30 Blood and water's relative viscosity
Different creatures come into life different ways. Elves, much like humans gestate similarly and also very differently. Humans carry a fetus in the womb for roughly 9 months give or take, some are born early and some are late. Elves must undergo a very special ritual to conceive that consolidates their magic. This follows several cycles to obtain magical energy from all the seasons. It's tradition during this time that friends and family bring magically infused gifts, bestow blessings and send positive intentions. When the elf feels that enough magic has been gathered another ritual takes place to implant the seed of the new life so that it can gestate. This is the order of things: first spirit, then flesh and from the two grows a soul.
Elves, like humans, gestate in a womb with water (amniotic fluid). The gestation period for elves is quite quick comparatively because so much time is spent gathering magic to conceive of the spirit that the spirit can generate flesh quickly when put in the right environment.
Fire elements reproduce every time they are separated in the same way that a fire that splits from its original source becomes a separate fire. Fusing a fire element with elf magic was quite complex and disastrous because the fire's nature is to just consume things. Hence when the fire energy went in, nothing was left, even the fire would burn out having consumed all the rest as its fuel.
The solution rested in fire's opposite: water. The fire had to be artificially added to the womb's water in such a way that the water would control its burn, but not extinguish it. The fire also needed enough fodder. This was also how they could control the length of life in one of their creations.
The magic of water was indeed deep, being the place where new life spawns. There could be found stronger magic, but that stronger kind of magic was greatly misunderstood and could not be wielded by just anyone.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Zion, having noticed their tears, looked down at the quicksilver puddle they had made streaming from their cheeks. As the tears dried they congealed together sharply like shards of a mirror. Zion gathered the shards up and hid them away in their cloak.
The shadow continued to write in the air like smoke. The words felt much heavier this time. Zion crumpled up under the weight of the enchantment, clutching their stomach as blood, darkness and starlight heaved forth out of their mouth. This pain they had forgotten that they had remembered, remembered all this time while they forgot themself. Forgetting to remember and remembering to forget.
The starlight and darkness swirled in with the blood and crept over the floor transforming everything it touched. Spinning with gravity everything started to warp beneath it, except Zion's shadow, which did not change shape (as shade is made of darkness and darkness is defined by light), but did take on substance (as blood makes flesh), crawled off the wall and sat down next to the lich looking like an elf child with hair red as fire. It spoke a familiar rhyme while its hair flickered like flames.
"As this form shall bind unto the tomb,
from the time of planting until full bloom,
these promises I will assume.
The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb."
The swirling mix beneath Zion gravitated to the shadow now made flesh and flowed up into it. With skin now looking like the night sky, the shade put a hand on the lich's shoulder and then faded out back into a shadow as it crawled back on the wall.
The lich's host body lie there motionless as Zion's soul had already vacated. Unbound was a difficult position to be in. Interacting with the physical world takes far more inertia and there's the constant gravity of the next world that pulls at you. It becomes quickly tiresome. This, however, wasn't the first time Zion was unbound, and it certainly wouldn't be the last.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lucky had found her way to Corvis when something strange happened. The Raven, having been turned away from her as she approached suddenly turned around and glided down to her from his perch. He looked into her as if she was a window and said "A chipmunk with a magical go piece in her mouth... that's an interesting pivot from a dragon with a fire pearl in her maw. Or would it be an opal, hmm, Loex of Hrívë..."
Upon hearing the name of her dragon form Lucky felt her temperature drop. Her breath turned to frost. She began to tremble until she could no longer hold her form and shifted into a dragon.
"Whatever he sent you to do, I urge you to reconsider it for your own sake, because I will not let you harm them or their union." The Raven said hauntingly as his form slowly melted from a bird to a sphynx with wings the color of a starry night sky.
