A single question had piqued Jessamine's curiosity and subsequently consumed the majority of her free time for the better part of a fortnight, to the dismay of the professors whose assignments were the chosen sacrifice fueling her obsession. She couldn't abandon her duties to the Royal Society, after all, but something had to go.
There were only so many hours in the day.
Thus, when Jessamine should've been paying attention to her education, she instead allowed her mind to percolate on the implications of her recent encounter:
If the New Roman Union suspected that I am the Domino Witch, why would they send such an ill-prepared operative to look for information at the manor?
The answer is obvious—they must think there is a more believable candidate.
But whom?
If that's true, then I'm in a good position. People might forget me, and then I may be able to fake a comeback…
I need to pick a scapegoat. I've already waited far too long; I should've done that immediately after Dover.
Or should I skip to the end and avenge my father?
No, no—I can handle Elisabeth, but the true extent and power of the Moriarty family is unknown. I can't get caught unawares, and I can't give any indication of being a threat.
I really do need to pick a scapegoat, and the best option is one that people already suspect…
So I need to know what the New Roman Union knows.
I need to fight fire with fire.
…and that's how Jessamine arrived at the genesis of her plan.
As the daughter of Duchess Annalise di Cadenza, head of the family and Director of MI7—the section of Military Intelligence that dealt with magical happenings—Jessamine had survived a childhood consumed by the world of spycraft. Maybe it was that unorthodox upbringing which prompted her to hide her dramatic transfiguration at the hands of Domino; in matters of intelligence, secrets are power.
Thus was her untold magical power was magnified tenfold through her discretion.
The challenge set before her was, then, the question of how best to obtain the information she sought; and her answer was to use a form of astral projection similar to the Farsight spell she had used to observe the Union agent.
All magic relied on rearranging the transfer of energy in the natural world, and "Farsight" was a spell that transferred light from one location directly to the user's eyes. It was a powerful surveillance spell, to be sure, but there were few magicians who could use it without an incantation or a complex rune—and those who could were still limited by their own knowledge of the target location.
Jessamine had been able to observe the interior of Spear's Tip Manor easily because of her familiarity with the location; but finding a single needle in the haystack that was the New Roman Union? Difficult, indeed.
That's where astral projection entered the picture. She needed a way to use Farsight in a location she knew nothing about, and thus, the simplest (though undoubtedly most time-consuming) method was to travel to the target while in the Farsight state. In order to do that, one had to be a magician capable of dynamically altering their spell while casting it; and that was impossible, unless one was able to use instinctive magic.
While the actual method by which magic worked was still a mystery, theorists had long ago discovered that a human consciousness was instrumental in its operation. Thus, the primal magics relied on instinct—hence, instinctive magic—as well as chants which could be used by those who lacked the instinctive gene. Then, of course, there were cultures who had discovered that certain inscriptions created magic when energy was applied, which lead to the various culturally-specific runic magic systems that existed in the present age.
It was theoretically plausible that a magician could alter the Farsight chant while casting in order to achieve astral projection, but it would require absurdly-high synchronicity between the magician's brain and the chant, and they must also possess a deep understanding of the principles of magic. It would be far easier to design a complex rune to achieve the same effect, and Jessamine had suspected that governments had been endeavoring to do so for decades; whether or not they had been successful was unknown.
In matters of intelligence, secrets are power.
Before her near-death experience, Jessamine would not have been able to cast Farsight Projection (the provisional name she had chosen) without a complex runic device. She had been capable of incredible magic feats, to be sure, but those were limited to specific areas in which her synchronicity exceeded expectations.
But now, thanks to Domino, she had no such constraints.
Well, that wasn't exactly true—there were still the societal constraints to consider, as her investigation would likely take a long time. Time, for Jessamine and for the world, was a critical resource that couldn't be wasted. She had her responsibilities to the Royal Society and to the Throne, as well as her neglected schoolwork, and she had a pretense to maintain.
And, so, she had settled on the weekend before Guy Fawkes' Day to enact her plan. The Royal Society would be hosting the festivities on the Tuesday of Fourth Week, and Jessamine could reasonably take a long weekend in the name of event preparation… the various officers of the Society were capable of handling the planning and execution, meaning she would have approximately four days' worth of time to investigate. She'd have to come up with some excuse for the Society, but given her position of authority, they would naturally follow her instructions.
Hopefully four days is enough.
Jessamine put her plan into action when Friday evening rolled around, starting by telling the Society that she wasn't feeling well and didn't want to be bothered. They had been agreeable, as they should be, which meant that she only had to beware third-party intervention.
Elisabeth Moriarty was the one who demanded the bulk of her concern, as Jessamine still didn't have an accurate understanding of her capabilities, and likely never would.
I'll just have to cross that bridge when I come to it.
Despite the relative improbability of anyone disturbing her, Jessamine made an effort to make herself look as sick as possible before laying down and casting Farsight Projection with a single thought.
She didn't begin in her dorm room; she began directly above the city of Reims, a location with which she was familiar enough to use Farsight, and which functioned as a good starting point for her investigation. Whether or not she'd find her answers would be determined quickly, but it didn't matter: for even in failure, she'd be able to take another step closer to her ultimate goal.
While the capital of the New Roman Union was Vatican City, as might be expected, Jessamine believed they may have used a local branch of covert operatives to infiltrate the Academy and thus began her search in Reims.
The first point was to identify the division office in the city; she knew where it was, thanks to MI7's habit of keeping tabs on enemy intelligence organizations, but she didn't know Reims enough to be able to view it directly.
I'm glad. This is more fun, even if it's inefficient.
A ghost, unseen by everyone and everything, floated throughout the sleeping city with intent.
Sometimes it behaved with curiosity, pausing to look into windows or examine a street sign in more detail than was necessary, but never dallying too long.
The few enjoying a late-night walkabout were none the wiser as the ghost passed them by, offering only a passing critique which served no purpose.
After only an hour, Jessamine reached the point for which she had been searching: a nondescript office in a seldom-trafficked part of the city which functioned as the clandestine headquarters for anti-Britannian activity within the Union. Her mother had complained about the incessant poking and prodding coming from this office, and though a small part of Jessamine was tempted to remove the building in its entirety in petty vindication, a moment's hesitation allowed a calmer head to prevail.
Entering the building would have proven difficult for your average spy, but Jessamine had no need to physically cross the threshold which would've kept her at bay. It was easy; in fact, it was too easy.
If there were any answers to be found, they wouldn't be found in a satellite office with minimal security. The lack of a magical barrier preventing Farsight from penetrating its walls meant that this particular station was a logistics hub, only in use when an operation needed third-party coordination. In other words, it was not the type of facility where critical information was stored.
However, Jessamine's time had not been wasted.
Scattered throughout the facility were various handwritten notes, and though most of them were innocuous, she only needed one to contain vital intelligence.
After skimming through the dust-collecting papers for about half an hour, Jessamine found one note which appeared promising:
RS is still a no-go zone.
1 can't be ruled out, but timing and character lean towards 2 (no body).
Get ICV's opinion?
'RS' likely referred to the Royal Society, and ICV was the intelligence arm of Vatican City, but the identities of 1 and 2 were uncertain—Jessamine thought that she might be suspect 1, as she had been for ages, but who was 2?
Excellent, she thought. I've come all this way for a clue, but my only lead points me to the place I already knew that I had to visit.
Jessamine groaned inwardly.
Truthfully, while she had allowed herself to believe that Reims may hold some vital clue, her decision to begin there was more strongly influenced by her utter distaste for Rome & Vatican City.
Rome, like most modern capital cities, was protected on all sides by a magic nullification zone that extended ten kilometers outside the city's urban area. The field was generated by a hypercomplex runic device which used magic to seek out the energy signatures of magical activity and apply specialized counter-magic when needed; while there were some variable elements which could be filled in at runtime, most of the device relied upon known energy signatures and their associated counter-magics. This necessity amplified both the complexity and the cost of such devices exponentially, essentially mandating that they only be used in the most important locations—but when it had come to Rome, no expense had been spared.
Jessamine knew from MI7's dossier on the Roman nullification zone that it was impervious to every known application of magic, but also possessed a unique advantage: it had been designed to trace the magic back to the caster and 'mark' them by some unknown means so that the caster would be immediately arrested upon setting foot in any part of the New Roman Union.
It was indeed a device most impressive and most frustrating.
The only way to infiltrate such a barrier was to use unique magic that was inconceivable to the magicians who had created the nullification zone, as only then would the magic remain undetected by the panoptic gaze.
In other words, Farsight Projection wouldn't be enough.
What about teleportation?
A teleportation spell did exist, but there hadn't been any successful test on a living being… the issue was something having to do with the idiosyncrasies of the subject, Jessamine recalled, and so it could only be used on inanimate objects.
That spell is a Britannian military secret, but could the Union have a countermeasure for it in place anyway?
It's not impossible, which means I can't use the basic spell.
However…
The Britannian spell wasn't the only way to teleport. Jessamine had quickly learned that teleportation came naturally to her, likely as a result of her remarkable level of synchronicity. She had become accustomed to teleporting on a whim—and that magic was unique to her, as far as she knew.
I need to find a way to test it without the magic being traced back to me.
She wasn't familiar enough with any location along the border of the nullification zone to be able to immediately project herself there, and neither was she familiar with cities nearby—I should fix that—so she was forced to take the long way around.
A secondary school trip to Cannes now proved useful, providing her a starting point, and from there she floated noiselessly across the Mediterranean in the direction of Rome and the stalwart Vatican City. Passing over the newly-autonomous island of Corsica, she made a mental note to investigate the possibility of establishing a Britannian stronghold there; though, there was a significant chance that such matters were already in discussion at Buckingham.
Upon reaching the outskirts of the preeminent city of the Tiber, Jessamine paused and gave herself a moment to collect her thoughts, admiring the golden hue of the eastern sky promising the coming daylight.
Her forthcoming experiment required only one thing: a method of validation that wasn't linked to herself. She had an idea on how to accomplish this, but it was heretofore unachievable by normal magicians. As she had come to understand, her incredible synchronicity meant that her brain was remarkably proficient at translating her thoughts into magic—so why not use that to her advantage?
She closed her eyes and, first, attempted to clarify in her own mind what she wished to see, and having done so, kept her eyes closed and her mind clear.
See the invisible elements of magic.
Jessamine opened her eyes and was disappointed: everything appeared normal. However, upon glancing around, something attracted her attention to her peripherals and she turned to face distant Britannia.
Stretching between her projection and her physical self in Spear's Tip Manor was a cord of strange black energy, which gave off some sort of glow, and which whipped and crackled like lightning. It seemed to be as direct as possible, though there were variations here and there, but she couldn't think of a reason for their existence—it was all rather strange, she concluded, but it appeared this was some representation of her Farsight Projection.
She turned back towards Rome and performed a quick test, summoning a flame ten feet before her: instantly, the black lighting graced her vision once again, and the flame sprouted at its tip. It lasted as long as her conception of the flame, and when one vanished, so too did the other.
And if she had to guess, it was pointing in the direction of her body: to Britannia.
Fascinating.
It's fast—too fast for my eyes, but that can be fixed.
Looking towards Rome, she now recognized that the same black lightning arced across the city, stemming from a central root and evaluating every square inch of its domain. It came alarmingly close to her own location, but stopped a few hundred meters away, allowing her a small sigh of relief.
The nullification zone.
With another thought, she slowed her perception of time to a rate at which the process of the zone became clear.
She had assumed erroneously that the black lightning swept over the city like a radar scan, but that didn't seem the case. She lit another flame and watched the lightning stretch from her mind to the target location—it was impossible for her to comprehend the true speed of the lightning, and she didn't even try to figure out how slow time had become—and saw the very first sparks of the flame come into existence, but the lightning around the nullification zone stayed roughly static the entire time.
It appeared like a fractal dandelion: tiny strings of darkness stretching out from the Vatican to nearly every point in the city, with the end of each string spawning dozens more that were almost imperceivable from this distance.
Amazing. The magic never ceases being cast—I wonder what they use to power it?
Well, here goes nothing.
Jessamine imagined an apple, and one appeared in front of her, generating another bolt of darkness in its creation as well as the entire time it was held telekinetically before her wandering eyes.
Then, with a thought, she deposited the apple within the portion of the zone closest to her.
For only a moment, her body and the apple were connected by one of the magical tethers across vast distances of space and time—but a moment was enough.
She watched as a bolt of black lightning reached out from the nearest dandelion-puff and wrapped around the apple, disintegrating it, before branching out and slithering its way towards her body along the path of her own lightning-cord.
Despite the apple having vanished, the tether remained intact.
Is the counter-magic keeping it in place?
I have to sever the connection.
Though her body was still thousands of kilometers away, the probing enemy magic was making good progress, and would no doubt reach its target soon.
Jessamine wracked her brain, cycling through different possible solutions faster than she even knew she could think, doing her best to avoid panicking.
Sever the connection.
But how?
I don't even know what that connection is… it's just a representation in my mind.
Does it actually exist? Or is this a magical hallucination?
The lightning was already many kilometers towards its ultimate goal—she had to act fast if she wanted to have any hope of preserving her anonymity.
Stay focused. Sever the connection.
Stay focused. Sever the—
Wait, focus—
Focus—
That's it.