Ori stood in the empty room, brooding. Both mind and body were wired after his time with Poppy in the garden, leaving him unable to sleep and finding it hard to focus on anything productive. He didn't regret what they had done; in fact, he was quite proud of bringing the elven handmaiden to climax multiple times, though he'd never admit that fact to anyone. Reflecting on how the night had unfolded, Ori had originally intended to talk with Poppy, gaining clarity over what they were to one another. Perhaps such talks were pointless now? The exhilaration from his time with Poppy clashed with a creeping sense of unease. He was proud, yes, of the intimacy they shared, but a nagging doubt lingered – was he getting too entangled, too fast? Ori still remembered that funnel of soul essence that seemed ready to crash into his own.
> 'This is a soul bond after all, not a mere life bond. It's one of the few things in Fate that can easily transcend the boundaries of time and realms…
>
> …tricked you into a union far more profound than marriage, one even more intrusive than your familiar bond’
In the silence of his room, and with a clear head, Ori asked himself if he was really, truly ready to forge yet another lasting bond. With each bond he forged, he could feel his heart torn in separate directions, the duties and responsibilities of one, clashing with the burdens and requirements of another.
Upon reflection, it was no surprise that they were all women, even Freya – though he had imagined her as a nagging elder sister, there was no doubt that despite the limited time and interactions, he deeply cared for her in a way he had never cared for anyone before his abduction.
And now with Harriet and Poppy, Ori stared at the prospect of forming soul-deep, lasting bonds with two women worlds away from his own, and hundreds of years apart. He was relatively confident that even if they were human, at the Sovereign rank, their lifespans would extend well beyond the duration of their time apart. However, just how much could a person change in seven hundred years? Just how much could their worldview diverge? How much could life experiences and maturity alter who they were? Could they still love a person who hasn’t had a chance to grow up?
With a conscious choice this time around, perhaps he should consider alternative ways of helping instead of falling headlong into another, permanent bond with all the responsibility and potential heartache that would involve.
Ori critically considered the idea of being in a relationship with either or both women, setting aside the complex issue of temporal dislocation. There were significant factors to contemplate. For example, did he truly want to be in love with a Queen, a woman whose nation would invariably come before him? As for Poppy, her duty to her queen would likely supersede any relationship or commitment they might share.
Yet, didn’t he have his own commitments, goals, and evolving bonds? While pride and responsibility would prevent him from abandoning Sera or Freya, he missed them too much to entertain the thought of remaining in Lunaesidhe indefinitely, never to see them again.
Furthermore, the fact that they were High Elves and he was not, presented a significant obstacle. Song Law prohibited unevolved races from freely moving within High Elven society. As a human, this meant he could likely never legally or openly travel to, or stay with Harriet and Poppy. This restriction could also affect any potential children, given that High Elven society relied on the intermingling of specific bloodlines for Altus Progenitus – the ability to bear evolved children from birth. Meanwhile, whether Ori actually wanted children was another complex web of emotions and insecurities he wasn't prepared to unravel at the moment.
All these thoughts and more swirled between the three portions of his Split Mind. Forcing himself to do something productive during his brooding, Ori re-tasked a third of his mind towards the translation project of Arabella’s journal.
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It was dawn by the time he finished the task, gaining momentum as the process became more familiar and other, more extraneous thoughts evaporated throughout the night. Surprisingly, while a bit stiff and with gritty eyes, Ori still found himself unable to sleep and unwilling to disrupt his body clock with a nap that would likely stretch beyond lunch.
Before diving back into his enchanting lessons, notes from Arabella’s journal, specifically those on mana control and mana efficiency, sparked ideas for experiments Ori wanted to conduct. With his ability to see Mana and various other paracausal energies, Ori was well-placed to explore the fundamental interactions between enchantments, spellforms, and mana.
He opened his sight to the world, and for the next two hours, Ori went through every spell he could cast, inspecting in great detail how the effects changed with mana usage or tweaks to the methods of casting spells. Though he gained little to no benefits in terms of mana efficiency, Ori could feel the amount of time required to visualise and imprint his intent onto unaspected mana, reducing. This familiarity improved his casting speed, allowing him to form Light Orbs almost as quickly as he could gather mana from the atmosphere.
He experimented, seeking to verify many of the most accessible facts he could. He used wands, ones he’d crafted and others he had not, to instantaneously cast spells or continuously channel them. He handled and manipulated mana around some of the more exotic materials in the workshop including vials of Aether. Meanwhile, he tried to see if he could manipulate any of the other fundamental paracausal energies he should have had ready access to, specifically Grace and Breath.
Grace was the energy provided to individuals by the belief and worship of others, an external energy that, from Ori’s experience, appeared like a golden haze or coating over skin. He had seen a thin shell of Grace across his own skin for the first time, and while it was more like a soap bubble-like coating compared to the thick wall that covered Harriet or the turbulent flow that swirled around Poppy, it was reassuring to know that somewhere, likely in Astoria or Orinth as it was now known, enough people thought positively of him for him to have a visible measure of Grace. Despite already knowing it was unlikely, Ori was disappointed to find himself unable to influence Grace in any meaningful way.
Meanwhile, Breath was something Ori had never really seen or understood. Textbooks described Breath users as steaming, hypermetabolic avatars of vitality and virility, physically tough and capable of outstanding feats of athleticism and internal enhancement. One of the books in the workshop, "Breath Extensions" by Gurney Kaune, described how enchantments could allow some of the internal enhancements of Breath users to influence their weapons or armour as long as it was touching skin.
Unlike Grace, which was tied to spirit and thus the more subconscious desires of the individual, Breath was said to be the very deliberate expression of a person's body. What exactly that meant in practice was beyond Ori, however. Using his vision to focus inside himself, Ori believed he saw or felt something within his lungs. Breathing exercises suggested by Gurney’s "Breath Extensions" seemed to increase the brightness of a ghostly mist within his chest with every inhalation. Ori imagined that this breathing exercise if carried out over a long enough time period, would incrementally improve his Breath, or eventually provide better access to utilising Breath after a certain threshold was reached. While it was clear his talents likely lay skewed towards magic, Ori had already promised himself to become strong and complete, which meant he would not leave any potential avenues of power untapped.
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Throughout his diversion from pure enchanting, he made no sudden breakthroughs, though he enjoyed the process and kept in his heart the mindset of observation. He knew everything was new and overwhelming, and had no illusions of overturning thousands of years of established thought overnight. But Ori also believed deep down that his long-term survival depended on finding new insights that could give him a competitive edge.
Even if he returned home, Ori knew that if he could be abducted once, he could be taken again, meanwhile, as his thoughts drifted over to his bonds, those current and soon-to-be-formed, he was filled with an undeniable desire to be equal to the challenges and demands such responsibilities will undoubtedly place on him.
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Without so much as a knock, the door to the drafting workshop opened and a person Ori had never seen before walked in. He was lean and close to Ori's height, his face narrow with a familiar set of intense blue eyes and long navy hair pulled into a ponytail. That Ori could tell he was likely a male elf at all had more to do with his clothing, which appeared to be more of a martial full-dress uniform than the flowing dresses of the only elves he'd been introduced to so far.
With his vision active, Ori saw the swirls of Grace and the thick, grey internal mist he was now starting to recognise as Breath, though it was intertwined with the energies of the soul, the person's mana, and the typical aura of one at the Sovereign rank.
The man froze as his gaze swept over Ori, specifically his eyes which were still likely glowing due to the active use of his arcane vision. Reflexively, the elf rested his right hand on the hilt of his sword, and at that moment Ori desperately missed the ability to call upon Seraphine similarly for reassurance.
Were it not for the man's obvious similarity in appearance to Harriet, Ori might have been more terrified than he already was. Still, his heart thundered just the same, his mind working out possible words or actions in the taut silence that stretched between them.
"Who are you?" The man's accusatory voice was almost too high and smooth to be male, and with the general androgyny, Ori started to second-guess his assessment of the person being male. Putting that thought aside, Ori stood from the desk he had been working at, slowly.
"I’m Ori Suba, guest of Queen Harriet," Ori offered.
"What are you? And why have you been given access to my late grandmother's workshop?"
"I am…" Ori thought quickly. Perhaps with his glowing eyes, the elf likely believed he wasn’t human, not completely, and as being a basic human within elven lands was illegal, Ori decided to play dumb. "I’m not quite sure. As for why I’m here, I’m helping Queen Harriet on a minor project." He gestured to the desk and the piles of written translations he had toiled on overnight.
The elf walked towards him, his posture ramrod straight, his eyes locked on Ori until he reached the desk and stack of paper. As he leafed through these, his expression shifted from bland annoyance to confusion, shock, then darkened into a purple-skinned rage that manifested in the aura around him as an increase in gravity and a stillness in the air that made it harder to breathe.
"My mother didn’t write this," Harriet’s brother said coldly. Ori had no ready response to the accusation as he decided to explain.
"I translate using the karmic intent of words. I’m not sure what language this journal was written in, but to the best of my ability, this was what she wrote," Ori said, handing over the original journal.
The elf looked at it as if it was covered in filth. He opened it, flicking through several pages with a scowl. "This is her handwriting," he murmured at first before his voice grew stern. "But if you believe you can pass off this… drivel as what my mother wrote, then you are grossly mistaken. This is a mockery of her legacy, a lurid fantasy from a perverted mind. You, an outsider, have no right to even be here, lest to be pawing over such intimate texts." The elf's voice was thick with contempt, his eyes burning with a mix of anger and disbelief.
‘Fuck’sake!’ Ori cursed internally and frowned, growing frustrated with the man's unreasonable attitude. Was this how it felt to be placed in the crosshairs of a bratty, petulant noble? Quickly he weighed the options of revealing more information about himself, but against someone who did not know who he was, nor signed an oath of non-disclosure, letting out that he was a summons for example, would likely offer more opportunities for others to counter him. Just as he was about to suggest finding Harriet to resolve this issue, Ori felt a brief shimmer in the elven man's Breath. That was the only warning Ori received before darkness overtook conscious thought.
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'Same shit, different fucking universe,' Ori cursed. He groaned as he peeled himself from a stone floor, his face sticky with drool and blood. Instinctively, Ori reached for the Mana in the air but found the cell absent of Mana, or his ability to connect with it void. For a moment, Ori feared his connection with magic had been severed, but he decided to believe that a fantasy jail cell in a magical world likely blocked its occupants from all conceivable means of escape, magical or otherwise.
His head was fuzzy with concussion, and while this could have been easily remedied with Lesser Restoration, Ori decided to lie down, his back flat against the cold stone floor as he waited for his brain to stop throbbing.
Hours passed as Ori slipped in and out of consciousness. Sitting up prompted nausea, so he decided to think while lying down. First, Ori inventoried himself. He still wore his supplied elven clothing, though his tunic was stained with blood. Beyond his clothes, Ori had no real possessions to speak of. He was able to summon the fragments of Seraphine to his palm, and surprisingly, his arcane vision still worked, though it prompted a spike of pain that exacerbated his headache. After checking on the fate of the queen to find it unchanged, Ori confirmed that his rote knowledge from Freya, as well as the Boon of the Succubus, still seemed to work, though beyond that, using magic up to and including his domain, was impossible.
Within the room, there was little light beyond whatever spilt in through the gaps around the stout wooden door, which was the sole opening in an otherwise stone-wrought room. He picked at the stone with his fingers, testing its hardness and consistency.
Then he considered better uses of his time, methods for escape, or constructive ways he could be spending these long, silent moments in the dark. His thoughts drifted to Poppy or Harriet: Where were they? And didn’t guest rights offer some measure of protection? Did I break it somehow? And what happened when I was taken to this cell?
Briefly, Ori felt a spike of fear for Harriet over causing a scandal by the revelation of his presence, and then he chuckled bitterly to himself, he was the one with a bashed-in skull, locked in a dark room, again.
A deep well of anger soon overtook rational thought. It was a rage that seemed to feed off the throbbing pain of his concussion, a rage born of self-pity and self-recrimination. Just when he had thought he had a handle on things, when he thought he had found somewhere safe, Ori was reminded of the ugly truth of his situation once again. He was weak, and because he was weak, he could never be safe, not in this realm nor his own.
His fists clenched and unclenched, shaking with impotence before self-recrimination cooled into frustration, and then settled into an icy resolve. He brooded, his mind charting the next steps, from attempting to dreamwalk Freya, Harriet, or Poppy if he managed to dream again, to accelerating his plans with enchanting if he were ever released.
He would arm himself with enchanted devices of his own design, no longer deeming himself safe enough to be unarmed, guest rights or not. He would need his very own Mana Nexus to power his inventions and enchantments, or failing that, an external, self-perpetuating Mana Source, for which he had already skim-read the designs.
Meanwhile, Earthly knowledge of weapons and explosives seemed to surface in his mind, as if the Maker of Saint Donna’s tinkering with his soul had imprinted upon him a heritage that reminded Ori he came from a world of war and conflict, one that would thrive in chaos and innovation if given ways to break the laws of thermodynamics or the conservation of mass and momentum. In particular, void storage seemed ripe for exploitation, while Mana’s propensity to be destroyed or created wherever it needed to be seemed so ripe for abuse, Ori could only laugh in disgust at everyone else’s fascination with Aether or Grace.
For a moment he had been fooled into believing he was thriving, but this had always been about survival and this was a reminder. In stark contrast to his earlier whimsical fantasies of love and bonding, now he lay feverish with dark thoughts and even darker machinations of mass destruction.
However, despite Ori's glum mood, he never considered leaving this final trial.