Catching Up With Annei

“Welcome home, Annei. I’m glad to see you’ve come back well.” Mother says.

We’re all sitting in the dining room having lunch together for the first time in a while. Brother’s shaved and changed back into noble clothes, but his more mature demeanor is still there.

I’ve also changed back into a more fancy dress instead of my training clothes. I do keep my Gift tied above my left eye though, since I need it to see properly. I keep it on pretty much wherever I go, except for when I sleep, and even then it’s always on the dresser right next to me.

“So Annei, how long will you be staying?” Father asks.

“Oh, as long as nothing major pops up on the frontline I’ll be staying for good. Luckily, I have a plan to stay here even if something happens.”

“Hm? Please continue.” Mother says.

“While Hana is technically first in line to take over the Amber family should anything happen to you Mother, I’m widely considered the one who’s set to take over. If I used my Gift to help assist people of the Amber domain on a wider scale and help keep morale up, then a bit of pressure on king Wynn and a few small edits to your will should be enough.”

“Very well. We’ll talk about it in more detail later. For now we’ll enjoy your company.”

“Yes, mother.”

“Brother, I’ve been committing myself to all my studies while you were gone.” I say.

“Really? How far have you gotten?”

“Mm… I could list off all my skills, but I think it would be better just to show you.”

“Alright, after lunch. But I do want to ask you, how are your golems?”

“Oh, well I had the genius idea to give them minds of their own with my Gift, but I’m not smart enough to be able to do that yet. Oh, but I have created some really unique golems I want to show you!”

“I’ll be looking forward to it after lunch, Lilith.”

Brother, Sister and I walk onto the open field that Wolstan and I have taken to training at. Brother looks frantically around at all the damage but Sister’s completely used to it.

“It’s… it’s like a battlefield… How much of this was Wolstan, and how much… was Lilith?”

Brother’s eyes have no wonder or awe in them at all. Only fear.

“Um! I’d never do anything to hurt anybody who didn’t deserve it! And I can do a whole lot of nonviolent things with magic too!” I yell.

“Huh? What brought this on?” Brother asks me.

Sister goes to whisper in his ear. I make a note that I should try and hear with my Gift too. I can see better with it now than I ever could with my eyes, so maybe the same will be true of hearing assuming I practice with it enough.

“O- oh! No, it’s all amazing Lilith, really! I’m really proud of you! I couldn’t have imagined my adorable little sister getting so powerful!”

I’m assuming that Sister just told him that I noticed fear in his eyes and that he should apologize for scaring me like that. Well, I don’t think that Brother could ever be really afraid of me unless I did something really bad and I don’t want to complicate the situation so I just smile.

“Alright, so just what did you want to show me, Lilith?” Brother asks.

“Um… it probably would have been a good idea to change first. I really can’t get the footing right in these shoes, but I’ll try anyway. I left a couple of spikes over here, come on.”

I guide Brother and Sister to the pile of bedrock spikes that I used to fight Wolstan. This is where I’ll start.

“Alright, both of you stand back, and let me focus for a bit.”

“Alright Lilith.”

“Go for it, sis.”

I hold my arms out and focus. I draw a lot of dirt out of the ground, and activate my “Earth Golem” skill. With a lot of mana and a bit of focus I create a large humanoid figure out of dirt. It isn’t very durable given the building material I’m working with, but dirt is pliable so it’s actually incredibly easy to work with even though it’s fragile.

At its completion, the golem comes up to a little over 40 feet tall. Using my “Earth Golem” skill, I have it slowly kneel down and hold its hand out to me. I step onto it slowly, since it’s so huge there’s actually quite a lot of space to step on. It stands up and lifts me up to its shoulder, which I also stand on. There’s a lot less space to stand on up here, but I can manage.

Next I use basic earth manipulation to lift the earth spikes on the ground. I change their shapes and fit them together. This requires a lot more focus, but I manage to put them into the shape of a 20 feet long bedrock club.

My golem walks up to it, picks it up, and swings it at the ground, launching tons of dirt in the air. With the swinging motion, it’s a bit difficult to stay up on its shoulder, but I’m used to it so I manage it.

I look down at Brother and Sister. Brother looks surprised, but Sister is used to it at this point unfortunately. Maybe I could use this opportunity to show off?

“Well, what do you think, Brother?”

“It’s… it’s really impressive, but I’m not sure what you could really do with that on a battlefield…”

“Well of course! It is made from dirt after all. I tried this against Wolstan awhile ago, and he cut it down really easily. I also have to consider long range attack magic, but if I was serious about bringing something like this into a fight I’d make sure to get some really durable stone for it!”

“It’s good that you’re considering that, but… well…”

“Besides, it isn’t like this needs to get close to the enemy to really fight. If I make a spear of earth and make it really aerodynamic, it can throw it well over a third of a kilometer.”

“Lilith… are you OK?”

“Huh? What do you mean? I’m clearly fine, aren’t I? I mean, I definitely wouldn’t be up here if I wasn’t.”

“That isn’t what I mean. Is this all you’ve been doing? Is everything in your mind revolving around when you’ll inevitably get sent to fight demons?”

Oh no, Brother looks nervous. I mean, he isn’t exactly wrong. I haven’t actually been thinking about demons at all, but everything I’ve been doing for the past two years have kind of been revolving around getting strong enough to the point I didn’t have to worry about another young death.

He got used to it, but he must have always been kind of worried, because of course he would. If your kid sister was making every last decision with survival in mind what kind of sociopath would you have to be to not be worried? He must have been hoping that I grew out if it, and as soon as he comes back I go talking about how my earth golem would fare in actual combat.

Damn it, I’m such an idiot sometimes. How do I fix this situation? I don’t want to lie and tell him that I’ve been doing a ton of things that don’t revolve around fighting… Maybe I could show him some of the applications of my Gift? Yeah, that seems to be the best option.

I use my skill to have the earth golem slowly lift me down. After walking for a bit towards Brother and Sister, I deactivate the skill to save on mana and the golem collapses into a pile of dirt.

“Here, let me show you what I can do with my Gift now. I’ve come up with a few really great ideas.” I say, grabbing my Gift from my head.

The sudden movement of one of my “eyes” really throws me off, but I’ve trained enough to handle it. I used to have to shut that spell off whenever I moved my Gift at all, but now it can get thrown pretty much whatever way and I can handle it just fine.

I start the spell to summon my halberd. Wait, Brother doesn’t know that I have a real one yet. Showing him that Wolstan literally made a halberd for me specifically is going to have the opposite effect that I want.

What else is there for me to summon? Um… I have a whole bunch of earth spikes laying around I could grab. That would also be worrying, but it’s better than an actual physical weapon, and I can’t think of anything better so that’ll just have to do.

I start the spell and focus hard. I visualize the spike materializing right next to me. Light blue light starts to swirl around where I plan on summoning it. After around 10 seconds or so, the spike of earth appears right next to me, and falls over onto the ground.

“See? I can do that with pretty much anything as long as I have a good image in my head about what makes it up.”

“That’s amazing, how does it work?” Alright, Brother seems to have calmed down a bit, that’s good.

“I don’t really know. The Gift of Knowledge feels like a bottomless pit, so I kind of thought about stuffing things in it. I kind of just visualize taking the whole object and dumping it in my Gift, and when I need to take them out I do the opposite. I don’t really know where they go, or the mechanics behind it.”

“Hm… I see. Have you tried it on anything living?”

“Yes, actually. I was able to do it with worms without any negative side effects. Anything much bigger though and it just doesn’t work. I need to know just about everything that makes something up to work, so I think the problem is my own lack of knowledge.”

“So that scraps just hiding in it… actually, no. You have that spell to detect all of what’s happening in your body. Have you tried using it on yourself then?”

“No, I was scared.” Being vulnerable with him is sure to put him at ease. I’m not lying either. I genuinely haven’t tried that yet because I’m not sure just what’s going to happen to my consciousness if I do.

Brother smiles. I guess that worked.

“Alright, that makes sense. What else have you done with it?”

“Oh, well after I figured that out, I decided that I may be able to do the same with my memories. It’s still in the beginning, so it isn’t perfect, but I’m capable of storing memories I would normally forget in my Gift. My current goal is to get that going all the time so I don’t forget anything.”

To Brother I’m sure this seems like a legitimately interesting idea, but it’s also survival orientated. The reason I’m pursuing this spell is in case I ever need to suppress memories in order to maintain an act, and to remember every last detail of everything just in case it winds up being important later.

“That’s amazing, Lilith. I’m sure that will be very useful in the future.”

Yes, yes it will. I want to tell him more, but there isn’t really all that much more to say to him. I got three water manipulation and wind manipulation skills I can show him, but those were also learned with survival in mind. I’m extremely proficient in earth magic at this point, but there’s nothing I can show him there that can’t be tied back to my vow to live somehow.

“Alright, alright, I’m sure Lilith’s very happy to tell you just what she’s been up to for the past year, but what about you? Have you done anything?” Sister asks.

“Oh, uh, well… don’t catch me off guard like that, OK? I don’t… I don’t want to worry Lilith.”

“Oh come on, you have to have at least one family friendly story, right? If you can’t even do that you’re just going to worry her even more.”

“Um…” Brother looks at me, he seems to be really scared. Not of me, but of the possibility that he’d worry me.

“Just… give me a minute, OK? I’ll have a whole bunch of stories ready to tell Lilith, just give me a minute. I’m going to go back to the mansion to collect my thoughts, alright?”

Brother begins walking back towards the mansion, while Sister and I just stand there, waiting for him to get out of ear shot.

“There was one more thing you did with your Gift that you didn’t mention.” Sister says.

“I could never tell him that! Imagine how worried he’d be! Just… don’t say anything about it, OK? I don’t know what I’d do if Mother or Father found out about that.”

“I won't, I'd get in a whole lot of trouble for it too. Now that he’s back though, do you want to cut out that practice?”

“No, it’s too important to. Just keep making sure that no one finds them.”

“Alright, little sis.”

I would have gotten in a whole world of trouble if Mother or Father figured out I convinced Sister to help me with such a thing, and now that Brother’s back I’m even more worried about anyone other than Sister figuring it out.

Just what would he think if he knew his kid sister was sampling just about every poison she could get her hands on in order to gain immunity? What would he do to Sister if he knew she was the one getting me all that poison?