"She's lovely, mature, sophisticated, and has one of the most important noble titles in the Kingdom."
Solus looked constipated for a long second before managing to smile while Phloria just nodded.
"She sure seems nice. I only want you to be happy." Elina said while fiddling with the contact amulet in her pocket.
'Heck no! I want someone a bit younger and that can give my grandchildren a bit more skin and a bit less scales. I can't wait for lunch to end so that I can call Zinya. There must be something that we can do.' She actually thought.
"Big bro, can you take us to the Trawn woods?" Aran didn't share any of his parents' worries. "Lilia and Leran are back and we'd like to go play in the woods."
The children were still too scared to move around without the supervision of an adult. Protector had already gone back to work to provide for his family and help Faluel with the mess that they had found upon their return from Fyrwal's castle.
"Sure. I just have a couple of errands and then I'm all yours."
After lunch, as soon as Friya and Phloria walked through the Warp Gate in the barn, Lith summoned Locrias' shade for the first time since he had discovered his Void Sigil bloodline ability.
The former captain of the Queen's Corps emerged from the feather that now hosted his soul, drawing the shadows inside the barn to him. At first, he looked like a small black star, but the sphere quickly grew into the fully developed body of a five-eyed demon.
'It seems that by conjuring him alone, Locrias received much more energy than usual.' Lith could see that along with the unusual number of eyes, the Demon of Darkness had clear features that made him look like a living being.
Only the random flickering of his energy body betrayed the fact that he wasn't made of flesh and bones.
"What can I do for you, Lith?" Locrias looked incredibly sad, yet his eyes quickly steeled the moment he recognized where he was. "Are some of the members of the Queen's corps acting suspiciously or is there someone inside the house you want me to tail?"
"Neither." Lith shook his head. "It's just that before Zeska, I never thought that souls could linger around me after so much time from their death. I wanted to ask you to accompany me to the places where Lark and Mirim died.
"Maybe they are waiting for my call, just like you did. They could tell us something about the copycat and help us to catch him. Yet I can't go to their houses and conjure the Demons of Darkness without causing a commotion and revealing that I'm the Tiamat."
"I can help you look around for them." Locrias cupped his hands, generating a black flame between them that revealed Lith the presence and the identity of the souls that kept following him.
Lith flinched as the allegedly empty space of the barn filled with ethereal figures. Some were dressed in ancient clothes, some were half-naked and covered in mud, but they all had their faces twisted by violent emotions as they stared at Lith, waiting.
"Yet I doubt they are still around." The captain said. "I died before your arrival, but I felt your pull and used it to follow you around. You visited the Lark's estate soon after the attack and the Distar household just a few days later.
"They were much closer to you than I ever was so if they had chosen to stay, I wouldn't be your first." Locrias neared the black flame to his chest, revealing the presence of a thin chain that connected him to Lith.
'That's the same thing that kept Carl by my side until I broke it!' He thought in shock.
'This means that you can break the bond with your Demons at will and it also poses a question.' Solus pondered. 'Why didn't Carl ever take the form of a Demon, even just to talk to you?'
'Maybe he did.' Lith suddenly regretted sending his little brother away. 'As a Wyrmling, my Demons were much weaker, barely a three-dimensional shadow with no mouth nor features.
'Maybe he fought by my side for a long time, protecting me, but we'll never know because by the time I became a Tiamat, he was long gone because of me.'
'Seriously? Would you really have liked to force Carl in a state like that of Locrias?' Solus asked.
'No. Carl had suffered too much both in life and death. I much prefer knowing that he is at peace rather than dragging him around potentially forever. Also, the Odi machine is the only way that I've found to break my reincarnation cycle and I don't want Carl to see me like that.' Lith inwardly sighed. 'Thanks, Solus.'
'You are welcome.' She replied with a dazzling telepathic smile.
'Do you know that it's really rude of you to keep me waiting while you two flirt?' Locrias chimed in, making them both flinch. 'Yeah, I'm a part of you so of course I can use a mind link as well. Do you mind telling me what you want to do? By the way, who is Carl?'
Feeling his presence in what usually was a private space irked Lith to no end. He cut Locrias off before replying.
"You are probably right, but it's still worth a shot. Even if Lark and Mirim saw nothing, I can still say goodbye before helping them to move on, if that's what they want. We'll start from the Lark mansion."
Lith opened a Steps back to the Trawn woods and Solus used the Tower's Warp Mirror to instantly reach their destination.
"I still can't believe that you are the owner of a mage tower and yet you refused to share it with the Kingdom." Locrias said in awe.
The building still looked broken, but in his Demon form, he could perceive the power coursing through the plain grey stones.
"Don't be foolish. If I did, I would have never survived childhood. Petty politics and power-hungry nobles still bother me now that I'm an Archmage. Imagine what would have happened back when I was just a student from a backwater village." Lith replied.
"I meant now. The tower grants you amazing abilities that could greatly help the Kingdom now that there are so many threats circling around it like hungry wolves. Your household might even become a new founding pillar of the Kingdom." The captain said.
"Yeah, right. It would also put a target on the back of every member of our family." Solus said with a sneer. "So far, they are safe only because Lith has nothing that the various Households want. His talent can't be stolen and compared to them, he is poor.
"If the existence of the tower gets revealed, the nobles would spare no effort to kill Lith and his family to get their hands on it."
"The Royals would be your sword and shield as they always did. They would move your family to the capitol and-"
"Make my parents live as prisoners until the day of their death, if not even use them as hostages to keep me on a leash." Lith cut him short.. "Thanks, but no thanks."
