Chapter 95: 82: Cats and Catalysts

Auratic

Days had passed since she had closed the rift in the mountains. The abnormality of the situation that was present that day led to Alicia looking more into the cause of the event. Early into her investigation it was made clear that it wouldn’t be a straightforward case and it was abundantly obvious that she needed help if she were to make any meaningful progress towards understanding the true nature of the void. Although she was reluctant to enlist others’ help for her own ends, her adjutants were more than happy to provide assistance, almost to an obsessive insistence - and with some discussion among themselves the most suitable candidates were elected for the task at hand.

Alfred was the most intellectual of Alicia’s adjutants; however she had a far more crucial task of leadership and management, which led to Erwin taking the position of the researcher in charge. Mesmers, perhaps thanks to their unusual hunting strategies requiring both creativity and an erudite mind, had intrinsic advantage in regards of discovery, analysis and if necessary, development. Though Alicia quickly learned to outsource the development part to other more suitable individuals. Alicia was extremely concerned about how she couldn’t teach Echo the scientific method. Rather it seemed that she drew inferences and made  breakthroughs at random. Only to later discover that she could hypnotize herself to test hypotheses at an extreme rate by creating close to reality illusions inside her own mind. While within one such illusion, time is indescribably dilated.

Unfortunately the method was inapplicable for anyone else as they couldn’t be safely induced into or awakened from the mesmerization. In addition, once they’re in the illusion they couldn’t maintain a cognitive state suitable for productive research.

‘Seems that their hypnosis causes some short term memory loss, replaced by their new experiences from their time within the illusion, making their victims’ switch from illusion to reality completely seamless… I thought that I had just gotten slightly aloof Araneae species… didn’t know how terrifying they could be…

As for me… it just doesn’t work. I cannot be put into their hypnotic state, aware or otherwise. Alma has its own ideas but… the general consensus that it reached was that my, or rather, our minds within a single body was far too independent of each other to be fully affected by any mind altering states, hypnosis included. What am I, an Alien…? Well… suppose I am…’

Later Alicia discovered from Lynbell, that her void crystals were not a new discovery that she had made but rather any medium that possesses a minor spirit, energy to house it and specific set of instructions - like that of a spell - were known as catalysts. They were often scrolls bound with a special string or seal that had to be undone to release the spirit and subsequently the magic. Other rare forms of it were that of a grimoire, wands and staves with special fixtures, and of course small crystals. The water spirit was more terrified of how Alicia had made dozens of them and were handing them out like candy. Even simple ones cost a pretty penny due to the difficulty involved in creating them.

Materials that could house a lesser spirit were few and far between, in addition not only did they need the careful hand of an artisan to craft them into the desired form but also the spells of the distinguished sorcerers. All of those steps had a price tag that would make even the most affluent of merchants to wince at the cost. The end product was worth it, as even such catalysts devoid of a spirit could still be used as a sort of a magical battery, being able to act as a capacitor to aid the sorcerer in possession of the objects, to quickly recover their energy reserves, whence their names come from - catalysts for magic. With only another step of processing, devastating spells could be preserved within such objects. Army devouring floods, city swallowing earthquakes, cyclones capable of uprooting nations, infernal hellfires, all could be stored in a chunk of crystal small as a handful. And Alicia was using such crystals bound for greatness for the purposes of creating a glorified fire striker.

But it was not without a cause, even though the rift was closed, in its area the void crystals continued to bud and grow almost as if it was… alive. Unintentionally she found out that the crystals… if not possessing intelligence or will… had some sort of memory. When she used dauntless to chip off a sample to bring back to study reacted with her blade. It was then she noticed the uncanny resemblance of her blade to the unworldly minerals. When it was first forged, the dwarven smith Greimen gave her an oil and whetstone to hone its edge and sharpen it but she had never once used them, still floating in the dark space of her vault. And although she was quite conscious of needing to treat the blade at first, she soon became more and more… barbaric with the weapon.

From using it for crude work such as to chop wood, to jabbing it deep into stone floors and so on. The weaponsmith would have hammered her head flat into his anvil for just one of those incidents, let alone the numerous other transgressions she had committed against the blade. But most importantly it never once lost its edge and only now she noticed the strange property of her weapon. To see what was happening she brutally smashed the edge against a rock, smashing it to pieces. Then she examined the edge of her weapon… it had lost its sharpness somewhat with noticeable chipping but she also saw something else. The sword was… for a lack of better words restoring itself to its original form. It did lose its edge, very often in fact. But it simply repaired itself when she wasn’t looking. And as she suspected the crystals themselves in their raw unprocessed state also shared the same property.

Where it was getting the materials to ‘grow’ was still a mystery as it didn’t seem to be absorbing anything from the nearby terrain, but for her purposes testing out a theory she marked one of the buds to be kept undisturbed. In weeks worth of time it grew from a small bud to a flowering bloom and stopped, or rather it had matured and reached its own saturation point. Smaller the bud faster it grew to reach its ‘ideal size’ slowing down as it grew closer to it before stopping completely. Her initial worries of needing to keep the crystals from growing indefinitely was fortunately unneeded. Even if unattended they wouldn’t consume the entire world and turn it into crystals. The reconstructive nature of the crystals were lost once they had been broken off from their origin. The limit of how many times they could restore themselves hadn’t been discovered yet or if it even has such a limit in the first place. In the long term, it meant that Alicia had a ‘crystal farm’, an unexpected windfall.

Though dubitable, for now the crystals were deemed safe for use and Echo had moved onto researching more applications the crystal could be used for. Reasons for her suspicion towards these crystals closely affiliated with the void came from the ‘gift’ the void bestowed her.

With the title came three individual traits and of which one had already made its presence known.

‘Devour hope… I don’t remember getting an improvement like that… Doesn’t sound friendly either… Alma?’

>Decrypting standby………………… Complete.

‘Right… how do I mentally strain them… be annoying?’

>Cause burst of mental distress for immediate effect.

>Inducing an acute sense of overwhelming dread. Efficient.

>Inducing a sense of disorientation into the target, self doubt. Cause target to question rationality.

‘So… wait. Either I terrify someone to the point where they cannot resist the domination attempt or I gaslight them into questioning their own sanity…’

>Options inexhaustive.

‘Yeah I guessed, I’m sure there are a lot of way to torture someone… But… it will leave them an empty shell. A living puppet… Not going to be my first choice… Speaking of which…’

Along with Rosalia and the former coachman of the house Valtima, Alcia also brought a young lithiline girl from the town. From the learned Merchant she found out that this girl was a Grimalkin, most common around this part of the continent, known to be related to reclusive giant felines that make boreal forests their home. The other most common type of lithilines, the Leaena, originating from golden deserts to the south are the stark opposites of the Grimalkin - the tundra-morph. Besides the contrasting climates where they hail from, the Leaena - desert-morphs - as opposed to their other kin are supposedly extremely gregarious. While most half-kins struggle to progress further than tolerance of human presence, the Leaena seem to actively seek out relations with humans, living amongst their communities and settlements. It seems that they are all considered citizens in the region of Ægiphet and though disputed some are even revered as a deity. As much as  Alicia wanted to learn more, accurate information on both morphs, and lithilines in general are as rare as they come. Half-bloods without collars were rare around these parts.

‘People couldn’t abolish racism in its entirety when we were all humans… now with other entire species possessing intelligence that are wholly different put into the mix, in addition to the constant warfare and paranoia… I can see how xenophobia became the trendiest mindset. Grimalkin and Leaena are just two of the entire genus of Lithilines out there that have been discovered and described…’

The grimalkin was mostly left on her own when she was brought to Velauhart, so as not to stress her out unnecessarily while she got accustomed to her new environment. Although she was quite annoyed by Rosalia’s unrestrained curiosity into her species at first, after sneaking out by herself during one night and accidentally running into cave lion’s den to then flee into an owlbear ambush, she was then rescued by one of Rufus’ night patrols. At the end of it, though only sustaining superficial wounds it almost seemed as if she was more patient with the noble girl’s attention. Alicia was hopeful that Rosalia, through exposure and bonding, had learned more about her but…

Under her breath she whispered…

she likes to be scratched behind her ears.”

It was obvious that her hope was misplaced…

Abashedly, she replied.

‘This might be something to look into…’

After a quick few knocks on Rosalia’s room Alicia let herself in without waiting for an answer. From indirect observation through the numerous Araneae hanging around the premises she knew the felid girl had her bouts of restlessness after the sun went down, deducing her to have a nocturnal lifestyle. That being the case, she knew the Grimalkin would be lounging about in Rosalia's chambers, napping the daylight away. As she entered the room, she quickly sat-up from her sprawling stretch on the bed. She avoided making eye-contact, hoping that Alicia would just leave. It was a much better reception than the first time. Though anything but warm, there wasn’t any disdain flowing through it. It was perhaps the most intense neutral gaze Alicia had encountered.

Pulling up a chair and placing it in front of her Alicia sat on. Quite alert to her actions she had stiffened up, pupils narrowing into a slit, her ears were upright facing towards her, following her movements attentively, however it didn’t turn down and to the back yet which was a sign of aggression or in most cases interactions with Alicia, fear. Without a word, Alicia balled up her hands into a loosely clenched fist and slowly presented to it. Bemused by the gesture she wasn’t sure how to react. Regardless, Alicia was determined and held her rather awkward position. After some time, she gingerly leaned in to sniff at her hands, occasionally being startled by seemingly nothing. She had become oddly fixated on sniffing at her hand eventually, nuzzling her face against it before backing away; Alicia noticed that her pupils had become mostly dilated when she did.

After the greeting, she slowly opened up her balled up hand and calmly reached around her head to rub her behind the ears. The felid girl’s hesitancy had mostly faded away, still she could sense that there was some chariness left in her. Those walls would take time to break down. Quiet, barely discernible sounds resembling meowing could be heard coming from her; even with her finer sense of hearing, the sound was still easy to miss. Judging now was a good time Alicia spoke.

She interpreted the slow tilt of her head to be one of confusion, as if to ask ‘what name?’

Knowing that she was ‘contracted’ from a slave trader, she had heard that most slaves had their names wiped from them so that they could be renamed by the client to make it more of a ‘personal’ purchase. Alicia thought that she might remember her previous name but it seems that it was not the case.

The petite girl turned around and swished her fluffy tail at her in disinterest.

Low, almost growling yowl of discontentment came from her.

Alicia was surprised to hear from her. The topic must have been dear to her.

After a long pause she responded once more.

Hopping over to the window peeking out;

‘Get married, raise the children, then figure out something else later… Sounds like the life plan of most people I met… It isn’t bad but… sounds like she’s lost.’

Pensively she mused to the skies through the window.

Her pale green eyes stared intently at her.

For almost every day since then Alicia visited Frost to learn more about her and to limit test the capabilities of the Slave collar. It took a long time to find a fitting name that she liked, as she would stubbornly refuse most suggestions but eventually she remembered the name of a place that struck a chord with her, Caulforst. As the name was quite complex for most to remember in its entirety, it became shortened to the much easier to recall: Frost. Initially she was unresponsive to the name but she quickly became accustomed to it.

The first thing Alicia wanted to get to the bottom of was therianthropy. Where did it come from, what benefits did it offer, why of all things did they look like a hybrid between humans and animals. Originally Alicia thought that some drunk village idiot got out into the woods and had a procreative congress with whatever woodland creature they found, that resulted in therianthropes. Though she would have been unsurprised, she would have been nonetheless disappointed if that were the case. Thankfully, for the dignity of the entire human race Alma’s genomic mapping results suggested otherwise, though it did elucidate a rather intriguing compatibility between the two species.

Setting aside the compatibility,  Alma's analysis suggested that the Grimalkin had most likely come from a common ancestor of sorts that have been well adapted to cold climates. The reason as to why their evolution took turn towards convergence with human evolution is not yet clear, however compared to other animals humans did possess a rather unique set of abilities not commonly found amongst others in the animal kingdom. Humans were not good sprinters, however they had evolved to have extreme endurance using the numerous sweat glands of the body for evaporative thermoregulation. This was the first and perhaps the most important ability for a therianthrope to acquire from humans. The act of shapeshifting or transforming their bodies, partially or otherwise, demanded an enormous deal of energy but also generated excessive heat, losing that heat quickly was important. Speech, higher cognitive skills, opposable thumbs, and a slew of other talents that were all rare in the wild were inadvertent perks that just so happened to come bundled with it. While there are many advantages to be gained from mimicking humans, there also had to be concessions to be made.

Lithilines for example, lose a great deal of their facial muscles from acquiring humanoid form - facial muscles used for delivering tremendous biting force, used for taking down a prey - but in turn gain much more flexible and nimble digits in the forms of hands and feet that are capable of more delicate and deliberate actions. From there adaptation takes a further step by replacing fingernails with the razor sharp retractable claws, combined with the enhanced dexterity this meant that they became even more of a dangerous weapon.

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Auratic

‘But is there really a need to look that much like humans? I’d say buttocks are an unnecessary adoption.’

>Gluteal muscle group. Necessary for supporting upright posture. Enables Erect pose. Crucial for regaining posture from crouching position.

‘No I meant that… whatever. They don’t need to be so large.’

>Effective fat storage medium for reserve energy. Acts as additional storage to be used during energy demanding actions. Perceived shapely form from curvaceousness indicates well nourished, healthy subject, used as indicators for identifying attractive mate.

‘Riiiight… but women don’t look at a man’s rear and get hot and bothered. What about that, eeeeh?’

>Fact remains unchanged.

‘Wait really? I… didn’t know about that… huh… do you by chance know why human male genitalia is shaped the way it is?’

>Ridges likely evolved to displace competitors’ reproductive fluids within 50 hours.

‘You mean…’

>Deep repeated plunges simulated to remove over 90% of Rival’s emission from the female's parturient canal.

‘No wait-’

>Post climax enervation combined with continued stimulation resulting in perceptual pain supports theory. Natural discouragement from displacing own-

‘I get it! I get it! Please. Stop. Why have you cursed me with this knowledge…’

>Query. Is the inquiry rhetorical in nature.

‘YES! Don’t answer…’

Using a few rats for experimentation in parallel with examining Frost’s collar, Alicia started to piece together an image of its unseen structure. Specifically how it enforced the master’s will into the victim and how it perceived what defiance was. Despite its seemingly almighty power it had glaring weaknesses in its designs. Firstly it identified the master through their magical signature imprinted to the collar, but when situated far away enough, it lost its signal, so to speak. In this situation it relied on a fallback mechanism that relies on the victim itself. If the victim is still aware of their master, it will read and use that image from the slave’s mind to continue to enforce their last orders, recurring or otherwise. Since anything short of brainwashing will not easily remove the impression of the master from the victim's memory, it is a crude yet effective method of imposing compliance.

Additionally, one can attempt to overwhelm the magical flow inside the collar, overloading it so that it attempts to reset to its original state. During this the collar will try to ask for the master’s impression from the victim, often being recalled through traumatic memories resurfacing. Here, if the enslaved in question is unable to be accessed by a token of being unconscious. The collar will revert to its initial state of not being bonded. If the individual overloading the collar does not act to imprint their own magical signature, this essentially frees the slave. Though she noted few unintended side-effects especially in the short term.

In terms of how it judges compliance, unless done through physical contact,  it was much of the same story, if the slave could comprehend it, it used their own conscience to determine if they were complying or not. While effective, it also left much to the slave’s own discretion than initially thought. If somehow the slave could delude themselves into thinking that they were carrying out their master’s orders they could practically do whatever they wanted to, this included walking up to one’s own master and slitting their throat. Whilst it was nearly impossible to achieve without completely degrading the slave’s mind to a point of insanity, outside influence is not factored in. In a sense a slave could be tricked by someone into thinking that whatever it was that they were about to do was their master’s order, or an interpretation of it.

Unless the master’s order in particular was given while in contact with the Slave. The physical contact creates a bridge that connects the master directly to the collar. Here the collar will instead prioritize and use the master’s intents and expectations for the enforcement part. After seeing how it worked, Alicia could already devise a better design just on principle of doing it better than the person who made it in the first place. Setting those aside, none of it truly mattered, as she found out that Domination simply overtook any slave collar. Meaning that people under the power of domination are immune to the collar's effects. But there was still one more question that remained and she intended to find out the answer.

Few days prior Alicia gave Frost a simple order, should the last experiment succeed she was to hold her breath until she passed out. But she didn’t tell her what the experiment was going to be, or when it would happen. Called into Rosalia’s room where she liked to nap, she was curious as to know what was happening. Alicia’s experiment had already started.

Frost had been dressed in a rather stylized maid’s uniform. Apparently Alfred commissioned Nikola to make it for her, her justification being that servants, temporary or not, should dress as such. The dress has apparently been made to be as comfortable and cut resistant as possible with specially interwoven silk to counteract her tendency to shred her clothes. 

Apparently, the silk is elastic and comfy enough that she hasn't tried to cut through them yet. It was now clear why she disliked clothes as they constrained her, which was less of a problem with the elastic silk attire.

Alicia held out her hand.

Although confused as to what she was saying Alicia understood it as acceptance.

She grabbed her hand rather carefully, as if she wasn’t sure if she was doing it correctly. As soon as she made a firm grasp;

>Kindred request transmitted. Awaiting response.

The girl now fully understood what the ‘join us’ meant. There was some hesitation.

Although her grip faltered for an instant, moments later she held it with conviction. 

>Connection Established. Idiosyncrasy in progress.

>New acquisitions.

>Instincts Deprecated.

As Kindred succeeded in its process Alicia was ready, repeating the word relinquish in her mind over and over, like a spell. And as it ended she waited with bated breath, to see if Frost would hold her breath, ready to release domination, but it never happened. The experiment was a success, meaning that kindred had higher priority than Domination. With that she let out an exhale glad that it was over. Until;

Frost pointed to something over her shoulders.

Looking over to what she was pointing towards, Alicia saw a white, spindly, segmented, appendage four in total coming out of her back. It looked awfully like the legs of a spider, instinctively she tried to move it and it responded.

Auratic

Anyway on a completely unrelated note, you may have noticed that there's a new addition in this series description.

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