The blessing of knowledge allowed her to retrieve any written information from the world and save some miracle restricted texts (magic restricted text too, but those primarily stopped being a problem once she became an archmage), text that has been burned before being targeted by her blessing is also knowledge that she can’t retrieve. Usually she dreamed with limiters on her blessing as she enjoyed reading more than sudden enlightenment but for the sake of her last conversation with Abigail she used the blessing properly. An heir, or so the princess’s blessing proclaimed. However her intuition thought it wasn’t so simple.
The source of information for the king’s desire for the GrandDuke’s heir wasn’t the personal diary of the beast. The beast’s diary was mostly ramblings about the idiocy of his quest. And the grandduke was right in thinking that the quest was stupid. Even if the rose garden’s dragon was real it wasn’t famous and thus it wouldn’t help the Beast’s already lofty reputation. The information about the king’s intentions came from quite a few nobles belonging to various factions in Wolfe, but only information about an heir and not about the rose dragone. The phrasing information in the intelligence reports were weirdly a bit vague or conflicting, enough so that some nobles might inclined to believe an heir was already born. It had only been a week since the king had a private audience with the beast according to the official records, thus the king must have intentionally spread the information. The beast was old, not as old as the princess technically was but old enough that rumors of an heir had popped up on multiple occasions. Each time to be proven false, thus it wasn’t news that would sway Wolfe’s factions unless the Beast were to say something himself. The princess was confident enough to claim that the king doesn’t actually want the Beast to be married and this was part of a circus of smoke and mirrors. However, it really didn’t explain why the beast was sent to Ain’s. Or why rumors of his arrival have already spread to the public. This was something more surprising than the rumors within nobility. It was interesting for Sofh to not have knowledge about a subject even after unrestricted blessing.
“Princess. . .” Abigail said. Sofh saw that her tea and cake were already finished. It wasn’t necessarily that a long time had passed, but time dilates and cataracts in dreams. “I’m sorry to leave you like this.”
“I’m grateful you've served me for as long as you have, this death like curse isn’t something I wish to force onto others, leave with a light heart. Don’t worry and rest peacefully.”
“Princess, please watch your back. The outside world is changing, no it has already changed.”
“I am aware, but I’ll be cautious,” the princess responds. But what could anyone do to her at this point? She couldn’t die so her dream would never end. And she couldn’t wake so any changes in the world meant nothing to her. She was also an archmage, even if she only qualified technically. Yet since it was Abigail's last request the princess decided to consider her words seriously. “Was there something specific that prompted your concern?”
“After I leave only Ashu is old enough to remember your waking days, and the young priests never stay long, and over half of them are in the pockets of local and foreign nobles.”
The cursed princess had foreseen this development centuries ago, but it didn’t bother her. The current setup was an artifact of her fear of loneliness and desire for Ain’s prosperity. Time had eaten away both of those things. “These are things I am prepared for.”
“I know, but I dislike it.” Abigail responded. This was the difference between the princess and her vassals. They still had the ability to connect with the world, and were more attached to it. Their time was shorter even if they were asleep for the same number of days so their emotions ran hotter. “Goodbye princess,” Abigail said.
“Goodbye,” Sofh decayed the cursed bond binding the two souls together and Abigail vanished from the dreamscape.
The princess stared blankly at the empty dreamscape. There was a feeling of loss, but no sadness, and it had less to do with emotion then it had to do with tampering with her soul. The soul creates bonds each time it encounters another life. The isolation save the few who wander or are brought into her dreamscape meant her soul was connected to few lives. Her blessing functioned by interacting with the web of soul connections called fate. Now that she decayed a major connection to the soulscape she found that her fated presence was incredibly small. While the lack of fate helped her focus internally and develop her magic she was technically already an archmage she didn’t want to dream without knowledge. Thus the princess began considering how she might re-establish her connection with fate. Then she remembered a famed individual who would be visiting town soon.
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Tezs the deer headed butler looked at his master, and best friend, who was sprawled on the dining room floor with a wine bottle in his claws. “Are you not going to tell me what this is about?”
“It’s absolutely fucking ridiculous!” the beast roared. These were the sort of answers Tezs had been getting since the grand duke returned three days ago, loud angry but without anything specific.
“Does it have to do with your child?” Tezs said knowing full well that his lord didn’t have a kid but also thinking that the implication might anger him enough to explain properly.
It wasn’t the first time such rumors had gone around but it was a sore spot for the now chaste beast. Tezs could sympathize, unlike his master he returned to human for half the day, yet his sex life was also forgone after marrying his beloved wife, Kami. She also had only half the curse but it was fixed so that everything above the torso was perfectly human but everything below was an eel, so that she looked like a mermaid. The idea of fathering a child was a nonstarter for both of them. Well, if Tezs abandoned his lord he would slowly become disentatched, but Kami was more loyal to the lord than he was. It wasn’t that Tezs was traitorous, but his relationship with the beast was much more casual than what a normal lord and vassal relationship would dictate. Kami on the other hand was a model employee, and a devout follower. He had known that before marrying her and even if the curse complicated things it wasn’t bad to obtain immortality with his best friend and wife.
“I’ve been living as a virgin since Rosaline, what child you bastard?” the beast said bringing up his ex fiance. When the grand duke was the crown prince the pair were known as being quite the harmonious couple. However this comment by the lord wasn’t one out of distant heart break.
Tezs wasn’t really sure if they ever had something like love between them, regardless with the help of that ancient ceremony the pair would be able to find true love and live happily ever after. After the curse the political sphere of Wolfe rapidly destabilized and his position as crown, yet the marriage didn’t get cancelled. However the ancient ceremony failed because of his highness’s cursed appearance, the beast assumed, and Rosaline was not going to fall in love. There couldn’t be a king without a true love, especially since the miracle of true love was usually needed to break a miracle curse. Thus the failed ceremony became the point when Canziano lost his right to become king. Since Wolfe had no legal requirement for virginity in spouses Rosaline was married to the new crown prince and eventually became queen. It would have been fine if that was the end of the story, but the beast committed regicide a decade later resulting in the beast killing Rosaline with his own hands. Granted in Tezs’s opinion the bitch deserved it due to things that occured in the glossed over decade, but Caniziano’s last romantic relationship had ended extremely poorly.
Tezs suspected that the ceremony didn’t fail because of the curse but because of sabotage, though without proof Tezs wasn’t going to poke at his friend’s sore spot. After being denied true love, a promise for every royal in wolf, he thought that a portion of his course was the inability to be loved. Tezs doubted it, the true love ceremony was a very powerful miracle blessing. At the time of the ceremony the beast hadn’t committed any taboos so the chances of it failing were minimal, and the chances of it failing twice were practically nonexistent. Even the infamous evil queen had a successful ritual against all odds, though the demonic fairy was said to have a hand in that improbability.
In any case Tezs ploy to anger the beast failed, either he was too drunk and thus vapid to work up such a response, or Tezs had pushed his lord’s buttons too many times and impaired his ability to agitate Canziano. However Tezs really wanted a response, he recently received letters from several nobles in the state of Ain’s all the way on the far end of the continent that they were excited to receive the GrandDuke as a guest.
“I’ll handle it,” the distorted voice of Glamora called. The thing about the beast curse was that it takes away the humanity of the inflicted. It's called the beast curse since usually the transformation is animal associated, usually an animal that resonates with the person’s life and relationship to the curses origin Canziano. The beast was the perfect crown prince thus his transformation into the exalted wolf beast made sense. Tez’s had always been (figuratively) an herbivore, and at the time of being influenced by the curse Tezs had spent the days being terrorized by his boss in a very prey like fashion, thus the deef fit. Glamora was a maid whom Canziano didn’t even know the name of at the time. Originally she stayed by the lord's side because her financial situation wasn’t good. Tezs knew her to be very orderly and detailed oriented in her work. Her personality however was contrary for the sake of being contrary. She was extremely independent and liked to either be ignored completely or the main topic of discussion. Such a girl transformed into a broom every night. A magic one. Mages were rare and they became increasingly rare as time progressed. Thus the broom Glamora was an unusual but highly respected vassal of the lord. “M’lord,” the broom said blasing the beast with mana. “What did the king say”
The beast actually had quite a lot of mana resistance, but he was drunk and his body instinctually designated Glamora as non hostile. Thus the beast fell victim to the simplest compulsion magic and told his two vassals everything.
"This really is absolutley fucking ridiculus." Tezs muttered.