The five of them started south at a brisk pace, Eli didn't want them to make it to the dungeon and be worn out, so they ran for ten hours, then they rested for two. The first break everyone just kind of snacked a little as Eli told them everything he could remember from his first dungeon. The second break however he had everyone sit around close and told Lucy to explain everything she knew about magic and where he was from. This had been something he was wrestling with, how much to share with everyone. But he decided that it was better for his people to be more informed, if he was going to maintain human connections, they needed to know more about him, not less.
Lucy started with her most basic, child's level, magical knowledge explanation, but to everyone there, it was massively advanced. For starters, the 10 magic nodes represented 10 magic realms, or planes, or dimensions; she wasn't sure which words would best describe it. These planes of magical existence were all on top of each other with the physical world where everyone lived, in the middle. The top layer was order, then earth or sometimes called stone, then water, then light, then life, then the physical world. The layers descending from there are death, then shadow, then air, then fire or plasma, and finally Chaos. The layers were stacked in order of magical stability, but Lucy wasn't sure about the details on that.
Next she explained how the nodes in people's bodies were linked to those layers or realms, allowing people to turn magic of any flavor into magic of that flavor. The more nodes you have the more powerful your normal magic is, not to mention the more powerful the abilities are linked to those nodes. Everyone can have 10 abilities, but only the nodes they have are truly strong. However, according to Lucy most people have a natural node or what they called favored or favorite node. This one would be the easiest to open and level, the ability or spell would feel more natural to the person and most often was the backbone of their combat style. She said that her father had told her about someone who had won some kind of championship tournament only having one node, because he worked hard at making his fighting and the ability work seamlessly.
Finally, she explained the leveling of nodes and how she had never even heard of anyone with a rank 3 'solar' node and only knew of its title because of a book her father had given her as a child. The ranks were, body, planet, solar, universe, and realm. The names related to the scale of what that magic was, fire for something the size of a person's body was a camp fire, but fire for a planet was more along the lines of a volcano, and fire for a solar system was obviously a sun. The upgrades didn't offer as much of a power boost as the ranks made it sound, it was more about the quality of the magic than the effective quantity of damage. The explanation that Lucy gave was that a body node needed to use more of its magic to complete a spell than a planet node did, due to its level of purity. There was a power difference as well, but the efficiency was the more dramatic of the two effects.
Giving the magic talk time to sink in, Lucy took a break and ate a snack. Cody was sitting there with a glazed look in his eyes, trying to figure everything out, Eli was sure smoke should be coming out of his ears by this point. Bethany did her best to look contemplative but it was obvious she hadn't been paying much attention. As for Eli, he was putting some pieces together and answering some questions he had had for a while now. But many things made more sense now that he had a few more pieces to the puzzle. Beau's reaction to all of this was to actually try some skills out, he was encasing his right arm in his rock armor covering and his left arm in the upgraded version of lava armor. It wasn't really lava, just stones that were hot enough to glow a bit, it wasn't liquid or anything which he and Eli thought would have looked cooler.
Lucy continued with an explanation of the three realms that now make up this new world. It turns out it was common knowledge in the other realms that there were three. Only the mid-realm was ignorant of the other realms known as the order realm and chaos realm. Magic was in the open in these other realms but it was different from their current system assisted magic. Chaos realm people typically had nodes on the chaos side of the mid line of magical layers, and the order realm the other side. Lucy didn't know how the order realm used magic before the system but the chaos realm fed emotions into the skill runes inside their nodes to use abilities or spells. Keeping magic inside your body wasn't possible for them until the system came along.
She went on to describe chaos realm society, it was heavily a tribal aristocracy with the strongest people being the heads of tribes. There weren't any wars, but duels among leaders were often fought for tribal leadership. The confusing part to Eli and Bethany was that these tribes were not static, people shifted between them based on who the leader was. And the members almost never fought among themselves, if there was an issue the leaders would discuss terms and find a resolution. The downside to this was tribal leaders were immune to laws, and were judge, jury, and executioner. That is with the one exception of Eli's Mother, Queen Liasandra Konzak.
Apparently his mother beat about half of the tribal leaders in duels but did not kill any of them, this led to their loyalty and she used that to intimidate the rest. She didn't take over the tribes or tax them or anything, she just started a few rules that were punishable by death. Lucy called them the queen's law as in, you are being executed according to the queen's law. Most were for the tribal leaders on how their duels would go and who could challenge who, but three laws were for the population at large. The first one was basically an eye for an eye, but only for crimes that were committed against another tribe. The second one was that everyone had to spend 2 years in military training at age fifteen. And the third rule is what had caused his mother to go into hiding, it was that any child born without a heard node must be killed immediately.
Everyone was staring at Eli in a stunned silence, but despite the abrupt change in mood, Lucy continued her story. Liasandra had lived as 'Queen of nothing' as she called it for four hundred years, there were rumors that she was planning an attack on the order realm and had been spending most of her time scouting there when she suddenly disappeared. It wasn't until 3 of the tribal leaders had found her and her son that they had truly fled into hiding, taking Lucy's family along for the ride as they had been loyal servants to her and not the tribes for centuries. Lucy then explained that his mother had feared the tribe leaders would find her again so she needed to hide her son from them, which is when she went to the mid-realm, wiped his memories and sealed his emotions preventing him from spontaneously doing magic and drawing attention.
Eli motioned for Lucy to stop, he felt like he had enough to process for the moment, probably more than he should really try to get through on his own. Luckily for him, Bethany had been paying attention to the part about his family and looked like she already knew what to do to help, but she also knew that the information needed to settle in his mind first. They had about 20 minutes until they would start running again, Eli was keeping his calm but it was clear to everyone that just beneath the surface was a boiling mass of raw emotion that could explode at any moment.
No one had said a word for those 20 minutes and they started running again, everyone was giving Eli space since he was so deep in thought he kept running into things. Most of the things he ran into just broke, but some of them caused him to bounce off and his momentum sent him tumbling to the side, which slowed progress down. When it was time for the next break, Eli sat by himself as Cody and Beau asked Lucy more questions about nodes and how magic worked. Bethany sat with them but she kept her eyes on Eli, she was sure he would figure out the question she knew his thoughts would eventually get him to, but she wanted him to get there himself. She just hoped it was soon, because they all really needed to know why babies without heart nodes were killed.
Losing her patience with him, she decided to ask Lucy anyways and if he heard her then great, if not, then she could tell him later. Lucy glanced at Eli then told Bethany in a low voice that there were many stories her father had told her when she was little of what they called 'The Heartless'. Some stories were that they were just too strong and they took over tribes while killing without remorse. But most stories just had them being the villains who were defeated by the chaos hero. Lucy guessed that it was someone strong or someone who didn't fit into the tribe culture, having never even heard of one who lived until Elias.
Just then Eli stood up quickly and walked over to Lucy, pulling her up until she was standing too. He grabbed her shoulders and asked, "How many kids are born with no heart node?"
It took a second for Lucy to get her head around what was happening, Eli had always been so gentle with her until now and it was shocking to her so all she could get out was, "What do you mean?"
"How often are kids born with no heart node, the ones who are killed," Eli asked again, clearly trying not to lose his patience.
"No one remembers the last time it happened, the rumors were that someone with no heart node had been the only person to defeat your mother in a duel, so that's why those babies were killed but it was just a rumor." Lucy managed to get out all in a rush.
"So it's possible that none were ever killed?" Eli asked.
"Well, yes, I guess it is possible." Lucy said while scratching her forehead.
Eli went back to sitting down to the side by himself, everyone sat back down and just kind of stared blankly at the middle distance. It seems that it just dawned on them that Eli was reeling from the fact that his mother was some kind of genocidal baby killer. Only to find out that it's probable that no babies had died and it was some kind of ruse or form of control. Lucy had mentioned that there were island tribes and pirate tribes but since their world had been one big continent and the rest was chains of islands and a single vast ocean, the rule could have been something to do with one or more of those tribes as well. Maybe they were religious or superstitious or something and the rule would keep them from fighting them.
Eli's mind was swirling out of control, just as it seemed everyone else's was too. Bethany stood and asked everyone to gather, including Eli, which he did with a bit of a grumble. She just flashed him a genuine warm smile and he stopped complaining to himself and after a few moments, returned the smile.
"We need to get our heads right, or we won't make it inside in time, which unless you have forgotten is important. I'll give everyone here a pass to say anything or ask any question for the next five minutes, but then we have to get moving and our next breaks are only an hour long." Bethany explained to them. She had been speaking in her soft comforting voice, which made Eli already start to feel better. He was suspicious of this but he knew he did need it.
Cody stood and asked, "where do babies come from?" which led to a lot of laughter at his expense, but when Bethany saw that he was serious, not that he didn't know, but that he was asking if magical realms like the chaos realm still had babies the normal way. She reworded his question to Lucy who answered in a tone that said she had no idea, "It works the same as mid-realm I think." Everyone shook their heads and Bethany got everyone moving, faster now and she decided that they would not stop until they got Eli inside the dungeon.