“Gwyn. Mommy and Daddy won’t say anything since they pamper you so much. But as the Grand Shamanka of the clan, I cannot remain silent about this grave transgression.” Lilian stated. She deftly moved her fingers to shape Agwyn’s leafy hair into two magnificent tails of piglets.

But the woman herself had not the tenderness associated with the act. Her eyes flickered with a kind of stern admonishment.

The little princess’s face reflected on Lilian’s irises started quivering. Agwyn looked up, her eyes pitifully big and glossy. But it didn’t work. Not this time.

Lilian was determined to maintain clan tradition.

“What will everyone think if word gets out? The subordinate houses will no longer look at us the same, not to mention the other high nobles. What will the servants think? This concerns not just you, but the reputation of every man and woman of the main house.”

“B-B-B- Hic!” Agwyn hiccupped with her face all scrunched up, blushing a lavender pink.

The little bun frantically searched for the prince consort. Elrhain was resting on Eluned’s lap, nibbling away at a giant crustacean, seemingly not yet wise to her plight.

Agwyn was about to scamper away like a runaway raccoon, but Lilian had braced herself for all contingencies. She resolutely picked her up by her armpits and placed the struggling girl back on her lap. Agwyn cried with giant pearly droplets falling out like a waterfall, still hiccupping as though she had forgotten which way was up or down.

It was as if an arrow had punctured everyone’s hearts…. Except for the cruel Grand Shamanka’s.

Cyra was opened her mouth to plead the little bun’s case. While Bromwyn looked like someone had physically slugged him.

‘No! I must do this.’

Lilian communicated that to the two overprotective parents. Her glare rendered all objections moot.

From the corner of her eyes, she saw Elrhain cock his head with an ‘Eh?’. The boy peeked around as if belatedly realizing something unusual was going on. He warily put down the half-eaten crawfish claw, then observed Lilian’s face with vigilance.

To the side was Thundham. The old man coughed while cupping his mouth, then shuffled into the grass stuffed Zabuton with eyes closed. See no evil, hear no evil. If Lilian wasn’t in the sky realm, she wouldn’t have noticed Thundham’s brows squinching ever so slightly.

Dofnald and Eluned just looked baffled. The former servant wife placed a peeled shrimp onto Elrhain’s plate like an automaton. She then went back to peeling more, hesitating if she should choose a blue or red prawn this time.

For some reason, Elrhain threw his head backwards witnessing all this. The boy shot Lilian a look as if to say, ‘Just out with it! Can’t you see Annie is scared?’, then went back to eating.

Lilian shot back a, ‘What? You think you will be let off?’

But the prince couldn’t do telepathy. Lilian mused inwardly at her own childish actions.

By then, the princess had ended her resistance, settling onto Lilian’s lap with an expression of martyrdom.

Usually, seeing such a piteous Agwyn would have rendered anyone’s heart like the slash of a serrated dagger. That certainly seemed to be the case with Cyra and Bromwyn.

But Lilian was too old to feel so squirmish. Someone as experienced as she had already used Agwyn’s tactics to much greater degrees when she herself was a youngster.

Moreover, there was something…. off about the prince and princess’s reactions to all this that Lilian just couldn’t put her finger on.

The exalted Grand Shamanka sighed, again bringing her attention back to the matter at hand. The faster she concluded, the better for everyone.

“It is irresponsible. As the sole inheritor of the clan, what shall we all do if something truly unfounded happens to you? This is something Tudor should have hammered into you much earlier! Why did you keep it a secret for so long no less? I will first hear your excuses before we settle on a punishment!”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Lilian had assumed that the princess would burst out into a wail rivalling the angry squalls of monsoon, like this pampered princess was so prone to do when things didn’t go her way.

But she didn’t. Agwyn leaned away, putting her thumb in her mouth and suckling.

“I-Is Annie going to be e-executed? Am I not wanted anymore?”

““NO!”” Four voices shrieked out at once, and Thundham cleared his throat loud enough to terrify a dragon.

Lilian was also at a loss for words.

“You have nothing to say?” The Grand Shamanka asked with trepidation.

“I-Is Annie, a bad girl? I-I am sorry if I did bad things. Are you going to make my E-Ellie marry someone else after Annie’s cold, decaying corpse is fed to the shrimpies and fishies?”

Lilian stared up with her shoulders sagging, looking blankly at the stone ceiling. The dumpling on her lap had accepted her unjust fate, seemingly not aware of her crimes at all.

“No… Annie. Okay, don’t glare. Gwyn, why didn’t you tell us you have almost ignited all one thousand nodes in your Totemic Soul?”

“Huh? That’s what this is about?” This time, it was Elrhain. The boy dropped a large piece of crab meat onto his trousers at the revelation, raising an indignant moan from Eluned.

“I did?” The perpetrator in question answered with another question. Lilian could swear she saw the little girl stumble momentarily as if she had lost her composure. Agwyn had hastily covered it up and now spoke with a stiff smile.

“Yes! Spirits bless us. Why is such a talented inheritor so slow in head faculties. By the good name of the Overgods, you didn’t even notice how many nodes you have ignited?” Lilian gave up, then slapped her temples while muttering something in an unknown language.

It was probably a fancy swear word.

Agwyn on the other hand picked up her courage at the outrageous insult and began shouting really creative expletives, furiously defending her intellect.

Lilian just stared at the angry squirrel with lilac eyes. She knocked on Agwyn’s head, shouting, “Princess. Cultivation is the one thing a dhionne can really do to better herself. Tudor should have warned you of the repercussions. Do you want to be the first Earthloch heiress in our three hundred thousand cycle history to enter manna deviation even while mortal?! Death would shame our ancestors less!”

“B-But Annie forgot!” The princess was unusually defiant about this. Maybe it was because Elrhain was rolling on the ground, laughing like crazy.

Agwyn’s face turned redder by the second. The hamster was indignant. Lilian knocked on her head again without paying the snarling little girl any heed.

“You don’t get to be mad! Everyone should point at you laughing their bottoms off. I should call an all-Earthloch gathering just to ridicule you for being so thoughtless. Just imagining the outcome if the situation continued unbeknownst to all of us as is, disc be blessed…. When young Ysbail told me you always mess around with the prince and don’t concentrate on cultivation during Tudor’s classes, I first didn’t believe it. But now.”

“Ysbail, that snitch!”

“That is no way to address your cousin!” The third knock to the head, and the princess finally covered her noggin with a distressed look.

“She did you right. Do you know what happens when the Totemic Soul overflows? Do you know why Earthloch scions are forbidden from entering the Earthen realm before the age of ten? If we hadn’t scried your soul today, then who knows what the future could’ve been! You need punishment, you, you infuriating little creature!”

Indeed, because of some suspicions of her part, the Grand Shamanka had performed a particular ritual on the two kids today. It was a safe magic but quite invasive. It had taken a good while to prepare after the upheaval with the Swampling’s curse. Despite everyone else’s objections, Lilian was adamant about finding answers.

This invention of the ‘fishing pole’ she had been informed about today was all the more reason. As one of the clan leaders, she had to confirm any and all incongruities with the two successors’ souls before any actual harm could be done.

Such misgivings were poisonous, Lilian knew. But sometimes, the hard choices fell upon those who cared the most.

So with the help of many master shamans, her own acolytes, a few rare soul mages from the shire, and the Naeman witch, Lilian set up the scrying formation.

They placed the two sleepy kids in the centre, and everything else proceeded according to plan.

As usual, the first thing Lilian saw was the tether connecting the two’s totemic souls. Elrhain’s was quite dim. Maybe a hundred-odd ignited? Two hundred at most.

As for Agwyn…

The moment Lilian saw it, she was so horrified her vision was almost jerked out of the astral plane.

Nearly all the nodes in the little girl’s totemic soul, from the most frequent violet coloured ones to the rarest black blue, every node brimmed with manna on the verge of augmenting.

It wouldn’t be a problem for anyone else, as the process would halt there without an ichor. But this fool of a royal dunce had literally a hundred thousand ichoric legacies hidden inside her body. Even poking her waist at the right angle might be enough for the girl to subconsciously inject a random ichor into her ichoric heart chamber.

Lilian was scared silly. Agwyn was only three. A peak Earthen toddler!

Then she felt a rage like no other she had felt in the last few decades rising from within. Agwyn, that stupid girl, had kept this a secret!

For the next hour, Lilian continued probing for any abnormalities in the two connected souls while holding her anger at bay from interfering with her present work. She would put a seal on Agwyn’s ichors later when her investigations were done.

The esoteric arts of the Naeman Witch were certainly helpful in speeding up the process.

She caught a few details all the previous scrying had failed to discover.

An odd light that blinked on and off branching into the distance like a snake of manna. Far out in the same direction behind the horizon of the Astral plane and outside the Astral Boundary, there seemed to be an enormous spherical form. Like a dark moon looming only as a silhouette, it floated in and out of the shadows of the Astral clouds. Dead, but real. Like an opened eye of a blind Giant.