“You dare?” Saha asked the thin elf.

  “I do, Duchess Voss.” The elf clasped his hands behind his back and raised his head arrogantly. “Right now, we can say that we found a wandering lost noble and returned him. If you press, we will have to contend with the fact that a Truechild invaded our lands and tried to sneak into one of our princesses’ rooms. She is just thirty.”

  “Thirty?” I asked in a whisper to Saha.

  Grek responded from behind me. “Your Highness, elves mature slowly. Three times as slowly. Your brother sneaked into the room of a ten-year-old.”

  “And got his bottom thrashed,” Saha whispered back with barely constrained laughter.

  Ilya wasn’t finding this funny. She glared at the elf. “Release him.”

  “Your emperor can do that on his own. Or he can come to in four days.” The elf clasped his hands behind his back.

  I sighed.

  “My lord, what is wrong with your brother?” Saha asked.

  “You know what they say? Mana is emotion. It is true,” I tried to explain.

  Grek looked at me and got my meaning. “My lord, are you saying that the mana that makes up your brother’s body has been manipulated?”

  “Shocked to stillness.” I nodded and got up.

  I wasn’t stupid. I knew what this meant. Someone had stepped into my domain. Into my hall. My waters. And challenged me. Not only that, they had used the word your in front of the emperor. Now that they had done that, the proverbial snowball was in my court, and I had to react or lose my authority.

  I knew how Ilya was going to react, and I knew how the elf was going to act. Ilya was going to throw a lance of wind at the idiot, and the elf was going to dodge and use his control of mana to stun Ilya too. He wanted to make a point. The idiot had backed us into a corner.

  I cracked my neck and released the lock on my torc. It took three seconds to reach my full height. I took that time to put Saha down and walk to Ilya and the elf. I used ice-cold mana to stop the vibrations that made up sound and hid myself in the dark waters, just in case. The result was that before anyone knew it, and even before Ilya could sense the disturbance in mana, there was a fourteen-foot-tall, large man standing next to the elf, looming over him and looking down silently.

  “Our emperor,” I said succinctly.

  To his credit, the elf didn’t jump. He didn’t flinch. He just turned his head slightly, looked at me, and nodded.

  “Perhaps, my lord.”

  I shook my head and cracked my knuckles. “Our emperor.”

  Grek cleared his throat. “Elf Lord Sylvari, what His Highness is saying is that if you don’t acknowledge that our emperor is also your emperor, His Highness is going to hurt you.”

  I pointed at Grek and nodded. He was a great mouth.

  The elf gave a scornful laugh and began, “Boy, you have no idea who you are dealing with.”

  “True.”

  The elf lord cocked his head to the side. He didn’t expect that answer. He finally snorted. “I am Elf Lord Sylvari, the arcane archmage of the queendom.”

  I exhaled impatiently. “Our emperor. Say it.”

  “I would rather...”

  I punched the toothpick. At the last moment, a barrier popped into view, stopping my fist from connecting. Still, there was too much kinetic force for it to disperse. The elf flew into the gray granite wall behind him and fell face-first to the floor.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “Voss!” Ilya and Saha screamed. My sister in shock. Saha in stunned amazement.

  “Stop!” the elf screamed.

  “Put your weapons down!” Grek unsheathed his sword and pointed it at the elves.

  I didn’t have time for all that. I ran to the straightening elf and thrust my fist forward again.

  The elf gritted his teeth and cried out, “Fool!”

  A wave of mana blanketed me and stopped all my muscle movements. I expected that. My momentum and the ice on the ground in front of me carried me through, and another punch hit the rising mage. His head recoiled off the wall. His control of mana slackened. And that’s what I needed to know.

  You see, something had been bothering me ever since I had woken up in this world. Every time I submerged myself in the dark waters, it took me a moment to reclaim control of my body. Why? Because mana formed a manaborn’s body. And mana and emotions were connected. That was why fire mages were quick to anger. Water mages were temperamental. Light mages were flighty. And ice mages were so intense. Mana was driven by emotions, and emotions allowed us manaborn to exist. Unfortunately, emotions were the first thing the dark waters washed away. And with that it also washing away control of my body.

  When I had woken up, I was confused, and it had taken me a long time to acclimatize to my body. But as I had learned how to walk, move, fight, and feel, my dips into the dark waters had become jarring. The dark washed away emotions, feelings, and memories. And when I returned, I was usually numb, which led to me being disoriented.

  And today, when I had fought the damned, it had been hard. One moment I was lost in the anticipation of the kill, the feeling of triumph in killing the predators, and the next I was in the dark waters, where my emotions were leeched away and only the duty of purging the waters drove me ahead. Then I was back in my body with a racing heart, spiking nerves, and my senses in overdrive. The fight had left me frustrated. I had to reconcile the difference between being a reaper and being mana-born.

  The thought of letting my past as a reaper go didn’t appeal to me. Father might have given me life and welcomed me as a son, but I had a purpose. A duty toward order. And here it was. A chance to test a theory. To reconcile the difference between my two natures.

  The idea had come from the wall of service. I had a similar thing. A code I had lived by. My oldest words came to me as I slipped into the waters.

  There was no order but order.

  In the waters, I was order. The silent hunter who kept order. In the world, the emperor was order. I wouldn’t serve. That was against order. But I would assist him in keeping it here too. Because there was no order but order.

  I came out of the waters. This time, my body took but a fraction of a second to regain its balance. The mana that had been stiffened in my body steadied back into my control. It took a second, but I was free.

  The elf lord wasn’t taking any chances. He thrust his palm ahead and slammed me in the chest with a yellow ball of force. I grunted and slid back. Reveling in his victory, he smiled triumphantly and began.

  “See, you brute, you are nothing in front of us elves. Just… spells made… manifest?”

  The idiot thought I was still trapped in his control.

  I punched him again.

  “What?”

  The skinny elf flashed mana into his control again. I took a dip. Came out and punched him. Again. And again. And again. No, I wasn’t beating this pompous fool because it was fun. It was my duty. And sometimes, duty was fun.

  “Stop! Stop. I submit!” the elf cried out.

  I stopped. Now why did he have to say that? I sighed in disappointment and looked down at him. I pointed at the mouth.

  Grek did not disappoint. “My emperor. Say it, elf lord.”

  Sylvari gave me a hateful look and shut his mouth audibly.

  I thought about what to do. Meanwhile, people behind me started speaking.

  “He beat an arcane archmage with his fists?” Saha asked.

  Ilya made a dismissive sound. “Yes, but the mage isn’t using his spells.”

  “Neither is Lord Voss,” someone said.

  “You silly humans think a manaborn can stand against an archmage’s spells?” an elf asked.

  “Yes, he can. He is not just manaborn. He is Truechild.”

  And they went on and on. Why did people like talking so much?

  I looked down at the elf, who was now smirking at me. I sighed. I couldn’t kill him. I couldn’t let him go away with this either. Then my eyes stopped on a woman standing near the servants’ entrance.

  I nodded at Grek. “Dress. And rope.”

  People stopped talking with confused looks. Even Grek took a moment to understand what I was saying. When he did, his eyes widened. He looked at me for confirmation. I nodded again.

  “Sergeant-at-arms! Get a maid’s uniform. Put the elf lord in it. And tie him up,” Grek finally relayed my orders.

  “What!?” Elf Lord Sylvari screamed in outrage.

  The elves weren’t far behind.

  I put my foot on the elf’s chest and pushed him back down, standing there in the middle of the commotion. Swords were drawn. Crossbows were leveled. But I didn’t worry. People talked too much to kill each other. All I did was stand there, sometimes on the archmage, sometimes off him. He learned his lesson quickly and stopped struggling. He barely struggled when the imperial soldiers put him in a dress. We even had our overworked, out-of-mana healers tend to his wounds. Poor guys.

  Speaking of which, after the elf lord was tied up with rope and two mana-soaking artifacts, I went and woke up Sage. The soldiers had unbound him and even unwrapped four pairs of bolas from his limbs.

  Waking him up wasn’t simple. I didn’t drag him into the dark waters with me, although that would have been simpler. No, my brother was too full of life to appreciate the comforting darkness of death. Instead, I moved to his body and touched it with my mana.

  Sage and I had done this before when Father had been overwhelmed by his emotions. That time, it was like our mana had pulled us to touch him. This time, I reached out and touched Sage. The mana in his body was in turmoil. It wasn’t moving the way it should have. If this had happened to anyone else, they would have been dead by now.

  I couldn’t blanket Sage with my cold. Sage’s affinity was toward light. So I did what I had done for as long as I could remember. I put things in order.

  Being manaborn gives us an unparalleled understanding of how mana flows and moves. I used it to all of my capability. It was not enough but Ilya joined me and started helping.

  I started from the heart. Ilya stabilized the region outward. Ilya moved the mana, and I numbed the eddies. Like that, we worked in silence. We were so lost in our work that we didn’t realize when Sage opened his eyes and screamed.

  “That is one scary elf girl!”

  Ilya jumped back in fright. I almost punched my brother. And then regretted not doing so. That was strange. Emotions were weird. I needed a wash in the dark waters.

  “Sage!” Ilya hissed with gritted teeth.

  “What!?” Sage blinked and looked around. He scratched his head. “Why am I back in the fortress?”

  Ilya created two arching blades of wind and tapped them together. They made a screeching sound. With her threat delivered, she stated, “No, brother. You don’t get to ask questions. We ask the questions.”

  “I see. Yes, sister. Please ask your questions.”

  I decided to start. “How are we going to explain all this to Father?”

  My siblings looked at me in silence. I looked back at them.

  “He is not jesting, is he?” Sage asked Ilya.

  “No,” Ilya responded.

  “That’s right. I am panicking a bit,” I stated.

  My siblings looked at my bland facial expression and then at each other.

  “Don’t panic. Father will understand,” Sage tried to comfort me from the floor.

  Ilya groaned.