Short Story: Magical Tattoo

A young woman has accepted to receive a magical tattoo at the hand of the most feared archimage of the country. This tattoo will grant her the ability to control magic, but comes at an unexpected price...

World

Society

The country is controlled by a dozen archimages who fight each other for dominance but stand united against foreigners. Each archimage has a "family" of loyal mages, which are made of the people to whom they gave magical tattoos. The rest of the population are made of "commoners" who cannot do any magic beyond a few paltry trick, and so whohave to obey the mages.
Mages see themselves as superior to the commoners, but only a few treat them all as slaves. Indeed, all mages' were commoners themselves befor egaining their powers, and so their biological family and previous friends are among them. In addition, it is not unheard of for mages to be murdered by their commoner servants for having abused them.
A small groups of rebels are attempting to change the political status quo. They not considered to a be a true threat by the archimages, but the mages they are starting to gather among their ranks serve archimages and so could really manage to hurt them through betrayals. However, the real danger is in the rebels selling information to foreigners and betraying the archimages at the most inopportune moment. Since relationships are getting tenser with foreigners right now, some archimages have began to turn their attention towards the rebels...

Magic and the tattoos

Every human generates some magic, but their control over it is very limited and most can only use it to do a few tricks. In order to control it better and unlock the full depths of magic wonders, tattoos that work like a circuit card were invented. These tattoos are enormous, covering the entire back of an adult, and extremely fine and precise.
Not everyone can get tattoos. They are hard to make and it requires a lot of skills and magical power. Only archimages can make them - that is in fact what distinguish them from other ordinary mages (with mages simply being people with tattoos). Archimages also have better things to do than to tattoo people all day. Because of this, they personally pick each new person they are going to tattoo so that they are loyal to them and fit into their whatever ideals they have of what a mage should be. Each tattooed person then becomes part of the family of the archimage who tattooed them.
What is not widely known is that the tattoos create a mental link and a dependence between their wearer and the archimage who made them.

Characters

Annelise

Her character: Annelise is only interested in science and magic and in understanding how the world around her works. She does not really care about the unfairness of the world around her and about politics. She was always able to do small magics to protect herself and did not have big ambitions. So long as she lives comfortably and is left alone to do what she enjoys, she is happy.
Before, she was fascinated by the idea of becoming a mage but unwilling to uselessly humiliate herself by attempting to court an archimage's attention alongside hundreds of other hopeful. However, when the opporutinty was presented to her on a silver platter by the rebels, she certeinaly was not going to say no.
Her past: Before getting her tattoo, Annelise was working in a commoner-led company that works in the service of mages, providing them with the basis for artefacts that they can then finish and imbue with magic, before sellling them back to commoners.
Why the rebels think she is on their side: As somenoe working for mages before her transition, the rebels know that she has her eyes opened as to their behaviours and the unfairness of the situation. Besides, as someone who refused to court the archimages, they also think she is not too enhamoured with them so as to lose all sense of where she comes from.
Why D thinks she is on his side: D sees her selfishness and hyper focus on magic and disregard for everything else, and so he thinks she will not be a real danger to him and that she will not be hard to turn away from the rebels. Her high knowledge about magic makes her a great candidate, but it is her link with the rebels that convince him to give her a tattoo, so that he can use her to draw them out and get rid of those annoying people once and for all.

D

D is one of the archimages who control the country, and one if not the most powerful one. He always act polite and suave, and he has affectionate nicknames for a few people he likes to tease, like Annelise, but this does not prevent him from being strict and cruel when he feels the need for it.
D values curosity about magic, science and nature, and ambition and hard work. For building his family, he is looking for people sharing those values, so that they can fit in and not be a hinderance.
He is both well respected and feared by other archimages and mages. On the other hand, commoners interact with him less, and so they have lots of horror stories about him without being able to tell what is based in truth nd what is pure invention.

Rebels

A group of people who want to kill D and are using Annelise for this.
They include some mages but most are commoners. Their leader is an older woma, O, who is very nice and is also a political leader among commoners. She is widely respected, but her abilities to help other people are limited by archimages and their power.
O wants revenge on D but hides behind the justification that he is the worst archimage and the most respected and powerful, and so putting him down would make other archimages pay attention and realise they have to change how they behave with commoners.