33 Risen#re

The butlers wore formal attire at all times, black pants with a white shirt and an overcoat, all the seams were done with a golden thread, and from what Lirian had come to understand, wearing gold showed status in this society, the emperor and empress had formal attire made up completely from gold, and they were the only ones who could wear such clothing.

Different stations of rankings could wear gold on specific parts of their bodies, in the emperor and empress's outfits what showed their status was the golden shoes they could wear.

The only people allowed to wear have golden seams on their clothes were the emperors and empress's most trusted aides and their status was above most nobles, from what he had understood if they were to go to one of the lesser world's controlled by the Clovis Civilization, they would be given complete control of such worlds.

Of course, most of what he had learnt was from the stories Helen and Anya would tell him every night, Jack the Fool, was a story about a man named Jack who knew no fear and made a dress entirely of gold for a princess that he had taken a liking too.

To shorten the story, by making a dress entirely of gold he had offended many nobles, the princess he admired had lost her title and Jack the Fool had his head chopped off.

It made for quite a bedtime story but there were enough facts mixed in for Leylin to understand the deeper meaning of the story, and from it, he could even glean a little bit about the brainwashing methods of the Clovis Civilization.

It was very common for the bedtime stories of children to have some form of propaganda mixed into it.

Andrew walked in with a folder holding some papers and Cain was holding a circular disc in his hands, Lirians eyes widened for a second when he saw the object, but he hid his expression. He was amazed to see such an object it was made with a sleek design and some very good materials.

With just a glance he could tell that it was fate forged, such objects are extremely difficult to create and extremely difficult to replicate, and even if replicated it would never be a perfect replication.

Lirian was incredibly surprised to see one.

When Anya noticed the disc she pouted, "I can believe it, are they really going to make us take an oath with the disc again." She said clearly dissatisfied about the appearance of a disc.

Andrew smiled gently at her, she was the youngest of all of them and she had only been working for the empress for a little over a decade, so she still wasn't completely clear on some of the rules.

"It's just a part of the regulations we learned something too important and dangerous, so we can't afford for the word to get out."

"Hump," she snorted not even try to hide contempt, "It's not like any of us will ever let the news out, even if we report it to any other Civilization they will want us to forfeit our lives simply because we didn't report it immediately."

"I wonder if all the children of gods are as smart as this little one." She wondered aloud.

"Quite now," Belinda chided, ", it's because of people like you that speak about things carelessly that we have to take this oath."

"Still, I do wonder what the empress is thinking, there are millions of talented orphans out there for her to adopt, there are even hundreds of noble families that would gladly give her a child of theirs to her to raise but she sets her eyes on the one that can get all of us killed." Said Helen with a sigh.

No one retorted it was a simple truth, and none of them were fools, it was practically impossible for someone to bypass the defenses of the Clovis Home-world  and the defenses were all passed down from the immortal realm so even immortals wouldn't be able to send something without being noticed.

So, the only way a child could have gotten through the defenses unnoticed was with the help of a god. Although the emperor and empress didn't tell them that it was a god child they easily made the connection.

"Well at least he's cute," chuckled Cain as he walked towards Leylin and pulled on his cheeks, Cain had grey skin with red markings around his three eyes and all his front teeth were sharp fangs.

Lirian stared at Cain with interest as his cheeks were repeatedly stretched in every direction, both Cain and Belinda were of different races from the rest, Belinda was some form of reptilian, human hybrid, and the only feature gives her away was her vertical eye slits, other than that she appeared completely human, while Cain had a completely different appearance.

There was an infinite number of different intelligent races so it came as no surprise to Lirian, his only surprise was the lack of discrimination, especially in mortal realms there would almost always be racism amongst the different races. It probably had something to do with how many worlds this Civilization conquered.

Lirian noticed Anya glancing at him from time to time, she seemed to be anxious, he sighed inwardly it seemed that he made her a little wary of him.

"Let us get this over with quickly.", Said Helen, she quickly made a slit on her finger and allowed some blood to flow into an ink bottle, afterwards she grabbed a quill and dipped it in her blood she slow read through the files Andrew brought before signing it in her blood.

"The contracts are fine," she said after which everyone quickly copied her and signed their own contracts in blood.

When they were all done the five contracts were placed and the disc was placed on top of it, the five of them poured in a little energy and the disc began radiating a white light that enveloped all of them.

Lirian watched in silence, he noticed several treads of fate wrapping around each of them, to anyone with a good understanding of fate laws the strands would have been visible. 'So, it was a fate forged oath disc," he sighed, 'it must have been a nightmare for whoever created.'

Lirian was extremely impressed, if the Civilization could create a fate forged oath disc their knowledge of fate forging would have to be extremely great, or they had one very lucky opportunity to create or find one.

"Urgh," Anya moaned in frustration, ", every time this thing feels like it's strangling me." She started rubbing her neck and twisting it around.

"You're exaggerating Anya," Helen said with a sigh, "Now that all of this is taken care of I'm going out to get a drink, I've been cooped up in here for far too long." She rushed towards the doors and push them open, they swung open with a heavy thud and Helen ran out like a convict that just earned her freedom.

While the room slowly emptied out only Anya remained still holding Lirian tightly, unknown to her he was staring fixedly at her neck where she kept messaging herself, he had finally been intrigued by Anya, she was messaging herself where the fate string had wrapped around her, this meant that she probably has some talent or sensitivity to fate, he reached out with his small hands and pressed it against her neck.

At that moment Anya looked at Lirian wide-eyed, a silver glow wrapped around his body, and all the energy in the room started to move around her neck while being dyed silver, a silver radiance grew stronger around Lirian until even his eyes began to glow, he pulled as much energy as he could and used it to soothe Anya.

Anya had started off startled, and finally let out a moan of relief as the energy erased all her pain, she looked down with a strange expression, "How did you do that little guy, all the doctors always say that there's nothing wrong whenever I ask them to take a look at me after I take an oath."

She ran a hand around her neck and smiled pleasantly when she confirmed that all the pain and irritation was completely gone.

Lirian wasn't surprised at what she said, curing an affliction caused by fate is beyond the knowledge of mortals and even amongst immortals, the knowledge is scarce. He had developed his technique so that he could break through any oaths that he took.

After snapping the fate string an ordinary person would suffer a severe backlash, but his technique removed the backlash, allowing him to freely violate any contract he made with fate as the witness.

He blinked his eyes weakly and buried his head in Anya's bosom as he passed out, it was still too much for him to manipulate the energy in the world, this little stunt had completely drained him.