David opened the door to the guest house, letting in Niala, who slumped her way in, ears and tail tucked in. She walked up to the couch and let herself fall into it, curling up on the spot.

  David closed the door and sat down next to her, putting an arm around her shoulders and pulling her toward him, without any resistance on her part. She settled against his side and let out a small breath.

  “I thought I knew what being scolded was, but I was wrong. I was a grasshopper who thought the wheat field was the world, until the storm pulled me high into the sky, and let me plummet to my death.”

  She winced as she remembered the past half bell, and Jacob's verbal typhoon, which had flailed her raw.

  David put a kiss on her forehead. “Very poetic, I like it.”

  She looked up, disbelief in her eyes. “And you grew up through that and still ended up mostly sane?”

  He smirked. “It wasn't that bad. You get used to it after the... fiftieth time or so. Did you see how my mother stood steadfast through it all? And, besides, you also learn how to avoid triggering him.”

  She blinked. “...Teach me. I don't want to live through that again.”

  “No special trick to it. You just... don't do anything he wouldn't like.”

  “That's not helpful.”

  He shrugged. “It's something you have to experience for yourself, kind of like survival instincts, but tuned toward the Patriarch.”

  She let her gaze linger on him, meeting his eyes, and then nestling her head into the crook of his neck.

  “Your father is a lot more terrifying than I thought.”

  David sighed. “I don't know. I think... It's going to sound stupid.” He cut himself off.

  Niala rubbed her head against him a few times. “Please, tell me.”

  He scratched his chin. “I think my father's been hiding behind the role of the Patriarch for a long time. Most of his life, so much that I think he doesn't really remember who he is.”

  “That sounds... kind of sad. You think he'll be alright?”

  “Kitten, I don't even know if I'm not imagining things. He might have been acting the entire time I was there with him. The father I know could certainly have done that.” David admitted, shaking his head.

  She looked up at him. “But you don't think it was an act, right?”

  He craned his head down to meet her eyes. “Is that what the link told you just now?”

  She softly nodded.

  “You're getting better at interpreting it.” He said with a smile.

  “So are you.” She returned his smile while snaking an arm around his neck, cradling the back of his head with a hand, and pulling him in for a kiss.

  Their lips touched, and they let it linger for a while, eyes closed.

  He pulled his head back, leaning against the couch, looking up at the ceiling, while she let herself slide down, resting her head on his lap. One of his hands found its way to her hair and began weaving through it with its fingers.

  Her voice was soft and content. “What are you thinking about?”

  His reply took a few seconds. “The other thing I wanted to come here for.”

  “Your sister?”

  “Yeah.” He sighed.

  She sent a hand up to his face, cupping and gently rubbing its side.

  “Tell me what's bothering you.”

  He let his head fall back. “Should we tell anyone? It might not even work, but if it does...”

  “You think we can't trust your parents?”

  “I don't know. It's... a lot. This might be some special circumstances, how I somehow caught my sister's soul, but what if there's a way to replicate it?”

  The guest house was nearly silent, only the faint whisper of an air vent floating to their ears.

  Niala frowned. “A way to resurrect someone... I could see people going crazy over it.”

  He let out a sad chuckle. “Right? Them knowing it's at all possible would... I don't know. It's a lot. I'm starting to wonder if we should even try.”

  The cold box's soft buzz joined the flowing air.

  Niala twisted and righted herself, pushing up and crawling over David, straddling him and planting her face in front of his. He pulled his head back up and looked her in the eyes.

  She had that determined look. The one he was beginning to learn he should trust.

  “We should talk about it with your parents and your brother.” She said.

  He blinked. “Ah?”

  She nodded, even more confident. “Yes. They're Annabelle's family. They deserve to know, and to have a say in whether or not we should try.” She said, staring at him.

  He smiled and brought a hand up to Niala's head and petted her. She closed her eyes and pushed up against his hand, wordlessly requesting more petting.

  As he obeyed his queen's command, he concluded that involving his family might not be the smart decision, but it was the right one.

  The one he wouldn't have regrets over.

  That night, he went to sleep with a surprisingly light heart.

  A few days passed before David called for a private meeting with his family in the council room, behind magically sealed doors.

  The Wardenfels were sitting on one side of the large polished table, with David and Niala on the other.

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  Isaac was a mix of curious and stolid, while Agatha had a content smile on her face, proving the verity of her vows to let go of the mask she had worn for most of her life.

  Jacob was... struggling. The Patriarch's eternal scowl was present, but subdued. His eyes seemed to alternate between icy resolve and self-doubt.

  David began second-guessing their decisions to inform his parents when he felt Niala's hand shuffle over his own. He looked at her, finding deep, beautiful amethyst eyes hanging over a wide, warm smile.

  He smiled back before stilling his features and turning to face his family. “Brother, Mother... Father, Niala and I have something to tell you, but before we do, I want to ask you all something.” He said.

  He made sure he had everyone's full attention. “If I had knowledge of something, a process, that everyone in power would seek, possibly at all costs, but which could gain this family a treasure beyond worth, should I share it?” David asked.

  The Wardenfels pondered the question, looking at each other. Jacob turned his head toward his eldest son.

  “Cryptic, but I assume you are not exaggerating any of it?”

  His son shook his head.

  “Then yes, you should share it with us.” The man confirmed.

  David breathed in and let it out slowly. “Could you tell me your reasoning?”

  Jacob frowned, some annoyance playing over his face. The Patriarch was not someone you asked to explain themselves.

  But... it appeared that the man truly was trying to let go of that mantle, at least in private.

  “What you truly asked, my son, is if the treasure was worth the price, and when the powerful speak of price, they measure in blood, not coin.”

  Jacob levelled his gaze at his son. “And you said that it was a treasure beyond worth, which means it cannot be measured in coin, for its value is too vast. It means, then, that it is a treasure worth blood. Something this family should be willing to pay the price.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “Does this satisfy you?”

  David let his eyes fall to the table. Niala squeezed his hand, and he made his decision.

  “Very well, then. Please, don't be alarmed. I am going to... call on a friend.” David said, closing his eyes and retreating to his inner realm.

  David had spent the last few days out in the estate's woods experimenting with Leviathan, retracing the steps they had taken when he had managed to materialize him, back in Torsteel's cell.

  Knowing that it was possible only made the string of failures they encountered more frustrating. Try as he might, he could not even repeat the overwhelming explosion he had triggered the first time, and nothing else seemed to work.

  He had been about to give up when he remembered something. Just before Leviathan was punted out, before everything went white and he was expelled from his inner world, he had felt something break.

  It had been a small point, where the mana had seemed to coalesce into something solid.

  Only, no matter how much he filled his inner world with mana, no beads would form.

  That was when he switched approach and decided to try to concentrate the mana in a single point, instead of just trying to over-pressure the entire area.

  And so he had pressed down, condensed his mana to a single point, sweating and struggling. It felt like trying to squeeze a bar of soap coated in slime, the focal point always slipping from his hands.

  He had been ready to give up on that as well, when a second set of “hands” had joined his, helping stabilize the focal point, keeping it from escaping.

  Leviathan.

  It had turned out, going to the physical world had done something to the serpent. Leviathan had always existed within this space. As he had described it, he couldn't really tell where his body stopped, and the mana sea began.

  But now, he could tell there was a small difference. He had felt its absence, and thus could now feel its presence. He was able to manipulate mana on his own.

  David hadn't thought too much about the topic. It was far beyond his area of expertise, and trying to understand how a being made of mana had mana of its own... it just gave him a headache.

  One effect was clear and precise, however; Leviathan could help his Lord recreate the break.

  And so they did.

  And it happened once again.

  The mana's innate resistance was overcome. That which wanted to remain intangible was forced into a solid.

  It hated that, and recoiled with all its might, except it had nowhere to go but inside, where there wasn't any more space for it to go but within itself.

  And so the mana collapsed, the bead broke, and an infernal explosion of mana rolled over the inner sea once more.

  When David had reopened his eyes, Leviathan was there, quite a bit bigger than in the cell, but still not nearly as big as he should have been.

  Further tests had revealed another aspect of the method; Leviathan's size was dependent on how big the bead was before it broke. They tested it further, refined the technique, and found that the bead's size changed according to the amount of mana they pulled before compressing it.

  Niala had gone into Hyper-Niala mode the first time she laid her eyes on Leviathan, pelting both him and David with an unending flood of questions, and gushing over just how amazing and beautiful the serpent's scales and body were.

  The way the serpent had subtly puffed out his body and frilled his fins, angling just right so the sun glinted off his scales, had amused and dismayed David in equal measure.

  All the while, David couldn't know, but there were a pair of gods watching over him and his experiments. One losing his mind over the transient who repeatedly broke a fundamental law of existence just to call out his pet, the other who found the entire sequence hilarious and rooted for him to find even more outrageous things to do.

  And it was thus that, sitting in front of his family, David casually triggered an, all things told, small mana cataclysm in his inner world, pushing his mana construct out into the physical world.

  From the Wardenfels' point of view, David had closed his eyes for a few moments, and then a crack in reality had formed beside him.

  The intense sense of wrongness as they looked upon the rend made their skin crawl, and a small voice in the back of their head screamed at them to run.

  And then something dark-blue and glinting had been expelled out of the crack, and ballooned into a bear-sized monster, sinuous, scaled and finned, with the head of a marine dragon, and deep blue eyes. It had landed on the floor beside their son, coiled upon itself and rose its head to eye level, and waited with a regal air.

  David reopened his eyes, looked to his side and smiled as he saw the beast. He turned back to his family, each one of them staring wide-eyed, the rest of their bodies forgotten.

  David cleared his throat, grabbing everyone's attention back to him.

  “Please, meet Leviathan, my mana construct. He will not hurt anyone unless I tell him so.”

  All eyes turned back to the sea serpent as he bowed his head and spoke with a resonant, rumbling voice.

  “I am Leviathan, servant to my Lord. I greet you, and wish you well.”

  Jacob turned his head back to David.

  “Is... is that the treasure you were talking about?”

  David shook his head.

  “No, Leviathan simply holds half of it.” The courier turned to his mana. “Lev, could you bring it out? The thing I asked you to preserve?”

  Leviathan bowed and closed his eyes. From within his coiled body a bright, prismatic light shone. He loosened his coil, and held within the curled tip of his tail a scintillant sphere which radiated youth, care, innocence and love.

  Tears streamed down Agatha's face without her even realizing it, while Jacob couldn't help but stare at the light. Both felt a deep sense of loss and familiarity, neither able to explain where it was coming from.

  Isaac, as well, instinctively knew this was something important, though he didn't know why he did.

  Jacob was the first to find his voice. “What... what is this?”

  David looked at the light with sadness in his eyes before turning to his father. “Annabelle's soul.”

  The following silence could have crushed a rock.

  Koltos pulled at his hair. “Noooooooo!”

  Almeniris, mouth open in a huge smile, eyes ecstatic, simply stared at her most favourite beloved transient ever.

  The god slumped forward, hammering the ground with a fist. “He can't keep doing things like that!”

  The goddess spoke without turning her sight away. “What's wrong with it?”

  Koltos froze, snapping his head up at Almeniris. “What's wrong with it?! WHAT'S WRONG!? This maniac brought a soul into the physical world!”

  Almeniris nodded. “He did! And it's glorious!”

  “It's not supposed to be possible!”

  “Well, it clearly is.”

  “You don't understand! The ramifications of this! The effect this will have on the soul! It's... You... you're just enjoying the show, aren't you?” He accused while squinting at her.

  She dismissed his glare with a wave of her hand. “Doesn't matter. Non-intervention, remember? We didn't tell him any of this when he came for a visit. This beautiful man did it all on his own!”

  Koltos started to reply, but cut himself off. He tilted his head and ran Almeniris' words through his mind.

  Wordlessly, he picked himself off the ground and, blank-eyed, returned to his seat, turning his head up at the display.

  Almeniris smirked while throwing him a knowing glance.

  She was right, and he knew it. This WAS a show, and it was very entertaining, and, best of all, they were entirely guiltless.

  Which somehow made it all the more interesting.

  Bonus content: Niala meets Leviathan

  Out in the woods of the Wardenfel estate, Niala watched her boyfriend trying to figure out how to bring his mana back out into the world.

  He told her he'd managed to, back in the prison cell at the Torsteel house, but he'd been having trouble reproducing the feat. It was now the third day, and she had felt, and noticed, his growing frustration as he kept bashing his head against the metaphorical wall.

  But he couldn't give up. Getting Leviathan back into the physical world was a requisite for the true reason of their presence here: attempting to stuff his little sister's soul back into her body. A miracle by any other name.

  She saw his closed eyes scrunch for the umpteenth time today, and she sighed. It didn't seem today would be any different. With a small smile, she told herself she'd do her best to ease his tension tonight. A good meal, some quality snuggling, quiet chatting and, maybe, probably...

  Just as she began blushing, a cracking sound snapped through the clearing they were in. Alert, she scanned the area, only for her eyes to fall on something... wrong.

  That was the only word she had for what she thought she saw, even if her brain kept saying it wasn't real. Her ears tucked back and her tail went still as her body began strongly suggesting that running away might be a good idea. In fact, staying here was the worst-

  She blinked as a blue balloon suddenly filled the rend in time and space, filling it, expanding out of it, like an all-consuming blob of colour. She was a heartbeat away from jumping to her feet and scrambling away from the area when the blob began defining itself, twisting and bobbing into a long, sinuous shape. Scales drew themselves over the shape, and fins sprouted like unfurling petals. For a few moments that could have lasted for all of eternity, the thing looked like a tangled ball of blue-scaled yarn, with no end or beginning.

  And then, as if finally deciding where it wanted its face to be, a length uncoiled, dragging a large draconic head with it, away from the mess, which unspooled into a long serpentine body covered in lustrous dark blue scales that shone with an under hue of green and purple.

  The beast was about the size of a large autocar when all was said and done. It remained silent as it slowly panned its head around, taking in its surroundings. Niala could do nothing but stare at it.

  David smiled. "Niala, please meet Leviathan. Leviathan, this is Niala. She is my most important person. Treat her like you'd treat me, please."

  Leviathan turned his head toward David, and then to Niala, bowing as he did. "Lady Niala, I am honoured to meet you."

  Niala remained stunned for a second until her mouth began drawing into a huge smile, her ears perking up, and her tail furiously wagging. "Oh my saints! You are AMAZING!" She shouted, throwing her arms up.

  Leviathan blinked. "I- I am humbl-"

  "Is that your full size?! You look aquatic! Do you need water!? Are you fine breathing outside of water?! Can I touch your scales?! Do you have infinite mana like David? Wait! You are David's mana, right?! How does that work? Can David still use mana when you're out? Can you use mana? Is it David's mana you're using, or do you have your own mana?! Can-"

  David appeared in front of her, between her and Leviathan, startling her. She looked at him with her big, overstimulated eyes. "David! Leviathan is incredible!"

  He smiled. "I know, but, try to calm down? Maybe let him answer?" He glanced back at the serpent and did a double-take when he saw his expression.

  Leviathan had the eyes of a student who'd forgotten there was a quiz and hadn't studied for it.

  David blinked. "Lev, are you alright?" He asked while Niala leaned to the side to be able to see the beast.

  Leviathan swallowed. "I do not know the answer to most of those questions. I apologize." He said, deeply bowing in shame.

  Niala gasped, her ears flattening as she stepped around David and bounded forward toward the serpent. She stopped a few paces away from him and bowed. "Leviathan, I apologize! I just got really excited! It's fine if you don't have the answers!" She straightened, her face radiant. "We can figure things out together!"

  Leviathan looked up at the small catkin before glancing at David, who nodded with a small smile. The serpent lifted his head back up. "Lady Niala, you don't have to apologize. I simply wish I could answer your questions. It would be my great pleasure to receive your assistance in figuring out what I am, and what I can do."

  Niala's smile gained a few millimetres in size, which was impressive given that it already stretched across her face. She tried, and somewhat failed, from squealing in delight as she did a little wiggle-dance before closing her eyes and taking in a deep breath. When she reopened them, she was merely smiling, rather than being manic. "Ok! Then, first things first! Would being in water be more comfortable?"

  Leviathan angled his head, pondering the question. "I... do not know. In my Lord's realm, I am always submerged in water, but it is not real water, merely a representation."

  The catkin nodded, resolute. "Then! We shall find out!"

  She turned toward David. "Is there a lake nearby?"

  He frowned as he explored his memories, nodding after a few moments. "Yeah, there's a small fishing lake, maybe a quarter bell out, that way." He said, pointing toward the south.

  "Good! Then let's go!" She said, her eyes widening before looking at Leviathan. "Can you, huh, move on the ground? Like a snake? Or do you need David to carry you?"

  The serpent stared at Niala for a second before bending his head to look down at his body, on the way it rested on the ground. He undulated a bit, testing his motions. After a short while, he looked back at Niala. "I believe I can ambulate by myself."

  She smiled. "Good! Let's go then! To the lake! To find out if you like real water!" She declared, walking up to David and nudging him toward the south.

  In the end, it turned out that Leviathan did, indeed, like water.