Celestial Hall
Omni POV
The area where the meeting was taking place was a dimension of only white, except for the seven giant balls of light that radiated colors of different wavelengths.
"This injustice can't be allowed to persist without retribution; otherwise, other celestials will see fit to breach our dimensional walls again! We need compensation," Aerisyl spoke, his voice filled with clear hatred for whoever had the gall to cross them.
"Cool your spirit, brother. We don't even know who sent those souls through the dimensional wall in the first place, and you need to remember there are other celestials whom we can't mess with. Shall I remind you we all nearly died because of your challenge to TOAA?" Verdalyn said, clearly disappointed at his brother's lack of foresight.
Noxira, seeing that her little brothers were finished with their argument, asked the oldest and strongest among them,
"Brother, what did you learn when you interacted with them before?"
Ignara, hearing the question, took a moment of silence. No one knowing what was going through his mind at the moment, he responded with his usual emotionless tone.
"When I first sensed the foreign energies, I tried eliminating them, but it would seem they have inbuilt defenses and they only needed a few moments of exposure to my celestial energy to get acquainted with it," he released a small sigh, the only sign of what he was feeling.
"Now, whenever my energy interacts with theirs, mine is absorbed and integrated into theirs. And of the seven that arrived, they only needed to sacrifice two. One was split into two, but the two healed into complete souls due to my energy, so it doesn't seem like a sacrifice. The other was pulled into a time gap that was formed due to the collision of energies, but I still sense it 300 years into the past," with that, he finally finished.
To that, Noxira responded with a sigh.
"So what you are saying is that since you can't do anything, we can't either, since our energy is an offshoot of yours, and let me guess, you can't trace their origins?"
The silence that followed was all the answer she needed.
Amethyne finally entered the conversation with a question of her own.
"So, what is it that we can do here?"
"Nothing but observe for now, but we can't let this distract us from our main battle. The black beasts still try to invade our plane to this day. So while the rest of us keep an eye on the evasion forces, Somara and Lunara will keep tabs on the intruders," Ignara said with a tone of finality, suggesting this was the end of the meeting.
Kingdom of Holfort, Bartfort Barony, The Farmshed
On a stormy night, and to make it worse for those who believed in ill omens, an eclipse was also taking place.In a shed that lay a few meters away from an opulent mansion, we could hear the labored cries of a woman giving birth.
"You can do this, Madam Luce! The first one is almost out! Just a little more; for the children, I need you to push!"
Balcus, hearing the midwife's words, couldn't help but clench his jaws, for he had never felt this weak before. Even during the birth of his two previous children, the twins, Luce didn't seem to be in the same pain that she felt now.
The approaching sounds of his two children, Nicks and Jenna, were what pulled him out of his self-loathing.
"Daddy, is mommy going to be okay?" Nicks, already 3 years old, could understand that his mother was in a lot of pain, and while Jenna at two couldn't be as intuitive as Nicks, she could sense that something was off.Balcus did the only thing he could: he hugged his children tight and whispered into their ears,
"Don't worry, Luce is a strong woman and she will make it through." No one knew if he was telling them or affirming it for himself, not even him, but it did work in calming his and his children's nerves.The moment he heard crying in the next room, there was nothing he wanted to do more than run to his wife's side, but he knew he had to hold on, for she had just won half the battle.A voice in the delivery room proved his thesis:
"Madam, you're almost there, please hang on!"
After what felt like an eternity to him,
Balcus finally heard the second cry of a baby, followed by the appearance of Agatha, his wife's midwife.
"The delivery was a success, both the children are safe, and the nun is administering healing magic on Lady Luce so she is expected to make a healthy recovery," Agatha announced.
"With this, I hope you've had your fill of children because I don't think Luce will want any more after this." To make her point stick, she even gave him a firm slap on the head.
"Now go and see your children. I'll look after the little ones." Few could do that and even fewer dared to treat the lord of their land like this, but since Agatha was the person who helped birth Balcus, she had a pass to do so.
Stepping into the delivery room, he saw maids (at least the ones Zola allowed him to have help with the procedure) clean what was left of the messy room. Slowly approaching the bed, he saw his wife with clear signs of the ordeal she had endured.
"My love, how are you holding?" His voice was what seemed to have roused her from her sleep.
"My babies, how are they, where are they?" she asked in a flurry.Balcus, seeing his wife's worry for her children clearly exceeding her own well-being, couldn't help but fall in love with her all over again.
"Luce, don't worry, the children are safe, but you on the other hand are not, so please rest. I'll bring them to you," he said, at the same time signaling for the maid who had just finished cleaning the twins to bring them over.
"My lord, the two are perfect replicas of one another except for their eyes. The firstborn has green, while the second one has gold eyes," the maid said while handing them to their father.
"Thank you, Alicia."With the twins in hand, he carefully sat beside his wife in a way that allowed her to see them.With a small, powerless smile she asked,
"Darling, do you have names for the two of them?"
"Leon for the oldest and Lex for the youngest," he said with a smile.
While looking at her two children Luce said to herself, "Leon and Lex for Bartfort, they are fitting names."
The parents sat there in silence, not knowing that they were holding the two people who would become the strongest of the world, where side by side they would change the entire realm's future.