The Beasts' Forest:

"What... What does that mean?" Susan asked him in a bit of hesitation and confusion, which was to be expected.

"Precisely what I've said," he answered as he scratched at his chin, "as I said, what I've experienced and what happened in the last few days led me to this conclusion.

 

"First, I wasn't able to heal you, and the mana I used back then felt as if it disappeared without a trace, then a bit after that, while using my scanning spell, I felt the mana that passed by you got absorbed and disappear from under my control, it was then that I started suspecting that you somehow could absorb mana.

"Later, when I faced the floor hidden by a runic glyph I didn't recognise, I had the sudden idea of using this special trait of yours to absorb the mana powering it directly, and to my surprise, that did work, and that only strengthened my suspicions."

When he talked about having her try and see if she could affect the runic glyphs, Adam noticed that Susan had a weird look on her face, one she tried to hide, it was a mix of fear and hurt.

He couldn't come to understand why she would have that reaction and she didn't seem to want to talk about it so he let it be for then.

"I didn't tell you about all of this straight away because you weren't in the best state of mind these past few days, and even I don't have an actual answer, all I have are but educated guesses."

"It's like that...?" She murmured after he was done speaking.

He was able to see that she was still confused and had no idea about how to deal with this news, and even seemed as if she didn't understand what was really happening.

Thinking about it for a bit, he waved his hand, just for the sake of appearance, and called a bright sphere of milky white light with a thought.

Susan's eyes moved towards it instinctively, it wasn't the first time she saw him using this spell, he sometimes used it at night, and he also used it when they were exploring the ruins so she wasn't that surprised, but she seemed confused at what it was for.

"Here, I think this is going to give you a better idea about what I meant," he explained as he had the milky white sphere move towards her, "touch it when you feel like it."

She looked at the milky white sphere suspiciously and then at him again before lifting her hand and touching it.

As he expected, as soon as she touched the sphere, the spell appeared like a sphere of smoke getting sucked into Susan's finger.

She acted as if she got burned by a fire as she retracted her hand back as fast as she could, but if her expression was any indication, then she was just surprised and that didn't hurt her at all.

"Did that hurt?" He still asked her to make sure.

"N... No, it didn't, I just got surprised..." She answered as he predicted But then she continued in hesitation, "I still felt a chill going up my arm though..."

Adam frowned at that, he was able to remember that she did mention something like this before, how she felt something moving up her arm.

"The best explanation for this is that you're feeling the mana going up your arm as coldness, that still can't explain how you can feel it at all though, or why you can absorb mana..." He said.

Adam was a bit surprised about how good Susan was taking the news in, she wasn't as shocked as he thought that she would be, then again, he didn't know how much of that was because she really wasn't affected, and how much of it was because she simply didn't understand what those few words meant. Though he guessed that the second part had more of an impact, it didn't appear as if Susan had any real understanding about mana, magic and how all of that worked.

To someone like that, what he said won't be as shocking as it would be if the listeners were someone with a deeper understanding of magic.  

Shaking his head of those thoughts he turned his attention back to Susan who seemed to have calmed down a bit and fell into some deep thoughts, he didn't bother her and let her be with them for the time being.

A while later, Susan finally got out of her thoughts, she lifted her head as she asked him: 

"Do you have any idea about why something like this would happen?" Her voice was sturdier and she herself was calmer.

"No, not even an idea," answered Adam humorously as he shrugged before continuing in a graver tone of voice, "especially with you being a human, origins can't react with mana at all, that's one of the things that define a human, after all, someone can't be a human if they can use mana or affect it in any way... Being able to absorb mana somehow is making me doubtful of the fact that you're a human."

Seeing her turn as pale as a human can go when she heard the last part of his words, he hurried to add:

"Don't get me wrong, I'm almost sure that you're a human, you don't have any traces of mana on you, and your features are that of a human, you don't have any features of any other race in Tellor. The chances of you being anything other than a human are so minimum they can be considered null, I can't explain why you can absorb mana, or why you are so different from other humans, but there are uncountable unexplainable things happening in this world each and every day, and this is but one of them."

After calming down again, she asked the second question that was in her mind:

"How... How would this affect me?" From her tone, it was apparent that she was quite worried about this point, something Adam was able to understand.

"I don't really know, I didn't notice anything that bad about this, the closest thing that can be considered a bad effect of this is the fact that healing magic doesn't work on you, that would for sure make healing you a pain, making the danger you face a lot worst. Of course, that's just what I've noticed these last few days, there can still be some hidden dangers there, I can't give a final judgment," answered Adam before he suddenly thought of something as he added in a serious expression and tone of voice:

"You also have to make sure to let no one know about this trait of yours, there are a lot of people who would take great interest in your condition and try to understand it, and most of them would take drastic measures in their experiments to do so, your well being won't be high on their priorities then, you should be careful and try to hide it."

Susan nodded hurriedly, showing her understanding, she was already being followed by soldiers and whoever sent them, she for sure wouldn't want to make herself a target to more people, her chances were already low.

"It's good that you understand, now that we have dealt with that, let's start moving again, we still have a long way to go before reaching the next village, the journey is only going to get harder from here," done talking, he stood up and started collecting his stuff in preparation for moving.

Susan stood up too and started helping him before they continued again.

***

A Forest to the Far East of Aldiri, the Encolian's Capital:

Despite his aged features and old age, the encolian's current king, Tilton Ranly wasn't the king for long, he only took the seat a few years back after his big brother and the previous king, Arromar Ranly was assassinated.

Tilton himself wasn't interested in the position, but Arromar didn't leave any heirs and Tilton's eldest son, Mathias, wasn't old, or wise enough to rule in place of his uncle, so he took the position reluctantly as his son was being grown to fill the shoes of the encolian's next ruler.

At that moment, Tilton was looking at the multicoloured branches high above, and as expected and as it always was, the colour most prominent among them was blue, Tilton smiled lightly as he thought about how he was going to change that for the first time in the history of Aldiri.

Thinking of that, Tilton felt that he was truly alive for the first time in years, throwing his eyes ahead, the space in front of him was full of a half-finished grand array, with runic glyphs being left half-completed on purpose in many corners of the grand array.

Complicated runic glyphs spread as far as the eye could see, in a design so compact and complicated that it seemed impossible to understand.

Alongside the engraved runic glyphs on the floor, there was also gigantic rectangular pillars engraved with runic glyphs of their own, with big shining crystals spread around their faces equally. The crystals had different colours, but each pillar only had one type of crystals.

Tilton felt his heart beat as it hadn't in a long long time, the closer the time for him to move got, the more excited he felt, all that had been put in the ground till that point was only the work of some talented runic glyphs masters among the encolian, all he himself did was give some orders and instructions, his turn to step into the floor wasn't there yet, there was still some last-minute preparations to deal with as different runic glyphs masters ran amidst the array in front of him.

"How are things going right now?" Tilton asked the head of the guards next to him.

"Everything is alright, all the guards are in place already, and we have caught some skugg who came to stir up trouble, the most they were able to do was delay the ritual a bit, they weren't able to achieve any long-lasting damage," the head of the guards answered as he bowed.

Tilton nodded before bringing his attention back to the array under him, the people below were about to complete their part of the work, leaving the floor for him to complete the other half.

After the last glyph master left the floor below, Tilton turned to the head of the guards in front of him, gave him some final instructions before taking sturdy confident steps to the centre of the half-completed grand array, taking his place in the empty circle left there for him, surrounded by intricate runic glyphs 

Standing there, he took a deep breath, calmed his burning heart, closed his three eyes and fell into deep silence. A short while after, blue shining runic glyphs started spreading from under his feet, filling the circle he was in slowly.

The runic glyphs continued manifesting all around Tilton, filling the empty circle he was inside, with all the runic glyphs spreading from him touching its borders at the exact same time.

When that happened, the third eye on Tilton's forehead opened and shone with a blinding blue light as a blue shockwave like light expended from where he was, filling the whole grand array and lighting the existing runic glyphs in the same blue colour.

When all the runic glyphs lit up, new ones started manifesting, filling the different and spread out empty spaces of the grand array, completing it as they went.

 

When the blue light from the runic glyphs passed by the places where the gigantic pillars were, the colour would change to the colour of the crystals on it, and after that, the new colour would move on to light up the few runic glyphs around the pillars. Still, the strongest colour was the shining blue, after all, the whole point of the ritual was consuming as much of the encolian's mana as possible.

Not long after, and as the array was moving closer and closer towards completion, Tilton whole body started shining in bright blue light as he floated slowly of the ground.

Tilton's whole attention was on the array he was working on at that moment, he didn't care about what was happening around him, he didn't care about the people who suddenly appeared around the border of the land prepared for the ritual, neither did he care for the people who appeared closer to the array than they ever expected and nor all the soldiers who moved to stop all those new arrivals and the battles that ensued because of that. All his attention was solely on leading the ritual towards its final form and controlling the astronomical amount of mana that it produced.

The more runic glyphs shone and the more empty spaces were filled, the greater the amount of mana the grand array brought in.

That was the first time that much mana was under his control, even for someone like him, he never had the chance to do something like this, and he doubted anyone else in Tellor had such a chance.

Throwing those unimportant thoughts out of his mind, Tilton concentrated on completing the last part of the array and controlling the flood of blue mana that was still being collected.

After what seemed like ages passed while he was in this state, even though he knew that not even a few minutes had passed, the array was finally complete.

As soon as that happened, the whole array pulsed with a blinding blue light for a second before the blue light disappeared entirely out of it.

That didn't last for long though, a short while after it happened, an oppressive sense of unease fell on everyone close to the array, they all stopped what they were doing and lifted their heads in unison as if practised on, to look at the branching Luminous Rivers on the sky.

What they saw then was something they would never forget for their whole lives.

From those gigantic shining branches in the sky, bolts and wisps of what appeared to be blue shining smoke twisted downwards towards the grand array on the ground before starting to circle Tilton.

At first, those bolts and wisps were small and solitary, but with time, those bolts grew in number and size, till it seemed as if shining gigantic blue tornados were landing on the area, linking the sky and the ground.

With that, for the first time in the history of Aldiri, for a short few seconds, the blue colour disappeared from the Luminous Rivers in the sky above.