27 A purpose for magic

When Dahlia awoke, it was still early. The birds could be heard singing, but based on the current light levels, she assumed that it was still before sunrise. Shifting around, it didn't take her long to locate the Archduchess beside her and once located, she began to run her hands along the woman again. Just feeling her under her hand was a comforting sensation that Dahlia was still yet to get used to.

In the dark, alone with her thoughts, it was only this gentle warmth, the soft breathing of someone in a deep sleep, and the sound of distant birds that accompanied her. It actually gave her much needed time to think. What had happened ever since the debutante felt surreal and it was still catching up to her.

While she was on death's door, most of what she experienced she wasn't lucid for, so the last week had been a total blur. Other than a painful haze of memories, all she really recalled was the events at the ball followed by being beaten, treated by her mother, and then waking up now in the castle. There were so many sudden changes that thinking about everything almost made her dizzy.

And beyond it all, there was Valentina. That source of warmth and love beside her. Like an angel descended from the heavens, this woman felt like she was too perfect. Too ideal. Everything about her seemed impossible to Dahlia, whose pessimism had long since overtaken her. Just thinking about how much affection, love, and lust came from the vampiress made Dahlia wiggle excitedly.

Beyond never having received love before, she never was comfortable receiving the advances of others or being lusted after. With the Archduchess however, she thought it felt wonderful. It made her feel cherished, appreciated, and valued. It was shocking how big of a difference a person could make. Then once she added on the gentle affections she received, it was hard not to believe that everything was just a dream.

And yet here she was, lying next to her love. She had woken from her sleep, yet this 'dream' never left her.

'She said she wants me to love my new life here. To find purpose. I don't know if she realises just how much purpose she alone gives me. And more than that, she said the word "wife" like that wasn't a big deal. It's a very big deal!'

Faintly smiling, she continued to run her fingers along her abdomen, softly outlining every muscle. In some ways she was happy she couldn't see. Being in close proximity and being able to feel her like this was already overwhelming, if she could see her right now, she likely wouldn't be able to think.

Memories of Valentina's beauty and her piercing eyes rushed through Dahlia's mind and when she connected those images to the body she was feeling, a shiver ran through her. She bit her lip as she held herself back from leaping on her right there while she was asleep. Yes, there were all the concerns they had already talked about, but just because she theoretically wanted to take things slow, that didn't mean her body always agreed with that decision.

It was quite a bit of effort to hold back but she knew it was worth it. With Dahlia's experiences, her degree of trust in herself and others was just far too low. Even with the sheer amount of love that radiated from the vampiress, Dahlia's paranoia still made her hesitate to fully believe that she deserved genuine care from others.

By taking things slow, she was hoping to mitigate that. To prove that it wasn't a relationship formed purely due to her looks and lust, but something much deeper than that. From everything she could see so far, that certainly seemed to be the case, so now it was just a matter of letting time pass until her paranoia was proven wrong without any shadow of a doubt.

For the time being though, she planned to enjoy the time they had together. Although things might not proceed further for now, she was already so pleased by Valentina and their relationship that it was hard not to already cherish what she had.

More than this new budding relationship, what was actually the greatest source of stress was her future. From what they mentioned yesterday, it sounded like there would be a lot of changes from now on. No longer would she be isolated and just doing nothing but study all day. From the sounds of things, there would be plenty of new concerns.

The two smaller jobs the Archduchess suggested were honestly quite appealing. However, Dahlia had never worked an actual job, nor was she given duties beyond studying or cooking for herself. This made it so the idea that she'd suddenly need to learn how to work, all while also interacting with new people made her anxiety begin to flare up. Even though working in the libraries and gardens should be enjoyable, there were so many unknowns that it was impossible not to get nervous.

And then there was combat training.

All through her life, anxiety and physicality were probably Dahlia's two defining weaknesses and when she thought about combat, she knew that it would almost certainly involve both. Physically, her parents never cared too much. They initially wanted to train her a little bit so that they could brag, but after seeing her dreadful strength, dexterity, and stamina, they quickly decided it was more of a headache than it was worth.

Once this overarching lack of ability was paired with the pressure that came from combat, Dahlia suspected that she might break down crying quite frequently in her upcoming lessons. All this to say, she was already bracing herself to be a disappointment to the Archduchess and a laughing stock for the rest of the castle.

That would have to wait at least. The medics instructed her that she should be fully healed in three days and that she shouldn't do anything unnecessary until then. Due to this waiting period Dahlia had a little bit of room to breathe and her fears could be set aside, at least temporarily. During the next few days, she had decided that she would make full use of this time to finally figure out the last pieces of the puzzle that was her schema.

The foundation was already rock solid, so there was basically nothing to do there. There were different sets of patterns she managed to overlap previously that might be better suited to her aspect than other options, but that would just be a simple choice. There wasn't any real effort involved. So what remained was working on the specifier and how to tie it all together.

Honestly, this final step of schema creation always left her feeling uncertain. She enjoyed the rationality and fundamental truths she could locate in schema foundations. It was just a magical version of physics, and she found it quite intuitive. That wasn't the case for specifiers though. Specifiers were heavily based on mindset and were more like mental gymnastics than anything solid and easy to define.

During their talks yesterday, Dahlia had learned Valentina's specifier was called 'Vampiric Bloodlust' rather than the family's traditional schema of 'Vampiric Bloodlord'. And that was cool and all, but if asked Dahlia would have a difficult time explaining what the difference was or why they had these names. This wasn't from lack of trying. She exhaustively researched specifier naming conventions and was able to get a general gist for how they worked, but the most important principles always seemed to elude her.

Once again returning to the case of Valentina, she had explained that her family's traditional schema was dedicated to complete and utter dominance of both their vampirism and the blood aspect. While the foundation was a meticulously designed variant of traditional sorcery that combined innate magic with channelling, the result was designed to create the quintessential schema for a vampire.

'Vampiric Bloodlord' was apparently the specifier that they found emphasised vampirism, blood magic, nobility, and superiority all in a pair of words. Then it was just a matter of them interpreting the foundation into the specifier and *poof!* you suddenly had a completed schema.

Valentina used her family schema as a starting point and then looked to the eastern Dìyù Empire, where she found inspiration in the current empress' hexcraft schema. Taking the best of both worlds, she had formed 'Vampiric Bloodlust'. She had explained that the 'lord' title no longer made sense as the schema hadn't attempted to be able to overpower all other blood mages or make her the pinnacle vampiric lord.

Instead, her custom schema was intended to thirst for the life and blood of others, to hunt them and then bind them. It was meant to take, and take, and take, until the vampiress' thirst was quenched and she left satisfied. By removing the dedication to sheer power, Valentina had instead created a schema that complimented her more primal instincts and desires, and so 'bloodlust' had felt incredibly suitable to her.

These were just a couple more relevant examples, but Dahlia had studied countless schema with regards to both their foundations and specifiers. Theoretically, she should be well prepared for this final step, but she really wasn't.

First was just the subjective nature of specifiers. They were meant to streamline and direct the user's thought process. Basically, they were a mnemonic for casting magic, but not all mnemonics worked equally for everyone. A specifier which might be perfect for someone else may not help her at all. Often she found this to be the case, where her textbooks would say 'this schema was so intuitive and clear, anyone could use it!' meanwhile she would be scratching her head in bewilderment.

The second problem was that specifiers were supposed to be succinct and define a concept more than the actual mechanics of what was happening. Again, where some people found this enjoyable or easy, Dahlia found it to be a nightmare. Naming her foundation was easy because she just said what it was. 'Body embedded geometric witchcraft' doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but it didn't need to. It was just functionally descriptive.

In contrast, a clunky name like that would be an awful specifier. Not only was the word count relatively high, but more importantly it didn't really paint a picture in someone's imagination. If she wanted to do it right, Dahlia would need to come to a full understanding of what she found important in her schema and how to best represent it, and honestly… that was a tall order.

Like she had mentioned to Valentina, there was no real purpose for her magic. She loved magic theory and so she put in all this effort but when it came to actually figuring out what it was meant for… she had no clue. Combine that lack of clear vision with her lack of creativity and suddenly there was a pretty big problem.

It didn't help that her aspect was also complex and abnormal. If it were something a little simpler then it may have at least been easier to imagine but no, she was stuck with the complicated aspect and she'd simply have to adapt. This was the point she had decided to work from. She needed to think carefully of how she imagined her aspect behaving when used, and after that she could then begin to try and find how best to pair it with her foundation.

Instead of determining how to use her aspect based on what she wanted to do with magic, Dahlia basically flipped the typical process. Would it be powerful? Tricky? Sneaky or overt? Maybe it would be better suited for utility, combat, or something else entirely. With no drive to use her magic in any particular way, she instead tried to find the purest form of her aspect.

Thinking back to the debutante, she had gotten a taste of what her cantrips were like and, as an extension, what her mana naturally gravitated towards. Other than her space attributed mana betraying her and forcing her to suffer, the mana had formed just about the way Dahlia had anticipated. While there was certainly more to uncover, what the cantrips had taught her was that her basic assumptions could, for the most part, be relied on.

Using that as the basis for everything else, she then began to think about it even more. Other than her cantrips, the only real information she had was her hallucination. Back when her aspect awakened, that hallucination had felt like a pure and refined version of what her aspect was. It was to the extent that it ingrained the name directly in her mind. With this in mind, Dahlia began to come to the conclusion that the hallucination may just be her aspect's most natural state.

Thinking back, it wasn't a good experience. The cloying dark mixed with the vertigo and irrational fear all made the entire thing dreadful. Even the gorgeous forest she would typically love had become something she dreaded. Thinking about it closely she realised that, although it might not be in the name, fear and anxiety was tightly tied to her aspect.

At first she had figured that the anxieties she felt back then were simply due to her own personality, but looking back it was clear that she was far less rational than usual. If she had to guess, the combination of 'lost' and 'dark' had an almost direct connection to fear.

When trying to parse the qualities of the aspect, it basically worked down to two categories. There was the overt and physical, and then there was the more mental. For the nature attribute, at least as far as she could tell, it seemed to be exclusively physical. Could you play mind games with plants? Sure, but that was secondary to them being physical creations.

Darkness then had its own physical properties. Literally creating darkness was what one of her cantrips did, so it was safe to say manipulation of shadow was within her purview. However, unlike some darkness attributed users, she may not be able to make shadows tangible. If it was similar to some other aspects she researched, emotionally affecting effects, sensory distortion, and even illusions weren't completely ruled out, leading to her darkness being better suited to trickery, stealth, and indirect confrontation.

Finally, space was usually a highly physical attribute, but hers was a little abnormal. During the hallucination, she was almost certainly redirected without her knowledge and that made Dahlia think that her space magic would still be able to affect things physically, but just not in the ways typical of other space aspects. Once it combined with the mental effects of vertigo and causing all sense of direction to be lost, it was unlike any other aspect she had researched before.

Each attribute could have its own strengths and weaknesses if used for utility purposes or magical item crafting, but if she were to think of them in terms of combat potential, then nature seemed to be a very typical element that was physical and would excel at physical offence and defence. Chances are, due to the mass involved it would be slower than other elements, but she could make up for that in being able to overwhelm. She wasn't using a single tree after all, but a whole forest.

The dark and space attributes seemed to be complimentary, and rather than acting as offensive tools would instead aid in defence, utility, and hindering an enemy. While not something she would be able to use directly, if used in tandem with something else it could be incredibly effective.

Dahlia smirked to herself. Combat wasn't ever something she was fascinated by, though overarching war tactics were certainly interesting. Now that she was told to do combat training lessons though, a little part of her wanted to rebel.

'Maybe if I get really good at magical combat, it'll make up for my lack of physical ability and I won't be a laughing stock… My aspect might be a little atypical, but if I design it for combat purposes, I bet I'd be able to make something work and avoid having to rely on my pathetic physicality.'

She poked at her forearms and scowled a little bit. Now with the injuries mostly gone, her extra soft 'muscles' left her feeling depressed.

'Hopefully Valentina wasn't hoping for someone as toned as she is. Her body is like a sculpture while mine… It's not like I'm fat or anything, I think I'm healthy enough! But… soft is probably the word I'd use to describe myself.'

She thought back to when she asked the Archduchess if she'd be alright with her tattoos and she remembered noticing something. Although Valentina had tried to answer with a calm and gentle disposition, there was something in her voice that caught Dahlia's attention. A slight shake in the voice. A hitch of breath.

When she had asked the question, the vampiress had started to breathe a bit heavier and her heartbeat sped up too. It wasn't hard to notice, Dahlia had her face pressed right against her chest after all. With all that in mind, Dahlia smiled slyly to herself. It seemed like her partner was particularly excited by the thought of her tattoos, so even if her body wasn't quite up to standard from her own perspective, hopefully getting her schema finished would help add to the Archduchess attraction to her.

With the first goal of settling on a schema to make combat easier for herself, and then the second goal of getting her schema quickly so she can seduce Valentina more than she already did, Dahlia began to think over her options again and this time with far more enthusiasm.

'I don't care if making a specifier is difficult for me! I'm starting to get excited about magic all over again~'