Chapter Thirty-One.

Cameron, Eden, and Adam made their way to the teleportation plaza they'd been arriving and leaving the auction center through, the latter two immediately guarding up when Cameron stopped walking, rigid.

"What is it?" Adam projected into the younger boy's mind only a few moments before he felt a very powerful presence near him.

Not a divinity or angelic sense, however. Something far, far more terrifying, which he had faced only once before, and that was with the backing of his grandfather and several other members of his family. A force that had laid waste to the Leosvar two thousand years prior, resulting in only three of them actually surviving.

Turning slowly, the trio faced a group of fairies, noting the mages and other supernats having backed off or stayed back. There were forty fairies in total, which told Adam that they had likely taken over at least seven rooms to auction in.

The terrifying power he sensed wasn't coming from the four silver-haired and silver-eyed fairies. Fairy Lords, he could handle as long as there weren't more than four of them. The two with white hair and silver eyes gave him a little concern, but he could handle Fairy Kings and Queens in one-on-one fights. As a force combined with thirty or more other fairies, that was fear-instilling, even for the ancient mage. His grandfather being there only gave him a small amount of reassurance.

However, those thirty-eight were not what he truly feared. It was the two emitting the most powerful auras around that bothered him. Alone, they could lay waste to the entire auction. And they were together, something that never happened.

The silver-haired, golden-eyed Fairy Empress, Titania, and the golden-haired, silver-eyed Fairy Emperor, Oberon.

Not for the first time in his long life, Adam was grateful that he had a habit of never revealing his true form and changing them regularly. It meant that the two terrifying, god-level beings didn't know who he was.

The last time they'd met, he'd pissed them off to an extreme level. Destroying one of their Fairy Gates while their daughter was passing through would do that. They only reason they'd stopped fighting after she died was because a High Goddess showed up. One of the ones Adam didn't know the identity of.

Purely by coincidence, but it still had an effect on the fight, and caused the pair of nigh-immortal beings to leave.

Them being there meant that Cameron would be captured and turned into a tree. That, or returned to the Thorntons, if the evil mage family had contacted their fae allies for assistance in retrieving their lost member.

It took Adam a full minute to realize that the Fairy Emperor and Fairy Empress were staring at Eden, who was clearly uncomfortable.

"What happened to cutting him up and feeding him to the dogs around the city?" Titania asked after another minute had passed.

"I saw an opportunity to make money," Eden answered with a shaky voice. "Fairy Lord hearts are extremely expensive components. They're a limited supply, after all. So I spared some of his blood and his heart and-"

"Uh-huh," Titania stepped forward, and Eden took a step back. "Tabiris purchased the heart last night and let me know about the sale. She also purchased the vials of his blood. It is interesting that someone with your level of power could kill him."

Her gaze turned to Cameron, who shrank back behind Eden.

"You on the other hand," she said. "Are powerful enough, even if your own tree doesn't show the signs of you having the magical talent to do so."

"I killed him," Eden shakily pulled a gun out from under his hoodie. "I sh-shot him with a gun. Anti-anti-fae bullets. Three shots equal death."

"Silviar knew how to make barriers that ignore that little property of theirs," Titania said.

"I got-got lucky," Eden's hand was shaking to the point that he might drop the gun at any moment. "And it took me a-a bit. Not-not three shots at o-once."

"Interesting," she smiled, then turned her gaze back to where Cameron was hiding behind Eden, before seemingly teleporting behind them.

The only reason they knew she had used speed alone to reach that spot was because spatial magic was impossible there, outside of the teleportation plazas.

"You have the face of a Thornton," Titania commented as Cameron buried his face into Eden's hoodie, holding on tight. "Yet you aren't among their family. That tells me that they broke our agreement in not giving us their unwanted children. No matter, you're ours, now."

Titania grabbed Cameron, pulling him off of Eden as he attempted to wrap his arms around for a better grip. The younger boy started wailing and flailing, only to find his efforts fruitless against the powerful fae. Eden launched himself at the Fairy Empress, who flicked a wrist, sending him flying into Adam, who caught the teen and flung spells at the Fairy Empress.

"Your magic smells familiar," Oberon said as the spells splashed against his wife's barrier. "You are Adam Leosvar, are you not?"

Adam's eyes widened, and he grabbed Eden.

Titania sighed as the pair disappeared from sight.

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"We can track him down later," she said. "We have the real prize, now."

"He's grown more adept at time magics," Oberon commented. "I wasn't able to lock into it before he finished."

"You can hunt him later," Titania slung Cameron over her shoulder, the boy having already given up his fight, tears streaming down his face. "The little demigod will provide more power than we had ever hoped to have."

"Shame he's not fully matured," Oberon commented. "Another year or two, and he'll have reached full maturity. Another year or two of training after that, and his magical power could likely be ten times what it is now."

"Indeed," Titania commented. "Let's go."

Oberon nodded, and they and their underlings followed them down to a different teleportation plaza, where Titania waved a hand, the wooden ring around her finger glowing as a ring of vines and flowers formed, the throne room of a palace of marble and wood visible through it.

The fairies entered, Titania entering last, and the gate collapsed in on itself, disappearing just as quickly as it had appeared.

"I will personally see to the transmutation," she informed the fae. "You may go off to your own realms, and do your own things."

The other fairies nodded, opening up gates of their own and leaving, until only Titania remained in her throne room. Once they had left, she opened another gate, this time to the Fairy Forest, and stepped through.

Tens of thousands of trees filled the forest below the cliff she stepped out onto, trees of varying types and sizes. She could see the lake in the center of it, at the bottom of which rested a portal to where the Tree of Eternity, also called the Tree of Life or the Tree of Magic, grew.

Or at least, to part of the tree.

With the boy converted into a tree, she might finally be able to open the portal. She had waited far too long for that.

The back of her dress fading away, Titania manifested her delicate, silver-and-gold wings that sparkled in the light of the twin suns of the forest's realm. They began to flutter, and she flew into the sky, making her way towards a massive empty space near the edge of the lake.

With luck, the boy's tree wouldn't uproot those around it once planted, though if he did, they would deal. He was worth more than a third of the forest by himself. She'd been growing the strongest trees around the lake, and that was where he was to grow.

Landing, Titania looked at the runic circle etched onto the ground, the vibrant, lush grass parted by the marks. Purple, silver, and gold, the ten-foot-wide circle was all that was needed to make the boy into a tree.

Carefully and slowly, Titania flew around it, aware of the eighteen fae around her, all of whom had spent extra time preparing the ritual. This was too important for them to miss.

After confirming that the ritual circle was ready and without flaws, Titania flew over the circle and placed the boy into the very center. He'd passed out during the passage into the fae realm, as was normal. That was why she'd taken him to her palace first, rather than straight to the forest.

Had his divinity been unlocked, he would have retained his consciousness. Only fae, demigods with unbound divinities, and gods could stay awake when entering the fae realms. The Fairy Forest wasn't within one, even if their power permeated every aspect of it and prevented anything but a fairy gate from allowing access.

"Begin," Titania ordered them, floating back.

With the boy unconscious, he wouldn't attempt to run away, and nor would he resist the ritual. It made things easier.

The eighteen fae began feeding their magic into the ritual, speaking in the ancient tongue, and the magic circle began to glow with a rich, violet light. Several minutes passed, and Titania frowned. The circle wasn't working. While it did normally take a few minutes for its effects to become noticeable, the boy hadn't begun the conversion.

Titania swore as she realized that a complication had arisen. The token wouldn't interfere with the ritual, and neither would the boy's gift from his father. She would've removed them if they had.

What prevented the ritual from working, and caused the circle's light to turn red, then burn out, was the fact that the boy had never, not once, accessed his inner tree. It was one of the first things every mage was taught how to do when they began lessons. Even mages who didn't have teachers inevitably accessed their inner trees within a few months of gaining access to their magic. It was a simple matter of meditation focused inwards on their magic.

And he'd had access for roughly three years, and had the aether voices as his native root. She'd assumed he had been taught how to access his inner tree by then, yet it seemed that he hadn't.

Of course he hadn't, she thought to herself. The aether voices likely never taught him how because he'd never asked, and everyone else assumed the voices had taught him.

With any other mage, she could easily convince them into accessing their mage tree. A slight suggestion with her silkspeech, coupled with the promise that doing so would give them better control over their magic, always worked.

Cameron, unfortunately, would likely have a subconscious mental resistance to awakening his mage tree the moment they attempted to convince him into it, rendering silkspeech ineffective against the natural mind mage on that matter. She needed to find a way to talk him into it in a way that he could actually meditate.

Titania walked over to the boy and lifted him up, then glared at the fae.

"We can brute force this in a month and a half," she told them. "But I expect that he'll access his mage tree within two weeks. Prepare the ritual again, in this spot. Let me know as soon as it's finished."

"Yes, Empress!"

The fae immediately got to work soothing the land as Titania flew towards a mountain in the distance. The rituals took two weeks to create, and they would need to fully sooth the land before placing it down again, which could take a week or more.

There were other open spaces near the lake, with even larger trees around it than the ones there, but that was the largest of clearing, stretching more than seven hundred feet around. With the boy as powerful as he was, she doubt any of the others that close to the lake would be large enough to house him without uprooting numerous layers of trees, rather than just the nearby ones.

Reaching the mountains, Titania made her way into a tunnel network, which only a dozen fairies could navigate unassisted. She traveled deep beneath the mountain, until she reached the prison. Each cell consisted of three stone walls and a metal grill.

Ignoring the prisoners within the cells, some of whom begged for release, Titania made her way to the first empty one, which took her several turns to reach. Tracing a finger along one of the bars, she activated the unlocking mechanism.

The metal rearranged itself until a doorway had formed, and Titania entered, dumping the boy on the woven pad that would serve as his bed. Turning, she flew out and relocked the cell, then looked at the three prisoners in the one across from him.

They were all young men, and scared. She couldn't remember why they were in there, just that they'd been brought in when they were around the boy's age. So several years had passed. As she floated closer to the cell, the three elves shrank back in fear.

All three were rather attractive, she had to admit, especially the orange-haired twins.

Smiling, she touched a finger to one of the bars.

"You two with the orange hair," she said, her voice soft and soothing, her silkspeech weaving its way into their minds, broken and unable to resist due to their time there. "It's your lucky day. You finally get to leave."