"This is a complete cheat..."
*Mhmhm* Elah pressed a hand to her lips, hiding a soft chuckle. "Your father said the exact same thing the first time he saw it."
"Then how will you teach it to me, Mom? Are you going to give me tips like Dad did?"
Temorsth asked, genuinely curious.
He was already bracing for some brutal trial to match an ability this overpowered.
"Mhm? You don't need tips for this one." She waved the thought away with a lazy flick of her hand.
"Hm?"
"Baby, you already know mommy's Unique Ability."
"...I already know?"
"Yes, you do, my little genius."
"But... how?"
"Well, to be exact, you inherited it."
"Uh... then how do you still have it, Mom? Didn't dad say inheriting through transfer removes it from the original owner?"
"Your Dad was in a hurry, so he only explained the active part of inheriting."
"Active?"
"Though it doesn't look like it, mommy is a bit older than dad, but the real reason why mommy had her Unique Ability first wasn't age but because I naturally, passively, inherited it through lineal descent, just like you."
"Lineage?"
"Yes, when deciding a ruler, the elves are a bit different compared to vampires."
"They decide through a power struggle among eleven families."
"For the elves, there is only one royal bloodline, and only among the childer is it decided who will be the next king or queen."
"This Unique Ability of ours has naturally been passed down through this royal lineage, though with each user it is a bit different."
"It's always connected to magic and to elements, mine is stranger since it can even change magic forms."
"As such, it looks a little different on you, too, but it's still within the range of what's expected — " She stopped, Temorsth looked utterly confused, too much information to process it cleanly.
"What do you mean, Mom?"
"Simply, you inherited mine. Or some form of it, at least — I still have my own, so it wasn't taken from me, just... passed down."
"What kind of form? Nothing element-changing has ever happened to me."
"You wouldn't have noticed. It's not something you could see yet."
That vague answer only left Temorsth more confused.
"Even when we sparred, I caught it right away." Elah steered the conversation somewhere simpler. "But let's say the first time we saw it..."
"Uh?"
"Do you remember the day you first used your magic in a fight against Dad?"
"I do. The day I almost scratched him." He said it lightly, but inside his head—
'Hahaha...'
'Shut the hell up! You couldn't even get close to him. What are you laughing at!?'
Feral's shout tore through the moment Persona's laughter reached him.
"Yes. That day." Elah's voice pulled Temorsth back to the present.
"You used water and metal the whole fight, right?"
"Yes?" He still couldn't see where this was going.
"And the moment you called me over to distract him — that big idiot — something happened. It surprised both of us."
"What happened?"
"The second you rushed him, your affinity and your whole aura shifted to fire."
"Fire? But I never—"
"Yes, before, you had zero affinity for fire. You couldn't have manifested so much as a spark, and even now I don't feel a trace of fire energy in you."
"Then..." He finally understood where she was leading.
"Yes. You, my little Dumpling — you used my... I mean your ability, without even realizing it."
"You rewrote your own affinity. You never actually cast fire magic that day, but if you had tried, it probably would've come out stronger than anything else you know."
"I used it without realizing..." The question wasn't for her. It was for himself, trying to make sense of the ability's shape.
"Now we just need to figure out how you did it, and we're done."
"How did I do it?"
"It sounds simple, but it might take longer than learning it from scratch, since—" Her voice faded into the background as Temorsth's attention turned inward.
'Should we try it?' Persona asked the space.
'We need to test it properly.' Brilliance was always ready to test something.
'Shouldn't we ask Original first?' And Realatio still tried to keep it up.
'I allow it. No need for a full meeting — Feral's already awake for this one.' And Original, who was always listening in, spoke up.
'I think we should try too, but do you agree?'
Once the others had settled, Persona turned to the one the whole conversation actually revolved around.
'What does it matter what I think!? You'll drag me out either way!' Feral, still simmering from the fight, wasn't in the mood to be reasonable.
'Fair.'
'Ugh — why do I have to be the one to learn this!?'
Feral wasn't following the conversation, so he misunderstood it a bit.
He was already annoyed, and being volunteered for something he hated made his mood worse.
"Hm? How—?" The instant Feral surfaced, Elah caught the shift.
"Did it happen?" His voice carried a slight edge, though nowhere near as sharp as when he spoke inside.
"What did you do, Sweetie?"
"Mom, did it happen?"
"...Yes. Your affinity for fire completely overtook everything else — your water and metal nearly burned out entirely."
"Mhm."
'Looks like we were right.'
'Mother can use every element, but Feral only pulled one.'
'So does that mean the rest of us have our own?'
'Probably.'
'Cool, so Mom's ability got split across all of us.'
'If that's confirmed, let me back in! I'm not staying out here for nothing!' Feral cut through the rest with a shout.
'Funny how you don't seem to raise your voice at Mom,' Persona needled, unwilling to let it go.
He'd noticed something — Feral had been acting differently ever since Elah seriously sparred with him.
'Shut the hell up!'
'What, did I catch you? Did someone turn into a mama's boy after getting his ass kicked?'
Persona was talking about the day Elah stopped holding back — the same day Feral got thoroughly beaten in front of Antanasia, the first time they'd ever met her.
'Fuck you!'
'HAHAHA—'
'Don't you dare laugh at that. You couldn't even dodge a bullet.'
'I got shot in the back! Don't make it sound like I just stood there! And you didn't dodge it either!'
'I had to force my way into control and still kept it out of anything vital!'
'Yet, we still died!'
'That one wasn't my fault!'
"Baby, can you activate it again?"
"Uh?" Elah's voice cut through and silenced them both instantly.
"It's a little strange," Temorsth said, choosing his words carefully. "I think it's reacting to my... emotional state, maybe. My thoughts." He hated lying to his parents more than almost anything.
So Persona tried to be as accurate as he was allowed.
"Unique Abilities are called unique for a reason. They can behave in strange ways — you don't need to worry about it, Baby." Elah had been surprised at first, but she'd already suspected something like this.
The ability hadn't manifested the same way in him as it had in her from the start.
Her own gift let her reshape the element, nature, or form of any magic or skill. His, it seemed, altered his aptitude — the affinity that decided which elements and magic types he could even access to begin with.
"I understand." Temorsth already knew what Affinity of Magic meant — and understood that what was shifting wasn't the spell itself, but the one thing people always said couldn't be trained or conquered: talent.
"Can you manifest more of it? I want to see."
"I think so, but I'm not sure which state brings out which element."
"That's easy — just cycle through them one at a time, and I'll tell you what each one is."
"Oh."
'This is perfect — '
'I've been thinking how to know each of our elements,' Brilliance said, delighted.
Original, who'd been listening the whole time, roused everyone at once. ' There seems to be no time for a meeting, so I will just wake everyone one after the other.'
"Alright, let's start." Once everyone was ready, Temorsth called out to his mother.
...
"And this — hm, interesting. This is the first time four have shown up at once."
"Four?" Temorsth's voice came out softer than usual. Almost girlish.
"Radiant, Light, Dark, and Life. That last one's fascinating — only two kinds of magic use life energy, healing and cursing, and I genuinely can't tell which this is. It reads as both, which shouldn't be possible..."
'So Tiana can heal and curse at the same time...' Brilliance was recording.
'That reminds me of her...' Relatio's thought threatened to pull them somewhere else, but Elah's voice cut it off before it could.
"Alright, next."
"I think that was the last one." This time, it was Persona who stopped her.
"Oh."
"...?"
"Hmh." Elah hummed to herself for a while.
"Mom? Is something wrong?" He caught the way her eyes had gone distant.
"No, it's just — some elements are missing. Also, Baby, could you bring everything out at once? You haven't done that yet."
"All at once — no, I can't. That's just not possible right now."
"Why not?" If he could bring each one out separately, it didn't make sense that he couldn't do it together.
"It's just... hard."
She didn't fully understand, but she let it go. She wasn't going to push him into something he clearly didn't want to do. "And the missing ones — can we bring those out too?"
"Um..."
'Everyone's had a turn except—'
'Just me and Monster,' Original cut in, already ahead of Persona's thought.
'No — it doesn't matter. We don't need to.'
'Don't lie to me, Brilliance. I know exactly what you're thinking, and it's not hard to do.'
'Ugh.'
'But—' Relatio tried to speak up and was cut off just as fast.
'Yeah, I haven't been out since that day. It's been over twenty years now. I'd have to come out specifically for it.'
Once Original had made the call, no one argued.
"Mother — what's the energy in me right now?" His voice was even, so natural, it felt unnatural.
"..."
"Mother?"
"Everything. Every single one." Her voice shook.
"Every element that's shown up so far?"
"Baby, right now you can use every element there is. Every type of attack. There isn't a single thing you couldn't do. I can even feel Space and Time — the two hardest types to ever manifest — and—"
"Hm?" Her voice cut off mid-sentence, and Temorsth turned to find her frozen.
'How the hell are those two here!?'
"Mother? Is something wrong?"
"Hm? Oh — nothing, sorry, Sweetie. Mommy was just thinking."
'Divine and Demonic. Even I can barely touch those. He doesn't need to know. Not yet.'
"Mother... do I need to keep doing this much longer?"
"Is it bothering you?"
"I don't feel comfortable."
"You don't have to keep going. It might just be that actively using the ability is wearing you out."
"...Maybe. Sorry." With a quiet apology for the small lie, Original stepped back and handed control to Persona.
"Don't apologize, Baby, it's not your—" Elah stopped short as something drifted past her face — not quite sand, not quite ash, not quite dust.
The particles were so fine, so unnaturally uniform, that even in a world built on magic, they sent a chill down her spine.
Following the drift of it downward, her eyes landed on the ground. In a perfect circle around Temorsth's feet, the grass, the soil, everything had crumbled into that same fine, wrong-feeling matter.
She watched it spread — slow, deliberate — and tried to step back.
'I can't move!?'
Her body wouldn't respond.
As the crumbling crept closer, a single word began looping through her mind.
'Death.'
'I'm going to die.'
She closed her eyes, waited a beat, then cracked one open just enough to check—
The matter had stopped, right at the edge of her feet.
'That was close.'
"Um... Mom?" Her son's voice pulled her out of it.
"Hm?"
"Mom?" She looked up from the ground, and in that same instant, quietly and deliberately, she erased the memory from her own mind.
"Yes, Sweetie? What is it?"
"So with this, I've learned to use your ability too, right?"
"..."
"I can go out now, right?"
"..."
"Mom?"
"..."
"Oh, perfect timing!" Xalier's voice carried over from a short distance away.
Antanasia, standing a few steps off, turned toward him.
Reading the question in her look, Xalier gave her exactly what she was waiting for. "Your sister's here."