Chapter Text
The first time Katarina realized she could wield light magic came when she was eight years old and had almost bashed her brains out trying to climb to the top of her village’s mightiest tree.
It had been, of all things, over a bet – a ridiculous and stupid bet – that would end up altering Katarina’s entire destiny. And it was one she only undertook because Ian Basilios – that boastful brat whose family ran the largest local farm around – had sworn she was too much of a coward to match his prowess, when everyone knew that she was the best damn tree climber their village had ever seen.
Indeed, in many ways, Miss Katarina Campbell at the age of eight was as popular as she would ever be. She was widely acknowledged as the prettiest, most intelligent, and most charming girl in her peaceful, backwater village – a girl with a doting father, a beautiful mother, and storybook life that would lead her to a prosperous marriage and a bucolic life as a mother and wife in her village eventually. And at the age of eight, staring first at Ian Basilios’ irritating face and then at the top of the tree he pointed at, Katarina had had no idea that all her youthful dreams of eventually becoming the most beloved woman in her village would evaporate as soon as she climbed up that tree –
Only to feel her skirt snag on a stay branch she would find on her way up, which ended up in her losing her footing and falling down a good 30 feet –
Face-first onto a jagged rock that would have killed any other girl instantly.
And that would have been the end of Katarina’s short, albeit mostly happy, life were it not for the fact that she ended up manifesting an enormous surge of light magic that guaranteed her survival without so much as a scratch to her pretty face. And even the terrifying blow to her head had ended up being shrugged off by her – driven, the Ministry of Magic’s light mage expert would later say, by the enormous well-spring of magic that had erupted from her body.
No, any damage that would arrive would come later – just a day or two later, as her family’s once-friendly neighbors began to gossip about her, circulating the news that she was the first light mage born in ten years… and oh, wherever did those powers come from, honestly? Surely not from her thoroughly common ‘parents’, who should have no ancestry in common with the magic-wielding nobility?
Surely to gain a cursed child who could cheat death itself, lovely Miridiana Campbell – long acknowledged as the most beautiful and bold woman in their village – must have become entangled with a noble who had magic running in his veins already!
And though Miridiana Campbell continually protested her innocence and faithfulness toward her husband… after several months of incessant rumors, said husband had left her nonetheless, impoverished and with a child to feed. So was it any wonder that Katarina’s mother ended up working so many demeaning jobs to support their diminished lives, even as Katarina looked on helplessly?
It wasn’t that Katarina would ever blame her mother – no, never. The thought itself was an anathema. Truly, until her dying day, Katarina would believe every single word her wonderful mother had to say – and would trust her mother had remained faithful to her father and given him the one and only child that would one day drive him away.
And whenever Katarina blamed herself for her father leaving and their lives becoming a wreck, her mother would always take pains to set her straight.
“Maybe I’m the problem,” Katarina confessed one night, after her father had finally left for good, the sound of the slamming door somehow still present in their once-happy home, the ghost of his love in every room. “Mommy, if only I hadn’t gone wild and climbed that tree… if only I didn’t show anyone I had light magic… or been a magic-wielding freak… then daddy wouldn’t have left us and you…”
You, Katarina had thought, as tears slid down her youthful cheeks, would have still been happy! You would not cry at night when you think I’ve already gone to sleep!
“I,” Miridiana had calmly and gently interrupted, “may be going through a hard time indeed. As you are as well, my beautiful dear. But I am still grateful for having the most wonderful and splendid and precious daughter possible beside me.”
That only made Katarina cry harder, even as Miridiana bent over to kiss away her tears.
“You,” her mother said, even as she gripped Katarina’s hands in her own, “are the most perfect daughter I could ever ask for. You are fierce and loving and clever and beautiful – and the only light mage to be born in the last ten years! And if anyone doesn’t realize just how amazing you are – or how much your gift can change the world – it is their fault, not your own. And you needn’t grovel after their support of approval – not when you have mine forever!”
And though she may have only been eight years old at the time, Katarina would always think of that as the moment in which her life’s goals and dreams would crystallize – the moment her mother’s fiercely loving words would flower in her heart and mind alike, and make her realize what she would spend the rest of her life seeking.
“I,” Katarina finally managed, after her tears had subsided and been wiped off by her mother’s gentle hands. “I’m going to make them all regret everything they said about us, mommy! I’ll make them all see how amazing you and I happen to be! One day, I’ll be so rich and so powerful, nobody will look down on us! And we’ll live in a castle together, you and me, and wear the best clothes and eat the best food and show them all how amazing we happen to be!”
Miridiana had laughed so loudly at that that tears had come to the piercing blue eyes she shared with her daughter, until her cheeks were nearly as damp as Katarina’s own happened to be.
“That a girl,” she said at last, before tucking Katarina into bed again with shaking hands. “And wouldn’t that be lovely to dream about indeed?”
Only it isn’t just a dream, Katarina decided, even as she let her mother soothe her back to sleep. No, it was a promise, a vow, and a covenant she was making with the whole of the world – no matter how awful it might currently be.
And when Katarina went to sleep at night, she managed a genuine smile for the first time in months.
It was easy to do so, once she realized her life’s goal was to make herself and her mother happy once more – and to direly punish all those who looked down on them currently.
And it was just a matter of time until Katarina found the means to reach those goals, she swore. Just a matter of time indeed.
***
Over the course of the next few years, Katarina bided her time and made the most of suddenly becoming a social pariah, taking as much lonely pleasure as possibly from her inner sense of superiority.
After all, what did it matter if she suddenly went from being the most to the least popular girl in her school – or if she went from being the budding belle of her little town to being the girl that almost everyone spoke about in nasty whispers? As her mother would tell her, the lion did not need to concern itself with the bleating of sheep – and truly, what were the peasants around her except sheep that were only fit to be made meals of eventually?
(Once, Katarina would never have thought of her dear former friends and neighbors in such a manner. But once, she was not a light mage who would find herself shunned by almost everyone around her. So she could hardly blame herself, however old she might grow, for the contempt she felt for such pathetic beings. After all, had they not earned her wrath fairly?)
Though at eight years old, Katarina would reluctantly admit, she was not yet a full-fledged lioness. After all, while she might have access to light magic, it would take years of hard work for her to become a power in her own right – let alone who could silence the whispers of others with anything more than hard, angry stares. And since she lacked the magical tutors that almost all the nobles had access to – and received little other than second-hand books and scrolls from the Ministry of Magic, which seemed reluctant to cultivate a common-born mage no matter how potentially powerful she might be – Katarina was largely left to her own devices.
Luckily, being a social pariah left Katarina with more than enough time to use the trapping skills her father had once taught her to get a few animal “volunteers” for her magic. For even Katarina was not (yet) fool enough to start slicing herself open to see whether she could heal any ensuing damage – not when she could test her magic out on others first.
And so, with the help of as many anatomical diagrams and texts as she could wheedle out of the Ministry through a series of flattering letters she wrote with the help of her mother, little Katarina had took to slicing and dicing – and then healing, sewing and gluing back together – animals with the religious fervor of a little girl who knew it was her only path out of dwelling at the lowest rung of every social ladder.
And truly, once she had let go of silly notions like having friends or taking part in social events or doing anything other than doing all she could to support her always-tired mother, Katarina was left with a surplus of time on her hands. Time that she used as constructively as possible to experiment with exactly how she could use her light magic to heal or inflict cuts, soothe or create burns, stimulate or reduce the flow of blood within one’s form – and cause all sorts of nasty problems in one’s body as well.
It truly was amazing, Katarina decided as years of experiments accumulated over time, to see just how versatile light magic could be in the hands of a person driven to master it as quickly as she possibly could. But then again, her light magic had been powerful enough to keep her alive and healthy after a massive blow to the head that would have killed any other child – and what’s more, had proven its ability to influence or outright control almost any cell within a living body. Was it really such a surprise, then, that with enough practice, she could learn to inflict every condition from mild headaches and stomach illnesses to crippling migraines and muscle cramps so intense that they drove her animal “volunteers” to seizures?
And just to make sure all of her efforts would work on humans as well as animals, Katarina began to carry out little “experiments” on herself – even going so far as to slice, burn, and bludgeon herself so that she could practice healing her own body. Which ultimately – after enough time went by and she had finally gotten fed up with the pain – led her to realize that she could modify (and even nullify) any sensation she felt by strategically shutting down connections between her body, her spine, and her brain.
And if that ended up leaving her with an odd feeling of numbness and the inability to completely control her affected limbs –
Ah well, Katarina had thought at the age of twelve, smiling as she stared at burned hands that she had deliberately set afire with a bolt of her own lightning. Doesn’t this mean I can also cripple my enemies by taking control over their bodies?
For oh, she had so many enemies. And once she decided she had learned enough to punish them at the age of twelve, she took her first tentative steps toward making sure no one could ever disrespect her and her mother again – at least, not when Katarina herself was near.
***
Katarina’s reign of terror began when she was thirteen and went on happily for the next five years.
She began with what she felt were quite modest punishments for the worst offenders in her village – the ones who seemed all too dedicated toward making the Campbell women’s lives one of unending misery. Indeed, even looking back years later, Katarina would heartily congratulate herself for the restraint she had shown in not simply handing out heart attacks left and right, however deserved said attacks might be. Instead, like the genteel little miss she was, Katarina had used a far defter touch with her white magic to spread about misery. Indeed, she felt she ought to be commended for her delicacy!
For the grocer who only sold them the most haggard of vegetables – the ones Katarina had to invigorate again with her white magic to make them even half-way edible – Katarina gave the precious gift of a slow boil of non-lethal but terribly painful stomach ulcers of just the kind the Campbell women would have had if they had to eat such vile food.
For the baker who sold them half-rotten ingredients for their morning meals – which Katarina had to shift ceaselessly through in order to make a decent loaf of bread– Katarina gave the gift of hands that trembled so ceaselessly, he could no longer knead dough without having his hands seizing up in pain. A fitting punishment for a poor baker, as far as Katarina could see.
For the men and boys who taunted her about how soon she’d spread her legs for the nearest noblemen who came about – just like that whore of a mother, who thinks she deserves better than any common man could give her – she reserved any number of pleasant abscesses, boils, sores, and poxes that she aimed at their proud manly bits with ease. Let them reflect on how whorish the Campbell women supposedly were when their loins burned constantly!
For the girls and women who spread nasty gossip about how Katarina would eventually use her beauty to snare a rich nobleman once she went off to the magic academy – no doubt because the hussy-in-training thinks she’s better than us, just see how that trollop goes about with her head held high no matter what we tell her – she gifted sharp pinched nerves and unpredictable migraines and muscle spasms that were timed to hit just when they were in the market and carrying their groceries home. For if they were to spread such nasty gossip, they may as well have limbs as graceless as their tongues could be!
And just to balance out those little misdeeds, Katarina tookcare to reward the few people who were still decent to her and her mother – clearing up the cataracts of the old woman who would chat pleasantly with her mother from time to time, healing the boils and bruises and aches of anyone who would employ her mother, clearing the skin of the few children her age who would still nod to her respectfully, even assisting in the pain-free births of the few pregnant women who still treated the Campbell women kindly.
That last part, especially, had earned Katarina some points from the local midwife, who took her on as an apprentice at the age of fifteen.
“Honestly, girl,” old Glenda had said. “You can be a holy terror at times – though God knows the idiots in this village often deserve it – but you truly do have an astounding gift given by the Lord himself. I can only pray you use it wisely!”
“I most definitely will,” Katarina had replied, feeling sure of it. “I’ll use it to get rich and earn a noble title as soon as possible and then whisk my mother away from this hell-hole of a village. You can come along if you like, Miss Glenda. I’m not sure these idiots deserve you either.”
And at that, Miss Glenda had laughed and patted Katarina on the head and then went back to supervising Katarina as she dissected a pregnant dead cat to see how the organs of reproduction worked.
And if she also learned how to control not only her own but also other people’s fertility as well through the use of such experiments under Miss Glenda’s careful supervision… well, that only gave Katarina yet another means by which to control others and ensure no future bastards would spring from her own loins, no matter who she might bed eventually.
***
At one point, by the time Katarina was fourteen, the idiots populating her village finally realized her tendency to reward the good and punish the rotten through her light magic – though they seemed to believe she had chosen her targets poorly. Thus, they decided en-masse to try and burn the Campbell women’s humble little cottage down – only to realize that Katarina had been anticipating such an attempt for a while and set up defenses already.
From a combination of poring over whatever texts she could cadge from the few mentors of the Ministry she cultivated and her own mad experiments –once she had dropped out of commoner school to develop her magic, she had freed up so much time – Katarina had realized how remarkably versatile light magic could be.
After all, it was already amazing enough that light magic could reshape the way cells lived, died, and thrived within living bodies – be they of humans, animals, plants, or even simple algae. Yet light magic’s effects went beyond even that. With sufficient practice, light magic could also cast dazzling streams of lightning that could bore holes into almost everything she aimed them at, construct invisible barriers that could protect people or spaces from physical and magical assaults, and even bend light waves to render herself and other objects invisible to the human eye.
And though even Katarina could not possibly perfect all of those powers by the age of fourteen, she was damn well bullheaded and stubborn and reckless enough to still try to learn as much as she could about the astounding power that made her both a pariah and a prodigy. And her quest to do so became all the more urgent once she realized that the petty bastards in her village would eventually realize how she was provoking them and come for her and her mother directly.
Thankfully, clever little Katarina knew enough about the human mind to predict when and where such a confrontation would happen – and enough about light magic to set up some truly interesting defenses. So it was that when the torch wielding mob came for them, they found a fourteen-year old Katarina and an equally calm Miridiana patiently waiting for them within the Campbell’s little cottage.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Katarina said, smiling slightly at the dozens of people who had come to her informal coming out party. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“Bitch!” Ian Basilios, now a strapping and still brainless man of sixteen, cried – even as his hands came to protectively cup his crotch at her returning glare. “You know what you and your whore of a mother did! You’ve been hexing us all like the little slut you are, just because you can’t stand our way of talking about your freakishness!”
“And so now what?” Miridiana said, her voice icy even as she clasped Katarina’s shoulder protectively. “Now you’ll try to show us Campbell slatterns exactly why we should have submitted to your mob rule during all of these years? Is that what this pathetic little display meant to do for us? To teach us to fear you, when you ought to fear us in truth?”
And at that, the mob had stepped forward, wielding their usual round of pitchforks and burning torches and nooses while the Campbell women had stared at them contemptuously.
And then, Miridiana had gently squeezed Katarina’s shoulder in solidarity, and Katarina had smiled, and unleashed the finest display of light magic she had ever displayed in all her last six years of experimenting.
It turned out with enough mana and moxie, she could create miniature barriers around multiple people’s heads in order to cut off their supply of oxygen long enough to render them unconscious. And after she had done that to a good half of the crowd, she had proceeded to take advantage of the remaining group’s onset of panic to shoot lightning at their feet and make them dance fast enough to press a smile to her mother’s wary lips.
And after that… well, Katarina supposed she didn’t also have to turn a crazed bunch of feral animals that she had stored on the remaining mob’s bodies. But didn’t she deserve some fun as well? She even let the animals she turned loose go free afterwards – a sign of kindness indeed!
And anyway, that night – while enjoyable and even profitable once she and her mother had looted the unconscious hooligans at their doorstep – had led to no causalities. (Even if that was mostly because Katarina had been kind (or pragmatic) enough to make sure there were none – even if all of the members of the mob ended up with some interesting internal growths over the next few years). Indeed, once even the most thick-headed of villagers realized she could destroy each and every one of them from thirty paces if they so much as glanced her or her mother the wrong way, their direct attacks on either Campbell women dropped sharply.
So all in all, Katarina considered that night quite the success story. Not that the Ministry of Magic official that came to visit her for a “gentle reprimand” afterward had seen it that way initially.
“Miss Katarina Campbell,” Lord Kai Garren said, his tone dry as the desert. “While it certainly was your right to protect yourself, your mother, and your home from the torch-yielding mob on your door-step, I am not sure you needed to go so far as to turn wild animals on them either.”
She had just given Lord Garren the kind of heart-melting look that tended to stop even men who loathed her in their tracks, though all it did was make the man before her roll his eyes.
“But my lord,” she said, in her best simpering voice. “Those poor animals were all my friends, who I cherish and feed continually. Perhaps they somehow realized I was in distress and came to save me!”
“Ah yes,” Lord Garren replied, smiling despite himself. “No doubt you are the kind of pure, kindly soul who raises a friendly horde of animals who come to her hapless self’s defense in her time of need.”
“No doubt,” Katarina sweetly said, leaving out the part about how she had trapped each one of those feral animals and kept them in a half-starving and anesthetized state for weeks on end as she waited for the mob to find her. “Although given how hapless I happen to be… and how cruel these villagers are toward my poor mother and myself… we certainly could use a bit more protection. And if possible, by your kind leave, perhaps some extra training in healing and self-defense for me!”
“Well,” Lord Garren had said, mouth twitching, “I suppose training a light mage of your caliber on a part-time basis would accord with my ongoing work at the Academy of Magic, which you will join sooner or later. And we certainly cannot have you going around being helpless around a useless passel of peasants who cannot properly prize your power, can we?”
“No, my lord,” Katarina said, smiling and opening her brilliant blue eyes for all they were worth. “No indeed!”
So that was how Katarina gained Lord – or rather, Professor – Garren as a magic tutor at the age of fourteen almost despite (or perhaps because of) the havoc she wrecked constantly. Though the greatest lesson she ended up learning from that incident – besides how very useful it could be to overpower a whole group of people with both magic and cleverness – was that power wrote its own way forward.
And if she had enough power – be it through magic, money, standing in society, or ideally all three –
Why, she would finally be strong enough to decide the very contours of her life, and to give herself and her mother all they deserved – instead of being forced to sit and wait for yet another mob to find her eventually.
Power, Katarina realized from that point on, was the apex of life. With enough of it, she could do almost anything she pleased – and make sure she would never again be anyone’s object of derision, lust, mockery, or violence in any way, shape, or fashion.
And though Katarina hardly needed any further reason to chase after power, that was quite the incentive indeed.
***
By the time she was eighteen, Katarina was – if not the belle of her village once again – at least someone those around her knew not to irritate unduly.
After all, a decade after she had first awakened her light mage powers, Katarina was widely acknowledged by the Ministry of Magic – if not the ridiculous backwater village she lived in – as one of the greatest magical prodigies in the country, as well as the only light mage born within the last twenty years. And after she had sufficiently terrorized the less civilized peasants in her village into proper displays of respect – and shown them that the Ministry of Magic would much rather take the magic prodigy’s side over random commoners who would never join their ranks – she had come to tolerate life within her village again.
True, she would never again be the sort of girl who would walk around her town square and cheerfully greet and be greeted by everybody. Honestly, with the exception of a few brave souls who had the good sense to have never crossed her or her mother in the first place, most people tended to avoid her as though she might hex if they looked at her the wrong way – which, as far as Katarina was concerned, only showed their good common sense.
Indeed, she thoroughly applauded the way even the greatest of the village idiots fell in line after she received Professor Garren’s personal protection – not that she truly needed it, especially after she became ever more adept at flinging around lightning just as she pleased.
Eventually, even the most dim-witted of the peasants around her learned to curry her benevolence by treating her not only with the dignity she deserved but also giving her tribute. After all, even Katarina’s explosive temper could be cooled whenever she opened her front door to see the little bags of copper coins that men heaped upon her in thanks for her no longer crippling them below the belt. And she was – once her neighbors had groveled enough – willing to do them little favors in turn, such as alleviating their aches and pains and boils and so on, so long as they let her and her mother be.
(And if Katarina’s favors were given only partly the result of benevolence as well as her needing test subjects with which to try on Professor Garren’s medicinal remedies… well, one could not say Katarina couldn’t kill two birds with one lightning bolt. Indeed, she was up to as many as seven winged bodies in one stream!)
So by the time Katarina had her bags packed and ready to head over to the academy, the stalwart and long-suffering Professor Garren awaiting her there, she was ready to leave her village in a triumphant mood– though she had to admit she would miss her mother desperately.
After all, for the last decade of her life, Miridiana Campbell had be Katarina’s greatest supporter, defender, and the emotional rock upon which Katarina had built all of her dreams. She was the first person Katarina saw and kissed every morning, the person who still tucked Katarina in at night (though Katarina hoped no one would else would learn so embarrassing a truth), and the one and only person Katarina loved and was loved by thoroughly.
So perhaps it wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone but Katarina herself that she became a sobbing mess as she had wrapped her arms around her mother and blubbered at the thought of leaving her, even for the sake of a brand new life at the Magical Academy.
“I’ll write you letters every day,” Katarina managed through her childish stream of tears. “And make sure to come back as often as I can, on any breaks, to make sure no one is hassling you. And write to tell me if anyone is. I’ll hurt them so much, their great-great-great-grandchildren will feel it! I’ve been working on exciting new hexes that will cross generations already!”
Her mother had just laugh and kissed the tears from Katarina’s face, before wiping them gently away. “That’s my fierce little girl. I’ll tell you if anything happens at home and wait for that letter-a-day. And make sure you tear into idiot nobles who give you guff at the academy.”
“I will,” Katarina promised, even as she continued to blubber into her mother’s arms. “Mommy, every time I torture one, I’ll remember you!”
“Just do it while you’re invisible and no one else is watching,” her mother had said, gently kissing Katarina’s brow before withdrawing to look at her daughter tenderly. “You know you have to be careful while tormenting them – even as you should never present yourself as easy prey either.”
And once Katarina finished her blubbering and promised her mother she would be strong and brave and exactly as vengeful as she needed to be to stay safe around predatory nobles, she parked herself in the carriage that came to take her away and tried to hold back the rest of her tears.
After all, what reason did Katarina have to fear the future anyway? She had been honing her light magic for the last ten years, both on her own and under Professor Garren’s careful scrutiny – and she had a very concrete set of goals in mind for what she wanted to achieve over the next few years in the academy. For once she went there, she planned to build alliances aplenty, gain enough political capital to enter the Ministry of Magic at an excellent starting position, eventually climb up to a position of unassailable power and prestige, purchase or be granted a grand estate far, far, far away from the awful little village she lived in, and live a happy life with her mother eventually.
One day, Katarina promised herself fiercely enough to justify any tears, I will be so strong and powerful and prestigious, everyone must acknowledge me. I will learn more about the human body than anyone ever before dared dream! And no one – even behind my back and away from my ears – will call me a bastard or shame my mother for adultery. No one will ever dare disrespect either of us in the least.
And with that conviction burning in her breast, Katarina smiled and closed her eyes to await for the start of the Academy.