In principle, despite their flaws, doppels satisfied my needs. Yes, I couldn't see through their eyes or speak through them, their spells were weaker with the same mana investment, they weren't intelligent and couldn't transfer experience to me, but the mere fact that they could use everything I knew negated all the disadvantages.
If in the future I could copy someone else, then I could... no, not learn their spells, since doppels cast completely differently, but train with other fighting styles and opponents stronger than me. By the way, I was slightly mistaken - doppels don't speak BY THEMSELVES. That is, until you take control of them or order them to reproduce specific phrases, they remain silent, they have no mind. But they do pronounce the same spells if the original doesn't know how to use nonverbal magic.
Two weeks after my deterioration in magical progress, I was, as always, meditating under the apple trees, where it was easiest for me to replenish my strength and enter a trance. My old long-eared acquaintance lay down next to me again this time - here he could not fear predators. I hadn't seen the nymph anymore, but I wasn't destined to be alone either.
— "You're here again? Oh, bunny!" — Apolline exclaimed and grabbed the gray one onto her lap, where she began to strang... I mean, I wanted to say pet and caress him, yes. Why did she know where I usually was? It was because she was the one covering for me with Ariel.
— "Why are you so secretive? You leave everyone, sit here alone with your eyes closed? Even Aunt Ariel is worried."
— "Maybe because I have secrets?" — I answered her question with a question. — "We've already talked about this, and not just once."
— "Why do you need them, these secrets?" — the blonde girl asked me, tilting her head cutely.
— "Everyone has secrets. You have them too, don't you? For example, who do you like?" — of course me, but am I stupid enough to tell her this out loud?
— "That's different!" — she exclaimed, blushing. — "It's just that Aunt Ariel sometimes cries and says she doesn't understand you."
— "I just can't tell everything, you understand?"
— "Can't you tell not everything? So she won't cry?"
— "Hmm, I think I can," — I answered after several minutes of silence. I had never separated the grimoire's secret from my own. It just so happened that I perceived it as inseparably connected to me. But really, what was stopping me from telling about the translation without involving the details of my birth?
— "Then let's go!" — releasing the rabbit, who immediately bolted, Apolline exclaimed and dragged me by the hand. Or tried to. After all, without my desire, she couldn't even move me from the spot.
— "Where?"
— "Where else? To tell your mom the secret! So she won't cry anymore!"
— "No, this is a secret between mom and me," — I answered, getting up and brushing off my clothes.
— "Don't pout," — seeing the offended little face, I answered. — "I'll find a secret for you too."
— "Promise?"
— "I promise," — I have plenty of secrets, don't I? I'll find some and tell her. For example, that I don't like buckwheat, which my grandmother used to force into me under the pretext that it was healthy. Ugh, disgusting.
***
— "Mom," — I knocked on Ariel's room. — "Can we talk?"
— "What happened, son?" — she worried, hiding her tear-stained eyes. Despite all my empathy, I thought she was crying for me-Victor, not Arthur. Superpowers don't make us superhumans. Mistakes just become more terrible.
— "We need to talk. You probably think I'm strange, constantly running away to the forest or sitting in my room. I should have confessed long ago - in the bracelet I found father's inheritance, which he left for me. I shouldn't have hidden it, I was just afraid you'd take it away, forgive me," — I rattled off and showed her modified copies of the translation minus the Emblem ritual. Showing it would be like admitting I wasn't her son. Well, I was hers, but... it's complicated. I can't perceive her as a mother, but not as my girlfriend or, even more so, wife either. For me she's something like a kind friend. The full truth wouldn't bring anything good to either me or her, only complications.
— "You're my silly boy. Why didn't you tell me earlier?" — she hugged me with tenderness and love. But why did I feel so sick at heart?
— "I told you, I was afraid you'd forbid me from training," — I wheezed from her tight embrace.
— "I know you're smart. You've always been like that, as if an adult in a child's body,"
I was struck like lightning by how close her phrase was to the truth. — "But you know, I'm even glad you're like this. I became a mother too early and didn't know how to raise you. I thought, what if I spoil you? Or be too strict. Your independence became a blessing for me. But lately you've been distancing yourself more and more, and I thought you had come to hate me," — tears flowed down her cheeks.
"No, I'll never hate you. How can you not love the person who gave you life?" — after these words, she smiled, and I felt like I had dropped another multi-ton burden from myself. In pursuit of power, I had forgotten that I wasn't alone in this world. That there were people who cared about me. And betraying their trust would be quite the bastard thing to do. I'm not a good person and I'm ready to do a lot if I consider it necessary. But I'm not bad either, at least I don't consider myself such.
From this time, Ariel began training with me. No, having learned about the danger of Sumerian magic, she tried to forbid me from practicing it, but I didn't show her the most dangerous of my training sessions. And what was the point of forbidding me? I had more experience and skill in this than she did, which I proved by helping her with her chosen disciplines. Which turned out to be fire and word magic — who would have thought?
But if I had previously shown Apolline some methods of conquering fire, I didn't trust Patrick. Not only because I was afraid he'd blurt out too much, no. He was simply a child, which meant a subordinate. I was able to earn authority with Ariel through my adult behavior, stubbornness, taking advantage of her inexperience and some naivety. And even then, I had to work quite hard for it.
For example, she tried to lock me up. Pfft, I demonstratively didn't listen to these prohibitions, apparating from the room. Fortunately, this could be attributed to childhood magical outbursts. And Ariel understood that it was easier to negotiate with me than to threaten and pressure with authority, only getting resistance. You could say that I was raising her, not the other way around.
However, what about Patrick? Wouldn't he spill all my secrets if his father asked him? I couldn't be sure of this. An Unbreakable Vow? Very funny, this vow doesn't forbid revealing everything you're forbidden to say — it first warns, then immediately kills. And if it turned out that I forced children to take such a vow... they'd lynch me. Or at least try to. That's exactly why I didn't show the translation to anyone, though I overdid it with Ariel, of course.
***
— "Mom, why do you just throw fire around? Yours is strong, much stronger than mine, but you don't control it at all," — as I said, I now conduct most of my training with Ariel.
— "How should I do it?" — she asked me slyly, and I understood that she simply liked it when I explained things to her. Emotionally, she was just dying from cuteness.
— "I imagine fire as a wild animal. If you show weakness — it will bite you, burn you. You need to train it, show who's boss, and then it will behave like an obedient dog," — after this I specifically showed off and directed a fire clot in the shape of a bird flapping its wings along a broken trajectory. The explosion was about twice weaker than Ariel's, but it was much more even. The result of control.
— "Did you train for this long?" — she asked me thoughtfully. — "And why didn't I see burns on your hands?"
— "I was very careful, mom," — I couldn't tell her that despite caution, I constantly healed myself due to failures, could I? — "I used candle training. Wait."
Taking a candle from my bag, I lit it with one effort of will and gave it to the girl.
— "Do you always carry candles with you?" — she stared suspiciously at my bag.
— "For training - always," well, and a couple more cubic meters of various junk. The bag had expanded internal space. Then I "grabbed" the candle flame and made it burn with the same even flame in my hands. — "The focus of the training is to make the flame burn as if it's still burning on the candle. Not letting it flare up, but not letting it go out either."
Ariel repeated my actions with frightening ease. After all, she hadn't been sitting idle either.
"Pretty easy," — she said.
"Only at first. The longer it burns, the harder it becomes to maintain it in this state. The height of mastery is making it burn without paying attention to it," — I tossed the flame from hand to hand, made it take the silhouettes of different animals and extinguished it. I myself built a fire and tried to pull the same trick as with the apple tree. That is, understand fire with the help of yoga. No, I didn't want to merge with it like with the tree, because the element is even more removed from human consciousness than a plant. I wouldn't have dared to try before, but now there was someone to back me up if something happened.
What is fire? From a physical standpoint, it's an intense oxidation process accompanied by radiation in the visible range and the release of thermal energy that heats expanding gases. But from a magical perspective... everything is much more interesting. Let's start with the fact that magical fire can either obey the laws of physics or not. With sufficient desire, strength and skill, you can make water, air, ether, someone else's spell, or even a water god burn. For the latter, I don't even know what level you'd need? Demiurge? But you could, say, create or transfigure oxygen and, say, hydrogen with magic and get purely physical combustion or explosion — why not?
I used not ordinary fire, but green, after adding floo powder. Speaking of it, about the powder that allows travel through fireplaces. It's simply overflowing with mysteries. Let's start with the fact that only one company in the world produces it, "Floo-Pow," whose representatives only sell it and don't answer other questions. Its cost has always been the same for a whole century — two sickles per scoop. Needless to say, no one has been able to determine the powder's composition or find a replacement, despite numerous attempts. Always unsuccessful. Like some kind of zero element. It was in meditation that I wanted to at least approach understanding this amazing powder.
In meditation, time flies unnoticed — you simply fall into a trance at some point and perception of time, space, even your own body goes somewhere far back, remaining in the real world. Before me was only flame. Burning and warming, killing and saving, giving life and death. It was unstable and in one moment fawned like a faithful puppy, and in another snapped like a rabid dog. Flame is the most complex element of the elements. And though wind is elusive, water flows through fingers, and earth doesn't like movement and is stubborn, it's flame that's the most dangerous and unpredictable.
At some point the flame began to flare up in unison with my heartbeat. I felt myself being drawn into an abyss, and in attempts to get out, to grab a saving thread, I sensed something foreign in the flame. Something completely uncharacteristic of it and even more elusive. If I hadn't been so focused on my salvation, I would never have felt this, and in one moment I "surfaced," finding myself already at home. My head was splitting terribly, and my reserve was completely empty. Still, for now even just external meditation is dangerous for me with the loss of self. I didn't want to go so deep — I was drawn in myself. Perhaps due to veela kinship with flame, or perhaps for some other reason.
— "Arthur, are you alright? I was so worried!" — Ariel shouted, running to the house, grabbing me on the way like a kitten. Decided to finish me off?
— "What happened?" — I was curious how this looked from the outside and why I ended up at home.
— "At first you just sat with your eyes closed, then you began transforming into your second form," she probably means harpy form. — "Then you were covered with tongues of flame, but it didn't harm you. I tried to douse you with water, wake you up, but it just evaporated without even reaching you. And then..."
— "What then?"
— "You disappeared in clouds of green flame, as if you moved through the floo network. I was terrified and was about to call everyone to look for you. Where were you?" — Ariel told me excitedly and confusedly. Well, this is travel using flame?
— "I ended up at home, and I don't remember what happened besides the flame," — and that's the truth.
— "Don't scare me like that anymore, okay?"
— "I can't promise that."
— "Arthur!"
— "I really can't. I understand that you worry, but I've been practicing father's magic for a long time," yes, I changed the translation so it seemed to come not from Lerach's perspective, but from me in a past life. - "And I understand that without risk there's no progress. You can reduce it, but it's impossible to prepare for everything."
— "Why do you do this then? Maybe stop, as I asked? You'll go to school and..." — I didn't let her finish.
— "And what, you want to say it'll be safer there? Hundreds of student mages with magic wands — what could go wrong? Yes, maybe it's safer there, but I want to be strong like my father. And you can't achieve that with just a wand. And besides, I'm a veela, fire is in my blood — should I stop being one? Refuse part of myself?" — I asked.
— "No, I... you're right. All veela learn fire, I'm just worried about you. Your training is much more dangerous than usual. Why can't I just forbid you from doing this?" — Ariel asked herself, raising her eyes to heaven.
— "Because it won't work? I'll do it anyway, just secretly," — I answered the question, though she already knew this.
— "Oh no, you'd better be under my supervision."
***
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