The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2
Chapter 50

Part 9

"No, I doubt anyone heard it except us and the unicorns." Povon said as the explosions resumed. She cast a Speaking and continued psionicly. "We were the only ones who flew up to take a look, anyway. Equemev checked psionicly to see what it was, but that was it. She and Selmiom are both heavily pregnant now, and you know how unicorns are. Once any of the mares are pregnant enough to be vulnerable, none of the rest of the herd will leave their side until they've delivered and the colts are running on their own.

"Quewanak says hi by the way, he's busy in a project with Yazadril and Hilsith, something to do with the human longevity problem."

Karzog turned to Kragorram and said a few words in Draconian, Kragorram snarled a reply, and they flew off a few meters from the group and began to experiment with breathing fire of different colors and ther mixing their streams to produce a third color. Between the roar of their fire and the continuing explosions, only quality sound-shielding allowed the noise to be tolerable.

Mark silently spectated while Povon, Talia, and Alilia discussed their unicorn friends' pregnancies.

After another half an hour, Valentia's magic endurance was too exhausted to continue casting explosions, and at Mark's suggestion, the children began to play a game of chase with war darts. Whoever was being chased flew their war dart by Movement in wildly evasive maneuvers around the group at a safe distance, while the rest tried to hit it with their darts. Whoever scored a hit became the next person whose dart was chased. Karzog wasn't capable of casting magic yet, nor did he have the skill to cast Movement even if his magic had been working already, but Povon quickly devised a way to cast Movement on his dart and psionicly give him control of the spell. Since he couldn't use psionics yet either, she had to devote some of her attention to doing that part of it for him as well, but her attention span was so broad that she had no trouble doing all that while Levitating and having a conversation. She didn't mind, and it allowed him to have fun with the other children while sharpening his eye and his aim.

That night, as the children were being tucked into bed, Talia caressed Valentia's face and gave her some instruction. "Try this, dear heart; without doing anything to cast your power, gather it to you as you would if you were preparing to use it all to cast a spell. That's it, just hold it, as much of it as you can. You don't need to hold it so hard, just enough to keep it ready, try to relax as much as you can while you're holding it. That's it, relax, just let your body marinate in the power, let it seep deep into your muscles and bones and nerves.

"Starting tomorrow morning, I'd like you to try to do that all the time, if you can. If it gets uncomfortable, let some of it go very slowly and carefully, just let it flow back into the power field around us without affecting anything. Good girl, well done, now hold it all again. Very good.

"Doing this will make every part of you work a little better, but mainly your nerves, and most especially your brain. It'll make mental processes quicker and easier, it'll improve your spell-casting ability, and once your psionics become active, holding your power will improve that ability significantly. I really don't know why the practice fell out of favor among wizards, but it's one of the fundamental practices of magecraft and the other older arts, and it's helped your father and I a great deal. Great mages, magicians, and sorcerers get so used to holding their power constantly that it becomes as automatic as breathing, whether they're awake or asleep. But you have to be more careful to not cast the power accidentally, or without thinking about it much. When you first start holding your power like this, if you think about a spell, you might start casting it before you mean to, and we don't want that."

"Thank you Talia." Valentia smiled. "It feels nice."

"You're welcome. I don't think you're ready to try sleeping like that yet, so let it go slowly, and start holding it again first thing in the morning."

"Can I try? Doing it when I'm sleeping?" Valentia asked. "It feels real nice."

"We can make sure she doesn't release it suddenly or cast anything in her sleep." Helemia volunteered.

"Ah, but can you do so when you're asleep?" Talia chuckled as she gave her a little tickle.

"Sure!" Helemia laughed. "Automated psionics are a wonderful thing."

"Well all right." Talia allowed as she gave her a kiss. "But if anything goes wrong, you'll have to clean up any mess that gets made."

"We will." Reggie assured her.

After they'd all kissed and hugged and said goodnight and I love you to each other, the adults left the children to sleep. But they were still too restless from their exciting day and Valentia's birthday in the morning to sleep.

PART 10

In the morning, Alilia went in to wake the children. She knew they were still asleep without thinking about it, since her constant subconscious psionic contact with them kept her informed of their state of mind, and she could feel that they were asleep.

So she was quite surprised, and more than a little irritated, to enter their room and find them wide awake, sitting in a tight little triangle on the bed with their arms and legs wrapped around each other, their foreheads pressed together, and their eyes closed. On the tiny space of bedspread between them rested the pebble that the twins had been using to test their magic, or rather their lack of it so far.

Upon seeing this scene, Alilia suddenly realized that she had been fed a false psionic trace, disregarded it, and examined the children's true psionic state. They had been awake all night. They had cast upon themselves with Valentia's power to banish their fatigue and need for sleep, which could be harmful if overdone, but they all seemed to be fine with it so far.

About half an hour after they had been kissed good-night, the twins had succeeded in teaching Valentia what they had been doing to activate her psionics, and she had taken over from them in supplying the tiny part of her brain with the spark of energy it required. As soon as she had done that, her latent psionic ability truly awoke to full functionality, and she and the twins had Melded. For a moment they were one mind, each with full access to the thoughts, memories, and sensations of the other two.

Valentia had panicked, but the twins had pushed her out just enough for her to retain a comfortable grip on her own individuality. For over an hour the three of them had simply communed with one another, lost in the beauty and the joy of the experience. Then Valentia became determined to return the favor, and since then the three had been working intensely on awakening the twins' latent magic abilities.

First they had all carefully examined a Reading of Valentia's memory of her moments of panic during her birth when her magic abilities had awakened. Then they carefully monitored Valentia's mind and brain while she held and cast her power. Then the twins attempted to do what she had done. Their close psionic Linking meant that they knew exactly what she had done and what it felt like, but it still didn't work for them. Then they made a direct comparison between Valentia during her casting and the twins during their failure to cast, while monitoring dozens of physical, psionic, and magical variables, as well as electrical activity, magnetic fields, auras, and other information that Alilia didn't recognize. And now the three of them were altering the twins' minds in order to have them do what Valentia's did.

Alilia felt the blood drain from her face and she was struck by a bolt of panic upon realizing that they weren't merely adding a spark of energy, as they had done to Valentia. They were making physical changes The twin infants, with baby Valentia's help, were performing very fine-scale brain surgery upon themselves.

They freely shared all this with Alilia in a fraction of a second, in order to avoid breaking their concentration. She immediately forced herself to calm with an iron discipline, and silently backed out of the room, closing the door behind her.☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐

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