Chapter 91: Confrontation (Third Part)

Many things are absolute in this world.

The pull of gravity; the heat of the sun or the passage of time.

As Walmir had said to me not long ago: ‘Magic itself was absolute even if Humans are not’.

However, few things were more absolute than a parent's love for their child.

I was blessed to have received such love myself in this new life. That’s why I couldn’t doubt the strength of a father's desire to protect his only daughter.

So how could such a thing be possible?

How could such an accusation come out of my mouth?

Because I knew that there was something else absolute in both worlds.

A simple truth that I unfortunately also witnessed.

Love and horror were never far from each other when Humans were involved.

“What? This is absurd, I love my daughter more than anything in the world!” immediately raged Paul after my question.

Gone was the shame he had briefly shown me, replaced by a righteous obfuscation to sweep away any possible accusation.

First comes the denial and the anger.

I let him rage at me for long seconds, his voice probably strong enough to have reached the cave beyond the trees. My lack of reaction seemed to anger him even more and renewed his will to deny this atrocious accusation with even more vigor than before.

When Paul finally ran out of steam, I spoke again as calmly as possible.

“Yes, it is absurd,” I started.

“Then…” he immediately hollered.

“However, everything matches,” I continued before he could interrupt me. “I’m sure this is the same decoction you gave her while inside your farm, something she had to drink daily without fail despite being completely unaware of the reason for that.”

“It’s because she is sick!” he bellowed.

“Sick? I don’t think so. She was certainly a girl without any hidden ability or prospect as a future mage, but she wasn’t sick. She certainly wasn’t ordinary either or this Ryunno clan member wouldn’t have chosen to take her,” I simply declared.

“Maybe… maybe he made a mistake,” he stuttered. “It’s obvious. He made a mistake! You were just right next to her that day. You’re the only abnormality who could have attracted his attention!” he finally declared with as much confidence as his shaky arguments, not even able to convince himself, were able to give him.

The bargaining always follows when the anger runs out.

I watched as Paul tried to twist the reality and the truth to fit any flawed hypothesis that could explain why Alianelle was the only one singled out among all the people present that day.

Once more, I patiently waited for him to run out of ideas before opening my mouth to tell him my version of Alianelle’s truth.

“You’re probably not aware of this, but when we rescued her, she told me that this Ryunno clan member had already explained to her that he had found poison inside her body. None of this made any sense so we ignored his words. Alianelle was mortally wounded not long after that. If she had the slightest regenerative ability then, it was the only time to use such a power consciously or not. However, nothing happened when she bled to death. Not until I gave her what was left of my regenerative potion. Potion potent enough to save my life more times than I can remember without any side effects. However, we both know that Alianelle didn’t react as she should have.”

Hypotheses to discredit my story and contradict my words were gone from Paul. All that remained were downcast eyes, unable to look straight at me, as I slowly unraveled a truth he was so desperate to hide.

Finally, the depression had taken its rightful place in his heart instead of any kind of bargaining. I just hoped that by the end of our explanation, he would be able to reach the acceptance necessary if we all wanted to survive the rest of our journey together.

“She fell into a coma, and a few days later had her first crisis inside the swamps where she released an absurd amount of mana for someone who had never shown any potential as a mage. At the time, I thought that she had badly reacted to the elven potion, but of course, you already knew that it wasn’t what was happening. It’s only a few days after our encounter with Walmir and Ilan, and after a few more crises, that she finally fell again into an absolute coma, only broken a week ago.”

“I was there, Sillath. I remember everything clearly so get to the point!” he grumbled.

Certainly, if I wanted to get any truth out of him, I had to make him unable to deny the reality. With his emotions and flawed explanation out of the way, it was finally time to confront Paul with my own hypothesis.

“This potion is a poison preventing Alianelle from waking up by crippling her natural regenerative abilities,” I simply stated with a kind of certainty I spent days of constant reflection to achieve.

“Absurd! She is just a girl… A weak little girl without any kind of power… My weak little girl!” lamented Paul probably already unable to tell who he was trying to convince with these words.

“Certainly not as weak as you wanted her to be,” I replied mercilessly. “For years, you used this potion, no, this poison, to cripple her abilities and make her believe she was ordinary. You overcame her regenerative abilities with this poison, making it unusable for anything else in her daily life. She had taken it as usual on the day of her kidnapping and was left totally defenseless when this deviant tore her belly open!”

“I…”

“Without my elven potion, she would be dead. Make no mistake about this,” I accused, leaving my emotions take the better of me for a few seconds before taking a deep breath and resuming my explanation.

“No matter the amount of internal damages she had accumulated along the years of this treatment, no matter if her natural regenerative abilities were already completely crippled, this potion was able to change everything. It healed those ancient internal wounds along with her laceration. A rebirth probably too significant to happen while awake which explains why she has never woken up since.”

All this talking made me slightly lightheaded, a sign that I should probably have taken a few more hours of sleep. However, I couldn’t stop now. Paul had put all of us at risk just to hide this secret. Who could say he wouldn’t do worse? At first, I simply wanted to quietly watch over him and his daughter while hoping that he would stay quiet and tranquil once he saw that Alianelle’s crisis had stopped. However, I finally understood that the only way to make the rest of our journey with Paul go smoothly was to confront him with the truth.

So, I heartlessly continued to assault him with this truth so difficult for him to hear.

“The healing ability of this potion is absolute, but it can take a while. That’s what happened to me on these lands when I was poisoned myself. This is also what happened to Alianelle. It’s only inside the swamp that her natural regenerative abilities were finally restored and took over the healing of her internal wounds.”

I only gave her half a vial of potion when she was wounded.

Was it not enough to fully heal her?

Did the potion conflict with her restored regenerative abilities?

I didn’t know, but neither the potion nor her power was enough to heal her completely. She needed more time, but Paul took that away from her too.

“Her mana abruptly stopped along with her healing after you took her alone with you inside the carriage. That day, you finally had enough time to find this plant and give her the same poison again. And for months you continued to poison her, to prevent her from healing completely and waking up until you started to run out of potion for that,” I concluded heavily.

When her mana vanished, we all thought it was something beneficial for our group as it finally allowed us to have some measure of peace without all the different species being drawn by her unchecked released mana.

However, we were all mistaken.

Paul had simply put her old chains back on her, putting an immediate end to her healing and her future awakening until he was unable to find more of this plant despite all his searching. He probably rationed it to make what was left of the poison last, but this finally allowed Alianelle’s natural abilities to once more gain the upper hand while we were inside the devastated camp.

This was Alianelle’s story.

Paul wasn’t directly responsible for her coma, but he has done his best to keep her from awakening from it ever since.

Unfortunately, there was no place left in my mind for any doubt. All I lacked was the answer to the most important question.

“Why?” I simply asked solemnly.

I was sure he had an excellent reason to have done something like that. Something a barely educated kid like me couldn’t imagine. I hoped so with all my being because it was the only way to soothe the anger and frustration that gnawed at my insides when I thought of all those nights spent worrying about Alianelle, convinced that I was responsible for her coma.

I was feeling more uncomfortable than ever as I patiently waited for Paul to finally answer me. I wiped the sweat on my forehead and did my best to ignore a surprisingly strong headache until he spoke again.

“Why?” he asked back in a light whisper.

“You ask me why I had to do that?” he continued with a voice stronger than before and brimming with frustration. “It’s because you and Jazor chose to trust and ally yourselves with slavers who wouldn’t even bat an eye to put any of us in their cage if they knew they could get away with it!” he finally boomed in a firmer voice than before, as if this was an absolute truth that no one could deny.

“We would never have allowed such a thing to happen!” I blazed rebukingly before a sudden vertigo forced me to calm down.

“Maybe not you, but Jazor is a Dwarf and, if you think Humans are bad when it comes to slavery then you certainly don’t know enough about them,” he sneered. “That’s why I didn’t want to travel with slavers, but I’m not an idiot, Sillath. I admit that I hadn’t realized the true scale of what we were forced to confront. Jazor and you alone would have never been strong enough to save us from what we had faced day after day. I know that now.”

“Then, you understand we had no choice if we wanted to survive.”

“Yes, we didn’t have any other alternative. Our two groups depended on one another and, even then, we barely made it,” he consented.

I certainly didn’t need him to remind me. I couldn’t remember how many times I thought none of us would survive, either overwhelmed by an impossible number of opponents or crushed by creatures so much stronger than us. I already had more scars than I could count and more nightmares plaguing my mind than I could remember to bear witness to those desperate days.

“But, I never trusted slavers to keep their word,” he suddenly added, interrupting at the same time unsavory memories. “I certainly didn’t foresee how desperate our situation truly was, but I knew that sooner or later when the situation started to calm down, the agreement between our groups would slowly start to lose its value.”

I didn’t know why, but I felt sick and slightly dizzy. Hoping that I hadn’t caught a cold or something similar, I missed his next words, but I didn’t feel the need to make him repeat them as I already knew what he meant.

Walmir and Ilan needed our strength just as much as we needed theirs, but they also provided a Vrapy-drawn carriage to our deal, something essential if we wanted to reach the Advanced town.

“So you were afraid that as soon as the situation started to become more manageable for the two of them, they would ask something more from us so that we could continue to use their carriage?”

“Can you blame me for that?” he asked challengingly. “Alianelle and I are both defenseless, so I had to consider all possibilities. What if one day they had simply decided that the price to pay for continuing to use their carriage was my freedom or Alianelle’s? I couldn't even be sure how long you or Jazor would continue to put your life on the line for us. All I could do was make myself as useful and discreet as possible while making sure they never took an interest in Alianelle.”

I didn’t contradict him, as I remembered that he had learned to direct the Vrapy on his own precisely to be useful to our group, even if he had to temporarily put aside his aversion for Ilan and Walmir for that. He also took care of Alianelle’s daily needs on his own without asking anything from any of us even though taking care of an unconscious person under these conditions couldn’t have been easy.

In fact, if he had had enough of this plant to make his poison, his presence in our group would have probably stayed anecdotal until our arrival in the first Advanced town as his conflicts with Ilan only started after he began to dangerously waste our time to look for this plant.

And that’s precisely what I wanted to understand.

Why did he have to make sure Alianelle wouldn’t wake up, even if it meant antagonizing Ilan?

He purposely danced around this question, always avoiding telling me what I truly wanted to understand so this time I asked him directly.

“But why did you have to make sure she wouldn’t wake up no matter what? Just to hide her abilities? I have trouble believing that you would go to such lengths just to hide her true value, especially considering how she finally became a complete burden for our group, which was probably even worse in our situation.”

“Because, Sillath,” he slowly started with gritted teeth and reluctance to answer written all over his face. “You don’t know anything about her.”

“So, explain it to me!” I pleaded once more when I saw hesitation return to his face.

“It's because her power is absolute!” he finally screamed from the top of his lungs letting go of all his rancors, frustrations, and worries at the same time while leaving me completely baffled.

“I can’t let her regeneration unchecked or, as soon as she wakes up, her other abilities would soon follow, revealing at the same time her true nature,” he continued with a defeated voice.

“And would that be so terrible?” I asked after I came to my senses and assimilated what he had said.

“Yes, it would be,” he simply answered.

“You can trust me, Paul. No matter what you have to say, I will protect her as I have always done,” I quickly added to encourage him while trying to hide any winces caused by my growing headache.

A sad smile I didn’t understand appeared on his face for a few seconds before he finally consented.

“Sillath… Alianelle and I both belong to a very special beast tribe. If she awakens, she will soon regain her full abilities and the characteristics of our race I definitely lost long ago. I simply couldn’t let that happen in the Advanced town, much less so close to slavers.”

I restrained myself from any unnecessary comment and simply nodded like a fool, unable to truly realize what he just explained to me.

“You’re too young to know the name of our tribe even if I told you, but trust me, not a single slave dealer in the whole continent would ever pass up on this opportunity. If this becomes known, the whole world will become her enemy, and your promise will become worthless.”

“To capture her, not you? Aren’t you from the same tribe?” I asked, baffled and still a little overwhelmed by his sudden revelation and by my lack of knowledge about the different beast tribes.

“I am, but I already lost all my powers and potential value, but her outrageous regenerative powers are what makes her truly special and what puts her in so much danger. This power could condemn her to a life worse than death,” he sighed. “That's why I even had to prevent her from knowing her own nature. For this reason, I had to use such a rare and potent poison to neutralize her mana before destroying her from the inside on a daily basis for years,” he explained with a detached coldness I rarely saw in him before today.

“Her regenerative ability is so strong that not a single of the more common poisons I’ve used on her has had any effect, not for long anyway. If any poison would have been sufficient, I wouldn’t have had such a hard time looking for this specific plant. You have to understand Sillath, what I did to her, I did it for her own good. I had no choice!” he concluded with a voice a little too strong to reflect complete confidence in the words he had just spoken.

Although I suspected that Paul and Alianelle must have had a peculiar history to have been forced to live in an Advanced town so far out in the wilderness, I could never have guessed this kind of revelation from him. To me, this man who was telling me his story with only shame and frustration as companions wasn’t the same simple, honest farmer who had opened his door to me.

Besides, the important part wasn’t whether I decided to believe his words after all the lies he had fed me, but to make him understand his current situation.

“I understand, Paul. However, Alianelle will wake up soon whether you want it or not. Giving her the rest of the potion will not be enough to last until the end of our journey. This poison will only delay the inevitable unless you miraculously find more of this plant you spent weeks looking for without any success. For now, she is stable and on the verge of waking up because most of her internal damages are probably already healed. However, if you give her more poison, she will sooner or later once again release more mana to heal herself, which would put us all in terrible danger. It’s not something any of us can accept and trust me, neither Ilan nor Walmir will silently accept it this time.”

Paul turned silent, obviously conflicted and aware that things could quickly spiral out of control.

“But, if we explain it to her when she wakes up, we can help her hide her nature for the rest of our trip. I will cover for her and keep protecting her so that neither Walmir, Ilan, or even Jazor realize what she truly is.”

“I can’t…” he muttered.

“Yes, you can. It’s the only way for everything to turn out well in the end,” I insisted with a growing unpleasant distrust as I looked at his conflicted face.

“You don’t understand!” he shouted. “She thinks we are from an ordinary beast tribe. She doesn’t know her real powers nor her true worth and is not ready to hear it yet. I need to protect her from that!”

“Protect her from that, or protect you from her judgment?” I asked coldly, having unfortunately gotten the confirmation I dreaded.

If everything he told me was true, then I could understand why Paul had made such a heartless and difficult choice. However, although he had sensible reasons, it was now his shame that prevented him from accepting my solution and letting her wake up.

He was afraid of her reaction when she learned the truth about what he had done to her all these years.

He couldn’t face his own lies and actions, and that was something I couldn’t accept.

“One way or another, she will learn the truth. Better to learn it from your mouth before…” I spoke again to persuade him, before being taken by another sudden dizziness that prevented my last words from leaving my mouth.

Surprised and unbalanced, I struggled to get this feeling under control with my hands on the sides of my head.

“What the…'' I croaked while fighting the urge to throw up as the constant headache I had to bear all along our talk finally exceeded my limits. I could no longer attribute this to any kind of natural tiredness or any sudden cold.

Something was very wrong.

As soon as that thought crossed my muddled pain-ridden mind, my blurred vision sharpened into a narrow tunnel in front of me, while everything else around started to spin.

Noises behind me made me turn my head only to see Seth pulling his sister by the hand and using his long magical hair, moving like a sentient being, to carry something with him. With a vision getting blurrier each second, it took a few moments to realize what he was bringing with him.

“Alianelle…” I indistinctly mumbled with words barely more than a whisper now.

“It’s too late, Sillath…” declared Paul’s distant voice as my knees finally buckled up under my weight.