Sign: Snake
Buffs: Serpent’s Kiss (Romance twice as easy)
Debuffs: Curse of the Unspecified (Start the game with no gender, no name, and no other identifying feature)
EXP: 1,338
Alchemy
Coagula (LVL 1, 44 SKP)
Solvé (LVL 1, 19 SKP) Ready to level up!
Theoria (LVL 1, 48 SKP)
Botany
Sowing (LVL 0, 5 SKP)
Tending (LVL 0, 80 SKP) Ready to level up!
?
Cooking
Fire (LVL 1, 28 SKP)
Water (LVL 0, 39 SKP) Ready to level up!
?
Homesteading
Fire Tending (LVL 0, 7 SKP)
Tidying (LVL 1, 124 SKP) Ready to level up!
Mending (LVL 0, 15 SKP)
Speech
Logic (LVL 1, 23 SKP)
Linguistics (LVL 0, 41 SKP) Ready to level up!
Cajoling (LVL 0, 10 SKP)
Total SKP: 441
Inventory:
Auros: 2.65
Cards of Destiny: 5 of ?? Discovered
Names: 4
Evengeline, The Pure Snow (Holly)
Vitas, The Wind Thief (Sparrow)
Gillygad, The Stitched-Up Wonder (Pitchfork)
Zinia, The Serpent’s Caress (Snake)
Anjelica, The Keeper (Ladle)
Passive Skills:
(Theoria LVL 1) Pure Substances: Some metals are especially luminous. Some hands are more precise than others. These hands shall become sharpened scalpels, made of the most luminous Silver. Higher maximum Quality points are possible for all potions.
(Coagula LVL 1) Coalescing Membranes: The membranes of the parts which make up the whole shall be in accordance. Ingredients combine more smoothly, producing higher quality potions.
(Fire LVL 1) Ignited: The Elemental branch of magic lends this Sorcerer the ability to cook faster using fire. Prepare fried or baked meals twice as quickly. Get burnt less.
(Tidying LVL 1) Dirt Buster: The magical branch of Purification lends this Sorcerer the ability to ‘Bust Dirt.’ Dust and grime accumulate at an infinitesimally slow rate on objects you have cleaned.
(Logic LVL 1) Rhetoric: The magical branch of Entreatment lends this Sorcerer the ability of heightened ‘Rhetoric.’ The structure of your arguments is smooth, regular, and orthogonal. Spirits and people are more likely to agree with you.
Active Skills:
(Solvé LVL 1) Dissolving Lines: The understanding of how a menagerie of elements comes together to make common items; skin, bark, atlases, all are building blocks, of building blocks of building blocks. The understanding of how to dissolve the whole into parts, to learn of its nature. Boil or burn an unknown ingredient to discover its essence.
Spells:
Wild and Overwhelming Growth (LVL 1) Accelerate the growth of plants and fungi. Enchanted plants grow ten times faster (Overwhelming Influence), BUT enchanted plants sometimes disregard their original form.
Mated With A Strong Bond, Lesser Baptism (LVL 1) Skill actions performed by the enchanted object grant the Sorcerer one-fifth of their SKP and EXP (Strong Influence) but the objects must be enchanted in identical pairs.
I woke up in the dark purple hour of morning before the first ray of light crested the horizon. I rubbed my eyes and looked over to my poppets.
They were where I left them, on the pillows by the foot of my bed. I observed them for a second.
They looked so still, so lifeless, and a sharp blade of fear cut into me.
I jumped out of bed and dropped to my knees next to the two poppets.
“Are you okay?” I whispered but got no response.
I gently put my hand on Gretel’s shoulder and tried to rouse the enchanted doll.
“Hey, hey! Can you hear me?” My voice was growing louder, and I could hear it shaking even as I tried to control my emotions. It couldn’t be! Not so soon!
I kept trying to wake them up, first Gretel, then Hansel, but they laid there, looking like two waxy dolls that had never known life.
My yells alerted Cheerful, and he swooped into the room.
“Little boy! Little girl! Time to wake up! Little boy, little girl are too sleepy!” The bird croaked above me, but I hardly paid any attention.
Just then, the first blade of sunlight entered the room through a crack in the curtains.
Gretel’s tiny mouth yawned, and she sat up, her arms reaching upward into a stretch. Hansel was after her. They both rubbed at their eyes, and blinked at me, confused as to why I might be crouched over them, half mad with panic.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
I sat back down, and let out a shaking breath. Everything was okay. I only tried to wake them too early.
I still had time.
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Downstairs, I let the poppets run amok and play, as I hunkered down over the poisonous pages of Ma Chère.
After the last passage I had read from this book, I did not want to read anymore. I did not want to have Gigert Giger’s meandering voice crawling through my head like a spider. I began to detest the author, and reading his journal made me slightly nauseous.
But, I knew I was running out of time. As I watched Hansel and Gretel, my two poppets, I knew that their enchantments would run out, sooner or later. I had to find a way to stop that from happening.
Oddly, it took me longer and longer to read each page of the pink-covered book. It felt like time was winding itself out, as I flipped the pages. I would start to read in the early afternoon and find that I had barely gotten through a dozen pages before the onset of evening.
I needed to read faster!
I did not know for sure, but if there was a way to extend the life of my dolls, it had to be in this book, where I learned the enchantment to bring them to life in the first place.
With a groan, and an unpleasant lurch of my stomach, I opened the book to the dog-eared page I had marked and began.
After my dear let slip about the messages she saw, I got not one more lick of information about it. I asked and asked. I cajoled, interrogated, and bribed.
But, she was truly like me! I had let her see my surprise, my astonishment, and now, the little wretched dear knew she had something to hold over old Giger, something which she could wield like a club. She knew what I did not, and she would keep it safe and hidden within her doughy chest where there beat no heart.
My loved and cherished nemesis! My treasonous doll! My detested little dear!
Are you, young Sorcerer, confused? Fear not, I shall explain.
One golden evening, as I watched the last glow of sunset fading, with Ma Chère unwillingly seated on my lap (at this point, she did not care for this physical closeness, and I had to force her to show me the least scrap of affection), she asked me one peculiar question.
“Monsieur, why must I sleep when it gets dark?” I pondered the question, trying to construct a reasonable answer.
The real answer was simple. She fell asleep, as all enchanted objects do when the sun set. She was roused again when the sun came up. This was a cardinal rule of enchantment, and unless the enchanter made a deliberate effort to circumnavigate this phenomenon, all enchanted objects followed this rule. I will not give you a treatise on ‘Dark Enchantments’ here, for I believe that my story is more important. Suffice it to say, I did not make my poppet into a thing of nighttime and darkness, for I intended her to be my ever-present companion, and since I woke with the morning sun, she should as well.
But what could I say to her? How could I explain?
And, as I write this recollection, I realize that I have not told you something very important, a potent little stone that sits at the very heart of my story.
Ma Chère did not know that she was an enchanted poppet. She had no idea. She thought that she was a little girl.
I kept the details intentionally hazy. Was she my daughter, my servant, my tiny wife? She tried and tried to ascertain the exact nature of our relationship, but I merely wound circles around her head, and never gave her a straight answer. In fact, I took delight in confusing her.
So, what could I say to her now? How could I explain?
“Everyone goes to sleep at night, ma petite Chère,” I told her, hoping that would be the end of it.
“But, you do not. I always fall asleep before you. Why?” She was a persistent little wench!
“I am older, much older than you Chère, so I go to sleep later,” I answered, trying to will her into silence through the simplicity of my fabricated responses.
She chewed on this for a moment, and then she asked: “Is that why I am Tired?”
“What was that, dear?” I asked.
“The words, they tell me I am Tired, and must soon go to bed. Is that why? Because I am young, and you Monsieur, are so, so old?”
The words?! The words which all Sorcerers read, the words which flow from the very heart of Sorcery itself, from the gloomy kingdoms of Twilight, is this what my little Chère saw?
My mouth hung agape, and I was stunned into silence. The last ray of sun left the earth, and Ma Chère’s darling eyes fluttered close, but I knew that before she succumbed to her enchanted sleep, she saw the fear in me. She went to sleep with a sly, pernicious little smile playing on her lips.
The next morning she faced a barrage of questions from her old Papa.
“What color are these words?”
“What do they say to you?”
“When do you see them?”
“When do you see the words about being Tired?”
“Do you see any other words?”
I asked, and asked. I became angry, I intimidated, and I begged. I flew into a temper and threw the innocent furniture in my displeasure. I went on my knees to face her and tried to convince the lying tart.
But there was no answer.
She pretended she did not know what I spoke of, all the while that devilish little grin played her feature like a puppeteer plays a marionette.
I knew, as surely as I know my own heart, she would never tell. She had too much of me in her; we were too similar.
But this was quite a discovery!
All becomes clearer with distance. Here, confined to a cell, I ponder the mystery of my doll’s secret, and I have some conjectures.
In all my extensive reading, my long and scrupulous searches for the ultimate enchantment, I have never once known of an enchanted object that knew human speech.
Is it possible that Ma Chère was the first to learn the speech of humans?
I think it is not likely. How many Sorcerers have come to the same pinnacle of creation, which I have reached, but chose simply to let their accomplishments fade into dust and memory? How many poppets have been enchanted, with no studious chronicler to document their short lives?
I am not such an ignorant fool to think I was the first and last to create such a thing.
No doubt there are countless poppets, which have approximated but never quite captured, the magic which I have confined into the body of my darling. But, of all those dolls, only Ma Chère gets the honor of this book, which is written about her, and soaked with tears I have cried for her fate. Only she gets to live forever. Oh, Chère, my last gift to you, little darling! May it right all the wrongs which I have so thoughtlessly inflicted!
Where were we, again?
The words, of course, the words, which my little doll saw. As I have never seen a record of any other poppet learning human speech, it is possible that ALL poppets know and feel the Sorcerous words that display with such clarity the mystical complexities of magical power. But, lacking human speech, the poppets never tell their creator of this fascinating attribute.
How could they not see the words? The enchanted objects have their lifeforce drawn from the realm of twilight that we simple humans tap for just a few drops of power. My poppet was borne of Sorcery, so it was in her very soul, her very essence.
And so, that explains it quite neatly, don’t you think?
I have no more to say about this, for as I have mentioned before, my little dear never let on any more of her secret words, which were whispered to her, and her alone.
And what could I do?
I could not force it from her, so I was left to wonder, at what else the little doll had in her head, which I had once shaped with my very hands.
At the time, the discovery of the magical words, and the doll’s secretiveness was like a personal disaster. I tossed and turned in bed, had a poor appetite, and worried myself sick at what else my poppet could ultimately accomplish.
However, with time, I grew to think little of it, and the trouble faded from my mind.
Of course, this was all before the real trouble started. This was all before the other actors in my sad and unwholesome drama came onto the stage. Because you see, not long after this, my poppet, my pristine and precious creation for which I have struggled my whole life, my crowning glory of achievement in Sorcery, MINE, my little Chère, she went and made friends.
And how life changed after that.
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