"The worth of a man can be measured by the length of his beard, and the girth of his belt buckle." ~ Olaf, The Berserker (What the fuck is Forsaken Olaf by the way, the art and the skin look so different.)
One more day of daily uploads guys! I'm not pushing out chapters as fast as I am supposed to be.
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Left
Right
Duck Under
Jump
Dodge
Roll
Briar did all of them effortlessly. And she did all of it while dodging every single attack coming her way. Faye and Annie were launching projectiles at the girl with surprising accuracy.
Annie threw balls of fire at her, but they were relatively harmless. The only issue Gregori had spotted was after missing quite a few times, Annie tended to sometimes overpower the fire balls. But it never mattered since Briar was quick enough to dodge them. Annie was growing stronger. Her control was secondary but her pure firepower kept rising without limit. Gregori wondered if her connection to Tybaluk was making her develop at a pace that mere humans couldn't comprehend. The demon had dodged the question in their conversations but it was the only explanation. Another thing that had grown concerning was her emotions and their affect on her magic. Anger was Annie's fuel. More the anger..... more the flames. It was something Gregori was teaching her to control but Annie's playful nature made it hard.
Faye on the other hand used her telepathic abilities to form balls of snow and launched them at the girl. Her control over her magic had improved vastly but it was still a far cry from Gregori's own. However that didn't mean that she was not improving.... having taken Gregori's ideas on control and use of magic to her heart, she seemed to be able to replicate his techniques well enough. There was promise in the girl. And she made sure to push herself harder than her siblings to match the gap in talent.
Gregori appreciated that and he supported her.
His words of encouragement had her preening. The smile on her face that day stayed in place for a whole week. It had also made her extremely motivated.
"Na na you can't hit meeee~"
Gregori turned to the girl who had seemed to have grown into her own body. Briar was a child who was quite mentally backward. But the time she had spent with children her age and both him and the tribespeople had helped her mature to the age she was supposed to be at. She acted like a teenager. Like a girl who was thirteen, almost fourteen. But she was still innocent. She was still the same little girl at heart but just a little mentally older. But with her development came a little bit of a mean streak. She found quite a bit of happiness in irritating her siblings. Harmless fun but it drove the children crazy. And Briar being Briar was blessed with immense strength and agility.
No one could touch her unless she allowed them to and no matter how much her angry siblings tried..... they couldn't touch a hair on her head. Her cognitive abilities had also developed to such an extent that she could dodge Faye's ability when it wasn't even fully aimed at her yet. It was almost as if she was predicting an attack before it happened. Reading the flow of magic.
Whatever experiments done to her by those creatures in Noxus..... they had changed her in such a way that she was extremely far removed form any normalcy possible. Above all, her physical changes were quite prominent. Her hair was now purely white. Almost like an Iceborn. Daisy liked that. Something to share with her sister. Other than that, she had started to develop like a normal human. The abnormal bottom half of hers was smaller now, her torso now matched the rest of her body. Lithe yet powerful. Small yet devastating.
But by far the most important thing for Gregori was her eyes. Gone were the completely cataracted eyes. They were now more human. A little larger than average but it suited her. No one saw anything off with it. Her eyes were just like everyone else's. The surprise in her voice when she had seen her eyes in the mirror one morning was the largest emotional outburst from Briar they had ever seen.
She was almost in tears from happiness. Instead of the normal brown or blue... her eyes were red. Not common but not entirely unbelievable.
That was probably the turning point. She had started to believe herself human. And when she started to believe, she started to become.
But Briar felt. Felt human emotions. Empathy. Fear. She remembered the conversation between Caalyx and Gregori. She did not want to lose her father. She did not want to lose her family. She just wanted to be with them forever.
Daani instead of training his magic normally, chose to experiment with its versatility instead. Despite having powerful arcane magic, he chose to work on his ability to transform. He watched. Observed. Understood. Everyone and everything were under his eyes. Then came the mannerisms. He would emulate everything he had seen, mimicry to actions, he would do them all. And then he would transform. The number of times he had acted like Gregori to give the children permission to eat sweets only for the real him to find out and get angry was plenty.
He was a natural.
A natural spy.
Espionage came naturally to him and other than his mannerisms it was pretty impossible to detect if he was not the person he was impersonating. He didn't just transform his physical features into that of someone else.... no.... he became the person. Completely. He had held Daisy's True Ice sword and only winced at the sharp pain.
It was a miracle how he was overlooked his entire life with an ability like that.
And Gregori had started to teach him about the tactics a spy would employ. Sydell was a part of these instructions. His path as an assassin was set. The two of them learnt infiltration techniques, physical cues and skills that weren't meant for battle. How to talk to people. What information to give and how to get information out of them. How to walk on the balls of their feet. How to move silently. How to stay hidden in plain sight. It was all a part of their education.
They had chosen their ways. They were willing to hide in the shadows and take over everything while their sisters faced whatever the world threw at them head on. With how the both of them were, it was possible they would be ones who defined the upcoming era.
Gregori had told Talon to follow his dreams and become the greatest assassin that ever lived and even if he had managed to achieve it..... it would only be a short while that he would be able to hold onto that mantle. Sydell would be coming after the title.
His flexibility was off the charts. His reactions impeccable. His reactions were better than Briar's dodging things without even seeing them. It was near impossible to take the boy by surprise. It was like he felt something happen before it actually did. His strings were also strong. Strong enough to hold the weight of all seven kids as they swung from the hanging chair he had set up. If the lad managed to learn to control the thickness of the string, then it would mean threads stronger than steel. Choking enemies out would be easy. Killing them? Even easier.
Finally came his connection to the little spider. It listened to his every order and it even communicated with him.
Though eavesdropping with the spider was still out of reach.... it was a very real possibility. The combat training he went through was a hybrid one. Both assassination training as well as standard combat. Briar, Daisy and Sydell were together in that training. The trio pushed themselves beyond anything. The initial disparity between Daisy and the duo lessened as the two faced her in combat but Daisy was constantly training with the other Iceborn. It put her at a point far from the rest of them but together they could stall for a little. But they were good in their own rights. Reacting and developing new methods to take her on every fight.
Gregori could not be prouder of the two of them.
But Daisy was strong. Stronger with her sword in hand. Just like how Ashe's bow created arrows and Braum's shield grew larger with ice encasing it..... Daisy's sword grew longer and sharper. She said that it could do something more but has never been able to reproduce it but it was a strong ability.
Gregori took her word for it.
But it was a little comical when the sword was encased in ice. The size of the weapon eclipsed her and it looked like the weapon was wielding her.
Her own insecurities of being left behind by him had also faded away, the love from her new large family reinforcing her beliefs.
Rell, like Sydell was also choosing her own ways. She was focusing on learning. Reading. Training her magic. Her chosen route was more of an academic. A scholar. She learned about how and why her ability worked, choosing to fine tune her control over her ferromancy.
She made some interesting little critters with her metal. The horse being broken down into squirrels, birds and wolves. As expected though the bird did not manage to fly. But she took it as a personal offense. Just for that reason, she started to learn about the inner workings of every creature she created in their natural state. And eventually she made a bird that could fly.
Gregori understood the capabilities of a flying weapon, especially one hidden as a bird. But he refrained from telling the girl, she had created it innocently and he did not want to spoil that innocence. Not when she had been raised as a weapon.
She would come to the conclusion of it being used as a weapon on her own. He wouldn't expedite that.
The happiness of his children mattered more.
And happy, they were.
But there was one thing Gregori found a tiny bit annoying. That was waking up in a pile of bodies. It wasn't exactly the best thing to wake up to having your face under the back of one of your children or being encased in a metal construct or a cocoon because your children found it funny.
Though..... he would never give it up for anything.