Magic Maid Maintenance
“Good morning, Princess.”
Said Sylvia as she smiles down at Mary.
Mary, in response, sends Sylvia her best confused baby look, her eyes pointing insistently at the maids who have already begun to move around the bedroom.
‘What’s with the maids?’ she tries to convey.
Mary is sure that she catches a flash of movement in Sylvia's eyes as she glances at the maids in the room, but it happens so quickly that it could have been a trick of her mind; instead, Sylvia smirks at Mary and takes a deliberately long sniff.
“Looks like somebody had their first accident.”
Sylvia speaks in a voice typically reserved for talking to babies, but Mary is certain she can hear amusement beneath it.
Mary responds to that amusement, real or imagined, with an angry glare before glancing again at the maids. While Mary is distracted, the maids have apparently started using magic in the room; she catches sight of flashes of light, which can only be runic circles that are appearing and activating instantly.
Waves of magic begin to sweep across the bedroom surfaces and furniture.
Mary watches on, enraptured, as a maid approaches the window curtains and lifts her hand. In a flash of light, the curtains start to move, parting. A fine silky fabric wraps around the curtain ends to keep them in place.
With the window now fully unobscured, Mary can look at the world beyond. What she sees is something that Alexander would not have seen outside of a virtual reality.
The beautiful sight beyond immediately captures Mary's attention. In the distance Mary can see a vast mountain range, towering snow-covered peaks as far as the eye can see, and nestled between those mountains is a mountain town.
Outside of her window she can see tall medieval towers, capped with what are probably wooden snow-covered roofs. Stretching out of sight are equally snow-covered, roofed walls. Between her window and the walls is a large courtyard, which Mary assumes is an equally snow-covered garden of some sort.
Given that Mary is apparently a princess, she can only assume that the structure is a fortified winter palace.
Beyond those walls, Mary can see what she guesses might pass for a medieval city; hundreds of buildings radiate out from the palace walls in tightly packed clusters. Smoke rises from dozens of snow-covered rooftops; the roads in between those buildings are closer to alleyways by Alexander's reckoning than proper city infrastructure.
And surrounding all of it is a second, shorter wall. Sylvia's amused voice interrupts Mary's detailed inspection of the city.
“Let’s get you cleaned up then.”
Mary allows her attention to snap back to her still smirking maid.
She watches as the smirking maid lifts her hand towards her before winking cheekily.
Slowly a magic circle forms in the air, and even with the little experience Mary has with magic casting, she knows that Sylvia is being deliberately slow in her casting.
Three unknown runes form in the circle, with unfamiliar logic surrounding them. She immediately notices that the runic logic is formed in a line, with a central rune that is connected to the left and right by the others.
Mary subtly glances at the maids around the room, checking to make sure that their attention is elsewhere, and feels relief as she sees that they are interacting strangely with the room around them but not currently paying attention to her or Sylvia.
Mary desperately wants to know what they are doing to the room, as she no longer sees any magic circles forming on their hands, and yet they are clearly doing some sort of magic. But the temptation of learning more runes is too great.
Firm in the knowledge that she can secretly inspect the runes in front of her, Mary pushes her mana out to inspect the three unknown runes that Sylvia is showing her.
Object:
Rune
Main:
Clean
Level:
Advanced
Power:
Average
The central rune that she grasps turns out to be a ‘Clean’ rune; considering the location of the rune, she suspects that this would make it the main aspect or direction of the spell.
‘Considering this is probably some sort of hygiene spell, Clean being the main aspect does make sense.’
‘I wonder if the level and power are necessary. How much power does a cleaning spell even need?’
Object:
Rune
Main:
Fabric
Level:
Advanced
Power:
Average
The second rune, connected on the left, turns out to be a fabric rune, clearly restricting the spell to fabrics only.
‘Makes sense; cleaning a person is different from cleaning clothes.’
Object:
Rune
Main:
Freshness
Level:
Superior
Power:
Average
The final rune she finds is a ‘Freshness’ rune, and Mary also notes that the level is more advanced than the other two.
‘A fabric cleaning spell, then? I suppose that the freshness rune turns up in any of the so-called lifestyle and hygiene spells in this world. I wonder how common they are?’
Mary stops for a moment to consider the impact of something like a hygiene spell on what would otherwise be a medieval world.
‘Thinking about it, if basic magic like this is widespread, then it really changes how a medieval society would function. Even modern cleaning appliances need an hour or two to thoroughly clean something. Before modern times, properly cleaning clothes could take an entire day and would cause damage too.’
Mary nods to herself in confirmation.
‘But what about the level and power? Do they increase the speed of the cleaning? How thorough it is?’
Mary stops to think about things for a moment before concluding.
‘Probably how deep the cleaning is. There is a significant difference between a light and heavy wash. And… in a world with magic there is no guarantee that magic diseases don’t also exist.’
At the grim thought of magic diseases, Mary switches tracks.
‘Perhaps mundane diseases are less common around here? Even if the infrastructure is lacking, is it possible that people regularly use magic to clean themselves? If that is the case, then the real threat would be magic-resistant diseases.’
Before Mary can be further distracted by her thoughts, a light flashes as the spell circle in front of her activates, and Mary cannot help but flinch as the spell circle collapses into energy that practically leaps at her.
She blinks at the feeling of the magical energy flowing over her.
‘No, over my clothes.’
She thinks with a frown.
Mary immediately notices that the mess she had involuntarily made in her underwear has disappeared, the unpleasant lumpy feeling she had woken to and been deliberately ignoring instantly replaced by the pleasant freshness of freshly cleaned clothes.
‘So, it really was an instant clothes-cleaning spell.’
Mary thinks to herself in amazement.
‘If you swapped out the fabric for, say, a Human or Person rune, would it be a person-cleaning spell instead?’
Mary frowns for a moment, feeling as if she might have forgotten something from her birth, before Sylvia calls for her attention again.
“Well Princess, now that your clothes are clean, let’s get you sorted too, shall we?”
Sylvia says with a knowing look in her eyes.
Another circle begins to form in Sylvia's outstretched hand; this one, however, follows a significantly different logic than the last one.
Where the cleaning spell had the ‘Clean’ rune as a centre and focus, linked to what the spell was cleaning, in this case ‘Fabric’, and to what the result of the cleaning would be, 'Freshness'.
This new spell was instead formed from four runes, only two of which were familiar. Three of the runes, two of which Mary now recognises as the 'Clean' and 'Freshness' runes, are arranged in a linked triangle, and all three corners of that triangle are linked to a central, unfamiliar rune.
Mary glances again at the maids, ensuring that they are still distracted with whatever it is they are doing before again inspecting the runes that Sylvia is showing her.
First, she focuses on the unfamiliar rune in the triangle.
Object:
Rune
Main:
Refreshing
Level:
Advanced
Power:
Average
And frowns as she blinks in confusion.
‘Not just a cleaning spell but also a refresh?’
Mary shakes her head as she dismisses that line of thought for now; instead, she focuses on the central rune, the identity of which she is fairly certain.
Object:
Rune
Main:
Human
Level:
Superior
Power:
Average
Mary nods to herself in confirmation; she had guessed that it would be either a ‘Human’ or a ‘Person’ rune. That a human cleaning spell had ‘Human’ as a central aspect makes perfect sense to her.
‘I wonder if this means that it wouldn’t work on non-humans?’
The spell activates, and once again Mary feels Sylvia's magic washing over her; to Mary, it is a distinctly pleasant feeling, reminiscent of a shower that lightly scrubs at her entire body simultaneously.
As the glow of the magic fades, Mary finds herself not only feeling but also smelling fresh and clean, as the runes promised.
‘Does this make baths irrelevant, or are there superior magic baths too?’
But also simply refreshed, Mary blinks as the tiredness that she hadn’t realised was present has completely fled, and Mary looks around the room with newly refreshed eyes.
‘So, a Refreshing rune causes someone to wake up properly and be refreshed? This feels better than any tea or coffee that Alexander could remember.’
“Now that we’ve got you all nice and clean, what do you want to do, Princess? Maybe a meal? Or do you want to do some maid watching?”
Sylvia's mischievous voice comes again.
Mary turns her thoughts away from magic for now and looks at her maid in her amused eyes.
Briefly, Mary lowers her eyes to Sylvia's admittedly amazing bosom, and Sylvia lets out a long, amused chuckle as Mary allows her incredibly mixed feelings about her current meal options to bleed through.
Instead, Mary shifts her interested eyes to the maids and what they are still doing; to her relief, Sylvia seems to accept this decision for now.
“Interested in what they’re doing, are you?”
Came Sylvia's voice again, her voice knowing.
Sylvia reaches down and lifts Mary into her arms before turning around to sit on the bed, leaving Mary carefully balanced on her soft and warm lap.
With her sight no longer obstructed by her maid, Mary can properly inspect the maids that have been cleaning her bedroom.
As she had previously observed, each of the maids is beautiful in her own way; this does not surprise Mary, as a royal palace would no doubt only select the best of its staff, but what does surprise her is that these women, much like Sylvia, all seem to be able to match the bio-sculpted perfection of the modern world.
‘A result of magic then?’
Mary once more confirms to herself, before moving on and with reluctance looking at their clothing, that each of the maids are dressed as classical French maids.
‘Clearly my predecessor ancestor had certain tastes.’
But again, the quality of the clothes seems, if anything, even greater than what Alexander would have been able to buy with his student budget.
“Rooms in the palace are cleaned by the staff every day.”
Remarks Sylvia quietly, drawing Mary's attention back to her maid.
“But more importantly, they check the enchantments in every room, ensuring that they are intact and recharged.”
‘Enchantments?’
At this, Mary blinks and looks again at the maids, noting that they are raising their hands and sending mana into different parts of the room. This is apparently done to check, maintain, and charge the enchantments that cover the room and its furniture.
“A richer kingdom might have automatic maintenance and enchantment charging; usually those would use some sort of power network and ward-stone scheme. But Midgard can’t afford such things.”
Sylvia goes on to explain.
“While previous heroes have championed something called a 'national grid', the demonstration prototypes were so incredibly expensive that not even the richest of kingdoms has anything above a city-wide network. Midgard can’t even afford a palace power grid.”
‘I see. If the palace lacks a power grid, then the entire kingdom does as well. But what makes them so expensive?’
Sylvia smirks down at Mary, once again seemingly aware of what she is thinking.
“Magic conductive material is rare and expensive. The cheapest of them is silver; some dungeons have notable silver veins and drops, but Midgard isn’t lucky enough to have any of those.”
Sylvia finishes her explanation with something intriguing.
‘Dungeon loot? That is more video-game-like than the Akashic record, at least.’
Mary watches as the maids finish their maintenance of the room; they turn as one towards Mary, and Mary watches in fascination as they, in sync, lift up the hems of their skirts, smiles on their faces, and curtsy.
“Good morning, Princess.”
They say in unison before dropping their skirts and leaving the room.
"Well, now that that’s done. Let’s give you breakfast, Princess.”
Sylvia speaks with amusement clearly evident in her voice.