CHAPTER 17: A REVELATION

"What?!"

"You're crazy!"

Austin looked unperturbed. He had already expected that kind of a reaction. He had come just as soon as Jane's reign had stabilized to ask for her hand in marriage.

Not that there were no suitors but none as shameless as him.

Catherine looked down on him from her seat.

"Sister it's too much!"

"You can't just get married to the first qualified man you see!"

Austin: "So I am at least qualified huh?"

"You barely passed-Humph!"

He had heard the princess was unreasonable but the extent was appalling.

She had forced him to fight the imperial elites after he had barely managed to protect his head from the magical monsters she had set on him. He was already battered and exhausted but not done with.

To top it all off she had set a miniature version of herself to fight with him. Austin had nearly lost his life to her blood lust.

Now at the current moment he was kneeling in front of the queen bleeding from on arm-He was hardly presentable in his current state.

'She is surely trying to kill me from excessive blood loss!' he thought.

"Indeed I thought so!"

'Damn! She knew how to read minds.'

"Yes I do."

"You!!!"

"Silence."

Jane finally spoke.

"Catherine will marry you."

Silence.

No one moved.

Austin was surprised at Jane's words.

'There's no way I am marrying a girl of ten'

"It's too much."

Austin said. "The princess is underage."

"Plus our age difference is a bit...."He trailed off.

"Ahem!"

"Catherine I think it's time you show him yourself."

Catherine giggled.

"I should?"

"Go on."

"Fine, fine."

"Well there's no need to hide our true selves now anyway."

Austin had just blinked his eyes when he saw a totally different sight.

Jane had grown up into a twenty one year old woman while Catherine had grown up into a sixteen year old girl.

"So you see this is our true selves. We possess magic and the more we perfect our magic the younger we become."

"So what you saw earlier was a result of that."

Austin nodded in understanding. "So Catherine is the one suitable for you."

"Hmm."

"But we need someone to support the life force there."

"The princess cannot do it."

"Who said I can't."

"You! Let me remind you that the feeling is mutual."

"So don't belittle me."

"So that means that you can?"

"Of course. Watch and learn."

Then in the garden Catherine slowly pointed to one of the rose bushes and squeezed her palm.

The rose bush withered away in an instant. Then she looked at another tiny bush of roses and released her hand. The bush kept growing till it was about a three inches taller than the previous one.

"So you can only transfer life force from one living thing to another."

"You have good observation skills."

"It is indeed so."

"We undergo fifteen manifestations to fully understand the reason behind our existence."

"There is no regulations regarding the time when we manifest and Catherine had just undergone her fourteenth one in the week she was asleep."

Austin nodded taking it all in.

"But Rumield's people are able to survive without food and drink and the crops are thriving. It would require an enormous amount of life force for that."

"Sister had just undergone her fifteenth manifestation. Her life force has been multiplied exponentially and her body cannot hold so much life force at once so there is a need to get rid of it."

"She is constantly supplying her life force to the soil of Rumield. As such whoever steps foot in it will feel invigorated and energized."

Austin wanted to know more.