"Erryn?" I asked, causing the toddler to peer up at me.
"You know her?" asked Jason. "Oh, of course; you were there with the resurrected of the Emerald Caverns, weren't you? It was a shame we were never able to trace her real family."
Of course they couldn't. She didn't have one! Or, viewed another way, she had everyone.
She had all the affinities. She had her own name as a trait. And [Eye of Judgement] wouldn't show me the details, either, so it was high ranked. And that status condition...
Bracing myself, I flipped on [Soul Perception].
I hadn't been bracing hard enough.
"What's wrong?" asked Jason. "Oh. You have [Eye of Judgement], don't you?"
He drew nearer, lowering his voice. "Please don't share what you saw, especially with her. And please rest assured that she's healing. It'll take time, but... she's getting better."
Huh? He thought my reaction had been from reading the details of the status condition? Just how bad was it?
[Scarred Soul] - All that you once were has been torn asunder, leaving only scattered fragments of yourself behind. What remains is fragile, open to further damage, and unable to hold itself together outside of a container.
I looked again at the small child, who tilted her head cutely.
"Hello?" she said, sounding a little confused.
"Hello Erryn. I'm Peter, Darren's older brother. Nice to meet you," I replied with a smile. Or at least, I hoped I was managing a smile. It probably looked a bit forced.
She certainly didn't look or sound fragmented, although obviously she was no globe-spanning goddess any more. The second part of that description, though, implied that if she died again right now, there would be no further reincarnation. Her soul would shatter for good.
I could imagine it, too. To [Soul Perception], she was a complete mess. Far worse than me when I'd merely lost a chunk of my soul to not-Blobby. Erryn had huge chunks missing, her soul an irregularly shaped blob mostly confined to her torso, rather than the form-filling thing of everyone else. It was covered in black growths, like cancers, sinking tendrils deep inside the white mass. The coloured patterns were hidden under the surface and barely moving. The only time I'd seen them so still on others was when they were sleeping. There were cracks plunging deep beneath the surface.
She had a System shard, and not only that, but she had the chains of Law. She'd Lawified herself. And perhaps that was a good thing, because some of the cracks ran so deep that her soul looked in danger of splintering apart if it wasn't all tied together. If the description was right, outside of her body it would break apart anyway. And this was after three years of healing.
Jason seemed to be right about her healing, but the only way I could tell was that white soul-mass was growing around the chains in places. They'd been on the surface, but the missing chunks of soul must be filling themselves, engulfing the chains. Who knew what effect that would have on her? How she seemed to be conscious and playing was a mystery. I'd been completely bed bound with far lesser damage.
... Speaking of healing, if healing magic relied on the soul, what the heck did it do to her? Unless the soul knew it was damaged, and what it was supposed to look like, I was going to have to rethink my theories.
"Pet... er...?" she said, before wincing and clutching her head. "Darren said about you!" she continued, as if she hadn't just obviously been hit by a burst of pain. Jason didn't react, suggesting that wasn't abnormal.
"Good things, I hope."
"Silver sparkles!"
I blinked and peered at Darren. "Silver sparkles?"
"And violet! And pink skin!"
I peered at my skin. People often talked about skin being pink, but in reality that was a poor description of anyone, unless maybe they stood under a hot shower for too long. Mine was more of a light brown, with hints of yellow, and yes, maybe pink. But the [Artist] Darren would never be that imprecise. A normal six-year-old would have said purple instead of violet.
And I was pretty darn certain that I didn't sparkle.
"Cluma hasn't covered me in glitter while I wasn't looking, has she?" I asked Jason.
"Have you never before asked your brother what the world looks like to him?" asked Krana, answering in Jason's place.
"Uhh... Like the world?" I tried.
"I see that you have not. You should. Or at least pay attention to his artwork."
I did pay attention to his paintings. Mostly they were of fire; he got through a lot of red and yellow paint. What did that have to do with the conversation?
He'd lost interest already, conjuring up more of his faux fire elementals. How they were even possible, I hadn't a clue, but empirical evidence proved that they were. Another dozen of the things were dancing around Darren already.
None of which he was actually looking at, despite the way he was giggling. Instead, his eyes were focused on nothing, pointing into the distance, unseeing.
That must be what Krana meant. I'd gained other senses, but sight was still very much primary. When I thought 'how does the world look', I thought of light. Darren probably didn't. His eyes had the same level of importance to him as my nose. Yes, it had its uses, but my sense of smell was situational, and I didn't need it to stop myself walking into walls. To Darren—who had an ability on par with my [Mana Sight] by the time of his first birthday, and had doubtless gone way beyond it by now—the world was lit by mana. Sight was a lesser sense with a limited field of view, that dipped in usefulness for half the day when the sun set.
If Krana was talking about paintings... Perhaps that self-portrait he'd done of himself standing in an inferno hadn't been him imagining himself on fire, but what he really saw, with the fire affinity mana wrapped around him.
"My mana is sparkly?" I asked, my voice tinged with doubt. Why the heck would my mana be silver and sparkly?
"If it helps, mine is apparently green-yellow and bubbly," shared Jason.
"Mmm! Bubbles!" agreed Darren. "And Krana is bright, like the sun. And Erryn is a rainbow!"
"Not rainbow. Am human!" disagreed Erryn, much to Jason's amusement.
"So, what brings you out here?" he asked, turning back to me. "And from the length of that tail, I assume you... finished..." he stuttered and drew to a halt. "Uh... Why is your tail alive? And your ears? I thought Grover's fifth rank enchantment didn't change anything significantly?"
Hah, Jason probably hadn't heard the final outcome of the experiment. "They didn't on their own, but after wearing them for a few days, my body kinda decided they were supposed to be there, so the next time I got hit with healing magic, my 'missing' body parts grew back."
"Seriously?! Then, people who lost limbs but couldn't get them healed in time, or people born with defects. They could all be healed?"
"Maybe. I suggested it to Raymond back in Dawnhold, but it requires a rank five enchanter, and just like my tail needed a staged approach, so would something like an arm. Maybe the institute is running trials to see how feasible it is by now, but I haven't heard anything."
"I would hope I'd have been notified if anything like that was happening. I'll need to send them a message. I hope they aren't taking such a great opportunity for healing and using it only to grant people like you fluffy ears."
"I doubt it," I answered truthfully. "More likely, they have a million and one other things on their plate, and they simply haven't got around to it yet. If you want to volunteer to help out, go for it."
"Perhaps I will," he answered, glancing at Erryn. "But it's a shame it wouldn't help me heal her."
"She is beyond the healing of anyone," said Krana, the air in front of him shimmering with a heat haze as he emitted a high-temperature sigh. "Her wounds are not of the body."
"I know," said Jason, with a much smaller and lower temperature sigh.
"I fine! Stop!" exclaimed Erryn, hands on hips and pouting, causing Jason to smile again.
"I know, but we want you to be better than fine," he said, rubbing her head.
"Ahh! Daddy! Stop!"
I smiled at the sight before Krana's interjection played itself back in my mind. He had his rank five appraisal skill, so he could certainly see the [Scarred Soul] status condition, but the way he'd phrased it... Was that just his normal heavy wording, or did he know?
"Krana..." I started, but wasn't sure how to ask without arousing the suspicions of Jason. Or worse, Erryn herself.
"I do wish you would use my name correctly," he rumbled as I thought.
"... I'll try. It's just... long. And I'm not great with names."
"Your intelligence stat is over seventy. Remembering my name is not beyond you."
Hah. It would be nice if my stats were all I needed to raise to make myself more intelligent. Alas, while the intelligence stat helped my memory, it didn't automatically make me a genius. Nor did charisma automatically make me socially competent.
"Right. Anyway, we had another mutual acquaintance named Erryn. Have you heard from her?"
"Alas, she is no longer around," he answered as his massive eyes flickered down to the toddler. I was right. He knew.
"Really?" asked Jason. "No-one I'd spoken to has ever heard the name before. We were hoping the rarity would make it easier to track down her family. Where does this acquaintance of yours live? Perhaps there's a relation."
"She has passed on, and left no family," answered Krana. Or Kranakellicium. I really should respect his wish to use his full name, at least out loud. "I am afraid there is no help to be had there."
"Oh. That's a pity."
"Perhaps, but who is to say what is for the best? You are the father of that child now. There is nothing to be gained by looking for that which does not exist."
"I know. I just wish I knew where she came from."
"Perhaps the past will be revealed to you in time."
I'd been debating whether to tell Jason. It would assuredly make things weird, but it was kinda a big secret to keep. Given that Krana wasn't saying anything either, obviously he didn't want Jason to know. I suppose what not-Blobby had said was accurate; there was really nothing left of Erryn in that little girl, other than the name and the scars.
Hopefully, he was right about her healing, but given the state of her soul, I was still worried. Even if it was healing, was it healing right? She wasn't human to begin with, so human-shaped wasn't how her soul should be. Plus there was the way it was engulfing the chains, and the blackened growths. Were they growing? Shrinking? I'd need to monitor her over time to even find out, but whatever the answer, it wasn't like I could do anything about it.
Maybe she'd need Harry's hypothetical Law cure, to clean those chains out of her soul once she'd healed further... Hopefully, Erryn's previous incarnation had thought all this through, and whatever was happening was planned.
"Does this mean it's not a secret from Peter?" Darren asked Krana while I was thinking.
"... I suppose it does," admitted Krana, sounding fairly unwilling.
"Yay. Watch!" exclaimed Darren, taking a deep breath and looking into the sky.
His pose was enough to guess what he was doing, and sure enough, through [Mana Sight], I watched the burst of mana flow out of his thauma, flood the veins around his lungs, and saturate them. Most twisted into fire affinity, permeating the air. The rest wrapped itself around his throat as he exhaled, forming patterns in his flesh and imprinting itself on the breath as it rushed through.
A lance of flame launched straight upwards. Not a patch on what I'd seen Krana do, but Darren was blatantly using a dragon's breath.
"Is that even a skill?!" I complained.
"It is not," confirmed Krana. "It is a racial ability. A human copying it like that is incomprehensible. Likewise, the portal he created was based on that of your Earth, which was not produced via mana at all."
"I suppose I can see why he caught your interest," I said, looking up at the hole he'd just punched straight through a cloud.
"Erryn?" I asked, causing the toddler to peer up at me.
"You know her?" asked Jason. "Oh, of course; you were there with the resurrected of the Emerald Caverns, weren't you? It was a shame we were never able to trace her real family."
Of course they couldn't. She didn't have one! Or, viewed another way, she had everyone.
She had all the affinities. She had her own name as a trait. And [Eye of Judgement] wouldn't show me the details, either, so it was high ranked. And that status condition...
Bracing myself, I flipped on [Soul Perception].
I hadn't been bracing hard enough.
"What's wrong?" asked Jason. "Oh. You have [Eye of Judgement], don't you?"
He drew nearer, lowering his voice. "Please don't share what you saw, especially with her. And please rest assured that she's healing. It'll take time, but... she's getting better."
Huh? He thought my reaction had been from reading the details of the status condition? Just how bad was it?
[Scarred Soul] - All that you once were has been torn asunder, leaving only scattered fragments of yourself behind. What remains is fragile, open to further damage, and unable to hold itself together outside of a container.
I looked again at the small child, who tilted her head cutely.
"Hello?" she said, sounding a little confused.
"Hello Erryn. I'm Peter, Darren's older brother. Nice to meet you," I replied with a smile. Or at least, I hoped I was managing a smile. It probably looked a bit forced.
She certainly didn't look or sound fragmented, although obviously she was no globe-spanning goddess any more. The second part of that description, though, implied that if she died again right now, there would be no further reincarnation. Her soul would shatter for good.
I could imagine it, too. To [Soul Perception], she was a complete mess. Far worse than me when I'd merely lost a chunk of my soul to not-Blobby. Erryn had huge chunks missing, her soul an irregularly shaped blob mostly confined to her torso, rather than the form-filling thing of everyone else. It was covered in black growths, like cancers, sinking tendrils deep inside the white mass. The coloured patterns were hidden under the surface and barely moving. The only time I'd seen them so still on others was when they were sleeping. There were cracks plunging deep beneath the surface.
She had a System shard, and not only that, but she had the chains of Law. She'd Lawified herself. And perhaps that was a good thing, because some of the cracks ran so deep that her soul looked in danger of splintering apart if it wasn't all tied together. If the description was right, outside of her body it would break apart anyway. And this was after three years of healing.
Jason seemed to be right about her healing, but the only way I could tell was that white soul-mass was growing around the chains in places. They'd been on the surface, but the missing chunks of soul must be filling themselves, engulfing the chains. Who knew what effect that would have on her? How she seemed to be conscious and playing was a mystery. I'd been completely bed bound with far lesser damage.
... Speaking of healing, if healing magic relied on the soul, what the heck did it do to her? Unless the soul knew it was damaged, and what it was supposed to look like, I was going to have to rethink my theories.
"Pet... er...?" she said, before wincing and clutching her head. "Darren said about you!" she continued, as if she hadn't just obviously been hit by a burst of pain. Jason didn't react, suggesting that wasn't abnormal.
"Good things, I hope."
"Silver sparkles!"
I blinked and peered at Darren. "Silver sparkles?"
"And violet! And pink skin!"
I peered at my skin. People often talked about skin being pink, but in reality that was a poor description of anyone, unless maybe they stood under a hot shower for too long. Mine was more of a light brown, with hints of yellow, and yes, maybe pink. But the [Artist] Darren would never be that imprecise. A normal six-year-old would have said purple instead of violet.
And I was pretty darn certain that I didn't sparkle.
"Cluma hasn't covered me in glitter while I wasn't looking, has she?" I asked Jason.
"Have you never before asked your brother what the world looks like to him?" asked Krana, answering in Jason's place.
"Uhh... Like the world?" I tried.
"I see that you have not. You should. Or at least pay attention to his artwork."
I did pay attention to his paintings. Mostly they were of fire; he got through a lot of red and yellow paint. What did that have to do with the conversation?
He'd lost interest already, conjuring up more of his faux fire elementals. How they were even possible, I hadn't a clue, but empirical evidence proved that they were. Another dozen of the things were dancing around Darren already.
None of which he was actually looking at, despite the way he was giggling. Instead, his eyes were focused on nothing, pointing into the distance, unseeing.
That must be what Krana meant. I'd gained other senses, but sight was still very much primary. When I thought 'how does the world look', I thought of light. Darren probably didn't. His eyes had the same level of importance to him as my nose. Yes, it had its uses, but my sense of smell was situational, and I didn't need it to stop myself walking into walls. To Darren—who had an ability on par with my [Mana Sight] by the time of his first birthday, and had doubtless gone way beyond it by now—the world was lit by mana. Sight was a lesser sense with a limited field of view, that dipped in usefulness for half the day when the sun set.
If Krana was talking about paintings... Perhaps that self-portrait he'd done of himself standing in an inferno hadn't been him imagining himself on fire, but what he really saw, with the fire affinity mana wrapped around him.
"My mana is sparkly?" I asked, my voice tinged with doubt. Why the heck would my mana be silver and sparkly?
"If it helps, mine is apparently green-yellow and bubbly," shared Jason.
"Mmm! Bubbles!" agreed Darren. "And Krana is bright, like the sun. And Erryn is a rainbow!"
"Not rainbow. Am human!" disagreed Erryn, much to Jason's amusement.
"So, what brings you out here?" he asked, turning back to me. "And from the length of that tail, I assume you... finished..." he stuttered and drew to a halt. "Uh... Why is your tail alive? And your ears? I thought Grover's fifth rank enchantment didn't change anything significantly?"
Hah, Jason probably hadn't heard the final outcome of the experiment. "They didn't on their own, but after wearing them for a few days, my body kinda decided they were supposed to be there, so the next time I got hit with healing magic, my 'missing' body parts grew back."
"Seriously?! Then, people who lost limbs but couldn't get them healed in time, or people born with defects. They could all be healed?"
"Maybe. I suggested it to Raymond back in Dawnhold, but it requires a rank five enchanter, and just like my tail needed a staged approach, so would something like an arm. Maybe the institute is running trials to see how feasible it is by now, but I haven't heard anything."
"I would hope I'd have been notified if anything like that was happening. I'll need to send them a message. I hope they aren't taking such a great opportunity for healing and using it only to grant people like you fluffy ears."
"I doubt it," I answered truthfully. "More likely, they have a million and one other things on their plate, and they simply haven't got around to it yet. If you want to volunteer to help out, go for it."
"Perhaps I will," he answered, glancing at Erryn. "But it's a shame it wouldn't help me heal her."
"She is beyond the healing of anyone," said Krana, the air in front of him shimmering with a heat haze as he emitted a high-temperature sigh. "Her wounds are not of the body."
"I know," said Jason, with a much smaller and lower temperature sigh.
"I fine! Stop!" exclaimed Erryn, hands on hips and pouting, causing Jason to smile again.
"I know, but we want you to be better than fine," he said, rubbing her head.
"Ahh! Daddy! Stop!"
I smiled at the sight before Krana's interjection played itself back in my mind. He had his rank five appraisal skill, so he could certainly see the [Scarred Soul] status condition, but the way he'd phrased it... Was that just his normal heavy wording, or did he know?
"Krana..." I started, but wasn't sure how to ask without arousing the suspicions of Jason. Or worse, Erryn herself.
"I do wish you would use my name correctly," he rumbled as I thought.
"... I'll try. It's just... long. And I'm not great with names."
"Your intelligence stat is over seventy. Remembering my name is not beyond you."
Hah. It would be nice if my stats were all I needed to raise to make myself more intelligent. Alas, while the intelligence stat helped my memory, it didn't automatically make me a genius. Nor did charisma automatically make me socially competent.
"Right. Anyway, we had another mutual acquaintance named Erryn. Have you heard from her?"
"Alas, she is no longer around," he answered as his massive eyes flickered down to the toddler. I was right. He knew.
"Really?" asked Jason. "No-one I'd spoken to has ever heard the name before. We were hoping the rarity would make it easier to track down her family. Where does this acquaintance of yours live? Perhaps there's a relation."
"She has passed on, and left no family," answered Krana. Or Kranakellicium. I really should respect his wish to use his full name, at least out loud. "I am afraid there is no help to be had there."
"Oh. That's a pity."
"Perhaps, but who is to say what is for the best? You are the father of that child now. There is nothing to be gained by looking for that which does not exist."
"I know. I just wish I knew where she came from."
"Perhaps the past will be revealed to you in time."
I'd been debating whether to tell Jason. It would assuredly make things weird, but it was kinda a big secret to keep. Given that Krana wasn't saying anything either, obviously he didn't want Jason to know. I suppose what not-Blobby had said was accurate; there was really nothing left of Erryn in that little girl, other than the name and the scars.
Hopefully, he was right about her healing, but given the state of her soul, I was still worried. Even if it was healing, was it healing right? She wasn't human to begin with, so human-shaped wasn't how her soul should be. Plus there was the way it was engulfing the chains, and the blackened growths. Were they growing? Shrinking? I'd need to monitor her over time to even find out, but whatever the answer, it wasn't like I could do anything about it.
Maybe she'd need Harry's hypothetical Law cure, to clean those chains out of her soul once she'd healed further... Hopefully, Erryn's previous incarnation had thought all this through, and whatever was happening was planned.
"Does this mean it's not a secret from Peter?" Darren asked Krana while I was thinking.
"... I suppose it does," admitted Krana, sounding fairly unwilling.
"Yay. Watch!" exclaimed Darren, taking a deep breath and looking into the sky.
His pose was enough to guess what he was doing, and sure enough, through [Mana Sight], I watched the burst of mana flow out of his thauma, flood the veins around his lungs, and saturate them. Most twisted into fire affinity, permeating the air. The rest wrapped itself around his throat as he exhaled, forming patterns in his flesh and imprinting itself on the breath as it rushed through.
A lance of flame launched straight upwards. Not a patch on what I'd seen Krana do, but Darren was blatantly using a dragon's breath.
"Is that even a skill?!" I complained.
"It is not," confirmed Krana. "It is a racial ability. A human copying it like that is incomprehensible. Likewise, the portal he created was based on that of your Earth, which was not produced via mana at all."
"I suppose I can see why he caught your interest," I said, looking up at the hole he'd just punched straight through a cloud.
