I fell through clouds of cotton, bounced on hills that looked hard as rock but gave like flesh, and landed upon a massive book that proceeded to snap shut - waking me from my dream and causing me to sit upright in bed.

“I’ve got it!”

“Got what my Lady?” Clara asked, from beside my bed post.

“Wha-you… No! No time! It’s going to leave my head at this rate - I need a paper and pen.”

“A pen?” Clara asked, frowning for a moment. “Do you mean a quill?”

“Yes! That! With ink!” I replied, waving off the question. “Hurry, too, or I’ll-”

“Here you are, my Lady,” Clara said, proffering the writing materials upon a tray.

“Where did you…?”

“Lady Amelia always kept them close at hand - in her writing desk,” Clara explained. Not that it explained how she’d gotten ahold of them so fast, or where the tray had come from, but… I’d worry about that later.

“Hold the tray steady,” I told her. “Or put it down, if you must - I just need a steady surface to write on.”

“I’ll hold it, then, my Lady,” Clara replied.

I didn’t question her choice, too busy dipping my quill into the ink, tapping it against the inner wall of the inkwell in order to shake off the excess, and then transmitting the image that had come to me in my dreams into reality.

“A book,” I murmured, mostly to myself, trying to keep hold of an image that I could already feel beginning to fade. “No - four books, in a square, their spines backed up together. Four parts of a whole - a series. Distinct, but interconnected. Each of the four books has four acts - four stages of the story, tied together by the central theme! A simple motif of shadow runs through it all, creating the interconnection between the works that make it work…”

I honestly had no idea what was leaving my lips. I didn’t know if it made sense. I knew what I was drawing didn’t - I mean, it sort of kinda looked like four pages if you squinted a bit? And maybe those little lines underneath could be said to be more pages, meaning a book… if you squinted real hard… and yet I knew deep in my bones that this was it. This was my abstract representation of the third option Professor Devulchas had provided. It was… messier than hers, to be honest. Not nearly as efficient - she’d probably complain about it taking up too much room. It would do what was needed, though… and if it was messy and inefficient, then so what? So was I.

Though there was one problem I still needed to solve…

“Clara. Why are you in my bedroom?”

“You called for me, my Lady,” Clara told me.

“No, I didn’t,” I replied - and yet there was doubt in my voice. My ability hadn’t read her words as a lie.

“Maybe not consciously,” Clara said. “But I could feel your need for me even before your eyes snapped open.”

“How?” I asked, deciding not to beat around the bush. “Were you watching me sleep?”

“Of course not, my Lady.” Clara looked almost affronted. “I’m simply well attuned to my Lady’s needs.”

“So well attuned that you entered my bedroom before I even woke up?” I demanded.

“Of course not. I entered it the same instant you woke up. It’s just that your eyes took a second to open and notice.”

“That’s…” I didn’t know what to say to that. “How? I didn’t hear the door open, or close, either!”

“I don’t rely on such conventional means to appear by my Lady’s side,” Clara replied.

“…You can teleport?” I asked, flabbergasted.

“In a limited capacity,” she admitted, her tone so carefully neutral even I could detect it. Was she nervous? “More specifically, a lady’s maid must always be present to open the door for their Lady upon their return… and must similarly be available to her at all hours of the night within their own abode. The mana cost is heavy for large distances, but generally manageable.”

“And you didn’t tell me this before why?” I demanded.

“It wasn’t necessary information,” Clara replied, shrugging. “It’s still not necessary, in my opinion.”

“…Right…” I murmured, letting out a sigh. I’d almost forgotten, somehow, but Clara didn’t truly work for me. She worked for Amelia. It only made sense that she wouldn’t trust me with information she didn’t need to… though now that I knew about it, a scary thought crossed my mind. “Could you teleport into my room and kill me? At any point? All this time?”

“I would never do that, my Lady,” Clara replied, sounding almost affronted. “And… No. I could not.”

She wasn’t lying - I could tell that much - but… “What do you mean you can’t? Surely you mean you wouldn’t - or is there some issue with your abilities that would prevent it?”

Clara didn’t reply at first. Her lips twisted into an expression of discontent, and I could tell she was seriously considering refusal. Still, she eventually confessed. “I am unable to hurt you, my Lady. Physically. Magically. It would betray the very nature of my existence.”

Again, Clara seemed to wage an internal war with herself, her expression shifting from frustration to discomfort to eventual acceptance. “What do you know about magical affinities, my Lady?”

“That… they’re a thing, I suppose?” I replied. “I know I’m aligned with shadows - or at least Amelia was, and considering the fact that I can tell the truth from lies, like her, I imagine it remains unchanged…”

“Just so, my Lady,” Clara confirmed. “Similarly, Miss Pauline is aligned with the element of light, and her mana expresses itself through the healing aspect. Bridgette, meanwhile, is aligned with wind. I am aware that she can also hear things said from great distances away, though what she hears seems to be almost random. She can also travel at great speeds - probably a spell rather than a direct expression of her magic.”

Bridgette could do a lot more than travel at great speeds with her ability - but I wasn’t going to say that out loud. Rather, I bit my tongue to keep from letting it spill by accident, and just nodded along.

“Not all alignments are so straight forward,” Clara continued. “Most are fairly simple, mind you. Air, earth, fire, water, and - more rarely - shadow and light are fairly standard themes. You might have ‘stone’ or ‘metal’ over the more-encompassing ‘Earth.’ You might have ice, or lightning, or even warmth as your affinity, but it usually all ties into those categories.”

Again, I nodded. It was more than I’d known before, but it still made sense to me.

“Rarely, however, someone is born with something more… esoteric. Something that doesn’t neatly align with one of the elements…”

“I take it you’re one such case?” I asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Just so, my Lady,” Clara confirmed. “More specifically, my affinity is servitude. Just as all your spells must inevitably invoke shadows in some way, mine must always be in service to another.”

“In service to me, you mean?” I asked, a grim realization falling over me. “To this body. Are you… couldn’t you switch to someone else?”

Clara shook her head. “I made my choice long ago. While it’s true that my power once had such flexibility, I chose to narrow the nature of my most powerful spells - more specific concepts are generally more efficient, requiring less power to activate and returning greater results. I can teleport to your side from almost anywhere - but only your side, my Lady.”

“That… that still doesn’t explain why you can’t physically harm me,” I pointed out. “Surely that only restricts your magic, no?”

Again, Clara shook her head. “I carved an oath into my core, when I joined my Lady. One enforced by the very nature of my mana. To break it would no doubt shatter my core. I’d quite literally die before harming you.”

“That’s… that’s horrible,” I whispered. “How can you be so calm about that? Being bound to someone like that - being bound to me, someone you don’t even know, just because the real Amelia left you - how could she-”

“I doubt she knew she would be taken beyond my reach,” Clara interrupted, her expression stormy.

“But still! You’re basically trapped in servitude, aren’t you? I mean, no wonder you chose to stay by my side, even when I can’t pay you… you literally couldn’t leave me if you tried…”

“I swore an oath to Lady Amelia,” Clara replied. “And I am bound only by my own interpretation of it. The only reason it protects you is because I trust my Lady to have a plan, and reclaiming her body might be part of it. To hurt your physical form would be a betrayal. That doesn’t mean I have to serve you, someone who isn’t her, beyond the bare minimum. I choose to do so.”

“But you’re still bound to her,” I argued. “What did she… how did she make you-”

“Stop!” Clara demanded, glaring at me. “Not another word, my Lady.”

“But-”

“I made my own choice when I carved my core.”

“But you’ve been serving Amelia since you were both children. No child should have to-”

“She doesn’t know about it.”

“What?” I asked, blinking.

“She didn’t require it - she certainly didn’t ask for it. As if she needed to… I was just some random girl from the slums. Someone she saved from the very fate you seem to think she consigned me to. But you wouldn’t know about that, would you?” Clara asked me, her eyes drilling deep into mine. “You just assumed the worst about her. Like everyone else does.”

“That’s…” I swallowed. “Amelia is the sort of person who’d take advantage of that. You have to know that. That’s why you didn’t tell her, isn’t it?”

“I never told her because I didn’t want her to feel obligated to keep me around! I swore that oath because I wanted to! Because I wanted to be the best servant that she could ever ask for! Because I didn’t want to give myself the option of cowardly backing down, when things got tough, like I had all my life before! Because she saved me… but none of you can see that side of her. All you see is the cruel mistress who mistreats everyone around her. Everyone except me.”

“That’s… I mean… Just because she didn’t mistreat you doesn’t mean she was a good person…”

“I’m aware of that,” Clara replied, her voice icy cold. “But who said I care?”

I had no response to that. Not that Clara waited for me to give one, simply striding towards the door. Whether because her teleportation was limited to coming towards me, or simply to make a point, she actually went through the trouble of opening the thing and… surprisingly not slamming it shut. In fact, she closed it with the same care she always did.

Not for my sake, though, I realized. Never for mine, at all. She only cared because it was Amelia’s house - and this, in her eyes, was Amelia’s body…

Maybe she wasn’t wrong to think that way. Maybe Amelia really would come back for it… but I didn’t know for sure what had happened to her. I didn’t know that she could.

So she could go on thinking it was Amelia’s body… like I only had it on loan. Maybe she’d be proven right in the end. In the meantime, though? I needed to get used to treating this body like it was mine for good… because it very well might be.

The first step to that would, of course, be prepping my core… and after an entire week of core-classes, spent slamming my head against the wall trying to get in touch with my sub-conscious, the answer had literally come to me in a dream. It had been dropped right into my lap!

So why couldn’t I stop thinking about Clara, and just be happy about it?

~~~

Author'sNotes

I uh... was expecting to get to the actual core carving this chapter, to be honest, but then the whole thing with Clara happened and next thing I knew an entire chapter had flown by? Which is kinda the story of this chapter in general, considering I only intended to get the start laid out before bed and instead ended up writing the whole thing between 11:43 PM and 1:12 AM... Then again, the series as a whole never seems to go how I expect it to, huh...? Oh well! Hope you enjoy!

If you're eager to read about the core-carving experience, as well as Amy's first Real Spell, feel free head over to my Patreon where you can read three chapters ahead for as little as $1! (That's right, I boosted up the buffer to three. Will it stay that way? Grow? Come back down to 2? Guess it all depends on how productive I can be... but for the time being, three chapters it is!

You can also read 2 ahead on Naughty Magic, Double Trouble, and Hatching a Heroine - as well as 1 (new) chapter ahead on My Oni Love. All for that same $1 price!)