This was bad. I had not expected for the discussion between Nymph and I to get so intense.

I had adrenaline pumping the entire time that attack was going on. It allowed me to stay focused through the events outside.

I was still in that adrenaline high when Eirlathion brought us inside. It helped me to stay focused when Tia used her strange blood healing method. The feeling of having her bite my arm also released more adrenaline and endorphins into my body. This gave me a boost and it kept the tension up. Her healing magic also had an intense invigorating effect to it.

I was still riding on that high when I talked to Tia and the boys about the situation we were in right now. Because we ended the subject with a talk about how to handle Eirlathion, that allowed my tension to stay up. Because of this, I was able to stay focused and ready for whenever Eirlathion came up here.

However, now I just had a very intense discussion with Nymph. My tension went really high in that discussion. I hid it during the discussion, but I had spoken my real feelings and intentions for this plan that involved our very survival. In it, I relayed exactly how desperate our situation really was. How many steps I was reading ahead. I have seen enough back on Earth to have a very good idea about how this all plays out, and also how our path to survival looks.

From where I’m standing, I really hope and pray to God all the way back on Earth that Eirlathion has something to offer that me and Nymph are unaware of. Some kind of solution that will make our situation not look so bleak.

Talking to Nymph had forced me to come to terms with exactly how bad things can very easily get. What Nymph told me is that things are already pretty close to that line. We are currently around two or three steps from the worst case scenario. Right now, we are only dealing with the villagers. The villagers have not done anything drastic yet.

But, if the villagers decide to take action, then they discover that we are well defended and the action they’ve planned is impossible, then they could seek assistance from outside the village. Worst case scenario then is they bring back someone Nymph cannot handle.

Right now, I do not see a way out. It seems like we’ve already gone too far down the path without me even being aware how far things had progressed. I cannot see a way to reverse course right now.

Having faced all that, and then resolving the problem with Nymph, the tension that had kept me going melted away and then I was crushed under the weight of everything that discussion had forced me to face head-on.

Once Nymph left, I simply collapsed into the bed and berried my face in the pillow. After that, I felt a sense of my mind drifting off in a manner I had not experienced in a long time. Tia, Levin, and Rolwen all came around to pester me, but I just growled at them and told them to leave me alone. I was simply too tired to deal with anything. I gave them instructions to only wake me up if Eirlathion was coming up.

***

Eirlathion sat and focused on the way that large dose of spirit energy was coursing through him. It was a very strange energy from an even stranger blood-based potion.

He did not understand the magic Tia had used. It was clearly some kind of blood-based vitality transferring magic, but that was about as far as his knowledge went. Blood magic was not something he understood very well. However, Tia clearly had an almost instinctive mastery over that spell, almost as though it was from a bloodline.

Demonic bloodlines were not very well understood. It would not be surprising for it to include some form of blood magic. However, what Tia did was too powerful to be the innate ability of any bloodline. It would have to be a bloodline at the divine level if it was.

The ability to use that magic certainly had to come from the previous life Tia had lived. Normally it was only fairies who remembered past lives. Even then, only the great fairies had a solid enough grasp on the memories they retained for them to be of any actual worth.

However, according to the story of the mother of those girls, they were conceived on the night of the Heaven Fall. Not only that, the body of Kiiria, which had sustained grievous injuries, basked in the intense residual energy of the fall. The body of Kiiria was remade and sustained by those energies which were strong enough to change this very world as they dispersed.

Those energies were enough to greatly strengthen the spirit of Kiiria, and it was clear that the daughters she birthed were abnormally powerful as well. Would it really be strange with all that energy for them to remember the past life as a fairy would?

The energy of Tia was always hard to track. The hunger for spirit energy of that girl knew no limit. There was no spare energy leaving the body of that girl, she consumed it all and kept it. This showed a level of energy mastery that was beyond that of a normal child. However, it made it easier to sell the story that she was merely a sick child.

Asa had a much harder time controlling the energy she released. From that, Eirlathion was able to tell that the energy she had was truly great. In fact, it was even greater than that of the two boys they had found. Those boys were unlike any they had ever discovered. After seeing the girls, he could not possibly think this was unrelated to the Heaven Fall. Judging by their ages, it is entirely possible that they were also each conceived on the night of the Heaven Fall. He had heard it took less than a full cycle of a season for a human pregnancy, so the ages of the boys would likely add up with the time the girls were conceived.

However, the energy of Asa was much greater than the energy of the boys. It would make sense, she and Tia were conceived much closer to the heaven fall than the boys were. And Asa had such a hard time hiding it.

Eirlathion had tried the best he could to teach her. He had thought her just a normal baby at the time. The methods he taught her could not even hide the intense energy she had completely, only lessen how intense it was. However, what leaked through was still greater than even the energy of a fourth tier mage such as himself.

Then, one day, Asa was suddenly able to completely hide the energy she released. While she had such difficulty before, it was suddenly undetectable. The only answer he could imagine was that she must have been taught how by Tia who had already demonstrated an excellence at controlling energy. 

This was the point where Eirlathion had begun to suspect that the girls might have retained at least some of the memories from the previous lives they had lived. Perhaps it was only as much as a common fairy, but somehow as elves they had retained memories of the previous life.

He did not press them on this. He was glad Tia had not taught Asa that intense energy absorption method she seemed to use to retaliate against children who clung to the boys. She was very protective of the birthmates she and Asa had been given. Perhaps she thought Asa might not use it in as disciplined a manner as she did. If used wrong, a technique like that could easily kill a young elf. It was good that Tia only ever took a small amount.

It was only a shame that girl also seemed to grow a distaste for anyone touching her, often warning people away with the same technique. Catla was the only one able to approach her, and he was certain that was only because she was human and was not in danger from those spirit absorbing techniques.

Eirlathion had reached the conclusion that Tia must have been a bloodcrafter in the previous life. One who has the ability to forge a new bloodline. He wondered if she had left behind any descendants in the previous life she lived, they would no doubt become a fantastic new line of sorcerers. Perhaps it is even a healing related power that this new bloodline had given. At some point, he would need to inform the queen to look for any new emerging sorcerer line with healing magic.

Tonight though was the event that had confirmed it all. Tia, despite all the cold treatment she had given him, leapt in to rescue him when he was being hunted. She took the arrow for him, and the arrow shattered without even damaging her. That body strengthened by the intense spirit energy of the Heaven Fall was impervious to all the arrows fired at her by the assassin.

It was clear that Tia had trained in a warrior meditation, that was the only explanation for the speed and toughness she demonstrated. Even with the body of a toddler, she caught and killed the two dark-elves pursuing him.

After this, he learned what kind of magic Asa was proficient in. She must have been a druid of the order school. This would explain how loved she is by the nymph. She demonstrated a mastery of wood magic that was beyond anything he could do himself. This did not actually suggest she was more powerful than him. She made strong use of the spirits to do this. However, being so loved by the spirits of nature is a feat onto itself. As a user of the green word, it was truly inspiring for him to see.

Eirlathion was uncertain whether or not he wanted Asa to have retained all the memories of the previous life she lived. If she had full access to those memories as a great fairy would, then he felt he could learn a lot from her. If she possessed only fragmented pieces of those memories, then perhaps he would enjoy taking her as an apprentice. It could even be a good way to mend the relationship between mother and daughter.

This brought him to this current state he was in now. After that, Tia had healed him using that blood magic. When that didn't fully heal him, she used a more intense form using the far more powerful blood of Asa.

As he drank the potion, it filled him with this intense energy. This energy easily bound to the spirit, making it an excellent accelerator to a warrior cultivation. He had hoped to finally enter the realm of fifth tier magic using this immense spirit energy, but it seemed that energy only wished to enhance the portion of the spirit corresponding to the body. He could only imagine this must be the influence of what Tia did to it.

This was not a bad thing. It would mean a longer life and a stronger body. He even felt that this energy would continue solidifying into the spirit even if he did not actively support it.

He could have left this meditative state a long time ago if he had not been so bothered by these events. When he had discovered that it was useless to control the flow of this energy, he had continued to sit there and think over the past events with those girls in light of what he had seen today. He was also glad for a reprieve from the aftermath of the chaos that had occurred outside. He dreaded the part where they began to count the dead.

There was another reason why he pretended to still be in meditation though. After this, he was going to have a conversation with the girls. After tonight, the lives of those two would likely be in danger. All the efforts to keep them safe had just been destroyed in a single night. They had to act, and he could only pray to Kingu that the girls had enough memory of the previous life they lived to understand and cooperate with what needed to be done from here onward.

He knew he had to have this discussion with them, but he had a hard time getting himself to move. It was not a discussion he was looking forward to. He didn’t even know how to start talking to those girls about this kind of thing.

Suddenly, his indecision was broken by the arrival of a very timid looking projection of the nymph.

“Umm… Ether.” The nymph called him by the same childish name all those children other than Asa used for him. “I… uhh. Asa just went to sleep.” The nymph said with a frightened look. “Asa doesn’t sleep! She has too much spirit energy! She doesn’t need it! I think something is wrong with her! She just yells at all of us to go away if we try to help her!”

Eirlathion sighed. From what the nymph just described, he could think of two possibilities. One was that it had something to do with the energy Tia had taken from her. The other… well, if it was the other then this was actually very good news. Things might even go well in the conversation he had been dreading.

Either way, he had a concerned nymph urging him on. That meant it was time to stop delaying.

Jemini

Jeeze! I am DEFINITELY feeling the regret over my decision to give the elven language no 3rd party or 2nd party possessive pronouns. It always makes writing chapters from elven perspectives... let's just call it "interesting."