We entered into a large room. On the longer left side were two doors, and on the shorter side up front one more. On the right a large table was placed, and on the wall behind it the evening light entered through dusty windows. The floor was made out of large, dark oak wood planks. There were a few shelves with various items and just right to the entrance stood a shoe rack. Catherine put on some slippers, while I just pulled my boots off and was left in socks.
Catherine just put the bags down and began to introduce me to some more vocabulary. If you suddenly enter a house for the first time after being in the wilderness all the time, you will get exposed to a swarm of miscellaneous things you never even thought about before. I struggled to keep even a few of the words in my mind.
Intelligence has increased by 1.
Now this time I was surprised. In the best of ways of course but still. Learning the language must be considered a suitable activity for increasing ones intelligence. Which is sensible I guess, depending on the way intelligence is defined. What was not sensible was that my mana pool had increased right along with it, as my status screen showed, that I had immediately opened up.
Shalyne
Class: Sorceress Level 1
Profession: Enchanter
Stats:
Strength: 5
Dexterity: 8
Vitality: 6
Endurance: 8
Intelligence: 12
Health: 57/60
Mana: 120/120
Mana Regeneration: 1.20 mana/minute (5.20 mana/minute)
What did mana have to do with learning? If this was earth, every bookworm would blast his enemies into oblivion. Well, that would be one of the perks I would abuse from now on however possible.
“My intelligence has increased!” I happily shared the news. Catherine just laughed and pointed at the table: “What is this?” I knew had had just known it one moment ago. It was at the tip of my tongue and I struggled, until she just repeated the word. I certainly would not forget this time, hopefully.
Seeing that my capacity for the moment was spent we just went through the first door, where a kitchen was built in. I looked in horror at all the different kinds of tools and vegetables. When I was done here I would be an arch mage.
Catherine took some potatoes out of some cabinet and handed me a knife with a grin. I sighed and went to work on my dexterity.
When we were done cutting vegetables we had prepared a nice amount of stew which would last for a few meals. I found myself a chair while I waited for it to finish.
I must have dozed off for quite a while, because when Catherine woke me up it was much darker outside. The room was illuminated by a strange lamp that hang on the ceiling.
We ate in silence while I enjoyed the stew. Of course the vegetables had not been fresh, but compared to the boring food on the trip it was much better. I ate until I was completely filled up, which surprisingly only took two servings.
After we cleaned up Catherine gave me a towel, soap and some fresh clothes. I went outside to the stream and stripped out of my current clothes. I scrubbed my whole body clean. The water was cold, but becoming clean again won out.
This was the most intimate I had been with my body so far. It one time when I had been cleaned by Catherine, I was mostly numb. Now I was aware of every touch I made. It wasn't just my breasts. The whole female body is so completely different. Thin arms, my long hair, even my face felt unfamiliar.
While washing my waist and hips the proportions just felt so off. I took some effort to keep myself together while quickly washing my nether regions and was still shaken while finishing with my legs and feet. The whole time I had done nothing beyond simple washing and was glad when I finally put on some clothes again.
As I trudged back to the house my self awareness was heightened a lot, leaving me with a disturbing feeling.
Back inside again I found Catherine in the back room. It was very crowded with several pieces of furniture pushed together on one side of the room, including two bunk beds. The other side was occupied by an isolated bed and a nightstand.
The top of the more accessible bunk bed was somewhat prepared and I climbed up there. I just managed to cuddle myself into the blanket before I slept like a lazy shoe.
When I woke up the next day I was alone in the room. Although I was well rested I felt a bit drained. Slowly taking my time to get up it quickly got worse. Mana! The effect of the last potion must have run out.
I looked around the room, but could not find anything prepared. Then I went into the lobby/communal type room and started looking. “Catherine?” I called out, but got no answer. The kitchen was empty, and the other remaining room tightly locked, so I went outside to call out again. Still no answer I ran a bit around the house, to the shed in the back, and then took a larger circle.
I was shouting out louder, when I found a small shack one corner around the hill closest to the house. Going over there I finally got my answer.
“I am here, what is it?”
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“I need a mana regeneration potion!”
She furrowed her brows and looked me over.
“You still need them?”
“Please”
Not entirely happy we went over to the house, where she opened up the locked door. Inside where a variety of more valuable items, including books, potions and what looked like ingredients to me. Catherine took out one of the familiar blue potions and I had it gulped down before she could even blink.
We went back into the lobby and sat down.
“You still need them?” she asked.
“Yes, I need much more mana.”
I felt a bit awkward to further depend on her.
She tried to find find the right words and finally said:
“I told you: You work for me, I help you.”
I still remembered. Now the cards would be put on the table. So I just nodded in anticipation.
At my agreement she left to the storage room and returned. She put a few things on the table. I didn't look them over, because once I saw the syringe I didn't need to. A small shudder passed through me. So it came down to donating blood. I was not naive enough to think that giving blood was as trivial as on earth. It was possible that it could be used against me in some way.
The situation was definitely difficult. On the one hand I was in her debt, and already depended on her. On the other she might use the blood to bind me even further, perhaps even leaving without any choice. Or might she be able to remotely hold my life in her hands? Corrupt me into something else?
Aside from changing my very self those problems actually didn't scare me all that much. If I were to actually die by some remote spell using my blood I would be released. I estimated, that in such a situation I would just collapse to the ground again, but that was something that would happen anyway if I ran out of mana. If it came to that I could only hope to have built up enough intelligence to have some left over regeneration for healing myself up again.
Any further binding me into dependency was certainly problematic. But here the same basic situation applied. Almost any kind of life was preferable to lying on the ground for an indeterminate time. And as long as some semblance of free choice remained I might be able to stage some assassination. Or might be released by chance.
All in all, most of the outcomes could certainly be bad, but within my wide range of acceptability.
“Why do you want it?”
“To create potions.”
Next I tried explaining my fear of being bound, by using gestures of chains and me moving around like a zombie. She shook her head.
“Only potions.”
The question of trust remained, but I couldn't do anything about it. I sighed.
“No selling. My blood stays here!”
She immediately agreed. Then I spoke out my last concern, one I could do something about.
“Only clean.”, I insisted while pointing at the canula.
Catherine didn't seem to have many replacements, so we finally agreed on flushing the used one with some alcohol beforehand. It was not perfect but I could live with it. Even newly produced ones might not be perfectly clean anyway, so I doubted the situation could be improved by much. Perhaps these procedures where unnecessary with the use of healing magic, but I preferred it this way.
Finally I stretched out my arm. Catherine seemed proficient in taking blood, and hit my vein at once. After taking about half of a liter she stopped and healed the puncture wound with magic. I looked at my arm and didn't find any sign it had been pierced just a moment ago.
I felt a bit light headed so I leaned back into a chair while she prepared some breakfast. We both ate and although I helped cleaning up I rested a bit longer afterward. Will increased Vitality reduce the effect of blood loss? I really hoped so, because spending blood had never effected me this much, even if it wasn't too bad.
I was just getting myself together, when there was a knock on the door. “Hello?”, a loud female voice rang out. Catherine must have been at the shack, or at least close by, or she would have told me something. So I decided to lead whoever just came here over.
When I opened the door a rough looking elven woman stood before the house. She wore a heavy leather armor and had a sword strapped to her side. Her blonde hair stopped above her shoulders. Just below her left eye was a huge scar, finishing up the appearance of a warrior woman. But somehow the way her face looked just didn't fit at all. There was no trace of harsh severity. She felt like a child playing warrior.
We inspected each other, each surprised at the other. After a few moments of silence I pointed over in the direction of the shack and said: “Catherine is not here right now, perhaps she is over....”
Before I could even try to finish the woman before me already interrupted my sentence and introduced herself. The first few lines were too quickly spoken for me to understand even a word I may have possibly known, but then she finished up with a more pronounced:
“I am Arienne. What's your name?”, followed by another two quick gusts of language.
Finally she gave me a quick moment to utter: “Shalyne.” Before I was able to take a breath she started to ramble on. I gestured her to slow down and inserted a quick “I don't understand.” That paused her for a moment, producing an irritated look, before she switched into another language began to speak just the same way.
I shook my head, but she just ignored me. I closed the door and keeping some kind of eye contact walked over to the shack. When we were close enough I desperately cried out: “Catherine?” A slightly annoyed: “What is it?” rang back. After a short moment Catherine came out of of the shack, a light frown on her face. The moment she spotted Arienne the frown deepened to a substantial level. “Only one day back and....” What she said afterward sounded like anger and curses.
Arienne didn't seem irritated at all and found some way to fluently combine whatever she had spoken to me into something to answer Catherine. The two went at each other, and after a little while I finally felt excluded enough to breath a sigh of relief. I didn't enjoy speaking when I was unable to understand anything, so I dislodged myself from the conversation and left back for the house.
After a short time a disgruntled Catherine entered. “Stay out there!” She went to the locked door, opened it, took some potions out of the storage and locked it again. Then she went to the front door and exchanged it against some coins. Before Arienne could even say anything the door was thrown right in her face.
My vocabulary was then expanded by 'bad luck', 'avoid' and some curses. After a while she strode to the front door and peaked out, followed by a more thorough search outside. When she came back in she took out broom, bucket and some rag and handed them over. Before she left again she just said: “Bad luck.”
I knew I would have to work my share sooner or later but the way it came about seemed a bit unreasonable. Still I took up the bucket and went outside to the stream. I found a place very close to the house where it was steep enough, so I could fill up the bucket almost entirely. I started cleaning the windows when Arienne suddenly snuck back around the corner of the house and began another tirade.
“Please speak slower.”, was all I could force out and it must have accomplished something, because the following two sentences where spoken at an almost sensible speed before Arienne forgot all about it and resumed her former pace. At least I had been able to make out about a sword and some wolves, so she was probably telling me a story that happened to her.
Something must be really wrong with that woman, because she kept at me until I had finished the outside of all windows. I emptied the bucket, refilled it and went into the house, managing to delay her at the front door just long enough to sneak in and shut it before she could even try to follow. I anxiously waited for a while, but the house must have been some kind of taboo to her.
I decided to delay cleaning the inside of the windows and began to work on some hidden corners at first. Uttering a deep sigh, I hoped I had not made an enemy out of Arienne. It was difficult to take her seriously, but the way she carried herself still held some weight. Perhaps I should apologize once my language skills had improved enough. For now I went to work on the house.
The cleaning took the whole day until I had put most of the house into a decent state, but there were some corners I could have spent another week on. Catherine had briefly joined me for lunch and only came back in for dinner once it was almost dark. I considered my work finished at that time and cleaned out the bucket for the last time.
Completely full of dirt I went to the stream to clean again, but today I was even more tired than after a whole day of travel and just went through the motions. I put on a different set of clothes. That was also something I had to change, I couldn't continue to depend on Catherine's wardrobe forever.
It didn't take me long to sleep that day either.