The Story of Hanna/Memoirs of Princess Hanna - Page Six
The next day you woke up to soft words of your personal maid. Surprised by both your appearance and the open window, she inquired you about it. You couldn't come up with any excuse other than feeling too hot to sleep uncomfortably, but she instantly recognized that for the lousy excuse it is, and she scolded you for it. Lucky for you, she couldn't possibly have guessed the actual reason. You were sure of it.
It was a good thing you had nothing scheduled for that day, as you were very sleepy. After all, you had fun late into the night way past your bedtime, but still woke up the usual time. Anyone would've been tired after that. Your physical exhaustion wasn't as overwhelming as you were afraid it would be, but you still felt it in your body. You felt strangely self-conscious about it, and that feeling wouldn't go away even after you felt perfectly fine by the evening. Because of this, there was a slight change in your demeanor, a change that would never be reverted.
You were sure you would meet Renault during the day, and you absolutely did. You didn't stay for a talk this time, as it wasn't a good idea with other people around this time, but you did 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 instructed you to drink all of it, and then, he left.
Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months. During this time, a lot of things happened, both in your professional and personal life. In Nova Albion, there is a school system in place that is divided into three tiers, all of which consist four years. As fall rolled in, you left the first tier behind and moved onto middle school, which is for children aged eight to twelve. This was also the time you for the first time in your life would truly be able to show your intelligence and knowledge passed onto yourself from your past life. You attended lectured, sure, but you never really paid attention to most of them, as they didn't teach you anything new. Also, you were too absorbed into alchemy. You got into trouble for it multiple times, since you were ignoring your teachers in class when you just couldn't be bothered. You were reading unrelated books, ignoring teachers and even sleeping in classes. Teachers you gave trouble hated you for it. You even got grounded few times, a punishment not spared for even the most noble of students. But you continued to not care.
Then, exam season rolled in, and you aced your tests. Teachers that had grown to hate you for your tardiness and general disinterest in school started suspecting you of cheating. They had no evidence, but they made new, specialized exams for you. Of course, you aced them too, and this time there were no suspicion of foul play either. You proved yourself to be a real deal. Your homeroom teacher together with student counsellor, your father and finally your personal alchemy teacher, made plans for you for more personalized study program, one that could benefit you more than the general program for children. They exonerated you from most of your current lectures and only demanded your presence during exams, a compromise that pleased you greatly. They wouldn't allow you to skip straight into higher classes though, since it was too early to make a decision like that. What they did allow you to do instead was to attend classes that would interest you, and devote more time into studying alchemy, a subject you actually were passionate about. This was fine by you, as there were a lot of subjects that you were interested in, mostly language and history, something children usually had to wait until their teens to learn. With a special permission you were allowed to attend these glasses with high school students. It meant that the school became a little bit more hectic for you with double the exams, but since you only had to study for half of them, you didn't really care. Besides, it would help you graduate faster.
As far as your personal life went, you fully went down the same road as your sister did before you. You started with one man, who you shared a sexual secret with, as did she. Then, as time went by, you became a little bit braver and gained more information about the other men in castle, and you gained few additional partners, as did your sister before you. By the time your troubles with school started, you had gained a total of four unique partners, including Renault of course. It was about as many partners you were willing to have, as the secret would become too hard to hide if you were to have too many men in your life. But that was fine. You were able to get laid anytime you wanted even with just four. After all, who would ever deny princess sex?
Back to your studies, and alchemy to be specific. In addition to personalized lectures you got from your teacher, the current official state-alchemist, you did a lot of independent research as well. You spent a lot of time studying both local flora as well as transmutation, which allowed you to even come up with your original recipes. Most of them were purely experimental and served no practical use, but you were able to at very least replicate the contraceptive Renault usually provided you with. You had to reverse research by dividing the actual potion into its components because you couldn't find the original recipe anywhere, which made it a painful process, but you succeeded in it after one whole week of work. It let you finally move on to your next passion project, but there was a sudden roadblock in the way.
Since transmutation requires the user to use her magical power, even if it is just very little, you managed to hone your magical skills a little bit as well. You even tried learning witch- and spellcraft, but it soon became clear to you how hopelessly talentless you were in this regard. You did learn something about yourself during this time though. There was something mysterious about you that affected the amount of magical powers you had at any given time. It was a personalized power you were born with, but you couldn't make any sense of it. You knew instantly that it could potentially make you stronger, but how? It wasn't a cycle, as the levels seemed irregular. You begun to observe the level of your mana on daily basis to see how it fluctuates from time to time, but even after weeks, you couldn't figure out what it was.
You learned that it was linked to your everyday actions. And not just actions, but also speech. It was coincidentally around that time when you learned 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 had an epiphany. Your power might have something to do with that innocent old play. You learned that as you would make promises to yourself, and also other people around you, no matter how small or insignificant, you would gain power. If you were to break your promises, you would lose power, more than you had originally gained. Some of these curses even seemed permanent. Was this why you were so weak in the first place? 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 began 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. You made deals and bargains with the devil, and you came 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. And what he desires is you, and only you. You feel him tempt you every day. You have a feeling that would you sell 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.
Once this roadblock was out of your way, it was time for you to fully commit to your real dream, which was to synthesize a very special potion. 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. It's all just appearances. You knew you could do better. You had a dream of making a potion that would make it so you would never grow up, and you had 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 learned 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 a potion of your dreams. You had already laid a groundwork.
As it turned out, it was easier than you thought, at least for you. Sure, the end product was 70% herbal mixture, but your knowledge of elements from your past life helped you greatly nevertheless since the 30% part was 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 was a sophisticated process that consisted of many ingredients and steps, but as far as its cost and actually transmuting it went, it wasn't all that complicated. Sure, it's not something anyone can just figure out. After all, nobody had before you, but it wasn't inconceivable that someone would be able to replicate your results using your original recipe. You tried it on many things and tested it a lot before drinking it yourself, and you realized your product is a very dangerous. The potion you had created was too potent. The smallest dose usually used for a normal potion would surely kill a human. For a tiny child like you, one tiny fraction of a drop was all you could take without it completely devastating you and having unintended consequences. This miniscule dose would make you actually make you smaller and revert your growth, and it would revert it back by roughly six to eight months. The shrinking would happen over a period of one week, and it would never be instant. The potion was still imperfect, and its taste was beyond gross. Just one drop the first time you took it made you violently puke entire days' worth of food, but luckily it didn't have any other side effects on you. Your early prototype needed a lot of fine tuning, but that was going to have to wait, since you already had what you wanted, and it would probably last for a decade. You could stay forever young.