Hestia's Hearth: Chapter 2, An eye for detail

A few hours later, Anna woke up, her bones aching, her muscles throbbing, but otherwise she didn’t feel any more pain. Gently rubbing her own face, she wiped off the dried blood, noticing that all of her wounds were gone. Quickly getting up, she noticed that her younger brother, Alex, was posed like he was meditating. The family claimed meditation helped train the mind, empowering mana reserves within the body. So the family forced all of their mages into not only meditating before they use magic, but to meditate while sleeping. The family expected all of it’s mages dedicate as much time as possible to boosting their reserves. So the young boy, rather than focusing, was sleeping.

Smiling at her little brother, Anna tapped him gently, getting a weak groan in reply. The boy had clearly overworked himself healing her, and his awkward pose wasn’t helping him recover much. “Come on, let’s get you back to your bed.” Anna whispered, tapping him on the shoulder.

“Carry me.” Alex said softly, opening his eyes but not getting up.

“Already an adult and you still want me to lug you around?” Anna said, more joking than criticizing him. Given how much mana he had used on her, it would be weird if he could move much at all. She pushed mana into her left gauntlet, her armor, shield, and sword disappearing in a flash of light. A simple tunic decorated in red eyes became visible, a symbol of her family, and some long pants and boots.

As amazing as it looked, it was a simple enchantment- a common item that just about any enchanter made at least once. It holds everything paired to the focus item hidden within, the weight remaining the same, but focused on one spot. A worthless item to most, but useful to someone strong enough to carry it all and simply wanted more space. “Up you go.” Anna said before Alex could reply, easily lifting him off his feet and onto her back.

“Thank you,” Alex muttered, using her shoulder as a pillow as best he could from his position. Even with her sibling sleeping on her back, Anna felt almost no weight, as if her brother was as light as a feather. Lightly jogging, she quickly ran through a path littered with glowing, blue haired men, women, and children, all of them displaying those piercing green eyes and had the symbol of a red eye on their person. The path, simply gravel at first, soon transitioned to complex, wooden structures that were curved and molded into various, sharp points with brass and marble decorating every support and wall. As she walked more and more, brass and marble mixed into the architecture, creating an odd clash of natural and artificial as the brass carved its way through the marble finish.

Eventually after several minutes of travel, fewer and fewer people walked by, and those who did lacked the blue glow in their hair. The inheritance of the family was only left on people like herself who couldn’t perform magic. Anyone with any talent, like her brother, the mages, were given a cure, freeing them from a slow death. After another few minutes, she came across a massive the cast iron gate, painted a bright red in contrast to the sharp blues of her family- a family of water mages. Two mages stood guard at the gate. Like most of the people past this point, the glow of the common family was gone in anyone she saw. As she got closer to the gates, she could feel the disdain directed at her.

As soon as she was next to the gate, drops of water materialized around the guards. No skills were activated, but the strong smell of mana, a sweet yet bitter tang, infused the air. The jitter in Anna's bones telling her what the mage guards wanted to do.

“Branch family members are allowed no further.” An old woman said, her armored robe letting out a flash of light as she stepped forward.

“Special privileges, come on, I pass through this gate every day.” Anna said, digging through her pocket awkwardly while trying to keep her brother from slipping off her back. After a few seconds, she pulled out a blue coin, the metal glowing slightly, a symbol of her lesser status within the family, as well as a sign that she could enter her family's grounds despite that.

“Same rules for everyone,” the second guard, an old man, said. “Besides you could lose your coin at any time. Not like you’ll be needing it much longer from the looks of it.” He eyed her glowing, blue hair.

Ignoring the guards, she put her coin back in her pocket and walked through the gate, the previous marble replaced with Lapis Lazuli in such vast quantities of it that the previously overpowering brass almost became mute. She would mistake it as wealth if she didn’t know that it was all fake, simple blue stone made to look the part. The entire area was as big as a small city, filled to the brim with water mages who were all running around in the name of pleasure, politics or power. The number of people like herself who had glowing hair all but disappeared. Ignoring a new wave of hate directed at her, she rushed through the streets to a relatively well off house, the front door depicting the family’s icon like everything else. The obsession with this emblem ran so deep that she could hardly think of a single building in this family-filled city that didn’t have it carved somewhere.

She quickly went through the door into a simple wood house, the high class blue framing of the house shifting into a far more simple structure, the outside a facade for outsiders. Most of the inside was square rooms, simple, nailed together, and then slathered in brown paint. It’s not that her family was poor, or that the family only gave them low class conditions, it’s just one of many superstitions.A superstition that claims that simple environments in dark tones help mages improve faster. She quickly walked through the largely empty building into a room with the name ‘Alexander’ carved into its door. Like the rest of the house, there wasn’t much to her brother’s room, only a simple wood frame bed and a dresser.

She gently laid her brother down, covering him up before she felt mana floating through the air. “Anneliese? Is that you in there?” A cold, female voice called out, amplified by mana. “Please come to my office.” Groaning, Anna stepped out of her brother's room, closed the door, and shuffled her way further into the house before stopping at a half-opened door. Inside was a basic rectangle of a desk with papers piled so high that Anna wondered if magic was being wasted on holding them up.

“Yes, Mother?” Anna said. Inside was a blue haired woman, her long hair set in a tight ponytail that trailed long enough to reach the floor. It would have been impressive if wasn’t for her short and slender build, so different from Anna’s own that occasionally people would question if they were even mother and daughter. Her squinting green eyes, set narrowly within their sockets like she was struggling to see, focused on Anna. The woman’s sharp eyes seemed to go soft before she started speaking.

“Do you remember when I first came back with little Alexander?” She asked?

“Yes.” Anna said, confused at what her mother was getting at.

“You hated me, but you were so excited to have a little brother. Every time I turned around, you were carrying him off somewhere calling him your baby. You still carry him off the moment I look away.” Anna’s mother gently laughed.

“What are you getting at?” Anna asked, aware of what she was going to say.

“I know about your plan to run off and become a deathless, that you plan to carry him off with you.” The mother said, leaning back in her chair.

“Even if you know, you can’t stop me.” Anna replied. “At least as adventurers, we’ll get to live a little.”

“Oh, I can easily stop you, he’s the city’s only healer, and, while you don’t realize it, guards are sneaking around you two constantly. The only reason why you still get to come in here is because I told them you would never go through with your little plan.” Anna's mother said, slowly standing up while holding a box in her hands.

“What are you planning?” Anna asked, “I might only be level one, but so is everyone else in this cage, and, unlike most of you, I can actually run longer than five seconds.”

“Is that what you’re planning to do, outrun us?” The mother laughed “Hun, all you know is the Roberta Family walls. Even if you could get away, I doubt you’d get very far.”

“I’ve read plenty about the outside world.” Anna said.

“I’m not planning to stop you two, don’t get me wrong.” Anna’s mother said, cutting into what almost became a argument. “This family is nothing but a mage breeding pen.” She handed Anna the box she was holding. “That’s why your father and I tried so hard to get Alex out. If he stays here long enough to be cured from the mana poisoning, he’ll probably be locked up and used as a breeding mule.” Anna looked down at the box while her mother continued explaining, opening it to see a complex white and red robe. “I don’t approve of the deathless, but I doubt either of you have much choice. I left a staff for Alexander with Daniel, that trainer of yours who wants you to join his Azure Dogs mercenary group. Have him bring you to the tower of Anemoi.”

“I-” Anna started saying, surprised.

“You can thank me by living. Make sure you two have a good life. Don’t drag Alexander down on every whim.” Anna’s mother said before she pushed Anna out of her office and slammed the door.