074 - Efrideet's Folly 2

"There's no need for that I trust you dear, but if you try to get my clearance codes to the empires server again, you'll be grounded till your trial begins," she said quickly with a smile on her lips, she lost count of how many tricks he played to get the clearance codes.

Lirian sighed, she knew him too well, and lately less and less of his tricks worked against her, he put his hands together and cried as he had to drain 100 trillion fate particles from the system to do it successfully.

He cried internally the people of this empire gave him a ton of fate but they also devoured it, in ordinary circumstances, this shouldn't have cost him more than a few billion particles.

The energy gathered and his fate string began to shine brightly in a magnificent silver light when he looked over at his mother's string, it appeared in an orange/gold color that was hard to discern.

He inspected it closely and slowly looked through it, he could see the uncountable things linked to it and tugging at it, in a way every single being in the empire was affected by her.

It could be said that her words had the power to shift and pull on the strings of every being in the empire, for example, had she ordered the Jane family destroyed.

The order would pull on the strings of every person in the empire shifting them in the direction she wanted them to go, whilst having the most effect on those that had no way to resist her commands, such as her soldiers and aides.

There were also things from the empire that tugged on her fate string, these were constraints of leaders, all her responsibilities as empress was one severe knot binding her down in service of the empire.

That knot was the source of her great deal of fate particles, but it was also what grounded her.

As he focused on it, he found a spot on the string that was dyed his color he looked through the last 14 years of her fate string and he was happy to see that his tug on her was very powerful.

He even saw the point where she almost lost her fate particles, it was when she made a wish for a child that could survive the trials, he looked a little deeper and suddenly his eyes narrowed seriously.

He knew that his mother performed the ritual every ten years, where she would visit her children, but as it turned out, she was making that very wish every single time.

It drained her fate particles every single time without fail, but it never ate away at her life, it was an unprecedented event for him.

Usually, if someone made a wish they couldn't afford it would eat away at their life, but in his mother's case it was as if she took a lay-bye.

Slowly paying the price with installments across millenia, it must have cost her quintillions of fate particles over time.

To say that this was concerning was an understatement, in all the years the closest person he knew to the true power of fate was Katherina, and fate would not even give in an inch for her.

Yet he just discovered that it was actively helping his mother, by all means, her existence would be considered a miracle by every god out there.

He shook his head to shake of his thoughts, he was getting distracted if he looked deeper, he would find everything he needed to know about her past, her children, and her relationship with the emperor, but that wasn't his purpose today.

He soon reached the present moment they were in and began to influence it with gentle strokes, he had to be careful if he got forceful with it, he could easily pass on his memories directly into her if he made a small mistake.

Taliyah was waiting patiently, she felt a sense of discomfort as Lirian dove deeper, but she didn't understand why, it only felt like something completely unnatural was happening to her and she had to force herself not to fight against it.

The strange invasive feeling suddenly vanished, and she began to glance around the room when the smell of the cheeseburgers reached her nose she got up with a sudden impulse.

She moved with hurried legs as she looked at the burger with a drooling mouth, she reached out grabbing the burger that was on the desk, she ripped the wrapping off in a rush and slammed the food into her mouth as if afraid it would run away and gnawed on it until it disappeared.

When she finished, she turned to look at Anya with a stupefied face, she hide her messy hands behind her back as if it would change what had happened.

"You saw nothing Anya absolutely nothing," she said with a slight shriek to her voice while turning to look at the chuckling Lirian.

"I never saw a thing your majesty, I have no idea what you're talking about," Anya responded while clasping her hands over her mouth to hide the surprise and block out her laugh.

"Lirian, why did you do that?", she asked in wronged voice and looked at the burger wrapper in sadness she planned to enjoy that later on.

"I did nothing, I merely reduced your impulse control for a second," he said softly, ", that is how a diviner manipulates people, it's not so easy to take control of a person so they influence them for an instance at the ideal moment by making them lose their impulse control."

"I merely planted the thought of the food as I ate in front of you and set a burger on the table, when I took away your control you acted on your impulse." Lirian laughed.

Taliyah's beautiful bronze skin had a hint of pink in them as she realised what Lirian was implying, he wasn't responsible for the action she was, which meant that deep down she really, really wanted to devour that burger whole.

Anya glanced up and at Alastor and frowned, "Does that meant that deep down he really wanted to kill you?" her tone was very cold, Alastor was currently lying unconscious in a seal created by the warlocks.

"That's a bit complicated actually," he said with a finger holding up his chin, Taliyah and Anya couldn't help but think that he looked unbelievably cute when he fell into thought like that.

"As you know many of the nobles disapproved of me, when I..." he pondered deeply on what to say his act of warning them was exactly, in his case he did it to create an information feedback loop but to everyone else he didn't know what word they'd use to describe his actions.

"When you spoke down to them," Anya offered helpfully.

"Yes, that works," Lirian nodded, ", when I spoke down to them they were offended and Alastor was no different, Efrideet knew of this and used it to make him lash out at me,"

"At the time I didn't even realise what was happening, by all means, I never would have expected such a young diviner to be able to influence fate strings, but because of that I was baited into humiliating Alastor,"

"And as he got more and more furious, he developed a tiny bit of killing intent, that was when Efrideet struck again, making him lose all reason causing him to attack me," Lirian finally concluded.

"But this is also where she made a big mistake, she has no idea who she is dealing with and revealed herself, unfortunately for her anyone that so much as glances at my string of fate will reveal themselves to me." he chuckled softly.

Taliyah and Anya always found it hard to cope with this Lirian, the plotting and conniving Lirian, is what they called him when he began to brag about how inferior all others were in comparison to himself.

But they knew that the knives were coming out, on many occasions, it was this Lirian that helped Taliyah when she was busy and had to deal with tricky members of the nobility.