〈 Chapter 6 - Literary Checkmate Letter by Letter 〉

It was a war on paper. Stacks lined the writing desk and the nearby table that had been moved for additional room. Towers of books loomed, with nearly more books in piles than on the shelves. Inkpots and dip pens were ever at the ready.

Garnet sat with a ghastly expression. Her eyes roamed around scanning ever scrap of text and muffled mutterings permeated the air. Pages of notes from her desperation induced studies were stacked beside her. She was in this crazed state due to attempting to curb her overwhelming ignorance of the world she found herself trapped in. Hours upon hours, days upon days, she had quested for information locked away in the disorganization of lengthy tomes. Unlike modern texts these books simply did not have indexes and table of contents. She had to follow the monotonous droning and meandering narration of the authors who had scribed them. She also lamented the complete loss of standardized computer fonts and the corresponding ease of readability.

*Scribbles and flowing cursive. Scribes, I curse your damn scribbles.*

Due to her time constraint and the need to acquire as much information as possible in the shortest amount of time, Garnet had relegated Mira to independently extract the most important possible information and promptly report the in-depth analysis at the end of the day in exacting detail. Looking back at Mira, who had just as many books opened before her as Garnet, it was possible to imagine a plume of smoke rising from her overheated brain. Despite not understanding Mira ardently exerted effort towards fulfilling Garnet's requests, and she was extremely grateful for her assistant. She almost felt like there was hope.

The books were embellished and poetic, but the needlessly fancy and long-winded way of expressing everything obscured the substance of the writing. It inflamed her impatient irritation to no end, but Garnet had managed to identify various key subjects of importance. The key subjects of history, geography, philosophy, religion, and magic all intertwined with each other.

Garnet's subjective opinion was that many of the books mostly chronicled a glorified history of class distinction in the Erudotti Kingdom. Although it was not directed stated, she found the texts allude to a caste system, which had been partly justified from a promoted societal belief in magic-based biological superiority. The implications seemed quite disconcerting. Perhaps information unfavourable to the ruling class was censored out of circulation.

Garnet's understanding of the origin of Erudotti came from a fable-like story. She had second-guessed the veracity of the tale due to its simplistic and light-hearted nature, but on further study it seemed to be taken as an accurate historical record.

Long in the past Erudotti had been nothing but untamed wilderness stretching from a large mountain range at one end, across an extensive forest, and finally ending at the sea. Explorers had attempted to survey the uncharted lands, but they were unable to progress far due to the powerful beasts inhabiting the wilderness. However, it all changed when one highly gifted explorer formed a pact with a spirit of the land. The spirit they exchanged vows with gave its guidance until finally some of the land was appropriated from the beasts of the wilderness. The first settlement, of many to come, had been formed and the people had always remembered and honoured the guidance of the spirits through celebration even to the present day. The kingdom's social structure and beliefs were formed due to magic and spirits. Known as the Kingdom of Spirits, Erudotti was forever intertwined with its heritage.

Garnet wondered what the main contrasting point was with her own world where even the forces of nature were not revered to this extent. Was it that magic and spirits were proven intangible manifestations of a sentient being's will and existence?

When Garnet first investigated into the nature of magic the first thing she read resembled philosophy books with their prompting, inquisitive tone. The concepts being deliberated echoed Cartesian Dualism, where the famous philosopher Rene Descartes postulated that the mind was separate from the physical. Though the books outlined intriguing concepts it mattered not to her; Whether the will was separate from the body wasn't the most important thing at the current time.

Although Garnet had no idea what magic or spirits truly were, at least she was now fully aware of their existence. They were forces to be reckoned with; They were a power she desired and a privilege she was permitted to have as an aristocrat of an affluent bloodline.

Garnet was already aware of an alien and unruly force within her. Powerful and chilling, it was not possible to ignore once it was given attention. This force was hard to grasp and manipulate like a limb she had never used, difficult to perceive, and it constantly eluded her as if it were water slipping through her fingers. The rumbling feral power conjured visions of unwitting pioneers playing with newly invented gunpowder or the ignorance of early physicists to the dangers of radiation exposure. Unsure of how to properly manifest it she felt herself losing control and thus passed on pushing her luck further. The casino she was guaranteed to win at was the one she never entered.

Despite the overwhelming feeling that her new reality was a sham on the verge of unravelling and dissolving, Garnet returned her attention to the immediate problem she was trying to address. The letters addressed to her.

As a prime example of high society Garnet had the corresponding social obligations and relationships. How many hundreds of total strangers was she, Garnet Noire Valeria, the daughter of a duke, supposed to be acquainted with? It was no exaggeration to place the estimate in the hundreds simply due to the fact that social connections were tantamount to success and status. Garnet's relationships with the majority were likely to be superficial, but she couldn't discredit their significance. In addition, Garnet had been writing down all the information she could glean from the formal letters she had exchanged with more intimate acquaintances. The mannerisms they used, expressions while speaking, etiquette, method of address, learning dates, the name of the months, their identities and relationship with her, and anything else she could organize were written down for future reference.

Sitting to the edge of the desk was a stack of letters kept separate from the rest. They were special in the fact that they were relatively recent dating back to the days before Garnet's accident and had not yet been replied to. Those recent letters and letters in the near future would never receive replies due to her inability to counterfeit the previous Garnet's literary rhetoric and knowledge.

It was a blessing and a curse that there were a few unfinished draft letters and old writings from the previous Garnet for her to study. The surprisingly polite and formal tone of the letters caught her off guard since the previous Garnet's reputation could only be described as comically bad. Treatment appeared to be partial to those she couldn't afford to disregard and the elegant calligraphy used in her letters wasn't something the current Garnet would be able to reproduce.

Garnet had been checkmated before she had the chance to make her first move. From now on her reputation in high society would consistently deteriorate and the terms of success had changed to minimizing the inevitable damage until the moment she could flee. She couldn't stand it. Disgusted and exhausted by her circumstances she could only grit her teeth and bear it stoically.

There was one letter different from the rest, which persistently invaded her thoughts causing endless distress. It had arrived with a large entourage of red flowers just a day before. She had never received flowers before, and they were an exceptional and unusual get well gift to be delivered late in the winter season. Perhaps Garnet would have been awkwardly delighted if the situation was anything but the current dreadful mistake.

Her fiance was to arrive in four days.

〈 Author's Note 〉

This was the hardest chapter so far for me to write. So much world-building. I knew exactly what I wanted to write, but everything was interconnected and I couldn't figure out what order to write everything in. Flowers, History, Legends, Religion, Magic, Philosophy, Geography, Socializing, Worries, Letters, Prince, Terms of success. Garnet's desperate and jumbled studies became my own problem to sort out in this chapter.

I have long sets of jot notes for a few chapters ahead, but translating those disjointed ideas into flowing written story is quite difficult.

I've been thinking about my writing philosophy. After reading webnovels for a few years I have grown to hate novels that are written aimlessly from chapter to chapter as if the author is just desperately outputting content without knowing what will come next in their own story. Hundreds of chapters roll by and at the end of it all I just get tired of reading about some protagonists power-tripping journey of cultivation megalomania that an author is trying to sell to me under the guise of character development and plot.

The stories that have always given me the greatest satisfaction are the ones with a true conclusion after a very legitimate struggle that wasn't artificially drawn out for monetary purposes or viewcounts or whatever. They are bittersweet and make me desire more even though I know it's the end. I'm trying to fully encapsulate all my story's passion, fury, and impact in a neat little package of about 100 chapters. I have zero desire to ramble on aimlessly for hundreds of chapters with no clear goal in sight and call it a plot. Gross. We'll see how I do.