Chapter 19: 17: Feigning illness

Eirlathion POV

Eirlathion was sitting in a corner of the ground-floor room of his house. He sat cross-legged with his hands in a relaxed position, his eyes closed peacefully. Inside his mind though, he was quite active at this moment.

He had to stay downstairs in order to be accessible to the children in case something went wrong, but they really rarely bothered him. This meant that he had ample time to himself in a house where three of the four other people in it produced an unmatched abundance of spirit energy. In this situation, there was no self-respecting elven mage who would not attempt to cultivate and progress their access to the magic of this world.

Elves produced mana naturally. This gave them a very large advantage in the area of magic at lower levels. It was as though they started their life at what humans call the fourth level of mage craft. However, the elves also naturally lacked the spirit energy needed to bind mana to their spell slots, and on top of that they needed to consume spirit energy just to live.

They could get enough spirit energy to just barely sustain themselves from the plants and animals of the forest, but in order to train as a mage they either needed access to a human, preferably a child, or train their craft in the presence of the fey royalty who had taken in such an amount of spirit energy over their lives they had re-shaped their own souls in order to produce spirit energy as they would if they were a member of a different race. The latter, of course, was an option available to only the most privileged who had received the special interest of the fey court.

Humans only needed to form their own spirit energy into a vessel and begin to bind mana that they had received from outside themselves. Any member of the fey however needed to gather a great amount of spirit energy just to create such a vessel. In Eirlathion’s case though, he had such easy access to any excess spirit energy Gaerien hadn’t gobbled up with her astounding appetite for the stuff that he found it fairly easy to cultivate.

That such a small child could consume such an outrageous amount by herself was another matter entirely. He had not payed it much mind since the prospect of Aerien producing her own spirit energy was so outrageous. Meanwhile, for a child to require so much spirit energy a mage could form a rank seven spell vessel with it every day could be easily seen as a handicap. He had not paid much attention to this before since it was natural for a child to need a lot of spirit energy, but what she was consuming was several tens of times greater than what any child ought to need. Gaerien’s case may in fact be every single bit as strange as Aerien’s, only in her case something may actually be wrong with her. Perhaps it is a lucky thing for her to have been born with the good fortune to have a sister who could make up for it and two humans at hand with such phenomenal spirit energy of their own.

Despite all the energy that Gaerien consumed though, there was still a fair amount left over that he could utilize as well, and because of this his progress since living with these children really was amazing. For decades leading up until now, Eirlathion hadn’t been able to form a single new spell vessel. However, in the six months that he had spent every day in the nursery he had built up his spirit energy and managed to significantly expand his foundation, forming new spell vessels for the second, third, and fourth ranks. He already had a few spell vessels at those ranks, but having more expanded the amount of magic he could use in any given day.

This however also helped to expand his foundation. A mage needed several lower rank spell vessels before they could even attempt to form one of a higher rank. The bare minimum was two of the rank below it before you could attempt to form one of a higher rank for the first time. Just the day before, Eirlathion had finally accomplished it. He had formed his very first spell vessel of the fifth rank, bringing him into what the humans referred to as the ninth level.

It was not anything truly impressive, especially compared to the royalty of the fey. It would be at the fifteenth level that your soul was re-formed to produce spiritual energy as they did. However, among the elves, this placed him as one of the most accomplished mages in his entire life time. Given the inherent difficulty for the fey to cultivate, the only reason the royalty were able to gain such high feats was due to the infinite lifespan enjoyed by the faeries. Unlocking fhe fourth tier of magic is normally the farthest an elf ever progresses, and Eirlathion had just unlocked the fifth due to these children.

He had yet to attempt any use of this newly unlocked level though. He had only formed the vessel. This only gives him the ability. Now comes the second part. This is what’s considered to be the hard part for humans. However, this is the one area the fey actually have the advantage once they have surmounted the hurdle of forming the spell vessel in the first place. Now he had to bind mana to it in order to ready it to handle a spell.

Binding the mana was, of course, a far more simple process. All he had to do was focus on the form he had created the night before and line the edges of it with the mana produced from his own body. It was ideal for a fey to use their own mana. This would allow them to far more easily regain expended spells, and they could avoid the backlash humans often felt from spell casting that often even caused them to loose memory of having ever studied the spell they just got done casting. This was all the result of the humans using borrowed mana that was not their own. The humans were capable of advancing faster, but this backlash was something they faced as though in compensation for their rapid advance.

Eirlathion did not think this spell vessel would be prepared today for use, it might even take in excess of a year or two, but thanks to the children he was already a lot farther along than he would have ever thought possible. But, more importantly, the formation of a new vessel at a rank higher than he had ever achieved before would help to extend his life span by nearly a century. He could afford to wait. For now, he was only doing this as a good use of his time as he waited for Túeth, the mother of the girls, to come.

Eirlathion was snapped out of his concentration as he felt a pulse run through the house. This was the mana of someone coming from outside his home. For the elves who were all born with the ability to produce mana and learned as children how to manipulate it, this was equivalent to what humans would consider “knocking.” There was nothing like a door on their homes, and so they always alerted each other with this method if they wanted to enter someone else’s house.

Eirlathion gave a smile, he decided he wanted to try something that not many elves could do. Most would have to go to the wall they wanted to have open. However, in Eirlathion’s case, his mastery over his mana flow was precise enough he could do it from here. Without even getting up, he placed his hand on the floor and focused on the wall near the entryway to his house. The wood of his home reformed at that moment, creating a doorway to admit his guest.

“Come on in,” Eirlathion greeted her, still sitting on the floor. While he may have a rather low vantage point, the position of this corner of the room actually had a clear view of the entire lower floor, including the entryway. As such, he and Túeth had a very clear view of one another, and he saw the confused expression on her face when she did not immediately see him and then heard his voice coming from so much deeper in the room than she was expecting.

“Glad you could make it.” He said, as he rose to his feet, the opening closing behind Túeth in the meantime. “The girls are upstairs with the humans, I took the two amazing young boys along with them. With how powerful their spirit energy is, it was rather believable that only the two of them would be enough.” Eirlathion had not abandoned his caution before talking so openly about this subject. The sound isolation spell he had cast on Túeth’s house when he had visited was temporary and did not last a long time. However, for his own house, he had enchanted it with a permanent version of the same spell. Simply by having the door closed, it was no longer possible for any sound to escape to the outside and no form of magical scrying or listening could penetrate it.

“Ah, right.” She said. However, a moment after this exchange, a very concerned scowl passed over Eirlathion’s face. “What’s wrong?” Túeth asked, having noticed this expression.

“I think it’s Aerien.” He said. “There’s something I didn’t really tell you before, it’s the most unbelievable part of this whole thing. I told you that she can produce her own spirit energy, but... it’s not consistent. When I gave her the sleeping medicine to disguise how healthy and energetic she was, she completely stopped producing spirit energy and began consuming it instead. Basically, she was no different from a normal baby when she was asleep.”

He could see the confusion on her face from his explanation. Why was he telling her all this now? He was certain she was wondering about it, but there was a reason, and it concerned what he just felt. “As soon as I started talking to you, the spirit energy in this place started dropping like a stone. I think Aerien heard us down here. I told her a few days ago, the day right after I visited you, that if there was ever somebody other than the five of us in the house that she should start acting like she’s sick. I didn’t think though that she actually had a way to control her ability to produce spirit energy to that degree. She seems to have just completely ceased to do it at all.”

He saw Túeth’s brows crease with his explanation, her face now filled with skepticism and annoyance. He had predicated her coming over here on the fact that Aerien had this amazing ability in the first place and the chance it offered to save her daughters. With it seeming to suddenly disappear the moment she walked in the door, it must look as though he was toying with her. The image this created certainly was not good.

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“That girl,” he said, shaking his head at himself. This was quite the situation she had just put him in, there really were very few correct words that could be said in this situation given how unbelievable all of this is in the first place. He would not believe it himself if he had not watched these girls grow up, having been at their side every day since the week after their birth. “Aerien is incredibly smart for her age, so much so that it’s downright scary. If you can come on up with me, I’m sure I can have a talk with her. I can’t really predict how she might behave toward you, but I hope you are able to get along.”

“Alright,” Túeth responded. “But, you had better be telling me the truth. I got my hopes up when you said they might be saved, if you just said this to get me here...”

“I assure you I did not!” He cuts her off. It seemed she took this exactly as he had feared she would. “If she responded like this to what I said to her, that means she listens to me. I’m pretty sure I can convince her out of this little act of hers, and then you will be able to see what I was talking about.”

With a stone-faced nod of his head, Eirlathion began ascending the stairs to the second floor with the expectation of Túeth to follow. When he came up and saw the children, Aerien was laying limply in Levin’s arms. Or rather, he was pretty sure it could only be Aerien since it was Levin’s arms she was laying in. With her having somehow halted her production of spirit energy, he no longer had his own easy way to tell the girls apart. If the boys were not near them right now, they would just look like two identical babies and there would be no way at all for him to tell the difference between them.

As for Gaerien, she seemed to be extremely restless. He was pretty sure Aerien was somehow faking being sick, but Gaerien looked like she may be really having problems. She was clinging tightly to Rolwen’s shirt with both hands, and kept making little whimpering and fussing sounds like she was right at the edge of breaking into full tears. Rolwen, for his part, seemed to be doing a good job of soothing her. Normally, Gaerien didn’t seem to show a particular amount of interest in Rolwen and it was more like she tolerated him. Now, however, it seemed as though he was the only thing in the world that could keep her calm.

Eirlathion let out a sigh and began channeling his mana into his eyes to get a better look at what was going on with them. Since he was just thinking about Gaerien’s case earlier, now might even be a good chance to see what was going on with her. However, what he wound up seeing made absolutely no sense at all.

When he looked over to Gaerien, or rather, the child that Rolwen was holding, he actually saw very little in terms of spirit energy going either direction. Rolwen’s spirit energy just seemed to radiate out, passing right over her without being consumed. Meanwhile, the child laying limply in Levin’s arms seemed to be absorbing almost all the spirit energy in the room. Not only that, there was also something very wrong about how the energy was moving. It did not look like it was nourishing her in any way, and it was also not being converted into mana. It was like all the energy in the room was just being destroyed when it came into contact with her body.

“What!?” Eirlathion shouted as he took all of this in, just as Túeth was reaching the top of the stairs. He dashed out toward the child laying in Levin’s arms. Her breath was weak and coming in gasps, and her eyes were unfocused. He could feel her pulse racing as he reached down to help Levin support her head, and she began to squirm uncomfortably in his grip. “Levin, did you and Rolwen actually switch the girls!?” He demanded.

“What?”He responded, looking back at Eirlathion in confusion. Was he wrong? Well, if he was wrong, it meant that instead of this being Gaerien having troubles because Aerien had intentionally shut down her flow of spirit energy, if this was really Aerien he was cradling right now then it might mean that she somehow damaged herself while doing whatever it was that cut off her flow of spirit energy.

“Alright,” he said, looking up to the child that Rolwen was holding, “I don’t know which one of you is Aerien, but whoever it is, I want you to stop this right now!” He said, and then pointed one finger at the chest of the one in Levin’s lap. “She’s seriously not doing well, and if you don’t fix this problem if you can, then she might be in serious danger!”

“Whah-huh?” With that reaction, the child laying half in Levin’s lap and Eirlathion’s hand seemed to have a startled convulsion run through her entire body, and then just like that all of the symptoms he was seeing were just gone. What’s more, the rate of her spirit energy consumption slowed down to what one might see in a normal elf child. Nothing at all like Gaerien’s consumption rate, only something that one might consider normal. A moment later, this reversed and then he started feeling spirit energy coming FROM her.

“Aerien!?”It actually was Aerien after all then. That meant she had done something really crazy to herself just to pretend she was sick. The real question though was how exactly she had done it. Yet another mystery about these girls had just opened up in front of him, and this one seemed a lot more serious in nature than anything that had come before. If Aerien could do something like what he just saw to herself, if something had gone wrong, she very well might have wound up killing herself with it. “I don’t know what it was that you just did, but NEVER do that again! Do you understand me? That was dangerous! That was very very bad!”

(Wh... what!? But... but you said!) Aerien began to whimper and cry from Eirlathion yelling at her.

(You said to act like they were sick when someone came over!) Levin declared defensively as he wrapped his arms around Aerien and held her in a defensive posture as though to protect her form him.

(Oh in the queen’s name!) Eirlathion said in exasperation as he stood up. (This is Aerien and Gaerien’s mother! You don’t have to pretend like that in front of her!) He was not yelling, but he was using a much harsher tone with Levin now than he had intended. He was still rattled about what Aerien had just done to herself because of something he had said.

Well, this is definitely going to slow down the plans for getting help from the fey royals. There is simply no way he can leave Aerien alone without someone well versed in magic, at least not until he can teach her to control her mana better. And, it seems he had better start on her lessons immediately at that. It was simply unheard of to start trying to teach a child to control mana when they weren’t even a year old, but there were a lot of other things unheard of for a newborn that Aerien was also exhibiting. So, what’s one more to add to the list?

Author's note

I believe Eirlathion said it before a chapter or two back, absurdly intelligent children just find different ways to get into trouble. I will confess, the last 1/3 of this chapter, basically from the moment Eirlathion reached the top of the stairs onward, kinda came to me while I was in the middle of writing. All of it comes 100% from the lore though. My writing style is to firmly establish the lore and the characters explicitly for moments like these. When both those pieces of foundation exist, it can all click and your characters themselves can decide to give you a helping hand whenever you're stuck.

I'm really glad I got an assist like that too. It actually solved a few problems I was having where things were not quite going the direction I was wanting them to go. Things are looking remarkably on track now though. Also, it helps in avoiding Aerien becoming infallible. She's gotta mess up somewhere, but I don't want her to just be an idiot. If she messes up, it's gotta be in a way where only an incredibly small fraction of the readers can see it coming. If the readers who see it coming exceeds 25%, I did something wrong.

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