Bloody Mary and the Magical Revolution

Human

Over the next several hours, Mary carefully iterated her way through what she had privately considered her notions and ideas of what could really comprise the concept of a [Human]; as she began to finalise what would be the final iteration for the evening, Mary could not help but reflect that she was immensely relieved at the outcome.

But once she realised how well things had gone for her this time, she felt utterly bewildered despite the relief. This wasn’t surprising, as the princess had found that her new world's opinions on what encapsulated the concept of humans were broadly similar to what would be expected of humans on Earth.

The more that the confused princess considered her success on this subject, the more shocked she felt herself become.

By this point, Mary was becoming increasingly exhausted by the emotional ups and downs of her most recent exploration into magic, yet she still found herself staring at the ultimate result of her latest runic creation. She could not help but feel a still-growing degree of confusion at the latest addition to her growing collection of exotic mana runes.

“I don’t get it.”

Mary finally admitted her confusion to her second mind, shamefaced at her inability to understand what she was looking at.

“How have we created a level five [Human] rune but failed so miserably when we tried to create the [Biology] one?”

The princess muttered internally, her frustration at the situation plain to see, both for the second mind within her and the maid in the physical world who had at some point arrived to start cuddling her physical body.

Mary heroically ignored the maid, who had seemingly decided that the princess was a plushie to be hugged at every opportunity.

The avatar of the second mind in front of her frowns in response, visibly taking the time to deliberate on the possible reasons for what was admittedly a strange discrepancy.

It was only after several minutes of careful thought that the second mind came to her conclusion, and yet instead of attempting to answer the question straight away, she chooses to answer the question with a question of her own, for the most part, to air her thoughts and give them form.

{How much would you say that we know about the human condition?}

The second mind asks rhetorically.

{Humans, or maybe more appropriately ‘people’ really, are not made up only of the biology that they are comprised of, but they also have an internal psychology; this is what their minds consist of, and perhaps even more importantly, there is also the matter of the culture which human civilisations are comprised of.}

She continues, her verbal train of thought growing stronger as she becomes more confident that she is at least broadly correct in the conclusion that she has reached.

{We don’t currently know much about any of the – what Alexander would refer to as – fantasy races of Terra, although due to Sylvia and our mothers’ books, we at least know that they exist. But we do know that Elves and Dwarfs are both much longer-lived than Humans.}

Mary nodded along in agreement, visibly attempting to follow the train of thought that the second mind was trying to construct.

“And as we know from the last few decades on Earth, longer life spans can have a severe impact on culture.”

Mary interrupts with what the second mind was going to say next, and then she moves to add her own thoughts on the matter.

“By the time of Alexander's death, people were starting to have families nearly thirty years later than the historical average. Such a thing was only possible due to much longer lifespans and the appropriate fertility treatments. The whole concept of nuclear families from the previous century had ended up erased, not just by life extensions but by the total shakeup in culture.”

{Exactly, and that leads to the question.}

The second mind pauses to gather her thoughts before continuing.

{How different, culturally, are the Humans of this world? Certainly, mana has changed things severely; there is no doubt about that. But we have an advantage there which would have caused the rune to cleave to our own assumptions about the nature of humans.}

“The influence of otherworlders.”

Mary announces internally, and the second mind nods in acceptance of the interruption, instead choosing to verbally expand upon the statement.

{People from Earth have been getting summoned to this world for thousands of years, essentially corrupting the values and cultures of Terra with those same things from Earth.}

{Are we not speaking English at this very moment? Sylvia speaks it too.}

“And language is also a large part of culture.”

The princess mutters internally.

{The people of this world even call it Terra, despite knowing about Earth and the influence that they have on it.}

“And Terra is merely Latin for Earth. The use of Latin here suggests that either many Catholics came here in the past or that some of the most influential otherworlders were Romans while they were still on Earth.”

That was right, wasn’t it, Mary thought? Thinking about it logically, how much of Earth's culture had been influenced by the Romans?

It is accurate to say that all of European civilisation, and by extension the various nations of the American continent, were ultimately built on Roman foundations.

Other cultures might have added to that foundation or otherwise changed it, but that was how influential the ancient Roman republic and empires were.

But it went further than the European and settler colonies of America, didn’t it?

All of the ‘great’ colonial empires of Earth’s history were predominantly European-descended; in the lead-up to the Second World War, most places were under the control of European powers in some way.

As such, the number of places on Earth that hadn’t been heavily influenced by Rome, at the very least indirectly, was small indeed.

Even nations like Japan, which had been heavily isolationist and had with some degree of success navigated around the European colonial powers at their height, still had some echoes of Rome due to sheer osmosis.

{It doesn’t even matter which of the potential options occurred; in fact, it was probably even both. I would be shocked if at one point in Terran history there hadn’t been Catholics present and Romans too.}

“Because in the end, one ultimately means the other.”

Mary stated in agreement, having finally calmed down from the frustration that had been gripping her earlier.

“So, the reason we had so much success is due to the influence of Earth on the humans of Terra.”

Mary frowned as she considered the rune before her.

“Considering the connection with not just Earth, but humans in general. Could this rune be used to help us gain better access to Alexander’s memories?”

The second mind moved to nod automatically but stopped in shocked surprise as the question fully hit her. This idea was intriguing because it required a level of conceptualisation that they had not attempted before, but it still held promise.

After a few moments of thought, she finished the nod, this time consciously and firmly.

{I think that we could.}

Said the second mind, the surprise still evident in her voice.

{It would almost certainly increase the mana costs of the spell severely, of course, but I think that you're right; it really might help increase the output of the memory harvesting spell.}

The two Marys nodded at each other firmly; they had already dedicated so much to that spell, and while there was a degree of sunk cost fallacy in play, getting it working to the best degree possible was still a continued priority for them.

They might have succeeded in starting to harvest Alexander's memories, but right now they could only really save those memories in one way.

This method was primarily through books or, more specifically, through direct text.

While this was useful to some degree, the most important knowledge of Alexander could largely be translated into text or had even been text to begin with.

But the books that they had created thus far, taken directly from Alexander’s memories, had been of terribly poor quality. So poor, in fact, that it still frustrated Mary whenever she deigned to think about it.

The text often looked like industrially printed books, but it was hard to read due to smudging and grammatical errors that slipped in during copying.

Increasing the spell power with a relevant rune could help make those harvested texts much more accurate.

{And of course it will increase the capability of our biology spells too, at least those that will be aimed at humans.}

Mary nodded in answer to the statement; it was only natural, as that was why they had started looking into a [Human] rune to begin with.

Attaching a [Human] rune would likely make using the spell on non-humans extremely difficult, if not impossible, but in the short term, that was not much of a weakness; this was because she had no true expectation of meeting anyone but humans for years to come.

For Mary it was slightly saddening, but it would no doubt take years, or perhaps it might even take a full decade, before the princess would encounter any sort of non-human. From what she had learned, meeting such a person was unlikely to happen in the royal palace, even more so while she was isolated in her room.

From what Sylvia had told her, while the classical fantasy races had once been friendly with the human kingdoms, that had changed in recent centuries. It wasn’t difficult to figure out that the silver-haired maid had meant that the other races were utterly furious at the hero who had enslaved their princesses during the war against the demons.

Objectively, none of these factors truly mattered, as Mary couldn’t leave the palace immediately, or even relatively soon, especially not while she was so young that she couldn’t even properly walk. Overall, no matter how much Mary disliked how she was being treated or the fate that was in store for her, the reincarnator wouldn’t feel remotely comfortable with leaving what were arguably the safe grounds of the palace.

At least not until she could reliably protect herself.

Sylvia would never allow such a thing, even if ordered, especially while the princess could still barely walk without aid.

In fact, if Mary were being totally honest, even leaving her current room was difficult due to the intentional isolation she was subjected to; she would need to either learn how to hide from prying eyes or somehow gain permission to explore the palace.

The latter was a difficult prospect, considering that the isolation she was currently experiencing was intended to transform her into a compliant and easily controlled slave.

Of course, this was only true once Mary had found a way out of her bedroom without facing immediate and catastrophic consequences. There was a minuscule but nonetheless existent possibility that she would meet non-humans in the palace, be they of other sapient races, such as the classical elves and dwarves.

Or maybe even pets or other animals of some kind. Alexander had few experiences with such things, as he’d never had a pet. Privately, Mary was somewhat looking forward to seeing what magical pets might be like.

But the royal family somehow managed to ruin even that, as the former would be constrained to pets of the palace staff or some sort of stowaway if that were the case, and the latter, other animals than those traditionally called pets, would only be from the palace stables.

As she thought on the matter further, for a moment, the princess allowed herself to properly reminisce.

The princess found it strange that there had been no animals in her life for months; she had expected at least a cat to wander in. And yet, eventually, she had not seen any animals or pets in the months since her birth, but when she had asked Sylvia about the absence, the maid had looked at her princess as if she were crazy.

Mary stopped to think on the matter further; it had been a bizarre conversation for the reincarnator. If Mary were to be honest with herself, Alexander's knowledge of history, specifically the medieval periods, wasn’t what could be called the best, but nonetheless, she knew enough that she would have expected at least a mouser, such as a cat, to take care of rodents if nothing else.

But apparently royalty was expected to have no pets that couldn’t be ridden, or so her maid had claimed, and the staff were also supposedly forbidden from having any pets for some unspecified reason.

Privately, Mary assumed that a restriction like that was less about practicality and more about control.

But it still means that the only animals that are actually allowed in the palace grounds are those that can be found in the stable, something which Sylvia has confirmed exists.

Mary allowed herself to physically twitch at the reminder of that conversation.

Apparently, any sort of riding animal owned by a palace would also have to be suitably powerful and majestic, which meant that regular old horses were completely absent from the palace stables.

Part of Mary was incredibly interested in what the maid had told her about the stables. She really wanted to witness the actual magical steeds!

The other part of the princess was terrified of being eaten by what was supposedly incredibly dangerous and often carnivorous steeds that the royal family of Midgard allegedly preferred.