The Story of Hanna/Memoirs of Princess Hanna - Page Six
The next day you wake up to soft spoken words of your personal maid. Surprised by both your appearance and the open window, she inquires you about it. You can't come up with any excuse other than feeling too hot to sleep comfortably, but she instantly recognizes that for the lousy excuse it is, and she scolds you for it. Lucky for you, she's got no clue about your actual motives. You are sure of it.
It is a good thing you have nothing scheduled for this day, as you are very sleepy. After all, you had fun late into the night way past your bedtime, but still woke up the usual time. Anyone would been tired after that. Your physical exhaustion isn't as overwhelming as you were afraid it would be, but you still feel it in your body. You also feel strangely self-conscious about what you did last night, and not simply because you're tired. There is a slight change in your demeanor, a change that will never be reverted.
Your first priority is to meet Renault during the day, and you don't have to try hard to get this done. You don't stay for a talk this time, as it probably isn't a good idea with other people around, but you do exchange a wink and a nod, as well as one physical object, a glass bottle small enough to fit even inside your tiny fist. He instructs you to drink all of it, and then, he leaves.
Days turn into weeks, and weeks into months. During this time, a lot of things happen, both in your personal and professional life. First and foremost, you're happy to find out that the medicine worked, so no unwanted baby for you. You were sure that it would work out, but that tiny seed of doubt that you had in your mind made you worry a lot. No longer do you need to be burdened by your fears, but enough of that, because you have some trouble in school.
In Nova Albion, there is a school system in place that is divided into three tiers, all of which consist four years. First, there is preschool. Then, there is middle school. And last, there is high school. As fall rolls in, you leave the first tier behind and move onto middle school, which is for children aged eight to twelve. This is also the first time in your life for you to be able to truly show your intelligence, along with the knowledge passed onto yourself from your past self. You attend lectures, sure, but you never really pay attention to most of them, as you feel like they don't really teach you anything new. Besides, you are too absorbed into alchemy, the one field of study you're actually motivated about. This general disinterest in school and the lack of attention is also why you get into trouble. Not just once, or just twice. No, every week, almost every day, you get into trouble, or get lectured by one of the teachers. You also often get busted for reading unrelated books and even sleeping in classes. Teachers you give trouble hate you for it. You even get grounded few times, a punishment not spared for even the most noble of students. Your parents allow it, which kind of annoys you, because you were hoping to get special treatment. Yet, you continue to not care about school.
Then, exam season rolls in, and you ace your tests. Teachers that have grown to hate you for your tardiness and general disinterest in school, immediately suspect you of cheating. They have no evidence against you, but they decide to make new, specialized exams for you. This time, there is no grey area; you ace them too, and there are no suspicion of foul play either. You prove yourself to be a real prodigy. Your homeroom teacher together with student counsellor, your father and also your personal alchemy teacher, make plans for you for more personalized study program, one that can benefit you more than the general program for children. They exonerate you from most of your current lectures and only demand your presence during exams, a compromise that pleases you greatly. They won't allow you to skip straight into higher classes though, since it is too early to make a decision like that. What they do allow you to do instead is to attend advances classes that interest you, and they also let you devote more time into studying alchemy. This is fine by you, as there are a lot of subjects that you are interested in, mostly language and history, something children usually have to wait until their teens to learn about. You are also allowed to attend these classes with high school students. It means that the school became a little bit more hectic for you with double the exams, but since you only have to study for half of them, you don't really care. Besides, it helps you graduate faster.
As far as your personal life goes, you go down the same road as your sister did before you. You start with one man - Renault - who you share a sexual secret with, as did she. Then, as time goes by, you become a little bit braver. You gain more information about the other men in castle, and you gain few additional partners, as did your sister before you. You currently have a grand total of four unique partners. It is about as many partners you are willing to have; not because you're not willing to be promiscuous, but because the secret becomes harder to hide with every new man you enter a relationship with, but that's fine. You are able to get laid anytime you want even with just four partners. After all, who would ever deny a cute princess like yourself sex?
Back to your studies, and alchemy to be specific. In addition to personalized lectures you get from your teacher, the current official state-alchemist, you do a lot of independent research as well. You spend a lot of time studying local flora as well as transmutation - to a lesser extent - which allows you to even come up with some original recipes and new inventions. Most of them are purely experimental and serve no practical use, but hey, that's science for you. Some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of the past were accidents, and even those which didn't weren't discovered in a day. You also replicate the contraceptive Renault usually provides you with. You have to reverse research by dividing the actual potion into its components because you can't find the original recipe anywhere, which makes it a painful process, but you succeed in it after one whole week of work. You finally feel comfortable moving on to your next passion project. Or, so you think. There is a sudden roadblock in the way.
Since transmutation requires you to use your magical power, even if it is very little, you aren't very good at it. You manage to hone your magical skills a little bit in the process, but only a little bit, because you feel like you aren't actually getting any stronger. You also try learning witch- and spellcraft on the side to help train you even better, but it soon becomes clear to you how hopelessly talentless you are as a mage, so you give up without even passing the basic training program. In the process of learning of failing miserably, you also learn something else about yourself during this time, which may be the reason behind your weakness. There is something mysterious about you that affects the amount of magical powers you had at any given time. It must be some kind of personalized power or a trait you were born with, but you can't make any sense of it. You know instantly that it could potentially make you stronger, but how? You begin to observe the level of your mana on daily basis to see how it fluctuates from time to time, but even after weeks, you just can't figure it out. It isn't a cycle, as the levels seemed irregular. There is no pattern either; sometimes you feel stronger, sometimes weaker. It's all a big mystery.
You learn that it is linked to your everyday actions, and even your speech. It is coincidentally around that time you learn about a very old play, especially popular amongst children living in the kingdom of Kalmar, that encourages them to keep promises to each other at the fear of being cursed. You have an epiphany; your power might have something to do with that innocent, old play. You learn that as you make promises to yourself, and also other people around you, no matter how small or insignificant, you gain power. If you are to break your promises, you lose power, more than you had originally gained. Some of these gains and losses even seem permanent, which just confuses you even more. Is this why you are so weak? You have probably broken a lot of promises in your life. It would explain why you are so abnormally weak, especially considering how talented your family members are in the arts of magic. You begin to call this power a curse, and a curse of a devil to be specific. There is a devil on your back that holds you accountable for everything you say, rewards you fairly but also punishes you, a devil that you just can't shake off, a devil you have to deal with for the rest of your life. You believe this devil is real. Yes, he's definitely real. Having learned of his presence - yes, you refer to him as a he - you make deals and bargains with the devil, and you continue to learn about him. You can never hear him, you can't feel him, and you can't see him, but you learn that he has a distinct personality, and he has desires as well. What he desires is you, and only you. He tempts you every day. You have a feeling that would you submit yourself to him, he would perhaps release you from your curse and unlock your full potential, but the ramifications of that are unknown to you, and therefore better left undiscovered.
So, your passion project? Honestly, you started working on it a long time ago, but it took a while for you to fully commit to synthesizing a very special potion. What you want is a so-called potion of youth. There are plenty of potions that can help its user feel or look younger, but none of them actually make their user actually stay physically young. You want to do better. You have a dream of making a potion that would make it so you would never grow up, and you have a hunch you know how to do it despite the fact that nobody seems to know about such a recipe. When researching the subject, you learn about it being the one of the greatest hopes of alchemy, a high that hasn't been reached. Just like there once was a man who could transmute gold and a man that could create a living being, you believe you can transmute the potion of your dreams, and you have already laid a groundwork.
As it turns out, it is easier than you thought, at least for you. Sure, the end product is 70% herbal mixture, but your knowledge of elements from your past life helps you greatly nevertheless since the 30% part is mineral and a very essential part of the final product. Nobody else in the world could've done the research on the 30% part so easily. It is a sophisticated process that consists of many ingredients and steps, but as far as its cost and actually mixing it together goes, it isn't all that complicated. Sure, it's not something anyone can just figure out. After all, nobody had before you, but it isn't inconceivable that someone would be able to replicate your results using your original recipe. The end result is a mixture which only requires few steps of transmutation to change one ingredient to another, but you don't have to rely on transmutation much. Sure, you would've done an even better job with some better transmutation skills, but that's not important, since you succeeded regardless. You try it on many things and test it a lot before drinking it yourself, and you realize your product is a very dangerous. The potion you have created is too potent. The smallest dose usually used for a normal potion would surely kill an adult. For a tiny child like you, one tiny fraction of a drop is all you could take without it completely devastating you and having unintended consequences. This miniscule dose doesn't just stunt your growth, but it actually reverts your growth, and it will revert it back by roughly six to eight months. The shrinking will happen over a period of one week, and it will never be instant. The potion is still imperfect, and its taste is beyond gross. Just one drop the first time you take it makes you violently puke out entire days' worth of food. Luckily, it doesn't have any other side effects on you. Your early prototype needs a lot of fine tuning, but that is okay, since you have always loved being perfectionist when it comes to your potions. Besides, you already have what you want, and it will last for a decade. You can now stay forever young.