When I write original characters I feel like I need to introduce them to you properly, so I really like this chapter, where we get to see Corinna far from Nozel and Fuegoleon, alone in her cage.

[Black Clover characters' belongs to Yūki Tabata]

[I'm also on AO3 with the same username]

CHAPTER 4

The Lonely Mansion

Corinna P.O.V.

Spatial magic was more complicated than it looked.

In theory, I could use my powers to take me anywhere or to any dimension, but I needed to know that place first and somehow know where I was going specifically so I could open a portal.

So for now I couldn't go very far from home, but I was working on it.

The landscape in front of me was full of mountains and forests cut by a road that seemed to be endless. There was nothing there but larger plants and trees, quite different from the center of the kingdom, where houses and mansions squeezed to find a space where they could live together.

- So this is the border of the Noble Realm - I told myself, putting my hands on my knees. My heavy breathing and the weakness in my legs meant my mana was almost gone for today, and it didn't help that I needed to keep a portal open so I could watch my house and my father.

He caught me when I got back from Nozel's the other day, and I didn't want to be punished again. So I'd just have to be more careful not to get caught this time even though keeping a portal open while exploring other locations drained my energy faster.

I had barely finished thinking about the risks I was taking doing that when I heard my father's voice from the other side of the door to the room where I was supposed to be right this minute.

I had managed to get to the border after a lot of effort, marking places I knew it and hitchhiking with ordinary people who had come to the capital for work and were now returning to their villages.

Those people were all so kind, and they all owned so little.

I walked home to my father's private room and hoped I had managed to wipe all the sweat off my face with the sleeve of my dress. If that didn't give me away, my heavy breathing probably would.

When my father walked into the room I was adjusting the black pearl necklace around my neck, which he didn't think was strange since I fiddled with it all the time since I got it.

- How many pages have you read? - My father asked.

I looked up quickly, just to make sure he wasn't looking and skipped ahead fifty pages without him noticing.

- Nearly a hundred. - I replied, hiding a smile.

My father had his back to me, so he just nodded.

Technically I was grounded and couldn't leave the house, but that wouldn't work for me, of course not.

- I hope you're finding the studies interesting this time.

- Yes father - I said, when in fact I didn't even know what the central theme of the book was. I remember reading the first ten pages with some interest, but because he was by my side, watching me closely, but then he was summoned to go to the parliament and had to leave, casually opening a portal on the corridor, leaving me alone again.

If I had no interest in studies it was all his fault. How could someone be born with spatial magic and stay in the same place all the time?

He paced the room for a while, checking the books carefully, still in his long-sleeved green robe, with the clover shape on the back facing me.

I heard my stomach growling for a second so I hugged in a failed attempt to get it to stop.

I had walked too much and besides being tired I was hungry.

My father looked at me for a second and I straightened my posture in the chair, as if I was concentrating on that silly activity. I tried to face him, but it was hard at times.

Alsius Alstroemeria was like a tough, sharp version of me, and able to pierce anyone with a look.

- I need to get back to work.

He didn't like servants or commoners, nor those who had little magical power. His trials in parliament were fast and some said he sent the damned into the mouth of a flaming volcano while they were still trying to defend themselves.

I tried to swallow my hunger as I watched him, afraid I'd be the next damned thing on a volcano.

My father's grimoire was always by his side, floating around his head. He barely read it, it was as if he had somehow memorized all the spells on those pages.

- Don't leave the house - was the last thing he said to me before disappearing into the portal he had opened.

I took a deep breath once he was gone. I think, in a way, I was released from studying for today.

- Will I be able to do more when I get my grimoire? - I got up from the chair, going to the place where my father had disappeared. His portal seemed to be better shaped than mine, as well as seeming more stable and secure.

Suddenly I started to think about what would happen if a portal closed while I was still walking through it, and I shook my head, trying to get rid of those ominous thoughts away.

I'd made a promise to Nozel, and I wanted to be able to keep it, but it was hard when he wasn't here to watch over me and when everything around was so quiet and sad.

I left the room, but I still had to cross three long hallways to get to the kitchen and find something to eat. The wood on the floor had different color patterns, so I decided I would only step on the lighter squares until I reached the other side.

"One, two, three... Forty, forty-one..."

My fingers touched the wall as I moved back and forth, playing alone in that lonely mansion, until I stopped in front of my mother's portrait, which stood near a passage to the greenhouse, her favorite spot in the house. I was told she could spend hours tending to the flowers in the greenhouse and in the garden.

There was a small opening in the ceiling where sunlight always come in and touched her painting, illuminating the brown curls of her hair.

Sometimes I wondered if my life would still be like this if she were here, and if, someday, I would be able to open a portal into her world.

By the time I reached the kitchen I was tired of playing in the hallway, so I grabbed whatever food was nearby so it wouldn't get in the way of the maids who looked too tired from the heat, bits of cheese, cake, and what was left of the stuffed bread we ate for the breakfast. I put everything on my lap as I sat in the garden, near the rose bushes.

My father had chosen the furthest residence of the Noble Realm, so that he could not see and hear anyone but himself and my mother. I don't think it was in his plans to be stuck with someone like me.

And I didn't want that fate either.

"Don't you think the union between a magic knight and a member of the parliament would be perfect?"

I ate faster when I remembered Nozel's words. I think I knew what he wanted, but I wasn't ready to let our fun days go by.

I knew the older we got the more responsibilities would come and I didn't want that, I didn't want to be a wife yet. I wanted to travel, to see the skull of the demon that nearly destroyed the world...

And I wanted Leon and Nozel to be by my side on these adventures.

I was so tired of my thoughts beyond the effort I'd made in the morning that I ended up falling asleep by the rosebushes, with the grass green and neatly cut like a soft pillow under my hair.

I only realized that I had actually fallen asleep when I woke up hours later, already in my room. I thought that it must have probably been carried by some servant working in the garden, until I saw my father's green robe covering my legs.

- He brought me here - I sighed - but he's gone again.

I pushed the robe away with my feet, throwing it on the floor in an attempt to be a little rebellious with that gesture, but then I regretted it and took it off the floor, placing it carefully on my bed.

I put my face close to the fabric, closely examining the seam of the clover, until I felt tightness in my neck.

I got up right away, feeling again, it wasn't tightness, but a vibration. I reached for the necklace, which was still around my neck. That feeling really came from that object.

- What you want? - I asked as if that thing could answer me somehow.

I touched the necklace again, and this time I felt great energy being transmitted through the pearls.

- Could be a magic item?! - I asked myself, excited by the possibility.

Going to an abandoned tower with two friends and discovering a magic item didn't seem a bad thing.

I went to my bedroom door and opened it carefully, my father must be working. I would have a little time, so I opened a portal back to the top of the hill where Nozel, Leon, and I explored that day. The sky was already getting dark, so I entered the tower quickly before it ran out of sunlight for that day.

- All right - I said as I climbed the stairs - tell me where I should go.

The pearls kept sending me signals as I walk through the old, dusty furniture of the tower, until I stopped in front of a large mirror near the wall.

The mirror had caught my eye the last time I was here, but Leon had distracted me, so I couldn't see all the details of its golden frame properly.

- Oh, how wonderful it would be - I said, still talking alone and with the pearls around my neck - to cross to the other side.