Reincarnated as the mother of an otome game's villainess?!

Chapter 33. La costa del silencio.

(From Maxwell)

One day I received two mail deliveries; the first one was an invitation for Rosanne's birthday party. That was quite the surprise, for as long as I had known her, she had never celebrated it, nor made any mention of it. She cared a lot for other people's birthdays though, she had even made me tell her when mine was two or three years ago, and had made a point of inviting me for dinner on that day every year since then.

The other package was a manuscript that contained a more detailed description of the symptoms and effects of the curse of Calliope. I came to know about it after thinking that the context of the legend might give us a better insight on it. So I looked up battles similar to the one mentioned in the tale we already had. Of course, there had been way too many conflicts between two armies near a temple or church, but I felt like the name of the priestess that released the curse was a hint in itself. Calliope. That was a name that originated in the Minoan region, after one of their muses. It was possible that the name had been adapted in retellings, but at the moment I decided to go for the most obvious and straightforward route.

Eventually I found a promising suspect, a conflict that had happened centuries ago, between the Minoan civilization and the "ancestors" of ours, the Achaemenids. Once in this trail, I managed to find a reference to a manuscript written by a traveling historian called Deucalion, who had recorded the effects of a sickness that resembled a lot of what we knew of the curse. Moreover it was reported they had interviewed people who had witnessed the events just a couple of months after it had happened, or so they claimed.

The problem was that there was not a single copy of that manuscript in our nation, just references to it. All the copies that had once existed had been lost to time. In a last attempt, I sent requests asking for it to several libraries in other countries, just in case. The replies I had gotten, at least from those that bothered to send a reply, were as depressng as expected. Some had scraps of the original manuscript, barely anything of substance, while others had also lost theirs. When I was about to lose all hope, I received that package from all the way beyond the Sindhus river. The sender was a librarian that called herself Yamma. I didn't remember sending a letter to her, but the message that was annexed to it seemed to address this.

—I heard of your plight from a friend, Doctor. We have the manuscript you are looking for, in a perfect state I must add, so I'm sending you a copy of it. I have to say, I am quite disappointed with the care other librarians had of such remarkable works. Our manuscript was written into an ancient version of our language though, so I am also sending you a dictionary I have written myself. With that, someone like you should have no problem translating it. May the gods guide you, Doctor.

I was rather confused after reading that letter. But despite the new challenge presented by this stranger that acted so familiarly towards me, I had to recognize this was exactly what I had asked for, so I started to work on translating it. Still, I couldn't help remembering that woman I had met before, who apparently was also from Bharat, and had also treated me as if she knew me. For a moment I considered the possibility that they were the same person, or related in some way at least, but that would have been too much of a coincidence. Perhaps it was just an aspect of their culture.

I finished translating right before Rosanne's party, and I was actually a bit excited to show her the results of my research, but Carmila made it very clear that it was a work-free day. I thought it wouldn't matter, we could talk about it the next day. Rosanne certainly could benefit from resting more, and it wouldn't hurt me to take a break.

But then, at the very end of the party, Carmila fainted. We took her to her room, where I analyzed her state. I had brought Sylphie with me, just because she had slithered around my arm and refused to let go of me, but that allowed me to realize a more thorough inspection. I was hoping she had just overexerted herself, but I realized that was not the case very quickly. Her symptoms were almost identical to the first stage of the curse as recorded by Deucalion; her fingers and toes were turning black, but not due to necrosis, and her hair was losing its pigmentation, turning into a whitish silver. She got an intense fever, followed by sporadic spasms. But more importantly, when I examined her mana flow, I found out it was completely erratic, even more so than Rosanne's had ever been.