Release that Witch

After Barov left, Roland went to the drawer and put the statistics into it. Looking back at Nightingale, he wanted to ask her what had happened with her but after hesitating for a moment, he ultimately wasn’t able to.

He already had a vague answer within his heart, but saying something like that was too embarrassing, and even if he guessed wrong it might even be even more embarrassing. So in the end, Roland swallowed his question and said instead: “Now with this done, let’s go to the North Slope Mine.”

“Do you want to go and see what changes Soraya’s new ability could make?” Although Nightingales behavior has become somewhat strange, her attitude was still the same as before, with a smile, she took off her hood and said, “Let’s go.”

Perhaps I’m just thinking too much into this, Roland thought, as he looked at the witch who quickly came to his side.

The ride on the hot air balloon on the other day had influenced far more than only one or two people.

He never imagined that Soraya would become the second witch who gave birth to a fundamental change of her ability.

In fact, even she wasn’t aware of the change.

Roland had only been present by chance when her talent appeared.

Since the hot air balloon was a gift for Anna, it had been placed in the castle courtyard. Whenever someone wanted to see the landscape from high up, they had to call for Anna and Lightning. But the day before when it began to rain, Roland suddenly remembered that the out of rattan weaved basket would become soft when immersed in water, and even if it later got dried it would still lose its toughness, thinking of this he wanted to take it back into the castle.

He had intended to let the servants do it but he then had second thoughts about doing so, whatever the outcome, the hot air balloon was his present to Anna, and the ropes and airbag were parts that could also be easily damaged, so he decided to personally bring it back to the castle. After he had called Hummingbird over and came to the vestibule, he got surprised by what he saw.

The whole basket had a pattern painted on it – it was covered by a bird’s-eye view of the scenery of Border Town. But unlike her previous photo-like paintings, her paintings unexpectedly looked like they would immediately stand up and come to life. And it also seems that the raindrops here couldn’t fall on Roland either. When he took a closer look, he discovered that her paintings had for the first time gotten a “thickness” to it.

It wasn’t strange that a picture had thickness. Theoretically, every real picture should have had a thickness – because the pigment itself had a thickness. In paintings, this thickness could even be put to use. By using brushes, strokes or scrapers it was possible to create rough textures, and through a variation of layers the realism itself could be increased, enhancing the expressive power of the painting.

But Soraya’s paintings were different, her paintings weren’t drawn with a brush and paint, but directly by using her magic.

Therefore, that she was able to create this thickness by shaping her magic was especially surprising.

He remembered that when he had softly touched those sticking out woods with his hands, it had really felt like he was scratching over branches and green leaves, it wasn’t the case that they were hard and solid, but rather soft like gum. And when he touched the ground, the tactile sensation was very robust, as if he had actually touched a stone.

Simply amazing.

As well as that those raindrops flowing down along the drawn landscape were unable to soak the slightest bit into the rattan.

Back in the castle, he immediately called for Soraya to come over, and then Nightingale also confirmed this point. When she observed Soraya from within her fog, the magic in Soraya’s body also wasn’t the same as before. Previously it was a golden whirlpool, but now it had condensed into a rotating… ribbon.

…

When they stepped into the military factoring compound, Anna approached and welcomed them laughingly, while giving Roland a big hug.

Since they had deepened their relationship, the intimacy she showed him had become significantly more. Roland rubbed her head in a good mood, and the silver clip stuck to her hair flashed within the sunlight.

But in the corner of the eye, initially Soraya had also intended to come over to greet him, but now she stood at her original place not knowing what to do, in the end, she began to blush and turned away, putting on an, I see nothing appearance.

“Cough,” Nightingale took Soraya’s hand and pulled her to the table, and asked deliberately, “Did you draw this?”

Roland smiled and shook his head, letting go of Anna and went over with her.

Only seeing that the whole table was covered with the demanded pictures, the paintings were exactly what you could see in the yard, the only difference between the paintings were the thickness, some of them were only about a millimeter higher than the paper, while some came close to three centimeters – this was exactly the training concept Roland had arranged for her this morning, testing how far it was possible for her to thicken her magic “paint”.

“Is this the thickest one?” Roland touched with his fingers a nearly three centimeters thick picture. The enchanted blue sky, that part of the picture was soft as if it has no texture in general, but when he slid his finger down to the yard’s wall, he immediately felt a sand-like friction.

It seemed to be exactly as he had expected, after the evolution of her magic pen, the pictures drawn by her were not only in line with the shape and color of the original, even the tactile sensation came close to the original object.

“It can also become thicker, but increasing the thickness, even more, the magical consumption becomes very large,” Soraya pointed at a brown protrusion on the table, “I wanted to draw the tree trunk outside of the wall, but I had barely drawn the basics of the tree trunk before I had already spent half of my magic power.

“This is your painting?” Roland reached with his hand for a ten centimeters thick painting, “I thought it was really a bark.”

That being said, however, its connection to the table was exceptional firm, the Prince used his hand to grab the tree bark and tried to pick it up until his two feet had left the ground, but even with this he was unable to separate the bark from the tree.

Seeing this, Nightingale drew a knife, yet even after a long time she was still only able to cut a small hole at the bottom. “This thing seems to have been embedded into the table.”

In the end, it could only be cut by Anna, she changed her black fire into a thin thread and swept it over the table. Afterward, the pigments began to emit white smoke and then it dropped off. The cut was smooth but not glossy. Instead it had several black scorched marks on it. Roland picked the fallen pigments up, and when he held it in his hand he discovered that it was far lighter than he had imagined.

“Why did you suddenly want to change your style… No, I mean, how do you decide to add thickness to your painting?” Roland asked.

“I think it was probably because I had seen this kind of scenery for the first time,” Soraya stated her memories. “When I was high up in the air and looking down on the earth, I felt, that the paintings I had made before – which you had said to be almost comparable to the real scene and had called a “photo”, was in fact not accurate. Especially when I used the basket to portray the scenery, and also when I had come down I thought even more in this way.”

She paused, then continued slowly, “The tops of the trees are pointed, and the wind always blows through them carefreely. The mountains are high and low, resembling the ups and downs of a chest. And the river is embedded in the earth, the ships on top of it are pushing their way through. This was the scenery I had seen and not the extremely thin painting.

So I had wanted that my picture would become more like reality. I wanted it to stand up, just like this magnificent scenery. But even after several tries I failed to succeed… during a moment of frustration, I suddenly remembered what you had said about those balls.”

“Balls?” Rolland raised his eyebrows questionably.

“Well,” she nodded shyly, “that was at least what you had taught us. I thought that everything was made out of those small balls, then shouldn’t the pattern I drew also be the same? I made a few more attempts and imagined that the pattern illustrated by my magic pen were made out of colorful balls, all stacked to each other, and together formed a whole block of color. Then… the screen suddenly wriggled up, the green woods grew upwards, the dark blue river sunk, finally turning into the pattern you normally see. At that time, these changes shocked both Anna and me. If you hadn’t mentioned it, I would never have realized that my magic had evolved.”

“So, it was like this.”

“But compared to Anna’s black fire, with the exception that after the evolution my paintings seems to be more vivid, it seems it doesn’t have any other useful effect.” Soraya spat out.

“No … why?” Roland shook his head. “In my eyes, they are not just simple paintings.”

It would be a waste if she only used this ability for painting. He remembered the scene where the rain had slid over the surface of the basket but was still unable to immerse into one of the scenes – rather than a painting it was a kind of “coating” magic.