I've Got the Power
(4E-182 7th of Sun's Dusk)
Darklight Tower
"Morila, this endeavor was clearly a failure. We need to move on. I know it's difficult but look at the boy, he's just a normal baby. Aside from being a bit on the heavy side, having dark grey skin, and elvish ears there is nothing remarkable about him at all. At the very least, he clearly isn't one of us." Moria protested.
"Moria, this is why you are far indeed from being Head Matron material. You are far too quick to judge...and to give up. We've spent entirely too many resources on this child, to just toss him aside simply because of his appearance. Just because he doesn't look like one of us now, doesn't mean he won't in the future. He is a baby, after all, and he could easily grow into something more than just a larger version of what you see now.
"Also, it could very well be that our appearance is the result of using the ritual, while this method maintains our nature simply with a different more normal appearance. Either way, we are absolutely not just going to throw away generations of patient planning, effort, and sacrifice just because you don't approve of his appearance. We will raise this child to maturity and see what he is capable of. If he still doesn't show any promise by his twentieth birthday, then and only then will I be willing to call this endeavor a failure."
*Sigh* Moria was exasperated. "Very well, Head Matron." She acquiesced as she left the Head Matron's chambers.
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(4E-182 8th of Sun's Dusk)
Darklight Tower
Galeron was sleepy eyed and lethargic despite having clearly just woken up. He also felt quite hungry but was not at all looking forward to reliving his past feeding experience. He wondered if his entire babyhood would be spent being hungry and tired. He certainly hoped not but these were rather petty matters, in the grand scheme of things.
'Now that I'm finally out of the womb, it's time to see what, if anything, I can do with my magicka.' Galeron thought as he reached for the magicka in his core. He brought it up into his palm and imagined a flame flickering there. Although no flame appeared, he very briefly detected an orange-ish light that disappeared almost as soon as it was visible. It didn't look like a flame, however, it looked more like it was the gleam off of some type of sphere.
He then took a moment to think about the nature of fire and heat. He knew that heat was essentially just the movement of molecules, meaning the faster molecules in a substance moved the more heat that substance would radiate. Fire on the other hand was simply when a substance reached a certain temperature and began to break down into its molecular and atomic parts.
Galeron summoned his magika once more and concentrated on imparting the characteristics of rapid particle movement and molecular decomposition into the magika gathered in his hand. As soon as he released his will into it, a bright red hot flame appeared in his hand and set his entire right arm aflame.
Galeron didn't think he would be doing too much crying his second time round as a baby but the pain he was experiencing right now was simply too excruciating. He wailed and wailed as loud as his little lungs could manage.
It took less than a minute for Morila to arrive and bear witness to the horrifying scene before her. Her child, the one she and countless Coven Witches and Hagravens had placed their hopes upon, was writhing around in agony with burn marks all up and down his entire right arm.
As soon as she registered this situation, she immediately summoned a healing spell, Healing Hands, and applied a continuous flow of healing magicka into Galeron's right arm. The burns on his arm slowly started to heal themselves.
Being a Hagraven, Morila wasn't very accomplished in the field of Restoration Magic and so she could only continue to supply his arm with healing magic, until it was fully recovered.
Several minutes later, Morila was lying on her bed exhausted, with Galeron wrapped up in her arms. Despite how tired she was, she was seething with fury. Someone had clearly attempted to murder the hope of their Coven and she was going to make certain she discovered who it was and send them to Sithis.
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(4E-182 10th of Sun's Dusk)
Darklight Tower
Galeron had been thoroughly traumatized by the great flaming arm catastrophe of two days ago. Even though mentally he was an adult, his body, and that obviously included his brain, was still very much an undeveloped baby brain. Every time he thought about trying to experiment with magic after that his body would start involuntarily shaking. This placed a huge barrier in between him and his desire to learn more about magic.
He decided that some good old fashioned meditation might help to zero his body's reactions to magical experimentation. After spending a full day with his empty mind meditation, he awoke feeling refreshed and ready to jump back into his experiments.
After confirming that his body was no longer rejecting the very idea of engaging with magic, he decided to take a different approach this time around. The last thing he wanted was to damn near blow himself up again and so he decided to scrap the elemental magic, until he figured out a safe way to handle it.
Galeron was currently being held tight, by Morila, as she slept. He looked at his mother's hideous chest and noticed an amulet that she wore around her neck. It looked like a tiny piece of taproot with a small red rock embedded within. He reached out with his magicka, wrapped it around the taproot looking amulet, and ordered his magika to lift the thing away from his Mother.
'Well, this is just disappointing! It just budged! Seriously, that's all it did was budge!' He kept trying to feed it more magicka, to see if that would change anything. All this did, however, was to wear him out faster and drain his magicka.
'Hmmmm…' Galeron thought for a moment. 'Maybe this is a problem similar to my first failure with fire magic. Perhaps, I need to consider the physical aspects of what I'm actually trying to accomplish and then use my knowledge of the task I'm trying to accomplish to form a coherent starting point, follow through, and final goal. With all that in mind, I can then transfer that knowledge, in the form of my will, into the magicka and hopefully get a much more satisfying result.
Galeron then spent a moment considering what he knew about gravity and the laws of motion, which wasn't much. He then organized all that information, in a manner suitable to achieve the lifting of the amulet. Once he had the process fully fleshed out, he once again wrapped the amulet in his magicka and then willed it to rise up.
'Ha, it worked!' Galeron mentally exclaimed, as he witnessed the amulet slowly being lifted off of his mother's abominable chest. It still took a lot out of him to accomplish this small task and so he returned the amulet and went to sleep to recharge his magicka batteries.
The next day, Galeron persevered through his breakfast and then waited until he was alone, to once more try his hand at elemental magic. He had spent most of the day trying to form a sort of shield around his hand that would protect him from the Flames. He was certain that what he had achieved so far would suffice and so now he just needed some alone time.
As soon as Morila was out of the room, Galeron conjured the hand shield he had been working on and then once again attempted to produce flames from his palms. This time, however, he made sure to put more relevant information into the spell other than just "be hot and burn." He made sure to direct the flames away from his body into a straight flowing stream.
'Hahaha, another success! Damn, I'm good!' Galeron patted himself on the back. This success, however, came at the cost of a huge chunk of magicka. He could sense that the flames were causing constant damage to his shield and thus both spells were constantly draining his magicka. He was on a roll now, though, and he wasn't about to stop. He was really starting to get the hang of this magic stuff and he was loving it!
Deciding to alter the fire spell one more time, Galeron attempted to imbue the flame itself with the quality of not damaging himself. He once again conjured his shield and then followed it up with another flame stream. 'Yes! And another win for Galeron! The magicka cost was only increased by less than a quarter and it didn't do any damage to my shield! Muahahaha!'
Having had so much success today, Galeron cast the exact same spell but without the hand shield this time. Seeing the steady stream of flames issuing forth from his little hand and not so much as a warm breeze affecting that same hand, he grinned the evilest grin that a baby could grin.
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Morila knew that there were traitors amongst her Coven. She never would have guessed it but, after her baby was attacked like that in broad daylight, she was certain and she had to ferret the traitors out.
Morila laid the child down in her chambers and then walked away, seemingly leaving the baby unattended. She then made a right turn down the hallway on the left and entered a room with a clear line of sight from it to her quarters. She could just barely see a sliver of the inside of her room, where her baby was. She cast Muffle and Invisibility on herself and waited.
It was difficult for a Hagraven, whose innate proclivity was towards Destruction Magic, to advance to higher levels of Illusion Magic but she had been quite proficient in it before she underwent the ritual. She was the one who trained Yeala and prepared her for that night.
Patiently she kept watch over her chambers and soon she witnessed a flame pass across the sliver of her room that she could see. She was immediately infuriated and almost barged into the room to confront the attacker who had somehow entered her room while evading her detection. She cast Detect Life, as she came out of her hiding spot.
At that time though, she noticed a few things. First, the child was silent, no crying or whimpering. Second, Detect Life only showed one life sign in the room and it was her baby. Third, she was the only person anywhere near her chambers, at the moment. She was quite confused, until she witnessed another streak of flame through the visible sliver of her room. Now she was mostly just curious and dying to discover what was going on in her room.
She slowly approached the doorway and peeked inside. There on her bed, she could see her child lying on it's back smiling, while holding its right hand up in the air. Suddenly, from that very same hand, a spout of flame came forth and didn't seem to damage the child at all. As she looked on in awe at the scene before her, her baby's smile spread all the way from one side of his face to the other. That smile seemed unlike any smile she could ever imagine a three day old baby having.
While looking at that unnatural smile, she had the distinct impression that it held a hint of intelligence and cunning, regardless of how impossible such a thing seemed to be. She finally decided to act and released the Invisibility and Muffle spells. As she did so, Galeron suddenly noticed her presence and turned his head towards her.
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'Awww, shit! She's back! Dammit, did she see me practicing magic?' Galeron exclaimed inside his head. 'Do babies have poker faces? If they do I could really use one right about now. Equip Poker Face! Go, go, gadget Poker Face! Poker Face Power Activate! Kenny Rodgers, I choose you! Use The Gambler! Dammit, it's not very effective! She's still coming!'
Galeron, for the first time in his new life, tried to explain himself but all that came out of his mouth were indecipherable baby sounds. 'Shit, what is she going to do?'
Morila stopped at the edge of her bed and just stood there for a few seconds just staring at Galeron. Soon afterwards, she reached into her cloak and pulled out what looked like some kind of tree bark. Galeron assumed this must be some kind of Alchemy ingredient. She then stepped to the side and held the tree bark in place with her magicka. She looked directly into Galeron's eyes and spoke to him. "Use your flame spell to burn this, child."
'Well, shit! She definitely saw me. There's no doubt about it now. Should I do it? I don't really see any benefit in trying to continue hiding it. She'll probably just go around setting traps for me, trying to catch me in the act, if I don't. Well, so much for having secret baby powers. Here goes nothing.' Galeron considered, before holding up his right hand and, once again, releasing his newly developed flame spell.
The stream of flames rushed forth and instantly ignited the tree bark being held by Morila's magic. Morila watched silently as Galeron's flame spell incinerated the tree bark, slowly turning it into ashes. She stood there speechless for a moment, despite having already seen it once before. A three day old baby using a fully functional and actually somewhat powerful flame spell is just not a normal thing! She gradually suppressed her shock and gathered her wits once more.
The more she thought about this situation before her the more she was certain that this child was even more special than she could've ever hoped. Despite her adamant stance, Moria's words had moved her slightly and a seed of doubt had been planted in her mind. She was no longer as certain as she once was that they were walking the correct path. Now, however, that seed and all the tainted earth around it had been ripped up and tossed aside.
'This is the child that will lead our people to greatness. Our efforts were not in vain.' She comforted herself. She was now more certain, about the path ahead of her, than she had ever been and she was going to prove, to all those doubters in her Coven, just how wrong they were.
In what may well be the first time in the history of Nirn that such a thing has ever occurred, Morila, a Hagraven, looked at Galeron and smiled softly. Galeron, however, could see no softness in it, as she was a hideous thing and any movement her mouth made seemed insidious in his bright crimson baby eyes. 'Fuck! What is that look for? Is she gonna sacrifice me now or something? Ahh, fuck me, I demand a do over! I didn't see this coming! Please don't eat or sacrifice me?! Please, pretty please!?' Galeron anxiously thought as nonsensical baby talk continued to come from his lips.
"Child, can you understand the words I'm saying to you? If so, then stop making those sounds."
Galeron instantly sealed his lips and remained deathly silent.
"Stay still, child. I'll return in a moment." Morila said, as she turned and walked out of the room.