“Why don't the commoners just use magic to create counterfeit goods? It's a question that more than a few gifted peasants have asked over the years. Unfortunately, they ended up learning the answer the hard way, with their families being greeted by their heads in baskets.”
-‘The Nature of Magical Economics’, authored by āwhina Ratana of the Ara Harore Trading Company
A few days had passed since the awakening ceremony and, since then, Dahlia had invested the vast majority of her time into thoroughly studying her target —or, rather, her potential doting grandmother— the Archduchess of Amarei. Considering her parents rarely gave her information regarding modern politics however, collecting accurate information had proven to be particularly difficult.
Perhaps the biggest complication was the lack of any reference whatsoever to the current archduchess: Valentina. The most recent matriarch from the family tree Dahlia had available, Mirela, came into power at the turn of the fifth century and presumably would be three and a half centuries old now; which was old, certainly, but for a vampiric line? One previous Amareic matriarch had records of ruling into her eighth century so, by all means, Mirela could have easily ruled until now, but the guest list clearly indicated otherwise.
Adding insult to injury, the name Valentina didn’t appear anywhere else in the family tree and it left the girl struggling to understand how the current archduchess came into power. She couldn’t help but wonder if she was some kind of hidden heir, perhaps tutored in secret until her time for succession? It was… quite an assumption to make, but considering how Amareic matriarchs rarely came to power before they were at least a couple centuries old, it wouldn’t be the most bizarre part of the family. After all, the entire noble line seemed somewhat eccentric and it wouldn’t be that strange for a bit of paranoia to slip into the ranks.
Regardless of her origin though, Valentina now had a thorough writeup in Dahlia’s notebook explaining how the Archduchess could be coerced into becoming her new grandma or, at the very least, how the girl might make the older noble feel attached. Just the sheer idea of escaping her current situation and obtaining a taste of freedom had Dahlia far more excited than she cared to admit, and that enthusiasm had led to her ‘notes’ approaching the size of a novella. After working tirelessly for days though, the girl ran into a problem. She knew so little that her plans could never be detailed. Oh, she could project countless possibilities and come up with endless scenarios, but that was all it was: possibilities. The lack of information and facts had prevented her ‘precise plans’ from being very… well, precise.
Having run into a metaphorical wall in her plans, she decided to take a step back and instead focus on something she had been delaying. The girl exited her room with a thick tome in hand and, humming a tune that made those listening wince, she made her way to her greenhouse. There was something just so uplifting about having a glimpse of hope and it had started to seep into the way she approached her days. The weight of her parents’ expectations were gone, ripped off like crusted gauze from a freshly healed wound — painful at first, but now so much more free and better off for it. When that weight lifted off her it was terrifying initially, as her value and all her dreams had been stripped away with it but, now as she came up with plans and schemed a way to be free, there was a taste of newfound hope that was just so sweet.
Even outside of planning how to escape her parents’ clutches, Dahlia could feel that positivity seeping into everything she did. Was she perhaps a little too keen to ride that high? Maybe. But she couldn’t help but feel a skip in her step as she ignored the occasional avoidant maid or judgemental guard. When she arrived in her little corner of the garden and began to take care of her leafy children, she pampered them like adorable and beloved pets. She spoke to them in silly conspiratorial whispers and giddily retold stories she’d recounted a dozen times to them before. She reminisced on nothing in particular, hummed joyfully off-pitch, and cooed at the now-ripe fruit from the pretty vines as she picked her harvest.
The day was good: relaxing and productive in equal measure and she relished every moment of it. And with the rest of the greenhouse taken care of, she had no plans of stopping there. She cast a quick glance to the centre of the greenhouse and felt a smile tug her lips: there, sat atop a table, lay the tome she brought with her along with a single potted plant. Not wanting to delay any longer, Dahlia sat down and her smile only widened.
“Mister Lily, I think it’s time we had a more thorough discussion on schema, don’t you agree?”
Opposite of her, the potted lily was positioned so its beautiful white flower was at eye level and Dahlia tried not to giggle as she imagined it quite-literally shaking like a leaf. The poor thing was just a dumb plant, and yet the girl refused to lecture thin air: that would just be silly. Pushing forward with her topic of the day, the girl flipped open her tome to some of the earlier sections of the book and began to skim the contents before nodding to herself.
“Alright. I’ll try to keep things simple, but there’s a lot of information here regardless of how I try to say it. Let’s start by breaking down how schemas are formed. I mentioned it briefly before, schemas can be subdivided into three different varieties: innate, channeling, and constructive, with each gathering and shaping mana through different methods.”
She flipped forward a couple pages and gestured toward one with a set of three charts accompanied by figures.
“Innate schema draw directly from a bloodline and, assuming the bloodline is potent, they are typically known to be the fastest and most powerful types of schema. Their tradeoff comes from being locked into a bloodline’s restrictions making them lack flexibility. A good example of this could be the Liontáriou’s burning lion bloodline: it would empower the caster with the burning lion’s physical strengths as well as the ability to manipulate fire, and it’ll even do a fairly good job at it, but that remains true only so long as the caster draws on the burning lion’s traits. The rule of thumb is that the further an innate caster gets from their bloodline’s ‘intended use’ the less potent their casting becomes. Because of that, relying exclusively on innate casting can be a double edged sword.”
She glanced up at her student and smiled. The wind had blown through and caught the plant, making it bob back and forth like it was nodding along. Trying to suppress a laugh, she turned her attention back to the next set of diagrams.
“Moving on to channeling schema, these manipulate mana in a way that’s… perhaps the most intuitive. Depending on how it’s designed and what its specialty is, channeling can affect the caster’s own mana or it can affect ambient atmospheric mana instead. Some common examples include druids who pull their power from the nature around them, soul channelers who can use ambient souls, and kineticists who pull on and shape their own mana. Hopefully you get the idea.
“The main takeaway, however, is that channelling is easy. Some of the examples I used might not be the most common, with druidism being fairly specialized and originating from the Southern Isles while soul channelers have been outlawed throughout the continent, but kineticist schema are one of the most commonly learned casting methods to exist. They are simple, intuitive, and remarkably flexible.”
Taking a moment to pause, Dahlia took a deep breath after realising she just rambled all that without letting herself breathe. It’s not that any of this was advanced theory —it was about as entry level as it came— but teaching a plant was stressful! After taking another moment to clear her head though, she refocused on the page and let out a small sigh.
“Ok, we’re almost there. The last category we’ve yet to discuss is constructivism and this is the category most commonly associated with great ritual workings, creation of magical relics, and the war casters in legends. As the name suggests, spells cast with constructive schema are designed and built by the caster rather than being spontaneously cast. It’s a variety of magic that is structured, formulated, and engineered, all with the intent of optimizing it into perfection — that’s the dream anyway. For constructive casting, a spell is typically rigorously designed and pre-formulated to determine how it should behave, with only a select few variables being solved at the last moment.
“It is, for all intents and purposes, the most mathematically intensive field of casting, capable of turning even a relatively worthless aspect into something magnificent, yet it’s so restrictive and complex that it remains one of the least common varieties of schema used. There are entire universities dedicated to producing the next generation of constructivist casters but, quite frankly, it’s a lot of work and a huge investment; usually too much for the average person.”
She looked up from the book and levelled a pitying look at the plant in front of her.
“No offence Mister Lily, but I don’t exactly think constructive casting is for you. You’re just… you know, a bit too slow. It doesn’t mean you can’t admire the craft though!” She excitedly prodded a finger at some of the diagrams on the open page and her face just lit up. “The people that actually take the time to specialise in constructivism often become considered elites in their field. War doctrine hinges on magical advances, technology advances or stalls almost entirely dependent on constructive methodology, and rulers maintain their power at least in part due to the relics and casters they retain. It might be the most complicated field of casting, but it makes up for it in both optimization and influence. And there you go! That’s all three categories, all explained for your learning pleasure!”
She looks up at the flower, a playful glint in her eye, as Mister Lily very clearly doesn’t ask a question.
“What was that? You were wondering why I make a big deal about schema when there are only three types? Oh you sweet and innocent thing, you have no idea just how wrong you are.”
Rapidly, she began flipping further into the book despite being sure that poor Mister Lily just wanted the lecture to end.
“Saying that there are only three varieties is simplifying things so far that it’s almost laughable. How schemas actually work is that they come in two parts. The first is called the ‘foundation’, while the remainder is called the ‘specifier’.
“The foundation is, hmm… perhaps the best way to describe it is as a framework for how casting is performed and how someone’s magic will behave. You’ll find different standardized foundations used all over the place, from the republic’s Dwergazish runecrafting to the nomadic Kuyūthi shamanism; they each have their own standardized structures that mix and match the three schema categories into something more complex than their constituent parts. One of the most textbook examples would be how sorcerers combine channelling and innate casting; the way those two properties combine leads to a style of casting that utilises a bloodline while retaining the versatility granted from their aspect.”
She opened the tome to a page that was almost entirely covered in ink, the text too small and dense to leave any spaces free. It was a massive list, with each entry containing a name, the ratio of schema sub-types used, as well as a page reference for more detailed information.
“Because these foundations are so important in defining how a caster’s magic behaves, being able to determine the foundation of an enemy has even won wars in the past. Of course this massive list here only contains preexisting and predefined foundations.”
A smug look began to take form as the subject came up. Oh yes, she was very proud about this.
“Some clever people, not naming any names, will develop their own original foundations. These will almost always have an overlap with existing foundations, but being original makes them harder to immediately grasp by an enemy. Additionally, if someone has a unique way of thinking or specific purpose behind their magic, then creating a totally original foundation can be incredibly useful, although very difficult to achieve.”
Pulling out a second book that she’d kept hidden until then, Dahlia slammed it down on the table. Half of the action was due to her enthusiasm, but the rest was simply because the book was far too heavy. It dwarfed the tome that was already on the table by a fair margin, and looked like a well worn and fantastical grimoire.
Where did the book come from? How was such a big thing hidden? Well, perhaps it’s best left at plants not being very perceptive and Dahlia being no stranger to having a particularly vivid imagination. The book had been there on an adjacent seat the whole time, obviously. Undeterred by her theatrics and the urge to giggle, Dahlia instead pointed at the monstrous tome and wiggled her eyebrows with a little smirk.
“When I say difficult to achieve, this is what I mean. Calling my schema a thesis would be overstating the size of a thesis by a longshot. What you see here is something I made over the course of nine years and I had completed it only half a year ago. It’s also worth noting that this tome only contains the foundation; I haven’t discussed specifiers yet and they’re more… esoteric, but that’s a separate issue. What you see here is the culmination of years of work, all dedicated to creating my very own foundation.”
Shoving the grimoire aside she sighed a little wistfully. Mister Lily definitely wouldn’t appreciate the effort she had put into it.
“Don’t worry, this book of mine isn’t just for show; we’ll get to go over it later, but I may as well explain specifiers while we’re here. Going back to the basics, if we say that a foundation defines how magic is cast, then what exactly could be remaining? The answer, my dear plant, is nuance. Despite their variety, foundations act as a one-size-fits-all concept. They behave as their name suggests and are merely the structural element of something more: a base in need of refining. And if we extend that metaphor, you could think of the foundation as a skeleton. With that in mind, it should be obvious that while a skeleton is necessary, a person can not live nor move without more.”
She frowned and tapped her cheek rhythmically, all while trying to think of a decent analogy. Teaching plants continued to be a challenge.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Here’s a different way of approaching it. Think of the schema as a piece of art. The foundation is the type of art. Not just a generic category, but a detailed description. Following this, the tools, material, etcetera, would be the bloodline and aspect. It is the schema’s specifier which marries the concept with the materials to form the finished work of art.”
She double checked that the analogy made sense and found… that it was a floundering thing that just barely relayed the point she was trying to make.
‘“Yeah… it’s probably fine,” the girl shrugged, and pushed on.
“To wrap the magic theory up, I think it’s worth explaining that while there are underlying design concepts, specifiers are actually more of a mindset. In the Dìyù Empire, they sometimes call specifiers a ‘Dao’ and it’s basically the interpretation someone forms that lets them relate their foundation to their aspect and bloodline. People try to summarize their magic and transform it into as solid of a concept as possible because, where foundations are structural, specifiers are personal. They reflect the mindset, personality, temperament, and purpose of the caster, which is why, while foundations are often given more technical names, specifiers thrive in more flowery and subjective language. It’s why the Amarei family’s schema has the name it does. Because, for whatever fucking reason, someone figured that the entire family should share a schema, specifier and all, and thought that the best name possible was ‘Vampiric Bloodlord’.”
Even now, saying the name of that specifier left her wanting to wince. It just sounded like they were trying a little too hard, though presumably their vampiric bloodline thrived from that sort of flair. Doing a bit of a stretch, Dahlia let out a tiny yawn and decided to move on, pointing at the currently unopened grimoire.
“Now that the boring explanation is out of the way, it’s about time that we finally talk about what’s important. I have a schema, or rather, I should say I have a foundation. It’s good. I love it and no one is going to take it away from me. Now all that’s left is to create a suitable specifier. I’d been putting that off until I understood my aspect and, to a lesser extent, my bloodline, though I think I ought to start thinking more on it now. For some reason I still don’t know my bloodline, but that’s alright. While I had some potential ideas for how to incorporate innate casting, my schema’s current iteration just uses channelling and constructivism — no innate magic in sight.”
She dragged the book in front of her and flipped it open. The pages were alchemically reinforced so they wouldn’t smudge or degrade but, despite that, they still looked heavily worn. There was both joy and reverence in how the girl handled her life’s work and she had to steady herself as she began looking it over.
“And here it is in all its glory.” The girl’s smile was manic as she looked over each painstakingly crafted line of text. “My foundation is primarily a constructive style with a tiny bit of channelling added to facilitate it. I always loved how runecrafting and magic circles worked, but they are infamous for being slow and near impossible to use in combat. It’s not that I ever really planned to do fighting, but my parents insisted that my schema be versatile enough to do more than just crafting or something similar and, for once, I actually agree with them.
“Traditional Dwergazish runecrafting might be the standardized approach to modern rune magic but it rankles me all the same. It’s been optimized over the centuries for excelling in engineering and war but it falls flat in so many other ways. Naturally, the Republic isn’t the only source of runic spellcraft, but that hardly matters. Each and every method has its faults and flaws. So… rather than settle for modifying something second rate, I instead decided to improvise and get a bit creative.”
With a bit of an apologetic smile, she looked at the plant across from her, suffering and struggling along because it had no choice in the matter. It deserved to be pampered just like the rest of the greenhouse, and yet Mister Lily was singled out time and time again. The poor thing — Dahlia tried to hide the pity from her eyes.
“Now, Mister Lily, I don’t expect you to understand what I’m about to say, I’m going to be honest. I’ll make it quick though. I used two foundations as the basis for my schema and then modified them heavily to match my needs. The first is my all-time favourite foundation, ‘Fatinian Geometric Constructivism!’”
Looking at the flower… yup. She was right. It sure didn’t look impressed.
“Ok, look. It’s an ancient Kuyūthi foundation originating from the earliest days of the Sultanate and is renowned for being the most potent form of constructive schema foundation in recorded history. It’s suuuuuper cool. The issue is it’s absurdly complex; every spell requires intensive calculations and it takes forever to draw the overly detailed sigils derived from all the maths involved. But trust me. It’s cool. Math is cool.”
She frowned to herself. “I don’t think I sold that very well but whatever, who cares. You’re just a plant so you don’t need to think it’s cool! I know I’m right!” She did her best to resist a pout and failed miserably.
“Ok, so now you’re saying ‘Dahlia, what are you, stupid? You just said you weren’t allowed to make a schema where it takes forever to make magic circles or whatever.’ And yes! You’re right! Screw you for theoretically calling me stupid though. So this is where the second foundation comes in, and that is ‘Imperial Tattooed Witchcraft’ from the Dìyù Empire!”
Suddenly, she felt a little judged and her pout returned with a vengeance.
“Don’t you go with the whole, ‘Tattoo? You?’ surprised schtick. Tattoos are cool and I can totally pull them off… maybe. Well either way, I didn’t choose this for aesthetics anyhow. Tattooed witchcraft is a Dìyan methodology which embeds sigaldry or runes directly onto a person’s body. Because everything needs to be predefined, the schema is inflexible and restricted until the tattoos are added to or redone, but the benefits are that you can use the abilities of highly-complex sigaldry on the fly. Additionally, this particular schema allows some minor adjustments of existing tattoos in order to allow for some degree of adjustment on the fly.”
Hopefully that silly flower could see where she was going with this. Just thinking about it made her excited every time.
“You get it, right? Absurdly complex geometry predefined via the tattoos. Isn’t that cool? I know, you can applaud any time!” Letting a manic giggle slip, she scratched her nose a little in embarrassment.
“So now that you’ve appreciated how cool that is, now seems like the best time to tell you that what we’ve talked about so far is only the first quarter of my big book here.” The moment the topic shifted, there was a dangerous glint in her eyes. A look that comes from someone who just saw the future and it looked oh so satisfying. “What if I tell you that the rest of the book makes it so I can change and reshape my geometric tattoos on the fly?”
Mister Lily stood there, frozen in shock, awe, and utter amazement!
Or at the very least, that’s what Dahlia projected onto the imobile plant. Frankly, considering plants were inanimate, it was remarkable how expressive they could be if one put their mind to it. Suppressing her smile, the girl pushed forward.
“Alright, now if we’re being honest, I can understand how just hearing a short description of something complicated isn’t guaranteed to get you overflowing with excitement. Hell, add on that I’m not allowed to use any magic, and it means I can’t even provide a proper demonstration to wow you.”
She tried to maintain her earlier positivity but the subject rankled nonetheless. Regardless of any reasoning her parents had, political or otherwise, the fact that she’d been forbidden to use magic chafed at her like too-tight restraints. Even now after only a short time having passed, she could already feel the desire nagging at the back of her mind. Her mana begged to flow and be put to use and yet here she was, remaining obedient and suffering for it. That her aspect was particularly interesting didn’t exactly help matters, but she was beginning to suspect that the greatest source of torment was the sheer quantity of mana she contained.
Dahlia couldn’t tell for sure, but the sensations she felt recently from holding back had been… less than pleasant to say the least. Channels and organs that she understood on a theoretical level were now something she could feel pulse and throb beneath her skin, bloated and inflamed from excess mana in her system. It was, she thought bitterly, something anyone could fix with even a small amount of training, and yet she’d been forbidden from even that. Each passing day it would grow worse and she could only pray to the gods that she might find some solution before too long.
Sighing and trying to pull her thoughts away from less pleasant things, she flipped through the pages of her gigantic book, looking at intricate diagrams and tightly packed notes as if they were bittersweet memoirs.
“I guess without being able to show off proper, I’ll just have to summarise things for now and then we’ll have to go on with our day… So, my unique foundation has a fairly clinical name: ‘Body Embedded Geometric Witchcraft’. This is however, as I said, the foundation. I still need to settle on the specifier, so hopefully the final product will have a name that rolls off the tongue a tad easier but… oh well.”
Turning through a few more pages, she stopped at a point where a massive map sized document was folded up and, as she began to unfold it, a set of incredibly detailed drawings could be seen. Intricately connected and interwoven geometric patterns spanned the page; lines crossed from point to point, circles intersected in some places and were tangential or concentric elsewhere, all while parametric curves twisted and curled. And scattered amidst it all, countless nodes of varying shapes and sizes lay spread across the page in impossible to comprehend patterns.
Altogether, it looked like an excessively complicated star chart filled with eldritch constellations. As if a geometric mathematician and an astrological extremist met at a bar and decided to make a beautiful monstrosity together while plastered. To lesser minds —and perhaps more sane ones— to attempt to comprehend what lay on the table would lead to nothing short of horror. As Dahlia looked at it however, she simply whistled and admired her work.
“Right, so what we have here is… a lot.”
She gestured at the sheet, pointing out the different lines, points, circles, and more. She also pointed out how the sheet was actually divided into multiple sections, each containing the identical set of dots and nodes while everything else differed drastically.
“So, the dots that you see are effectively reference points, each corresponding to specific points within the body’s mana circuits. From there you could almost imagine it as a children's game: the dots need to be connected to form patterns and, depending on the patterns used, those connections will determine how mana flows within the body. There is —well, I want to say a little more complexity, but that would be dishonest— there is a huge amount of oversimplification going on here but all you need to know is that, depending on the pattern, I could entirely redefine how my own spellcasting works. Ok? Excellent! You now have a basic understanding of ‘Body Embedded Geometric Mysticism’.”
She couldn’t help it, she smirked.
“You might not have caught that, but there was a difference there. See, there’s a difference between what I just described, mysticism, and what my foundation achieves, witchcraft. What I just described is a well documented —if somewhat uncommon— schema. It’s efficient and able to be well optimised for an individual, but it’s also inflexible. In comparison, tattooed witchcraft —the other primary inspiration for my schema— tends towards poorer optimisation, but it’s flexible in a way geometric mysticism isn’t. Now, hypothetically, if I were to find a way to combine the two, I’m sure you can see how they might cover for each other's shortcomings. And that, my lovely plant, is exactly what I’ve done.”
Even after all that showmanship, Dahlia worried that the plant still might not be as suitably impressed as it ought to be, but she forged ahead. What came next was both her crowning achievement as well as her greatest shortcoming, and it always pained her a little to think about it.
“This brings us to how I combined those two schemas. Basically, what you see on this paper is what you get. The trick is that I can’t just use any set of geometry I like; each pattern I use needs to be fully functional while also sharing the same nodes as any other pattern I use. The dots must be transferable and consistent to act as anchor points and that can… limit things. Not even taking into account how I would prefer to have these patterns optimised, the truth of the matter is that getting them to share all of the same nodes is absurdly difficult.
“The more shared points they have, the more complex I can make the patterns but that also leads to more constraints in my calculations. I’m risking getting into the weeds, no pun intended Mister Lily, but all you really need to know is that there’s always a limit to what someone could do and you better believe me when I say that I pushed it right to the edge.”
With a broad wave of the hand, she gestured at the drawings before her.
“From what you see here on this sheet, three quarters of the designs I developed aren’t even fully compatible. The best I’ve ever achieved was having three separate patterns compatible which leaves the rest —while theoretically valuable— effectively worthless. I feel like I’m just one step away from getting a fourth to work but, frankly, I’ve felt that way for years now. Three patterns is what I have to work with and that’s it.
“Of course, needing to exclude so much of my work doesn’t leave me thrilled, but what I’ve accomplished still can’t be overstated: I’ve developed three highly optimised patterns that, once embedded into my body, I can shift between at will. All I need now is to get my hands on the right relic and I’ll be able to tattoo my life’s work directly onto myself.”
Running a hand over the page, pressing down wrinkles and smoothing creases, the girl felt bittersweet. There was so much within those pages that just couldn’t quite work and would need to be left behind, yet soon she would finally enjoy the fruits of her labour. Finally, with a calming breath, the girl began to fold the page back up.
“I can’t tell you about the rest yet. Partly because it’d benefit from using casting as a demonstration, which I’m unable to do at the moment, and partially because I’m missing part of the final product. I’ll need to think of a specifier now that I know my aspect, but that’s not the kind of thing I can rush. It’d be a struggle for anyone but, frankly, I’m awful at more subjective thought processes like that. Once it’s done though, I’ll be overlaying imagery related to my specifier and aspect with the patterns I tattoo. Again, it’s far more subjective than the rest and lacking the fun math-y bits, but that will be the finishing touch. Until then…”
She closed the book and stood up. Another moment later, Mister Lily was back on its regular shelf as well and the girl stroked one of its leaves.
“This is all I’ve got for you for now, but I need to thank you for listening. I know I can be long winded, rambly, and tough to understand at times, but I just needed to talk about this. Next time though — next time I’ll show you the rest, alright? I’ll even try to keep it simpler, just for you. For now you just stay safe and healthy.”
With a deep sigh and a wave to her plant goodbye, Dahlia finally left her greenhouse and began the march back to her room. Talking things through had been fun —she couldn’t deny that— but she also couldn’t deny that it had reminded her of just how restrained she was. She yearned for freedom and with every thought about casting and all the things she might achieve, that longing only grew. The restraints were chafing more with each passing day and soon either the restraints would break, or she would.
Today I'm gonna keep things real simple (I really hope I don't ramble this time). We're going to be going over the Archducal name: Amarei. Unfortunately, this one is hard for me to even confirm pronunciation of but I believe it's approximately a-ma-?ay, again as is often seen in Romanian it has the softer r sound. The name itself has, from what I could find, disputed origin but its use in the novel was inspired by the matronymic naming scheme for a female-led household. "Mara", which is the name the surname is built off of could very well originate as a diminutive of Maria (not my intent) but I remember reading —and now failing to find— that it could alternatively have roots in the Romanian moroi folklore, which absolutely is the intent, even if that fails to be the actual origin of the name. Trust me when I say that it's very hard to find a surname that feels representative of an ancient vampiric lineage and so anything remotely adjacent to a folklore nightmare-vampire was good enough for me.
If you're enjoying what you see and want to read ahead, I do have a Patreon that will maintain eight chapters in advance of what is public. If that interests you, you can find a link to it
And if you're interested in talking to me about the novel or if you'd like to join a community of other delightful readers, I'd be happy to see you over at my Discord. You can find the link
And as always, I hope you're having a wonderful day!
