The setting is medieval. Cobblestone streets and arched bridges, fishtail lamps and brick buildings.
While most nations looked like this, there are also the occasional Japanese-style or Chinese-style ones.
And every nation has its own retained mages, naturally called upon for everything from attending royalty to being thrown into wars.
That is the stage of The Demon King and the Hourglass. This world.
Morning. She rises with the sun.
The mana she had been given in abundance by Louis since yesterday still sat within her, unspent.
As the pale orange light filtered into the dark room, her eyes opened as if beckoned. Peeking out from beneath her lashes were eyes the colour of the deep sea.
She sat up slowly. Through the gaps of her silver hair, which covered her slender back like a veil, delicate wings could be seen drooping from around her shoulder blades.
More graceful than a deeply sheltered lady and more charming than a housecat.
"... Mm."
Arching her back, her wings stretched and glistened in the morning sunlight.
She, Eleanor, begins her day.
Since she has plans to go out today, she can't stay in her fairy form. She put on a brown cotton dress and leather lace-up boots. Her wings were tucked close against her body and hidden, which felt a bit constricting.
After putting her apron on in the kitchen, she pulled the gnocchi dough she'd prepared and the other ingredients out of the cooling box Louis had made. While shaping and boiling the gnocchi, she started on the sauce on the stove next to her. She added onions, and fried them until they were sweet, then added tomatoes and simmered them down in their own natural juices. She stirred constantly, added cheese and let it melt, then seasoned salt and pepper. Her secret ingredient was finely chopped chilli.
She prepared a bento and breakfast, and finally finished cooking.
A plate of salad and a boiled egg, a plate with gnocchi piled on it, and orange juice. With everything set out on the table, Eleanor went to call Lumina down from upstairs.
The first thing that caught her eye on entering was a golden waterfall, the golden hair spread across the bed. Softly, wavy, and glowing in the sunlight.
Now grown into a girl of an appropriate age, Lumina looked just like a princess from a fairy tale.
Her still-sleepy eyes began to shine brightly the instant they caught sight of Eleanor.
"Mornin'."
"Morning. Breakfast is ready."
Lumina was a morning person, so it didn't take her long to get up. All Eleanor needed to do was make sure she was fully awake.
Eleanor quickly returned to the living room and began eating her own breakfast.
--- Now, will she manage to come down today?
If she ends up taking too long to get ready and can't have breakfast with Eleanor, then Lumina's whole day turns gloomy. A few years ago, when Eleanor suggested they eat together once both were ready, Lumina had shown some inscrutable pride about how that would feel like losing.
Eleanor smiled warmly at Lumina, who came thundering down the stairs in a noisy clatter of footsteps.
"D-did-did-did-did I make it!?"
"You made it, but that was unladylike, so points deducted."
"Ehhh. Then, then, today might be an 'eh' sort of day."
The girl's face burst into a beaming smile when she saw the breakfast laid out.
"Tomato sauce, right!"
"Nope, gnocchi."
"Love it! Thank you Eleanor, please marry me!"
Lumina grew up on Eleanor's cooking. As a result, her favourite foods kept growing and growing, until eventually there were only two categories of food: "like" and "love."
Watching the girl tuck in happily, Eleanor put a piece of gnocchi into her own mouth too.
Flutter.
Something white flitted across her vision.
Floating around Eleanor was a butterfly made of paper. It was a spell often used by the master of this house by applying wind and dark magic. Levitating objects is wind magic; transformation, which alters the form of something, is dark magic.
Eleanor held out her palm and waited. Within seconds the butterfly accepted it as its destination and landed. Then the butterfly shifted, returning to its original form as a letter.
"What's Onii-chan saying this time?"
"Let's see... 'Please bring me lunch. I'm in the mood for teriyaki chicken.'"
"Teriyaki!? Is that what's in my lunchbox too!?"
"I'm afraid your lunch is already made. It's Karaage." [1]
"Karaage! Whoo whoo!"
In the end, Lumina is happy with anything Eleanor makes.
After breakfast, Lumina checks her uniform and her bag.
The school Lumina attends is a prestigious one, attended by many children of noble lineage, and the dress code is quite formal. Her black knee-length dress flared softly out towards the hem, a design the nobility would be sure to favour. With a matching black beret on her head, the girl headed for the entrance.
"I'm off!"
"Okay, have a good day."
She, too, has inherited the Stillus family's good-looks. She'd been cute ever since she was small, but since she started school, her radiance had only grown more.
She still spends many days in bed, but she has become far livelier than before.
Watching her grow, Eleanor feels like a mother.
It has been ten years since Eleanor first met Louis. Once a Court Mage, he has become a Court Mage of formidable skill, the talk of the town.
He is a flawless beauty. A well-paid Chief Court Mage with a good personality, though Eleanor would object, so it's only natural that he attracts women.
For now, however, the women who've been approaching him consist only of noblewomen.
He is, apparently, a man already beyond the reach of commoners.
She draped an off-white shawl over her shoulders, and left the house.
The Stillus residence is an ordinary house with three rose beds set out on either side of its small garden.
Since the house sits along a main road, stepping off the grounds puts you straight onto a wide thoroughfare bustling with foot traffic.
This is a place where the exposed skin of an adult woman is considered improper, the sort people avert their eyes from, so skirts are always long. So she walked on step by step, careful not to splash puddle water up onto her hem.
Eleanor is disguised as a human woman.
People sometimes turn to look at her thanks to her face. Eleanor was designed as a beautiful girl; she's a different class from the mobs hanging around the place.
--- But.
Eleanor knows the citizens who turn to look also whisper to one another.
And that whatever it is they're saying isn't anything pleasant either.
--- Let's get moving. It's almost lunchtime at the palace.
She trod along cobbled stones with mud caked in their cracks, and passed the familiar general store, or what this game would call the item shop, on her way.
Visible from kilometres away, the white royal castle can only be described as majestic. Its ceilings are uselessly high, and it is opulent.
The royal castle has extensive grounds, with a main hall that stands out at the back. The wings at the front, left and right, are the barracks on the right and the Magic Research Institute on the left. The several additional buildings dotted around house the Grand Library, an indoor garden, the guest hall and administrative offices, training grounds, dormitories and more.
To enter the grounds, one must obtain permission from the guards stationed on either side of the main gate.
"Oh, Eleanor-san?"
"Heya."
The man who noticed her and called out looked her age, with short dark brown hair. Spotting the lunch box she was carrying, he understood why she was here.
"Has lunch break started already?"
"The bell should ring any moment now, I reckon."
And then,
--- Goooooonggg.
The bell rang.
Whether to call that grand, reverberating metallic sound sacred or oppressive is a hard call to make.
"There it goes."
"Yup. I'm in a bit of a rush, so could you let me through?"
"Sure, sure. Uh, Magic Research Institute, right? I'll let you through. Here, your pass."
"Thank you very much."
Practically a free pass at this point. At first she'd been asked her name, place of origin, address and more, but these days it couldn't be more lax. She does wonder whether this is really okay, but this special treatment is also thanks to Louis's achievements.
The road leading from the main gate is wide enough for ten adults to walk side by side with room to spare.
Along the way there's a large fountain plaza, and on each side of the fountain, the main entrances of the barracks and the Magic Research Institute face each other. Continuing straight on would lead to the main hall, but Eleanor only ever visits the Institute.
"... Hm?"
She noticed something was off.
From behind a pillar in the shade of the eaves, the hem of a black robe was visible. And the female mage and court ladies enjoying lunch at the fountain plaza were casting admiring glances at him.
--- Ah, I can already tell where this is going.
Two steps up the stairs towards the Institute's main entrance, the figure leaning back against the pillar smiled faintly.
"You're late."
Louis Stillus, Chief Court Mage. Eighteen years old.
Golden hair bathed in soft light under the sun. His piercing moon-coloured eyes, always calm, never wounding a soul. Features so flawlessly arranged that it was a wonder they weren't the work of a dollmaker, a beauty no one could hope to match.
And what is indispensable in describing him is that smile. His lips that always wore a gentle smile, so captivating that many women claim that they would happily die if they could kiss them.
She didn't know what made him smile so happily all the time, but in the game Eleanor remembers, he had been the same. Beneath the black robe he wore a white shirt and slacks, but even so, his bearing put models to shame.
Beauty is justice. What a hollow world.
His robe fluttering as he moved, he came down the stairs and took the lunch Eleanor had been holding and clasped her hand with his other.
From somewhere came an anguished shriek, "kyaaaa!"
"What's this?"
"Keep me company until the lunch break is over."
"I don't think it's a good idea for you to let a random outsider like me in, you know."
"You're allowed because you contributed to the research. Or rather, you're allowed because I allowed it."
Basically, the more skilled a mage is, the more authority they have.
Among the court mages, Louis, the most powerful of them all, had been granted the title of Chief Sorcerer. He was given many subordinates, two private rooms, a personal subordinate and an aide, and a certain amount of authority.
"Chief" is as unstable a title as the rankings on a school's periodic exam. If an unscheduled evaluation shows a drop in ability, or if a more powerful mage appears, the holder is demoted on the spot.
Louis, who took the seat of Chief a few years ago, has since passed through twenty-four evaluations and still reigns from that seat.
To keep the Chief's seat for many years is to secure one's future.
It was practically a guarantee that he would eventually become the Grand Court Mage.
As Eleanor walked through the Institute at Louis's lead,
"That's a blatant abuse of power."
"Yes, no problem at all."
Louis's private rooms consisted of his laboratory and a multipurpose room. The latter he uses for napping, reading and such while on break. On the way there, the pair were greeted with bows by several people in robes. Those without an emblem on the chest of their robe are the lower-ranked Court Mages within the Institute. Those with an emblem are the Court Mages [2], those who wield powerful magic.
Louis gave every one of them the same smile and said, "Good work."
It was a spectacular meritocracy no matter how many times she saw it.