"He said he sensed something 'not right' about him," Terezio finished, looking down at the juice in his cup as he swirled it.
Dresan looked uncomfortably from his new-found grandparents to his unmoved mother, who seemed to be closely inspecting her beautifully carved wooden fork before putting it back into the half-cold food left on her dinner plate.
"Not right how?" the middle-aged mage finally asked as he tore his eyes away. "Did the man sense any enchantment, any compulsion?"
"No," Terezio said in a disapproving tone, looking up from his juice. "The battlemage said it was as though a spell was absent. That something magical should have been there, and it wasn't. You really must listen more carefully."
Dresan rolled his eyes immediately, nearly out of force of habit.
"Did your mother teach you to do that?" Druce chirped sharply. "It's very rude- Trizelle, why did you allow him to learn that?"
The grey haired female pursed her lips and continued to look down at her utensil without uttering a single word in reply.
"Trizelle, your mother spoke to you," Terezio warned, the eyes behind his spectacles narrowing.
Although Trizelle still didn't bother to look up, she did finally speak. "Did she exhibit unusual behavior?"
"What?" chorused three of the four other diners at the table.
"Silveredge," Urmlaspyr's court mage said flatly. "Unusual behavior?"
The retired battlemage recovered himself first, but still spoke with a note of surprise. "The Oversword noted that it seemed as though the Sunfire mage had enslaved her again. Her answers weren't always to the point, even when she'd been asked direct questions of identification."
"Unusual?" Trizelle repeated for a third time, finally looking up at her father with a weary gaze.
You really must listen more carefully, Dresan thought bitterly.
"I believe I can say the same to you," a powerful something said inside the Tiefling's mind. The message was so strong that Dresan's head throbbed momentarily in response. Self-conscious and concerned that he may slip into a fit of possession at the dinner table, he began to study his own fork.
Terezio raised an eyebrow at his daughter's disenchanted look, then answered. "A soldier close to her said that she spoke directly to the dog after he scratched her up. As though he would understand her."
Trizelle broke gaze with her father, looking back down at her plate. "Aleksei?"
And the Dragonborn, who had remained painfully silent for most of the meal, looked up from the table to Dresan, then to Trizelle before answering. "This is strange for Niku, but not for Rasha."
" 'Niku' is mangled Elven," Dresan noted quietly enough to be speaking to himself. "Funny that none of my compatriots ever spoke of her."
"They wouldn't," Trizelle replied simply in a similarly quiet voice. Without any emotive note or shade of feeling on her face, her son was unable to tell whether her words had been a comment on the competence of his companions or on the nature of the Shadar-kai herself.
"That's not nice, to trade secrets at the table," Druce pronounced firmly, setting her utensil down completely. "Now, really, Triz, I know I didn't raise you to do such things; I don't know why you permitted your son to learn them."
"I raised my son with no help from you, or anyone," Trizelle finally replied, looking her mother straight into the eyes. "Perhaps some delicate or polite qualities were overlooked in the process."
"There were a few useful details omitted as well," the powerful something soothed inside Dresan's head. The recipient of the message bit his lips, trying to ignore whatever-it-was until he could get a chance to speak to his mother about it.
A few moments of intensely uncomfortable silence passed between the diners.
"How old is Niku, Aleksei?" Dresan asked when he had released his hold on his lips, fidgeting slightly in his seat.
Aleksei shook his head. "I am not sure. He is big, but he comes and goes only when Rasha is asking, or when he himself is wanting to do so."
"So he doesn't recognize commands, then?" Dresan wondered. "Would the Sunfire sell him untrained?"
"You think he's a familiar," Terezio suggested, locking eyes with the middle-aged mage even though he was speaking to his daughter.
"Yes," Trizelle noted. "Silveredge has raw talent."
"If he's too young to recognize standard commands, he's too young to be a familiar," Terezio volleyed sharply, still staring at Dresan as though it had been his idea.
"And if she hasn't been trained in how to command a familiar- if she asks him to do what she needs instead of commanding him- she can't possibly have full control over him," Dresan noted.
"Loyalty," Trizelle replied without losing a moment. "Strengthens focus."
"Enough to bind a puppy bred for fighting to a weak, inexperienced mage?" Terezio wondered aloud.
"Positively," Trizelle answered, finally looking straight at her son. Dresan, somehow strangely encouraged, focused on following her train of thought.
"If the dog had been a familiar, the bonding magic would have been sensed," the retired battlemage grunted.
"If he is a familiar, he would try to protect her-" Dresan began, interested in his mother's look. Her eyes seemed to be opened, somehow- "vulnerable" was the only adjective that seemed to fit, and he wondered if that was his own idea.
"-but she protected him, instead," Trizelle finished.
"So the 'missing' spell-"
"-was instead a magic aura."
Mother and son, in that strange moment, realized each other as if for the first time. Trizelle broke the spell first, looking back down at her fork as though it were the most interesting thing in the room. The open, vulnerable quality in her gaze disappeared, and Dresan felt somehow different for having experienced it.
Closer to her? More understanding of her?
"No. More power over her."
Dresan drained the wine in his cup completely, drawing Trizelle's faint attention and a stare from Druce.
"Not possible," Terezio muttered grumpily, shaking his head. "The battlemage should have been able to perceive the glamer-work immediately."
"There is the blood abjuration theory," Dresan suddenly said, as though the theory had just explained itself to him.
"No," Trizelle said, shaking her head. "Shadow Child."
"Blood abjuration," the old man cut in sharply, as though his daughter hadn't spoken at all. "The battlemage did say-"
Dresan, who had set his fork down, began figuring the factors aloud. "I remember- 'If self-inflicted physical damage can be made inversely proportional to incoming damage, be it physical or magical in nature, there should be a point at which the incoming damage can be reduced lower than the lowest species standard damage threshold,' right?"
"But if the target of the physical damage is capable of transmutating their own blood into a magical focus, she needs only to select the spell best able to counteract the incoming damage," Trizelle replied.
"But only one being has been known to successfully transmutate self-inflicted damage into usable magica of any kind-"
"The Raven Queen," Trizelle injected with an impenetrable mask of dispassion on her face.
"-by the misguided 'benevolence' of Nerull himself, and at the cost of hundreds of trapped souls. I... don't know if there are... mortal... blood abjurers-"
"That is because the only mortal practitioners of blood abjuration," Trizelle counseled in a tone that Dresan immediately recognized as her teaching voice, "are all 'Shadow Children,' or Shadar-kai who, by means still not fully researched, are naturally capable of transmuting their own physical or mental damage into potential arcane or divine energy."
"The Shadow Child 'theory' is a political and religious pacifier," Terezio interjected. "It's meant to keep the rabble from clamoring for a genocidal-"
"No, the ability to transmute damage into potential magical energy is a testable trait," Dresan mused slowly. "Although it... is... notably... a.... bloodline trait."
"You're welcome," the deep ethereal voice soothed. "You have a few... bloodline traits, let us say... yourself. Your ability to commune with me this easily is one of them."
Aleksei closed his eyes, feeling the maddening pain burning through his self-control. Whispers, unintelligible to the spirit that was trying to deafen itself to them by strength of will alone, skittered like mice through his mind. On the other side of both his lids, Trizelle had stolen a glance at him, then looked over to her son.
"You're saying that the Shado- the Shadar-kai, rather- incited her own familiar to attack her with the intention of temporarily covering up the familiar bond," Terezio remarked, looking from his grandson to his daughter with irritation printed plainly on his face.
"Yes," Trizelle stated flatly, having gone on to other matters in her mind.
Her mother, sitting immediately across the table from her, had the irritating desire to kick her daughter in the shins. The distant, empty stare was even worse than the unreasonable staring at the fork, yet it was just as normal now for Trizelle as it had been decades ago.
"First of all, the dog is too young," Terezio snapped bitterly. "Second, not only is the Shadar-kai too inexperienced to hide a familiar bond from a trained Cormite battlemage, she is too inexperienced to have any sort of familiar at all. Now, I tell you again, Trizelle, there are no such things as-"
"And how do you explain the 'missing' spell?" Urmlaspyr's court mage said calmly.
"There wasn't a 'missing' spell," the retired battlemage snorted, annoyed at the idea that he could be talked down to at all, let alone by a child of his. "The creature had a gal-ralan, as most of her kind do. When the dog attacked her, the gal-ralan absorbed the damage, creating a slight energy vacuum. I explained that to the boy, and-"
"Neither an implement's absorption nor a practitioner's transmutation of physical damage would result in an energy vacuum of any kind," Trizelle replied.
"And what happened to Thultanthar, then?" Terezio demanded. "Did it just float into the Plane of Shadow on its own?"
"It was magically shifted into the Plane of Shadow via the strongest teleportation spell documented to date," Trizelle responded without missing a beat. "For the past decade, there have been yearly HCC conferences held in Myth Drannor on whether or not that spell should be recast for testing; would you like to attend one?"
"HCC?" Druce piped up. "What's that? I've never heard-"
"The Human Conjuration Council, dear, and it's because no one from here is affiliated- for good reason, may I add," Terezio answered without taking his eyes away from his daughter. "Human only in name, it's got Elans, Gnomes- Shadovar themselves-"
"Shadar-kai, Battlemage Ranclyffe," Trizelle reminded immediately. "Not every-"
"Well, I fail to see the difference, then, Master Ranclyffe!" Terezio rumbled, allowing his fork to thunk down to his half-finished dinner plate.
"Now, Rezi-" Druce began comfortingly.
"Bloodlines," Trizelle shot back. "This has been tested as well, although some findings are rumored to be lost to the collapse of the Turathi Empire. Only the Human bloodline Shadar-kai of Thultanthar are true Shadovar. Not the Human bloodlines through the unwilling, hapless people that were dragged along for the ride from nearby countries, not the Elven bloodlines, and certainly not the actual natives to the Plane of Shadow. A mere ten percent of the estimated Shadar-kai population, probably even less than that, can truly be called Shadovar."
"Why you are studying anything that could have been found in the Turathi Empire is beyond me, Trizelle," Terezio sighed wearily. "When did you become an expert on the origin of extraplanar races?"
"I'm not an expert," Trizelle replied quietly. "I had the opportunity to do extensive testing on a subject that could not reject any of my methodologies- or any of those of my more... sanguine... colleague."
"A mage with a focus more singularly vicious than yours?" Terezio hissed. "Color me amazed."
"Rezi!" Druce fussed, crossing her arms. "The first time our daughter comes back since Shade, and this is how you talk to her? Why can't we simply be a family? Why can't we forget the spells and the studies and the experimentation or the methodologies involved for just one hour- just one!- and enjoy each other's company?"
And everyone looked at Druce, dumbfounded.
"Sometimes I wish you all were as idiot about magic as I," she added, shifting her chair back to get up from the table.
"Dru- Maman, s'il vous plait ne vas pas," Terezio said suddenly, laying his hand upon her own. "I apologize. I brought the subject up and... I don't know what I... well, yes I do. Trizelle, it... it's hard to admit you're wrong, at my age, but... I'm wrong. I've been wrong for... well, for longer than this boy has been alive, obviously... it... is my fault that you've been alone all these years. And... I don't know if it's appropriate to say, but... you don't look like a Tiefling, Dresan. You look like... like your grandmother, actually, around the eyes, although that hawkish nose is... definitely mine."
Dresan turned to his mother, whose face had not melted in the least. He was about to be astounded at the impenetrability of her heart when he heard-
"He's named after you... Maman."
Druce put her hands to her face, too moved to speak. Terezio sat back in his chair and began to cross his arms, then thought better of the motion. He rested them on the table instead, softly drumming his fingers as though he were waiting for something. Dresan, for his part, was just as struck as his grandmother, since this information was new to him, as well. Yet the similarity between Dresan and Drussandra jumped out at him immediately, looming so large that he felt stupid for not noticing it before.
Even before he'd been a knowing part of the family, he had been part of the family, ancestral name and all. He wondered if Trizelle had ever before planned to tell him anything about it, or whether she intended to take the knowledge to the grave with her.
And then he shivered at the thought of putting his mother in a grave.
Knowing her, she'd sit right back up, he thought, macabre humor his only way to rally back from such a thought.
"She might," the voice echoed in his mind. "Better learn a few tricks to keep her where she belongs, when the time comes."
"That is enough," Dresan thought at last, squeezing his eyes shut. "Away from me, whoever you are."
The voice laughed.
"Ah, you were much better off ignoring me," it soothed. "You've invited me in by speaking to me, so now, I think I'll stay. You may call me Graz'zt, by the way. You can thank my benefactors, Aleksei and Bahlzair, for my ability to hang around. If you'd like to thank them in a tangible manner, I can tell you the perfect ways to bring them to their knees before you- and you'd like that. I know you would."
"You know nothing about me," Dresan stubbornly insisted.
"Oh, you are just as much a part of my family as you are of this one," Graz'zt said gleefully. "You see, I'm your father. You'll find that I, in fact, know a great deal about you. But even still, I do very much look forward to knowing you."
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