We spent a lovely evening in town and moved on the next day. If a map had not told us that we were now inside Queen Aerin’s territory, I would not have noticed. I had to admit, I had no idea how much autonomy the queens had. There might be some local laws, I suppose. But the people were the same.

Actually, that made me think. There had been plenty of wood and night elves inside Solana’s territory. Sure, sun elves might have been the most common, but elves seemed to mingle a lot. How were there still three distinct types of elf? Should there not be a lot of mixed elves?

This was a world of magic. I could not just assume normal biology, or physics, applied everywhere. I had already found out about souls. People could shapeshift. I could turn into a panther, but I would still be an archfey. Changing your body did not impact the soul. Were different kinds of elves essentially a soul thing? Or an arbitrary classification based on looks?

I pondered this some more. Who said there were still three different kinds of elves anyway? Sure, night elves had dark skin, for example. But they came in different shades. Besides looks, was there a difference? Had certain elves more or less affinity for some magic? Actually, night elves did have better night vision. So there were differences. But how did children inherit powers? How was their soul created?

This led me to another question: How did unions between different species work? There were certainly half dragons. If a dragon took a human form, and had a child with a human, it still passed on draconic powers. Meaning children were not just created with biology but the souls were involved.

Suddenly I stopped, my eyes widening. Would it be possible to have kids with Lucy? Not that I had any plans to become a mother. But it was certainly an interesting consideration for the future.

“Why have you stopped?” Lucy asked.

“Uh… just thinking about things. Like… souls.” I said.

“A fascinating topic.” Lilith commented. “Souls are the key to power. While Beira’s methods are despicable, her desire to empower herself is understandable. Have you made some breakthrough in countering her?”

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“Not really. I am just pondering souls in general. Since we have the power to create warlocks, we can manipulate them to some degree. And are not our aura’s powered by our soul?” I asked. Actually, auras were a great topic to distract myself from some other thoughts.

Lilith looked at me. “All of our powers come from the soul. If you transformed into something else, you would still have your spell slots.”

“Sure. The spell slots are inside our soul. But they fill with ambient mana, I suspect. Or maybe our soul fills them with mana while we rest? Anyway, our aura works differently, right? Is it not just a projection of the power of our soul? I am not sure if projection is the right word, actually. Like… maybe our soul is a fire and the aura is the heat it emits? The aura is a product of our existence. It’s not a conscious effect we create, like a spell. It just is.” I theorized.

“But we can do stuff with our aura, right? Like the lightning covering my fur.” Lucy said.

I nodded. “Sure. My fire analogy is not perfect. We can learn to control our aura to an extent. We are all suppressing, or containing, our aura right now. And we can target certain individuals and try to spare others. But our aura is not a spell, it’s a byproduct of our existence. Our souls. It is always there. We just suppress it when we don’t need it.” Which was also a reason why my aura reacted to emotions. If I got too angry, my mind stopped suppressing it. While I did discover a few things about my aura, I should invest more time studying it.

“Ok. So is there anything useful we can do with our aura then? When we do not need it. Like, instead of suppressing it, can we make it do something useful?” Lucy wondered.

“You know, we have shared power through the bond. Maybe we could just push it in there instead of suppressing it?” I wondered. Then I gave it a go. And so did Lucy.

Lily gasped and stumbled.

“Weeeeee.” Adhira began zipping around like crazy.

“MUAHAHAHA!” Shani laughed like a maniac while lightning covered her skin.

I scratched my head. “Maybe it is not the greatest idea. In battle we want to use our aura differently anyway.”

“Hm.” Lucy remarked. “Our aura radiates in every direction, like heat from a fire, right? Would not a small part of it try to enter the bond? What if we just don’t suppress that part?”

I looked at her. She made an excellent point. “You know, that is a great idea.”

I examined my aura. Only suppressing most of it but leaving the area open that wanted to enter the bond was kind of tricky. But it should be doable.

“I will need a bit of practice to pull that off. But I think it could be worth it long term.” I mused.

“Yeah. I will need to practice that too.” Lucy said.

Devoting a small part of our aura to the link should empower our servants, slightly. But I was hoping it would have long term effects as well. The mana could nurture them, helping them grow in general. I wanted our maid knights to be an elite unit, after all.

Lilith was watching us closely. She did not have the same kind of bond with her subordinates. But she had a link. I had my doubts that she could replicate what we did. Unless she was willing to change some things. I looked at Erin, wearing maid armour.

I guess there was a good chance Lilith would enquire about our bound at some point.