The Fire and the Storm - Metric Pro Edition: Fiction, Dragons, Elves, Unicorns, Magic (27 page)

“Still, they’re right.”
Mark nodded. 
“We should be using it on everyone we can, and we haven’t been.  I’ll even go along with the surprise for Quewanak!  As you say, he doesn’t get one very often.”

“All right, get ready.”
Mark warned them as he prepared the spell.  “Here you go.” he said as he cast it on both of them.  “And here’s The Skills of Visinniria.” he concluded as he set the spell in their minds.

“Wow Father, it really works so good when you give us a spell!” Helemia marveled.  “It’s way easier than when we get something from someone else ourselves!”

“Thanks.” Mark chuckled.  “Did it work all right?  You didn’t find it too much to take all at once?”

“I think it’ll take a day or two for some of the fine details to fully sink in, but it’s not uncomfortable or anything.” she responded, then grinned.  “Now quick, do Aunt Alilia and get your armor on so we can start fighting!  I can’t wait!  This is gonna be
so fun!”

“Okay!” Mark laughed as he cast on Alilia, and Talia fetched their armor by Translocation.

Soon the back yard rang with the sounds of joyous combat, while Ria floated above it all offering pointers on tactics and strategy.  What the twins lacked in strength, endurance, and outright speed, they made up for in quickness and enthusiasm.

Valentia was so distraught at being left out that Mark and Alilia spent a few minutes casting a close fitting Shield around her with enough power to make her almost indestructible, and gave it the Illusory appearance of armor that matched Reggie and Helemia’s.  This allowed her to run through the sparring combatants being a complete pest, swinging a wooden sword at everyone indiscriminately, which she enjoyed immensely.  Mark said it was good training for the rest in dealing with distractions on the battlefield.

They kept it up all day, with a pause for lunch.  As always, Valentia was allowed to use her magic for three hours each evening beginning at the fifth hour after noon.  She had the elven time sense, and began chanting; “Magic time!  Magic time!” over and over in anticipation a couple of minutes before it began.

That evening, the whole family worked on aerial combat tactics and strategies, which was even more fun than ground work.  They were having so much fun that they skipped a formal evening meal and had sandwiches and juice between bouts.

That evening Valentia insisted on sleeping with the twins, rather than with her parents as she always insisted on before that.  It was a relief for her parents, since they wouldn’t have to monitor her sleep and cast Silence on themselves in order to make love without disturbing her.

As the adults were tucking the children into bed, Mark commented to the twins; “You know, you’re more than ready to join in the community military training.  You’d already be more effective than about a third of our adult neighbors.”

“No thank you, Father.” Reggie smiled. “It would be fun, but we’d like to wait until Valentia’s ready too, and until her psionics are fully running, and our own magic is fully working.”

“But thanks for offering.” Helemia added.

“All, right, I understand that.” Mark chuckled.

“And it’s very generous of you to wait to include Valentia.” Alilia smiled.

“Thanks,” Helemia giggled, “But it has less to do with generosity than with knowing how much of a temper tantrum she’ll have if she doesn’t get to play, when we can.  And I can’t really blame her.  But she’s coming along pretty fast, especially since you grownups started Linking her without us, so it won’t be long.  She’s not near as far ahead as me and Reggie, but she’s still
way
ahead of any other kids her age, and we’re helping her as much as we can.”

“And she loves you dearly for it.” Alilia told them.  “As do I.”

“As we love you all.” Reggie returned with a smile.  “And we’re sorry that you don’t get to, well, to parent us very much compared to other kids.  You don’t have to teach us as much as normal kids, or care for us as much as normal kids, and on top of that we know we like to spend a lot more time on our own working on stuff than other kids.  And sometimes we can tell that you really miss it.  Like today, with the combat training.  You wanted the joy of sharing your knowledge and time with us, passing on what you’ve learned, and we just wanted to get it all done right away.”

“Ah.  Well I’m sorry we were that obvious about it.” Mark chuckled.

“Almost every advantage has its price.” Talia smiled.  “The benefits of your amazing abilities far outweigh their meager drawbacks.  And you were right, we had far more fun today than we would’ve if the we’d spent the time teaching you the basics of swordplay without any magical or psionic teaching methods.”

“As to the joy of parenting you, we also have the advantages of our abilities.” Mark told them.  “We’re always psionicly aware of you, at least subconsciously, even when you’re off on your own.  We always know you’re safe, and we share every moment of your lives to one extent or another.  The only exceptions were when we were in a combat exercise, at which time we used to have Quewanak monitor you for us so we could free up our concentration.  But since your little adventure with the Sylvan, we keep some of our awareness on you even when we’re fighting a battle exercise.  So in many ways, we get a lot more wonderful parenting experiences than normal parents get with normal children.”

“We’ll never lose you.” Alilia told them with love that was almost fierce.  “As Mark saved Dalia and Bezedil from death itself, so we will save you or Valentia, should you ever need it.  We make sure that all three of us have sufficient psionic awareness of all three of you at all times to make the Resurrection work, we keep a reserve of power available for it at all times, and Mark has pre-cast the spell for each of us and stored them in indestructible objects.

“Even if something were to kill all three of you children and two of us, our family will be restored.  If we can find a way to fully automate the spell, it’ll save us even if all six of us are suddenly killed.  And
that’s
as safe as we can be, until Mark figures out how to make gods of us all.  Our love for you will
not
be denied, not by anyone or anything!”

“Wow!  That’s good to know!” Helemia marveled.

“And besides all that,” Talia pointed out with a smile, “If we want more of the joy of parenting after you’re grown, we’ll just have more children.  Won’t we Alilia?”

Alilia looked at her with wide eyes.  “You’re offering to make our relationship permanent?” she asked in surprise.

“As long as our love lasts.” Talia returned with a smile.  “Shall we say indefinitely, rather than permanently.  I still think the great love of your life may be out there somewhere, and once Yzell solves the fertility problem, every male elf alive becomes a candidate.”

Alilia actually chuckled bashfully.  “I hope she does solve the fertility problem, so that you can see that you’re wrong.  The fact that Mark was my only hope to have a child was a very lucky accident for me, because he truly is the great love of my life, I’m sure of it.  If I’d only been able to have a child with some other man, I probably would have done it, but it would have broken my heart when it took me farther from Mark.  I love you more than I could ever love any other woman, and the biggest reason for that is that you are so much a part of him.  Part of it is that you’re completely adorable, and a fine person in every way.  The rest of the reason being that this family that we’ve created has brought us together far more than Gorsh and I were by raising Bezedil, since we’re far better and more caring parents than Gorsh and I were then.  And my improvement in that regard is due to the beneficial effect that knowing you and Mark and our experiences together have had on my character.

“We still have twenty-two years of glorious freedom here before we have to go back to the world and all its demands.  Twenty-two years for our love to grow, and for our relationship to prove its strength.

“Then, if all has gone as well as I’m sure it will, I will ask you both to marry me; to stand with me in Laylas chapel and proudly declare our love and our union for all time, as all of civilization bears witness.

“I see I’ve surprised you, and it’s not yet time to ask that of you anyway.  As I’ve said, if all goes this beautifully for twenty-two more years, then I’ll ask you, and I won’t accept an answer until then.

“For now, it’s time our little warriors were asleep.  Goodnight, my loves.” she said, and leaned over to kiss all three children in turn.

Mark and Talia did the same, then Mark picked up his wives and carried them to bed.

The next morning, Alilia took Valentia for a visit to Yzell and Theramin’s home for an examination by Yzell and some play time with their children.

While they were gone, the twins tried to awaken their magic abilities for a few minutes, then prepared to go out.

“What are your plans for today, loves?” Talia asked as they put on their outdoor clothing.

“We’ll ask for private lessons.” Helemia replied.  “There’s much we still want to learn from you and Father and Aunt Alilia, and we plan to continue our lessons with you on magic, general knowledge, combat tactics and strategy, and practical skills.  But some variety will be nice.”

“We’ll follow Quewanak’s advice.” Reggie continued.  “I’ll ask to study the rules of reality with Grandfather Yazadril, fabrication with Kragorram, and manufacturing with Uncle Wittan and Grandfather Mark.  It seems much of the problem of fighting in the void involves the lack of wizard’s rock in the void, and the resulting lack of the ability to use wizardry, combined with the lesser energy available from the sun at extreme distances.  I propose to create a craft such as the Triax use, replacing much of the spells required to live and operate in the void with physical properties and processes.  And we can make some of the craft out of wizard’s rock, so we can use wizardry in it.  It’ll get plenty of sun in the void to charge the rock.”

“I’ll ask Grandfather Yazadril for special magic training.” Helemia added.  “I’ll ask him for training on magic techniques that get the most results from the least magic power by focusing on precision and efficiency.  I’ll be asking Bekamil of The Atoned about that too; he only has a tiny amount of power but he’s over three thousand years old, and he’s gotten really good at using the little bit of power he has.  Knowing this should help us a lot in the void when we’re a long way from the sun, and it might help me and Reggie when our own magic starts to work.  We might get it all at once like Valentia, or we might get just a little that grows with us, like most elven kids.  If we only get a little bit at first we’ll still be able to do a lot with it, even if we can’t get power from someone else when we need it.

“I’m also going to ask for Healer’s training from Hilsith so I can help with her research.  And I’m going to ask Quewanak to help me understand more of what we know about demons from Somonik’s memory.”

“We’ll make way better use of our time by splitting up like that.” Reggie added.  “We both pretty much learn what the other one learns anyway, so we might as well.  And it’s not so hard to be apart anymore.  We figure we’ll spend about two hours every morning on this extra stuff, until Valentia’s ready to do it with us.  We’ll do it more after that, but she doesn’t like being apart from us either.”

“Well, that all seems like fine thinking.” Talia smiled as she gave them a kiss goodbye.

“Will you be back for lunch?” Mark asked as he came over and knelt down for a hug.

“Yup.” Reggie nodded.  “Mother’s making berry pie.  I’d never miss that!”

“Good.  There’s something I want to ask you before you go, though.” Mark said as he stood.  “As far as I know, no one outside our house knows about the prophesies you made about your destined loves, and we think it would be best if it stayed that way.  We also don’t think it would be good for Valentia to know, if she doesn’t already.  It might become a self-fulfilling prophesy before it’s meant to happen, if indeed it is meant to happen, or it might drive her away from you if she feels that her choices are being made for her.  I’d also like you to make an effort to not treat her any differently than you would have if you’d never had the prophecy.  As you said, maybe you’re not meant to be together for twenty thousand years or more from now.  History is full of people who caused bad things by trying to make a prophecy happen too early.”

“All right father.” Reggie nodded.  “Valentia doesn’t know, I don’t think.  I can’t say for certain; we’ve been Linked with her a lot so she might have seen something we haven’t showed her, but we haven’t showed her that.”

“I don’t want anyone to know that I know about my destined love either.” Helemia stated with determination.  “I wish
I
didn’t know.  Now I have to do the same thing; act normal as much as I can so the prophecy doesn’t come early or get messed up.  We still don’t know if Reggie’s really a prophet anyway.  Him and Kragorram aren’t even best friends.  We were already planning on killing demons anyway, we’ll probably never know what the demons actually call us, and us destroying their homeworld is already starting to be what you said; self-fulfilling, because we’re already working on it just because he said so.  The only thing he’s said would happen that did is that Alilia named Valentia that after he said so, but he might have picked it up from Alilia’s mind, or she might have done it because he said so right to her.  If he’d hadn’t said it to her and he’d written it down in private and showed it to someone else, and Alilia named her that after that without knowing about it, then we’d know.  Now we have to wait until he says something we can prove.

“Anyway, we haveta go if we don’t want to be late back for lunch.  Love you!” she added as Reggie opened the door.

“Love you!  Have fun!” Mark returned, then turned to Talia.

“You know, Now that the kids are off to school, so to speak, we’re going to have more time available.” he thoughtfully stated.  “And it strikes me that they’re improving a lot faster than we are, so if we want to stay ahead of them, we’re going to have to start working harder.”