Chapter 4: Eggs and Babies

“How dare that little slut get pregnant.” My great-grandfather, the then head of the Securis branch of the Arma Royal Family, had an expression of rage on his face as his daughter-in-law, my grandmother, followed him quietly into the Royal Arma Clan’s Hall of Soul Beasts.

He was a muscular man, with fading indigo hair, glowing golden eyes, and green flames crawling across his skin everywhere his violet sleeveless battle robes didn’t cover, looking far younger than his 300 years of age. She, despite being over 120, had the appearance of a middle-aged beauty, with silvery hair that refracted light to create a rainbow of hues, violet soul-stirring eyes, and a black sword-shaped symbol on her forehead. And the Hall of Soul Beasts was in fact a suite of rooms, all huge, with ceilings at least 8 meters tall, and all covered in ornate time-sealed wooden shelves of all sizes, time not passing for any of the many, many eggs the hall was designed to showcase.

The shelves themselves were all dark, the time-sealing blocking any light from being emitted, but there were illusions of the eggs contained within floating in front of the shelves, and there were 317 different species of soul beasts represented throughout the various rooms, all with different numbers of eggs. For some there were only one or two eggs available, such as the single four-colored egg given high prominence in the hall’s main room, while for others there were dozens.

But what was most important was not the rarity of the eggs, but how high they were placed.

That four-colored egg, for example, was near the hall’s ceiling, representing an egg containing a beast with the highest level of talent, only suitable for not only full-blooded clan members of the direct line of descent but those with the chance to become emperor in the future. While the eggs at the bottom, a majority in the side rooms, were suitable for clan servants, containing stronger soul beasts than could be found in the egg storages of most small clans of the Elysian Empire, but incredibly weak when compared to the soul beasts of the royal family.

“And, if she was going to have a bastard, she could have at least chosen a father with some talent, not an affinityless foreigner from the northern islands.”

The green fire over the old man’s arms increased slightly as he stomped into a side hall and headed over to a large shelf filled with fist-sized jade green eggs, several hundred on the bottom two layers of the shelving and then a dozen, all with slightly different colors, at other levels, including one with a mix of white and blue coloration at almost the same height as the four-colored egg in the main room.

“Well, at least we might be able to use the girl for a marriage alliance in the future, so her first beast can’t be too low class.” Then he floated up into the air and reached out for the shelf holding one of the eggs about 70% up from the floor, one with a bit of brown mixed into its coloration, about to disable the time-seal to take the egg away.

Then, however he stopped as my grandmother, still on the ground, cleared her throat.

“Sir, may I make a suggestion?”

My great-grandfather looked down at her, frowning, but then he appeared to calm himself down slightly and nodded.

“While a bastard, she still has the blood of the Securis branch flowing through her veins, so any egg she bonds would influence the resulting beast’s bloodline seal. When her first beast eventually dies and its beast core reforms into an egg, it will make it more difficult for the other branches to hatch the egg that results.”

“Hmm.” A contemplative expression appeared on my great-grandfather’s face. “Reasonable. And who cares if she dies because the egg’s talent is too high.”

Then he floated up, disabled the time-sealing on the top shelf, and grabbed the green, blue, and white jade-like egg near the ceiling before floating back down.

***

Shadow Duke Aimon, the head of the Umbra Clan, walked through the Umbra Clan’s Hall of Soul Beasts, a large stone chamber with over twenty rows of built in stone shelves, all ceiling-tall, all filled with eggs, and all time-sealed, albeit without any illusions showing the eggs within.

With an intricate black tattoo of a dragon down his right arm, a silvery black horn growing out of the middle of his forehead, and red irises covered with intricate black runes in his eyes, the duke was nearly 500 years old, but he still looked like a middle-aged man, only his long nearly white hair giving away hints of his true age. And he knew where every egg of the Umbra Clan was stored in the room without needing any visual aid.

Without hesitation, he headed to the back right corner and moved to stand in front of one of the room’s most used shelving units, disabling the time seal on it to reveal over a hundred pure black thumb-sized eggs, all obviously containing soul beasts of the same species.

They all looked almost exactly the same, black as the void as if they absorbed all ambient light, all except for one.

It wouldn’t be obvious if it was seen separate from the others, but, when included with a hundred similar eggs, it was noticeably a bit duller, a bit more plain, not absorbing the light of the room quite as fully. And it was slightly smaller than the other eggs as well, though to an almost unnoticeable degree.

Next to it was a sheet of paper, and on that sheet there was a warning. This egg appears to be a time and space element variant, likely powerful, but it has already killed two talented tier 4 disciples who tried to bind with it, and one tier 7. Power unlikely to match cost. Consider tossing if more space is needed.

Without pausing, the Shadow Duke then grabbed the duller black egg, re-enabled the time seal, and left the chamber.

***

“Does she have a name yet?”

On a beach in the north-easternmost province of the Elysian Empire, where a large wooden ship had brought Adam and my father back to the Eastern Continent, my father took me, swaddled in a light blue blanket, into his arms for the first time.

“Kyla Securis Arma, though you shouldn’t refer to her as such on your desolate island.” My grandmother, who’d alone brought me to the beach, looked at my father with a cold expression on her face. “And this, if you know what’s good for her, should be her first soul beast.”

She then summoned out the green, blue, and white jade-like egg from the subspace contained in the ring on her right middle finger and handed it to my father. “Should anyone else somehow break the bloodline seal and bond with this egg, you and every single inhabitant from your island will be annihilated.”

“Understood.” My father’s tone of voice was carefree and indifferent, like he wasn’t paying the woman’s words any heed, and it looked like he wasn’t paying her warning any attention either as his eyes hadn’t left my little body ever since he’d seen me, but, knowing him as well as I do, it was obvious he was acting. He was just allowing himself to be focused on his own emotions of awe and fear at being a father so he wouldn’t show any outward reactions.

Adam, meanwhile, standing at another part of the beach, had a similar expression of awe and fear on his face as an elder of the Umbra clan handed him his son, swaddled in black cloth.

Covered in black and silver tattoo-like runic patterns, with eyes of pure darkness, no sclera visible whatsoever, and a red and black runic eye-like tattoo in the middle of his forehead, Ivette Umbra’s adoptive father had a somber and apologetic expression on his face as he stood on the beach in the night, wearing all black clothing. And, as Adam looked like he was about to panic, Christopher Umbra reached out and patted one of the much larger man’s arms. “I’m really sorry to have to pass this little burden to you.

“Ivette wanted to raise him herself, but there are politics involved, and she wasn’t left with much choice. She did, however, help prepare his first soul beast, a rare shadow squirrel variant with control over the higher elements of space and time.” He summoned out the black egg taken from the Umbra Clan’s Hall of Soul Beasts by Duke Aimon and handed it to Adam. “And she also used most of her clan contribution points to help prepare a copy of our clan’s most powerful adept cultivation technique, The Night Watchman Codex, for him to absorb before starting on the road of soul beast cultivation.”

He then handed over a small black cube, a specialized bloodline locked artifact holding the memories of an Umbra Clan elder containing the full technique, including all the parts difficult to put into words or pictures, that only Shaar would be able to access, and patted Adam on the arm again. “Reach out to me if you need anything for his development.”

Then, like my grandmother, he flew away, flying up into the darkness of the night.