Chapter 228 Sage Advice

"I don't want to have anything to do with them as a parent, once I agree to this," said Aella.

"That won't be a problem," agreed the tree. "I'll place them in the valley your people used to live in, north of the elves and dwarves. They should get along just fine with the fairies and other fae that live there."

"Fae? You mean fey, right?"

"That is another way of saying it," said the tree.

"I was meaning to ask you about that location," said Aella, brushing a strand of hair out of her face. "Is it still too dangerous to live in? Can I go investigate it? I was wondering about the fairies."

"You can go there without any problems, because the fairies and magical mushroom trees have sucked up all of the extra mana. The area is still very magical, in fact far more magical than any other place in the realm, but it is no longer dangerous there.

"Perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea to give you some means of knowing these things," added the tree thoughtfully. "As the realm guardian… err… king of the realm, you would need to know if there were wild fluctuations in the magic of the realm."

"Do I need to speak to Bridgette about that, too?" asked Aella feeling as if she should have visited the Sage first.

"No, I can initiate it, though the realm might not be happy with me messing with your mind and abilities��"

The tree was silent for a moment, then said, "It needs to be done. If the realm doesn't like it, I will deal with it later. Please step forward and place your hand on my trunk. I'll take the genetic sample I need for the children and impart the ability to know of magical fluctuations at the same time. It might hurt, though."

Aella hesitated as she went to place her hand on the trunk, then shrugged. It couldn't hurt worse than some of the injuries she got in the pits. The moment her hand was pressed against the trunk, a thorn burst out of the tree, piercing her hand. Aella forced herself to remain still, even though her initial instinct was to pull back or teleport away. She could feel threads of fibers moving through her hand, but then they pulled back and the thorn retracted back into the tree. She healed so fast, there wasn't even blood left on the bark as she examined her hand. A small scar remained for a moment, showing where the thorn had pierced her, before fading away.

"That will do nicely," the tree said. "I don't need as much from the male donors, but you will need to gather some blood from them. If you can stick them with these thorns, that would be perfect."

Several thin slivers protruded from the trunk, and as Aella went to touch them, they separated from the tree, falling into her hand. She looked at them for a moment, then shrugged and placed them in her pouch. That shouldn't be too hard.

"If you think about a place, much like how you think to teleport, you will now know how magical that area is," added the tree as she went to teleport away.

Nodding her understanding, Aella teleported back to the gargoyle cave, hoping to get the whole mess finished as quickly as possible.

"How are you going to get them to agree to let you stab them?" asked Precious as she settled down in the middle of the cave.

Ignoring Precious, she turned to the group as they approached her.

"What brings you here?" asked the leader, Hunter, glancing at the women as if Aella were about to take them away.

"I have a need to get a sample of all of your blood," said Aella, not bothering to lie. "My world tree has requested I stab each of you with little thorns and to bring the bloody samples back to it."

They looked at each other uncomfortably.

"Will there be anything bad that comes from this?" asked another of the gargoyles.

"Nothing that should bother you in your life times," said Aella with a shake of her head. "The realm wishes to have more gargoyles, and the tree wishes to make more. They will live in a different land, far from here, and will not know you, unless you request it."

"That sounds fair," said another, nodding thoughtfully.

"I would normally say no, absolutely not, but for some reason, the thought of a tree creating children from my blood doesn't seem like a bad idea," said Hunter with a frown.

Aella held out the slivers of wood as they gathered around her and held out their hands. She quickly stabbed each of them, before they could change their minds.

"Do you need to stab us, too?" asked one of the women, watching from the doorway of one of the rooms.

"No, the tree only wished for the pureblood gargoyles. You have too much demon in your blood for the tree to harvest gargoyle from," explained Aella, carefully placing the slivers back in her pouch.

"Good, because I don't want to get stabbed," said another of the women, turning to return to her room.

Aella thanked them and teleported back to the tree.

"That worked so well, it seems odd to me," observed Precious with a frown.

"They did seem oddly willing to let me steal their blood. But at least they weren't wanting to jump me and start having sex," growled Aella.

"Do you think you have pheromones that make everyone around you more willing to go along with whatever you want?" asked Precious. "It would explain how you were able to get everything done so quickly the past couple of days."

Aella paused with the slivers of wood held out towards the tree, and thought about how easy it had been so far. She could see the realm doing that, to help calm her down and keep her from getting mad and wanting to destroy it again, but she wasn't sure that she liked it. What if she asked someone to do something stupid and it caused another big mess? What if she went evil later? She could do a lot of damage before Alfred could stop her!

Chewing on her lip for a moment, she finally decided it didn't matter. If those things happened in the future, she would deal with them then. Besides, she didn't intend to go evil.. right?

"Thank you for the samples," said the tree as she pressed them up against the trunk and they were absorbed from her hand. "It will take me about three months to grow them large enough before releasing them into the wild. Though, I may wait until after winter passes to give them more time to build themselves a home before they have to deal with such poor weather."

Aella nodded, already thinking about traveling to see Bridgette on the communications rune and about visiting the mushroom forest. If these new gargoyles developed the same hormone issues, she might want to refuse them access to the trade town during the full moons.

Teleporting to the library, Aella scanned the area until she found Bridgette feeding her son and reading a book.

"Bridgette, I have a question," said Aella, landing next to her gently so as not to startle the baby.

"It better be good," grumbled Bridgette, glancing up at her and setting her book down next to her. "After your last visit, I should ban you from the library during the full moon!"

"I really am sorry," said Aella. "I had no idea I was bombing everyone when I left."

"No, what do you want," sighed Bridgette, moving her son to her other breast as he smacked his lips and started to fuss at being interrupted.

"I was told there was a rune of communication that would allow me to communicate with everyone who got a tattoo of it, no matter where I went in the realm. I was hoping to use it so the leaders of each kingdom could contact me if there was an emergency."

"Actually," said Bridgette thoughtfully, "There's a book about runes on the second shelf to the left. It has the large brown binding with the yellow thread on the cover. That one over there, if you could get it for me."

Aella scanned the shelf she was directed to, and quickly saw the yellow thread of the book Bridgette wanted. Bringing it back to the mother, Aella watched as she expertly opened the book and started reading from it, without bothering the baby who seemed to have fallen asleep while nursing.

"Ah, here it is. This one had been used at one point to help a king stay in contact with the scouts he sent to spy on other kings during a war. The mage who made the runes into tattoos actually left really good directions on how to put them on, but I'm afraid I can't do it. I can't stand the sight of blood.��

"Can I see?" asked Aella, sitting next to her and craning her neck to read the pages.

"You can see, but I doubt you can read the text. It's ancient halfling. They normally write recipe books and cook books, but it seems the king wanted to make sure none of his enemies could gain the information and had the halfling cook write the mage's notes down. I think the mage was an elf, judging from the way he said things, so maybe you could get one of them to make the tattoos?"

Aella thought about the beautiful tattoos the elven princess had on her cheeks and thought that might not be a bad idea. She needed to talk to the elves about their portal anyway, so she could do that at the same time.

"Could you copy it down so I can take the information to the elves and find someone?" asked Aella.

Glancing down at her son, Bridgette nodded. "He'll be out for a couple hours, so I should be able to pull it off by then. Mind coming back then to get it?"