Trotting across the courtyard felt refreshing in the cooling late summer air. And getting a leg stretch in was just what Katharina craved after being crouched down, scrubbing floors the entire morning. Even if it was just to fetch more water.

  By her calculations, she'd spent about two and a half months in the cogs of the machine. Now the sweltering summer was turning to an orange autumn. Apparently, that meant the entire manor was due for a full scrubdown. And now she was on her way to fetch more water for washing the numerous floors in the unfairly massive manor.

  She slowed her pace as she walked and took in the serenity of the manor's surroundings.

  Lush rolling hills, with the bustling of working people dotted across the landscape. The well-manicured gardens, whose flowers had been replaced by fruits since she arrived here. Yet there was no admiration for the scenery; no person here was able to stop and appreciate its beauty; instead, they were pulled along by the invisible command.

  And looking closer at the enslaved people she passed, she found them all to be quite ugly. Not because they were inherently unattractive, but rather it came down to their tired, distraught expressions and their overworked bodies on the brink of collapse.

  This horrible contrast suddenly pulled a memory that had long been forgotten. She had been out walking with a foreign exchange student, and somehow their conversation had turned to words that don't sound like what they are.

  That had been the example the exchange student had brought up. A small chuckle at the memory left Katharina's lips.

  Still, no matter how much she wanted to, Katharina couldn't deny that this horrible place was rather beautiful when you didn't know what was happening here.

  By the time her thoughts returned from their trip down memory lane, she was already at the pump.

  It wasn't actually that far, just by the end of the stables. And she had passed it many times before.

  But looking closer at it now, Katharina realized this wasn't a pump at all. Any handle or leverage needed for pumping was nowhere to be found. Instead, it had the spout of a pump that sat on top of a plain metal cylinder that extended all the way down to fasten itself in the well cover.

  Inspecting the 'pump' further revealed a set of runes down the side of the cylinder. These runes seemed similar to those on her brand and on the stone that had knocked her unconscious with a light tap on that fateful first day in this world.

  She tried pressing the top of the 'pump' to see if it was some kind of button, janked on the spout to see if it could turn. No prodding, pulling, or pushing, seemed to have any effect.

  Finally her eyes found their way back to the runes.

  If Katharina was going to believe there was something fantastical about this place, it was looking more and more like now was a good time. Why not just jump straight to the conclusion that this was a magic inscription that would get the water flowing when activated?

  In the fields, when the irrigation system was activated, it was always the same girl who would be called to operate it. Unfortunately, Katharina hadn't gotten the opportunity to figure out how she did so before Lian and she were moved inside the manor.

  And so Katharina opted to try to do the same. She placed the bucket under the spout, ready to be filled, and knelt beside it, hopefully out of range of any sputter that could come. Then she placed a hand on either side of the cylinder and let it hover just a few millimeters away from it, mimicking as best she could what she had seen the girl do.

  Nothing seemed to happen.

  It seemed there was more to it than simply hoping the pump would obey. Maybe asking it nicely would do the trick, a little incantation. "Oh, sweet pump, give me water." The plea was just a whisper, as full-on talking to an inanimate object felt a little wrong. Katharina was not an expert in magical systems, but she had read a few books where magic needed a specific language, so it was worth a try.

  "Oh, good water-" In that moment, she realized she hadn't the faintest idea what half the words should be to say the same thing in their language, so she kept it simple. "Water now, thanks!" Still, nothing came of her attempts. All she could feel was the cool of the metal radiating out and reaching her palms; that was about it. There was no mechanical hum of any pumping having started, no magical sparkles or little fairies appearing.

  Perhaps believing in magic was a bit too optimistic.

  And why couldn't the brand do its thing now and be a little helpful? It had guided her here; now it just had to guide her on what to do.

  There was no returning to the manor before this bucket was filled, so now it was time for good old trial and error, hopefully solving the mystery of the pump by sheer luck or brute force.

  And if she managed to look stupid enough, maybe a softhearted passer would take pity on her.

  It was an embarrassing display of every magical activation Katharina had ever seen, even some she wasn't sure she had seen. First pointing a stick, shouting "Expiliamus" , then jumping around doing a rain-dance imitation. She was surprised the brand was not reacting more strongly to her flailings, but it only seemed to be getting angrier at the delay as the pain was slowly ramping up with each passing minute.

  At this point, it was becoming ridiculous how long she had spent at the pump, and both her ears and cheeks were red from embarrassment, even if not a single of the people walking by seemed to care.

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  "Katharina?" Lian's chipper and slightly confused voice sounded from a bit away. "What are you doing?" Katharina looked up from whatever her current attempt was supposed to be.

  "Lian!" Seeing Lian felt like she was being rescued. "Help! I- not know... water." Her explanation was horrid, so she just pointed to the pump, hoping Lian would understand her predicament.

  Lian walked over with her own bucket in hand and knelt down at the pump.

  "Katharina, do- you- not- know- how- to- use- ?????" Lian made sure to ask slowly enough that Katharina could easily make out the words.

  "?????" It was a word Katharina hadn't yet heard before, and it was hard to know if she was familiar with whatever it meant.

  "No? I not know ????."

  Lian squinted her eyes and looked thoughtfully up at Katharina before just nodding and mumbling something to herself. "Good. I Ω???? you are ?????? ?木木 not Φ∞???∞Ω." No further explanation followed; instead, she proceeded to place her hands around the cylinder just as Katharina had done initially, and a slow trickle started flowing from the spout.

  As the bucket slowly filled, Katharina was much more invested in watching exactly what it was Lian did differently than actually watching the buckets fill.

  From the accumulating sweat on her top lip, it seemed that this pump was rather straining to use, and a normal pump would also require a decent amount of arm power to operate, so perhaps it wasn't that odd. And for a girl the size of Lian, rather petite, working a pump was bound to work up a sweat from the sheer manual labor.

  Yet here she sat completely still, dripping as though she was doing deadlifts, and Katharina couldn't for the life of her figure out how she made the water flow.

  As the first bucket was nearly filled, Lian let her hands fall to her side. Panting heavily, she slouched backward while drying her face in her sleeve. It took a minute for her to catch her breath. And now that Katharina thought about it, hadn't the girl in the field often collapsed after running the irrigation system?

  Lian pointed to the bucket. "There you go, take it." Katharina moved the now quite heavy supply of water by carefully nudging it from side to side without spilling Lian's hard work, and moved the other into place to be filled as well. Lian took a deep breath in preparation and got into position.

  The second round went even slower than the first, but at least Lian wasn't looking like she was about to pass out, just sweating profusely. By the time the water reached the top, Katharina was as ready as one could be to return to the manor, as the brand was starting to feel as hot and incessant as when she ran her laps.

  Lian grabbed her own bucket, and they started to make their way back following the path that usually did make up the laps just in the opposite direction.

  They turned onto the training ground, the brand leading Katharina, tugging so hard it kept her a few steps ahead of Lian.

  Contrary to earlier, when she had crossed it, her mind filled with other thoughts; something unusual was going on.

  No one was on horses or running about doing exercises; instead, they were all gathered in a large group up ahead. Some were shouting, others clapping, but it was hard to see what the fuss was about.

  As they approached the group, Katharina finally got a glimpse of whoever was causing the training to halt. It was the teenage girl who had recently decided to join their table at supper, and now inexplicably showed up at each meal to sit beside Katharina without saying much of anything, and then left just as abruptly when her meal was finished.

  Now she stood at the center of the crowd, stretching her arms above her head without messing up her neatly tied hair-buns, she let her hand fall and shook them as though preparing for somthing intense.

  Then she took a step back before a few light forward taps brought her into a one-handed hand spring, for a moment Katharina couldn't help but think of Furrow-Brows' weird acrobatics, but then here eyes were drawn to something.

  In the hand that wasn't touching the ground, a white light was materializing; it looked like the light Madam R?fna would produce to heal their swollen cheeks after a firm slap, but this light was much brighter, and from it burst long strands of light in every color of the rainbow.

  As the girl spun in the air, the ball of light formed into what could only be described as a spear, growing longer and longer until it was the length of the girl herself.

  As her feet touched down, she let the spear fly. It whisped through the air in an impressively straight line; anyone in its path would undoubtedly have been impaled, before it dematerialized a few moments after making contact with the ground.

  Even just performing the 'simple' magic to fetch water from the well would be handy, but this was on a whole other level, a spectacle even, and apparently enough so to draw a crowd. "Lian, what is that?" Katharina called over her shoulder without letting the sight of the girl go. Somewhere inside, she already knew that this was what Lian had mentioned, this was '????'.

  The way it emanated from the girl, Katharina could only think to translate it to 'Aura',

  At first, Lian just clicked her tongue, and when she finally answered, "Her name is ????? ???ψ??." She was, without a doubt, avoiding answering the actual question Katharina had asked.

  The brand was guiding them through the crowd, and they now had a full view of the girl as she was preparing to do another thow.

  "????? ???ψ???" It had a nice ring to it, but how did Lian know this girl's name when she hadn't spoken to them a single time?

  "Yes, because she always takes the ????? of her ?ψψ?∞?∞?." Katharina looked at Lian to better understand, and Lian gestured to the left side of her chest, where she made a ripping motion in the air, as though to show someone pulling out their heart. So the girl's name was something like 'heart taker'? But Katharina knew the word for take so it was not exactly that.

  She looked back to get the barings on where she was walking and found that she had just made it all the way thought the entire crowd, not only that, she was walking straight into the trajectory of the soon-to-be thrown spear.

  "Katharina! STOP!" Lian's frightened voice bellowed behind Katharina, but there was no stopping; the brand was pulling, and she was following.

  And it was already too late, she had stepped onto the course just as the girl had loosened the grip on her spear and sent it flying. Katharina mustered every ounce of self-control to withstand the urge to walk forward and managed to freeze in place mid-step.

  Lucky for her, she had done so at the last possible moment, as right then the beautiful spear of light reached the place she should have been standing, mere centimeters in front of her face.

  It was a moment of revelation, as she felt the strands of light licking her cheek as they pulsed in the air from the spear as it whipped past her.

  Even though the connection between her skin and the light lasted only a fraction of a second, time stretched, slowed to a standstill.

  The white light and the shimmering particles it left in its wake had the same warm properties as the brand.

  But this warmth wasn't painful; it was alluring.

  An image was forming in her mind’s eye:

  A playfully seductive face that had once spoken to her with the same entrancing pull she now felt radiating from the glowing spear of light.

  The blond man, the spear-throwing girl, and even the field slaves powering the irrigation system were all using this power.

  And for the first time since the brand's strangling grip had taken hold of her mind and soul, she felt its tingling presence emanating from places other than her shoulder.

  It was like a million little springs had been opened, and suddenly the power was flowing from every cell in her body. The world turned vibrant. Sound, smell, touch, every sense was heightened.

  As soon as the spear passed her, the feeling receded, and all that remained was the harsh tug of the brand. But now that sensation lingered, right on the cusp of Katharina's grasp, like a word on the tip of her tongue.

  Only a matter of time before she could say it.

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  Do you have any theories on how Aura works, or how Katharina might learn to use it?

  - Pinkymus