Chapter II - A magical prison

*** Kiara ***

A dim light engulfed her bleeding broken body. Slowly it starting to rise. His vision was slowly fading and yet he reached out with his bloody hands and grasped for her. Holding onto her. His grip weak and yet unyielding. He did not let go. He could not let go. Never.

Kiara awoke in her crib. Tears in her eyes. She was still gone, but slowly the weight of depression was lifting of her chest little by little and she was starting to see light again. “Who was to say they were both in the same situation? And if she was, I will find her.”

Did she have any clue what so ever how to do that? No. At least not yet!

“But let’s be honest what can you expect from a baby?” she snickered to herself. “On top a baby who is imprisoned in her very own crib. Ok then, let’s get back to work. It’s time for my escape.”

Her grandmother had carved some lines into the wood of her crib and embedded a small crystal at its head. Her mother and grandmother had heatedly discussed it. However, she still did not understand enough of the new language to understand what they were talking about. What she was sure about, was her mother was angry with her grandmother and yet the carvings still stayed in place.

The first night she tried to escape her crib - boredom being one of her main motivators - her head suddenly bumped into something, when she crawled on her stomach towards the bars forming her little prison. It was quite painful to be honest and worse it made her feel stupid like a cat running into a glass door. Her plan had been to get to the bars use them as a support structure to get into a standing position use one of her pathetically weak legs to place one epic heal hook on top of the edge and pull herself up. Maybe, just maybe her plan was destined to fail from the very beginning.

Slowly reaching out with her still pathetically weak hands, she felt for whatever had pushed her back. It was very unnerving to see or better not to see something truly invisible before her. Her hands touched the barrier, but except for not letting her through there was no reaction at all. No, light waves extending from the point of impact and passing through the barrier and no light humming from the barrier. It was just there. Invisible and silent.

If felt very slippery to the touch as if had nearly no friction against her hand. Neither cold nor warm.

“Damn that evil witch! I will get her back for it.” She cursed as she gently caressed her hurting head. Some early and frankly unrealistic revenge plans rushed through her head. Visions of her grandmother cursing as she stepped onto invisible lego pieces. She smiled. Revenge would be hers!

“But first she had to get out of here. Ok, think! We have an unknown system and need to overcome it, what are the options?” she mumbled to herself.

“Option 1 and 2: Trying to overload or exhaust the system. My current assumption is that the crystal is either an energy reserve or kind of a control center. Assuming there is no infinite energy source in this universe either she could try to slowly exhaust the reserve and disable the force barrier this way or she could try to generate a big enough impact to overload it and simply push through?” In her inner mind he saw a memory of a friend’s cat which had been unable to accept the existence of a glass door leading to the balcony and which progressively took more and more run up before crashing headfirst into the glass door time and time again.

“I think my pride would take too much of a hit for the overloading option. Let’s shelve this one for now. Exhausting the force barrier seems like a real possibility. Of course it might be the case, that the energy stored would be enough for several years of her banging her little legs and feet against, but I can’t know that without trying.” she schemed.

“Option 3: Overcoming the spell with one of her owns and tearing down the walls of magical tyranny on her very own. Difficult, yeah. Impossible, maybe! However again I can’t rule it out before at least trying it.”

“Also, I can not imagine this universe playing around with truly invisible barriers without there being a way to see them. Maybe there was a secret skill like Mana sight and she would be taught later on in life how to acquire it? Maybe there were specialized glasses which allowed one to see another spectrum of light or something and they made force barriers visible? Wait neither her mother nor her grandmother had ever worn fancy super glasses – maybe they were more like contact lenses? – stop no, she had no access to super fancy contact lenses or glasses so if it was in fact this option it was irrelevant for her right now. So, let’s assume for now it is possible to see Mana and it is in fact an acquired skill of some kind…” her line of thoughts broke when she came up empty on how exactly that really helped her. She had no clue on how to start learning Mana sight, sense or whatever it was called – if it even existed.

For now, she decided to bang her feet against the barrier for as long as she could in an attempt to exhaust the barrier. It would be a good workout routine for her body as well. During her unrelenting assault she could still make another plan on how to gain any insights into Mana.

And so, her tedious nights of silently kicking an invisible barrier began. From time to time taking breaks crawling around and studying and internalizing the carvings on her crib.

--- [Several nights later] ---

“Something was wrong” Magdalena thought. Her weave was consuming way more Mana than it should. “What is that little devil doing”

During the day the child had started to behave suspiciously normal. If one did not pay close attention, it was easy to miss the close attention it was paying to everything around it. Several time she had noticed her silently mouthing words which were recently said, as if to repeat them without being noticed and silently internalizing them.

“This was not a normal child. Of that she was sure, but what exactly it was she was not yet sure and neither if it posed a potential risk to her family. Further study was necessary, but Maya was already angry with her for carving the protection ward into the crib without her asking.”

“I mean I could ask her permission first… Hey, Maya can I run some tests on your lovely little girl? Why you ask? Well, love has blinded you and I am still not convinced your little angel is in truth a little demon and might be out for blood. Yeah, that would go splendidly.”

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“Another iteration of don’t ask for permission ask for forgiveness was out of the question. She was already in hot water as it is. In the best case whatever she did would look like a gift, like an apology – that would be perfect” Slowly a plan was forming in her mind, while a slight smile was forming on her face. She loaded the crystal in the crib back up and got to work.

--- [The next day] ----

“I know you aren’t a huge fan of weaving and I know I overstepped by simply applying the protection ward to Kiaras crib without asking first.” Magdalena started her apology.

Maya’s hands holding a knife as it made fast work out of an onion before adding it into a large pot.

“And I know you don’t like to leave little Kiara alone, when you have to work… And I also wanted to show you that weaving can be a powerful tool to help you in all sorts of ways. So, I made you this to apologize. To be honest it was a lot of work, quite complicated I have to admit and is probably one of my finer works.” She continued her apology, while at the same time starting to boast about her skills.

Maya’s focus was still entirely on the dish she was cooking. A carrot was quickly peeled and cut into small pieces. Only slightly turning her head to take a quick look at the object her mother was holding. It was a small sphere.

“What is it?” she grumbled while taking a big wooden spoon and giving the pot a quick stir. On the one hand she was interested on the other hand she was not yet willing to forgive her mother. She had told her time and time again, not to meddle with her children. It had been the same with Petro. Only once Petro had shown neither interest nor any skill in weaving had she finally relented.

She had promised – Promised! – that there would be no interference from her this time and yet. Little Kiara was not even one year old and she had seen her mother more frequently then ever before since she moved out of the old family house.

“It allows you to keep an eye on little Kiara while you are cooking or doing other things…”

“Mum. I told you to stay away from Kiara. I know you mean well, but I don’t want any experimental weaves close to her.”

“Don’t worry. I haven’t set it up yet. At the moment the corresponding sender is sitting on the mantlepiece – nowhere near Kiara. Not yet, but let’s get to the good part the demonstration”

She could feel her mother start to feed Mana into the crystalline orb and soon the image of her chimney appeared before her. Slowly her mother turned the orb in her hand and the view of the room next door changed with it.

It was both fascinating as well as a little bit nauseating, but she had to admit to herself it would be useful. She often times worried about Kiara. Kiara nearly never screamed and had at first only reluctantly been breast fed. She hated diapers and all around was a little bit strange at times. It would be a great relief for her worries if she could keep a closer eye on her when she was otherwise busy.

“What else can the orb do?” she said her tone full of mistrust as she remembered it was her mother’s invention.

“Nothing. I swear. Do you know how difficult it was to even create this orb? It can do nothing except receive the images of the sender orb. That’s all. If you don’t believe me examine the weave yourself.”

“Ok, I will think about it, but now I have to take care of dinner. Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”

“Yes, my dear” Magdalena said suppressing a smile. She had known her daughter would cave in and she hadn’t even lied this orb only could receive visual feedback. The other one she kept for herself could also receive acoustic and magical feedback.

And whatever the little devil was doing at night, it could only help her to convince her daughter to allow her to keep a closer watch on it.

*** Kiara ***

Kiara was frustrated. Her kicks had had little effect. The only thing she achieved was that her grandmother was slightly irritated after she had touched the crystal in her crib. Which in itself was a success, because it proved that her efforts had had an effect and that it might be possible to really drain the crystal and as a true cherry on top it had bothered granny.

But she had otherwise gotten nowhere with the carvings and no amount of concentration or meditation had so far led to any break throughs. The damn barrier was still invisible to her. Worse she had bumped her head into it once more when she had misjudged where exactly the barrier started.

Her days were boring and she tried to spend as much time as possible with her family. Her language skills were slowly becoming better and she started to understand some words. Her father Sarok, had thrown her into a loop when he had spent a lot of time repeating one word, leading to her initial assessment of it meaning “Daddy” before she realized that her older brother used it to address her mother. So yeah, her father was probably a good-hearted moron. How did normal babies ever make sense of anything going on around them?

A few days later something interesting happened. Her mother carried in a small black orb which she hung over her crib. It was completely black as if it was absorbing all light around it. A little round hole of complete nothingness in his view. It was somewhat unnerving and most definitely magical in nature. Her mother gave her a quick loving kiss on her forehead and mumbled something about her always being protected or something.

For whatever reasons the orb utterly fascinated her and she looked at it again and again sometimes for several minutes on end trying to figure out what exactly it did. Not that it was giving up any secrets easily. However, in sharp contrast to the force barriers keeping him inside his crib, she thought she felt something when looking at the nothing orb as she had started to call it in lack of a better name.

Magdalena

Magdalena was slowly going mad. The child was not ordinary, but what the hell was it. At night it spent hours on end just kicking her barriers, leading to her having to reload the crystal nearly every single day. It mumbled singular words over and over. During the day it never spoke a single word, it just smiled and laughed and pretended to be normal. Her mother was completely captured by the show. She loved her little angel full heartedly blind for her strange behaviors.

That’s not even including her newest strangest behavior. She could swear that little devil was watching her. So often when she was using her orb to spy - no to look out for her family – sweet little Kiara was starring directly at her. Not a quick look, no an unblinking unbreaking stare looking directly into her soul.

*** Maya ***

“Little Kiara was such a good child” Maya thought lovingly watching both her children play. Somehow Kiara had convinced her older brother to take her up on his shoulders and carry her around. She gently pulled on his hair indicating gently where she wanted to go.

At first, she had been a little bit worried but seeing Petro paying close attention to his little sister and taking his role of the older protector, her husband had instilled in him, very serious had eased her worries. She had asked Petro not to leave the house and to stay out of the kitchen when she was cooking.

Currently he loved to read and tell adventure stories to Kiara. They sometimes sat in front of a thick scroll for hours. Petro was still a very slow reader and often times needed to use his finger to pointing on the different letters when pronouncing them out loud. But he was proud as hell and Kiara always smiled at him with a smile as warm and bright as the sun.

Sometimes Petro even played part in the story becoming the daring adventurer slaying the ancient beast or protecting the innocent village from a horde Arachnids, sometimes becoming wealthy and famous and marrying a beautiful princess at other times taking a heroic last stand and finally after the day was won succumbing to their wounds. Petro liked to act those parts. Slashing around an imaginary sword against imaginary foes, slaying them one after the other before in the end grasping his chest and slowly falling down on his knees before tumbling over and uttering one last heroic line of speech. Little Kiara simply sat there laughed and clapped her little adorable hands.

In the evening Sarok often read another story to the both of them. The choice of scroll was read to them became strange, when one night Kiara started crying after her husband had picked the “wrong” one and Kiara only stopped crying when he started reading the one, she was pointing at. Petro didn’t much care what their father read to them, just enjoying the time they spent together as a family and listening to his voice. Life was good