Eirlathion, often called “Master Eirlathion” by the people of his settlement, was the foremost master of both the spiritual and mystic arts of the elves. It was truly rare to see an elf who had mastered the arcane arts in particular to the extent he had, most members of the fey races being far too fearful of the corrupting influence of the energies of the world. However, despite the risks, Eirlathion had pressed on in his path, never once allowing the arcane energies to overtake him or warp his body.

 

He had spent his long years in this way, doggedly pursuing the advancement of all forms of the mystic arts. On several occasions, he had lamented that he was not born in the southern elf lands where the elven cities were, and instead he was limited to the comparatively limited understanding available in these scattered elven communities of the north. However, with his loyalties to the community, not once had he ever considered leaving and journeying southward through the human lands.

 

Most of the time, Eirlathion would spend his days experimenting and learning from as many sources as he could. Several times, he had sought out the council of the faeries in order to deepen his understanding of the spiritual arts beyond what a mere elf could learn. There was no good instructor among the fay for the arcane arts though. For that, he had sought out the realm spirit of these lands. Although the great realm spirit did not use the arcane arts himself, his knowledge over them and resistance to their corrupting influence was far greater than that of the fay.

 

Due to Eirlathion’s deep knowledge and understanding of these subjects, it was common for the other elves of this settlement to seek him out for advice whenever something seemed unusual. Because of this, when the hunting party had gone out to retrieve human children for an upcoming birth that should be happening within the next few months at that time, when they discovered something unusual it was Eirlathion who they came to immediately.

 

When he had approached the wagon, the other elves from the hunting party were tenderly lifting one sleeping human child after another off of the wagon and bringing them to the nursery so they could be later educated in the time leading up to the baby being born as to how to act with an elfin child, how to care for and feed them, and train them to expect good treatment themselves so long as they helped see to the child’s needs until they were old enough to leave the nursery. These were presumably not the children Eirlathion was brought to see. When they had brought him, he was told that some of the children they found were highly unusual.

 

“Come on up master,” one of the young men aboard the wagon invited him while the elder was already boarding ahead of him. By the time Eirlathion had climbed aboard, the elder was already approaching a female hunter who had two of the smallest and youngest human children he had ever seen brought back curled in her lap. These barely looked like they were three years old by the standards of elfin growth, which meant that their actual age had to be fairly young indeed.

 

“These are the ones,” the elder of the settlement said to him with a tight face as he looked down at them. “We picked them up because the spiritual power coming from them was larger than anything we had seen, but it seems as though none of our magic meant to affect humans is working on them.”

 

Was that why they were in the lap of this hunter then? They were asleep now just like the rest of the children, but judging by the way that the woman who’s lap they were on seemed to dare not move her legs, it seemed they had likely fallen asleep naturally and not from the effects of the tune of sleep as the other children who were being handled like cargo were. Fragile and precious cargo indeed, but cargo all the same as they had no expectation of the other children waking up.

 

“We were hoping you could give your opinion on this matter, we managed to give them some bread on the way back, but since the magic did not work we also do not know if their soul vessel might still be in tact or not.” The elder went on to explain more of the situation.

 

“Well, let’s see what we can find out,” Eirlathion said, reaching out toward one of the two human children, a boy resting on the hunter woman’s left leg. He hovered his hand over the child’s body. Just being near the boys he could feel the large waves of spirit energy washing off them, but he wanted to get a more detailed idea of what was going on in the souls that were pushing off all of that energy.

 

Eirlathion began to allow a slight charge of mana to go through his hand, the neutral form of energy that existed between the spiritual and the arcane. Using his mana, he was able to stir the spiritual energies. After this, he charged his mana into his eyes, looking to see how the energies were reacting to what he was doing.

 

After he was finished with this, Eirlathion sat back and drifted into a state of thought. The elder, the flute player who had stopped her playing after the last of the other children were unloaded, and of course the woman who had probably had to comfort these children the entire journey back from the human lands were all looking to him expectantly.

 

“Well,” he said, “indeed, the quality of their souls is far more dense than a normal human soul. There is also, a strange different quality that I have not seen before. Are you certain these are even human children at all?”

 

“Well, all I can say for certain is that we did get them from human families. Those other children that were just taken off the cart were supposedly their siblings.” The elder informed him.

 

“Well, of course since it is undeniable that the energy their souls put off is spiritual in nature, it is a certainty their vessels were created by a god, just like humans. However, with the entirely different quality of their souls, it is incredibly tempting to say they were not actually humans themselves. That said, I am not certain of any god in this world who could create souls that dense. As for the chances the magic in their food had any effect on their soul vessels at all… I cannot say for sure because of the unusual nature of the situation, but it is highly unlikely.”

 

“I see,” the elder responded. “Well, at any rate, thank you master Eirlathion, for your expert opinion.”

 

“Well, I can hardly call myself an expert on this. This… is something I fail to truly understand myself.”

 

With this, he got off the wagon and allowed the others to do as they will. Because they were god-born, possibly even more powerful god-born creatures than humans, it wound up being decided they would be treated as a human would and were put in the nursery to nurture the soon to be born child just like any other. With the abundance of spiritual energy that was put off by their souls, it would be certain they would help the baby to grow up very healthy and strong. Meanwhile, several of the elves from the village seemed to start spending a lot more of their time in town near the nursery.

 

-

 

Over the next three months, the human children were given to the care of a human woman who had grown up in their settlement, having been taken here 20 years ago when she was only just coming of age. At a human’s growth rate, this meant she was near 12 years of age at the time she was brought to the village, and was around in her 30s now.

 

Having been one of the older humans at the time she was brought here, and being at an age where human children would respect her, she was placed in charge of the nursery and it was made her job to train the new younger children to properly obey the elves and to care for the baby that was soon to be born.

 

And then, after the three months were over, the elfin settlement was hit with yet another surprise. It was not one, but two babies born at the same time. “Twins” was the term that the human woman had used. This was something entirely unheard of among elfin society, but the humans seemed to be somewhat familiar with the phenomenon. This was something that was quite shocking, but soon enough it was decided that they should just be happy because now there were two new children born to the community.

 

However, it did not all go well. A mere 3 days later, the human woman they had left in charge of taking care of the children ran out of the nursery yelling that they needed to call Eirlathion because something was wrong with the children. She had become familiar with Eirlathion by this point because he had spent many days in the past three months entering the nursery in order to further study the human boys, and this was why rather than thinking to ask for a healer it was Eirlathion who was the first person to jump to her mind to ask for help.

 

As it turned out, Eirlathion was exactly the right person to ask for after all. Indeed, the issue that seemed to be affecting the children had to do with their energies rather than anything to do with their bodies. He had been doubtful at first when the woman told him the symptoms she was seeing, saying that one of them had started crying furiously and would not be calmed down, and that when she looked at their faces both of them seemed to have pale and ashen skin.

 

Eirlathion had let out a sigh as he approached the newborns. They had been left in the arms of the two boys who had been the key focus of his studies up until this point. This was likely a good decision, if the babies were ill in some way then keeping them close to the greatest source of spiritual energy available was exactly what they would need.

 

Eirlathion knelt down in front of the one who was still crying furiously. She had even been struggling against the blanket that wrapped her, obviously discontent with whatever was going wrong with her. Just as he had done before with the boys on several occasions, he began charging his hand and eyes with mana and hovered his hand over the crying newborn. What he sensed when he did this truly shocked him.

 

At first, everything seemed perfectly normal. He could see and feel the spiritual energy from the human boy, Levin, who was holding her curving inward as she absorbed it, and he could also feel the newborn’s own mana energies, the energy released by the fay, pulsing exactly as it should. However, soon after Eirlathion began, the spiritual energy being absorbed from Levin seemed to increase to a point it was as though all of it was being sucked in at once. At the same time, her mana seemed to almost fully disappear. A second later though, the room was filled with overflowing mana that even put the abundant energies of the faeries to shame. This, however, only lasted for a mere ten seconds or so as he had drawn back his hand in shock.

 

At some point, she had stopped crying. That was the one good thing in the whole ordeal he supposed. However, that reaction he had just sensed from her was truly strange.

 

“What is wrong with her?” The caretaker for the children asked eagerly. Eirlathion did not know quite how to explain it, so he merely told her that the child’s mana had been rapidly rising and falling and expressed his own concern and confusion at the situation. However, he did notice something else strange immediately after this.

 

Up until this point, Eirlathion had always had the boys brought to him one at a time by the caretaker as he studied them. However, now with them sitting together like this, he noticed something he had never expected from children their age. They turned and began talking to each other. This was not the language of the elves, which was imprinted onto all of the other children upon eating their food in addition to damaging their soul vessels in order to make them more dependent on elfin mana than elves were dependent of human spiritual energy. No, it was a different language.

 

He turned to ask the caretaker about what language the boys were speaking, but she informed him it was not the language of the humans either. Apparently the two boys converse like this a lot, but it is in a language entirely unknown to humans or elves. Could this be some clue as to what it is that these boys are? Hearing this, he wished this human woman had told him about this sooner. At any rate, he knew about it now, and would most certainly have his eye on these children. After what he just saw with the child just now, he would likely be in here a lot more often anyway to monitor the health of the elfin newborns.

 

----

 

Author’s note.

 

Well, I guess this might be a good place to leave it off. I had wanted to add in more stuff from Levin’s perspective, and also include events from Eirlathion’s perspective as to what was going on in the last chapter, but comparatively speaking that stuff is a lot less interesting that what’s here so far and it would really just make the chapter drag and become less and less interesting near the end if I did that. I might try to see if I can find some other way to add in those details in upcoming chapters, but ultimately that stuff may wind up just staying unexplained.

 

At any rate, for those of you who were really wanting to know what all that elfin talk in chapter 1 was all about, this is your answer. It's something of a short summary of events rather than the exact words said, but this is pretty much what that exchange was all about.