Day 280

I had gained enough confidence that leaving the castle and heading back to Alfred's home, alone with each other, wasn't a nerve destroying, timeline collapsing, cyclopean mental collapse of a task, although it was nerve wracking. I had walked a good thirty feet behind Alfred, constantly I holding the spells Coinnle had thought would be useful to learn as an assurance for my own safety. These were battle spells, things that would suit be better given my affinities.

I didn't know if Alfred would do what he did again, but I'd work to make sure he wouldn't have a reason to do so. No more suggestions, no more advancements, and no more asking for intimacy. I'll devote myself to the craft he wanted me to perfect myself in, there's nothing else that he would accept from me.

Alfred didn't attack me, and neither did he speak to me throughout the entire journey back. Both from fear and having nothing to talk about, neither did I try to engage with conversation with him. He had already promised that he won't attack me, but my feelings on the matter aren't rational enough to accept his words, regardless of how dangerous breaking vows would be for him. I wonder why this feeling of terror doesn't override my feelings of wanting to stay with him?

The gentle hills, and the massive Sunpeak mountain that serves as the backdrop for Alfred's home was in sight now. It had been getting colder, autumn has been setting in full affect, and already the trees are beginning to change their colors. Within these rolling hills and by the side of the mountain the rest of my life will be here, I hope. Preferably after Alfred has prepared new rooms for me, as having a single bucket, a bar of soap, and a towel to wipe myself in wasn't a comfortable way of cleaning myself.

Day 387

Nearly five months have passed since the incident. I've gotten substantially better at enchantments, and I've finally begun to understand what Alfred had been working on, and what he wanted me to do, after this entire time. I knew he could make dolls that could move if you inserted mana in the correct way, but what I didn't know what there were various other enchantments that make these dolls more than things that children could idly play with.

Some of the enchantments he wanted me to do involved sharing senses with the doll. Normally dolls have no senses, they can't think nor do they have souls, but through specific enchantments you can simulate the feeling of touch and to a lesser extent sight through the body and eyes of the doll. Each doll, in order to enchant them fully, requires months of work on just the enchantments alone, so for Alfred having someone else do the work while he spent his time either experimenting or creating new dolls was a massive time saver.

But still, the dolls had no souls. And that was the issue he had. How do you create an artificial soul? Was is necessary to? And what even is the soul?

The time I spent enchanting had taken up most of my days. But everyday I was given two hours for myself, not including the time needed to sleep, and despite that I wouldn't spend it doing anything entirely unrelated to Alfred's goals. I had been theorizing that it might be possible to transfer the souls of an already living being into the body of one of the dolls, and for that I was perfecting and making more optimized my enthrallment spell. Not so I could use it against peope, of course. But in order to get a better understanding of what a soul is, since the spell manipulates, or more accurately conditions it, almost directly.

I would find spiders out in the wild and bring them over to my room. I'd keep them inside glass containers bought from my yearly allowance, something I had to talk to Alfred about a few months back. We rarely talk anymore, so I remember that conversation vividly. Not that it lasted for more than five exchanges, though.

Year 2, day 22

Alfred had been making steady progress thanks to my presence. Everyday I would work in his workshop, and everday I would see a smile on his face while he worked. He had managed create an enchantment complex enough fully simulate what a human could feel with his sense in a doll. This was a goal that he had wanted to complete for decades, and it was only through my help and through the sharing of my insights related to how souls function that brought him to that enchantment.

Seeing him smile and be so full of joy over such a thing lit up my heart, it almost made me forget the dread I felt while being near him. Even after much more than a year I hadn't forgotten what he had done, and I doubt I ever will, but thankfully through whatever magical and incurable obsession I had over him I didn't leave his side regardless. Perhaps the divine had guided us together, my talent and his dedication are a good combination.

All that he had left to do was create an enchantment that could adequately stimulate a person's sight. For hearing he had already done that decades ago, it was something that didn't require much in order to simulate. In fact, the enchantment he had made for it could be made to be nearly hundreds of times more effective than an actual human's ears. Better than my own ears by a long shot.

Year 3 Day 10

Alfred wasn't the only one who's developed a groundbreaking magic, I've finally managed to do something I had been working on all year. The creation of an artificial soul might've not been necessary, and Alfred had never wanted to create a soul if he didn't have to. So, the logic went, if I could transfer the mind of a living being, such as an insect, to the dolls, then it could move independently and by itself and thus be a step closer to a lifelike construction. And for once, after hundreds of corpses of various insects, I had managed to transfer one of them inside of the doll.

Excitement bubbled up as I saw the doll do... absolutely nothing. I had expected that. The fact that the soul didn't immediately extinguish upon leaving the body was an improvement, but it didn't mean I had fully replicated how a spirit functions within the human body itself. Looks like different enchantments would be needed for that, and I had only a rough idea of what those enchantments would be.

The doll was one that Alfred had lent to me when I asked for one I could tinker with by myself. It was an old one, according to Alfred roughly as old as I was, but it had advanced enough magic to do everything I needed it to. From moving to any other senses it needed, it had it all. If only the soul of the insect could interact with the enchantsment inside.

The insect itself was a cricket I had found while walking outside. It wasn't anything special originally, but now that it was inside the doll it would be a very, very special cricket. I picked up the doll and headed downstairs into Alfred's workshop, anticipation threatening to boil over and leave me a giggling mess. But I was a proper lady now, at nineteen I should be expected to control my emotions well enough to hide that.

I opened the door to Alfred's workshop, since knocking was an inconvenience for both of us Alfred had given me permission long ago to leave and enter as I please. He was in his chair, as he always was, carving something into a piece of wood. I walked quietly to his side, holding the doll close to my chest. Alfred glanced at me.

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"What is it? You look like you're going to explode. Did something good happen?"

I nodded fervently, placing the doll on his table. He grabbed it and started to inspect it, and it only took a couple of moments for his eyes to widen, and then for his face to become serious. It wasn't anger, but a furrowing of the eyebrows indicating concentration, so I held no reason to fear the change in expression.

"Interesting. I've been wondering why you had been dumping insect corpses outside for a while now, looks like I've found my answer. While this is interesting it won't be useful for my research directly. However, that doesn't mean it isn't indirectly. I have a request, complete an enchantment that could allow this soul to interact with the rest of the doll's enchantments, and provide to me what you've come up with afterwords."

"Why won't it be useful, Alfred?" I had hoped he would be as ecstatic as I was. What a pity.

Alfred started to pet the doll's hair, turning his eye to me and then his face. "The intelligence innate within an insect's soul won't satisfy my needs, and I've already been making steady progress on my artificial spirit." Alfred stopped stroking the doll's head and furrowed his brows once again. "Well, artificial spirit might be the wrong name. It's a living spirit, and I've been replicating what a certain faerie had taught me about her own kind's construction and how they reproduce. Since it's a method that was asexual, and since the method did eventually produce a spirit that was as real as a human's, it would be accurate to say I'm making a new soul."

Making a soul? Alfred is not the divine, how can he do that? "How are you able to do that? And what faerie are you talking about?"

Alfred picked up the large wooden board he had been working on and handed it to me. It was roughly the size of my chest, and a perfect square that had a large swathe of it etched with odd flowing patterns. Some parts had perfect ninety degree angles, forming a zigzagging line that imitated a circle, in all I couldn't understand it without having to sit down and study it in detail. "What's this?"

"The soul I'm designing."

"You're designing it? How do you know this is going to work?"

"I don't, but hopefully with some experimentation I'll manage to create something that works well enough. If it works, then in the meantime I would hope you'd be able to create that spell I had asked of you. If you can dedicate some time for me later to tell me how you've managed to transfer the soul, then I'll also ask that you do that. Please continue whatever it is you're doing here."

I nodded. Alfred didn't answer my question about the faerie, but honestly that wasn't the strangest thing he'd said here. "Can you teach me about soul construction? Maybe we can artificially bolster the intelligence of the insect, can't we? Starting from a base rather than from scratch would work." Alfred nodded, taking back the wooden board from me and beginning to once again work on its construction.

"We'll exchange ideas later tonight. Thank you for the doll, and hurry in figuring out what I asked, I'm not sure what sort of effects complete sensory deprivement would have on an insect."

Shit, he's right. I picked up the doll and headed back into my room, immediately trying to work out a solution for the problem given. All the while, ideas of how I could go about enhancing this little guy's soul abounded within me.

Year 5, day 36

The doll had finally moved. It wasn't much, and figuring out how the hell crickets operate was a hassle that took an entire year to figure out. Inadvertently I had become a bit of an expert on the thought process and mana signatures of crickets in general. They don't operate like furry animals do, each of their legs have a tiny section of their souls entirely dedicated to its operation and movement. Mapping that to the doll required me to reconfigure and tweak the enchantments of all the spells within the doll's body. It took months, but luckily only four complete re-enchantments were necessary to have the doll move around.

She moved her head side to side, and her fingers in a frankly creepy manner. The legs would move, and the creature would open its mouth occasionally. All in all, a resounding success. But practically speaking the thing was completely useless. I'll let it do its thing for a while, perhaps being stuck in a doll for so long without any sensory information had truly messed with it. But from what I know about crickets, it'd never be all that intelligent anyway.

I could wipe the soul away, leaving it back to whatever nature does with it. Perhaps I should figure that out later, but for now I have a working doll. I picked her up and headed again towards Alfred's workshop. Lately I've been spending more time locked away in my room that I had with him, not a surprise considering all the tools and equipment I needed to complete my tasks were inside my own room and not in his.

Walking next to Alfred, who had his head in his hands, I placed the doll next to him and waited. He didn't respond.

"Alfred? You asleep?"

"No, but I am frustrated." Alfred lifts his head off his hands, his eyes tired and his face more weary than I'm used to seeing him with, and makes eye contact with the doll. The doll on her part, opens and closes her mouth and continues to twitch in a way that made me want to squash it.

He immediately went and grabbed the thing, lifting it and examining everything about it, a smile starting to show on his face.. "It works? You've completed the enchantment? By the divine you've remapped all the enchantments!" I smiled brightly at that. Well, hopefully brightly.

"Yes, the enchantments were half of the problem. They worked with human, or human like in my case, sensory information rather than the cricket's method of obtaining information. The enchantment for the soul-to-enchantment interaction was comparatively easier."

"Have you managed to transfer the souls of any other insects into the dolls? This one doesn't look to be learning or doing anything."

"No, I haven't. And you're right, it has no method of processing what should and shouldn't be desired, and outside of bodily needs I doubt an insect knows what to do. It's not a very intelligent being at a baseline. But, I have ideas. And all of them would be wasted on this thing, so I'd like more enchantable dolls if you'd allow it, Master Alfred."

Alfred nodded, touching and moving the doll to try to earn a reaction out of it. I knew it could feel, I was certain of that, but no matter how he moved or twisted it the doll wouldn't react. "Yes... may I have this thing? And can you discuss with me further plans for your research? What ideas exactly do you have for improving this thing?"

"Yes to both. Can you lend me some dolls or not?"

Alfred placed the creepy doll back on his desk and got up, walking over to a collection of unpainted dolls. He picked several up and gathered them up in his arms, none of them were bigger than six inches. In fact, most of them looked to be precisely six inches. "Of course, if you're having success in your research then it'd be petty of me not to help. Paint these dolls yourself, dress them up if you'd like. There's nothing wrong with them, I made them for the precise purpose of accepting an artificial spirit in the future."

I gathered them up in my own hands, Alfred giving each of them one by one to me, and I asked an innocent question. "What's wrong with your project?"

Alfred paused for the slightest moment, before handing me the final doll. He gave me five in total, a fair amount that I could do plenty with. "Creating the spirit has been taking more energy than I thought it would've. Or, more mana. I've been spending most of my days creating it, and it's been taking nearly all of my mana. If I look tired to you, then that's precisely the reason. It's very exhausting. Don't mind me, but know I'll be like this for a couple of years, most likely a decade."

"How much mana does it take?"

"As much as I could give it. Since the most I can give is roughly a hundred and fifty units a day, that's the amount I give."

"Do you need help? I could offer you some of my own mana, if you wish, Alfred."

"No, I've tried using other sources of mana but the only one that works is my own. Thank you for the offer, Eithne. Continue torturing the insects for me, please."

"Insects can't feel pain, it's not torture. And alright." With a humph I started to go back to my room, almost forgetting to mention an important fact. "And the doll has to be recharged of mana every couple of hours. Perhaps it's been to wipe the soul out, I'll leave that to you to decide."

I waited for his response, as I didn't want to be rude. He looked at me and then nodded, and then I closed the door. Proper manners and boundaries have to be closely maintained, after all.