The instant Elizabeth stepped forward, she was drowning. Not in water, but in the suffocating presence of Umbra’s nothingness. The Voids familiar infinity, amplified ten-thousand fold. As crushing as the most fathomless depths, and perhaps greater still. But even then, she stood tall. Not a figment of worry was allowed into her heart. As her bones shattered and skin corroded, it was not the pain she thought of. But rather the potential of a vessel reformed.

  The Voidmother would have approved of that. The Fragment had no mind of its own, perhaps, but something of a personality had still lingered. Everything happened through Elizabeth’s melded mind, but the path between decision and conclusion was still colored by that preference. Or perhaps it was just the stories. Was the remnant unkind because that was its nature, or because deep down Elizabeth was certain that it would be? Both - an answer instantly delivered.

  That was the danger - untempered whims. Already a weakness of hers, amplified and no longer tempered by what logic could offer. But the possibilities! The treacherous expanding field of could bes, stretching in every direction, no matter how hard she tried to catch them. Some tiny, some larger.

  The heart was such a fickle thing. For months she had tempered it. Embraced every sin the best she could, strived for perfection with each breath. And told herself, over and over, like a mantra: If not me, then who? Even across this Realm’s history, even in the future, none can be more worthy of calling themselves Umbra’s daughter. But despite that, it had lingered. Like the last cell of a cancer, impossible to excise. A single thought:

  What if she was not worthy?

  She was the fragment and the fragment was her. Lying was impossible in that bond - even to herself. So while it held no mind of its own, it surged with her desires. Umbra preached struggle and perfection, the same could not be said for abstinence. Elizabeth wanted to know beyond any doubt, so reality bent. It didn’t matter that what she desired to know should not be possible to learn with the limited power a Fragment held. The rulemakers had never bound themselves. She blinked and…

  Elizabeth stood in a familiar room within City Black. Not a particularly important one, yet she remembered it quite well. A mix between a study and meeting place, somewhat accessible within the bowels of her home. She had probably sat right there half a hundred times with her tutors, or on a rare few occasions with her parents. Nowhere too important, just… known.

  Three people were already in the room with her. Or perhaps without her. They did not react in any way as she appeared and moved - which they should have. Her father most of all would have spotted the intrusion instantly, had she actually been present in any way. She half expected him to do so anyway, even in whatever recreation this old memory was supposed to be.

  The power of a Truth were incomprehensible after all. For one, she knew that whenever her father was conjured by her dreams, he could literally see through the apparition's eyes. Any painting, image, or even memory, the Duke of Black could stare out of easily. It was one of the secrets she was bound not to share, that if she imagined him standing beside her, he would likely notice all the way from the Federation… after a while. It was a testament to the Fragment's power that no such recognition had occurred. From neither Ezax nor Johnson.

  Because the good doctor was the second person in the room. She did not know what Truth he held, or if he wielded one, though that seemed incredibly likely. For all their long acquaintance, she had never witnessed him doing anything worthy of a Truth bearer. Or perhaps just lacked the senses to recognize it. But it was likely she was about to get a glimpse, given the last person present.

  Avys seemed younger than the present day - unlike the other two - if just slightly, and happened to be noticeably pregnant. That meant the vision would be from decades ago, since the Duchess had access to some of the best rejuvenations influence could afford. That she still slowly aged despite that was a testament to her lacking magical talent. Given all the other clues and the nature of her wish, Elizabeth had a very strong guess about which child dwelled in that belly. Yet the scene was frozen… until the exact moment she thought about that fact, making it start playing out.

  “The child is dying,” Johnson stated plainly. It seemed the recollection had let Elizabeth skip the preface of the news. The doctor’s expression was neutral. That couldn’t be said for the other two.

  “What? How?!” Avys reacted with immediate outrage, her visage going through half a dozen emotions before settling on fear and confusion. It could be an act… but Avys would not need to keep that up in such intimate company.

  “Explain,” Ezax merely frowned slightly, taking the news much more calmly. “You said it would be safe.”

  “I said that I know of no factors that would make this unsafe. There is a reason I stressed that this could still pose an unexpected risk and sought your agreement beforehand. Simply put, we are encountering a limit that has simply never been a factor even in my most reckless of experiments.”

  “That is an excuse, not explanation.”

  “We have found the upper limit for mortal talent. Then passed it,” Johnson shrugged. “I didn’t think there was an actual barrier, but everything indicates that is the cause of deterioration. At this rate, I can keep the child uncrippled for about two more months and technically alive for maybe another after that. Which is still far from delivery, not to mention the miniscule chance of survival thereafter, even with all I can do.”

  “How?” Avys shivered, seemingly having only half listened to his words.

  “I am sorry. I bear most of the blame,” Johnson tried to reassure her. “This should have been possible to uncover, but I never had the required progenitors to even attempt this scale. Perhaps if I had made some different choices 50 years before we had met…”

  “How many did you merge? Compare that to the usual as well,” Ezax asked, outwardly calm, but Elizabeth recognized her father was not happy. “You made every implication that knowing specifics would not be needed on my part.”

  “For the spell I hope to make widely available one day, just nine happen. For your earlier children, nine to the power of the square root of nine, so 729 - which had been the most I had tested before. The symmetry of nines is absolutely vital. Not applying these principles cripples the spell to the point that more becomes less. You wanted a true prodigy, so I pushed the method and myself to the very limit…”

  “How many?” Ezax repeated.

  How many what? Elizabeth thought. The scene froze again, then she was elsewhere.

  / * / * / * / * / * / * / * / * /

  Johnson stood with her father again. It was a different room, different time. More conversational.

  “I call it the Hydra method,” Johnson explained, with her father listening attentively. “Technically, it should be achievable with just a single Concept, though that will yield far weaker results than what I can do. The spell is currently also too complex and requires my obscure prismatic element, but I intend to simplify it to the point that two mages with respectively Soul and Life could cooperate to cast after a few years of training. Just imagine what that will…”

  “But what is the method?” Ezax interrupted the tangent.

  “Yes, apologies. To explain the method, it is best to start where my search did. What is talent, Ezax?”

  “Inborn affinity for magic and its respective elements.”

  “Indeed, that is a valid way to explain it, but where does it come from? At which stage of development is it formed and how? Is it the flesh that hides this burden, or the Soul? Is it fully innate or developing gradually? Closer to a twist of fate, or inheritance?"

  “Questions that I expect you are the first to answer.”

  “At least in recorded history,” Johnson nodded with pride. “Talent is almost wholly determined during the pregnancy, settling at roughly two months. I have developed a spell that can determine it with almost perfect accuracy at that time - that was the first step. And not just for magic. It works just as well for honing, arts, as well as many harder to quantify things - though formulating the right ‘questions’ becomes quite difficult for some of those. There is a deviation during the developmental years, but no matter what methods I used, anything short of the most radical methods never strayed from the two-month results by more than ten percent.”

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “So whatever you need to do has to happen between conception and then,” Ezax followed along.

  “Don’t discount during, but essentially yes. My next step was accelerating that process. After years of iteration, I could manifest the fullness of that potential on the very first day of pregnancy and achieve a slight increase in most aspects. 10 to 20 percent, a bit more with damage to the mother. Already a notable achievement, but I was not satisfied, so I searched elsewhere. My inspiration came from the very same monster I decided to name it after.”

  “Hydras?” Ezax asked with some amusement. “Not the most fearsome beast. Several heads that can regenerate, but limited intellect. Hard to put down for equivalent mages, but not too dangerous in the great scheme of things. I never would have guessed it has some unique properties.”

  “Neither would I. The clue actually came during a different project. I was playing a physician during a plague when one of my patients, an old hunter, spoke of them becoming smarter, more vicious, for each head cut off. It took me 50 years to follow up on the idea when I encountered one by chance while traveling. I found that their claims were not only true, but that this monster achieved this slight effect with horrendous efficiency.

  “Naturally, I could not resist the temptation of uncovering and perfecting what they did, if only to add to my base of knowledge. Expanding on the crude inborn magic, applying it to Souls instead of just minds, perfecting a few sacrificial techniques and such. They were not terribly useful for anyone with a Concept, but it wasn’t long until this brought me my true inspiration. What if I could transfer more than just raw power? Achieve something far more complex than simple strengthening.”

  “What if you could transfer talent?” Ezax realized the implication instantly.

  “You likely see all the pieces already. I can mature the talent of a newly conceived zygote within a day of conception. Encouraging unnatural cell division and separation in the first few hours is likewise very simple, any half-decent Life mage can induce nonuplets, though it has lacked much practical use before. From there, it is a simple thing. Amplify the fully realized talent, transfer it, dispose of the drained cells, repeat. There are some rules and restrictions, which is why this requires much streamlining before general use, but I think we can both see the potential.”

  “Indeed. An insurmountable advantage. The foundation of a legacy that could not be toppled once those seeds sprout. The kind of thing most would jealously keep to themselves.”

  “What are a few decades of monopoly if it lets me complete my research?” Johnson shrugged with a smile. “And the dangers of wrong hands grasping this are apparent even to me. Especially the Rot. Even if I were ready today, the world isn’t. But that is what I seek Ezax: The Federation in two centuries that will be. A bastion against the dead like no other before it.”

  / * / * / * / * / * / * / * / * /

  Baffled, Elizabeth had no time to process this information. She was thrust back into the scene that had caused her question. A few moments back, just so that she could almost seamlessly continue watching with a newfound morbid fascination.

  “How many?” Ezax repeated.

  “Nine to the power of nine, 387 420 489.”

  “And you didn’t think that would cause problems?” Ezax’s glare turned harsher.

  “The furthest I have gone in my experiments was just under 300 000 000, wherein the child was born safely with no notable defects. The problem was that without the symmetry of nines, the result was not actually any better than 729. The limiting factor there has always been inferior progenitors that could simply not support further division of cell and talent. As I have promised back then, no reckless experimentation involving you two. But how could I have possibly predicted that we would breach the upper boundary of human potential?”

  “Is there a way to save her?” Avys interjected, seemingly getting hold of herself - or pretending to for some reason. That gave the two men pause. Johnson didn’t answer right away.

  “Is there?” Ezax insisted when the silence stretched.

  “Hypothetically… there could be.”

  “How ‘hypothetical’ is that?” he pushed.

  “I am putting together the theory as we speak, this has been just an idle thought before,” Johnson said, pausing for another moment. “Yes, I will need to triple-check this. And it will demand both of us to constantly attend to Avys during the rest of the pregnancy, but even at worst, we could still guarantee her unharmed survival.”

  “There is a Lich war ongoing,” Ezax frowned.

  “The tail end of one. You could still participate from a distance for the final push, which is not too much worse, given your gaze. I am sure Avys can manufacture an excuse. And this could be worth far more than what little glory the Brightbeak Duke will get for charging the Archlich alone in your absence.”

  “What is your proposal?” Avys interrupted.

  “If the child exceeds what a mortal shell can hold… why not elevate her from mortality? The blood of elves runs in House Blackburg. I could attempt to truly awaken it.”

  “True elves are not born like mortals,” Ezax immediately countered. “They spring from a Temzda manifesting in the deep Void, slowly, over eternities, filling with a Soul until a trueblood is born."

  “It is impossible,” Johnson readily agreed, but a slight smile of excitement. “Unless, of course, one wielded a Truth that made it feasible. I cannot promise success - I have never had the opportunity to attempt this - but there is a real chance.”

  Avys and Ezax shared a glance. Something passed in between them that Elizabeth did not understand, no matter how closely she looked. Either way, she already knew their answer. Her heart was beating furiously and mind spinning with revelations, but what followed was obvious.

  “What do you need?” her father asked.

  “First of all, a vessel. An elf is their Temzda. I assume House Blackburg might have such a corpse in their vaults?”

  What followed was more technical. No longer a true secret, just Johnson listing off other priceless treasures that his attempt would demand. None of them nearly as valuable as the true body of an elf. Elizabeth eventually lost interest and so the vision gradually dispersed. That left Elizabeth alone with her thoughts, forced to review the whole of her life under the lens of that knowledge.

  From as young as she could remember, she had been smarter than the few other children she came into contact with. Faster, better. Always, she had assumed it was her father’s genes and luck. Later, she begrudgingly had to admit that while Avys’ idea of upbringing lacked in compassion, it was full of lessons. But it had been so much more.

  No wonder when she had succumbed to sickness at a young age, Johnson took so long to find the root cause. He must have had ten thousand other possible problems to test for first. Looking for novel theoretical diseases, presuming there had been a fatal mistake made, yet another gap in his thesis. It was, in hindsight, ironically amusing that what had stifled a visionary like him had been just common mana hypersensitivity, merely at an impossibly young age.

  It almost made sense why Avys had cut ties. That thought wiped any hint of a smile off her face. Elizabeth was aware that the rest of her siblings did not share the… distaste for their mother. Some didn’t even seem to understand what kind of person Avys was. For all Elizabeth very rarely interacted with them, especially since meeting Irwyn.

  Yet she would never forget those years in her life as she had deteriorated. In a condition that would have killed her a dozen times over if not for Johnson and the best methods to keep someone technically alive which magic could afford. As visits and then letters from her parents grew less and less frequent. Because they had lost faith. Thought that if Johnson couldn’t fix her for so long, she may as well had already been dead. Callused… and perhaps protecting themselves by severing a bond before it could grow deep enough to tear flesh when untethered. And in doing so, scarred it beyond mending.

  She looked upon her Soul with mixed emotions. A facsimile of humanity, made so perfectly that even she herself had never noticed. With just her own ability, perceiving the truth would have been impossible. Instead, the Fragment followed her will once again and unraveled the false visage in a single breath. She became aware of a geas breaking, undoubtedly one of the measures that had maintained her ignorance. There was far more, of course. Johnson had truly outdone himself. The way her Soul had been twisted upon itself… it was inspired. Barely comprehensible only through her merger with an Aspect’s remnant. The greatest masterpiece of a true virtuoso.

  No wonder the doctor was the first one to notice the shell around Irwyn’s Soul. He had once created something similar for hers.

  From the ‘outside’ her Soul was perfectly normal. Or, at least, seemingly mortal. It behaved exactly like one should. The Vessel, Funnel, and Reservoir were there. Sure, there were a few small abnormalities and the Temzdaflame attunement seeping into it, but those were possible and easily explained away by her sheer talent. Even if someone had examined her Soul in depth, they would not have discovered anything off. Likely not even a specialized domain mage. Her Soul was shaped and acted perfectly mortal. Allowed her to live exactly as a mortal would.

  Shape, there was the trick. A soul did not have a ‘shape’ as geometry understood it. It had to be imagined and depicted as having one for those without affinity for Soul magic, but in truth, it obeyed angles and volume about as much as the Void did. Her insight was bruteforced by the Fragment, so she could not describe it properly, but Soul mages perceived them differently. Not in terms of ‘size’ or ‘shape’ but by a completely unique property that could characterize them - there was probably a term even Elizabeth just didn’t know. To that sense, everything would appear fine.

  What they would see was about ten percent of what Elizabeth witnessed now. There was no real ‘beneath’ or ‘within’, but those were the best ways she could describe where it had been hidden. If her Soul was like a crystal clear lake someone could gaze at and through, she had just discovered the groundwater ocean perfectly out of sight, yet technically connected and part of the whole.

  This ocean was the Temzda. She saw it now, as clear as night. It was vast like nothing she had ever seen. Not in size - though it would undoubtedly be as large as a Star if forced to physically manifest - but in sheer weight. It was simply more real. There was more to it than sheer power, but an inherent authority. Perhaps the only thing that could compare were the Fragments themselves, but those had been different. A single grain of sand taken from a desert. It was not truly majestic because it still carried the weight of sheer loss that had allowed one even exist. The Temzda was like a mountain witnessed from beneath. Majestic and unwavering. And hers.

  It changed everything.

  It changed nothing.

  If not me, then who, indeed. Elizabeth couldn’t help but laugh. The last doubt in her heart evaporated. She was Umbra’s daughter, in more than just name. The Fragment churned and she did not need to speak a word. They both knew she desired the power to be untouchable and free. Suddenly, Elizabeth felt closer than she had dared dream.

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