The Fire and the Storm - Metric Pro Edition: Fiction, Dragons, Elves, Unicorns, Magic (31 page)

Alilia felt the blood drain from her face and she was struck by a bolt of panic upon realizing that they weren’t merely adding a spark of energy, as they had done to Valentia.  They were making physical changes.  The twin infants, with baby Valentia’s help, were performing very fine-scale brain surgery upon themselves.

They freely shared all this with Alilia in a fraction of a second, in order to avoid breaking their concentration.  She immediately forced herself to calm with an iron discipline, and silently backed out of the room, closing the door behind her.

As soon as she had done that, she heavily Shielded her thoughts and communications from the children, and immediately informed Mark, Talia, Hilsith, Yazadril, and Yzell of the state of affairs with a single burst of psionic thought that would have staggered most minds.

None of those five were discomfited by the suddenness of the burst of information, though they were mightily discomfited indeed by what they learned.  A moment later the five were standing silently in the kitchen with their eyes closed, concentrating intently on passively psionicly following what the children were doing, without interfering in any way.  Alilia joined them in this.

Though all six adults were almost consumed with the need to put a stop to this incredibly dangerous procedure, they all realized that to even disturb the process in the slightest way might have dire consequences.  The work was already well underway, the chance to put a stop to it was hours in the past, and all they could do was wait and hope that everything came out well.  The only truly bright side to the situation was the children’s certainty that they were almost finished.

Mark called Povon and Quewanak into a Link, updated them on what was happening, and asked for opinions.

“I’ve been following what they’ve been doing since they began.”
Quewanak informed the rest. 
“Don’t worry, they have things well in hand.”

“I have to agree.”
Hilsith stated. 
“Their examination of the evidence was thorough and well-considered, their chain of logic is flawless, and it appears that between the three of them, they have the skills to do this.  It’s only the fact that they’re in no way qualified to be doing it that’s so worrisome.

“You know, in these last few months Helemia has scoured my mind for much of what I know as a Healer, but I didn’t think she’d be able to internalize enough of it for it to be useful to her for years yet.  Yet it certainly appears that I was wrong about that.”

“Obviously so.”
Quewanak agreed. 
“This is innovative and ground-breaking work, as well as a brilliant display of technique.  Furthermore, the importance of being able to awaken latent psionic and magical ability can hardly be overstated.”

“By herself, Helemia probably couldn’t use all the Healing she’s learned yet.”
Talia stated. 
“But she never does anything by herself, any more than Mark or Alilia or I do these days.  She and Reggie share every thought and task, whether it seems like they are or not.  They’re capable of so much more together than they could ever do separately. And now that they’ve added Valentia’s deft and sure grasp of magic to the mix, the three of them are obviously a potent combination.”

“I’ll say!”
Mark agreed. 
“That’s some delicate work they’re doing!  I’ve never even conceived of working on anything at such small scales!”

Their conversation faltered as they concentrated on their observations of the children’s operation.  Hilsith began tracing everything they’d done in the process, and preparing procedures to reverse it if necessary, should things turn out badly.  It was so complex that she had to have Yazadril help her in order to keep all the details firmly in mind.

Then Talia gave herself a shake, and started making breakfast.  Mark smiled, shrugged, and joined her in the task.  They knew their children would need some quick food energy when they were finished, at the very least.  They used magic to hurry the task as much as possible, and were finished in less than three minutes, then spelled it to stay hot and fresh until the children were done.

Almost fifty nerve-racking minutes later the children finished and began meticulously double-checking their work, and after another three minutes they were filled with the joy of their triumph.

The three babes shared their hug and their Link for one more long moment, just to savor their love and closeness and the joy of success as the adults who were physically present ran into the room.  Then the three of them relaxed and laid back on the bed, extricated their legs from around each other, and began stretching muscles stiff and sore from holding their positions for many hours.  All three had bright red spots on either side of their foreheads from pressing their heads together for so long.

Finally Alilia could contain herself no more, and she leaped onto the bed and tried to hug all three of them at once.  “You crazy kids!” she cried as her tension and fear were released in tears.  “You crazy, crazy kids!  Gods how I love you so!”

Mark and Talia sat on the bed and wordlessly joined the big hug.

“We’re sorry we worried you.” Reggie said, but his huge grin detracted from the apparent sincerity of his apology.  “We didn’t plan to do all that last night, but we did the first step, and then we did the second, and by the time we realized that there was a point where it wouldn’t be very smart to stop anymore, we were already past it.”

“It was still foolish of you to even start such work unsupervised, with the meager experience that you have!” Hilsith insisted.

“Was it?” Helemia asked over Mark’s shoulder with a defiant grin of her own.  “Nobody ever did that before, so we were as experienced at it as anyone else.  Sometimes you have to act when the inspiration strikes.  And it worked.”

She lifted the pebble from the bed with Movement without even looking at it, and brought it around in front of her.  “Look at that.  Just a pebble floating in the air.  But it means so much.”

“It sure does!” Reggie agreed with a giggle, and lifted his whole family off the bed with Movement.

“And I’m psionic now.”
Valentia announced with profound pleasure without physically speaking. 
“Reggie says I’m pretty strong at it too.”

“You are.”
Povon confirmed, with a bit of a mental snicker.
  “Particularly if being among the thirty most psionicly powerful humanoids can be considered ‘pretty strong’.”

“Zi pekbaz kvi Gron!  I’m starved!” Helemia suddenly exclaimed, and the three youngsters pulled from their parents’ embraces as Reggie dropped them all fifteen centimeters onto the bed, then they jumped off the bed and flew for the kitchen, darting around the other adults like pins in an obstacle course.

“Zi pekbaz kvi Gron?” Mark asked as he rose from the bed and they followed their children at a more sedate pace.

“It’s a common epithet in the Sylvan Blezogeth language.”
Quewanak psionicly informed them. 
“It translates literally as; ‘By the loins of Gron’, and refers to a famous prostitute who lived in Serminak some two and a half eons ago.”

“Oh.” Mark said with raised eyebrows as they entered the kitchen, where the children were already serving themselves up.  “You know, I think I’ve done a pretty good job at resisting it so far, but parenting is starting to be a pretty mind-boggling experience.”

“My mind is more than boggled!” Alilia angrily declared at the children.  “I’m immensely relived that you seem to have come through that with no adverse side effects, but it was still incredibly foolish, as Hilsith said!  When I entered that bedroom this morning and realized what you were doing, it scared the life out of me!  Perhaps no one could help direct you in your work, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t completely stupid to not have Hilsith standing by and observing in case anything went wrong!  She or any of us would have been glad to help you with this, even if it was a surprise in the middle of the night!  Not to mention how hurt I was to realize that you were deliberately deceiving us with a false psionic impression that you were sleeping!”

Suddenly her anger broke and she burst into tears as she turned to Talia and hugged her, burying her face in the younger woman’s hair.  “Sweet missing gods, I was so scared they would injure their brains beyond recovery.” she sobbed into Talia’s shoulder.

The children had frozen in mid-motion at Alilia’s angry outburst.  None of their three parents had ever truly been angry with them before, nor had they ever seen one of their parents cry.

Valentia started crying too, and flew over to hug Alilia’s neck.  “I’m so sorry Mother!  Please don’t cry!” she sobbed.

Reggie and Helemia’s eyes brimmed with tears, but they held their composure other than that.

“We’re sorry we scared you, and we’re sorry we hurt you.” Reggie quietly declared.  “We sent the false sleep signal when we were working on Valentia’s psionics.  That wasn’t dangerous, but it was tricky, and we just didn’t want to be disturbed.  We just left it on after that.  We didn’t deliberately use it to hide the fact that we were doing something dangerous.

“And, though we don’t want to make our apology seem in any way insincere, and we don’t want to seem like we’re making excuses, but we think it’s only fair to point out that we
were
being supervised.  Quewanak was watching us.  We didn’t even have to ask, because Quewanak is
always
watching us.  And we’re pretty sure if anything had gone wrong, he’d have had Hilsith here and alert a moment later.  He would have had a perfect psionic record of what we’d done, and she’d have it by the time he got her here.  And besides that, all of you really are great teachers.  There wasn’t really any danger, because we really weren’t working beyond our training and abilities.  We knew what we were doing, and Hilsith’s evaluation confirms this.  We were just making us more like Valentia, which seems perfectly safe, unless we’d completely bungled the whole thing.  And we’d have noticed something going wrong long before it got that bad.  We took it really slow, and did each tiniest possible step one by one, and checked that it was good before we did the next one.”

“I understand, son, but emotions aren’t logical.” Mark told him, and looked to Helemia to include her in what he was saying.  “As far as the state of Alilia’s spirit is concerned, her only other child died just a short while ago.  We brought him back, but that was four days later, long enough to have hurt Alilia so badly that her soul may bear the wound for centuries.  She’s understandably terrified that she’s going to lose him or one of you again.  So you scared her even more than you did me and Talia.”

He paused, and some of his own anger and irritation became apparent.  “And you managed to do the one thing, the
one thing
that could scare us like that!  We can save you if you got blasted into nothing but scattered dust and mist, we can save you from almost
anything,
but a whole bunch of extremely tiny brain injuries?  Who knows?  You wouldn’t be injured enough for the Resurrection to work on you, you might not even be injured enough to affect you in any way, but I’ve already learned enough about Healing to know that even the tiniest brain injuries can have a huge effect, from insanity to a lifetime of seizures and convulsions, or complete personality change, or loss of specific mental abilities, or loss of control of part of your body, or internal organ failure.  Even your innate magic Healing won’t work if you’ve messed up any of the parts of your brain that make it work.  Considering what you were working on, a permanent impairment of your ability to use magic would have been the most likely side-effect, which would have been heartbreaking enough.  And with the injuries being as small and as many as there would have been if you’d really screwed up, there’s a good chance that no Healer in the world could completely fix you again.  I’m not exaggerating when I say that we wouldn’t have been as scared if you’d cut all three of your heads clean off!

“And on top of all of that, avoiding mistakes caused by unexpected events is largely a product of
experience
, and at less than two years old, you still have almost none of that!  I’m sure you think you checked for every possible problem, but I can guarantee that in twenty years, you’ll have thought of at least five things you could have done better and safer in your operations tonight.”

“Please, don’t argue about it.” Alilia said as she wiped her eyes and tried to pull herself together.  She took a deep breath and stepped back from Talia, holding Valentia, and faced the twins.

“Look, I really am very proud of what you’ve accomplished.  Awakening Valentia’s psionics and your magics are both amazing acts of brilliance from all three of you.

“But please, just promise me that you won’t do anything more to physically alter your brains, at least until Hilsith declares you to be fully qualified as professional Healers.  And even then,
please
give me a bit of time to prepare myself for it!  I’m just too damn old to take that kind of an emotional shock again!”

“I promise.” Valentia told her, wiping her own tears, just as the twins said;

“We promise, Alilia.”

“We really never meant to cause any problems, and we never thought we would.” Helemia added.  “But Father’s right.  Not really thinking about how it could affect everyone else was the mistake we made due to our lack of experience.  We won’t let it happen again.”

“All right.  I accept your apology.” Alilia said, took a deep breath, and put a smile on her face.

“Now, to return to what I had planned to say after I woke you three up this morning, and that is;  Happy birthday Valentia!  You are one year old today, and I am very proud of you, and I love you very much!”

“Thank you Mother, I love you very much too!” Valentia giggled as she and Alilia exchanged a hug and a kiss.

Then she went around to everyone else and gave them hugs and kisses as they wished her happy birthday and she thanked them.

Then she returned to her breakfast.  She and the twins ate for almost an hour before they were finished, then they begged off on the picnic lunch trip their parents had planned, and slept until mid-afternoon.