"Thank you... Sorry if we scared you, the thought of him being even worse left us overcome. Now please explain what you mean by divinity seeping into the land, could we-"
"Oh no! Do not fear, the divinity present is certainly born of The White, it seeks to rule all it touches. Yours used to do the same, but now it seems to want to raise the land, work with it rather than dominate it. The very nature of the black seems to evolve with you in a way the last heir couldn't manage. Oh n-!"
"Settle yourself, you don't need to fear rebuke for speaking truths. Also, please, I can't take it anymore, please call me Adam."
"Oh -!"
"No shouting, no alarm. relax, report, explain, counsel and return home when you wish."
"Adam... Please, you ca-... I will do my best." The phantasm articulated its thoughts then explained the situation.
It turned out that something had been leaking divine energy over a considerable amount of time, it was seeping into the blood and flesh of those that were massacred by Idir and corrupting them in the same way it had before I arrived with Tyrland and the others to stop him.
Now flesh golems and zombies were rising almost daily, the guard was holding them off well, but they were exhausted. The leadership had all been slaughtered, it was final... Old Kanelsia was finished, even if Eve and I stepped in, that kingdom was done and the best we could do is clear a path for its remnants to reform and start anew as something else.
"We should go now, if i-"
"Eve, wait..." I shook my head "Will the guard be ok for this last night?"
"Yes, they may lose a couple more, but they won't fall completely."
"I say we go as a family tomorrow. I don't want to take the girls into that, but we need them. We're amateurs with divinity, we need to take the time to study this so we can make sure it is dealt with thoroughly and I also want Quatal to see what happens when power runs amok."
"I can see your reasoning, but I don't want her killing what used to be humans, I don't want us to be killing at all, but hunting and maintaining balance is acceptable maybe it will help balance the baby if I'm pregnant."
Her logic was debatable, but I could understand her thought process at least and I wasn't brave enough to say "You don't really think that's how it works do you?" Besides no one knows how genetic imprinting for future development worked so I couldn't say she was wrong.
"I won't let us kill anything there, any of us. The girls can focus on defensive barriers to guard us, we will try and unravel the secrets of divinity corruption. If it comes to it, we will call Layaera to cleanse it all with fire and if that doesn't work, I'll have to ask The Black for assistance." Eve nodded, then we thanked the phantasm before it returned.
With that we went to bed.
Eve sat up holding her stomach, asking The Black to protect a potential grandchild from any possible corruption, she felt a throb from her entire body that neither confirmed nor denied either the pregnancy or protection before pulling a face.
"Haha! You were hoping for a sign you were pregnant, weren't you?" Eve glared at me and slapped my arm playfully.
"Maybe... I want to knooooow, it isn't fair. We done so much to make it happen. I don't want to wait."
"Child, if you are happening, make yourself known soon. You can mature at your own pace, but if your mother keeps stressing about whether you're there or not she will get ill." I kissed her belly.
"Hopefully they listen to their father." She sulked. "I hope this one is a Mummy's girl or boy though, the other two are already more yours."
"Remember that two will turn to one and if you carry two, the equaliser and the tie-breaker. Cosmael clings to me as the memory of her father, not her father himself. Quatal favours me because she was Askel before Quatal."
"Idiot, just kiss my belly more and try to seal the deal with them. Then go to sleep so I can stroke your hair until I follow you."
The next morning we were treated to breakfast in bed, the girls apparently using the excitement for their gift to us to wake up by themselves for a change.
"Any signs yet?"
"Can all of you just show some patience." I chuckled, as I finished my breakfast and turned serious. "There has been a change of plans for today..."
Eve and I explained the situation, everyone's jobs in the operation and then we headed out to Kanelsia.
As we moved in our group we found our way to the bottleneck the guard was holding at the mouth of the castle where they were operating from.
"A-A-Adam, is it really you!?"
"Yes, along with my wife Eve, and daughters Quatal and Cosmael. We are here to clean this filth once and for all." My voice was unusually aggressive, but we were all in discomfort. Originally I believed it was just Eve, Cosmael and I because it was born of The White, but then Quatal made her own know which made me realise it was the corruption that reacted to all divinity.
We had him recover all scouts and pull his men in to rest.
Eve and I spent hours trying to decode it, with no luck. "By The Black, why is this such a riddle. It's like there is something missing, something not written." I finally ranted in exasperated frustration.
"Written? I can feel the emotion woven into it, but can't focus enough to see anything more. Like it's pushing my sense back with brute force. How can you bare to push through it?"
With those words I lunged forward and kissed her, making the two girls groan with disapproval.
"Shush you two, your mother's a genius. Eve, I can't feel anything, it must be your empathic ability, I need to give you my memories so you have the whole picture. Then I need to perform a sensory retrieval from you, so I can feel what you feel and then I need to share my understanding back with you."
"Ok, but what do we do after?"
"That depends on what it requires, but this is going to leave me completely drained, sensory memory takes a thousand times more mana than just a memory, the other day I used about half my tank, emotional... Well, I don't know I may need to burn through some life force."
Eve clearly wasn't happy, but she told me later that she wanted the "maybe baby" to experience the determination to make the world better, even when it wasn't easy, so she agreed reluctantly under the condition I promised to stop if it got dangerous.
In the end it proved very dangerous, but managed to use a few mana infusions to keep enough myself from blacking out, I didn't want to be anywhere near "Idir" in that place. A few may not sound a lot, but like I said, the other day used up half my mana black sun of power and that was my entire existence.
This was a couple of hours of recent memory, the fact it emptied me, the few infusions and a considerable chunk of divine life force meant it wasn't something that could be used liberally.
"What in The Black do you endure, Eve? I am so sorry, I never knew you went through that."
"Now isn't the time for you to show you have the emotional range of a rock. It isn't as bad for me, I don't even feel it a burden most of the time. Now what do we need to do to stop it?"
"We are going to need Layaera and Astrael to, nothing certain. It's a bloody newborn aspect of emotion."
"Thank god you figured it out Dad. Yes we need Sister and Layaera, I can't teach you secrets of the divine but now you figured it out yourself I can help. Quatal, you need to get all the soldiers to the camp and stay there until we come get you, okay?"
"I wan-"
"No Quatal, you need to go, we have to show this bloody thing we have suffered enough and send it to The White for nurturing properly."
Quatal begrudgingly did as her big sister instructed, then we called over Astrael and Layaera.
"Right, we need to channel every ounce of suffering we have each endured into our divinity and release it, not as an attack but a demonstration. If we attack it will fight back and overpower us. Layaera, can you do it, or do you need Eve to channel yours while you focus on support?"
"The latter, I can only control the divinity itself through fire, it might feel threatened."
"Damn those candle lights, I'll make sure it knows who abandoned it." Astrael spoke with the anger of a child who repressed her own abandonment for far too long.
"Lastly, I'm sorry, mine will be intense. Eve and Astrael know it, but this will hit you two hard. Layaera, it may not seem nescecary but regenerate yourself to, start when ready."
They began pulsing their suffering imbued divinity, frequency gradually increasing, for a while it was ignored, then it seemed to almost become enraged.
"Adam, you need to join in, it thinks we're mocking its suffering." Eve shouted, reaching for my hand by way of needless apology at me having to show my vulnerability.
"Ok, brace yourselves." The ground had begun to groan and the air began to vibrate under the aspect's rage toward the unintended insult. Then my first pulse spread out, knocking the wind out of Cosmael and Layaera, then we caught fire as Layaera realised she couldn't hold back on the healing.
After the first few pulses the ground fell silent, the air froze, the aspect hesitated.