As Maria settled back to her duties and Sophia was finally allowed to rest, her mother managed to be more and more awake. It seemed she hadn't been fed very well during her captivity, but with Miss Shelley's care and better, more regular meals were slowly giving her back her strength. She began waking regularly, which was probably a relief to Miss Shelley, as she didn't have to bathe and deal with Maria's mother's wastes.
Her listlessness did not improve, however, and seemed to easily fall into a daze. Sometimes she'd just… sit there, eyes open but somehow still asleep. Miss Shelley did what she could to keep Maria's mother grounded and occupied, sitting next to her and holding her hand, as if trying to keep her from slipping into an abyss within her own mind.
For all her experience in the Research Hall, Maria didn't know what to do. She had greater familiarity with what it took to put people into these states of mind than out of them, and while she had some though as to how to make her mother more mentally active and less listless, driving her into such insanity that she started thinking she was a robin's egg or that her head would be all right without her body was not an improvement.
Almost, she regretted not killing those highwaypersons they encountered. Perhaps her mother could have fed on their souls, as the old myths said hollows had done to hold on to their sanity. But no, thinking like that was how one ended up deciding that sending your trusted hunters to massacre a fishing hamlet so you could examine the inside of peoples' skulls for eyes…
"Master Mayor," Maria said.
"My Lady," the mayor nodded deferentially. By now he knew she was willing to let some things slide, like too much bowing. This wasn't a formal occasional, after all, and they both had things they needed to do.
"The school season is about to start," she said. "Many of my wards are approaching schooling age, with several already there but have previously been unable to due to their circumstances. Will the school be able to accommodate them?"
The mayor considered. "Well, as it happens, we will only have a few students at the this year," the mayor said. "Young children born later than others this generation, their parents courted late. We were worried we'd have to let some of the teachers go until the next generation."
"So having a sudden influx of students of various ages will not be a problem?" Maria said.
"They'll welcome it. It'll keep them in work," the mayor said.
"I see," Maria said. "How is the state of the school building? You have not notified me of any problems concerning it, so I assume it is in decent repair, but what is its exact state?"
For a moment, the mayor looked pained. "Perhaps you should see."
It was a decently well-maintained structure, with unbroken, glass windows, plenty of desks and blackboards, and with slates of the children to practice writing on. The design was not too dissimilar to Maria's own schoolhouse back when she was younger, although that structure had been much bigger, since her town had been a major hub outside the capital, and was note prone to have generational breaks in activity as they waited for more children to be born.
This school building, however, was very small, with only two rooms connected by a hallway and a storage shed. There was a second floor containing personal quarters for the teachers to live in if they had to, as well as a small infirmary in case any of the children were injured that doubled as a kitchen. Each classroom had only room for ten children. Fifteen, at most. And the mayor's idea of 'a few' was eleven, all young enough that they had a nap time.
"This won't do," Maria said critically as she and the mayor rounded the outside of the facilities, the teachers peering curiously out at them and looking nervous. No classes were going on yet, since school wouldn't start for another couple of weeks. "I'm afraid this location will be insufficient for my needs, Master Mayor. It's much too small."
"Pardon, my lady, but it's all we've got," the Mayor said.
"Fortunately, we are not limited to it," Maria said. "Come, let us talk to the teachers."
Raven's Nest had three teachers, a holdover from the previous year when the school had been overfull with the current generation. One was a young woman who looked fresh out of the Academy's Teaching Qualification exams, while the two others were older and more experienced. One looked like a pretty young newlywed, and the other a middle-aged aunt with a little gray in her hair. It did not surprise Maria to hear that the latter was the younger of the two senior teachers, with the former being a retired knight who had come home after several decades as a 'Sunsister'.
"You… want us to move classes over to your manor?" Strowen, the eldest said, looking surprised at the request.
"Yes," Maria said. "I have 27 young wards in my manor right now, and with the other young children from the village, this building will clearly be overstrained. I believe we can find a room for you to conduct classes there, and you will of course have my support."
"27?!" the youngest, Griant, exclaimed. "How do you have so many children? Er, my lady?"
"I rescued them from slavers who wished to sell them for use as toys by the morally bankrupt," Maria said.
"I think I heard a story about that…" the middle-aged looking one, Millibeth, said as Griant looked awkwardly horrified. The former Sunsister gave Maria a thumbs up, one knight to another.
"Please don't believe any of those, they are overly exaggerated," Maria said.
The next day, after informing Ghirardeli to start turning one of the rooms in the first floor into a classroom, Maria went to visit the Ministry. Larna Smith and Rafael had finally returned, with the enormous corpse of the beast that had been Estella Almera being flown in by wyvern. This had apparently resulted in a fierce inter-departmental memo battle between the Biomagic Department, Applied and Experimental Alchemy Department, the Exotic Materials Research Department, the Magic Research Department, the Abyss Watch Department and the Magic Tool Laboratory over who had jurisdiction over it. Rafael, as vice-director, was apparently doing some fierce negotiating with these apparently larger and more senior departments, engaging in high-level office politics.
Maria wondered if she should offer to assassinate some people in those departments, as a good fiancée should. Perhaps later, if anyone was being particularly obstructive to Rafael.
For now, she was meeting researchers from various departments, including most of the Light Magic wielders the Ministry had. Most were high-level individuals she'd met before at least in passing who knew of the existence of Dark Magic.
"I call it Rakuyo," Maria said, drawing the familiar shape of the blade from her shadow, where it hid when she wasn't using it. There were murmurs at its pure black form and white corona. "By certain comments the Dark Magic wielder who kidnapped my mother said, which should probably be taken with some skepticism, it is a 'Dark Familiar' that was created by using Dark Magic to feed upon my mother's soul in same fashion…"
From what Maria later learned, it could be compared to a magical construct, like an Earth Magic wielder's dirt dolls, though a more evolved version, with a form consisting completely of Dark Magic. Its similarity to certain mythical entities that were said to roam the abyss also excited comment, becoming fuel for the ages-old assertion that the so-called Humanities were corporeal, bodiless Dark Souls. It was strong evidence in favor of the theory that Dark Magic was fueled by the Dark Soul in some way, which seemed blatantly obvious to Maria since it came about from sacrificing a human's Dark Soul. But then they were academics and couldn't be expected to see the blood echoes for the blood in their eyes.
They were also very interested in the beam of blood made of darkness she could now use in conjunction with Rakuyo. There was much scholar bickering about whether it was 'simply' a new manifestation of dark magic, an expression of the Dark Familiar's power merely fueled by her energy, a Soul Sorcery, or a Hex (in the mythological sense rather than the expletive sense).
Then someone noticed that she occasionally left trails of black flame when she swung, inciting further discussion on whether it was merely a visual effect or a manifestation of the ancient art of the Black Flame, which manifested only extremely rarely in the royal family. Maria was reluctant to demonstrate more, as she could feel her Dark Magic dwindling with every manifestation.
She also learned, among other things, that Rakuyo could not be taken from her, as it transformed into a cloud of black mist that returned to Maria should she go too far from it. Various attempts were made to try to unattach it from Maria, including having several Light Magic wielders direct their magic at it and having Sora, the Ministry's only other Dark Magic wielder, attempt to 'claim' it as Maria had apparently done, using dark magic to force his will upon it. Sora had described it as trying to break down a titanite wall by poking at it with his little finger.
Maria was fairly sure at least one person was probably thinking about what would happen if she died, and if that would allow them to claim the Dark Familiar, but if they did, no one foolishly said it out loud.
Some wanted her to be conscripted into the Ministry, as between being a Dark Magic wielder and the wielder of a Dark Familiar, she was considered an individual of great value, but nothing manifested beyond talk. Maria suspected there was politics of some sort involved. As a knight whose direct liege lord was the king, it would probably be a political dung pie if the Ministry tried to force her into its ranks. Not that she was specifically against the notion of working for the Ministry– Rafael was there, after all– but she had other responsibilities right now.
In the end, she was tested by the Medicinal Magic department to see if bonding Rakuyo had produced any ill effects, and told to come back regularly for more tests to track her health and to bring Rakuyo and her person to the Ministry when requested.
In return, she arranged for members of the Medicinal Magic department to visit her mother to examine her mother, in hope that they knew something that could help improve her condition. After all, these brain-rotted academics might as well be good for something!