Chapter 116: What We Are

When Diana finally got to see the boy he was a wreck. His body was crushed as someone had stepped on him, and Eleftherios was healing him with a blank look in his eyes.

"What happened, were we attacked?" Diana was in full-on panic mode. Her grandfather had told her how strong this man was, he even made it sound like the dryad was above him in strength, but now his student was left in a critical in his own home.

"Don't overthink it, girl. My brother just wanted to test out the kid's new strength." Verdania said with a sneer.

She wanted to downplay the incident, but she was still angry at the man. What she didn't expect was the way Diana strode toward the unconscious boy, and she put her head to his.

The dryads were confused at first, but then they got mesmerized. They connected, not a simple Mind ling as they used before, but a genuine connection of the souls.

She didn't know what she was doing, but the girl felt a pull and she allowed her consciousness to seep into her partner. There she saw not the person she used to, but a deformed little boy.

His body grew, and his soul grew with it, but it did not age. His spirit body looked exactly how the boy saw himself, an ugly, deformed freak. His scales were not shiny light blue, but rotten pith black, with just a hint of purple. His limbs, just like in his youth, were too short for his body, and his face was scaly and filled with scars.

The worst part was that she recognized the scars, they were made with his own hands. It didn't take a genius to figure out that the boy hated himself. His inner self was nothing but a grotesque monster, and yet the girl didn't hesitate to rush at him.

"Wake the hell up you fool. What has gotten into you? Wake up Ciaran or I will beat you harder than your Master ever could." She grabbed him by the shoulders and started shaking.

The boy was startled awake, and on queue, he flashed her his usual dumb smile. It looked so real, Diana was fooled for a minute. She felt only joy and giddiness coming from him, but the wounds kept bleeding.

The wider he smiled, the more he bled, and the more he bled the deeper the wounds got.

Diana was strong, but this was beyond her. She didn't know if it was the boy's sudden power gain or the fight, but he was getting worse, and she didn't know how to help.

"You are the smart one Rony! Just tell me how to help you." She asked, her voice cracking from worry.

He simply kept smiling, before he reached up to his shoulders, and grabbed her hands.

"Wake up Diana, this is not how I want to be seen, but it's what I am. A filth, a wretch, a deceiver, scum, in short, a stain on the world, and on my loved ones as an extension." He laughed.

"But don't you worry, I will come back in a bit, I need to have a long discussion with my mentors," Ciaran said as he pushed her back.

The connection got cut off, and Diana opened her eyes. She was about to curse when she felt a little tap on her shoulder.

"Told you it won't take long." She heard her partner right next to her.

He was back, and he was the same as always. The same eyes, always looking three steps ahead of everyone. The same mocking smile, that looked down on all of his enemies. And the same hunger, his hunger for power had only grown since she last saw him.

"We need to talk, and you're not getting away from it, not this time." He said, and her heart froze.

She was about to speak, but then she noticed she wasn't talking to her.

He looked straight at his mentors, and he was furious.

"I saw something in my soul. I saw SOMEONE. How is that possible?" He asked, and Diana could feel the dryad's desire to run away from the question, but they didn't. Verdania was about to teleport the girl away, but Ciaran stood in her way.

"My partner stays. If she is to trust me, she needs to know me, and I mean fully know, who, and what I am." He said calmly.

Eleftherios nodded and disappeared. Not a minute later he was back with some vials.

"Do you know what this is? " He asked, and both kids shook their heads.

"This is the 'potion' the Empire uses to make children mature faster. It has a long and complicated scientific name, but I don't know it. I just call it what all of us regular folk call it, Soul Potion. Take a wild guess what the main ingredient is." The man as he sighed.

Then he gestured to Verdania, who conjured a big water-screen. On it, there were three categories projected – Demons, Angels, and Devils.

Before Ciaran could speak up and tell them this was ridiculous, Verdania wrote down 'other' in a fourth, separate column. Under the new section, she put humans and greyed it out.

"Demons are not chaotic otherworldly creatures, it's just a category we use to categorize all the creatures who live on pure instinct. Even when they evolve, they never stop acting on their instincts. We dryads belong here." Eleftherios said and his sister put the name of their species under Demons.

Both of the kids were surprised by that, but then they got over it. Ciaran was even gesturing for his Master to hurry along and get to the good part.

"We just told you your mentors are Demons. Don't you care?" The man asked confused.

The 'No' That came from the boy was both comforting and concerning. Most humans tended to hold every species in this classification in contempt. Ciaran was getting further and further away from humanity, but at the same time, he was shredding his biases too.

The other thing he saw was how Diana first looked at Ciaran and then proceeded to make her decision. If nothing else, she truly considered the boy her equal, not in strength, but as an individual.

"Demons are creatures of instinct. But Devils are creatures of desire. They live their lives chasing after something, completely obsessed with it. They are also one of Dyrta's most intelligent. Not that they are unevenly smarter than all the rest of us, but that they never seem to be at a disadvantage, and they also mature much faster, on an emotional level."

"The potions are made by hunting down magical creatures, extracting their souls, and making them into a potion."

He said, as he uncorked one potion and let out its contents to the ground. Diana was confused, but Ciaran was horrified. He saw a creature similar to the one in his soul rice from the fumes.

"One creature, depending on their soul, can make many potions. Devils tend to make for the highest quality product. The potions boost your growth, not only physically, but also mentally, and some even argue magically. The only downside is that only pure souls could absorb them, so only human children can consume this potion."

"And even they can only handle one to twenty drops. But there are special cases." He said as Verdania wrote Merfolk under Devils.

Then the dryads stopped and waited for a few minutes for the kids to process the information.

"Ok so I am a Devil, what has that got to –

"Ciaran, your not a Devil, your mother was, your biological mother. And those monsters made you eat her," Verdania said, unable to stay silent anymore. Her contempt for humans had been suppressed for too long, and now it exploded.

"The Clades found her wounded but still breathing, but they didn't help her, they trapped her in a cage like an animal. For months they bled her and fed you her flesh and blood. And the sad part is, she willingly gave them to you at the start."

"But as the days went on, chunks of her soul had been cut off, all of it made for potions you used, or were going to use in the future."

"Eventually, she went mad and cursed them all, but she was too weak for it to matter at that point, at least for them. For you, it meant, your high intelligence started to eat at your body, and both it and your soul got corrupted. "

"In the end, the once proud merfolk woman became a blood wraith, which haunts your soul to this very day. "

"Every time I cut you, I remove a bit of her flesh that is still fused to yours. Every time I rip a rotting piece of your soul, I am killing the last bits of your mother. And she still holds on, desperate to drag you into the grave with her."

As she finished her rant, the dryad couldn't hold it in anymore, and she hugged the boy, tears running down her face.

She hated the Clades for doing what they had to. She hated this Empire for forcing them into it. And she hated herself for telling her kid the truth, but she had promised him honesty and integrity, and that is what she would give him.

Ciaran stood there, not knowing what was worse. What he had just heard, or his complete lack of care for it.