Secret Novel Chapter 17: What's In The Bag? (Patreon)

The Maze gave Madeline no trouble as she quickly made her way back to the Garden with prizes in hand. What made the trip even easier was the knowledge that she could just pass through the shifting parts of the Maze simply by closing her eyes. She felt so incredibly stupid that she hadn’t realized this before, but she also felt smarter than the mages considering they had no idea how she did it. Though those mages were still students by the sounds of it, so that might be why they didn’t know. They also mentioned something about the Maze not opening up for them. Was that how they normally moved through the Maze? Either way it didn’t matter. Right now she had a pack to explore when she got back to the Garden.

It wasn’t too late when she returned, so she still had enough sunlight to see what she was doing as she made her way over to the large stone by the pond. She would have to make dinner soon but that could wait. Setting the decently sized pillow and blanket down, and sitting on them for comfort, Madeline put the pack in her lap and opened it up. Even though it was light out, it was rather hard to see inside the pack for some reason that didn’t make sense. Though Madeline didn’t put too much thought into that. What she could see was some clothes and maybe a book. It was rather hard to tell. Well the only way to find out would be to pull the stuff out, so she reached in. And kept reaching in until the majority of her arm was inside the pack that shouldn’t be able to fit this much inside. Pulling out she looked back in and didn’t see anything different. A little weirded out, she reached back in and managed to grab a book. A rather sizable book at that, too.

Perplexed at how a book this big would fit in the pack, Madeline reached back in and found her hand grasping at another book. She pulled that out as well, before diving back in and pulling out a third book. Then a fourth and a fifth. Before she knew it Madeline had pulled out twelve books in total. All varying in size and length, but all way too much to fit in the small pack. Still reaching back in, she found even more hidden inside the obviously magical pack. A number of different clothes for all different seasons. Three articles of which would even fit her and come in handy. There were a small variety of plants that came out of the pack. All of which she could find in her Garden in some place or another. Though there were a number of plants that looked familiar, it seemed as if all color had been drained from it. They also felt incredibly cold to the touch. Then came the glorious treasure of the never ending pack. Madeline pulled out a small chunk of cheese and felt her spirits soar.

There was more food in the pack that she pulled out, but none of those held as much interest to her as the cheese did. Taking gleeful nibbles of the sharp cheese, Madeline looked over the books she had pulled out. None of them had titles on any of the covers, which was a little annoying, but all the books were very distinct from one another. She guessed that the mages could tell by looks alone. Grabbing one of the bigger books, Madeline flipped open the cover to the first page. In bold and slightly stylized letters the books read Basics of Essence. An interesting title to say the least, and Madeline was also thankful it was written in the Goddess’ Given Language. There were a number of other languages besides the one the Goddess had specifically given humans so that they may all share a common tongue, and Madeline was a little surprised the mages used the Given language. She just imagined in their magical ways they might have used something else. She grabbed another to see if they were all in Given. Construction of Bindings. And another, Historic Teachings. Though Lexford’s school wasn’t large and they didn’t have many schoolbooks, Madeline felt a similarity between these books and those.

“These are the mage’s school books?!”

Madeline wondered, could she use these to teach herself magic? She may not be the fastest reader, but she had all the time in the world. If she didn’t try to go home of course. With these books and a chunk of cheese to now keep her sated, Madeline suddenly felt finding a way back to Lexford wasn’t really pressing anymore. She could easily stay here and use these books to learn magic. Sure it might be hard, but she literally had all the books she needed to learn! Madeline could learn Magic!

“Yes!” Madeline screamed for joy jumping up. “You hear that? I’m going to learn your magic! I’ll show you who’s too ‘perverse’ to be a mage!”

~~~

Madeline cannot learn magic… Or at least she was nearly one hundred percent certain that she cannot. Over the last five days, Madeline has spent nearly all her time reading over the books she stole, trying to find the basic start to magic, but she couldn’t find it. Though it appeared some of the books were about more advanced magics for the mages, there were books on more basic magic. Even so, those contained no true information on how to actually start learning magic. They were all about implementing the magic mages seemed to already start out having before they learn anything.

So was that their criteria for allowing offerings to become mages? That they already had some magic in them to begin with? But that didn’t feel right to Madeline. If Flora had magic to begin with, wouldn’t she have shown some signs of it back home before she came in here? Why, then, would all the nobles always become mages. Surely a number of nobles they accept wouldn’t start out with magic in them. So there must be some way they gain magic, but none of the books talked about it…

Despite the lack of answers, Madeline sat out on the flat rock, enjoying the sun's warmth and a pot of tea she made with the clay pot found in the hovel. So far she had only been making tea with the herbs she had from the plots. They were fine, but not as nice as the tea she had back in Lexford. She knew Lyr would often make tea from flowers, and Madeline was tempted to try that, but she was also a little scared to see as some of the flowers were obviously magical. Some might even be poisonous. So for now she stuck with herbal tea.

The mage’s books were rather wordy and hard to understand at times. Flipping open the ‘Histories’ book, Madeline found that the first section of the book was completely blank, as if everything from it was erased. It was odd, but maybe there was a reason for it that Madeline didn’t understand.

Where the writing began it told a story about the first mage. It was long, and incredibly wordy, but summing it up, it was rather simple. The man was shunned away from the ‘naturalists’ and went off to study magic in his own right and way. He invented a process the book called ‘Synthetic Crystallization’, which was a phrase Madeline had seen sprinkled here and there in the other book, and appeared to be something only someone with magic already could do. Upon his success he used the crystals to ‘harness the essence of matter and magic’ then implanted said crystals into his own body. The thought of which made Madeline’s skin crawl. Doing so gave the man magic more powerful than that of the naturalists and made him the very first mage. Then just like the blank pages at the front, there was another blank section that lasted a solid three of these large pages before cutting back in in the middle of a sentence.

“continued into the resulting war between the pure Mages and their Naturalist predecessors. Fought for centuries in the heart of the great Maze, the Mages slowly took over the lines of ley and pushed the Naturalists out. Once they won the war, the Mages of old spread across the Maze, building the Campus for deeper studies into magic and to train the next generations of the Pure. The Naturalists were pushed out of the Maze and quickly died out, having lost all that they needed for power and Magic. Their teachings have been lost for the better as Magedom has proven to be a more effective, pure, and powerful magic.”

Madeline huffed as she set the book down and flopped on her back, staring up into the sky. There was nothing in these books that could help her. No starting point to learn magic without someone who already had magic, and there was no way a mage was ever going to help her. Even if one did, would she even want to implant those crystals into her? What was even the point of her risking her damn life to get these books that did nothing but give her false hope for a few days? She should just chuck all the books into the pond and be done with it. Be done with the mages who thought of her as ‘impure’. Her fists clenched tight as she fought to keep control of her emotions.

Yes, she had been better the past few days. She wasn’t having episodes of depression so severe that she wasn’t able to do anything. The books helped with that. But the books didn’t help her! For the first time in a while Madeline felt anger start to fester inside her. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt this truly angry, and it felt good to be angry. Feeling her blood start to boil over with all the emotions she had been keeping tucked away inside her so well, Madeline stood up and started pacing around the rock. It helped, but it wasn’t enough. Everything inside her was threatening to boil over and out. So why not let it all out? There was no one around to hear her scream.

“Fuck you mages for bringing me into the Maze!” Madeline growled out to the world with no one to hear her. “Fuck you for dooming me to be totally alone for the rest of my life. Fuck you for turning the one person who had always truly believed in me into a monster. For turning her into a murderer. Fuck you for making me a murderer, too!”

Anger overwhelmed the young woman as she kicked one of the stacks of books over. It felt good to kick it. It felt good to hurt something of the mages. Looking down at the toppled stack she found one of the books had opened up to a page called ‘Body Transformations: Appearance and Sex change’. Madeline felt her heart tug as she read on. It went on about how to use magic in such a way that one could change their very appearance however they wanted, even as to go so far as to change one's sex entirely. Madeline took in a massive breath as the world turned white with rage.

“Oh you mother fuckers can fucking make me into the woman I am, but nooooo, I’m impure! I’m perverse! Fucking hypocritical pieces of absolute horse shit!”