Read Novel Full Chapter 1646 A Weird Trial
Chapter 1646 A Weird Trial
The Solar Fist gave up.
She doubled over harder around her own pain and made the strategic decision to allow the dogkin to remain wrong for the remainder of the experience, on the grounds that arguing with a wailing Blossom mid-recoding was a fight even Serika could not win.
A yard from Blossom, Iris had been screaming at the sky with zero reservation.
The Child of Reckoning was lying flat on her back in the moss with both hands clamped over her belly and her teeth bared at the canopy in a snarl that was equal parts pain and unfiltered rage at the man cross-legged above the courtyard.
"QUINLAN ELYSIAR!" she howled.
"IF YOU DARE PUT A FUCKING BABY IN MY WOMB, I SWEAR..."
A pause to gasp.
"...I AM GOING TO END YOU!"
"It is STILL not a baby!" Aurora attempted from her knees.
"SHUT UP!"
"I am only trying to inform you clueless creatures..."
"INFORM THE SLIT-EYED MIDGET, I WILL KILL HER!"
Feng had collapsed onto her side. The Tidebreaker had her cheek pressed to the moss and her eyes half-shut against the brutal restructuring her teen body was undergoing, and she had been groaning at a steady low pitch since her ribbon hit her. She tilted her chin up just enough to deliver one wet ragged sentence to the moss in front of her face.
"...The primordial mommies..." she mumbled, to nobody. "...were right..."
A small pause to groan.
"...I am not at all... ready... for this..."
Around the courtyard, the rest of the line groaned in something approximating sympathetic agreement with the teenager's statement.
...
Then a small, delighted, manic cackle rose up from the foot of Rosie's tree.
It was a very specific sound. It was the sound a dryad princess makes when her father has just done something the universe was not braced for.
All heads on the moss turned a fraction toward it through their pain.
Rosie was perched on Orianna's shoulder. The dryad princess had her hands on her hips in the pose she had decided, at some point during the last week, was her commander pose, her tiny green chest puffed out. Her ribbon was nowhere to be seen.
She was not on the moss, and she was not in pain. She was, in fact, cackling.
Ayame, from the moss two meters away, raised her head against the agony just enough to look at the girl. Her blue eyes had narrowed against tears she was refusing to let escape.
"...Rosie..." the Skysplitter managed, on a thin pant. "Did... yours... fail...?"
The dryad princess's grin sharpened.
"Nuh-uh!" Rosie chirped.
"Then... why aren't... you...?"
Rosie's chin tilted up.
The amber eyes had taken on the particular gleam that always preceded a disastrous statement.
"Rosie is already a member of Daddy's family."
The women on the moss processed the words through the fog of their own pain and did not immediately understand what was going on.
Rosie was not done.
She drew herself up to her full small height on the Flower Queen's shoulder, planted her tiny boots wide, and lifted her chin to the canopy.
"UNLIKE ANY OTHER WOMAN IN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE!!"
A breath.
"ROSIE IS ALREADY PART OF DADDY'S FAMILY,"
A second breath, drawn for the killing blow.
"BECAUSE ROSIE WAS MADE FROM DADDY'S SPERM!!!"
A held silence ran through the foot of the tree.
Then, three branches up Rosie's own canopy,
"Oh Holy Mother...!!"
A soft platinum-haired voice cried out at the high pitch the Bloomguard reserved for spiritual emergency.
"Princess… Please…"
She had been polishing a section of the bark when the announcement reached her ears, and her cloth was now pressed against her mouth in horror.
And she was not alone.
Five pairs of long elven ears twitched in utmost dismay.
But it was not their station to chide her.
The five maidens on the canopy, in the same instant, decided to pretend they heard, saw, sensed nothing.
None of them looked down.
None of them spoke.
The tree was getting cleaned.
On the moss, eleven women groaned harder.
...
A meter above the moss, Quinlan's eyes had not opened.
The Bloodfather had been holding the rite from his cross-legged float since the ribbons left the cloud, and the trance had carried each yes to him as it landed. Then,
[Ding!]
[Bond confirmed: 1 of 10.]
[Family rite in progress. Nine further bonds required to unlock further Bloodfather class capabilities.]
The notification rolled across his trance and settled.
He had felt the brutal restructuring begin in the eleven bodies on the moss the moment the ribbons struck. The new lattice was authoring itself underneath their skin in slow demonic script, the unique sigil and the unique gift writing themselves into each woman inside the Abyssal Genesis Physique's own cadence. The bonds were not yet locked. The rite was still doing its work, and the system would only confirm each bond once the body finished integrating it.
The one bond it had already confirmed was Rosie.
The Abyssal Genesis Physique had reached for his daughter and recognized her. The recognition was not an authoring. The recognition was a confirmation. The class had read his blood inside her green skin, found the bond already deeper than anything its sigils could describe, and routed her into the family layer without ever drawing a mark. His daughter sat inside the family because she had always been inside it. She was the only confirmed bond in the rite, because she was the only one the rite had nothing to author for.
The other eleven were still being written.
But only eleven.
The rest...
He felt it through closed eyes.
Around the loose ring at the foot of the tree, more women had said yes, their ribbons brightening, and then...
Nothing.
Raika and Orianna were standing idly by, listening to the chorus of screaming and cursing the women were hurling at each other through gritted teeth, foul enough to make the drunkest sailor on any sea blush innocently and excuse himself from the room.
Truly. Quinlan had surrounded himself with adorable little angels.
Sylvaris stood watching her daughter writhe in agony by her feet, her own ribbon hovering inert at her sternum.
Lyra, Ria, Shallan and Liora stood with theirs in the same suspended state.
All five had said yes to the offer, yet nothing was happening, the ribbons refusing to move.
Quinlan's awareness sharpened inside the trance.
'...Hm.'
His senses passed over the inert ribbons once, looking for the thread the ritual had not pulled. He had reached for each of them with sincerity, hoping to welcome them into the family. The rite had heard each yes and brightened each ribbon the same as anyone else's.
And then it had stopped.
The inert ribbons hung there without explanation.
Around the courtyard, the women whose ribbons had not moved started, slowly, to look at each other.
Confused.
Then a low purr arrived at the back of Quinlan's thoughts.
It came in the cadence Nyxara only ever used when she was looking at something through his eyes from her perch on Mimi's tree. Half-amused, half-tender, entirely awake.
<My ruin...>
A pause.
<Let me speak with them. Send them to me.>