Chapter 369 - The Muse, the Musclehead, and the Magus

The homunculus known to the public as Claire Augustus rose with the morning sun. She sat up in her bed at first light, feigning a few moments of sleepiness while her maids waited on the other side of her silken canopy. The fakery was an absolute necessity. She had to play Claire’s part, and the material, weaved by the finest Kryddarian craftsmen, was thin enough for the maids to observe her directly. Knowing that, she snapped to attention after exactly 1.38 seconds of spacing out. She lightly shook her head and looked directly at the nearest servant, signalling that it was time to draw the curtain.

All three of the ladies by her bedside got to work immediately. One began making her bed, while another helped her up and led her to the mirror in front of the dresser. Her nightgown was quickly removed, replaced by a gown with an awfully short skirt, while her hair was carefully curled. The more elaborate style would have been impossible when she first took Claire’s place. But like the original, the replacement was growing out her hair. She felt bad for the maids, knowing that the longer locks were much more difficult to maintain, but they seemed to enjoy the chore. Even if that weren’t the case, she would have been deadset on it regardless. She wanted to be more like her sister.

Of course, they couldn’t be identical. While Claire was out mowing down enemies—leveling and ascending—Rubia was stuck at home, mowing through her worksheets instead. The construct’s life was certainly less exciting, but she didn’t mind. She experienced the original’s fun every time their minds melded. By going through her sister’s memories, by living out her every fight, she could feel the events as if they had happened to her. She could experience the violence, the thrill, the adrenaline, and the fear full throttle, all in perfect first person.

The psychic link only accounted for half her satisfaction. The rest came from knowing the importance of her role. It was because she had taken Claire’s place that her sister could run rampant.

If the news ever leaked, if the people ever discovered that she was just a doll, a search would surely begin in earnest. The real Claire would eventually be captured, retrieved, and forced to sit through all of her homework and training. Someone had to carry out her duties in her place, and Rubia had long decided that such would be her purpose. She would preserve the true princess’ freedom for as long as the falsehood would hold. She would continue to play the part of a perfect daughter.

After getting dressed and decorated, following the mental reminder, she walked down the hall with her maids and began the day with a morning class.

Her first activity was always physical, and it was to facilitate her movement that she had been dressed in a less modest gown. On some days, the lesson was spearmanship, and on others, it was dancing. But on that particular morning, Rubia was stuck with something a little less fun. Durham, her guard, had simply ordered her to run a lap around the castle. As far as routine tasks went, it was a fairly typical exercise—the castle’s soldiers would run a hundred or so laps each morning as a warm-up—but for a tiny fake halfbreed with a set of utterly pathetic stats, it was a gruelling assignment. The track around the central space was over a dozen kilometres long and it would likely take a full two hours to complete.

Still, she put on her shoes and kicked off the ground. She started with a paced, half-speed jog. She wasn’t a fan of the gradual approach. She wanted to emulate her sister and break into a running start, but she knew better than to waste her stamina. Even with endurance in mind, she was likely to collapse before reaching the end.

She didn’t recognize all of the landmarks along the way. She had only lived in the castle for a few months so far, and it was just the one time a week she ran around it that she observed its exterior; her schedule was so packed that she rarely ever left the usual wing. In that sense, the run doubled as an opportunity, a rare chance to see the room outside her cage.

The property’s walls were still far away, with most of them blocked off by the massive hedges that grew within the gardens. Their height was derived from the size of their expected spectators. Centaurs could grow as tall as four meters, and some thorae were even larger. Hence why they sat precisely at the three meter mark. Though intuition attested otherwise, the height worked just as well for cottontails. The bipedal rabbits were small enough that the shrubs completely eclipsed them, invoking the feel of an emerald forest.

It was only for elves, lamias, and bizarre exceptions like Rubia that it felt a little off. Alas, it couldn’t be helped. The gardener-in-chief was proud of his design and stubborn as a bull; the old elf was unlikely to alter it lest there was a drastic shift in the visitors’ demographics.

The tradition had been unchanged for a thousand years, but it was possible that they would experience such a shift in time. Cadria’s soldiers were ready for an extended war, and the nobility was practically thirsting for blood. That much, she knew from all the parties and private events. Rubia couldn't speak in public, so she was free to listen to whatever she wanted so long as she nodded along when the other ladies addressed her, and most of the time, it was the gossip that caught her ear.

She recalled the most horrifying prediction—a rumour about an upcoming tea shortage—as she came up on the first corner.

Rounding it, she was suddenly struck with a sense of malaise. She shouldn't pinpoint exactly what it was, but something felt wrong. She started turning her head, raising her ears, and scanning the environment for clues as her sister often did, but she couldn't find anything worth noting; the sky was still the same, the gardens looked no different, and the castle was practically pristine. The feeling soon went away, leaving the homunculus to continue her leg-numbing trek undisturbed.

But while her anxiety was easily abated, the same hardly applied to her guard. Roughly a hundred and fifty meters from her location, Durham breathed a sigh as he remarked on the princess’ sharpness with a mangled corpse in his hands. The would-be assassin was no noteworthy fellow, just a peasant with a shoddy bow and no substantial combat experience. It was a wonder how he managed to slip past security.

It was not the first time that he had encountered such a bizarre scenario. Infiltration was at a historical high. Throughout history, there had only ever been four enemies to enter its grounds, each of whom was a monstrous warrior too great for Canterbell’s aegis to hold. That number had quintupled in the last few weeks alone, and nearly every offending individual matched the peasant’s description. They were all nameless weaklings with shoddy weapons, and strangely enough, they were all after the princess.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The whole scenario was so outlandishly ridiculous that Durham was tempted to think it a prank. It made no sense for the incompetents to have invaded the castle grounds. Three airborne soldiers were assigned to every acre of land, and another dozen stood by each of the thirty-five checkpoints. The gates were the only entrances—the only holes through which an entity could invade without disabling all three of the ducal fortresses. So long as even one of them held, the shield was nigh impenetrable.

Though true in many other cases, the soldiers themselves were hardly the weakest link. Each gate had an elite on standby as well as a pair specialized in enemy detection. Their characters were every bit as strong as the men themselves; only the most accomplished, decorated, and passionate patriots were allowed the privilege of overseeing the royal abode. They were the royal guard, and there was not a traitor or dissident among them.

Every coach was thoroughly searched, and every person was carefully inspected, regardless of rank or reason. Even in the seemingly impossible case that someone snuck an assassin through, there would have been some sort of trail to follow. But Durham could find none. It was like the intruders had simply appeared in the places he found them.

It could only have been an elaborate prank and one that Virillius had signed off on no less. But to what end, the guard remained oblivious.

And frankly, uncaring.

His job was to keep her safe. Asking questions was beyond the scope of his responsibility. That particular role was left to a certain grand magus, one that had moved far, far away.

___

The grand magus that had moved far, far away watched the morning sun from atop a dirty windowsill. It had been over half a year since she departed from the capital and returned to her hometown. Sarnium was a tiny settlement of little importance, located roughly seventy-five kilometers from the city of Tornatus. Its headcount was but a pitiful five hundred. Had it not served as Allegra’s origin, it surely would have gone down in history as nothing but another footnote.

The settlement was one of the many that dotted the Aniere, a large river whose headwater could be found in the mountains of Kryddar. Sourced from a magical spring atop a floating island—one of the few natural specimens the Cadrian warships were built to mimic—it flowed through the southeastern parts of Cadria, supplying three of its provinces with fresh water before finding its way out to sea.

Sarnium’s main crops were essential grains and grasses. Barley and timothy were seen most commonly on farms, with cabbages and their derivatives serving to add variety. There were a few meat producers as well, though they were far less common. The amount of food a single cow provided could not possibly match up to the amount they required to grow, lest one were to ignore the animal welfare rules that the nation enforced.

It was a complaint that many of the farmers shared, but Allegra herself cared little. She had never been all too invested in her community or its associated matters. Magic was of far greater importance. And it was precisely to do magic that she was seated where she was.

The magus needed to stay as far from her cauldron as she could without losing sight of its contents. It was a matter of purity; she didn’t want her mana to influence the potion brewing within.

It was a problem she never needed to consider when she was still enlisted in the military. The items she crafted there could be as potent as she wanted. They were still sorted into grades based on precisely how much mana they provided, but there was use for each and every variety. The restoratives she crafted for the town, on the other hand, could only contain so much magic. There were very few capable of ingesting anything worth more than a thousand points and mana potions could only be taken in the proper doses. Correcting a batch that was too potent was a tedious chore more difficult than starting fresh; the amount of time she could spend by the cauldron was even less than it was when working from the ground up, and she had no intention of being responsible for any circuit damage resulting from improper overdosage.

Her eyes naturally drifted south as she waited for the process to finish and settled upon the massive blade protruding from the horizon. It was impossible to miss. The weapon was taller than the city it had unilaterally consumed, with its total length estimated to be roughly two kilometers. It was impossible to say for certain without digging it up, and that was more effort than anyone had deemed worthwhile.

The government’s investigation had proved fairly fruitless. They were able to determine that it was made primarily of true ice with a few hints of another material buried deep underground, but there was little else that they concluded before deciding to back off. The magic within the item was still active, and no one was quite aware of any side effects that it would have on the workers.

Allegra had been among the many who advocated for the investigation’s end. One look, and she had identified its caster, and she knew that she of all people was certainly the type to hold a grudge.

Though her magical spectrometers had shown a set of undeniable results, the cottontail still found herself in disbelief. She couldn’t quite bring herself to believe that it was her. But at the same time, she was not entirely surprised.

Claire was Virilius’ daughter. Violet’s daughter. And in a way, even hers and Durham’s as well.

She had found a way. Just as she had secretly hoped.

But even knowing that, the rabbit pressed a hand to her chest and choked back a sniffle. She knew it was her fault, that she didn’t deserve to cry for what she had done, but she couldn’t stop her ears from drooping and her heart from reacting with a violent start.

She had transformed Virillius’ daughter into the killing machine that he had always wanted, despite having been a firm advocate against her weaponization.

Ironically, it had all stemmed from her violence-averse approach. Allegra had pushed the girl into choosing ritual magic to keep her away from the battlefield and guard her from her father’s machinations. It had seemed like a brilliant idea at the time, but though she had known him for over a thousand years, Allegra had completely failed in his evaluation. Despite her opposing judgement, he had gone ahead and used his daughter all the same.

She was the only one to blame. She had been one of the only three people capable of steering Virillius on course. But like all the others, she had criminally refrained.

Her lips trembled every time she looked upon the celestial blade. She could feel it, piercing her chest, parting her ribs, and ripping her heart to shreds. It was her fault. Tornatus was her fault. Claire was her fault. And she needed to do something to right the wrongs she wrought.