Chapter 1:
An Unannounced Guest
ON THE NIGHT OF AUGUST 15TH, A GIRL stood alone in the eerie darkness of the most feared forest in all the kingdom, the largest blightland in all the world—the Great Vanargand Wood. Who else could it be but Melody?
The moon soaked her in silver light as she stood in a freshly cut clearing (her work, of course). With her eyes shut and hands clasped, she began to chant. “Maid Magic Masterwork—Silvershine Raiment!”
Her eyes shot open, and she saw…nothing.
A sigh escaped her lips. “Still not working.”
Just yesterday, a great and vile wolflike beast—a monster, as best she could surmise—had threatened her and her lady. It was this spell that had come to their rescue. With hair of silver, eyes like lapis lazuli, and a brand-new argent uniform, Melody obtained a new power that allowed her to return the dark mana plaguing the land back where it belonged. Back “home.”
Some masterwork.
And yet, Melody could not shake her misgivings. In the moment, she’d felt that this power was indeed her peak, but in hindsight, she wondered what restoring dark mana had to do with maids. Now, she just felt silly, like she was reading back over a broody poem the morning after a particularly emotional night. Not that she’d ever considered herself a poet. In any case, she sought better understanding of this “Raiment,” and so had come to the Wood in the dead of night by way of Ovunque Porta, her all-purpose gateway spell.
Her timing resulted from an emergency meeting the Rudlebergs called not long ago, wherein they explained Melody’s unique magic to her in no uncertain terms. She was learning to be more prudent about using it. The Great Vanargand Wood offered her plenty of privacy to test this supposed masterwork of hers, if only she could cast it.
“Why can’t I use it anymore?” She looked down at her hands. What had been different back in that warped world of darkness? “That’s right. The bead.”
Black spots had infected crops throughout the Rudlebergs’ demesne. Melody had cured each and every one, collecting the particles into a condensed, crystalline bead. She remembered it being black, but when the wolf struck her down, she awoke to find it pure white.
She also remembered a little black pup crying for home. She’d granted his wish, and he vanished in a ripple of light. He was the white bead. Melody did not know how she knew that, but she felt that it was so. When she gripped the bead, it had become the threads of the Silvershine Raiment. After she cast the spell, the bead vanished.
It went back to where it belongs, she surmised. But the source of the dark mana went into Micah’s Uovo del Mago, and I’m still not sure if that was a good or bad thing.
Another mystery. Eggs did not typically swallow arcane entities on the verge of death then reseal themselves without a trace of having hatched.
Melody doubted her monster theory more and more. The wolf that attacked them seemed far more cognizant than any blight-tainted beast, and given that the Uovo del Mago was, by nature, heavily sensitive to mana, it would stand to reason that it might react to a being of pure magical energy. Maybe. Potentially. Hypothetically.
I certainly didn’t give it that feature, at the very least.
Neither Micah nor Melody could explain it any better than the wolf made of mana. What was that orb sealing it away? Why was it sealed away? And what was it doing beneath the Rudleberg estate?
The orb had unleashed a kind of haze that quickly coalesced into lupine form. For magic to act that way, to manifest as such a colossal creature, required a massive amount of mana. Had that strange, otherworldly space not been born with it, the earthquake that leveled the estate would have been paltry in comparison to the destruction that followed. Melody did not care to pursue that particular thought experiment.
Hostilities began almost the instant they encountered the beast. Were it not for Melody subduing it with her Silvershine Raiment, someone surely would have died. One egg-related incident later and all seemed well again, but Melody remained wary. Was that truly the end? They knew too little. Was the wolf alone? Was this a threat she needed to be prepared for at all times?
I really wish I could get the Raiment to work, just in case, but it isn’t cooperating. Maybe it does come down to the bead. Maybe I can’t call upon it without it.
She recalled the words spoken to her long ago. “I can sense power, but not the switch with which to access it.”
This had been the result of her magic screening at the church in her hometown when she was five. Of course, Melody wielded magic aplenty now, but only a few short months ago, this was not the case. Only after her mother’s passing, just before she turned fifteen, did the “switch” finally manifest for her. Its nature remained a mystery, as was much to do with her awakening.
“There must be something missing. Something that prevents me from summoning the Raiment.”
There had to be. Despite the extenuating circumstances, she had used it once before, and with a mysterious, immense confidence. She just needed to figure out the final piece of the puzzle.
“If it happened once, it’ll happen again. I’ll keep practicing until it does.”
That was something she was quite good at. Melody wasn’t simply born with gifts. She matched every ounce of natural talent with dedication and work ethic. Setbacks meant nothing to her. She and struggle were old friends.
“Gateway—Ovunque Porta.”
A plain, unassuming door opened before her, revealing a similarly plain room back at the temporary Rudleberg county estate. With a yawn, she passed through.
Melody poured her lady’s tea on the beautiful afternoon of August 17th while the sun hung high in the sky, so high it begged the question: What in the world were they doing outside at the peak of summer? Practicing their bacon routine? Hardly. A canopy courtesy of Rook and Schue staved off much of the heat. It wasn’t humid, nor was there any pavement or towering skyscrapers to turn the area into one massive microwave, so Theolan summers were really much milder than those in modern Japan.
They’d made the canopy out of debris salvaged from the old, collapsed estate. Indeed, Melody considered it quite humble, she who could have used the same materials to construct an entirely separate summer home were she not under strict no-summer-home-building instructions. Subtlety regarding her magic was a new concept.
“Hmm…”
“Something the matter, my lady?”