Chapter 2: Interrogation
-----{POV: Elysia}-----
Waking up from a magical overload is never pleasant. Side effects may include nausea, vomiting, fever, headaches, a weakened immune system, temporary memory loss, loss of property value, the feeling that your entire body has been horribly burned, unconsciousness, and brain damage. Fortunately, that time around, I only seemed to be suffering from a fever and temporary unconsciousness. I suppose that the younger your soul is, the less strain it can undergo?
Regardless, the last thing I wanted to see upon returning to cruel reality was an unfamiliar face less than twelve inches from my own. It wasn’t a particularly horrifying face, as such - kinda below average, if you asked me - but the point still stood. Well, I suppose it could look good if not for the near-perfect darkness. Kinda hard to tell. I could determine that I was in a tent and lying down on a bedroll, but not much beyond that.
“Wa-TaDeSt-” I began chanting in a rush, only to have a hand clamped over my mouth. I could, of course, resort to mental spellcasting, but that was a card I preferred not to play until I knew the entire hand of my opponent.
“Nice reflexes.” a child’s voice whispered, causing me to blink in surprise. Tilting my head slightly, I noticed that he was about my own age. He was certainly not a kidnapper like I first thought. I almost impaled a child. However obnoxious he may be, I really need to tone down how trigger-happy I am.
“Now, if I remove my hand, are you going to scream? Or can we actually talk like reasonable individuals?”
...Note to self: this kid really needs to be disciplined more often. Oh, to be twenty again… I quickly nodded, and the hand was removed.
“Right. So.” the young boy said briskly. “Our parents are going hunting tomorrow evening, and we have the option of staying here if we behave. I know that you seem to be extremely attached to your mother, but can you please tell her you want to stay behind? I wish to spend more time with you.”
...Eh? I thought, bewildered, then quickly realized that he probably just wanted to play with me. We were both still children, after all - he was a bit too young to realize that what he just said sounded exactly like something significantly different.
I put on a radiant smile, although I wasn’t nearly as happy on the inside as I showed on the outside. “Elysia would be happy to!”
A pained look briefly showed on his face, but vanished as abruptly as it appeared. “Okay. That’s all, good night!”
Without another word, he hopped up and headed outside; I waited for thirty seconds, then immediately hopped up and went to find mother and figure out what, exactly, was going on. I felt I had missed quite a bit...
The next evening, I stood across from the boy in a clearing rather far away from camp. The boy’s father, Eldon, had told me his view of the situation earlier, but for some strange reason, Eldon had stubbornly refused to tell me name of his son. When I had done the ancient and time-honored tactic of consulting someone else in the hopes of a better answer, mom had gone along with it. I suspected it was for some silly reason such as getting us to do self-introductions, but whatever.
“Nice to meet you.” the boy said shortly. “I’ll get right to the point: I know you made that assassin-construct. I would like to know how and what your motive for doing it was.”
Alarm bells started ringing inside the privacy of my mind, and I immediately put on my ‘innocent little girl’ act. “Elysia isn’t quite sure what you’re talking about; Elysia’s friends taught her to do that.”
“Really.” the air boy said flatly. “Then explain to me how you managed to create a construct that moved as if it was alive. As if that wasn’t sufficient, it had enough contingency plans to continue moving even after my father had reduced it to three legs.” He sneered disdainfully at me. “That’s not the sort of thing you can simply pick up on if you’re taught for a few years, it takes decades of practice.”
A cold feeling developed in the pit of my stomach. Putting my hands behind my back to disguise the fact that they were involuntarily clenching, I looked at him with suspicion intentionally written all over my face.
“Elysia wants to know why the boy is insisting on asking Elysia questions when she’s alone; couldn’t Elysia’s mommy answer these better? Mommy said Elysia shouldn’t talk to strangers. What’s the boy’s name, anyway?”
The sneer vanished and he stared at me with a growing disbelief, although I wasn’t entirely sure why. Regardless, the last thing I want is to be associated with a blood-mage, if that’s what he is; either he spent some time on one of the other planes, is possessed, is a blood-mage or has been spending a LOT of time with spirits. ...Or some combination of the above. Regardless of the answer, I really, really don’t want to attract his interest right now.
“I’m Sederick, but you can call me Sed. Look, I’m not going to tattle on you or anything, okay? Just tell me how you managed to make that thing!” ...It might just have been my imagination, but it seemed as though ‘tattle’ was said with rather a large amount of disdain, as if the word itself hurt his pride.
I planted one finger on my chin and looked slightly over his left shoulder. “Elysia’s friends put the knowledge in her head so she could use it later; Elysia doesn’t really remember making a construct, just saying the word they told her to. Why? Elysia wants to know if she did something wrong.”
Sed’s hands clenched into fists, a vein throbbing in his temple. Why is he getting so angry…?
“Will you stop with the blatant lies!?” he shouted loud enough to make my ears ring. “Humanoid minds don’t work like that! You can’t just store extra knowledge to be unlocked with a word! Now tell me what ACTUALLY happened!”
I had to resist the urge to burst out laughing. Even with obvious knowledge above the norm for his age, Sederick clearly didn’t know how to thought-cast. That plain out required for an individual to modify part of their own mind. You could have it done with help from others, but either way, it was necessary in order to silently cast spells without thinking SQUIRREL and completely messing it up. In comparison, planting memories was easy. Still, he didn’t seem like he’d go away until he got the truth, so…
...I started to sniffle, using a minimal amount of power to help my eyes tear up. “B-but… Elysia was telling the truth… They said Elysia was a natural, but Sederick is getting so angry… did Elysia do something wrong?”
Sed’s expression of anger quickly calmed down, then just as quickly turned to guilt as I burst out crying. Every girl should learn how to cry upon command; it’s amazing how quickly men completely change their minds when they’re faced with a bawling child or maiden.
-----{POV: Sederick}-----
This… cannot be happening. I thought, dazed, as I stared at the crying child before me. I think I find another wanderer, and it turns out to just be an absurdly intelligent little girl- and yet, she was overloaded just making a construct of that size… just how unfair do you have to be, god!? If you’re going to give someone natural talent, at least give them the power to match or else she’s just wasting her time!
“But… look, I’m really sorry.” I said awkwardly, reaching out to pat her head. “Your friends are spirits, right? I’ve been taught-”
“SEDERICK IS A BIG MEANIE!” Elysia screamed, smacking my hand away and running off into the woods, still producing heartbreaking sobs.
Left behind in a sort of a shocked daze, it took me several seconds to realize I had made a very, very serious mistake. After thinking for a bit more, I determined that I was absolutely screwed.
I had acted like someone twice my age or more, revealed my extensive knowledge of magic, and forever tainted myself in the mind of a little girl who would probably be living with me for the next several years. Just to top it all off, she was probably heading toward her mother. Oh look, now Anna is going to hate me as well. Fantastic. Could this day possibly get any better?
As if to mock me, I suddenly felt something heavy and wet land on the top of my head. Looking up, I spotted a smug-looking bird flying away and out of sight.
Reaching upward, I determined that yes, it had, in fact, done a dive-by bombing on my hair. I would be very much surprised if my resulting scream of mingled frustration and fury wasn’t heard all throughout the forest.
-----{POV: Elysia}-----
Well, that went quite well. I thought happily to myself, not bothering to maintain the cascade of tears now that I was out of earshot. Sederick will be focusing more on trying to regain my good graces than any attempts to pry knowledge out of my unwilling grip. Perhaps I should go over and cry in mothers lap as well? ...Hmm...
Changing direction, I took a moment to scratch out a gylph on a tree before proceeding. {Wa-SeTaDe-Re-Ra4-Du20-Drop6}
Carefully pointing toward my eyes with one hand, I poured power into the sigil before sitting down for about thirty seconds to let the spell do its work. Once that was over and done with and my eyes were no longer irritated, I headed back toward camp, having to resist the urge to skip through the woods. That would be too cheerful, and I needed to come in totally teary-eyed and barely comprehensible.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
The possibility that damaging my mother’s relations with a boy I’d only just met could be considered unfair never even crossed my mind.
-----One week later. {POV: Sederick}-----
Never, in any of my lifetimes, have I been quite this frustrated. Most of said frustration was directed toward myself for terrifying the most naive and innocent child I’ve ever met, but there was still quite a bit aimed at Elysia herself. I get that she’s just a kid, but there has to be a limit to how unreasonable she can be! I’m trying to make up for my mistake!
My good intentions, however, seemed to be flat-out ignored at every turn; every time I tried to apologize, she would run off, usually screaming some variant of “SEDERICK IS A HUGE JERK!” I attempted to appeal to a higher authority, my father, but was told that I should learn how to deal with girls by myself.
Okay then, you try it! I was talking to women while you were still walking around in diapers! I thought angrily, but resisted the urge to say anything aloud. ...Well, that was an unusually immature thought. Ugh. I can’t wait until I’m older again; nothing quite like having your body try to revert your mental state to that of an incompetent, immature child. ...And partly succeeding.
They kept leaving me back at camp with the little crybaby, too. Fed up, I attempted to point out that leaving two children in the middle of the wilderness wasn’t a very good idea. Father just gave me a disbelieving look, followed by a knowing smile.
“Well, you seemed to do just fine against that construct I was struggling with, so you should be alright.” His smile seemed to say, “After all, you seem not to need a teacher for the basics like I thought, hmm?”
Today, though, I’d decided it was time to fix things by force. She was poisoning my relationship with both my father and Anna at an alarming rate, and I’d had enough. Anna kept trying to chase me down with a rather determined look, probably to chew me out for terrorizing her darling daughter. ...On the bright side, Anastasia and dad seemed to be getting along just fine, although their awkward conversations were starting to hurt. I almost pitied my mother. Almost...
Then I’d remember the incident where she completely forgot about me and left me behind when I was only five. When I had finally managed to get home, I was punished for running off on my own and grounded for a month. Never mind that she had told me to stay where I was and I had complied. Never mind that I was freezing, wet, and came down with a cold just afterward.
Oh, and just to top it all off, I’d suspected she was cheating on father... although I didn’t have any actual evidence of that at the time. So, that suspicion remained in the privacy of my own mind. I considered bribing a pixie to spy on her, but filed that thought away for later; there were more important things to worry about.
...Going back to the main topic of today, Anna was off searching for medical herbs and dad was off hunting, leaving myself and Elysia back at camp. Is it just me, or is Anna kinda avoiding Elysia lately…?
At present moment, Elysia was sitting on the other side of camp with her back to me, humming happily to herself. I couldn’t see what she was doing, but judging by her past track record, she was probably braiding flower-necklaces or something. ...I didn’t get any, of course, which was rather conspicuous when both father and Anastasia got them.
“So, um… I don’t suppose you’re going to listen to me today?” I tried.
The humming got significantly louder, reflecting Elysia’s feelings on that particular subject. Okay, I thought, fed up with this childish nonsense. Time for plan… what am I on? J?
I walked over to her and planted my hand on her shoulder. “Oi. Listen, I’ve been trying to say that I’m sor-”
She stopped humming, got up, and started to run away as per usual. Grabbing her wrist, I pulled her back and prevented yet another sob-and-run.
“Stop being so darn- unreasonable...?” I trailed off weakly, my eyes growing to the size of saucers.
Floating all around my head and arm, many small, needles formed of clear ice had formed. If I moved more than a few centimeters in any direction, I had the feeling I would lose access to those parts of my body- which meant, effectively, that I would die.
When did she set this up? I heard no chant, and neither of her hands are anywhere near something that could hold a glyph!
“Unhand this one immediately, Sederick Jason Lycan.” A voice I barely recognized as belonging to Elysia said quietly as she turned to face me with pale-blue eyes. “I know not what possesses thee to pretend to be a child, and I shan’t pry. If thou is revealed to be a body-snatcher, however, this one will erase thou from existence. Understood?”
...Just what is going on here!? Although I knew that the eye color-change was just a temporary side effect of using magic, that didn’t mean it wasn’t completely unnerving. Gone was the excessively adorable little girl with a bit of an attitude problem, replaced with… something else. As if to confirm that I wasn’t dealing with a vastly-underpowered little girl anymore, I could feel waves of cold radiating from her body.
“Dost thou understand?” she asked coldly. ...No pun intended.
“Yes!” I squeaked, letting go and carefully removing my arm from the threat of repeated and painful stabbing.
“Good. Speak of this to no one.”
She waved a hand, and the needles fell harmlessly to the ground as she began to walk toward her tent. When she was about halfway there, she seemed to undergo an abrupt transformation, switching from taking long, efficient strides to skipping there and humming happily to herself.
Glancing toward the fallen projectiles, I began to realize another downside of it being summer, besides merely uncomfortable temperatures and high humidity: all the evidence that this had ever happened was melting before my eyes. Even the minimal amount of water it left behind would evaporate long before our parents returned.
...I think this is the part where I’m supposed to run away screaming. What was that supposed to be!?
-----{POV: Elysia}-----
As soon as I was safely back in my tent, I immediately plopped down onto my bedroll, horribly embarrassed. What was I thinking, wasting so much power? Even if it did look like that conversation had the desired effect, well…
What possessed me to talk like that? Did I even get that manner of speech right? And I just made an enemy of a journeyman air magician, and one who was apparently actually taught by the local spirits. So, depending on how much they value him, I might have a horde of angry elementals trying to kill me. Fantastic.
Unbeknownst to me, both Sederick and I were thinking the same thing at that moment. Could that conversation have possibly gone any worse?
-----Two hours later. {POV: Anastasia}-----
I can’t believe I’m resorting to old wives tales. I thought, sighing, as I mixed several annoyingly-rare herbs together. I can’t really see how putting this in food could drive out an evil spirit, but it’s better than nothing…
Of course, I’d checked first to make sure it wasn’t poisonous; I wouldn’t feed anything to my precious daughter that I didn’t first try myself. Still, although it tasted vile, the results were… underwhelming.
“Pardon me, miss Anna?” I heard a child’s voice speak up from in front of me, and I looked up, identifying the speaker as Sederick. ...Why did I even have to look up? Aside from Elysia and him, there are no other children around here.
Still, I was rather surprised; I’d tried to chase him down and speak with him without his father or Elysia around, but he always managed to make a perfectly valid excuse and slip away. I’d wanted to try and fix up relations between him and Elysia- she was totally overreacting over just one little argument. It was only after about the fourth incident that I realized it was a deliberate attempt to avoid me. So why is he coming to me now…? What a strange child.
“Yes?” I asked kindly, putting the herbs I was working on to the side. “What is it? You seem to have something on your mind.”
That was a wild guess; strangely enough, his expressions always seemed rather… fake. Even when he was happy and smiling, it seemed unnatural.
“Yes. I’ll be blunt; I have reason to believe that your daughter is possessed by at least a C-class water elemental, subtype frost. I am here to discuss what, exactly, you would like to do about it...”
Author’s note: Yes, elementals and spirits are the same thing. Feedback appreciated, as always.
Chapter proofread by Fangtooth, and then proofread again with a fine-tooth comb by Curvinho.