2615 True Natures (Part 1)



'Aalejah wouldn't be alone since I would send Solus with her but inside a Fringe it would never work. Aalejah isn't aware of Solus' powers and even if we trusted her enough to share our secret with her, that damn Soul Projection would expose Solus' presence.'

"Agreed." Morok nodded. "Since two of our main players are down, we'd better use this time to plan our next moves in advance. We need to have our audience with Mogar and we also have to attempt to negotiate with the elves. Both courses of action might require days.

"How do we want to play this? I mean, we can't just take turns with the ritual. It would take too long. Also, we can't let Aalejah go on her own. It's not just a matter of safety since she would be easily captured but also of authority.

"She can't speak in the name of the Council hence she can't offer them anything in exchange for their help. She needs to be accompanied by someone who can protect her and command respect even from a bunch of self-entitled jerks."

"My people aren't self-entitled jerks!" Aalejah replied in outrage.

"Oh, really?" The Tyrant replied with a scoff. "Have you ever met the guys who live here?"

"No." She candidly admitted.

"I rest my case."

"Enough." Ajatar stepped between them before the quarrel could escalate. "It pains me to say this but Morok is right. The Fringe is small so we can't stay here for too long.

"We have no idea if the elves can perceive the surges of world energy caused by the communion rituals and even if they can't, sooner or later their scouts are going to find us.

"Cloaking spells can buy us some time but…" Seeing that Aalejah had raised her hand and was waiting her turn to speak, the Drake nodded for her to start.

"First off, my people can perceive surges like those that Nalrond described. If it doesn't last long or we are far away enough, we can miss it, but a repeated event or if we are close there's no way the ritual goes unnoticed.

"Also, cloaking spells aren't going to do us any good. Even non-Awakened elves can use Soul Vision and there's no hiding from it." Aalejah bit her lower lip in hesitation, hating the idea of revealing the secrets of her bloodline.

'I can't put everyone's life at risk to protect someone that might as well kill me along with my friends. Also, this is an amazing opportunity for the elves to rejoin the outside world and stop hiding.

'It's not just a matter of helping Jiera but also coming out of our self-imposed exile after we lost the War of the Races.' She thought.

"Soul Vision? What's that?" Lith asked as Faluel tried to open her eyes and speak, but fell asleep again as soon as Ajatar pushed her head back on the pillow.

"It's what you get by channeling all elements inside your eyes instead of just one." She replied, seeing that everyone tried to do it. "It's not that simple, otherwise Awakened would have discovered it millennia ago.

"It's more like a bloodline ability since it requires you to perfectly fuse and harmonize the six elements. You can't just conjure them all."

"So, something like Gravity Fusion but specific to your eyes?" Ajatar asked.

"No." Aalejah shook her head. "Gravity Fusion is about conjuring the elements and mixing them together to give them an effect. Soul Vision, instead, consists in letting them flow together as one so that once they get mixed with the blood flow in your eyes, they become akin to Spirit Magic."

Everyone painted their eyes emerald as they flooded them with their own mana, but aside from seeing everything green nothing happened.

"Stop it! I said it's not that easy." The elf stomped her foot in outrage. "I can't believe that I'm trying to help you whereas you are only interested in stealing a technique!"

'Lith, can this Soul Vision be the apex of that Spirit Vision the Voidfeather taught you?' Solus asked.

'Beats me.' He telepathically shrugged. 'Let's listen to her. For now.'

"Bottom line, when an elf looks at anything with Soul Vision, they see the true nature of their target. It doesn't matter if you wear cloaking items or hide underground, I can still see all of you." Aalejah said.

"What do you mean, our true nature?" Ajatar asked. "Is it something like our respective Soul Projections?"

"No, those things only show your deepest current emotion. A glimpse of what's going on in your mind. Soul Vision, instead, shows who you truly are. Let me show you." The elf's eyes lit with white light as she conjured a hologram.

Solus was dressed in her apprentice clothes, something like a loose Roman toga and sandals. She was enveloped in golden light and burdened by chains. The bigger one bound her to Lith while the small ones lay shattered at her feet.

Only two chains were still holding her back but one of them seemed to be seconds away from breaking under the constant rain of blows from her hammer.

To Soul Vision, Lith looked like a Fire Dragon shrouded by blue flames. Only one set of its wings was feathered while the other was membranous and was bursting with the same flames that enveloped its body.

A human figure comprised of living darkness emerged from the Dragon's forehead yet the man didn't look like Lith and resembled his Abomination form instead. The Dragon and the Abomination both had seven eyes yet despite their bond they struck at each other relentlessly.

Every victory was short-lived since any wound one inflicted upon the other would be inflicted on the assailant as well.

Morok appeared to Aalejah in his Tyrant form, but not only did his image stare back at the elf with his six eyes, it was also trying to communicate something with gestures.

There was something wrong with it, its body bloating and shrinking with the same rhythm of a beating heart.

Friya looked like an embodiment of Mogar itself. Soul Vision showed how the elements flowed in harmony inside her body and orbited around her in the form of a star belt comprised of seven small suns of different colors.

The space around her cracked and deformed as if she was failing to bend reality to her own will.

Quylla appeared as a being of pure light that was wrapped inside a cocoon, trying to break out. Her eyes shone with power that the pod turned against her, making her lose consciousness.

Ajatar was in his Drake form, but with small atrophied wings on his back and frantically looking through a mountain of books for an answer that eluded him.

Faluel looked like a Hydra whose seven heads each nurtured and grew several small lights. Some of them would fade, twisting her reptilian snout in grief while others would become brilliant and fly away, filling her with pride and sadness.

As for Nalrond, his human and beast sides had stopped fighting against each other and were now both hanging from a cliff, their bodies covered in deep wounds from the fall and the long battle.