[Chapter Size: 2400 Words.]
Third Person POV
Aretuza.
...
...
Tissaia had just finished dismissing a few students from the rector's office because of fight-related problems they had caused. They left in a huff.
"Thirty years old and they behave like teenagers..." She sighed irritably. After all, they had the appearance of young women. Witches did not age after making chaos a part of themselves and beginning to manipulate magic. That usually happened when they became young women, to preserve the peak of their beauty.
As soon as she saw the door close, the room returned to silence, and Tissaia sighed.
She went back to reading her book, but something caught her attention the next moment. When she lifted her gaze, she found someone who should not have been there, staring at her with his arms crossed. This made her flinch slightly, closing the book as her eyes fixed on the figure standing before her.
Not that she was in danger. After all, if he wanted to have killed her, he already would have. Still, she could not help but frown upon finding him there, without any warning, without even having noticed his approach. If he were an assassin, she truly would be dead.
"Madara Uchiha... The most notorious and dangerous name on the continent, and you are here, in my office...," she said slowly, regaining her composure.
He nodded slightly. "It's been a while, Tissaia. How have you been?"
"Well, as well as possible. If you are here, I assume Yennefer will be as well, correct?" she asked, remembering that he had stated his desire to go to Aretuza to study the books of magic.
"No," he replied. "They are elsewhere, and I do not intend to answer that," he said casually.
She could not help but frown, but she nodded. Madara took a small letter from the pocket of the kimono he was wearing and placed it on Tissaia's desk.
"Here is a letter from Yennefer herself, addressed to you," he said. Tissaia nodded as she picked up the sealed envelope and began to read.
"Well… she is asking for authorization for you to study our tomes...," she said in a slightly sharp tone. "Tell me, why do you wish to study this? As far as I know, you do not use magic. You use another type of energy source..."
"Exactly why I want to," he replied. "Because I do not use magic, but my own techniques with chakra. I will use your theories to create my own jutsus. Magic and chakra are not something that cannot be shaped through concepts. I will simply borrow some of your knowledge and try to create something new. While you use enchantments with words, I use seals. You use different words to create a variety of enchantments, while I use my hands, forming various signs in my own combination." She listened to him attentively and ended up nodding her head.
"Very well. I doubt I could stop you from breaking into the library anyway. I wonder how you got through the barrier around the academy… well, I should not be surprised," she said in the end with a tired, albeit frustrated, sigh.
This man was more powerful than anyone else and was still just a boy, capable of doing the impossible. In any case, he merely nodded.
"I want to know where Isabelle is," Madara asked.
"So you want to see your protégée...," she said, which was not surprising at all. She already knew that Madara was the girl's true sponsor, and not a Yennefer emotionally touched by the girl's condition.
"Yes, I want to see her," Madara said.
Tissaia nodded. "She is in the girls' wing. You will find her easily there. Just, please, do not cause panic. This school is specifically for women, and I do not want our students running around screaming that they saw the most feared man on the continent walking through the corridors, or crawling along the walls like a spider," she asked.
That seemed reasonable to him, and he nodded. Madara disappeared in the blink of an eye without saying anything else.
Tissaia sighed. "I did not even ask how long he is going to stay. I will do that next time," she said, still somewhat worried about Madara's presence in Aretuza.
At the very least, he owed her a favor, after having helped Yennefer create the spell that the unicorn had made and that Ciri had maintained for months. At the very least, Tissaia could trust that, even though that boy was something beyond anyone's control on this continent, he would behave.
It was better to have him there with some kind of agreement than simply let him do whatever he wanted without needing to ask her for anything beforehand. At least, he had come there, greeted her, explained his wishes to be there, and assured her that he would not cause trouble. At the very least, that was already something for Tissaia.
Meanwhile, a hunchbacked girl was returning to the dormitory wing after leaving the library tower, running through the rain while protecting her books and a research sheet that the teacher had asked them to do.
Some girls, older or younger classmates, were also running to shelter themselves from the storm pouring down on the academy, but they used spells, creating a space above them that protected them from the rain. Most did not care about Isabella, but that did not stop others from noticing her.
As Isabella ran, someone kicked her from the side before she could react in time, making her stumble with difficulty due to her curved back and fall directly to the ground. She held the books tightly, hurting her forearm a little, just so she would not let them fall.
Even so, the sheet she was protecting slipped from her grasp and fell into a puddle, making the hunchbacked girl open her eyes in alarm.
"Watch where you're going, freak!" a teenage girl said arrogantly, staring at the hunchback lying on the ground.
Isabella, her eyes trembling, grabbed the wet sheet from the puddle and placed it on top of her book, while trying to get up immediately so as not to soak the books any further.
The companion beside her laughed when she saw the girl start running again, not caring that she had been kicked. All Isabella wanted now was to protect the books of her work. Complaining to those who hurt her there would be useless.
"Look at her, pathetic," said the adolescent who had pushed her, watching the girl run awkwardly due to her physical condition as she moved away.
"Leave her alone, Minerva. She's just another weirdo. Let's bother someone else," said her companion.
"My father is a duke and paid for me to come study here, happy that I'll become a sorceress for the family... what irritates me is that I shouldn't be surrounded by aberrations. Well, let's go. She's so pathetic it almost makes you feel sorry for her," Minerva said, returning to her friend as they walked, protected from the rain by a spell, heading somewhere else to kill the boredom of that rainy day.
At the top of one of the rooftops, a red-eyed figure watched everything. His gaze ignored the two adolescents and turned back to the hunchback who was running into the building, looking desperate. The lightning roaring in the sky behind him illuminated his glowing sharingan.
Isabella continued running through the wet corridors, passing by some classmates who stepped away when they saw her, until she reached her room. She finally arrived, opened the door, closed it quickly, and placed the books on the desk in the room.
"No, no, no…," she murmured.
The sheet that had fallen into the puddle was soaked. There lay the assignment she needed to turn in the next day.
"Please, no… please…," she murmured, going to the candle and trying to light it.
However, she was failing, unable to perform even the most basic magic, like lighting a candle with a small flame. After a few months, Isabella would never be enough. Spells would only be practiced years later, when she became accustomed to the energy of chaos and learned its theory. Even so, she tried in desperation.
Nothing worked. She tried to imitate the older witches, thought about feeling the energy, but nothing came. She had never been skilled. In truth, she had never had talent.
'You will never be anything, aberration.'
'I don't know what you're doing here.'
'Go away. You are the kind of monster that disgusts my eyes.'
'Look at you. To be here you need to pay a large sum of money, and you certainly are not noble. You have no formal education. It's obvious that you are a filthy commoner. Tell me, did you find some man rich enough who has a strange fetish for hunchbacked girls?'
The words echoed in her mind, followed by waves of laughter from her classmates, while Isabella merely shrank before the memories.
Then came the memories of her teachers...
'You are very persistent, but honestly, you should not be here.'
'Regardless of what Tissaia said about you, I honestly still wondered whether you should continue attending Aretuza... but she insists that you must continue. You paid, I don't know how you got that money, but it would be easier to take it and try to live in an isolated village. I'm sure you could spend the rest of your life well and save that gold...,' a teacher had replied.
'You'd better turn in the research and report. Otherwise, you'll get into trouble, and I won't be able to prevent your expulsion.'
Isabella's treatment at Aretuza was not the best. In fact, students and teachers did not like her, treating her like a plague. Isabella only shrank back; she never said the real reason she was there.
She still remembered the boy who saved her, who gave her hope when her brother tried to kill her in the forest, after what happened in Kaedwen. She clung to that hope, and the boy truly kept his word, taking her to a safe place, to the school of sorceresses.
When she arrived there, she met the red-haired sorceress who was also very kind to her, despite being worried. The second sorceress who arrived at the place some time later looked at her with a smile on her face, despite being a little more indifferent than the redhead, and Isabella was surprised to learn that Yennefer had also once been a hunchback like her.
That filled the girl with hope, making her believe that she could also change her physical condition. But when she began studying there, she was first taught to read and write and realized that she had no talent, just as Miss Triss had said.
Even so, Madara had insisted on sending her there, paying for her education.
And in addition to the lack of talent, she was not treated well. Isabella was falling into despair, because the teacher — one of the many who felt disgust toward her — had said that she would be in trouble if she did not hand in the report. Now, with the paper soaked, she tried to light the candle in desperation, until she gave up on using magic and took some stones she kept there.
She tried to strike the stones used specifically to light them, provided by the school, with difficulty, dropping them a few times due to her motor and movement problems, until she finally managed to light the candle.
She placed the paper over it, hoping that the heat would draw out the water. However, as she could see it better in the light of the flame, she realized that the paper was completely damaged, and her handwriting could no longer be seen.
She wrote with great difficulty. She had learned to write, but even so, it took her at least four times longer than a normal person not to make mistakes with the letters. She had spent at least five hours writing that, studying and staying up three nights to manage to turn in the homework report.
"No, no…," she murmured, as tears fell from her eyes. "I should have… maybe I should have died in that forest…"
She remembered the werewolf that killed her brother and thought about the disappointment her benefactors would have in her.
"You give up too quickly." The voice caught her attention, making her jump and look to the side. At that moment, the paper touched the candle and began to burn. She had not even noticed, so focused she was on who was there.
Isabella looked at the young man, wondering how he had entered there, and was even more surprised when she recognized him within a few seconds.
"You…," she said, before looking back at the candle.
Seeing half of the paper in flames, she screamed and began to shake it desperately, forgetting any caution.
"No, no!"
"Stop." Madara grabbed her arm, making her freeze. Then, he took the paper.
"That looks important," he said. She was still paralyzed, but soon the tears began to fall again.
"Yes…," she replied. "I'll have to go back to the library and try to redo everything before tomorrow." She knew she would not get another night's sleep.
Madara looked at her seriously. The girl was clumsy, constantly pushed around, and had no apparent talent. Even so, he merely sighed.
"There's no need for that," he said.
Madara activated his Mangekyō Sharingan and began to use his time manipulation ability. The paper was restored, returning to its original form, as if it had never fallen into the puddle or burned on the candle.
Isabella's mouth fell open in shock as Madara handed her the paper, lightly touching her arm. She looked at the report in disbelief and ended up clutching it nervously.
"You… you restored it…"
"You were lucky I was here today," he said. "Tell me, do those girls usually bother you?" His tone was serious.
For the first time, Isabella seemed to realize who stood before her. He was not just the man who had saved her, but also the one she heard so much about among teachers and students through gossip: the most powerful man on the continent, the one who had married the princess of the North, especially of Cintra. She had never mentioned that she knew him; he and the others had asked that of her, so she listened to everything in silence. Not that she had any friends there — she was the only hunchback at Aretuza, and everyone felt disgust toward her.
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