A Discussion, Journal and BANG!

Virion Eralith's POV:

"I came back from the future, and I would like your help to make it better than the one I remember."

It was like I was hit by a mountain, first the demeanor change, the perfect vocalization of words and the characteristic present in many of the royals of the long-forgotten past I came from were all hidden within her expression, she couldn't be anything but a Eralith that had grown to a fully mature king or queen, well in this case queen. But there was something warping her expression that reminded me of my own when I looked at a picture of my wife.

So why?

"Little one, is it fair to call you that?"

"Yes, I was only in my late teens when I came back."

She responded curtly in a business tone. Responding in kind I continued.

"So, why and how have you come back, little one?"

"I don't know why or how I came back, something like that would be beyond my reach, I only ever knew a handful of individuals that had the ability to harness something that could potentially do that."

That's fascinating, The prospect of a power that could do that.

"To think that there is a resource that has gone completely untouched by us with that kind of power…"

"That isn't the case, Diviners and Emitters can manipulate it to some degree, but otherwise are incapable to reach the limit of its abilities due to backlash, the only person who could reach to its limits died because of me…"

My granddaughter looked down in shame and despair. The person she was referring to must have been very important to her, but also to the continent if what she said is true, after all, they would have been hounded by all the royal families regardless of race.

"So who was this person, and if you're in the past, why wouldn't you just be able to save them?"

"His name was Arthur Leywin, he was… beyond special, I met him when I was five and he was four because of my own stupidity."

I was perplexed, she must have met our lances if she was in her teens when she returned, so who could be beyond special?

"Just how special could one person be?"

"Don't be too surprised, ok?"

She said with a self assured attitude that suggested that she would find my reaction amusing, I steeled myself, preparing to hear that he was god himself.

"He was the only lance to make it to white core without the assistance of the artifacts and was sixteen at the time, he was a quadra elemental with three deviants and was a dragon tamer as well as having a dragon bond. Of course there is more to him like how…"

Needless to say, I was foaming from the mouth and twitching by the time she had finished regaling the utter greatness of Arthur Leywin.

—

Tessia Eralith's POV:

After regaling to grandpa Arthur's story, I once again got back on topic.

Seeing my change in attitude immediately grandpa focused his attention upon me. It made me happy to see that despite how absurd the situation sounds my grandpa would listen to me. I suppose this is what Arthur felt like that pressure that he wouldn't be accepted must have been even worse for him.

"There are a few things that I believe are important to discuss for the future, first of all we will need to find a time to visit Elder Rinia, and secondly we need to find Arthur so that we can prepare him for the future and so that he doesn't get killed while he is in the forest due to his young age."

My grandpa nodded and I decided it would be best to adjourn for the day and continue our discussion in the near future after all the information has been digested, as even for someone as tolerant as grandpa, he probably wasn't going to take this perfectly.

"Now seems like a good stopping point for our discussion, we should continue to prepare in the meantime because it will be approximately three years before we meet Arthur for the first time in this life."

"Hmmm, I'm glad you came to me with this, I hope that it means you trust me a great deal in the future."

He gave me a smile as I left and went to bed. However he stopped me on the way out.

"Wait, I have one question, what was your relationship with Arthur?"

I had a slight blush on my face as I responded.

"I was his fiancé, but now I don't think that I'll be able to rekindle our relationship due to my mistakes."

Hearing the first part he smirked before his expression warped into something more solemn.

"I see, but don't give up too soon on him, relationships are a struggle, we sometimes have to fight the ones we love to keep our relationships healthy and alive, we sometimes need to make compromises as well, if your willing to accept some of the conditions that Arthur sets for you, then you may be able to have that relationship back."

He had a gentle expression on his face as I held back tears, wiping them away and continued to leave after one final word.

"Thank you for telling me that there may just be a chance, even if I have to do or accept something I don't like."

He smiled at me and I returned the gesture before walking to my room to go to sleep.

Today was a long day, but much more importantly, it was my first step to making the future even just a little brighter.

—

Alice Leywin's POV:

The boys must be the most adorable babies ever, and I'm not saying this because I'm a doting mother.

No.

The boys and their scruffy patches of perfect, fiery auburn hair and their azure gems for eyes, they seem to radiate blue light from their eyes and their gazes that seem to see through everything, even souls, in their sights.

No, no, I'm not a doting mother. I plan to be strict and just as a mother. I can't rely on their father to teach the boys any common sense, after all he tried to teach them how to wield a sword when they were barely even able to crawl.

I know that they'll turn out like Reynolds if I leave them be. As soon as the boys became mobile I was on the verge of tears seeing them move around, albeit slowly, though in hindsight I would come to regret this milestone as they became much more difficult to care for, not to mention the fact that they started crawling at least a month earlier than any baby I've ever heard of in Arthur's case, and even then Benjamin wasn't far behind, only by a day or two.

I swear, there's not a single moment where I can take my eyes off of the boys before they go at top speeds to the study room. How weird. We made sure to buy them all sorts of stuffed animals so that they would have a variety to play with and share between each other if babies even do that, but they seem more interested in books than toys. THAT, was at least opposite of their father who almost gravitates from texts longer than the weekly newspaper.

I found Arthur annotating a book. I was going to move to stop him, but the things he highlighted and noted in the margins, although extremely childish and nearly gibberish, was accurate.

Perhaps the boy's are geniuses? I'll have to refine my parenting style with that in mind so that they don't get full of themselves.

Looking at how excited they were, in particular Ben, at the prospect of going into town. I decided to take the boys with me every other day rather than twice a week.

Don't even think I'm doing this because I'm a doting mother. I'm doing this to keep fresh food in the house. (Not because I'm a doting mother, of course not.)

My boys seemed to be very similar, not just in appearances but in behavior, almost as if they were a pair, one in the same, for example the boy's tried to take everything they could with a deep fascination of the world around them, they were partial to their father's practices though.

Seeing their father practice fills me with nostalgia of when we were young and lovesick as well as our time with the adventurer's guild.

The boys thankfully ended up with both of our redeeming features, making them just that much more adorable. When I have to change the boy's diapers Ben puts his hands up to his face that always seems to redden as Art watches and giggles away, they do the same the other way around making fun of each other's embarrassment.

Do babies their age even get embarrassed?

The next landmark in the journal for the boys was when they said their first words. (Of course not because I'm a doting mother, pfft, as if I, the strict and just mother that I am, would dote on the boy's.)

Ben said Mama!

I told him to say "mama" again and again to make sure that my ears weren't playing tricks on me, then I heard Art say his first word as well and I was heartbroken, he went with his father, and my husband gloated over not losing the battle and only tying with me.

Haaaa, there's always the next milestone.

The rest of the year went by in a pleasant bliss with my boys sticking close to me whenever their father would do his after dinner practices. I'm glad Reynolds gave up being an adventurer and instead took up a post as a guard nearby for our town. Being an adventurer may have brought in more money, but not knowing when or if my husband would come home was not worth any amount of extra money. More so after that incident…

To our relief, the boys never got sick, but oftentimes, I would find them sitting still on their butts while closing their eyes. At first I thought they were having trouble relieving themselves, but after checking the first few times, that wasn't the case.

How strange, this might have something to do with those annotations that Arthur made in that book, however I haven't been able to find that book since to confirm almost as if it was removed from the house so that I wouldn't find it. How strange.

I'm writing "how strange" quite a lot aren't I!

I was worried at first, but although it would happen many times a day, it would only last a few minutes and then it was over and the boys would seem content afterwards. The way they hold their arms up to ask me to pick them up just makes me want to gobble them up!

*Ahem* Not a doting mother.

—

Arthur Leywin's POV:

Reading mother's journal confirmed to me that the changes to the timeline or at least that I can tell so far are both at the same time equally significant and insignificant at the same time, because now we have heroes running around doing god knows what and I have a brother, but everything else is almost entirely the same as before.

It confirmed something I had known in my past life and in fact exasperated my understanding of it completely.

She's a doting mother…

Like scarily so…

I was honestly tempted to take a pen and write "Bull. Shit." in dad's handwriting to see how mom would react.

Maybe… Just maybe I'll do just that….

—

Benjamin Leywin's POV:

About two years have passed since I made the difficult journey to the study room…

That sounded pathetic… but let's get back on track.

From then, after quickly skimming the notes that Arthur had made, and finding them very insightful, I have been constantly gathering bits and pieces of mana and bringing them to the location where it had been condensing naturally. It was a slow and arduous task that felt nearly impossible to accomplish.

I could see why it normally takes so long for people to 'awaken' as the book and Arthur's notes put it. If I had left them alone it would have taken at least a decade to let them gradually make their way to my core, as if I would let that happen!

Instead… With the mental acuity and knowledge stocked up from my past life and the strange insight I get when seeing something that feels… familiar? Maybe? I began dragging those little pieces straight to my core, however I could have finished a while ago, but the notes in the book gave me a map to follow and path the mana in my body through, my god was it a difficult and painful task! But the notes said the payoff would be worth it.

Arthur asked me to send the mana through the areas right next to where they naturally gravitated too when they were to move through my body at their top speeds, which was still slow, and string them in a coil like shape moving them along the paths, eight times per region, I felt like I was craving my body up in the process, but when I wanted to stop he said something that made me realize the action's importance.

"You want to be strong right, well this is the path to the strength you want to obtain."

My daily rituals consisted of using all of my energy on the carving process, making sure to be extremely careful with it as the warnings had been VERY clear if I was to mess up. The other common activities included trauma by means of mana enhanced tossing up into the air, it seemed like Arthur was receiving the same treatment, but the second he got into his father's arms, he seemed to flail about and pale, although I'm not sure how with that milky white skin though.

Fortunately mother could handle father when he was getting rambunctious. But mother is… scary at times. I often catch her staring at my brother and I like we were a prime meat ready to be devoured, I remember seeing Arthur look at mom's journal and ever since that day he would shiver when she laid eyes on us, what kind of horrors lay inside that book, I have no idea or interest in knowing.

Trying to adapt to this wretched body has made me blunt and curt with my words, only saying what was necessary to get the point across, no grammar necessary.

The training I was going through was slow, arduous and strenuous, but the advantage made it worth it so I wasn't going to or have any right to complain.

These past two years have not gone to waste, I finally gathered all of my mana into my solar plexus and was in the midst of condensing my core when…

"Stop Princess Two, jeez did you even read the book he gave you or did you just skim it?"

I turned to see the ghost which I had nearly forgotten over the years, but instead of a ghost he was a puppy?

He looked at me with a piercing, intelligent gaze before sighing and saying.

"Of course you didn't, Princess would never read the manual either."

Princess? He referred to me as Princess Two, does that mean he is referring to Arthur.

"What do you want?"

"Go outside, Princess is waiting for you there, if you had gone through with what you were about to do, you might have levelled a good chunk of the property."

I widened my eyes realizing that the warning was more important than I gave it precedence.

Walking outside, careful not to draw attention to myself, I arrived at my destination to find my brother, who was patting the ground, as if telling me to sit with him, waiting for me in a meditative position.

"Regis tells me that you didn't heed my warning to read the damn book before you started. No matter, I see that you heeded my advice on what to do about the mana channels and veins, so we won't be having any setbacks as a result."

He spoke like he hadn't gotten used to speaking after a long period of silence. However, his words flowed elegantly with intellectuality weaved into each word.

Sitting down next to me he explained.

"If you had read the goddamn book, you would've known about the explosion that occurs when you awaken."

I looked down, it seemed like my suspicions had been confirmed.

"You're a reincarnation aren't you."

My voice was low, just loud enough for him to hear and with dignity and maturity in it.

"Hmmm, you could say that."

I sighed and mustered as much pressure as I could in this body and let it weigh down on him. The only response I got at first was a raised eyebrow. I decided to push him a little.

"Are you my enemy?"

"No, most likely not."

How would he know that? I just asked to try and pry who he was out of him, so why was he so confident that I wasn't an enemy to him, and that he wasn't an enemy to me.

"You're thinking too much."

He accompanied the statement with a scolding flick to the forehead.

"Meditate and form your core, then we'll have a conversation about this matter later. After all, becoming strong in this world is much more important than living in the past. I've already thrown mine away, I suggest you do the same."

The ghost, puppy, whatever jumped out of Arthur's body and said.

"Damn, that was a lot of speaking for you Princess, seems like having a brother is really helping with your joice mood."

There were so many questions going through my head, but I decided that they would have to wait.

It's time to take the path of the strong.

To protect my new family!

*BOOM**BOOM*