NOVEL NEXT Chapter 14: 14—Begging your parents
The weekend feast ended more merrily than it began. Once the performers got on stage and the alcohol began to flow, everyone's mind was occupied with getting to know themselves.
Their table was more lively, with all the retainers now trying to get on Hecate's good side. But they of course tried entertaining Percy too for some reason.
He avoided the children's table specifically so he could listen in on interesting conversations lowkey, but all the attention at the table had turned to him.
Many people wanted especially to know if he would perform his spirit affinity ceremony earlier than other children.
The spirit affinity ceremony was a tradition used to gauge a child's affinities for the different branches of Spiritmancy: Fire, water, air, earth, darkness, light. Once you knew your affinity, you would know what spells and environments you needed to train in.
Hecate politely insisted that Percy's spirit affinity ceremony would not come until he was thirteen years old like other children, unfortunately.
Later that night, all their guests either settled into their appointed room in the fortress, went outside the fortress to find accommodation, or just had an extra home in Dema. It was time to rest and prepare for tomorrow.
After his bath, Percy sat on his parents' bed, waiting to ask them if he could go out into the city tomorrow. His behavior and etiquette hadn't been that good during the feast, but Sirena reckoned Hecate would still agree.
His parents' bedroom was about as big as a person's house, something Percy personally found to be a waste of space. The floor and walls were sleek white stones that shone in the light of the single torch by the bed.
His parents' king-sized bed went mostly unused as they slept close to each other on one side of the bed. It was obvious by examining the slight accumulation of dirt…
Percy frowned. No, that was a bit too creepy. Or it could just be his amazing attention to detail. He also noticed that only one of the long rows of windows were opened, bathing the room in the silver light of the moons.
Yes, moons. This world had more than one moon. Around five based on his count, but some records said there were three other moons. The five moons didn't often appear at once, but Percy could always recognize one moon.
It was called Ajax, the broken moon. A significant portion of this moon had been shattered by something a very long time ago. Percy studied the moon for a few moments, before turning back to his mission.
His parents came out of their bathroom laughing. Thalos' jet-black hair was tied up tightly, his lean, muscular body was riddled with sword scars from all his training. The normally silent swordsman was extremely vocal with his wife.
"Then he tried fitting the entire leg into his mouth. I saw his wife turn pale when the other men started clapping."
Hecate's sublime, silver-white hair was tied in a similar style to her husband's. Her olive skin and purple eyes gleamed in the light of the single torch illuminating the room.
"His manners were lacking. His face looked like a balloon when he tried to eat that."
"He swallowed half of it without choking." Thalos shrugged. "I call that a win."
They both noticed him sitting there at the same time and grew quiet. Hecate and Thalos plopped onto the bed beside him, hands running through his hair.
"Do you want to sleep here with us?" Hecate asked, smiling coyly. She had been a bit mad when Percy stopped sleeping here.
But he knew for a fact that Thalos enjoyed the fact that they could sleep alone… he unfortunately knew. Percy suppressed a gag and asked.
"I wanted to ask you and Dad for something," he said in his best cute voice. "But I know I did bad with Nikos."
Thalos and Hecate exchanged a wry smile that they didn't want him to see. They shouldn't encourage bad behavior, but Percy had been so good.
Hecate patted his head.
"You have to make sure to be respectful to your elders. They often carry wisdom gained from long, painful years. One day, you'll be Viscount of Demetria. You'll need more friends than enemies at all times. Or at least people who act friendly."
Thalos raised an eyebrow at his wife and she mouthed "sorry" to him over Percy's head. He decided to tap in there.
"Your mother is right. A great man knows how to restrain himself. I saw you show great restraint to not insult Nikos there, but your mother had the situation in hand. And we don't want Nikos as an enemy… yet."
It was Hecate's turn to raise an eyebrow. Thalos cringed at the mistake but decided that Percy might not understand what he meant… internally he knew Percy would easily understand.
They were both right. House Eurides took most of Demetria's fighting force with them and would most likely not respond to any messages to return them. They needed to build a new standing order of knights and soldiers, and they needed money to hire that army.
People like Nikos were annoying, but they could be dealt with later. Hecate understood that, and used his constant disrespect and supposed treason to set a precedent.
You could fear House Eurides and decide not to interfere in the silent war that was coming, but she would not tolerate conspiring with enemies.
Nikos was let off the hook this time. The next time he crossed Hecate… well, she couldn't be blamed for being ruthless.
This grace and fear was a tightrope she had to walk to make sure the retainers would want to trust her more than Count Sion.
Hecate waved away all those heavy thoughts. Her purple eyes gleamed as she leaned closer to him.
"So what do you want so badly that you finally come to speak to your parents?"
Percy snorted.
"I talk to you all the time. I just wanted to ask if we could go into the city tomorrow."
Hecate's forehead creased with confusion.
"That's what you wanted to ask for? Of course, we'll go tomorrow morning. I've been meaning to see the town more, and let the people see me."
Thalos nodded.
"Staying inside is not a good way for children to grow; they are like plants. They must receive light and food."
Children were not plants. Black holes that sucked away all your food, time, and money? Yes. Plants that stay in one place and just need water and manure? No. But that wasn't important.
He jumped off the bed a bit excited, grinning as he waved goodbye.
"Make sure to sleep early. We'll go in the morning and come back before mommy's afternoon meetings."
Hecate frowned.
"Why do I feel like we're the ones being taken outside for a walk? Also, I thought you were sleeping here?"
He ran off as Hecate chased after him playfully. He shut the door to his adjoined room laughing and just onto his smaller bed.
The room was originally meant for on-duty guards, but Percy was sleeping there because Hecate wouldn't let him sleep too far away.
He yawned, drained and very well fed by the long day of festivities. He decided to sit up and take a look at himself in the mirror on the wall just at the foot of his bed.
His hair seemed to be confused on what color to take. Hecate's silver-white or Thalos' jet-black. So it just said "fuck it" and went half white and half black.
His eyes were even more confused. They flashed purple or gray depending on what light you looked at them in. If Percy wasn't in a fantasy world, he would have thought he reincarnated with his old man brain.
The face was a bit chubby and some of his teeth were missing from falling while he was running around that one time. But he could see the hints that he would be good-looking when he was older.
He had to thank Nyx for her grace; he was set not only to inherit all of his parents' best features, but to have magical talent. His future scared him a bit, with both dual affinities and Arete.
Percy shivered dramatically, then he remembered his last gift from the goddess of the Hollows. He willed his system screen to open.
✧───✦ [ Status Window ] ✦───✧
༺ Name: Perseus Amphene
༺ Age: 13
༺ Race: Human
━━━━━━ ✦ Attributes ✦ ━━━━━━
༺ Strength : 10
༺ Agility : 10
༺ Constitution : 10
༺ Stamina : 10
༺ Spirit Energy : 10
༺ Intelligence : 10
━━━━━━ ✦ Skills ✦ ━━━━━━
• Spiritmancy : Rank 0 (Untrained)
↳ [ No spells learned ]
• Arete : Rank 0 (Untrained)
↳ [ No techniques learned ]
━━━━━━ ✦ Quests ✦ ━━━━━━
– Daily Quest : [ Delayed until age ten ]
– Optional Quests : [ Two available ]
━━━━━ ✦ Rewards ✦ ━━━━━
– None currently.
━━━━━━ ✦ Storage ✦ ━━━━━━
– Bread
– Water
– Dagger
–Rucksack
–Soap…(Click to expand)
✧─────────────────✧
All his stats were easy to understand except intelligence. They were all set to standard human value before training, but there was no way his intelligence was at the standard level for humans.
It most likely had something to do with magic. Spiritmancy he would start learning when he was thirteen years old, but Arete depended on when Thalos decided he was ready. For now he just did some breathing exercises and jogged in the morning.
He focused on his quests. Daily quests that he could have till he was old enough, which was infuriating, but optional quests were new.
He mentally selected the optional quests, relaxing back into the bed and before immediately sitting right back up.
His eyes widened.
━━━━━ ✦ Optional Storage ✦ ━━━━━
– Make some friends, you weirdo (Given by Nyx): Your loner nature worries the goddess, Nyx. Tomorrow on your visit to the city, make just one friend. Rewards: One Rank 1 customizable reward, two additional stat points.
– Kill Baron Nokis before he leaves Dema (Given by Aether): Hasn't the baron disrespected your family enough? Even now he conspires with former Viscount Sion to assassinate your father. Kill him before he can escape to his barony. Rewards: One Rank 3 customizable reward, ten additional stat points.
✧─────────────✧