Setti and Naydra Silver's eyes are fixed on Nina, still seated on the opposing couch within a bubble of completely unaffected space, her eyes staring back at them without a single trace of the levity she maintained prior. She rises from the couch, walking towards them with slow, deliberate steps that crack the thin ice beneath her feet ominously. She stops in front of them, leaning over mere inches from Setti's face with eyes that flicker dangerously, and speaks. Her voice is chilling enough to make the room's atmosphere seem pleasant by comparison.
"An insect so insignificant has no place telling me what I dare, foolish little elf. The mere fact that I have even allowed creatures like you to exist in my presence, speaking such insolence without the fear of death, is a testament to my restraint. A grace for which you owe Mizuki incalculable gratitude. However, even my consideration for my mate has its limits.
"I tire of the endless impudence of you worthless creatures. Imposing your moronic principles on me and Mizuki, crying for our assistance when you are too weak to solve your own problems, meeting our every gracious action with distrust and silent deliberation, as though you have the right to pass judgement at all. Well...Mizuki can be tolerant if he wishes, but I will swallow the indignation no longer. Today, your actions have consequences." (Nina)
Without another word, Nina extends her hand towards Setti's face, causing his eyes to widen in terror, his face muscles twitching and straining as he tries in vain to free himself.
The ice around Setti's body suddenly liquidates and darkens into writhing mud, before hardening to stone. At the same time that his jaw is freed from the ice's imprisonment, an eerie mist seeps from Nina's hand and invades his mouth, causing him to jerk. He tries to scream, but only a muted gurgle comes out, the strange, chilly mist numbing everything it touches and robbing him of the fine motor control necessary for speech.
Nina rolls her eyes at the sight.
"You can relax. I am in a remarkably good mood today, despite your behavior, so I will not kill you. Thanks to Ciri's abilities, you won't even feel pain...much. I'm just going to make sure you don't forget the consequences of irritating me again." (Nina)
Rather than assurance or relief, that only causes another panicked gurgle within Setti's throat. Nina ignores it, grabbing him roughly by the hair, then drags his body sideways, laying the back of his head into his wife's lap. She pulls the hem of her dress up her thigh slightly, raising her leg, then presses her knee directly into Setti's neck, resting her weight on him partially as she looks down with disdain. Mud begins to writhe around her own hands, forming into brown leather-like gloves as she grips his jaw, forcing his mouth open.
"I don't want your disgusting fluids on me, so do try to keep them to yourself, hmm?" (Nina)
The realization of what's to come causes Naydra, her body already trembling violently beneath the sheet of ice encasing her, to squeeze her eyes shut tightly. However, Nina notices the reaction and frowns, addressing her in a slightly annoyed voice.
"Open your eyes, elf. He is not in your lap by accident..this is a warning for you, too. I have no plans to do anything to you personally, but should you irritate me..." (Nina)
She trails off, letting the threat hang in the air. Reluctantly, Naydra opens her eyes, tears beginning to spill down her cheeks before freezing when they meet the layer of magical ice around her lower jaw. Nina smiles approvingly, then turns her attention back to Setti.
"Now, where was I...oh yes. I seem to recall a rather boring lecture from Mizuki about the relationship between humans' different sets of teeth and their diets. I think the blunt, back ones – you know, what nobody sees when you smile – were supposed to be the most important for chewing food properly. If elves are the same, I imagine struggling to enjoy your meals multiple times a day will be a powerful reminder of my threat, yes?" (Nina)
Squelch-skrch....PLOP!
Pulled by an invisible force, something small and white rips out of Setti's mouth with a wet, meaty sound, flying into Nina's free gloved hand. Nina smiles, presenting the bloody tooth to him proudly, its fleshy root dangling loosely. A low, panicked gurgle bubbles within Setti's throat, audibly impeded by something wet and viscous.
Squelch-skrch....PLOP!
Nina presents another tooth to him, and his eyes roll back in his head.
However, it's not from pain. Thanks to the strange, numbing mist, he can't feel anything at all. Rather, a fear unlike anything he thought possible threatens to overwhelm his mind. He can only lie there, immobilized completely, hearing the strange tearing sound that he assumes is his own flesh and the strangled gurgling that can only be blood in his throat.
Somehow, that's worse...watching Nina present pieces of him, constrained and helpless, a sense of wrongness assaulting his psyche each time he realizes that another part of himself was stolen without his own body warning him of the loss.
Making him wonder, imagine...just how much his body's suffering, how little of it he may be left with already.
Squelch-skrch....PLOP!
"Fufufu...oh my, is that a cavity?" (Nina)
¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬
"...I think...you're losing your magic." (Alto)
I blink, staring at Alto blankly. Losing my magic? I gotta say, when she said 'sick', that was the last thing on my mind. However, this is Alto we're talking about...it hardly seems like the kind of thing she'd leap to a conclusion over or joke about.
I narrow my eyes, studying her worried expression for several moments in silence.
"Why do you think that?" (Mizuki)
She looks away briefly, a thoughtful, conflicted expression on her face.
"Well..." (Alto)
Then, she begins to lay out her reasoning, all the 'evidence' she's accumulated since learning magic sense – how fast my flight and teleportation spells drain me, how Ciri's Bond affected me. When she finishes, I'm silent, a serious, far away expression on my face.
"So...?" (Alto)
Her audibly nervous voice pulls me from my thoughts. I glance back at her, noting the anxious, expectant expression on her face. I purse my lips, trying to decide how – if – to respond. Because I believe every word she's said, and unlike her, I have a suspicion about what might be happening to me.
Back when Nina and I had first met, when she told me she could sense that I'd become a nigh-immortal like her, I'd always assumed that was because her and I Bonded. I mean, why wouldn't that be the reason? It makes sense – Elder Dragons are ageless, the Bond was supposed to give us qualities or abilities of one another – realizing I was ageless not long after didn't seem like a coincidence.
But recently, since I discovered how to sense aether and its connection to nigh-immortality, I've been confused about that assumption.
If I gained nigh-immortality by acquiring magic characteristics from Nina through our Bond, then shouldn't the corresponding aether structure within me mimic hers? Yet, it doesn't. Hers looks like a structured, skeletal overlay that I've inferred to have artificial origins within her ancestry, while mine is chaotic, disordered – more akin to something that occurred naturally, like the Greater Spirits. Now, considering my recent experimental success with the Greater Spirits in parallel with Alto's observations...a solid, alternative theory takes form in my mind.
Magic fusion, taking place naturally inside my body, due to the absurd magic reserves contained within it. And according to Alto's observations, still ongoing. If true, that has several important implications.
First, of course, is that I'm probably not 'ill' like Alto believes, or anything else so negative. I'm just converting magic into aether, which might actually be very good for me. Despite purportedly losing part of my magic reserves over time, I've only found myself feeling more exceptional by the day – greater natural strength, endurance, and healing, less hunger and thirst, virtually no sleep deprivation effects, and my thoughts and senses feel far sharper than on Earth. In retrospect, that may be at least as attributable to passive aether benefits as whatever I've gained from my Bonds with Ciri and Nina.
The second, far more interesting observation is that aether accumulation is capable of dwindling my magic reserves at all. In my spirit experiment, such behavior makes sense because the magic sphere I use for compressing the magic prevents magic from entering or exiting. The magic in the area of detection is finite. However, inside my body I'd expect whatever magic is lost from fusion into aether to be replaced by absorption from the atmosphere. Yet, Alto says my magic reserves are shrinking.
For that to be true, I can only imagine two scenarios. One, my body's natural magic absorption rate can't keep up with the aether conversion, leaving me slowly losing magic. That seems unlikely to me, especially since I was able to quickly recover my magic reserves after draining them for that magic compression experiment.
That leaves scenario two – my magic capacity is dwindling because the aether is competing for it. It's a rather fascinating implication, actually, since my experience has been that magic particles do not interact with anything unless you 'take possession' of them and will them to. Of course, I'm not suggesting that aether truly repels magic or that they can't occupy the same physical space. Rather, it's just the general inference that whatever confluence of factors in my body decide magic 'capacity' are the same for aether 'capacity', allowing my constitution to get 'saturated' by a combination of the two particles.
Suddenly, another thought occurs to me, and I stiffen.
Even if the magic conversion isn't harmful like Alto seems to think, if aether and magic non-independently contribute to saturating my constitution, and the conversion is ongoing, won't the aether eventually outcompete the magic entirely? Will I eventually lose the ability to store any meaningful amount of magic?
If so, I may be in more trouble than I assumed. I don't know how to 'use' whatever aether is already inside me, if it's even of a 'usable' variety. Even if I did, Azazel has explicitly warned me against so much as researching aether. Who knows what he'd say or do if I actually started liberally wielding the energy source.
On the other hand, regardless of how remarkable my physical body is now, or how powerful it'd be when fully saturated and passively nourished by aether, I am far from invincible on Azura with it alone. Given how much attention I've started drawing to myself, if I really did lose access to magic...
My jaw clenches, and I swallow involuntarily.
I can't really afford to sit on my hands if my 'condition' continues on its current trajectory.
"Mizuki, are you okay? Say something..." (Alto)
Alto's concerned voice, even more insistent than before, snaps me from my contemplation. I look down, seeing her sapphire eyes unnaturally expressive, full of worry as they meet mine. I give her a half-hearted smile, doing a poor job covering the tinge of anxiety I now feel.
"Ah...sorry. Uhm...what else can you tell me about how my magic power level has dwindled? You know, percent change, whether the rate of loss is increasing or decreasing, stuff like that." (Mizuki)
Alto stares at me for a moment, pursed lips hinting at a burning question. However, she suppresses whatever it is, biting her lip as she glances away thoughtfully.
"I don't know...ten percent less than a couple weeks ago, maybe more? I have no idea about the rate. It took me this long just to be sure your magic was decreasing." (Alto)
Initially, her estimate causes my heart to race with panic. Five percent per week is...significant, in the context of losing my magical abilities. What's more, I can't be sure how long this has been going on, or how that rate has changed in the past or will change in the future. I doubt it's linear, but if my magic loss follows exponential decay, my magic capacity will be less than a percent of what it is now in...a year, give or take? If I'm in the early phase of a sigmoidal loss trend...months? Weeks?
However, the rational part of my mind eventually recognizes that even a hundredth of a percent of my current magic reserves is still astronomical by Azura's standards. I doubt it'd make much difference in my life here. Plus, no matter how I extrapolate the magic loss, I feel confident that the rate of loss would rapidly decrease below one percent of my current reserves, my reserves never truly reaching zero. That is, as long as any of the competition kinetics I'm familiar with from Earth are remotely applicable to ethereal particles.
The realization causes me to relax slightly, letting out a deep breath of relief.
Still, I'd be an idiot to not start working on some countermeasures. Ultimately, the only thing I know for certain is that I'm losing my magic, and probably have been for quite a while. Everything else is extrapolations based on logic that I wouldn't be surprised to find is inapplicable to ethereal particles. So, preparations are in order.
For now, though...
I glance at Alto, who's giving me a strange, studying look. Probably because I've spent much of the last several minutes staring off into space silently. Pretending like I don't notice her expression, I give her a reassuring smile that I'm sure looks far more genuine than before.
"Well, that's not so bad, I guess. I have plenty of magic to spare, so just keep an eye on me and let me know if you notice anything else. As of now, I feel better than I ever have. Plus, I did Bond with two Elder Dragons – maybe my body's diverting magic to the improvements that causes in my body?" (Mizuki)
Unfortunately, I can't share my full thoughts on the matter with Alto, or anyone else. Not yet, anyway. That'd be the same as revealing my revelations about aether, and I'm not sure how problematic that is yet.
Hearing my (partly) truthful rationalization, Alto's expression becomes slightly conflicted, her gaze holding a distracted thoughtfulness. However, after a moment her eyes sharpen, narrowing at me with a hint of suspicion.
"That's...reasonable, I suppose. Aren't you a little too calm, though? You believed me immediately, too..." (Alto)
I blink innocently.
"Well...yeah? I trust your word." (Mizuki)
She tilts her head, falling silent for a while as she studies me with a skeptical expression.
"Mizuki, do you remember the promise you made me?" (Alto)
I blink, then when realization settles in, I smile wryly, my tone turning serious.
"I haven't lied to you, Alto...I promise." (Mizuki)
She purses her lips.
"Then, is there something you're not telling me? About you losing your magic?" (Alto)
My smile turns slightly strained.
I briefly wonder what to say, caught between the promise that I made to her on the first night we met, and the concern I feel over openly discussing aether. Eventually, I sigh, giving her a helpless look.
"Yes, but I really do think I'll be fine. Can we leave it at that...please?" (Mizuki)
Her eyes widen in surprise, then narrow, her dissatisfaction evident. After a moment, though, she nods reluctantly.
"For now." (Alto)
Good enough, I suppose.
I smile at her appreciatively, sighing in relief. Before I can make a joke to ease the tension, the sound of soft footsteps echoing draws both our attention down the hallway. I raise my eyebrows in surprise, remembering why Alto and I were walking through the palace in the first place.
"Where have you been?" (Mizuki)
Nina stops a few feet in front of us, an empty glass of wine in her hand, a satisfied smile on her face. She hums thoughtfully, her words measured.
"Hmmm. Just...taking advantage of the more secluded areas of the palace?" (Nina)
I give her a deadpan look.
"So, avoiding the elves in the ballroom to get drunk alone?" (Mizuki)
A strange smile forms on Nina's lips. One that makes me feel inexplicably...uneasy.
"I might have enjoyed some wine while I was away." (Nina)
I nearly roll my eyes, ignoring the strange phrasing. Of course she was off boozing instead of joining the meeting. Although, perhaps I can't blame her this time...I admit she'd have been rather bored.
Shaking my head, I wave dismissively.
"Well, whatever...let's go home." (Mizuki)