Chapter 15 - Growing older

After learning more about Asgard's Einherjar and the integrated elements, time started moving fast. 

Hati spends his time learning from and playing with his mother and Astrid. He made sure to follow his plans of continuing to train Astrid into the perfect maid. He quickly noticed the girl's growing feelings for him and decided to capitalise on them, making her fall even harder for him while also increasing her obedience.

Two years later, Astrid turned ten. Of course, They didn't know her actual birthday because she had no memories of that, so Hati decided that the day she became his maid would be her birthday from then on. And since she turned ten, she could now start on her Einherjar path. 

Hati had managed to convince his mother to allow Astrid to begin on the path of an Einherjar. It took a while to persuade Sif to allow this, as she was worried that allowing Astrid to start on the Einherjar path three years before Hati might cause her to break free in the future. 

But Hati convinced her that those three years would not make a difference, and he would definitely grow stronger than her because he had the advantage in bloodlines. He layered his argument with a healthy dose of guilt by asking if she didn't trust him to grow faster than Astrid. That caused Sif to cave quickly.

Hati's confidence in growing stronger than Astrid did not come only from his heritage but also from the strange abilities he still had access to. He already figured out that, despite the techniques that existed in Asgard, his three abilities were different and would surely aid him in the future. 

That is, as long as he could find Luna and regain complete control over his pride while also figuring out what was suppressing it and then undoing that suppression. 

However, when Astrid actually started on the path, they suddenly weren't so sure about the superiority of their heritage anymore, as Astrid's physical element turned out to be light. 

The light element was no less rare or powerful than the blood element, and although blood was technically a better element for the heart focal overall, Einherjar, with light as their physical element, were typically some of the fastest alive.

It was entirely possible that her affinity with light was a mere fluke. Although one's physical and spiritual elements usually depend on the parents, sometimes a mutation would happen, and the child would gain an entirely different element. 

Another possibility was the atavism of a distant ancestor's light element. However, considering no one knew anything about the girl's heritage, she could also descend from a powerful light attribute family. Unfortunately, no such families existed in the kingdom of Máni, so an investigation would be complicated.

Whatever the case, Sif decided to forbid the girl from continuing on her path for another year. Two years difference with her son was her limit, considering her light element. Hati decided not to fight his mother on this and simply ordered Astrid to wait for a year. 

At this point, Astrid was already quite submissive towards Hati and had also developed a crush, so she didn't make things difficult and quickly accepted the decision. The only thing she was sad about was that it would be harder to keep up with her master in the future, as she was sure he was destined to soar into the heavens, considering his peculiarity. 

Another year went past, and Astrid started her training by absorbing energy into her heart focal. A phenomenon that Hati was quite fascinated with, as Astrid's body would always begin to shine a little when she did this. 

Astrid was initially a little embarrassed with having her master watch her while she did that, but after having gone through so much bullying from her in the last three years, she quickly got over her embarrassment.

Astrid used a light-attributed heart focal technique from Sif's personal collection. It wasn't anything groundbreaking, but it was better than the techniques most people would have access to. 

Techniques had more or less the same rankings as the Einherjar since a technique was judged by the level of the Einherjar that created it and his understanding of the appropriate element. The technique Astrid was using now was created by a fourth-revolution Einherjar, who also had a proper understanding of his physical element of light. 

Now that Astrid had less time to play with him, Hati decided it was time to really hit the books. Now that he was eight years old, Sif had finally permitted him to start reading in the library by himself. 

Taking the opportunity, Hati began to devour the books there with a passion that left even his bookworm of a mother in awe. Seeing this, she couldn't help but have a prideful smile on her face. 

So from that moment, most of his time was spent in the library, with his mother and Astrid usually joining him. Hati seemed to be on a mission to read every single book in that library, which wasn't entirely untrue as he knew perfectly well the power of knowledge. 

At the same time, Sif would divide her time between absorbing energy and reading her own books, and Astrid would either attend to her master or sit in the corner and absorb energy just like Sif. 

Occasionally, Hati's uncle Leif and/or his great-grandfather Erik would join them when their duties as Patriarch and elder permitted them.

Hati's knowledge about the world of Asgard, its inhabitants, the various elements and the Einerhjar path increased exponentially during this time. But truthfully, he was far more interested in two other subjects, which he had so far found disturbingly little information about. 

These subjects were his abilities and his reincarnation. He wasn't even looking for entire books about the topics. Just a casual mention would allow him to bring the matter up to his mother, who always seemed to be a treasure trove of information. 

Theoretically, he could lie about finding the information somewhere. However, with the amount of time his mother spends reading, combined with her age, which was still unknown but should be at least 300 years old, he wouldn't be surprised if she knew exactly what information her library held. Not to mention that she might ask him to show her the book he found it in.

Although he didn't find anything that directly pointed to the subjects he wanted it to, he did eventually come across something that caught his attention. A term he had heard earlier, back when he had just been born: sin shards. 

He had wanted to learn more about this for a while now, as he knew that his mother possessed one of these sin shards, and considering that his abilities also seemed to be linked to sins, he figured it might be related to those abilities.

He naturally couldn't have brought this up to his mother before; after all, who remembers what their parents talked about when they were just a few minutes old? But now that he had a reason, he quickly harassed his mother about the topic.

Sif was currently sitting on one of the chairs in the middle of the library while reading one of her books and passively absorbing energy. Hati ran up to her, pulled the book from her hands, and replaced it with his own before he jumped on her lap. 

Or at least, that was the plan, but no matter how he tried, he couldn't get the book out of his mother's hands. Meanwhile, Sif was grinning at his antics and said, "Why, dear Hati, is there something you need from me?" Still playing the child, Hati started pouting and complained, "Couldn't you just play along, mother?"

In response, Sif sighed and said, "Oh, fine then." And then suddenly released the book from her grasp, causing Hati to stumble backwards and would have fallen if Astrid hadn't suddenly appeared to stabilise him. 

Taking the opportunity, Hati draped himself over Astrid in a dramatic manner, causing Astrid to blush in embarrassment, Hati to grin and Sif to giggle in delight at her son's antics.

Hati had, of course, predicted this whole situation, as he knew perfectly well he wouldn't be able to get the book from his mother and had decided that the slight embarrassment for himself was worth getting to play a little with his mother and maid. Had his pride shard been running at full capacity, he never would have done such a thing.

Hati walked back to his mother with a smug smile on his face, acting as if he had ripped the book from his mother's hands with his own strength before he planted himself on her lap and shoved the book he was holding into Sif's hands while pointing to a specific line and asking, "Mother, what is a sin shard?"

Sif got a complicated look in her eyes as if thinking about something before she nodded and snapped her fingers. As she did so, a small drop of blood leaked out of her eye and formed a barrier around her and Hati, much like she had done on the day of his birth. "I guess there's no harm in telling you about this.."