The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 454 - Painting People By Numbers & Gifts By Level Of Atonement

Heavy doors sealed shut behind Elua as she emerged from another afternoon lecture session. Inside, Zyris continued her meditative exercises, no longer requiring constant supervision to prevent panic attacks. The older woman’s progress remained expectedly slow - but the stark terror had faded into more manageable wariness... after enough talk from an ancient teacher.

One who cared for her newest ’disciple’ *only* somewhere between Madrigil - a 3 out of 100 on ’other noisy spirits vs my beloved’s clear tone’ - and Sevra... who might score a 15 on a good day. With Onya scoring an incredible 60 and her parents averaging something like a 35... it was rather clear that her priority scale for caring deeply over anything about most people was *incredibly* tilted.

"Master!"

One of the two 25’s in her life, Nohre called from the center of the main hall where she and Fusand had been practicing their hand-to-hand techniques. The green-eyed girl bounded toward her with obvious excitement, braided hair bouncing with each step before she slid forward on the ground with her leg out, in an attempt to trip the brunette.

A light hop and step on an air panel for the heiress dodged it as she also ducked over the flying boy trying to aim a scissor throw at her neck and shoulders with his legs. Her hand reached up and caught the back of his collar before the Goltbred unceremoniously twisted her wrist and dumped him on top of his fiancee - so that they would lightly bonk heads.

"Better teamwork, but not quite ready to use against competent fighters."

"Ahaha... I thought it would work this time. Are you sure you didn’t hesitate?"

"I moved when you did, I’m just not as fast. Maybe I should be the one on the first attack?"

Watching as the sandy haired teen pushed himself off the stone over Nohre and his partner rubbed her thumb over the spot on his forehead that hit hers, El shook her head. Not at their rapid switch to easy and open skinship so much as the scholar’s ’excuse’ for their failure. To the mint eyed cultivator, who could read his spirit like a book, he was clearly trying to sow the *idea* that the girl would be the ’bigger threat’ next time so that less attention would be paid to him!

’Crafty little fox. I need to show him how to use his Dust as distractions. Also perhaps grind some of that dragon-bird’s feathers into something he can manipulate. A spirit blocking cloud of powder around his essence field be quite the tool in his arsenal when he can perform Adhesion...’

"How did today’s session go?"

"She’s starting to understand the difference between being a wielder of an Element and being composed of it."

The biggest breakthrough in her outlook had come when Elua explained her potential... for healing. For working with Nohre on extracting the miasmic contamination that had entered and lingered in livestock, mortals, and the rare cultivator like herself. Compressing the ’nothing’ together to release into the air safely, instead of allowing its tendency to spread and push away ’reality’ to break down lives even post-Descent.

The hours she spent now involved reaching for the sense to manipulate the edges of spaces between matter itself, after the little pushes and explanations from the willing. Grabbing onto ’nothing’ was impossible for most, even if the essence field told you a concept was ’there’. Some Air themed cultivators ran into the same issue at first, but at least then you could physically *feel* the movement of wind and taste the quality of air in your lungs.

That triple understanding - through the sense of your essence field, a physical reaction, and an understanding by your spirit is what allowed such Elements to be controllable.

’Telling her to just wiggle the edges of *everything* is hardly good advice. Even if its basically what I need her to... that she needs to do so I can stop using my noontime on her.’

"Come on. You can try to hit me again for a while. I promise I won’t toss you into the air... *very far* again this time."

Her days had changed greatly from tinkering constantly with her automatons or constructions and any other project she might have started on a whim. Now, she worked for a bit in the early morning on the wedding plans before spending social time with the two disciples, lecturing the Dame Talcres, and then sparring with the pair to keep them busy... before retreating some time after dusk to private works.

Little to none of it, beyond what the spiritual constructs already had orders to do, involved work on shaping the Exclave towards her purposes. And it was making her feel like she was wasting time, even if there were years ahead. That being said... the disciples had proven valuable company for talking with more emotion and she was glad her Qat sent them.

But the news they brought piled more work on her plate. The kind that was pressing and required solitude and concentration that their cheerful chatter she liked to be around would disrupt. After two hours of martial chat that was more ’frustrated’ than ’joyful’ out of them, Elua er Goltbred moved toward the stairs leading down to her private workshop.

"We’ll be in the library if you need anything. Fusand brought some interesting history books from the Talcres to pass the time. Just let us know when you... will accept the other things we brought. Okay?"

Looking back over at the pair before her head went below their sightline, the conflicted ’smile’ and nod she gave them - over the 14th birthday gifts she would not let herself open *yet* in some form of atonement... sent an astringent taste right into their very spirits.

⟠ ⟠ ⟠

Surrounded by precisely organized tools and materials on her primary workbench, all of which had taken these months to create or refine from the Exclave’s natural resources, two particular projects demanded her attention this week while the others had been tossed onto tables 2-7. Both had been born from the sense of guilt that had driven her to tears high in the atmosphere - and both represented her attempt to transform that regret into something actually useful.

On the left, the prosthetic eye lay partially completed. Mimicked and modified from an old memory of one such cultivator tool she had disassembled a long, long time ago to find out how it worked. After stealing it out of the eye socket of that particular spiritualist Guild’s beloved mascot - a large cat that had chased her away from the inner library over and over when she tried to sneak in.

’Crystalline structure inscribed with the foundational sigils. I’ll test tonight that it can generally interface with a cultivator’s spiritual sense and then do some more of the prep to refine it towards her individual use.’

To her right, all the fabricated components for the tissue regenerator awaited its final assembly. Unlike the simple healing brooches she’d created - even the one for Qat - this device required far more sophisticated manipulation. It needed to stimulate cellular regeneration by rallying the target’s physical energy without triggering any cancerous growth... a problem often found in rituals meant to heal ’too quickly’.

"The main goal is to promote her healing safely without leaving excessive scar tissue on her face and to fix almost anything located in the orbit except the eye itself, including osseous matter which can be helped along by her Bone Physique. All while remaining stable enough for repeated use."

She spoke to her disused tools while condensing her essence to a very tiny point that provided finer manipulation than her hands could achieve. The artificial eye needed to translate information captured through the minuscule optical mirror into signals that her mother’s brain could process. The finer parts of which would actually require the woman to be available for proper tuning.

"The optical nerve interfacing physically without any issues remains a harsh limit I won’t be able to fix with my knowledge, even if I could grow an eye for her. Or if I ripped mine out to give to her. Maybe someday Nohre can do something more..."

As it was, the ideas she was employing made the ’glass’ eye - with sheets of crushed and refused mint gems inset inside with a pattern to mimic the color of her mother’s iris exactly... not merely a very fine cosmetic replacement, but a functional restoration of sight through one ancient cultivator’s excessive knowhow. Tracing sigil patterns into the synthesized parts had taken so much focus these nights that she actually was able to forget for a while.

That her whole effort here might be for naught.

While she was confident that Yatrel er Goltbred, famed duelist and loyal wife, would pick the option that would allow her to fight closer to full capacity without enduring the lifestyle adjustments that would come with having only a single eye... her mother was also a very proud woman. Such a ’gift’ that effectively nullified the sacrifice she made might not be as well received as the eldest daughter hoped. But Elua simply could not bring herself to fail to show her the options she could think of, as unfitting as they were to the level of the continent’s technology.

The tissue regenerator she was more confident would be acceptable. Missing an eye was one thing, but scars on that beautiful face were going to damage her spirit... no matter how much her father just shrugged the change off. As a woman who had been in love enough times to feel she could say so, a willingness to endure hardship in the sake of one’s goal even when your beloved has to also live with the consequences of your actions was exquisitely touching.

And made it all the more insidious that it often fell absolutely flat to the whispering inner demons of vanity. Once born, they sometimes kept silent. But they always knew when to strike... and Elua knew she would do whatever it took to remain cute and attractive to the person she loved the most. No matter how ill-advised or dangerous.

"Mother always was too protective of our family. Which is why staying still is so hard. I need to put her at ease. Like I know Qat would want me to be in that situation."

The words escaped as barely a whisper while she calibrated the essence containment matrices. Each carefully placed sigil became another act of that atonement she sought. Hours passed unmarked as she alternated between the two devices, testing each component before moving to the next phases of her blueprint... which bridged a hybrid technological gap between classical sigil work and natural physics.

Both projects had finally reached ’completion’ at the end of that late night, a whole week after learning the news. Created from knowledge that spanned millennia and guilt that would likely last as long - since it had never fully faded in many other instances of her memory. They were not perfect solutions because Elua knew she was not a perfect genius.

"But they are genuine choices. That I made. That she can make. Sometimes... that has to be enough."