Rosetta

Rosetta’s expression softened immediately. Rather than her eyebrows furrowing with a frustrated grimace or her lips twisting into a scowl, she looked like she was surprised and worried.

“I’m so sorry, Mary!” Rosetta practically blurted out, “You still don’t know about my magic, do you?”

“U-Uh… No?” Mary said, confused as to how that was related.

“Hmm… You haven’t been introduced to magic at all, have you?”

Mary shook her head. “Not really.”

“Well, come with me,” Rosetta said as she stood up, “we’ll come back in a bit to finish our meals. For now, let’s get you some armor and a lesson on magic.”

Mary ignored the yearning she felt for another bite, standing and following Rosetta- though she cast one more glance at her unfinished plate as they left. She swore she would be back for it soon.

“So, Mary, let’s set a baseline. You already know that those markings on your body are magical, right?”

“Yeah,” Mary said as she nodded, “and you’re able to activate them by giving me a command?”

“Well, there’s a lot of ways to activate magic sigils,” Rosetta corrected. “My ability to give orders for magical effects is… Unique to me, essentially. For most people, they’d need to channel their own mana into markings like that.”

“Own… Mana?” Mary asked quizzically.

Rosetta nodded. “A lot of people will talk your ear off about what Mana is, how all living things have it, and how it’s part of the world’s life force. But, the way I see it? Mana is like our energy, but instead of being used when we move around physically, it’s drained when you use magic. You recover it in about the same way, just needing a good rest to get back your energy.”

“So, uhm… We use mana to power magical sigils?” Mary asked.

“Yes,” Rosetta said with a smile, “and that is most of what magic is!”

Rosetta continued to walk at a brisk pace, Mary having to hurry just to keep pace. They were moving away from what seemed to be the more open food area, approaching a more crowded and narrow section with stalls filled with trade goods. Mary looked around, eyes catching countless useful goods. Swords, axes, spears, shields, armors, backpacks, camping sets, tool kits, waterskins, everything you could need for an adventure was somewhere here. More importantly was that so many things had engravings.

“Take this, for example,” Rosetta said as she picked up a bead from a stand. “Do you see the markings on this?”

Mary paused. “U-Uh, Rosetta, are we supposed to-”

“Hey!” a woman’s voice called, “are you planning to buy that? If you aren’t don’t even think about-”

Mary leaned to see past Rosetta, seeing the woman running the stand looking at Rosetta angrily. Rosetta didn’t seem at all disturbed by this. She glanced over at the woman, then reached for her hip, and placed a pouch where the bead had been. It jingled with coin, and if the woman’s shocked expression was anything to go by, it sounded like it was a good bit more than that item was worth.

“The inscriptions on this,” Rosetta continued without missing a beat, “produce a spell of illumination. You’ll see that if I pass my mana through it….”

The small sphere started to glow. It wasn’t especially intense, but it was easily visible even in the daylight. The light seemed to shimmer, its brilliant gleam catching on the nearby weapons. Mary’s eyes shimmered in the glow as she admired it, and Rosetta slowly turned it to let Mary take in everything. Mary could see the light moving, and realized it wasn’t covering the entire bead, it was coming from the engraved sigils on the bead.

“Since you’re not properly trained to use your mana, I didn’t want you to use the markings on your body yet. It can be dangerous to activate those kinds of effects on your body without having really good control over it. That is why I only want it to be activated through my orders.”

“Oh!” Mary exclaimed, “U-Uh, actually… You said that using magical orders was, uhm… Unique to you?”

Rosetta nodded, starting to walk over to a stall that was selling armor. “Yes, magic inherently runs in my blood. Most of the time, you need to engrave sigils that will create spells to channel mana into, but that’s not always the case. If you learn specific spells, you can instead use a source to cast them from. For example, if somebody who knew how to use mana had a source of fire, they could use their mana to throw the fire around.”

“I… I feel like I’ve seen that before,” Mary said.

“You have!” Rosetta said. “That’s how those cultists were throwing flames around back in… Ahhh, right. You may not recall that.”

Mary nodded timidly, looking down. Rosetta brought Mary’s gaze back up by handing her a metal chestplate.

“Try that on, Mary. It just goes over your head and rests on your shoulders.”

Mary nodded, quickly trying it on.

“Now, as for the orders… You can think of that as me being a source for me to use my mana on. Just like somebody can put mana into a flame and cast a spell to make a fireball, I put my mana into myself and issue commands to bolster my allies magically.”

Mary managed to get the armor on. She looked at Rosetta. “U-Uh, got it… So, is this armor… Good?”

Rosetta nodded. “Yes, as long as it isn’t too heavy on you!”

“I-It doesn’t feel too heavy,” Mary said, gently bouncing on her toes to feel if the weight was too much. She didn’t feel overly burdened by it, so she nodded. Rosetta continued after seeing Mary’s response.

“Now, my inherent magical nature does allow me to do something else. I can use my blood more directly to do things that most mages cannot do without some very, very specialized training. For example, that dress you are wearing did not exist this morning. I was able to make it, but it came at the cost of a great deal of my blood.”

Mary froze. “W-Wait, so the dress… It didn’t look f-familiar, b-but I thought I had just forgotten that I had it! Did you…?”

“I used my blood to create it, yes,” Rosetta said with a smile. “And, because that drew on my blood, I was cranky afterwards. I apologize for not explaining that that might happen. I did not tell you that I had used magic to create it because I had worried you would feel bad and try to reject the offer.”

Mary was caught completely off-guard. She hadn’t expected Rosetta to literally have magical blood, and she certainly didn’t want her taxing herself like that just for a dress. She had no idea how to respond, so she stammered something out as her mind cleared.

“I-I!... Y-You’re right, I… Most certainly would not have asked for you to do such a thing to yourself for my sake.”

“It was nothing,” Rosetta said. “Well, my sour mood and behavior were certainly not nothing. I apologize for that.”

“No! Y-You don’t have to apologize, it’s my fault that-”

“None of that!” Rosetta snapped. “Just relax, Mary. We’re two girls out shopping, you needn’t worry so much! Now, there’s one thing I need to buy before we can move on.”

Rosetta turned a corner with Mary, entering a set of stalls with jewelry that extended quite a ways down. Mary immediately felt distinctly out of place. Most of the people here were wearing lavish dresses, expensive suits, and had excessively fat money pouches with them.

“W-Woah, I… Didn’t expect to see people like this here,” Mary commented.

“These sorts of small stalls bring in nobles,” Rosetta replied quietly, “They enjoy getting expensive trinkets for themselves, and these stalls are where they get them. Overpriced, not often made well, but it’s perfect for what I need.”

“What do you need?” Mary asked.

Rosetta smiled as she approached a vendor, then took a small, plain wrist bangle and left a pouch of coins. She quickly came back to Mary.

“This. It has no engravings on it, so I plan to make one. Now, shall we return to our food?”