The magical video feed cut after Sylph asked for alone ti. The oath in place kept the ntal connection at a still frequency. John, Nathalia, Nahoa, Aclysia, Lee, Gno, Salamander and Layla all stood in total silence. None of them had said anything for a while.
‘Have we been taking Sylph for granted?’
The question did not have to be spoken to be shared between them. It didn’t have to be pushed through the ntal connection either. It simply existed between them, each of them moving through their mories. The initial question’s answer was obvious, not because of what they felt but because of what she felt.
Sylph could be unreasonable. She could be a bouncy annoyance that just did what she wanted, but she never aid at anyone’s detrint. There was not a malicious wisp in her essence. Even when it ca to their enemies, the volt bunny was not soone to strike with full force unless those she cared about were hurt.
If that bundle of joy, if that most optimistic of people among them, struggled with inadequacy, then to deny that they had been doing sothing wrong would have been an insult to her cheerful spirit. To say they had no part in this was to forsake their responsibility to the current her. To better themselves so they could keep this optimistic soul alive was their duty. To stay their hand was to kill it through inaction, like a lack of maintenance to a house was surrendering it to the status of ruin.
Such behaviour could be warranted. Not every personality trait ought to be maintained or encouraged. People made the decision to criticize, to ignore or to praise behaviours every day. Such was the nature of relationships and community.
They did not want Sylph to lose what made her their Sylph.
“It seems I knew your air spirit better than you did, Gar,” Veridion mocked. “In all of her pathetic issues.”
John did not initially react to the words at all. His mind was elsewhere, the entirety of his erudition focused on what he could do to help Sylph. Two other bodies elsewhere had fallen silent in the middle of business etings. None of any of that mattered. Veridion mattered even less. All the sa, the primitive mind beneath the thoughts had John’s head slowly turn.
“I AM GOING TO FUCKING MURDER YOU!” Layla screeched. She was starting to spring towards the smug god of oaths, stopped on the first step by the hand that clamped around her wrist. Growling and stretching, Layla failed to advance towards Veridion. Gno’s arm was an unbreakable tether. “Let go!”
“Be quiet,” Gno responded with a demand of her own, spoken with all the certainty of an ancient oak. “This is about Sylph. He doesn’t matter right now.”
Layla’s head turned left to right, her brown hair whipping with every repetition. Her belaboured breathing cald forcefully. Finally, Gno released the reforming stalker’s wrist. Though she coiled up, ready to sprint again, she ultimately remained put. “I hate you,” she whispered. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you…”
Veridion showed a rare smile.
John felt the arcane might crackle in his veins. A simple exertion of his will and he could make the sky fall on this haughty-
“H-hey.”
The single muttered word wiped away all rage. Sylph had erged from the Swirling Point. She hovered a bit above the cliffside, her green-clad, pale form contrasting the ocean blue. Hair longer than she was tall swayed in her own breeze, the wild, straight strands painting the shape of the wind itself.
Sylph, their ever-smiling volt bunny, was an image of misery. Defensively, one green-gloved hand held the elbow of the other arm. Facing them fully seed impossible to her. One bare shoulder was slightly forward. Her head was turned to the side; her eyes focused on anything that wasn’t them.
Nervously, she kept rubbing her arm. “So… I failed that…” she muttered.
[Sad Sylph AI: scdn.imgchest/files/a9197293452e.png ]
John wasn’t about to dishonour her by telling her she had no reason to be ashad. She had lost, ultimately, and denying that reality would be insulting. What he could do, what he had to do, instead was to simply… be there for her.
Taking her lowered hand between his own, he gently tugged at her. Weightless, she was easy to pull into the hug.
Sylph had predicted their reaction with absolute accuracy. That did not an they would do anything differently. Dragging her back a step with him, John created enough space by the ledge for the other won to join into the hug. It was uncomfortably hot in the tropical heat, but that did not matter. They desperately tried to express all the support they could through this gesture.
“I am sorry,” John muttered.
“That’s stupid, you’re stupid,” Sylph muttered. “Why would you be sorry? I am the one that just failed. You can’t be sorry for failing because of sothing I didn’t know about myself. Stop being stupid. I love you, you are the smartest, you shouldn’t be stupid.” Her face and further words disappeared against his shoulder. Nervous tension in her bunny ears gradually loosened, until they were heartachingly slumping things.
“Gar!” Veridion shouted.
‘I am going to kill him,’ John thought. ‘I am going to turn his head into a sar on so random fucking rock.’ “What?!” he snapped at the god of oaths.
“I expect you to refrain from placing your spies on the trial grounds in the future.”
John pulled his eyebrows together. Had Fianna been out there? No, he couldn’t sense her ntal connection. Whatever she was doing, it wasn’t in this or any connected Natural Barrier. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“I am sure you don’t,” Veridion stated, then raised his hand to leave.
John, wanting to be entirely removed from all of this, followed suit. Moving into her incorporeal state, Sylph entered seclusion again. Attempts to reach out to her mind were made, but gently rebuked. She wanted to reflect on herself on her own. For a social thunderstrike like her, it was highly unusual behaviour, but perhaps it was for the best. It was impossible to say with these matters.
Moving from Honolulu back to their Hawaii compound was a relatively quick affair. The most populated island was also the best connected. Once they were inside the walls of their mansion, Sylph manifested again.
“Okay!” she declared. “I refuse to have all of you worry, so let’s all get together and get this sorted, and then we can just move on, okay? Okay!”
John was not sure he was okay with that, but he was swallowing that for the mont. By gestured demand, everyone besides the air spirit herself sat down. Short as she was, she barely stood above all of them – she jumped onto the table. That gave her the height she needed to look ‘authoritative’.
“I am NOT unhappy! I want you to get that into your skull, okay? There is no need to feel bad about how you treated or beat yourself up or anything, okay? I am not blaming anyone, okay? Is that okay? Are we getting what I am saying? Everyone picking up what I am putting down?”
“Yes,” Gno spoke for everyone.
“Nuh-uh! No lying!”
“It’s not-“
“You are looking all so miserable! I don’t want that, stop looking so miserable!” Sylph petulantly stomped her foot. The poor coffee table rattled. “You love and I love that and I love you and I appreciate all the hugs and the kisses and the offers and the worry, but you are not helping by suddenly making the centre of the world or anything. I am not the kind of girl that wants to be coddled when I am sad. Not that there’s anything wrong with being Eliana!”
Despite the heavy mood, that coaxed so giggles out of the crowd. John was not among them. He was looking at his hands. “Sylph… maybe that’s the problem?” he asked. “That you aren’t even the slightest bit selfish is… amicable, but…”
“I am plenty shellfish… selfish!” The arcvolt elental shook her head to clear her word stumbling. “I take all of your money and all of your attention and all I give back are positive vibes.”
“That’s plenty,” Gno assured. “We never would ask more from you.”
“I know but I am not sure I don’t want to ask more from ,” Sylph returned, her cheerful tone giving way for a deeper, serious voice. “I really, really, really appreciate all of you and I know that I can rely on you being supportive. If I need to, I will tell you what you can do for . I will! Until then… I have no idea what I actually want.”
Sylph’s hand went halfway to her arm, her head starting to turn. For a mont, it looked like she would assu that guilty pose again. Then, she reverted course, pulling her shoulders back and facing all of them confidently.
“I just found this out about myself. I am not even sure yet what it actually ans. Do I truly mind being this… bland? If I do, what do I do about it? I don’t want to change for change’s sake. I want to be the happy one, I want to make all of you smile with my hijinks, but I also want to know that I am more than a set of impulses.” Sylph paused for a mont. “When I raise my child, I want to know what I am doing, not just… do what I intuit is right. I’m not stupid enough anymore to just… be.”
Collective silence stretched across the room. The ultimately dissatisfying reality settled in that this was one of these things where only one of them could truly do anything about it. Worse, it was sothing where the answer wasn’t obvious, a best one could not be found, and finding any one of them would take ti.
A long sigh flowed from Gno’s lips. As the leader of the elentals, she was the first to speak. “I worry about you,” the season elental said, all shyness buried under her responsibility. “But… I get it. I do. We’ll just… let you deal with this… and try not to change too much.”
“Thank you,” Sylph said two words and nothing else.
The air spirit jumped off the table, then plopped down next to Salamander. An awkward second passed, in which the fire spirit was visibly uncertain what to do. Ultimately, she did exactly as Sylph had requested: acting as usual. “Look at you, worrying everyone,” she said, bumping shoulders with the much shorter woman.
“Yeah, I get to do that too! How does it feel, silly Sally? To see the airhead do sothing stupid and my depression symptoms are still way smarter than yours! I an, I just have to reflect on being a too-perfect daughter of the wind, youuuuuu summon horrid eldritch abominations to give you cool body markings.”
“Fuck off.” Salamander laughed. The two started to wrangle, sothing John stopped by clearing his throat.
Getting back into the swing of regularity took a bit, but it was his only option. “We are now 3 for 2,” he told everyone. “Which ans we have to win both of the remaining challenges. The worriso part is that Veridion gets to pick for us one more ti.”
“Veridion also appears to be losing support,” Nahoa chid in.
“It is no wonder.” Aclysia crossed her arms. “I believe he may have tinkered with the execution of so of these tests to ss with the outco. I refuse to believe that a ruler would be given a loss for defending his loves.”
John was not entirely sure about that one. He still hated that he had lost the trial, but it wasn’t like he couldn’t see the argunt for putting the victory of the nation ahead of the health of the family. Simultaneously, Hawaii did not strike him as the kind of cold and ruthless place that would encourage such a pragmatic viewpoint. Maybe Aclysia was onto sothing…
She certainly was onto sothing in the broader picture. The Fire Trial had been raised to a level of difficulty that had been absurd, looked at in the context of the wider Abyss. Lee wasn’t an experienced fighter, sure, but she was much better than 99% of all Abyssals that had ever lived. Nathalia had been humiliated to degrees that were truly pushing it. Nahoa had been tempted with offers that would have changed global politics.
Ironically, only today’s trial felt mostly reasonable. Even then, the level of scrutiny felt a bit much and why was it a loss to admit to faults? Were these trials looking for a good ruler or a perfect one? Because the latter didn’t exist…
“It could very well be that Veridion is organizing these trials in a way that is harsher than originally intended and it’s annoying the locals,” John agreed. “Plus, the others don’t seem very happy with the way he is goading us. Kael, especially, has grown distant for soone that is in the sa faction.”
“And then he accuses us of sending a spy into the field,” Layla hissed.
“Which is another matter,” John said, not even reacting to the ‘us’. Considering Layla had commanded Fianna to go on a few missions the last couple of days, it was accurate. “We didn’t. Veridion is a vile shit-heel, but he isn’t incompetent. Plus, there was this phantom Nathalia swiped at during her trial.”
“Are we assuming that was sothing?” the dragoness asked.
“Unlike , you aren’t in the habit of being paranoid,” John said. “When your instincts tell you there was danger there and then we get another clue sothing is wrong, we should keep an eye on it.”
“I don’t need Fianna anymore,” Layla revealed. “So, if you want to, you can put her on that.”
“I will,” John agreed with a nod. “Could be any kind of actor, not like we got a shortage of them these days.”
“Who all would be interested in this, potentially?” Lee started to count factions on her fingers. “Illuminati, Azure Tribe, Great Sultanate, Protheus, Sons of Ro, the other mbers of the Concord, Devos, Tzitzimih, Judas…”
“Not to ntion the remaining potential for an Awakened Latebloor,” John added and shook his head. He never thought he would… no, he didn’t actually have any nostalgia for the simplicity of the Lorylim threat. Sure, that had made the situation morally simple, but he was much happier playing global politics than interacting with the nihilistic chaos mushroom. Even the most hostile enemy factions still could be reasoned with. What everyone wanted was fairly clear.
Who would get what, that was the question on everyone’s mind.
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