Hastum
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64. At the core
🕑 Added 2025-08-30 10:58:00 +0000 UTCOphelia paused for a second and then looked back at the stack of books.
“No… I don’t think he is mentioned much, not until he is around twelve.”
We started to look through the journals, now searching for Ester’s brother rather than herself. After some time, the strangeness became obvious.
There was mention of his birth, as the woman describes herself as a giver of life, but almost nothing after that.
It was unusual, to say the least.
“What do you think that means?” asked Ophelia.
“Not sure. The kid was a way for the woman to keep control over the money. Without him, it would all be Ester’s according to the testament. So something’s clearly wrong here.”
I looked through the beginnings of the journals once again, with my brows knit.
“Okay, so the woman is greedy and self-obsessed and loves writing about herself. But there are holes in her story. What are they?” I started thinking aloud.
“The servants’ names are different after some time,” Ophelia pointed out.
I noticed that too. After Ester got locked in the attic, the servants changed, but that was understandable. The house probably didn’t have the best reputation at that point.
Ophelia started to theorise out loud. “There are no mentions of the heir who was supposed to allow her to spend all that money. The husband dies. She probably slipped him something. She stays with a young child she can control easily, and she would be able to live in luxury. She doesn’t like Ester because she is strange? Is that it? But Ester met her at a very young age. She should be able to control a child like her as well.”
“Yes, but Ester is a natural mind mage. She can sense the woman for what she is from a mile away. She doesn’t like her immediately. But why is the child not mentioned? She should be trying to mould him from a young age, pamper him, make him easy to control, like a proper mama’s boy.”
We both looked at the documents.
Then it hit me. “Why would she remarry?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“She wants all that wealth, but under the laws at that time, a new husband has way more control over the money than even a widow of the previous owner, yet she remarries. Why?”
“For social standing? Women in those times were judged by their husbands, especially in a place like that.”
“Possible…”
But I didn’t like it. Would she let go of her greed for social standing? She didn’t strike me as that kind of a person. Besides, she described what she wore, and each time she went out, it was all black, even after the mourning period ended. I thought she was going for the 'I was so in love I can never love again' angle.
“Write down the dates,” I said.
We wrote down all the events next to each other.
1845 - Ester is born.
1854 - Ester’s father remarries.
October 1856 - Ester’s brother is born, and a month after, the husband dies.
January 1858 - Linda suddenly remarries.
June 1858 - Ester gets locked up in the attic.
October 1858 - All house servants were changed.
The year 1858 was strange. There was a big change. The remarriage and Ester's imprisonment, not to mention the servants.
“Why the attic?” Ophelia’s question brought me out of my thoughts.
“Huh?”
“She writes that it is for Ester to be with her father’s things to lessen her mental burden, but she doesn’t strike me as a person who would do that for Ester. There should be rooms in this mansion that can be simply locked up. Even with her escape attempts, how hard is it to stop a thirteen-year-old girl from escaping, with or without magic? Why bother with the cage in the attic?”
That was a good point. If locking up the trap door could stop her, then normal doors should as well. Separating one room should be easier than giving up the entire attic.
“So that she can’t talk to others,” I realised. “It wasn't the escape attempts that were the problem. It was a servant's report to the local police. Ester saw something, or got to know something she wasn’t supposed to be aware of. Something that caused Linda to lock her up somewhere where she can’t talk to others, even through the doors.”
I even had an idea of what it was.
“Something happened, we assumed that it was the lack of magic crystals that caused the increased magic phenomena on Ester’s part. But what if that assumption was wrong? She would have to at least reach the first circle to do what was described in the journals. She wouldn't just lose the crystals that easily. She should have known what they were, even if she lacked control over her magic. What if it was a trauma of some sort that caused the increasingly violent outbursts, and moving her father’s belongings just made the already existing issue worse?”
I would have to wait for the morning to confirm.
I couldn’t sleep, to the point of considering risking it to satisfy my curiosity, but finally, after some tossing and turning with three hours of sleep left before dawn, I was able to rest.
Once the first rays of the sun shone on the house, I checked my theory. I went into the attic with Ophelia in tow and started to rummage through the clutter.
“What are we looking for?”
“Family paintings.”
I couldn’t find them at first, before realising where they were. We went back into Liam’s room and sure enough, there were the family paintings. We ordered them by the dates on their backs.
The first depicted a man and a woman. The man was wearing an elegant black coat with a white shirt underneath and a stylish cane. To his right stood a visibly pregnant woman with bright blonde hair, freckles, and a wide smile. They both looked happy.
Then the next painting was of only the man. He was holding a small child in his arms. The painter was excellent, as the sadness in the man's eyes radiated from the canvas, even with the child held tightly to his chest.
Then there was the next one. The child was older now, as she stood at the front. Ester was wearing a white puffy Victorian dress. She seemed to be smiling. The man looked better, still wearing the black coat and the cane. And next to him was a woman. She was quite beautiful if not for the cold, beady eyes. She was wearing a red dress decorated with gems and sapphires.
Next painting. Only the woman with a small child in her arms and Ester. Both were in black dresses. Ester looked sad, while the woman just seemed indifferent.
Then there were many different portraits of the woman by herself.
And finally, the painting I was looking for. A woman with a new man, a broad-shouldered guy with small beady eyes similar to Linda’s. Ester stood to the side and looked even sadder in this painting. The last person in it was a small boy dressed in the strange fashion of the time period.
I looked closely at the family picture, almost sure of my theory. “Go to the attic and find later paintings of the kid by himself,” I said, pointing at the boy.
After some time, Ophelia came back carrying a few paintings. I looked closer at them, studying all of the pictures in front of me. They only started after around twelve years, with no portrait in between.
“What a bitch.” I finally gave my verdict.
“Why? I mean, I know why, but what did you see?”
“The eye colour is different,” I said, pointing at the picture of the boy with the new family and the later ones. “It’s not the same kid.”
It all clicked in my mind.
“The testament says that in case both Ester and the son die, some wealth is to be given to the widow so that she can live in comfort, and the rest is to be given to the father’s distant family members for occult research. So Linda needed the children. But Ester’s brother must have died. She couldn't control Ester, so she got pregnant and switched children.”
I turned to Ophelia, continuing my explanation.
“She sells a story about the brother being sick and bedridden, and then remarries to have an excuse for a pregnancy. After the birth, she gets lucky on the first try and gives birth to a boy. She then tells everyone the kid was stillborn and fires all the servants. The pregnancy is not mentioned anywhere in the journals nor is it in paintings. To the new staff, she explains that this is the previous husband’s child. It would be tough at the beginning, but after a year or two, she can claim he is simply underdeveloped. As time goes on, it is harder and harder to tell the difference. When he’s around twelve, you can't tell that something is wrong. The woman was paranoid about someone finding out so the child isn’t mentioned until the age difference is impossible to be told.”
“But Ester knew her brother wasn’t around, and she couldn’t be fired. So she gets locked up and painted as crazy.” My apprentice realised where I was going with this.
“Exactly. When this painting was done, the kid was already dead. The painter was probably told he was bedridden and to paint him from a description, so he got the eye colour right. But the latter painting is of the new man’s son, so they don’t match exactly.”
“Well, a bitch indeed. But what does that give us?”
“That changes things. Spirit summoning isn’t easy. Of all the possible magic arts from the book, she obsessed over one to contact the dead rather than something to escape. There are spells to contact imps and demons in those books, but she chose the Ouija board. That changes her obsession. It didn’t start with loneliness. Rather, I think she tried to contact her brother.”
I got up, looking at all the paintings in order.
“And if familial bonds and her brother are part of the obsession, that would explain why she got so focused on Liam to let go of the others. He is someone’s brother. Getting her to pay us attention will still be tough, but if Ester’s brother’s death is at the core of the obsession, we could find where he was buried. If we find that place, use it for the ritual, and then lure her out with Daniel as a new companion, she should take the bait. Offering like that would satisfy both the obsession even better that Liam, and the instinct to feed at the same time.”
“You want to use Daniel as bait?” Ophelia asked, clearly unhappy about the plan.
“Got any better ideas?”
She went silent.
“But we need to find her brother’s body. How do you think we do that? I don't remember seeing any cemeteries, and if she switched the children I doubt he has a grave,” she finally asked after a moment's thought.
I smiled but stayed silent. You can’t call yourself a wizard if you aren’t mysterious after all.
“Oh, come on, can't you just tell me?” Ophelia spat in frustration.
“Guess. The clue is a Sun cross. Or rather its shape.”
