Chapter 549: The Twin-Heart Hybrid
“Because I don’t have any other name! If I didn’t know anything, how could I even know about some second name?” Stryg muttered in frustration.
“You’re right,” said Holo. “If you hadn’t met Father then you wouldn’t have been given a name either way. However, I knew you had met him, or at least I thought you had.”
He furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”
Holo looked into Stryg’s eyes, her own lilac eyes reflected in his own, her expression thoughtful. “When we first met, though faint, I could sense another divine aura mixed in with your own. I thought it was Father’s, but now I realize it was Lunae’s. But because of that, when we met I thought you knew exactly who I was, and the fact that you were unwilling to share your true name told me you couldn’t be trusted. I had hoped at some point you’d at least be willing to drop the act and be a bit honest with me, but you refused. Then again, you could have just lied and given me a false name to try and earn my trust, but you didn’t do that either. I didn’t know what to make of it.”
Holo sighed, “I wanted to trust you, but I couldn’t. So I gave you my orichalcum coin, in case you needed to contact me. If you were Father’s spy, I knew you would, in time. But you never did and then one night I sensed Caligo through the coin.”
“...The night at Widow’s Crag,” he whispered.
Holo nodded solemnly. “I decided to help you. After that, things became complicated. Your presence with Caligo threw all my theories out. So I kept an eye on you, especially in Undergrowth. After Shadow Lake, when you almost drowned in a lake of chaos mana, I realized you really didn’t know your true name or your lineage, otherwise you would never been so stupid as to get that close to a chaos lake with a heart so undeveloped.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked.
“Because you are an anomaly. And the fact that you didn’t even know your own constitution was more than just improbable. Father would never have let you go alone for so long. Which meant someone wanted you to be in the dark. I didn’t know why… so I decided to keep observing you.”
“Until you had no choice, it seems,” noted Melantha.
Holo ignored her comment. “Stryg, Ananta told you of your origins back during the siege, which means she probably wasn’t the one who kept the truth hidden from you.”
“Then who did?” he asked.
Holo shook her head. “My best guess? Lunae.”
“The Mother Moon?” Stryg frowned. “Why?”
“I’m still not sure, but seeing as she is probably watching us right this very moment, I think that conversation should be left for another time.”
“A more private time, one where even Lunae cannot see,” added Melantha.
“You can do that?” he asked.
Melantha nodded. “There are ways.”
Stryg sat up with a grimace. His chest still ached and every breath still stung, but he was already starting to feel somewhat better. “You said I was an anomaly. How?”
Holo looked him up and down pensively. “The first time we met you had only the smallest traces of chaos mana in your aura. It’s common among failures.”
“Failures?”
“Hybrid children who didn’t inherit the power of chaos from their titan parents,” explained Holo. “Simply put, they are mortals, not much different than any other mortal. They do not carry the spark of a titan, nor will their children or any of their descendants.”
“It’s the outcome of most titan hybrids. At least, the ones that survive,” said Melantha with a trace of sadness.
“Lunae told me something like that,” Stryg whispered.
Melantha placed her hand on his shoulder. “I know it seems cruel.”
“But it’s the way of our kind,” added Holo. “Believe me, it’s better if immortals don’t associate with mortal offspring. In the long run, it saves a lot of pain for everyone.”
“Everyone? Because I think a child would want to know who their parents were. To know where they come from.” Stryg swallowed, “Or at least, I think they would…”
“They?” asked Melantha with a cocked eyebrow. “So, you wouldn’t be bothered then?”
“You said the practice seems cruel. It doesn’t, not to me,” he admitted. “It’s cold, maybe, but so is the world. A Sylvan tribe must be cold in order to survive, even if it means abandoning the weak.”
“From what Holo has told me, you were going to be exiled from your own tribe for being ‘weak.’ Does that not bother you?”
Stryg shrugged, “Such is the way of nature.”
Melantha scoffed softly with a wry smile. “You believe in the Sylvan way so strongly, I almost admire it. But I can tell the rejections pains you. I know that you protected the forgotten and destitute orphans of this city and raised them into a tribe. That is not the way of the Sylvan. So tell me. Why help them?”
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He stared at his own hands, the blue skin seemed to almost glow under the moonlight. The dark veins underneath pulsated with more than just blood. “...I know what it’s like to be weak.”
Melantha smiled, “Holo’s right, you really are an anomaly.”
“What does that mean?” he asked once more.
Holo spread her hands, “As I said, the first time we met you only had small traces of chaos in your aura. But the second time we met in Widow’s Crag I could have sworn you had more and by the time we met in Undergrowth I was certain of it. Chaos flows freely from your aura. That shouldn’t be possible.”
“Our powers grow stronger as we train and grow older, but the density of chaos flowing within us does not change,” Holo continued. “It’s why we can tell if a newborn hybrid has inherited the power of chaos or not. The first time we met you were only mortal with a hint of our father’s power. Now you’re a full-fledged titan. A baby titan, but a titan nonetheless.”
“You’re saying I grew into my powers,” muttered Stryg. He supposed it made sense. Feli had noted it many times, his unusual growth and strength. He never felt the gradual change, but he knew it was there. Like when a youth’s voice grew deeper as they entered adulthood. He remembered there was a time when he struggled to pull his bowstring back. Now he wagered he could snap a bow in two if he wanted.
“Correct.” Melantha nodded. “So the question is, how?”
“I have a theory, but I need a bit of confirmation. Nel, can you look into Stryg’s chest, tell me what you see.”
A blue band of light glimmered off Melantha’s lilac irises. She looked at Stryg and narrowed her eyes. “He has two hearts, but all the chaos mana seems to be flowing from only one. The other is… chromatic? He really does have all ten colors… Father had his theories about the twin-heart model but it had never worked.”
“What are you guys talking about?” asked Stryg anxiously.
“Titans are creatures of chaos, titan hybrids can possess chromatic mana but only so much. At most, a titan hybrid can possess three colors.” Holo raised her index finger, “A quarter-titan could possess so much as six, but no more. Chaos may be an elemental energy but it does not play well with others. The titan hybrids who can develop their chromatic magic to the best of their ability are the ones who only possess a single color.”
Melantha summoned a spark of lighting between her thumb and index finger. “And if you’re going to have a hybrid who only has a single chromatic color then you’d be better off having a child who is a true chromatic.”
Stryg’s eyes widened. “Then, both of you being true chromatics isn’t a coincidence.”
Melantha stared at him, her eyes unblinking. “Our Father may seem lackadaisical and nonchalant to a fault, but nothing he does is without purpose. Not even your existence. For centuries he wanted to create a being with the full powers of chaos and chroma, he was obsessed with the idea, but it was impossible. A heart could not balance both ethereal energies together. So Death proposed an alternative idea, the twin-heart model; having a child born with not one but two hearts. He believed that if each heart only had to possess one energy then the body would naturally balance the flow.”
Holo sighed heavily. “Of course, it all ended in complete failure. Every single experiment. Whether it was a natural birth or magical alterations done to the mother’s womb. He even had a baby develop outside the mother’s womb, within an enchanted glass chamber filled with carefully curated liquids and surrounded by numerous enchantments that he’d constantly tweak daily. Nothing worked.”
“Although,” said Melantha, “He was able to create two hearts in the newborns and he even managed to have a few newborns have one heart absorb chaotic energy and the other chromatic energy. The problem was that the body could not reconcile two energies and it would cause the tissue to degrade.”
“Degrade?” Stryg asked.
“The body would destroy itself. The babies would die mere hours after birth,” Melantha replied grimly.
“...How many experiments? How many children?” Stryg whispered.
The sisters looked away.
“Too many,” Melantha muttered.
“I see…” he mumbled.
Holo cleared her throat. “When I met you in Undergrowth, Stryg, your chaotic heart seemed infantile, it was barely able to keep up with the amount of chaos mana it had eagerly absorbed from Shadow Lake. But now your heart seems as strong as its twin. Perhaps that was the key. Perhaps having a chaotic heart lay dormant for years until it grew strong enough to slowly absorb chaos mana could help stabilize the body?”
Melantha shook her head. “It wouldn’t fix the true problem. The body has to balance both chromatic and chaotic mana all at once. It was an issue that required more than just the twin hearts. It requires the entire body to work in a unique balance.”
“You’re right. Chaos is volatile. There would be too many complex permutations to account for. Not even Father could account for them all, unless…” Holo’s voice trailed off.
“Unless what?” she asked.
“Unless he didn’t account for them at all.”
“What are you saying?”
“What if… What if Stryg’s body wasn’t magically altered? What if it was natural?”
“A natural mutation?”
“The body creating its own unique set of permutations capable of balancing both chromatic and chaotic elemental energies within itself,” said Holo.
Melantha frowned. “The likelihood of a mutation like that happening is—”
“Practically impossible, I know. But it would explain why Father never returned for Stryg. He wasn’t trying to create a twin-heart hybrid.”
Melantha raised her eyebrow. “And that’s why he slept with a prime mageborn?” she asked sarcastically.
“Strange, sure, but it wouldn’t be the first time. Think about it, if Death thought Stryg was a simple hybrid failure then he’d have no reason to return or keep an eye on him.”
Melantha nodded slowly. “If Father had known, he would have never let Stryg out of his sight.”
“Exactly. Mutations are common among hybrids, but Stryg’s mutation is unique. One in which chaos wasn’t present at birth unlike the rest of us, and instead developed later in life alongside its chromatic heart counterpart. Father would have never noticed it at his birth.”
“A natural mutation would make sense but… the likelihood of that happening still seems impossible. And besides, Father never does anything out of a whim, especially sleeping with someone like a prime mage.”
“But even Father couldn’t have designed such a unique mutation,” replied Holo.
Melantha furrowed her brow. “So it really is just what, a miracle then?”
“I don’t know, maybe?”
“Um?” Stryg spoke up hesitantly. “Why does this even matter? So what if I have chromatic and chaos energies? So do the both of you.”
Melantha gave him a dry look. “You have a full spectrum of chromatic colors and you seem to have inherited our Father’s power to such an intense degree that you are capable of igniting the Astral Light without dying.”
“And? I’ve seen what you're capable of. I can’t even channel a tenth of that power,” said Stryg.
“You can’t channel it deliberately, at least for now,” noted Melantha. “Who knows what you might be capable of in the future? Someday your powers may equal mine in strength. But the strength of your powers was never why Father wanted a twin-heart hybrid. After all, neither of us will ever be as powerful as a Calamity.”
“Then why? What does it even matter if I have two hearts?”
“Stryg,” Holo placed her hand on top of his. “Our Father has been looking for someone like you for a thousand years. Creating someone like you was one of the main reasons for why he founded the Morterm Order.”
“Why? …What does he want from me?” Stryg whispered.
Melantha and Holo shared a troubled look. “Everything.”