Seyran laughed. A resounding sound in this otherwise quiet room; it was mesmerizing and pleasant to the ears but it wasn’t inviting to laugh back, for it was without mirth and tinged with too much sorrow. Not knowing what to do, Yenaigai lowered his head even more, not taking any chance to meet her eyes. Somehow, he got the impression that his mistress wasn’t laughing at all but crying and he didn’t know how to make her stop.

Wasn’t it funny? Making her life easier they said. Indeed! Been dead was so much easier than being alive! She laughed for a while, before suddenly feeling a little dizzy, the room seemingly spinning. She gripped her right knee. 

“Yenaigai” she called with a weak voice she had trouble recognizing as her own. She lacked way too much mana right now! “I’m going to sleep, put out the candles,” she said more harshly than intended. The light was pricking at her eyes making her a little snappy.

Yenaigai bit his lower lip, not voicing his complains. ‘Sleep?’ He wanted to say. After sleeping for so long she still had it in her to continue even more? Ah, then where was the need to wake up at all. But he said none of that, and diligently extinguished all the candles’ fire, wishing for once she would sleep like a normal person and not make it months or years.

“Wake me up at dawn… no actually wake me up when the sun will be the highest in the sky” she ordered when the last candle was snuffed, appeasing her martyrized sight.

Happiness burst in Yenaigai’s heart. This was clearly saying that she will be awake tomorrow right?

"Yes, this servant definitely will” he answered light-hearted from delight before sliding the rice paper to go.

Left alone in the dark, Seyran clenched and unclenched her fists several times. The more she went on, the less she could use force to close them properly. She was too frail to even clench her fists correctly! She let a long sigh and lay down on the big bed. Her eyes closed, slowing her breath; she breathed in and gently breathed out, trying to gauge her mana’s quantity.

In Unzu, mana was equal to one’s energy. It flowed through blood, muscle, bone, and skin and was one of the most important parts in been a wizard or a witch. And although one could live without ever needing to control it or even feel it, facts remained that the weaklings were bound to die in this world where might was right. So people would struggle to increase their mana.

It was their mana that let them have the ability to create what their mind was thinking about, be it an element like fire or a weapon like a sword. That same mana was used for summoning familiar which then would feed on it. And in their earlier years, Unzu’s inhabitants would often use mana to strengthen their bodies making them resistant to all kind of natural aggressions so that little diseases, hunger or all those tiny things that were lethal to those without mana, were bearable for them. That being said, once the strengthening started, a good portion of mana would be required and even against the user’s will a certain amount of it –and if need be the whole of it- would prioritize the body’s wellbeing over anything other.

For a witch, to lack mana was equal to be deprived of energy. Without any energy left in her body, how was she to move? Or was it that this body didn’t have mana at all to start with? But, Seyran realized, it wasn’t that she couldn’t feel her mana. Mana flowed through her whole body however the quantity was extraordinarily small. And given her state, she could guess that it was just a quantity enough to keep this body alive even in her comatose state. Like she was right now, even the smallest movements were very tiring.

For someone who had previously an unlimited quantity of mana this was really challenging.

Seyran opened her eyes and for a time stared at the darkness that surrounded her. She closed them again. Tomorrow morning, she would see what she could do about it, for now, she was just too exhausted.

***

“Mistress, mistress” Yenaigai called for the third time, panicking a little more with each passing second. He had been so happy the day before when he heard noise coming from her room after almost two years of overbearing silence. Yet now, here she was again, not responding back to him calling her name –or was it that he dreamt everything that happened? It wouldn’t be the first time!

‘No, no, impossible’ he reasoned. He had himself cleaned the room from those vases’ fragments this morning. So of course, his mistress had woken up yesterday in the middle of the night and of course, she would wake up again today.

“Mistress” he tried once again, louder this time.

It couldn’t be that she once again fainted right? He was debating if he should touch her to see if a physical touch would be more effective when he heard her sleepy voice moaned lightly before she unhurriedly sat up. Yenaigai let out a sigh of relief, looking at her with a much calmer state.

Her long black hair spilled over her shoulder and her oversized robe opened a little more than it already had the night before. She was thin, yes, but not ugly. And even though with her corpulence it felt like a child in her mother’s clothes it was still a somewhat sensual sight. There was a vivid contrast between her dark hair and her pale face which greatly outline her sky-blue eyes. She had a small nose and thin lips, which were slightly cut from the cold maybe. Her cheeks were almost nonexistent but not quite to the point of making her cheekbone visible.

Seyran’s gaze was unfocused as she was still feeling a little dizzy from her small movement. But after a while sleepiness evaded her and her mind rose from its slumber.

“Mistress’s bath is ready.” He said happily, a smile adorning his face, turning his handsome feature into a sight to behold.

Now with the sun’s light, she could see him better. His stature was thin if she was been polite –all skin and bones to be truthful; his long black hair had been tied in a messy bun, letting two strands frame his face. He had charming almond eyes joined by a high nose bridge and an exquisite oval face. However, he was wearing dark tattered clothes which, from the sight of it, had been numerously sewn up again.

“Is that so?” she said noncommittally taking her gaze away.

“It is as hot as mistress likes”.

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If there was anything Yenaigai took pride on, it was on knowing her habits. He headed to the left side of the large bedroom and made the rice paper leading to the small water’s chamber slide.

Seyran got up and each step more painful than the one before made her way into the adjacent room. Yenaigai closed the door behind her, letting her bath alone as she always had. Even when those female servants were still there, his mistress would always chase them away and tend to herself.

It was a really little room. There were just a chamber pot and a tub that took most of the place. Steam was gently floating from it, engulfing the room in a pleasant heat. Her aching body started to feel better even before going in. Taking off those sockets like things from her feet and disrobing herself layer after layer, - silently cursing the use of that many folders - she then put her clothes in the small basin that seemed to be here for that. In another basin near the first, there was a clean towel for when she would be finished.

Naked, she took the time to look at her body properly. There wasn’t much meat anywhere - certainly not on her chest for sure. Her breasts and buttocks were almost nonexistent. For a nineteen years old woman, it was somewhat surprising. And even thought Seyran never held that much consideration in her appearance, she had the itch to use magic to make her body more familiar to herself. Well, she concluded after the whole inspection, it was nothing that continuous good food couldn’t deal with.

She came closer to the tub; its water was starting to boil.

“How is it, mistress?” She heard her servant ask her from the other side of the door. He was waiting for her to say that the heat was sufficient enough so that he could go and extinguish the fire.

Yes, that tub was still on fire. To warm their bath’s water they actually directly put the tub on fire and when the desired temperature would be attained, the fire would then be extinguished and the person could take a bath. The material in which the tub was made of was the sort that, once the fire was snuffed, its edges would cool down making it so that only the water was warm and not its container. The person could then lean against the tube without any danger of being burn.

“Don’t let the fire die out.” Came her reply, before he heard the sound of water moving, seemingly she had entered the tub.

Her servant was a little startled. Even though this princess had always loved burning things, she still couldn’t take it if the temperature kept on growing but now, it seemed she was fine with the fact?

Seyran relaxed in her bathtub, feeling the pain that inhabited her lessened a little more with this hotness.

Even in Unzu, there had always been this pain that ripped at her, mentally and physically exhausting her. In her early years, she had thought it to be a disease. But no matter who she consulted no one could diagnose her, let alone cure her. And when she had exhausted Unzu’s whole healers, she tried physicians. Contrary to healers, physicians didn’t use mana and usually, their ranges of patients were limited to those without or with lesser mana but an exception wasn’t unheard of. Seyran could afford to gamble with her luck -and she did, looking for every physician in Unzu. They weren’t easy to find and it ended up being a waste of time, with no result whatsoever. About that time a decade had passed and with it, her hope of recovery. If it couldn’t be cured then it couldn’t. She chose to give up and live like that. She had already been used to the constant pain anyway and what more she had a kingdom to govern and many enemies lurking in the shadow. But her sisters wouldn’t let her be. They insisted and even sought aids from famous Seers. Seyran didn’t believe much in those people for they were known to fawn over their clients and only tell them what they wanted to hear. She recognized though, that one or two of them when proven right with time.

Anyway, they were invited to the palace that year; it was less than five years after she had killed the previous king who himself was once at a time her mother’s right hand. A stupid thing to do, having a trust one in a world where power was everything. Taking advantage of the weakness her difficult pregnancy had overwhelmed her with, that king had fatally wounded her mother making her breath her last, right after giving birth. To pay back, Seyran had cut his lower half pieces by pieces, turning them into tiny little things that she fed his underling’s familiars, with him still very conscious and looking.  He had begged and cried; at first pleading for his life and afterward, pleading to have a quicker death.

He didn’t have one. She grew increasingly creative and tortured him for months before growing bored and beheading him. In all honesty, his actions weren’t really condemnable. He had bided his time and struck at the right moment. It wasn’t his fault her mother had been stupid enough to buy his sweet-talks. He had wanted more power and had wanted to feel the elation of being higher than others. And he had felt it –for a time. Although she could understand him, to forgive was another thing. There were no words to explain how good she felt when she saw his beheaded head breath its last. She left his head on a pike for half a year after that as a warning to whom it may concern. She wasn’t someone to be trifled with and much less someone who can be sweet-talked.

So it wasn’t really surprising that she was unwilling to trust those seers, no matter how much she trusted her siblings and their dubious judgments.

Three of the most famous seers had been fetched for her. Two of them told her she would be this world’s greatest queen and how her life would be full of glory, nothing at all about her strange sickness –it was thanks to her sibling that they could leave her palace unscathed. The last one though was another affair entirely. The old short man was blind, his eyes were crystal clear without any colors but he kept on rambling about how he could ‘see’ her. And hell, he talked so much and in it said so little that Seyran and the triplets were left more confused than before. He talked about life, he talked about souls, death, missing pieces and he even went ahead and foretold their world’s destruction. That’s when Seyran had enough and just by snapping her fingers she teleported him at the other side of the world -The farthest from her, the better!

All in all, her continuous problem never found a solution and till her last breath in Unzu the pain was present.

But now, it was a different kind of pain. A gentler one –well, as gentle as a pain can be.

She had her eyes closed since entering the water. She opened them, their blue color a shade darker, and her complexion rosier than before. She lifted her small hands out of the water. The burning liquid on her skin was such a soothing sensation that along with her health, she could feel her mana improving. It was as though it was feeding on the water’s temperature through her skin’s pores, turning the hotness into mana. A light smile that would make Yenaigai over the moon embellished her beautiful face.

She focused her attention on her palm and tried thinking about fire, concentrating for a while. It was such a long time she hadn’t need this much concentration. Light sparkles could be seen and she released a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

She could still use her mana in this world!

The fire finally formed, the size of her palm, before burning out after a moment. Good, good, she hadn’t thought it would work at first try even if it burned out faster than it should normally have.

She tried creating it again on her other hand and felt a tingling sensation in her heart, making her frown. It tingled again and in her mind, came her sister’s words.

‘You know, before they accepted there was a tingling sensation you would feel and then you’ll know they were alright with been your familiar!’

For a reason or another, Seyran had never been able to summon a familiar and it wasn’t for the lack of mana. Not only she couldn’t summon them, but she couldn’t take over other’s summoning. She could still control them for a time though, but she never did have her very own familiar. However, she knew the process of acquiring one. If the creature was already in front of you, you just had to propose your mana for it to feed on and if it was willing, a bound could be formed.

But she couldn’t remember proposing now. A sinister smile plastered itself on her face as she scanned the room. Where was this stupid thing that was daring enough to feed on her mana!