[Standard Content Warning: This is an ABDL story blog, that means stories on this page contain diapers, diaper usage (like, lots of it), infantilism and the like! In addition, mental and physical manipulation, bondage and nonconsensual or dubiously consensual employment of all of the above themes and many others may also apply. Viewer discretion is advised.]
Later in the infirmary, the spellnurses quickly confirm everybody’s suspicions. It’s mana sickness.
The loss of muscle mass, the headaches, the exhaustion and yes, the accidents (Madris and the handmaiden immediately cop to keeping the accidents secret for you and charming your panties. For approximately half of one second, the Queen looks ready throw them both off the top of the tower, but she forgives them). All of your symptoms are a result of your body’s reaction to the infusions of the Queen’s mana. If you continue getting pure doses of her mana, this will become close to your default state for as long as your mana is adjusting to it.
“In a sense, the risk to her long-term health is actually quite minimal, as long as she’s monitored and cared for,” one of the spellcrafters explains. “But she would be dependent on others for almost every aspect of her care until her body’s own mana finishes synthesizing with the Queen.”
The Queen runs a hand down her neck. She lets out a long sigh.
“I really thought achieving mana synthesis was possible if we just found the correct dosage…” She murmurs. You look at her.
“But they just said it is possible,” you say.
“Rain-” your Queen tries to interrupt you, but you push on.
“They said no long-term risk to my health. That means your mana isn’t going to hurt me, right?” You ask. “It’s not going to ruin my heart or my lungs or make my teeth fall out, is it?” You look at the spellcrafters and spellnurses. They share a nervous look and then look at the queen for direction.
“Rain, you would be trapped, bedridden, like we found you this morning!” Your Queen says.
“The symptoms would continue to be what they’ve been so far,” one of the spellnurses offers.
“But they would grow in severity over time,” one of the crafters then confirms.
“Can you give me something for the headaches?” You ask.
“Rain, you don’t know what you’re saying,” the Queen insists. She kneels down next to you where you’re seated. “You wouldn’t be able to wield a sword or learn magic or spend time with Bernadette and Sabine.”
“Who says I can’t?” You grumble, your proper tongue slipping as your frustration mounts. “Somebody can carry me to see ‘em.” The Queen sighs. “You want this mana synth…thing to work, don’t you?”
“I want you to be healthy.”
“Everybody keeps telling me to be patient,” you respond. “How long would this take anyway? How long would I have to be stuck in bed before my mana gets used to hers?” You look around. “A couple weeks? What?” The spellcrafters talk amongst themselves for a moment, one of them shakes a head and they let out a sigh.
“We don’t know. This is still a very young art we’re practicing. All of our studying says mana synthesis should occur eventually, but we simply can’t guess when. If we were to continue down this path, it could take a very long time to reach the other end and there’s no guarantee we can pull you off of it once we start.”
“What if we made the dosage smaller?” The Queen asks.
“We’re down to a single drop a day, I don’t know how much smaller we can get,” Madris says.
“We can dilute it further.” She looks at her crafters and when she speaks again, it’s far more authoritative. “We’ll find a dosage small enough that makes synthesis still possible without any of these side-effects.”
The spellcrafters don’t look confident about that, but they know an order when they hear one, so they agree to start work immediately.
After a few days of no mana infusions, you feel better. Then, you’re given what you’re told is an extremely diluted dosage of your Queen’s mana. She has a smile on her face, but you can tell from her eyes that she’s disappointed at this turn of events. You take the dose and don’t feel anything - you can’t imagine how severely they had to dilute it, but, you feel fine. So they start giving you the dose with your morning water every day. Your headaches are gone, your strength is back, you have no more accidents (poor Madris got assigned vault duty for a month, you try to visit her when you can to help her stave off the boredom). You feel fine. Everything is…fine.
But you imagine how little of your Queen’s mana you’re getting now. You think about how long it’s going to take for you to become a true witch, if it ever happens at all. You remember the disappointed look behind her eyes as she forced herself to smile at you.
And it just….really doesn’t feel good.
—
“The Arcane Aspirant, the First Chosen, my Umbran Princess. You flatter me with your hospitality.”
“Yeah, yeah, pipe down and eat your cakes.”
But despite the surly way you talk to her, you do find one thing to feel good about. Giulia is feeling better from the illness that kept her from your ceremony and has finally come to visit. The two of you are sat with tea and fancy little cakes as princesses are like to do, or so you assume. You’ve got to be honest, you asked your handmaiden and Artemis what you should do when she got here. Both of whom are standing by, along with one of Giulia’s own guards.
She beams at you as she sits down. She does in fact help herself to some tea and spreads a bit of cheese on some bread. Once she looks comfortable, you decide to strike.
“Alright, I’ve waited all this time to ask and I can’t wait anymore.” You slap your hands on the table. “Did you know what was up with the tiara or not?!”
Your handmaiden and Giulia’s guard look confused. Artemis glances at you, then looks at Giulia. Seems she might want to know too. Giulia looks around and apparently surmises that since you brought it up, it’s fine to talk about it openly.
“I….admit. I shaded the truth about the tiara.” As she explains, she takes a cloth and spreads it on her lap. “I concealed the full purview of my knowledge of it to what I believed to be its applicability to your situation.” You let out a breath and fall back in your chair.
“So, you knew.” She sips her tea and nods. “About me.”
“I strongly suspected. And I did not know how to brooch the subject with you. I thought if I told you about the tiara, you would come back to see it,” she explains. “And if I offered it to you, you would put it on, wanting what you wanted and…the tiara would do what it does. I planned to tell you the truth afterwards.”
“What if I wanted something else?” You ask, raising an eyebrow. She taps her chin and looks up, lost in thought for a few seconds.
“I honestly hadn’t considered that outcome,” she says. At that, you both manage a laugh. “But whatever my plans were, I certainly never intended for you to venture to another country to try and steal it, muchless almost succeed!”
“What can I say, I’m a woman of many unexpected multitudes,” you say as you lean back in your chair and sip your own tea. “…were you going to try and get the Queen to adopt me, too?”
“Mmmn….” She strokes her chin again. “I had thought of it as a possibility. I knew she was searching and I sensed your potential the same way she did. And there was a part of me that thought you fit much better like this than our previous relationship. You never seemed to enjoy your previous occupation that much.”
“Well, that’s where you’re wrong, princess, I still love thievin’,” you say defiantly, getting another giggle out of her. “Problem here is if I try to steal something, they just give it to me anyway. Takes all the fun out of it.”
“I can only imagine how many fewer thrills your life has now, regrettably,” she comments. “I want to mention, Father gave me your letter. It was of great comfort to me while I was ill. Thank you.”
“Yeah. Well. I just. Wanted y’to know, I guess.” The letter was mostly just a summary of what had happened when you ventured to the tower. Along with some words of thanks for her part in setting it all in motion, intentionally or not. Regardless of your interrogating her today, you just wanted her to know you appreciated it. “Your father seems nice.”
“He’s very excited that I’m close friends with Queen Maeve’s first chosen.” You did get that feeling somewhere around the time he was readjusting your Queen’s spine. “Mother on the other hand wants to know when you’re going to pay us back for all the jewelry.” Your grimace and take a bashful sip of your tea.
“Sorry.” She waves a hand.
“Think nothing of it. Consider it a contribution from one royal family to aid the construction of another.” And while that sounds nice, there’s something else you can’t shake. Something you haven’t been able to figure out.
“….why’d you help me?” You ask. “Not only did you never turn me in, you…you saw what was inside me, and. You helped bring it out. And all I did was cause you headaches by stealing your stuff. Why?” Giulia half-glances at her own guard again, but considering the royal family already knows about the stealing, you guess you’re not in any risk of getting in trouble.
“I admit, I didn’t love having to hunt down and re-buy half of my jewelry every couple of months. But at the end of the day, they were just things. You were a person. One of my subjects. And my subjects deserve my help.” She places both hands on her cup and looks down. “It bothered me, that I knew you needed help, but I didn’t know how to give it and you didn’t know how to ask for it. So I just let it be. Until I could figure something out. If that cost me some jewelry, that’s the easiest trade I’ll ever make in my life.”
Things are quiet for a few seconds. You take a cloth and dab at your face with it as an excuse to look away.
“I guess that makes sense,” you mutter into the cloth. You’re not sure it actually does. You’re not sure it makes any sense that Giulia and your Queen have done so much for you. But the reality is that they have. Maybe it’s about time you stop questioning it and just start appreciating how much they care about you.
It’s quiet again, before Giulia changes the subject.
“Do you still have the tiara?” She asks. You think about it for a second.
“It’s back in the vault,” you say. She nods.
“Do you intend to wear it again?” She asks.
“We spoke a little bit about me about wearing it for special occasions,” you say. It wouldn’t have any practical effects. It cast it charms on you when you put it on and the spellcrafters keep the charms touched up now. But, for all it meant to you, it does still hold some sentimental value. So if it was something really important, you wouldn’t mind wearing it again. “But besides that, it should stay protected.”
“Agreed.” Giulia nods her head. “I wanted you to learn it directly from me, however. I am still petitioning the Queen to borrow it for research purposes. I hope you don’t mind.” You blink a couple times.
“I don’t, but, why?” You ask. You thought she had planned to borrow it for you, you’re not sure what use she has for it now.
“Well, now that I know it works, I’d like to study it. See if I can’t learn from its combination of charms and duplicate them or even modify them a bit. If there are others like you that…aren’t able to be their true selves, for whatever reason. I’d like to at least offer them the same choice you had.”
You have to admit, you hadn’t thought of that. While sometimes it felt like it, you probably weren’t the only person in the world who felt the way you did before putting on the tiara. Statistically, it was impossible. The thought of there being more people like you pulled at your heart in a way you didn’t like, but true to form, Giulia was not only thinking a lot more big picture than you, she was already thinking of a solution.
“I’ll speak to mother today,” you say, sipping your own tea. “I’ll ask her to give it to you.” You look at Giulia and she’s staring at you, an expression of surprise on her face. “What?”
“….you just said mother.” Your eyes get big when you realize that you did, in fact, just call her mother. Not your Queen. You look around. Your handmaiden has a hand over her mouth and is bouncing up and down on her heels. Even Artemis looks a little surprised.
“I…” You look down. “St-stop looking at me like that!” You sputter out. “It’s just…what she is! She’s my Queen and she’s…” You take in a deep breath and with more intentionality this time, you say, “….my mother.” Giulia chuckles a bit, but mostly just has a big smile on her face.
“Indeed. I don’t know why I was so silly as to be surprised. It’s just obvious when you think about it,” she says. “I’m happy you two found each other.” You nod and murmur some small agreement, still feeling a bit bashful about what you just said.
“What exactly is your relationship with her, anyway?” You ask.
“Mmmn.” She taps her fingers together. “Queen Maeve started me on my path as a magic user. There was, at one moment I think, an opportunity for us to become much closer. But I decided to forge my own path, in my own way. And that moment was gone. Now, we consider each other…colleagues. Trying to advance our understanding of the magic arts to help both of our populations prosper.”
“She talks the same way,” you notice aloud. “About helping people.” Their reasons for helping you sounded almost the same - just that they helped you because they felt you needed help and that in and of itself was enough reason.
“We share similar views on subjects like these and the role royalty has to play with them,” Giulia says with a nod. “She has without a doubt influenced my sense of duty.”
You have to admit it, you’re pretty impressed.
“You two are really special,” you say. And sitting here, across from her, princess-to-princess, you kind of hope that sense of duty is rubbing off on you a bit, too. But… “I don’t think I can do anything like that, though.” You let out a sigh and just weakly smack a fist on the table. “Especially if I can’t even handle my mother’s mana.” Giulia grimaces and doesn’t look or sound entirely surprised.
“Rain. Look at me.” You do so, looking up and making eye contact with her. She reaches a hand out and places it over yours.
“You’ll get there.”
And in that moment, you believe her.
Later that day, you ask the Queen permission to enter the vault. When you address her as ‘Mother’, she teleports across the room and grabs you in a hug that lasts about five minutes. When she hears what Giulia wants, she agrees that you should retrieve it yourself.
“Now that your journey is done, you can help start any number of others,” she says as she gives you her personal key to the vault. “I’m very proud of you, Rain.”
At the mention of your journey being done, you look down a bit.
“…mmn.”
But you take the key and go one floor up, to the vault. Madris is briefly inconsolable when you tell her you’re not here to spend the rest of her shift with her, but to actually enter the vault.
The tiara is in the same spot you found it before, on the night your life completely changed.
The night your “journey was done”….according to your mother.
You think about the next-to-nothing dose of her mana you took this morning. Then you grab the tiara and turn to leave.
On the way out, you pass a dusty old spellbook. Your eyes hang on it for a moment.
“… …. …”
You wind up personally handing the tiara to Giulia. She’s very appreciative and reveals she has a gift for you too.
“I did tell you, I always thought these looked better with black hair.”
It’s a new dress. Pink and white. Most of your dresses are purple, the colors of your house. You may have gotten a little choked up as you accepted it. You’re just a sucker for color coordination, you suppose.
Eventually, Giulia returns home. You wouldn’t see her again for a while, but you know the princess from another land will always hold a very special place in your heart.
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