Inheritor Of Magic: The Magi King

Stephanie snickered at Wolfe's acceptance of the excuse for only having cake in the house, which sounded more like wheezing in her feline body, but Sophie understood the sentiment even without words.

Then Sophie turned a bit melancholy.

"I've been doing better, you know. I've got great friends, and Stephanie is here to help me all the time, but they don't really understand, you know? They all came from villages where they had families who loved them and friends who cared, and it's all new to me." Sophie whispered.

Stephanie activated the privacy spell around the apartment as the girl continued to talk.

"It's not something that I can really put into words, you know? I don't want pity, but how could anyone really understand? All the scars are gone now, thanks to Stephanie's healing, but only on the outside. It's just that I feel like I can't really fit in. 

Like the older soldiers that are coming in for training or the villagers who were purged of the curse and started training, they're different from each other and had different lives, but there's more of them to bond with, whereas there's just me and Stephanie, but she's a cat, and nobody really takes her seriously unless she's showing them magic."

Wolfe picked Sophie up out of her chair to give her a hug, then settled her back on the couch inside and took a more comfortable seat out of sight of the public.

"Would you like me to find more people like you to help? I'm sure there are more cases who would love for someone to rescue them if only we knew where they were. I'm certain that at least one of our Witches can cast an Oracle spell." He suggested.

Sophie shook her head but gave Wolfe a sad smile. "I'm sure they would love the help, but you don't have to do it on my account. It's just silly of me to feel sorry for myself when things have gotten so good. I feel like I don't really deserve it, even though I know that's not true."

Wolfe looked at the Familiar Cat, who was now sitting on the coffee table in front of them.

"You know, Stephanie might be an oddball, but she really does understand. That's why I sent her to you. Has she shared her story with you yet?" Wolfe asked.

Sophie shook her head, and Wolfe gave Stephanie a pointed look.

[I guess it really is time, isn't it? I thought she was doing pretty well. She never broke down like that before. At least, not in front of me.] Stephanie replied through the bond.

[Yes, it's time that you explained properly.] Wolfe agreed.

Stephanie cast a spell to block all possible sensory intrusion through the windows and then looked around the room like there might still be someone hiding in there. With the presence of Faeries, it was possible, given their size, but Wolfe didn't detect anything or any disruption in the magic flow.

Once she was certain that there was nobody here but the three of them, Stephanie meowed to get Sophie's attention, then stepped off the coffee table and onto the floor in the middle of the room.

Then, the soft black kitten began to elongate and change, leaving a very naked Stephanie standing in the middle of the room.

Her body was still covered in scars and magical tattoos, thoroughly ruined, and even her face was unrecognizable to anyone who might have known her before under the damage that it had taken. There was no telling what she had looked like before all this had started other than that she had been a petite and slender young woman.

She wasn't nearly as emaciated as when Wolfe had first met her, thanks to half a year of regular meals, but she was still incredibly skinny even now, and the scarring hadn't faded at all.

Her voice was scratchy and faint as she began to speak to them for the first time using her own voice.

"When I was six, it was determined that I had no aptitude for magic. Nothing that anyone in my family could think of would cure the bloodline curse that I was born with, and that was unacceptable for a Coven Council Family. Pureblood Families don't have duds. There are no non-witches among our women.

So, I became the resented child, beaten, whipped and neglected. But the curse that they put me under for shaming them was far worse. Every time I pleaded for mercy, I gained one more scar that would never fade. As you can see, I pleaded many, many times for them to have mercy on me.

After a few months, they decided to train me as an assassin for the Family, always masked and hidden from sight, forgotten and stripped of everything, even my name. During the day, I trained. During the evenings, I was locked in a cell in the manor's dungeon, out of sight of the nobles, who had all but forgotten I even existed.

But then, when I was fifteen, my mother and the Family Head had a brilliant idea. If I couldn't use spells of my own, she would simply inscribe them on me until I could. She thought that she could overcome the bloodline curse by covering my body with tattooed spell inscriptions for every spell that would be needed to finish my education at the Academy.

But I still couldn't form an aura. Without an aura, they would never believe that I was a proper Witch, so my skill with spells would be irrelevant no matter how much mana they stuffed into me through spells and inserting mana crystals under my skin to power the spells tattooed on me.

I thought that they had given up and I could live out my years in that dungeon cell in peace. But then, last year, my mother came for me again. This time, with a new plan. At the family head's request, I would be given more spell inscription tattoos, ones to disguise my features and to convince others that I was not a daughter but a son of the family.

After that, I was sent to the Academy along with another son of the Family to seduce a young Witch into a Marriage Contract that would strengthen the Family. That was where I met Wolfe, Cassie and Ella. Wolfe saw through my disguise the very first day, and by the end of the week, he was slapping my ass and teasing me about being shy around naked men.]

Sophie was in tears at this point and flailing her hands for Stephanie to stop. She just kept talking, though, right up until the younger girl jumped on her with a crushing hug.

"Please, no more. I can't take any more. Oh, my Goddess, I didn't know. I'm so sorry." Sophie pleaded while she hung off Stephanie, who was tentatively stroking her head.

"You see, I do understand. I just wasn't ready to quit hiding from reality yet. The Headmistress cursed me as a Familiar Cat when she found out what my Family had done to sneak me into the Academy. But by then, I was already bound to Wolfe, so she ordered him to take responsibility for me.

Everyone outside this room thinks that the human incarnation of me is dead and that I am a lost Familiar that was gifted to Wolfe to teach him responsibility. The Morgana Fortress City thinks that I died in the attack that they staged on the disgraced applicants who were returning to the city, and all of the Witches who were at the Academy at the time think that I was a young man banished into the wilderness with nothing and nowhere to go.

I would prefer that it stays that way, but I can't remove the tattoos, and I can't remove the lingering effects of the curse from myself since they are entangled with everything else. So, this is what I look like as a human. If anyone saw me like this, they would know right away what my Family had tried to do, and that would risk them finding out and coming after me." Stephanie explained.

"What will you do? Can you hide it with a spell or maybe makeup?" Sophie asked.

Stephanie kissed her head and placed her back on Wolfe's lap.

"What I'm going to do is finish this conversation with you, and then I am going to turn back into a cat, and we are going to have a late-night snack. But when we get back here again tonight, I will change forms again, and I can hug you properly until you sleep and remember that you're not alone ever again."