs needed and, in extension, the less mana it costs to power. However, they aren’t able to do anything but the tasks given to them, so grandfather has regular servants that handle things that require diverse approaches.”
“I see, ” Eliza said as she finished dressing and stepped out of the room.
Isradine directed her down the halls until she eventually came to a room. Sliding the door open, she stepped inside.