Chương 5: Chapter 4: The Awakening

During the next few evenings, Elizabeth kept testing the crystal fragment and learned mostly where her equipment failed her. The tingling still appeared when cloth separated the crystal from her skin. At a short distance it was unreliable: sometimes she thought she felt it, sometimes she did not. Metal seemed to weaken the sensation, but the spoon, brass box and jewellery clasp in her room differed too much in shape and thickness for a useful comparison. Timing the onset went no better.

The mantel clock had no second hand, and counting for herself only added another source of error. After Lady Renwick's lesson one afternoon, Elizabeth borrowed a compass from the estate map room. She set the depleted crystal beside it, then above it. The needle moved when she knocked the table and settled north again. She waited, shifted the crystal once more, and wrote a zero in the margin of her notes. The compass was back in the map room the next morning.

Ten minutes each evening did at least confirm that the first night's tingling could be repeated. Elizabeth left the conclusion there. Halvern had warned her to stop if the headaches worsened, and losing the fragment before the ceremony would gain her nothing. As the ceremony approached, her lessons changed. Lady Renwick stopped introducing new material and made her rehearse procedure instead: wait until every option had appeared, read the descriptions before choosing, remember unfamiliar wording exactly.

Much of it returned once the lesson supplied a prompt. Pulling useful facts from the borrowed memories without one was less dependable. Two days before the ceremony, Halvern ended the concentrated elemental sessions and replaced them with low ambient exposure. Her headaches became less frequent. The trouble concentrating remained. One afternoon Elizabeth reached the bottom of a page and realised she had retained almost none of it. She started again.

Halfway through the second attempt, the opening lines had already gone vague. Later, while Lady Renwick was speaking, Elizabeth had to hold one sentence in mind deliberately until the next arrived. A few seconds later she was thinking normally again. The physician found no fever, no unusual pulse and nothing she considered abnormal in Elizabeth's channels.

"You have had a long week," she said.

"Sleep." Elizabeth said she would. She had no reliable way to know whether the original Elizabeth had ever experienced the same lapses, so she kept the timing to herself. On the afternoon before the ceremony, Mrs Harrow came for the crystal.

"Master Halvern's orders." Elizabeth closed the exercise book on her desk.

"I know." Mrs Harrow checked that the fragment was still wrapped and slipped it into her apron pocket. Her eyes rested briefly on the notebook.

"Finished?"

"For tonight."

"Good." Elizabeth let her take it. Halvern had promised the fragment only until the ceremony. Soon afterwards, servants cleared the class notes from her desk and spread a ceremonial dress across the bed. Eleanor arrived while two maids were checking the sleeves. She carried a small velvet case.

"Stand up, Elizabeth." Inside the case lay a silver necklace. Its pendant showed a white tower beneath a silver crown, the edges worn smooth with age. Eleanor moved behind Elizabeth and fastened it at the nape of her neck.

"Your grandmother wore this at her awakening. She awakened as a Court Magician." Elizabeth looked down at the pendant.

"What happened to her?" Eleanor's fingers remained at the clasp for a moment.

"She married your grandfather and returned to the march. She served House White until she died." Elizabeth turned the pendant once between her fingers. Her mother put it straight again and turned to the dress. Elizabeth went to bed early and slept badly. She had no useful model for what the System would find. Elizabeth White's body had eleven years of history behind it. Elliot Black's memories, intentions and point of view had continued after an execution that should have ended them.

She still could not distinguish between transmigration, possession, reconstruction, or some mechanism she had no name for. The awakening might tell her nothing about that. It might also reveal something to the people outside the interface before she understood it herself. She slept for a while, woke, and lay listening to the estate settle around her. After the third time she checked the window for dawn, she gave up. Mrs Harrow found her sitting at the small table when the servants arrived.

The housekeeper took one look at her.

"You did not sleep."

"Some."

"Not enough." She set a folded cloth on the washstand.

"Come here." Two maids washed and dressed her while Mrs Harrow supervised. Elizabeth's hair was divided, braided and pinned. The hooks at the back of the dress defeated her when she tried to help, and one of the maids quietly moved her hand aside and finished them. The white dress was heavier than it looked. Silver embroidery ran along the cuffs and hem, and a dark blue sash crossed her waist. Her grandmother's necklace rested cold against her throat. Mrs Harrow walked around her once.

"Shoulders." Elizabeth corrected them.

"Chin down a little. There." She smoothed a loose strand near Elizabeth's temple.

"Your mother is waiting." At the door, Mrs Harrow told her not to rush on the stairs. Several doors along the main corridor had been closed for the ceremony. Servants who would normally have continued working stopped to bow or wish her good fortune. Near the bottom of the staircase, an elderly footman Elizabeth recognised but could not name said, "May it be a fine class, my lady."

"Thank you." His smile stayed with him as she passed. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. The western hall doors were open, and the awakening stone drew her attention before the people around it did. The banquet tables had been removed. A low circular platform stood on the polished black floor inside a narrow silver ring. The stone rose from its centre, cloudy grey and a little taller than Elizabeth. Pale lines branched beneath the surface.

They resembled vessels under thin skin until one of them shifted course while she watched. Thomas was leaning forward for a better look. Eleanor caught his sleeve before his shoe reached the silver ring and pulled him back. Alexander came to meet Elizabeth.

"You look tired."

"I am."

"I barely slept before mine." He glanced at the necklace.

"Grandmother's?" Elizabeth nodded.

"Mother gave me Grandfather's chain. I could hardly turn my head." He offered his arm. Elizabeth took it; the dress made the last few steps more awkward than they needed to be. Julian greeted her with a nod. Marianne stood behind Eleanor with Isabel asleep against her shoulder. Thomas, denied the ring, had settled for staring at the stone from beside his mother. Alistair was speaking with Duke Harcourt. Adrian stood with him.

"Lady Elizabeth," Adrian said. His voice brought back a summer afternoon: a fountain, hot stone through thin shoes, adults talking beyond a hedge while Adrian asked why she preferred mathematics to music.

"Lord Adrian." The Duke inclined his head.

"Your father tells me the preparation has gone well."

"Master Halvern seems satisfied." Adrian said, "You look calmer than I was before mine."

"I didn't sleep much."

"Neither did I." Elizabeth studied him, trying to recover the rest of that earlier meeting.

"What class did you choose?"

"Courtly Duelist," Adrian said after a moment.

"You asked me that last summer too." The memory did not return. Elizabeth kept her expression neutral.

"Then I forgot the useful part of the conversation." Adrian gave a quiet laugh. His father did not.

"Was it what you expected?" Elizabeth asked.

"Close enough." Duke Harcourt adjusted his cuff.

"It has served him well." Royal Assessor Edric Vane arrived before the conversation could move elsewhere. Two attendants followed with narrow cases. Vane greeted Alistair and Eleanor, then crossed to the platform while the attendants set a metal frame beside the stone and fitted clear crystals into sockets around its base. He checked their work before turning to Elizabeth.

"Lady Elizabeth White?"

"Yes."

"I will supervise the awakening and confirm that the connection completes safely. What appears in your System is yours to see. My instruments will show me what your body is doing, not the options you receive." He continued before she could answer.

"You may feel hot or cold. You may become dizzy, or lose awareness briefly. If I tell you to remove your hands, do so. If you cannot, I will end the connection." Elizabeth glanced at the instruments.

"How will you know?"

"Your body is less private than your System." Halvern joined them while the physician checked Elizabeth's wrist and the channels at the side of her neck.

"Headache?" he asked.

"Not this morning."

"Dizziness?"

"No." He watched the physician's readings for a few seconds.

"Within your usual range." Behind him, Mrs Harrow exhaled softly. The clear crystals at the base of the stone brightened. Elizabeth felt a faint vibration through the soles of her shoes. Alistair stopped her before the steps.

"Remember what you were prepared to become."

"A magician."

"A daughter of House White." Elizabeth met his eyes.

"I remember." She climbed onto the platform. Thomas had gone quiet. Alexander stood beside Eleanor and gave Elizabeth a small nod when she looked towards him. Vane waited beside the instruments.

"Both hands on the stone when you are ready." Up close, the pale lines inside the crystal divided and rejoined beneath the cloudy surface. Elizabeth raised her hands and stopped just short of touching it. She had spent the week discarding bad measurements and repeating uncertain ones. There would be no repeat for this. She still did not know what, if anything, the System would make of the break between this body's history and Elliot's continued point of view.

Vane waited without prompting her, and the rest of the hall remained quiet. Elizabeth pressed both palms against the stone. Warmth spread across her skin. The branching light flashed white. The needles beside Vane jumped, and a pale line appeared across Elizabeth's vision.