Chapter 33
A Big Reveal
“Here we go again.”
Mary commented telepathically, releasing a defeated sigh that echoed into the now slightly less full breasts of her all-too-cheerful maid.
The situation for Mary had escalated quickly; shortly after she discovered that physics was merely a suggestion—at least within her mindscape—she finally stopped completely ignoring the physical world. Immediately after this realisation, she lost what she could reluctantly admit was a foolish yet one-sided battle with her infantile body.
As further proof of her surrender to the inevitable, Mary had turned her focus totally away from the library that she had built in the depths of her soul and summoned her loyal maid, Sylivia. Unfortunately for Mary, she was still young enough that she still had to use what was quickly becoming a dreadfully familiar cry for food when she wanted to summon breakfast.
“Your telepathic voice has changed a bit.”
Sylvia noted in amusement, having once again picked up on the fact that what she knew was a formerly adult male was still hung up on being breastfed.
Mary attempted to frown at her maid’s commentary but found that her facial muscles were currently being stymied by the maid's body pressing against her; instead, she turned her mental voice inward and sent a nonverbal question.
Had her voice changed? Why would that happen?
{I agree with Sylvia. Both of us sound more feminine now.}
Mary's second mind answered inadvertently, revealing her existence to the maid for the first time through their still-open telepathic connection.
Sylvia instantly flinched in surprise as the strangely echoey voice of her princess resounded across the connection. With tremendous swiftness, the now-worried maid turns a concerned frown toward the baby currently attached to her bosom.
“Oh dear, has it happened then? Has your mind begun to fracture due to the traumatic pressures that you’ve endured?”
Sylvia pointedly asked Mary a concerned question, unaware that her immediate conclusion—that Mary's mind had started to fracture—was incorrect.
Mary paused her despondent sucking in confusion at the query.
She turned away from the mountains that her face had been buried in, her bewildered eyes shifting to the face of the beautiful maid.
However, the princess’s confusion at the maids’ question did not last long; instead, her bewilderment turned into a form of dismayed understanding as she understood that Sylvia had immediately assumed that Mary had begun what might be an inevitable descent into madness.
Belatedly, Mary realised that she had not at any point deigned to inform Sylvia of anything about the magic that she had been recently pursuing; she had not mentioned her intent to create a second mind, nor had she revealed her idea of creating a mental replacement for the grimoires that Sylvia had told her about.
In, for the current Mary, a not rare at all moment of reflection, she wondered to herself if it had been a mistake to not tell Sylvia what her general plan of action were.
After all, due to the grim situation that she had been born into, Mary had forced herself to trust Sylvia; eventually, Mary had rationalised that if the maid was not trustworthy, then Mary was probably damned anyway.
After all, not only was Sylvia spending most of her days in the presence of her princess, but she was also the gatekeeper for food, which Mary needed to live, and knowledge, which Mary needed in the long term to survive.
{She thinks that we’ve gone mad.}
The second mind observed with a degree of malicious amusement, intentionally exacerbating Sylvia's well-founded worries.
With another, this time internal, sigh, Mary sent a wave of exasperation at the second mind for toying with their devoted maid before moving to reassure the now deeply concerned woman that her princess was still sane.
“That voice is a simulated duplicate of mine; I recently created a second mind spell that should allow me to vastly increase my multitasking capability. Of course, I used the latest iteration of my mind rune; … which you might not know about, but really, it’s not entirely dissimilar to the telepathy spell that we are using right this moment.”
Mary explained to the increasingly distraught maid.
Immediately, the maids’ concerns evaporated; what had been a concerned frown instantly morphed into a bright, beaming smile. The change had been so fast that it was as if her concern had never been present at all.
“Oh! That’s very impressive, princess!”
Exclaimed Sylvia, heaping what Mary took to be sincere praise upon her young princess, apparently having been truly impressed with what the maid considered a genuine spell-crafting achievement.
“Second mind spells are supposed to be very difficult to create, you know?”
Mary blinked in confusion at the maids’ statement; that hadn’t matched Mary's experience thus far. In reality, it hadn’t been that difficult for her, or rather, it had seemed trivial, really.
She had, after all, created not only the relevant mind rune, but the base spell itself in less than an afternoon!
“Are you sure about that, Sylvia? I didn’t have any difficulty creating a mind rune; in fact, I would even go as far as to say that it was easy to do. Nor did I have any trouble with creating the second mind spell, although admittedly the formula I used for that probably shouldn’t have worked as well as it seems to have.”
Mary asked the ostensibly more knowledgeable maid, her sincere confusion at the strange discrepancy evident in her voice.
“Well… such is the nature of heroes, I suppose?”
The maid explained sheepishly, which frustrated Mary and her second mind.
{We don’t have a frame of reference that is not influenced by our nature as otherworlders.}
The second mind stated loudly, airing the very thoughts that Mary had on the matter.
{So then, is our status as a hero really helping us that much, or are the benefits merely incidental? We don’t really know for certain if the status of a hero provides any genuine improvements over non-heroes or if it is something more like a badge of honour. At least from my perspective, everything we know about heroes is essentially unreliable hearsay.}
The second mind continued, her tone turning derisive.
{Who knows, maybe the truth is that we are being assisted by Alexander’s experience even more than we had already thought we were, and this whole hero stuff is just an otherwise meaningless add-on.}
The second mind finished her diatribe, having provided an entire slew of pointed questions and tangible observations.
Sylvia's face twisted again as she adopted a complicated look, her features displaying one part reminiscing and one part sadness as she patiently listened to the second mind's observations.
On the one hand, she didn’t enjoy the suggestion that the status of hero was meaningless; her revered ancestor was one, after all. On the other hand, much of what had been said echoed the thoughts of someone else that she knew.
“The similarities between you and Elizabeth really are stunning. She couldn’t restrain herself with her questioning either.”
Sylvia eventually said with bittersweet sadness.
“Personally, I doubt that it’s a coincidence that your personalities seem to match as well as they do.”
She heaves a great sigh, seemingly lost in memory once again, and then shakes it off, attempting to answer her princess's questions.
“Why does it have to be any particular one of those options? Studies have indicated that the status of hero does have at least some benefits; I’m sure that I’ve said as much before. While those benefits are only somewhat useful, they also shouldn’t allow you to so casually create something as complex as a mind rune.”
Sylvia points out that she had previously mentioned the possibility before the start of their book reading.
“I think that the memories of your previous life are really helping you here. We’ve talked about it before, but knowledge is arguably the most important part of the rune creation process.”
The maid continues, further reminding her princess of facts that they have already discussed at length, and, in fact, it was something that Mary had confirmed to herself numerous times during her recent magical rune creation endeavours.
“The person you used to be – did you say his name was Alexander? – He must have known a tremendous deal about the mind to be able to create a mind rune! Was he actually an amazing person?”
Mary nodded in agreement; it was something that they had already considered, wasn’t it? No matter how useful being a hero from another world might be and considering the trouble that might be associated with it, even that was debatable.
Without a doubt, it was the skills and knowledge inherited from Alexander, particularly his memories of a highly comprehensive and sophisticated education, that would enable her to excel in magic.
“I suppose he was, relatively, anyway. While Alexander might not have been considered a genius by the increasingly high standards of Earth, he may very well have counted as one by the reckoning of this world.”
Mary conceded, acknowledging the reality that someone capable of gaining a scholarship at one of Earth's highly exclusive world-class universities was likely not what could be reasonably called 'of average intelligence' by most standards.
{Well, as nice as this is, you have finished our breakfast. Can we move back to working on the scanner spell that we need to create?}
Sylvia blinked slowly in confusion.
“Scanner spell?”
The maid repeated, baffled by the non sequitur.
“Sorry. Perhaps I should have told you what my general plan was; at least then you wouldn’t have had to worry about my going insane.”
Mary apologised for what she has ultimately concluded was an unnecessary degree of secrecy.
“So, allow me to give you some background on this. Considering your original reaction to my second mind, you are apparently aware of this to some degree, but humans don’t do well with isolation. Add to this fact that being an infant again is humiliating, and I worried that my mind would start to take consistent damage.”
Sylvia nodded sadly, acknowledging the possibility that the isolation of her princess could very well lead to madness.
“Your isolation is intentional on the part of the Church; they don’t want another situation like they had with Elizabeth; she came extremely close to totally upending the local political order, and the traditional faction within the kingdom is bitterly opposed to such things.”
The maid begins to explain, once again bringing to Mary’s attention the lamentable state of politics in Mary's new homeland.
“Instead, they want you to grow up in isolation, which in their minds means you are already defeated.”
“The idea is that you would become twitchy, nervous, or insane from prolonged isolation; the specifics don’t matter to them as long as you’re not a threat to their order like your mother was; if things went as they wanted, it would even be beneficial to them; after all, they think you would ultimately be controlled by your future husband.”
She said, concluding her grim explanation.
Mary felt her face twist into a grim frown; distantly, in the corner of her mind, she could feel a similar expression from her second mind.
“Right. Well, creating my own mind magic, which includes the second mind that you can hear, had a twin benefit of further reducing that isolation while also assisting in any studying that I pursued.”
“Includes, is it? So, you created something other than a second mind as well?”
Sylvia interjected, having correctly identified the qualifier that Mary had added to her exposition.
Mary smiled at her maid and continued.
“Exactly. As soon as I had created my second mind, we had worked on creating an internal metaphysical plane, and in that place, we created a mental library spell. Something to replace the grimoires you’ve been telling me about.”
Sylvia stopped for a brief moment before asking in an amazed voice.
“A mental library? I suppose considering the grimoire connection, you’re talking about a place that you can store your spell lore without forgetting it?”
“Well, that is merely one third of what we currently intend for the library. But yes, that is part of it.”
“Only a third?”
Sylvia asked with a considering frown.
“Ah! You said that you intend to create a scanner spell.”
She exclaimed in realisation.
“You want to be able to scan Elizabeth's books, make copies of them and store them in this mental library of yours then?”
Sylvia concluded in amazement before frowning again as she noticed what was missing.
“That only accounts for two thirds; what is the last one?”
She asked, giving up on guessing.
Mary giggled, both physically and telepathically, amused with the reaction she was going to get from the coming reveal.
“I need a way to recover and store the memories of Alexander. As evidenced by the nascent level mind rune we created, his knowledge is incredibly valuable.”
Sylvia stiffened in total surprise, her muscles visibly locking into place; then her body forcibly corrected itself, and the maid took a performative breath, inhaling sharply before cheerfully exclaiming.
“Nascent?!”
The maid squeaked breathlessly.
Mary smirked knowingly.
“Nascent.”
{Yes, very amusing. What was that just now?!}
Mary's second mind interjected again, her attention firmly locked onto the maid.
Mary frowned at the suspicion that she was feeling emanating from the second mind, aimed firmly at the silver-haired maid.
“What was what?”
She asked in confusion, prompting the second mind to send her the relevant memory and impressions of the maids’ immediate reaction and subsequent overcorrection to the news. Mary frowned as she saw the issue.
“… My second mind is right. What you just did was strange.”
A flash of possibly genuine, concerned light flashed across the maid's eyes before she wilted submissively, proceeding to explain herself properly.
“Have you forgotten already, princess? I told you, didn’t I? I, along with your mother, used to be a B-ranked adventurer. By the standards you're familiar with, I am, in the words of someone from Earth, a superhuman.”
Mary paused at the reminder, sensing her second mind doing the same.
“I’m sorry if I seem a bit performative, Princess; I just wanted to make sure you were comfortable with my presence.”
The maid said apologetically.
“Was I infantilising you too much? I know that your current physical state annoys you. But well… I’ve never been one for magic or theory; I’m sure that you have figured that out by now. I don’t know what you thought my speciality was during my adventurer with your mother, but in terms that you should be familiar with, I was something like a berserker.”
Sylvia dropped a metaphorical bomb on her princess with a cheerful smile, having knowingly stated something that could only be called truly outrageous.