33 Risen#re

The morning arrived quickly for Lirian, he didn't catch a wink of sleep as he was too busy thinking of a way to make up with his mother, this revelation was way too sudden.

He was distracted at breakfast and didn't try to swipe anything from anyone's plate, he was now old enough to eat whatever he liked, but he still made it a habit to swipe whatever he could.

He kept stealing glances at his mom but said nothing of importance, his behavior was noticed by everyone and they were all watching with bated breath, for his grand scheme of the day but nothing happened at all.

He was dressed properly and to everyone's shock he was wearing his gold earring, it was a remarkable piece, on his right ear it was a short golden thread about a finger long and a round globe, the globe was barely the size of a pearl and had a detailed engraving of the home-world on it, but Lirian always refused to wear it claiming it was a chore to take it off every evening, clean it then put into its special case for the night and put it back on in the morning every single day.

The earring is the only gold piece that a prince/princess candidate may wear and his earring with a globe of the home-world is the proof that he is the empress's child.

A few minutes later he was lounging in the back of the limo, the same as the day before and Anya was there as well but it was oddly quiet.

He felt Anya's constant gaze but she said nothing the entire time, "Just ask me what you want to know already?"

"The empress told me not to say anything about what happened yesterday, and since you are still here and the empress hasn't changed her mind about keeping you around it means that whatever you told her majesty was good enough for her if it satisfied her majesty, it's good enough for me," she said tactfully, but she was pouting slightly.

Lirian sighed and lifted the sound partition, "... but you're still curious so go ahead and ask no one will ever know what I tell you."

She smiled brightly at his words then as she thought about what she wanted to ask the cheer vanished, "When I was in that vision, it felt too real and when I spoke to the people in it, they responded, also when I was there, I don't know why but the boy in the arena..." she paused to catch Lirians eye and spoke hesitantly, "I-I wanted to see him dead, why did I feel that way but your mother didn't?"

Lirian raised an eyebrow but wasn't too surprised, "You have a natural affinity with fate laws, so instead of observing you accidentally projected yourself into the image, it wouldn't allow you to do anything significant but you could still interact with what you saw and glean information that existed in that place, as for the boy you came into contact with his curse because you projected yourself there, and as you can probably guess the boy's curse makes everyone hate him!"

He was surprised to see how maturely she was taking the news, her expression barely changed, "I take it that everything you said yesterday was true." it wasn't so much a question as it was a request for confirmation.

Lirian only nodded in response.

"By fate laws do you mean that I can divine the future?" she asked suddenly, she was handling the new information quite well because it made almost everything about Lirian fit into place, and helped her feel better about herself until now she had felt inferior because of his talent that made her feel like she was a headless duck with no direction.

"Tsk,", he clicked his tongue and scoffed, "I swear every person existence hears fate laws and thinks of seeing the future, such utter stupidity has led to the death of almost every talented fate wielder."

Anya looked wide-eyed at him, she was used to his rebukes about many things, but she had never seen him get so riled up over something, "Forgive me for my ignorance, oh great one.", she said sarcastically and rolled her eyes.

"Sorry," he said apologetically, ", fate is cruel to its wielders the first time someone tries to steal fate's secrets, it shows them a future as horrid as it can and pretends to be their friend."

"Those who see the future fate gives them often try to change that future, but it ultimately leads them to create that future, the problem is that it's almost impossible to change fates web and the more you rely on it the more you are controlled by it."

"Also, by becoming a diviner you lock off all other parts, while time will never touch you and you'll never need a thing to continue living, your actions will be restricted."

Anya was confused in the stories and information she had discovered the only use of fate laws was for divining or predicting events.

"Fates real power lies in its ability to gather information, and perform unexplainable acts, for example, fate forging is a power of fate, if someone makes a sword normally you channel your energy into it to release a stronger attack than normal, however, if someone creates a sword with the right fate achievements and imbues that achievement into the sword with fate forging you can create a sword that passively increases the attack power of its wielder without utilizing their energy."

"And information is the greatest thing you can get with fate laws, all things in the world have a fate string down to the simplest of life forms, every planet, and entire star systems, even the entire universe, with enough fate particles, you can attach your string to a something and learn everything you want to about the world."

"Imagine if a team goes to a new world and searches for decades to find a mineral, but with a scry of the planets fate string you can learn if the resource is on the planet in an instant and with a deeper dive you can find its location and if you push deeper, you can find the quantity of the resource on the planet."

"And if you want to learn the number of cultivators on the planet and their levels all of it can be seen, with greater insight you could even learn of the different divisions on a planet, you can turn the impossible task of conquering a world into a simple game of chess."

Anya's eyes rounded as she thought of the possibilities fate held and a craving for its power festered inside her, she had an immediate urge to dive into it.

Recognising the look in her eyes Lirian panicked slightly, ", that said, using fate is dangerous, to access fate you first have to pull on your own fate string and manipulate it and that's dangerous, to every person touching their fate string is difficult and to those that succeed the first thing they learn is how weak their fate string is in their own hands, it's a thousand time more fragile that a tread of a spider web, pull too hard and you'll kill your self, or worse if you accidentally release the natural tension your body exerts on the string you can unravel your life, it will make it like you never even existed in the first place."

Anya nodded like a diligent student getting tutored, "So if a fate string is so delicate does that mean I can kill someone by pulling on theirs?"

"NO!", he shouted, feeling himself have a mini heart attack, "Never try to pull on someone's string of fate unless you have like 100 billion years of experience under your belt and I mean that literally, your fate string might be fragile in your own hands but to another person, it's harder than the toughest diamonds and if you make a mistake, you could give your entire life's memories to someone else, the perks of fate manipulation are immense but so are the risks."

"If you really want to learn how to use fate strings, just wait for me to complete my 200-year trial, by then I should be able to stop you from making a mistake."

Anya raised an eyebrow, looking very amused, he seemed oddly similar to his normal self yet somehow different, that ungracefulness of his was still very apparent but he felt like he earned the right to be as ungraceful as he wished, not to mention that she loved what she had just learned, from what she could understand of him the previous day, she was almost certain that he was once a god and getting direction even from a former god was an opportunity any cultivator would die for.