Lilian came back to reality with mixed feelings. The discoveries were undoubtedly worrying. But there was nothing to be done now. At least, not for this particular problem.

As for the overflowing nodes…

She glanced at the two kids. Their hair was fuzzed up like the fur of a Lynxmean, the felines of thunder. An after-effect of the lightning manna of the formation no doubt.

The princess menacingly glared at Witch Alorakana, baring her sharp fangs. The Naeman witch grinned back with her fiendish getup, a lock of leafy hair in her long-nailed fingers.

The Grand Shamanka could not help but exhale deeply.

‘The aspect of the soul matches that of the body.’

Further treatment or auguries would have to wait. In regular times, the treasured materials required for such high-grade rituals would cost Earthloch an arm and a leg if they chose to trade them from other clans.

But fortunately, with the collapse, they should spawn on their own in the many manna-riogh’s of the North within three to five cycles, judging by the records of past collapses. Until then, the two kids had to constantly be placed within earshot.

Not even she could foresee the repercussions if the princess and prince augmented their souls with ichors as things stood now. There were too many unknown variables.

And yet, and yet.

‘This… mindless buffoon! Like mother like daughter.’ Lilian fumed within, immediately blaming it all on the numb-sculled Faediaga Eldress and her equally brain-dead husband. A match made in heaven if there was one. It’s why Lilian never explicitly approved their marriage in the first place.

Lilian had already made up her mind as the ritual formation lost its light. Agwyn’s immediate family would never, ever, have the heart to reprimand her. They treated her like half their souls. They spoiled her like an ancestor.

It would be up to her, the calm-headed Auntie Lilian, to set things straight. So here they were back in the present.

Supper was already over.

The two dumplings had been kneeling on their pudgy legs for the last ten minutes.

A gallery of heartbroken half-wits wiped their tears at the side.

“They need this so the lesson will stick,” Lilian growled at them. Then turned her sharp glare toward the children.

“…. Why do I have to kneel too….” Elrhain muttered.

“N-No one loves me anymore.” Agwyn sobbed. But Lilian knew crocodile tears when she saw them.

“Quiet. You two will marry in the future.” Lilian saw Agwyn’s distressed eyes light up in delight for just a second before she went back to moping. Indeed, this girl might be a lost cause for more serious intellectual matters, but she was unquestionably an actor.

“If you don’t learn to share woes now, when will you?” Lilian said. She looked at a pale blue leaf burning in a small clay pot by the firepit. The ashes had piled up into a beautiful dusty mountain, and little of the leaf was left yet unburnt.

Bromwyn kept pointing at her and then the leaf. The big guy was a shame to the name of Siorrakt if Lilian had ever seen one! Not to mention the killing intent she was feeling from Cyra.

“Ah, fine, I get it. You two can get up now. Anything more, and I will be too frightened to go to sleep in the coming days. Both your mothers look like the last guardian of death aspected manna-rioghs.” Lilian acquiesced.

“Yay~” The little girl threw away the gloom and ran to her family. “Does everyone love Annie again?”

What followed was half an hour's worth of coddling, confessions, begging for a second chance and every other drama even a drunk storyteller could not conjure up.

Lilian was speechless. She wanted to leave this nauseating place, but a tiny hand tugged her shawl.

“I-Is Auntie L-Lilian still mad at me?” It was Agwyn.

Lilian rolled her eyes, then kneeled down, opening her arms wide. Agwyn cheered, jumping into her embrace like a gossamer cloud.

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

“Silly girl.” She replied. “I wasn’t mad. I was concerned! You can’t keep secrets like this anymore, okay? You two are special. And you are brilliant. Unlike Cati, Ysbail and Jesta, it's not like you to neglect something as important as your Cultivation base. If something happens, what do you think your uncle Tudor will feel? Will he not fault himself for not emphasizing the matter enough?”

“S-Sorry…. I won’t keep bad secrets…” the little girl whimpered.

Lilian was about to speak again, but Agwyn suddenly cupped Lilian’s cheeks and peered straight into her eyes.

Lilac pupils like a disc of amethyst. Worry, doubt, conviction. There was something more there, and Lilian didn’t know what it was.

Agwyn let go, then scuttled to Elrhain and whispered something in his ears. Because of her high cultivation, the words reached Lilian’s ears too. But they were strange and slurped. Lilian understood the individual words, but when put together, they made no sense.

A few moments later, Agwyn returned and brought her mouth closer to her ears.

“C-Can you keep a secret?” She asked.

“…. Gwyn?”

“U-umm, I asked Ellie, and he said OKAY. T-There’s something. En, a secret? Y-You told me not to keep. You won’t get mad?”

Lilian didn’t reply. She made eye contact with Thundham. The old man had a solemn look on his face as he nodded. Cyra, Bromwyn, and the other two looked worried, but they didn’t defy the Grand Elder’s command.

Lilian turned towards Agwyn and asked, “Why don’t you share it with everybody else too?”

“Ah, shhhhh!” Agwyn put her palms on Lilian’s mouth and peeked back towards her parents. She judged the adults didn’t overhear, then whispered with even a quieter voice. “I-I don’t want mommy to get mad so soon after we all made up!”

“So it’s fine if it's me?”

“Well, Auntie Lilian looks like she loves to get mad every time I see her.”

Lilian choked, resolutely ignoring the snickers coming from the half-wits. She then booped Agwyn’s nose in revenge.

‘Huh? That felt nice. No wonder Eldress Cyra does it all the time.’ She booped again.

Agwyn preened, revelling in the attention.

“Okay, tell me what you have to say. But if it’s dangerous, I might not be able to keep a secret. Wait, don’t pout. Let me finish. I promise that whatever the secret is, no one will get mad at you.”

“Really?” Agwyn held up her pinky finger.

“Of course. I am the Grand Shamanka after all. Who dares ignore my words?” Lilian didn’t disappoint the little girl, hooking her own little finger with Agwyn’s. “Now tell me. What’s this other secret?”

Agwyn squirmed for a moment, twiddled her fingers as she bit one uncut lock of her hair. She hesitated but ultimately found the nerve to open her tiny mouth again.

“Okay… so you know how mommy always tells me to never play outside after dark? And always take a gawdian, like Captain Anouk, when we go to new places?”

“Gawdian?”

“…. Guardian.”

“Yes, that should be obvious.”

“So if Annie and Ellie go out to play after falling asleep, you won’t get mad?”

“Explain.” Lilian inhaled.

“You see, after me and Ellie fall asleep, Annie poofs into this big black place with my Totemic Soul and twinkly stars, right? There’s this door there, like the shiny ones in the Elder’s rest, but I can see through them. Like orange Ice!

And I can go to Ellie’s big black space where his Totemic Soul is after walking, um, flying? through the tunnel-hole behind the door. But inside this tunnel, there are more icy doors.” Agwyn whispered as she cupped her mouth near Lilian’s feathery ears. Every few seconds, she would turn back to see if anyone was eavesdropping.

“And you know, Annie and Ellie read a loooot of scrolls in the Archive Keeper grandpa’s cave because Ellie says reading will make Annie smarter than him. And there’s this one time I read about a disc where they have this grey sand that can turn into stone after adding water. A discwalker wrote it in her nemmnoir...I mean, me-mo-ir?

Then when Ellie and me napped that night, I pushed open one door inside the tunnel with Ellie, and suddenly, we were in that disc… I think?

There were many dhionne in that place, and they all looked the same. They were building something really, really big with that weird sand. It didn’t look like any place in Earthloch Siorrakty like we visit all the time. So Annie thought it was the place we read in the scroll!

But you see, there’s this one time when Ellie got lost running inside another door after leaving Annie behind. Um, Ellie called it Lucid Dreaming and not normal dreaming? Anyway, he deserved it. Also, there was a big town behind the door with metal houses taller than the trees growing in our forest. The dhionne there too looked all the same. It’s like they all cut off their horns and wings and tails. It's there we saw an old dhionne grandpa making the fishing pole!

After that day, we read many scrolls in the archives, and finally, Annie found it, the place we went to after falling asleep. A discwalker mentioned in his memoir that he visited a disc long ago. The disc has only one river. The dhionne living there use ropes and sticks to trap fish! I even showed it to Archive Keeper grandpa.”

The little girl articulated. She described one place after another as her voice gradually grew louder. But she didn’t seem to notice that and continued her tales of travels.

“Ellie and I went to a place with mean-looking clouds in the sky. The dhionne who looked the same there were all cursed. But there are these other dhionne wearing bright robes that covered their faces and a beautiful lady who showed up and made a juice with salt, water, and sweet salt. Um, salt that tastes like fruit.

I’m not lying! It looks like salt but tastes sweet. She used the juice to cure the cursed, and they were all smiling and were so happy! Annie wanted to be like that too. So I went to say hello, but no one talked back, no matter how much I tried.”

It was as if she was lost in a story she had lived herself. She described event after event and disc after disc.

Metal birds that could fly faster than sound. Giant huts larger than the whole Lochuir township. Meat that grows on metal trees and dhionne-made fish that can stay under the void seas for months.

It was all things Lilian was sure even the most delusional dreamer of Earthloch couldn’t make up. And she was also sure that Agwyn wasn’t lying.