Seed 8

June 10th, 2032.

“So it appears Arali’s theory has some merit,” I muttered to myself as I paged through the ancient tome of Old Magic. It was from the perspective of a researcher studying ancient and forgotten forms of the Craft. “References to an ancient pictographic language, serving as an analogue to Latin when it comes to sourcing root words. Sifra is the glyph of void, and Frazo is the glyph of fire.”

I had seen the symbol in Dinah’s flames, twisting and twining energies igniting the light of the sun into fire and life. It was a hallow, a space to bind the energies of magic, a place for energies that had no place in this universe.

I drew the glyph on the ground, a simple circle with three lines slashed across its southern border. To my lack of surprise. Fire arose from the glyph, surging into my hands and I felt it.

In my blood, in my bones and muscles and tendons and veins and arteries, in my chest and stomach and eyes and groin and everywhere that was I and Me.

It was a fine thread of fire, a little heartbeat held in my hands. I thought of how I could rub my hands together to heat them. I made circular motions, coaxing the fire to follow, blending the energies of the flame with my own until—

It became lighter, different, like the sweep of the morning wind, or the curve of an ocean wave. Sputtering crimson and orange was displaced, orange becoming antique gold, crimson becoming illustrious violet with hints of green throughout.

“Dragon’s Fire huh? I’m guessing the dragon princess really inspired you.”

I jumped and the fire flared, gently sweeping along my hands and soothing the dull ache from drawing before winking out. Ultima snorted at my reaction as she slid into view, her cloak rippling in the summer breeze

“What?”

Ultima brushed back a stray bang of mine with a curl of her claw, and I flushed. “Didn’t think you’d take after me so easily is all, I’ve made my fair share of rivals and enemies at your age. Luckily for you, this one isn’t going to kill you for the insult.”

“I panicked okay!” I hadn’t meant for any of that to happen.

“Of course you didn’t, even the little dragon knows. Else you’d be up on a wanted poster by now… she’ll definitely be chasing you down though.”

…

“Why does this world hate me?”

“I doubt Calafia has any hate in her many hearts for you,” Ultima said with a toothy grin as she patted my back, leading me back towards our-her home. “But a sense of humor is another story, Dinah clan Frazoiyo is going to be a hard nut to crack.”

“Calafia is the name of the Titan isn’t it? The creature we’re currently standing on?” Ultima nodded as she opened the door to her home, pulling out a cardboard box leaning against the wall of her living room.

“She’s the mother and father of us all, from her flesh and ichor arose the bodies of the otherkinds, her dying thoughts became our minds, and from her soul and spirit arose our souls and the spirits of this land.”

I shivered, I had seen the maps of the region on her walls. It roughly paralleled California, though it was somewhat smaller and fractured. We were still talking about over two hundred and twenty thousand square kilometers of landmass. It was a creature so vast it likely towered into space when it was alive.

I had seen some open veins, digging below the earthy layer to reveal organic tissue, fractal patterns of semi-crystalline flesh, bleeding a strange golden ichor that Ultima told me not to touch. Which was decidedly horrifying to look at, as light itself seemed to sink into the strange liquid, reflecting strange unearthly images.

Titan Ichor was a colored, metallic, semi-transparent liquid that flowed throughout the body of the Titan. The lifeblood of the god under our feet, an impossibly dense source of power with potent and terrifying effects on the fabric of reality. Capable of tearing paths into other realms or fueling massive rituals, it could distort the very rules that underpin the working of the Craft.

It was nightmarishly rare due to how the ichor could shift density and volume, ranging from slightly denser than water to far, far denser than platinum.

“Still strange to think of a being so powerful and vast, that even in death it still shapes the world.” But maybe it was best to think of it as a collective?

One cell was nothing, but quadrillions upon quadrillions of cells had led to the Oxygen Catastrophe, changing the Earth forever. In death the carboniferous forests became the foundations of the Industrial Revolution, so maybe I could imagine it just fine.

“There’s a reason we consider our Titan our god,” Ultima clicked her tongue as she cut the tape of the cardboard package with her claws. “Oh your mom sent you some medication…”

“Yeah she does that whenever I need a refill of my—” I cut off my words as the blood drained from my face. I dove, ripping the box out of her hands as my heart leaped from my chest. “Do not open it any further!”

Ultima stared at me with concern. “I was just opening it for you? But… sorry Celia, this is private isn’t it?” She did sound apologetic, her guilt shifting her voice into an odd hiss. “Arali has been living with me since I found him as an egg, so I’ve gotten into the habit of opening packages for him. But you’re not him.”

The buzzing panic at the edge of my mind softened at her warm expression, and I counted backwards from ten until the shivering and vibrations of my body came to a gradual stop. She was treating me like I was one of her own.

I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck, thinking, wondering why mama had decided Ultima was safe. She only delivered my medication to people she trusted implicitly. “Have you been talking with my mom?”

Ultima stiffened. “On occasion I’ve been in the area, and your mother asks me how you’re doing and if you’ve made any friends in the neighborhood. She’s very protective.” She was gently rubbing her hands together, claws clinking against each other.

My mom was many things, perfect was far from one of them. But I knew she loved me. And I did trust Ultima, she was my Mentor, willing to put up with all my nonsense, willing to treat me with kindness and respect.

“I think I can trust you with this,” I rubbed my neck, chewing on my dry lip and doing my best not to peel it. “What… What do you know about people who don’t feel like what they were born as?”

Ultima tilted her head. “Human?”

“No. About a boy who feels like they’re a girl or a girl who feels like a boy? Or any other possible combination?” Her eyebrows lifted from her dark face, something like realization passing through her eyes.

“Oh you mean you’re loken don’t you?” I didn’t recognize the term. “Or… what do you humans call it, transgender? I suppose you wouldn’t know, but such a thing is quite accepted in Calafia, our god was an ever shifting being, mother and father and ortet. Why would we deny the truth of what something simply is?” I processed her words with shock, as they sank in and told me I was safe.

My eyes started to water, and I dove towards Ultima, wrapping my arms around her waist. She made a noise of surprise but didn’t push me away, instead carefully wrapping her own arms around me, pulling me into her chest, where I could hear the quiet but deep thrum of her heart.

“You okay?” There was an almost anxious gentleness to her question and I nodded.

“Just give me a minute or two to calm down.”

“Of course, you’ll need to be calm for our trip today.” there was bemusement in her voice.

“For what?”

Ultima smirked. “I’ll be taking you to a place rich in natural magic, so we’re going to be flying.”

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“H-How high are we going?” I hid my terror from Ultima as I cling tightly to her back. She commanded her staff to lift higher and higher. We were thousands of feet in the air, gradually ascending until we were at the level of low lying clouds.

“Well patagial islands tend to be at least at cloud level so we’re not far off now.”

“Patagial islands?”

Ultima pointed with her claw towards what I thought was a cloud, and my jaw dropped. It was a floating island, columns of stone and compacted mineral matter, of soil and plant life made of wood and flesh and chitin, blood red in pigment, branches and leaves and stretches of veiny fins and feathers reaching up to the sun.

Swarms of red surrounded the island, and Ultima surrounded us in a bubble of wind right as we smashed into the red cloud.

“What—” I cut my words off as I saw what we were passing through.

It was a menagerie of aeroplankton, of clouds of red algae and seaweed floating on the wind, of ballont multi-legged insects covered in moss and flowers, or drifting krill in the millions, of five legged starfish floating on liquid air, grabbing onto handholds of it, torpedo shaped fish-birds darting to catch prey, extending strange folding beaks to do so.

We swept out of the shoal of atmospheric beasts, flying out of what was effectively a miles long stream of life and flesh and air.

“A lesser known fact is that the Titans all had the ability to fly once upon a time, it was how they came upon this world. With wings that spread from horizon to horizon, and when they died, their wings dissolved and were shorn away by the sands of time and decay, and became part of the air itself, fueling the birth of the atmospheric ecosystem as both food and habitat.”

“Oh, patagial, these islands are floating on pieces of the Titan’s wings?” It made sense to me, if their blood alone had reality warping properties. What would the remains of their wings do when left to rot?

Ultima replied back. “They are, they’re the reason our world’s skies are so rich in life, they occur both on Calafia, Cipactli, and the mainland, and likely everywhere else in the world.”

“Sometimes I forget that your world is just as big as mine, even if there’s way less people.” Arali had told me some things, the mainland was known as Cemetario, a fossil graveyard of thousands of Titan corpses. Most of their names lost and forgotten. “Maybe a hundred million across the continent?” I think that was the current estimate of their population.

“You humans really like to pack yourselves in, for every one of us there are eighty of you.” I could hear her awe and shrugged. “Anyways, I’ve taken you up into the Skylands for a reason.”

“What reason is that?”

“Guess.” Was all she said, spreading her arms right as we landed on the ground, and I felt the gentle give of the soil.

To the west I could see a strange forest of… clear material, spangled giant trees covered in crowns of plastic branches acting like giant lenses. I saw a centipede the size of a rat try to dig into a tree… and it burned as one crown-branch shot a laser that cooked it alive. The branch lunged, pulling the creature into itself and devouring it.

I blinked, mesmerized by the response of the tree. Some form of carnivorous behavior? Did that mean the soil was nutrient poor, and they needed to take in nutrients from living organisms?

To the east was a broken up plain of floating platforms linked together by tendrils of light. Pulsing once a second, each holding ancient ruins, castles reduced to rubble, guard towers of iron and stone leaning off of cliff edges and scattered remnants of houses and homes reduced to charred skeletons.

Broken, dead, ended.

“You want to teach me about the more dangerous aspects of magic don’t you? And it’s beauty and terror.”

Ultima looked proud. “Not bad, it’ll also include self defense and the patterns integral to the various forms of magic, internal and external. The Craft is both a gift and a burden to those who wield it.”

“So where are we going?” I asked.

She smirked. “To the Ruins of Lympha.”

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The Ruins of Lympha were as silent as the grave. Like dead air, no chirping of birds, no croaking of frogs or other strange creatures, no rustling of grass or soft gentle whistles of the high wind.

Just silence that crept at the back of your mind and senses, a dirge of death, a sense of being hunted, watched, of something aching to devour your heart, to gnaw on your bones and drink of your blood and eat of your flesh.

It was in that silence that Ultima taught me of the Elements. Not just physical ones but areas of deep metaphysical focus, of concepts and primordial forces. Some were more important but they were all part of the world, part of What Is.

“For the people of Calafia, there are many Elements. But some of the most fundamental of them are the Classic Four. Air, water, earth, and fire.” She summoned all four with a sweeping gesture of her hands, gusts of wind fanned flames, while whirls of water wore away at flecks of rock. “They are focal points of the world, parts of the Real given dominion over creation.”

I nodded, mesmerized by her casual display of magic and skill. “I understand.”

“Air is the element of freedom, playful and capricious, dynamic, drawing on the energy and movement of the winds. Associated with lightness, quickness, agility and vision.” With a spinning motion of her hands she cast a twirling whirlwind, tinted blue by diffraction. It blew off into the distance. “To some it’s an element associated with peace… but I think you’re smart enough to know better.”

“The heart of a hurricane, the hot dry winds of my home that bring fire and death and fan disaster, the power to steal our very breath.” If a witch can control air, why can’t they pull the air out of a person’s lungs?

Ultima offered a disturbing smirk, like the snarl of a predator, and I offered the same, even if I lacked her fangs. “Good, the Chantry has done a lot to wipe away many branches of the Craft, they call it ‘pruning’ of savage practices. There’s so much we’ve forgotten.”

“Yep.”

She started again, forming a wave of water with a swaying push of her hand. “Water is the element of change, of the innate qualities of the liquid form of matter itself, drawing on the tides of the great Ocean. Associated with life, flow, of transformation and adaptability. Water is life.” She stopped, and gave me my turn.

“If water is life then it is also death,” I declared as I thought about it not through pure scientific logic but through the lens of philosophy. “The roiling currents of tsunamis, the wearing down of mountains and the carving out of canyons. Water is the best of the elements at decaying and breaking down the things of man and nature.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Ultima cast aside the wave, letting it drop limply to the ground, and moving on to the third element in her line-up. “Earth is the element of substance, embodying the enduring strength of stone and the vibrant energy of the tectonic forces, drawing power from them. Earth is resilient, diverse, and patient and enduring.” She lifted a column of rock with casual ease, easily enough to crush a car.

“Earth is strong, but it is also crushing and devastating, earthquakes that shatter cities, splitting plates that sink down into the depths, it can be tradition that preserves and saves but also that which buries all in its wake.”

No element or aspect of the Craft was inherently evil, it simply was. I saw this lesson for what it was. She wanted me to respect what she was teaching me.

Ultima ignited the fourth element in her hands. “Fire is the element of power, it is destruction and aggression, drawn from the heat and energy of the sun. It is energy and will, warmth and leadership. What else is fire?”

I crossed my shoulders, taking a moment to think. “Fire isn’t just destruction, it’s also creation, also life. It’s a mirror of itself, it is passion, all emotions both negative and positive. The breath of the flame and the wildfire, and the warmth of a nice summer day and a shared bonfire.”

Ultima cracked a smile. “Good, I’m glad to see you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. These are the Elements that shape the world, but we of course know there are more. Metal, ice, lightning, blood, shadow and light. Metal is of earth, refined and forged, ice is water given the cold of dark, lightning is fire at its most energetic, pure energy. Blood is of water given the iron and grit of life and connections, the blood of the covenant and the water of the womb. Dark and light are opposing opposites, perhaps elements in their own right, or inchoate forms born at the beginning of time.”

The fifth.

“Void is special isn’t it?” No modern text had even a hint of void as an element, it was something only used in fairy tales and creation myths.

“Void is an element I’ve never seen before in my life, the aura of it is… alien, it’s outside my knowledge.” Ultima sounded frustrated at not being able to help me. “Every witch has their own form of sensing magic, sight, smell, touch, even taste. But void has a way of evading or scrambling my magic, it feels like everything and nothing.”

“Maybe that’s important to what void is? To what it can do when unleashed.” I know there was more to the Void than altering kinetic and gravitic forces.

Ultima’s gaze sharpened. “You’re right, which is why we’re going to spar here and now.”

“Que?” I squawked and my Mentor’s eyes simply glinted with old lady mischief.

“Like I said, you’re going to need to be able to defend yourself, as well as be able to control your magic. You know basic self defense, but how often have you put it into real practice?”

I swallowed at the intensity Ultima was directing at me. “Not often.”

“You’re gonna have to get the moves down, how to shape and direct the energies inside and outside. I think you’ll do that fast, so we’ll also work on how to fight while distracted. Which in any real fight is all of them, until you’re more practiced you won’t be able to think.” I cringed at what I had done when Dinah had threatened me. “I’ll show you how to keep in control, so you don’t panic in a fight, so even if you don’t think, you can still react and live.”

“I understand.” I took deep resounding breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. “What is the other reason?”

“Magic is fueled by the energies of the soul and spirit. The ability to move and manipulate our khi to our will, though this energy has many names across many cultures. And what I’ve already taught you is that everyone has khi, even humans. It’s the only reason you can even shape your glyphs at all. All fighters use khi, witch or human, even if they don’t realize it. I’m going to see how well you can move your energy, and make you the best damn witch in the Isles.”

“I’m looking forward to the day I beat you then.” I feigned a cocky smirk and she made a come-at-me gesture as she lowered into a combat stance.

“I’m going to have to kick you up and down this island first kid, starting—”

She attacked mid sentence. I yelped as I rolled away from a kick that whirled with fire whirling together with a cutting vortex of air.

Oh shit.

“Let’s see how much you can take!” She swirled her staff, and launched masses of earth spikes which cut a building in half when I dropped to dodge the attack.

…

I’ve made a terrible mistake.

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I collapsed against the wall of a collapsed house. Body drenched in sweat and face caked with dirt and ash.

Hours.

Ultima had been fighting me for hours. Only offering me brief water breaks before I had to dive back into dodging or deflecting her attacks. Barrier had proven useful against most elemental attacks, but water retained the annoying property of being able to slip past it.

It had something to do with water being a perfect balance of physical and metaphysical. Air and fire were too immaterial, though heat could get through, and earth was too solid so it was blocked just like any kinetic force.

There was more to the void though, as I had gotten better at drawing out the power of my glyphs without destroying them, simply holding the energy to be weaved into a spell.

When I used the void, it was like a well of possibilities, it was the uncanny sensation of thorns under my skin, of coiling, roiling refractions slithering up against my soul, of peeling back the veil and pushing it outward to shape the world to my will, of a crown placed on my head, whispering to me from the yawning maw of long dead stars and the chattering teeth of the darkness between.

That crown gave me the power to negate the rules of reality, to magnify mass and kinetic energy, to negate mass and kinetic energy. The void was everything and nothing at all, it was… and was not.

As I sat down, I circled my index finger around a glyph. I gently streamed the threads of magic to my will. When I warped gravity and mass. I imposed rules on them, they will do this, because that was what void was for.

I grabbed a rock, and infused it with the energies of the void, and let the whispers guide me. Be unbound.

And it did, the void seeping out from my fingertips and down into the rock, weaving together into a fine net of invisible thread. The rock dissolved as I negated the rules that denoted the tiny fleck of earth.

My lips curled into a savage smile. “Oh, this has possibilities.” I let the magic run its course as my teacher approached, her staff following her with a flare of dim moonlight.

“We’ve got one more place to visit before we can consider this field trip, concluded.” With a drooping nod I slipped onto the staff, and found it weirdly comfortable.

Ultima had mentioned that a linked focus and familiar could create comfortable transportation for a witch.

“On the island?”

“No.” Was all she said as we flew off, back towards the more stable core.

“You never did tell me what happened here.” I continued the conversation, as the high wind blew past us.

“You’re about to find out.” Was all she said as she accelerated to her top speed in a matter of seconds, right towards a cliff.

…

“What are you doing!” I let out a strangled scream as we shot off like a missile right towards a solid wall of stone covered in strange tissue.

“Secret!” She shouted back as the wind was sheared apart by her magic.

“Don’t you fucking dare—”

We hit the wall, and I felt the signature lurch of a shockwave into reality, of dimensions crushing together.

When I opened my eyes. I was surrounded by tendrils of what looked like glass, round spheres the size of cars with many arms, connecting with one another to form a network of crystals. They reflected strange scenes and images, images emerging from the inky darkness contained within. Neurons?

“What the hell is this?”

“That would be one of the many processing centers of our Titan, you could say it’s a piece of her nervous system.” Ultima explained the insanity of what I was watching like it was completely normal.

“Processing?” I asked and Ultima answered with a shrug.

“Titans are multifaceted beings, every part of them can play many different roles, but they do specialize as needed. A living ecosystem unto themselves.”

…

Was she saying they were some form of modular organism? Actually that would make sense for a superorganism on this scale.

“So why are we going here?”

Ultima looked sad. “These places have deep memories, even if accessible one’s are few and far between. You wanted to know what happened, so I’ll show you.”

We slowed to a stop at a single floating platform of rock, kept aloft by trickles of golden light. I jumped off, hesitating at the strange pulsating darkness given mind, given purpose and will.

“What do I need to do?”

Ultima snorted. “Just call out that town’s name.”

…

I coughed and did so. “The Ruins of Lympha.” In a blink the neuron responded, rippling with a sound that was a mix of wet and crystalline, a chime that set me both at ease and not.

The darkness swelled, black as pitch, formless and ever shifting like tar until light escaped from the cracks to form a scene.

A war in the skies, a petty copy of greater and grander battles.

It was a war in the heavens, witch against witch, magic against magic, soul against soul. Armies riding on the backs of griffins, with crowns of flesh and meat reflecting like gemstones, holding flat blades lined with teeth, covered in black pitch magic with cracks like eyes blinking as they fired torrents of the elements which tore into floating islands which shattered, buildings and farms falling down.

Titan flesh…

“What are Titans exactly?” I swallowed as one woman with three emerald eyes cast out a vial of golden blood… and tore reality asunder, as space and time unfolded and unraveled into a focused spear.

And she couldn’t control it, as it doubled back on her own comrades. I was horrified by the result. Flesh sloughed off with zero friction, matter fused and unfused with horrific results, bodies were literally spaghettified in four dimensions, and it tore open portals with a whip crack of fracturing spacetime.

I swallowed the horror and waited for Ultima to answer my question.

“I never did clarify what the Others are, did I?” Was what she said as she watched the scene without flinching.

“No you did not.” I looked away from the scene and met her tired silver eyes.

“The Celestials, the Outsiders, the Fundaments, They Who Simply Are, those who are Other. They are said to be the first things to ever be, the shapeless light and dark borne of the void.” She looked almost reverent, and it made me remember their belief in their makers was powerful. “The Others are said to be the embodiment of the cosmos, both Spirit and Soul, the light of the Stars and the dark of the Deep. The Titans were those beings of the dark who took physical form, coming down from the stars to observe and play among the worlds… and lay down their lives to become our progenitors.”

“I understand, I think, but how does that relate to this scene?” I had to ask the real question.

“The Titans are beings of the dark, you could call them yin. Hard, negative, cold, destruction, the struggle to exist. So we inherited their taste for war and conflict, we fight to survive, the will to live. Using the Craft is tying yourself to both aspects, creation and destruction, life and death, the gardener and the winnower.”

“I get it I think… technology is like that too, we can use it to create, but we can also use it to destroy. The people here used the powers of the Titan and lost control of it, and destroyed themselves. You want me to learn from their mistakes.”

“Hope this isn’t too much pressure,” there was an honest concern in her question and I giggled.

“It’s fine, you aren’t telling me to save the world, just to think. And that… that I can do.”

My lips curled into a lopsided grin.

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Ultima smiled weakly at the woman who was the mother of her Apprentice. The one she had chosen to be the inheritor of all her knowledge and secrets. Who had come back from their field trip with a skip in her step before passing out on her couch.

The two women were sharing a cup of ice citrus tea, sweetened with honey, sitting across one another in the home that linked directly to her domain. Layers of defenses and magic had been carved deep into the old home, carefully siphoned from her world and into this one. It allowed magic to thrive locally in the twisted space surrounding them. In some ways it was an extension of her home in the Woven Realm.

Lucia smiled into her cup, her throat bobbing with each slow gulp of frigid tea. Hazel eyes gleaming, deft fingers rapping against ceramic one at a time. Ultima swallowed, and shook her head. I am not going to flirt with my apprentice’s mother, I am not going to flirt with my apprentice’s mother—

“Well, I can certainly see why my apprentice is going to be a real heartbreaker.”

Fuck, was her first thought and knew she had no way to take back what she had just said.

“So my daughter has made some friends in this neighborhood?” There was a calculating look in Lucia’s eyes that in Ultima’s view was a tad unnerving. Like she was dissecting Ultima down to an atomic level, every twitch of her fingers, every shift of her foot or sway of her arms, every minute breath or individual syllable of language, it was almost terrifying.

Lucia was a short, pudgy and busty Mexican lady but she was not harmless by any means despite her looks. She was a caged tiger, waiting to strike and rip out her throat. So she was definitely proof that her own apprentice had fangs and claws aching to come out.

“She has,” she decided to go with the truth. “Both are around the same age, Althea and Hakim. Sweet kids, she seems to like them, and she’s especially taken a shine to Althea.” It was clear to Ultima that her apprentice was at least intrigued by her werewolf friend, though it was hard to tell whether she wanted to be friends or dissect her.

Lucia explained a lot about how unnerving her apprentice could be despite being human. She was curious about everything, wanted to know and understand how things worked with a fervor of the damned.

“Althea, healer, wholesome, an English name derived from a Greek one, harder to figure out,” Lucia spoke aloud with narrowed eyes. “Hakim, wise or ruler, of Arabic origin. Interesting. I imagine they don’t mind my daughter and her… proclivities?”

“You mean her being scarily intelligent and periodically being an agent of chaos? No, not at all.” Ultima knew her apprentice was fairly intelligent and good with her hands. But she had proven talented at mixing potions of her own. Including figuring out a powerful lightning draught she had used to power a makeshift coilgun. It wasn’t deadly but it wasn’t harmless either, at least equal in power to a human air gun. “She’s a clever kid, not that I tell her that too often.”

Lucia’s gaze sharpened. “And why not?”

“Because it’s not what she needs, she doesn’t need that kind of pressure. Not when she’s still growing and changing and figuring out what she wants to be.” A hint of disdain couldn’t help but sink into her words, her claws flexing outward, clicking against her own cup.

“She’s a smart kid, she should want to excel.” Lucia protested, but there was a sign of weakness, a quiver to her hands, a deep resounding sadness in her eyes stripping away the shine in them like a void.

“You and I both know there’s a limit to that quaint little sentiment, Lucia.” A part of her hated the woman in front her of just as much as she found her attractive. “I’ve done my best to treat her like a normal kid her age, and she looks at something as basic as ‘knowing how to play’ as something weird and impossible.”

Lucia flinched. “I…” The woman trailed off, at a loss for words.

“You clearly love your kid more than anything else,” Ultima knew that much, she saw how her eyes melted when she saw her child, letting her chatter away with a curling smile. “So why?”

“I don’t have to answer that.” Lucia hissed and Ultima was not going to take that from her.

She stood up with a growl in her throat. “You very much do. Most parents don’t tend to just up and drop kids on me, and I know you’re just as clever as your girl. If you don’t want me butting in, why give me the responsibility of taking her under my wing, under my roof?”

“How would you even understand that? You’re not a parent.” Lucia scowled.

And Ultima scoffed. “Do you think I figured this out spontaneously, I’ve had a munchkin under my breath for almost twelve years now.” Arali was her little gremlin, she had raised him, taught him everything he needed to be safe and healthy and loved.

Lucia looked at her in a new light, seemingly taken aback. So her sources weren’t perfect. “I didn’t know.” She said hoarsely.

“Mhmm, you’re a clever woman, know more than you let on. I’m not going to say I haven’t made a fair share of mistakes,” I can never take them back either. “So listen when I say there are some mistakes you can’t take back, not if you keep stalling.”

Lucia stood up abruptly, caught off guard, hackles raised… and then all the life drained from her body as she slumped.

“Not now, not to someone I barely know.” She sounded exhausted.

Ultima nodded. “Well we can fix that can’t we? Let’s start with a human handshake.” She drawled out her words, waggling her eyebrows. “My name is Ultima, nice to meet you.”

Lucia gave her a look of deep seated skepticism before hesitatingly taking her hand into the stiff, awkward greeting. And then… she laughed, a loud boisterous things like the chiming of Big Ben, snorts interspersed between her guffaws.

“You are a very strange woman.” She said with whiny giggles.

Ultima just grinned. “I aim to please.”

Maybe this just might work out?