Sofia fixed her glasses as she continued to ramble about something I didn’t understand. I knew this conversation wasn’t actually meant for me, most weren’t, but I still liked to follow along. When we first sat down, Sofia was calm and collected, but that demeanor quickly faded. Within a minute, the mage was essentially explaining her entire life story. My parents, and I suspect everyone else, shared a few odd glances between one another before telling her to get to the point.
I was barely awake, just doing my best to keep my eyes open during what should be my nap time, when Sofia made a big revelation. From what I understood between her ramblings, Sofia was to be my magic researcher, or rather a magic researcher who studied me. A million questions that I lacked the ability to ask flooded my mind and I fully focused on what she was saying.
“— is why we are having this meeting today. There are a plenty of things to get done, which means we have to start soon, though the prince's safety will be paramount throughout the whole process,” Sofia said. Looking directly at the King and Queen, she continued somewhat apologetically.
“I’ve discussed this with my grandfather, and he said the second-best option is a research facility. This way if something does go wrong there will be safety measures and Ben will be in the least danger. It would also allow us to gather data from a controlled environment, meaning it would have potential for other uses. Any questions?”
Winston must have signaled from behind me because Sofia just bobbed her head once, and he began to speak.
“What was the first option?”
Sofia looked at my parents and I heard my mother audibly scoff, while my dad shrugged, me still in his arms.
“As some of you might know, Leven Serian is rather… eccentric at times. He thought a facility would, quote on quote, muddy the experiment’s data. So, he proposed to, again quoting, send the boy out and see if he explodes.”
By the end of it, Sofia’s hands were covering her red face and the room was quiet.
I saw my mother’s head turn towards me, but my eyes were struggling to stay open. Searching my memory for what an “explodes” was, I was sure I’d never heard the word. Most of my vocabulary came from the books Liza read and the conversations between the others, so this talk had introduced a bunch of new words to me.
‘Learn how to speak soon.’ I reminded myself as I heard Liza’s bubbly voice behind me.
“Why now?”
“There are two main reasons,” my mother began. “The most important is his health, we can’t fix a problem we don’t know we have, right now all we are doing is delaying at best.”
My father nodded at this point and let my mother continue.
“Second,” her voice became monotone as if this was a practiced response. “He is the prince, and the entire country is wondering what happened to the baby I had almost a year ago.”
My father adjusted his grip on me and grabbed her hand, with this seemingly small gesture she huffed a sigh of resignation and leaned back in her chair.
I was surprised since I figured it was normal for babies to live like this. It reminded once again how little I knew, making me even more excited for what Sofia called “experiments.”
“What exactly will you be doing that requires a whole facility?” Liza asked, with what might have been worried in her voice.
“Well, that is quite a loaded question,” Sofia started, her earlier embarrassment gone. “Due to some of his previous interactions with ambient mana we first need to develop a way for him to live without, for lack of a better term, exploding.” She whispered the last word, but I easily picked it up. “From there we’ll have to see.”
By now, as much as I wanted to fight my drowsiness and listen to the rest of the conversation, sleep overtook me, and I nodded off in my father’s arms.
Sofia Serian
When the royals first approached me, I was extremely honored, well they approached grandpa and he semi-blackmailed them into having me do it, but honored none the less. It was rare for the royal family to personally approach someone, so I knew the task had to be important, but this. This was not what I was expecting.
The whole thing was kind of funny at first. Everyone knew about the missing royal baby and a new theory of his whereabouts popped up every week, but reality was often stranger than fiction. After the runes in the common room were disabled, I activated the sound dampening construct and spoke.
“I believe I’m ready to give my assessment, Your Majesties.”
Queen Madeleine, who had been rather excitable recently, immediately motioned for me to start.
“Okay, so I know there were three main points you wanted me to focus on during the prince's main evaluation, but I do have one more to add.” I leaned back in my chair, forming my thoughts before continuing.
“First, I want to start with his behavioral patterns. Barring what all of you have told me, I couldn’t spot anything particularly odd other than his almost seemingly shocked expression when he saw me for the first time. Babies can exhibit advanced emotions early in their life and that could be enhanced by the fact that I’m basically the first new person he’s seen, well, ever. The only unusual thing about that interaction was his almost immediate recovery. That however could just be attributed to him being a baby and not realizing the true significance. A recurring theme will be the line between normal and strange baby behavior being basically non-existent.”
I paused, knocking my knuckle against the table to see if anyone had anything to say before continuing to the next topic.
“Intellectual and emotional advancement go hand in hand because if he can’t understand what’s being said he can’t react to it. For most of the conversation, he stared off into the abyss and had little reaction to my words. As I spoke, he’d often make eye contact and seemed to be more aware during the questions and answers portion, but that could again be just random baby things. There were no strong reactions to the trigger words, so that does give me the ability to refute some theories, but again we just don’t know enough for a solid conclusion.”
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I moved a curly lock of hair behind my ear and took a breath.
“I know we stopped him from napping to get a more genuine reaction, but if he did understand, his drowsiness could have drowned that out. Due to this I would argue the chance that there is someone who has ‘taken over the baby’ is highly unlikely, however child psych was only one of my majors. I recommend we move forward and just make sure to study his behavior more as we do so.”
While I was expecting some relief from the crowd, as that had been one of the top theories I’d recently heard, I got nothing but more stares and nervous tics.
“Anything spell related couldn’t be evaluated for obvious reasons, but I suspect my conclusions would remain, nonetheless. Based on what you’ve said, he shows signs of acute advanced intelligence for his age, but it seems limited to the things he’s been able to learn. While I’m not sure exactly what he truly understands, none of the trigger words, which he would have had no way to learn, gave any advanced reaction leading to a low possibility of any foreign entity inhabiting the boy.”
I let out a sigh and took a sip of water. My mind was attempting to figure out what his odd behavior derived from when the King spoke up.
“Ms. Serian you said you had a fourth point you wanted to add,” his tone expectant.
“Ah, yes,” I said, snapping back to the rather one-sided conversation.
“I’m not sure whether you need to hear this or not, but everything suggests he is for all intents and purposes an odd but normal baby and will be treated as such.”
This garnered the first bit of emotion I had seen from my rather dour crowd. The Queen let out a sigh so deep, it seemed like she had to have been holding her breath the entire time. The words weren’t much of an assurance, but I hoped they’d help assuage some of their unease.
“Let’s get to work.” the King said with a slight smile.
***
“Large hazelnut coffee for Sofia,” the barista called out from behind the counter.
“Thanks,” I replied, grabbing my drink and making my way out the store.
Looking around on my way to the castle, I couldn’t help but admire the scenery. I had only arrived in the city three weeks prior, so most of the sights were still new to me. Davion was by no means a poor country, but most of its territory was much more modest. Buildings rarely went higher than four floors, and while extreme poverty wasn’t much of an issue the divide between classes could easily be seen, but not in Vander.
Here every road was paved, and a few buildings even spanned well over a hundred feet. Guards could be seen at almost every other street corner, and anything you could possibly need was always within a block walk. My grandfather had told me Vander was just a poor man’s copy of an average Scatian city but being here made me dismiss his words as homesickness. How could something this beautiful just be average in the Elven Kingdom?
The lodging I was given by the castle, what the locals referred to as an “apartment,” was in one of the taller buildings towards the southwestern side of town. They were like the flats in my hometown, but the citizens seemed adamant about the use of their name. The view from my room was breathtaking the first time I saw it, easily encompassing the landscape below. It sat right in front of the city's largest park, and on a clear day I could see nearly four miles out.
I had already believed myself fortunate to not have to pay for the space myself, but seeing my neighbors immediately made me relish that fact. Born to a well-off family, this was nothing close to my first experience of wealth, it was still, however, eye-opening. The level of poverty here was lower than somewhere like the Meraki Empire, but it was clear most people could never dream of affording the space.
As I walked, I admired the people’s unique fashion style. Most still wore the clothes I expected from an average Davion citizen, but some, namely the rich or adventurers, wore more form fitting attire. I recognized the fabric as it had been one of the major talks of the magic community over the last few months. Eunoia had started exporting a new material with mana permeability so high, even Sages wanted clothes made of it. I’d have loved to get my hands on some, and with my new-found connection to the crown possibly I could have, but it’d be a waste where I was going.
My thoughts continued to wander as I made my way through the capital. Vander had a unique district division among the classes, compared to the rest of the country. Before the high-rise buildings had begun production a few centuries prior, Vander’s divide was like most. Poorest closest to the gate, richest closest to the castle, and the rest somewhere in between. However, due to the potential danger presented by the massive towers, a decree was set that no building taller than five stories could be built within a mile of the castle.
This led to the rich to move further away from the city central, so they would not miss out on the newest status symbol. Someone, somewhere, decided that the rich living near the poorest of Vander’s citizens was equally unacceptable, leading to the richer denizens buying multiple properties on either side of their new Takai District. Many were eventually sold for lower than market rates, though not enough to miss their target market, and so the city was split in four. Most of the richest people and nobility still owned the land near the center of the city, the Sonji District, though it was less coveted than that of the Takai.
As I arrived at the outer gates, I was stopped by a pair of women wearing city guard outfits.
“Hello ma’am, what business do you have at the castle,” the taller of the two asked.
“I have a meeting with Royal Adviser Quinton,” I replied, handing them the papers I was given by the crown.
The second guard took the papers along with my identification card. After tapping both the papers and my ID against a clear crystal, she handed them back to me.
“You are good to go, Ms. Serian,” the lady said, dragging out the prefix while looking for my name.
A similar type of screening occurred twice more before I reached the gates that led to the inner grounds, even managing to pick up a walking buddy at the last. The process of getting into the castle was arduous, and I was glad to not have to do it again anytime soon.
Approaching the final checkpoint, I could see two figures wearing the silver armor of the elite royal guard. The escort walking beside me seemed surprised at the sight, then even more so when elites took over.
I had only met the pair once prior while they were on guard at the prince’s room, and their silence throughout the escort showed they didn’t mind keeping our interactions limited.
After a rather long walk through the castle’s labyrinth of subterranean tunnels, we arrived in front of a set of double doors where two other men stood guard. The thick metal doors looked like they weighed a ton, but the soldiers seemed to part them with ease. When they did, I almost gasped in awe of my new workstation.
It was huge, encompassing almost 40,000 sq feet. The facility lacked internal walls, save a space marked for living accommodations, giving a clear view of all the equipment. Though I knew that the space would not be mine alone, even a fourth of it would be enough.
“They really spared no expense,” I mumbled, more to myself than anyone else.
“Depends on whom you mean by they,” a man’s voice said with a chuckle. “Amazing, isn’t it.”
I turned to see a fair skinned man with long pale hair and ears that pointed near vertical. Full blood high elves were rare outside the Elven kingdom, especially ones so young.
“It’s nice to meet you Magica Serian, I am Mark.”
Smiling, I took his outstretched hand and shook, for a full blood to extend such courtesy to an outsider like me, even considering my partial elven heritage, was rare to say the least.
“If you’ll follow me, I can get you a suit, record your identification matrix, and show you to your new quarters.”
Probably seeing my eyes linger on the massive runed cube in the center of the room, he added, “Then I’ll give you the tour.”