Alacryan Arthur

Chapter 32

Arthur Leywin POV

I could feel how Eriths Aether entered my body and the weird feeling grew stronger. It kind of felt like a combination of alcohol and a sleeping medication. If I had laid down I would have fallen down, as I could feel the nausea hit quite hard.

I could feel my heartbeat pulse throughout my body, especially near my temples and the pressure on my ears increased.

As instructed I didn't fight these symptoms and instead let myself drift into a deep slumber.

I was holding a sleeping baby in my arms and with a smile from the baby a warm feeling flooded my body. I gently moved my arms to each side, to lull it into sleep, as it was quite late.

Erith's feelings of care and love washed over me, it was a strange feeling, to have someone else's feelings in your brain. It wasn't at all like the connection I had with Sylvie, as her emotions were shared and Eriths emotions simply were in my own head, as if they were my own.

"Honey? Are you home?" I heard a voice from the entrance of the house.

Instead of answering I took a few steps to show myself and used my one free hand to lay a finger on my lips. Iana understood and came over to give me a kiss on my cheek.

"How was your encasing?" I asked her in a quiet voice, so as not to wake our baby.

"It went quite well. Of course only time will tell, but the reaction looked quite promising."

Iana was working with some other promising mages to eternalize our conscience, as a fail save if something happened to us. Essentially they transferred the mind of a Djinn into an aether crystal, which functioned as their new body.

The Aether stored in the crystal worked as a battery, which was able to recharge itself using the runes embedded in it. This crystal was also capable of creating a temporary body made from pure aether, which the Djinn could control from afar, and use to influence aether with.

Unfortunately it was only possible to uphold this form for a very limited time, as even our most powerful mage could only use this body for half an hour.

Of course during the rest of the time the person was able to observe the surroundings of the crystal, as well as communicate with people nearby.

But the thing that was really awesome was the fact that this procedure would theoretically allow one to live forever.

But since there are very few of these crystals that have the needed properties this will be a procedure reserved for our brightest mages, excluding the volunteers for tests of course. We couldn't risk just sending the future of our society in the crystals, only to learn that they malfunctioned or didn't work as intended. But since the tests with the volunteers worked well my wife and her team had started to encase our most promising mages and today the first encasings were completed.

I knew how much the responsibility of the lives of the now encased Djinn weighed her down the last weeks, but now her expression and stance seemed much more relaxed.

"That's great" I exclaimed, and quickly adjusted my volume, as I didn't want to awaken our child. "I'll bring him into his bed, and then we celebrate, okay?"

She nodded and went to the kitchen to get the bottle we had bought for this moment.

I was going to the sleeping room, to lay him into his bed, as an emergency alarm went off outside.

I continued to lay him into his bed and then hurried back to get to the alarm, as it was my job to do. "Give me a minute, probably just another test." I said goodbye to Iana and left the house.

But as I stepped out of the doorway I knew I was wrong. The normally blue sky was covered with clouds, a thing that should be impossible with the spells preventing clouds from hovering over the city. The clouds opened up and rain began to fall from the sky, and wet the city and all people on the streets.

However this oddity was nothing compared to the way the aether behaved. Even with my very limited influence over aether I felt the way it rippled, how it shook. I had never felt aether behave that way.

I ran toward the spot designated to meet up in case of an emergency and met up with my colleagues.

"We have detected unusual signatures in close proximity, which consist of mana, but also influence aether as you already observed. They are headed toward our location with a precision too high to just be coincidence. It seemed our shields have failed us."

Individuals with control over both mana and aether? Until now we thought we were the only ones who could control both, as no other beast was able to control aether, and the beast we created in experiments only managed to control aether on the shallowest level and couldn't use mana at all.

"Whoever is coming, it isnt likely that they come with friendly intentions, so prepare for a fight." Our leader finished.

We confirmed and went to our posts. My job was to scout and deliver intel, so I headed directly in the direction these signatures came from.

With each meter I got closer to these signatures I was confirming what our leader had said.

The six signatures had split up and started to surround our town. The aura they emitted was openly hostile, but they hadn't used a single spell until now. Maybe this was a misunderstanding, I really hoped it was.

The amount of mana they exuded wasn't that much, but I had a feeling that they suppressed a lot of it, so it was hard to guess how powerful they were.

The aether signature however wasn't concealed at all, which was weird, because their influence seemed rather weak. If I was them I would conceal such a weakness, as their average signature was very strong, around 5 times as strong as the potency of our most powerful mage, but their influence seemed absurdly weak.

Every Djinn, even one who had just learned to influence aether, had a much higher influence than any of them had.

It was then that a 7th signature appeared out of nowhere, probably through a portal or something similar, but this signature was much stronger than everyone else's. I couldn't even guess how much stronger, as it simply overpowered my senses.

But just like the other 6 beings this one's influence on aether was almost non existent.

Meanwhile I had arrived near one of the beings and peeked around a corner, to get a view on the individual.

I saw a rather young looking man in a militaristic attire, with blond hair and black eyes. He started setting up some kind of mana spell, while I transmitted an image of him to our leader.

The spell activated and created a mana barrier connecting him to the closest two other invaders, encasing the city in a hexagonal barrier. Meanwhile I heard screams from the middle of the town. The 7th invader was there and had cast some kind of spell.

Since my scouting was complete I quickly hurried back, to help with the defense and evacuation.

***

1.3k words

Sorry for the late and short chapter, I was a lot busier than I thought I would be. I have to adjust my update schedule a bit, prepare for only 1 chapter a week.

Minor changes to Erith: I previously described him as a Spatium user, I decided that it would make more sense for him to be a Vivum user. (The Memory spell would 100% be a vivum aether art, and his escape will also be slightly altered from what I had in mind, you will see next chapter.

I wish all of you a happy new year and good luck in 2023