Chapter 15: Between Flames and Family

In principle, despite their flaws, the doppels suited my needs. Sure, I couldn't see through their eyes or speak through them. Their spells were weaker for the same mana investment, and they weren't intelligent — they couldn't transfer experience to me. But the simple fact that they could use everything I knew made up for all those disadvantages.

If, in the future, I could copy someone else, then I could… well, not learn their spells, since doppels cast in a completely different way, but I could train against other fighting styles and opponents stronger than myself. By the way, I was slightly mistaken — doppels don't speak by themselves. That is, unless you take control of them or order them to repeat specific phrases, they stay silent. They have no mind. But they do pronounce the same spells if the original doesn't know how to use nonverbal magic.

Two weeks after my magical progress had taken a nosedive, I was, as usual, meditating under the apple trees. It was the easiest place for me to replenish my strength and slip into a trance. My old, long-eared acquaintance lay down next to me again — here, he didn't have to fear predators. I hadn't seen the nymph again, but I wasn't destined to be alone either.

"You're here again? Oh, bunny!" Apolline's voice rang out as she scooped the gray rabbit into her lap, where she began to strang— I mean, pet and caress him. Why did she always know where to find me? Because she was the one covering for me with Ariel.

"Why are you so secretive? You leave everyone, sit here alone with your eyes closed? Even Aunt Ariel is worried."

"Maybe because I have secrets?" I answered her question with a question. "We've already talked about this, and not just once."

"Why do you need them, these secrets?" The blonde girl tilted her head, looking at me with wide, curious eyes.

"Everyone has secrets. You have them too, don't you? For example, who do you like?" Of course, it was me, but I wasn't stupid enough to say that out loud.

"That's different!" she exclaimed, blushing. "It's just that Aunt Ariel sometimes cries and says she doesn't understand you."

"I just can't tell everything, you understand?"

"Can't you tell not everything? So she won't cry?"

I thought about it for a few minutes. I'd never separated the grimoire's secret from my own. I'd always seen it as inseparable from me. But really, what was stopping me from telling her about the translation, without involving the details of my birth?

"I think I can," I finally said.

"Then let's go!" Apolline released the rabbit, who bolted instantly, and tried to drag me by the hand. Tried — because without my cooperation, she couldn't move me an inch.

"Where?"

"Where else? To tell your mom the secret! So she won't cry anymore!"

"No, this is a secret between Mom and me," I said, getting up and brushing off my clothes.

"Don't pout," I added, seeing her offended little face. "I'll find a secret for you too."

"Promise?"

"I promise." I had plenty of secrets, didn't I? I'd find one for her. For example, that I hated buckwheat, which my grandmother used to force on me because it was "healthy." Ugh, disgusting.

***

"Mom," I knocked on Ariel's door. "Can we talk?"

"What happened, son?" she asked, trying to hide her tear-stained eyes. Despite all my empathy, I thought she was crying for me — Victor — not Arthur. Superpowers don't make us superhuman. Our mistakes just become more terrible.

"We need to talk. You probably think I'm strange, always running off to the forest or sitting in my room. I should have confessed long ago — in the bracelet, I found Father's inheritance, which he left for me. I shouldn't have hidden it. I was just afraid you'd take it away. Forgive me." I rattled off my confession and showed her modified copies of the translation, minus the Emblem ritual. Showing that would be like admitting I wasn't her son. Well, I was hers, but… it's complicated. I couldn't see her as a mother, but not as a girlfriend or, even more so, a wife either. For me, she was something like a kind friend. The full truth wouldn't bring anything good to either of us — only complications.

"You're my silly boy. Why didn't you tell me earlier?" She hugged me with tenderness and love. But why did I feel so sick at heart?

"I told you, I was afraid you'd forbid me from training," I wheezed, half-crushed in her embrace.

"I know you're smart. You've always been like that, as if an adult in a child's body."

Her words struck me like lightning — so close to the truth. "But you know, I'm even glad you're like this. I became a mother too early and didn't know how to raise you. I thought, what if I spoil you? Or am I too strict? Your independence became a blessing for me. But lately you've been distancing yourself more and more, and I thought you'd come to hate me." Tears streamed down her cheeks.

"No, I'll never hate you. How could I not love the person who gave me life?" After those words, she smiled, and I felt like I'd dropped another multi-ton burden from my shoulders. In my pursuit of power, I'd forgotten I wasn't alone in this world. There were people who cared about me. Betraying their trust would be a truly rotten thing to do. I'm not a good person — I'm ready to do a lot if I think it's necessary. But I'm not bad either, at least I don't think so.

From that day on, Ariel began training with me. No, after learning about the dangers of Sumerian magic, she tried to forbid me from practicing it, but I didn't show her the most dangerous of my training sessions. And what was the point of forbidding me? I had more experience and skill in this than she did, which I proved by helping her with her chosen disciplines. Which, as it turned out, were fire and word magic — who would have thought?

If I'd previously shown Apolline some methods for mastering fire, I didn't trust Patrick with them. Not because I was afraid he'd blurt out too much — no. He was simply a child, which meant a subordinate. I'd earned authority with Ariel through my adult behavior, stubbornness, and by taking advantage of her inexperience and a bit of naivety. And even then, I had to work hard for it.

For example, she tried to lock me up. Pfft. I demonstratively ignored those prohibitions, apparating out of the room. Fortunately, that could be chalked up to childhood magical outbursts. Ariel eventually realized it was easier to negotiate with me than to threaten and pressure with authority — that only got her resistance. You could say I was raising her, not the other way around.

But what about Patrick? Wouldn't he spill all my secrets if his father asked? I couldn't be sure. An Unbreakable Vow? Very funny. That vow doesn't forbid you from revealing what you're forbidden to say — it just warns you, then kills you. And if it turned out I'd forced children to take such a vow… they'd lynch me. Or at least try. That's exactly why I didn't show the translation to anyone else, though I probably overdid it with Ariel, too.

***

"Mom, why do you just throw fire around? Yours is strong, much stronger than mine, but you don't control it at all." As I said, most of my training now was with Ariel.

"How should I do it?" she asked slyly, and I realized she just liked it when I explained things to her. Emotionally, she was dying from the cuteness of it all.

"I imagine fire as a wild animal. If you show weakness — it'll bite you, burn you. You need to train it, show who's boss, and then it'll behave like an obedient dog." I showed off, shaping a fireball into a bird that flapped its wings along a broken trajectory. The explosion was about half as strong as Ariel's, but much more even. That's what control does.

"Did you train for this long?" she asked thoughtfully. "And why didn't I see burns on your hands?"

"I was very careful, Mom." I couldn't tell her that, despite my caution, I constantly healed myself after failures, could I? "I used candle training. Wait."

I pulled a candle from my bag, lit it with a thought, and handed it to her.

"Do you always carry candles with you?" She eyed my bag suspiciously.

"For training — always." And a couple more cubic meters of random junk. The bag had expanded internal space. Then I "grabbed" the candle flame and made it burn with the same steady flame in my hands. "The point of the training is to make the flame burn as if it's still on the candle. Don't let it flare up, but don't let it go out either."

Ariel repeated my actions with frightening ease. She hadn't been sitting idle, either.

"Pretty easy," she said.

"Only at first. The longer it burns, the harder it gets to keep it steady. The height of mastery is making it burn without even paying attention to it." I tossed the flame from hand to hand, shaped it into different animals, and then snuffed it out. I built a fire and tried to pull the same trick as with the apple tree — to understand fire through yoga. No, I didn't want to merge with it like I had with the tree. The element is even further from human consciousness than a plant. I wouldn't have dared before, but now there was someone to back me up if something went wrong.

What is fire? Physically, it's an intense oxidation process, accompanied by visible light and the release of heat that expands gases. But from a magical perspective… things get much more interesting. Magical fire can obey the laws of physics — or not. With enough desire, strength, and skill, you can make water, air, ether, someone else's spell, or even a water god burn. For the latter, I don't even know what level you'd need. Demiurge? But you could, say, create or transfigure oxygen and hydrogen with magic and get a purely physical combustion or explosion — why not?

I used not ordinary fire, but green, after adding floo powder. Speaking of which, the powder that allows travel through fireplaces is overflowing with mysteries. Only one company in the world produces it — Floo-Pow — and their representatives only sell it, never answer questions. Its price has been the same for a century — two sickles per scoop. No one has ever managed to determine its composition or find a replacement, despite countless attempts. Always unsuccessful. Like some kind of zero element. It was in meditation that I wanted to at least approach understanding this amazing powder.

In meditation, time flies unnoticed. You just fall into a trance, and your perception of time, space, even your own body, fades into the background. Before me was only flame. Burning and warming, killing and saving, giving life and death. It was unstable — one moment fawning like a puppy, the next snapping like a rabid dog. Flame is the most complex of the elements. Wind is elusive, water slips through your fingers, earth is stubborn and resists movement — but flame is the most dangerous and unpredictable.

At some point, the flame began to flare in time with my heartbeat. I felt myself being drawn into an abyss, and as I struggled to escape, to grab a lifeline, I sensed something foreign in the fire. Something completely uncharacteristic, even more elusive. If I hadn't been so focused on saving myself, I would never have noticed it. Suddenly, I "surfaced" and found myself at home. My head was splitting, my reserves completely empty. For now, even external meditation was dangerous for me — I could lose myself. I hadn't meant to go so deep — I was just pulled in. Maybe it was the veela kinship with flame, or maybe something else.

"Arthur, are you alright? I was so worried!" Ariel burst into the house, scooping me up like a kitten. Was she trying to finish me off?

"What happened?" I was curious how it looked from the outside, and why I'd ended up at home.

"At first you just sat with your eyes closed, then you started transforming into your second form," — she probably meant harpy form. "Then you were covered in tongues of flame, but it didn't hurt you. I tried to douse you with water, wake you up, but it just evaporated before it even touched you. And then…"

"What then?"

"You disappeared in clouds of green flame, like you'd traveled through the floo network. I was terrified and was about to call everyone to look for you. Where were you?" Ariel was excited and confused. So, this is what traveling by flame is like?

"I ended up at home, and I don't remember anything except the fire," I admitted — and it was true.

"Don't scare me like that again, okay?"

"I can't promise that."

"Arthur!"

"I really can't. I know you worry, but I've been practicing Father's magic for a long time." Yes, I'd changed the translation so it seemed to come from me in a past life, not Lerach. "And I understand that without risk, there's no progress. You can reduce it, but you can't prepare for everything."

"Why do you do this, then? Maybe you should stop, like I asked? You'll go to school and—" She didn't get to finish.

"And what, you think it'll be safer there? Hundreds of student mages with wands — what could go wrong? Maybe it is safer, but I want to be strong like my father. And you can't achieve that with just a wand. Besides, I'm a veela. Fire is in my blood — should I stop being one? Refuse part of myself?" I asked.

"No, I… you're right. All veela learn fire, I'm just worried about you. Your training is much more dangerous than usual. Why can't I just forbid you from doing this?" Ariel asked herself, looking up at the ceiling.

"Because it won't work. I'll do it anyway, just in secret," I answered, though she already knew it.

"Oh no, you'd better be under my supervision."

***

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