Chapter 26 : Early Morning
"Seriously!?" complained Fiona as she stared down in disgust at the bowl that was placed in front of her "Oatmeal!?...Can't we have any eggs or waffles instead? Or anything that's better than this shit!?"
"No, this is the best thing for all of us today." explained Anton as he sat down in his seat at the breakfast table and began to dribble a generous amount of honey over his own bowl of oatmeal "I doubt we'll be able to break for lunch so we'll need something that'll last us through the day."
Fiona narrowed her eyes at her bowl and grumbled as she began to grit her teeth.
Rolling her eyes at her sister's attitude, Kianna mouthed a silent thank you as she took the offered honey from Anton and began to dribble it over her own bowl.
"So, what exactly are we going to do today?" asked Fiona as she brought her eyes up to Anton "I know how you like to be stupidly vague! But can we at least get a hint?"
"You don't need a hint. I can tell you exactly what we're going to do." said Anton as he stirred up his oatmeal "But first there's something I'd like to ask you both."
"Oh, for the love of! It's always so many questions with you! Fine! Whatever!" declared Fiona as she eyed the bottle of honey that was still in her sister's hand "What is it now!?"
"Do you two even know why you can't use your magic?" asked Anton as he took a bite of his food and looked up at the dark elves.
"Uh, yeah! We do! And so do you!" exclaimed Fiona as she gave him a glowering look "This is got to be the stupidest question you've asked so far! Considering you already know damn well what the answer is! It's because our worthless bitch of a Mom won't teach us how to use it! I don't know how many times we've already told you this!?"
"...So then no, you two don't actually know why you can't use your magic." stated Anton as he scooped together another spoonful of oatmeal "Do you?"
"...Is it, not because of our Mother?" questioned Kianna as she and her sister looked at each other.
"It is. That is exactly what your problem is." said Anton with a nod that turned into him shaking his head "But not really."
"I hate you." stated Fiona calmly "With everything I have. Body and soul. I just hate you, so much."
"You see, your real issue is a lack of influence." continued Anton as he ignored Fiona's statement "Dark elves, like nearly every sapient species, aren't born with the ability to manipulate mana. They develop this ability later in life."
"...Why aren't we born with that ability already?" asked Kianna as she tilted her head and cocked one of her ears in a curious manner.
"Self preservation. The same reason that most other species aren't born with it either. Its easy enough to understand that any infant, or even a child, with the ability to manipulate mana would be a danger to itself as well as everyone around it." explained Anton "For argument's sake let's imagine that there was a baby who could manifest a fireball. Now how long do you think it would take before the house that baby was in was burnt down? With that baby more than likely still inside it."
"Oh, oh no!" cried Kianna as her face filled with turmoil and her ears pointed themselves straight upwards "That would be awful!"
"Mm hm, yes it would be." nodded Anton in agreement "That's why most children don't gain the ability to manipulate mana until they reach a certain level of ego development. In other words, children don't generally learn how to use magic until their mature enough not to immediately kill themselves with it. This can happen at different times for different species, but the most common time-frame is usually around puberty or at some point after. And that would have been about the time that you two would have developed the ability as well."
"...Except we never did." mumbled Fiona as she and her sister both looked down at the table and lowered their ears in sadness.
"Sure you did." stated Anton as he lifted a spoonful of oatmeal up to his face "You can both manipulate your mana just fine."
"...What!?" exclaimed Fiona as she and Kianna both looked back up at him "No we can't!?"
Anton finished swallowing his mouthful of food before turning to Fiona.
"Fiona, I'd like you to think about something that makes you angry." he proposed as he looked her in the eyes "And I want you to really focus on whatever it is that you come up with."
Fiona went completely still as she stared back at him. After only a brief moment her eyes tightened in an intense looking fury and began to glow with a faint red light.
"Um, I think she might be thinking about you..." said Kianna as she looked back and forth between her sister and Anton.
"At this point I'd be offended if she wasn't. That's not what's important though." said Anton as he turned to the second dark elf "What's important is that her eyes are glowing. You see, dark elves make their eyes glow by filling tiny shards of protein in their irises with mana. So this means that if you two couldn't manipulate your mana, then you wouldn't be able to make your eyes glow, but since both of you can make them glow, we know for sure that you both can manipulate your mana."
"Oh! Really!?" exclaimed Kianna as she turned to her sister and stared right into her glowing eyes "Well that's cool! And good to know!"
"Hold on a second!" exclaimed Fiona as she glared at Anton "If we can do this then why can't we do anything else!?"
"Because you don't know how to manipulate your auras." stated Anton as he turned back to her "I've told you already that the vast majority of your skills and abilities utilize your auras in some way. So without your auras available to act as a channel for your mana, there really isn't much you can do."
"...That!...Okay, that makes sense." grumbled Fiona as her glare intensified "Why can't we manipulate our auras then!?"
"Because your Mother neglected you. She never gave you the influence you needed to learn how to resist her aura." explained Anton "And without learning how to resist her aura, you never learned how to manipulate your own."
"...How would she influence us?" asked Kianna as she watched her sister blink away the glow from her eyes.
"Slowly, and overtime. Just by utilizing her aura around you she would have gently triggered responses out of you until you could fully manipulate your own auras at will." explained Anton as he looked from one dark elf to the other "This should have been something that would have happened throughout your childhoods. And that way by the time you two would have reached the point where you could manipulate your own mana, you would have already mastered the control of your auras. Unfortunately, that's not what happened."
"...When you say "utilizing" her aura, what exactly do you mean by that?" asked Fiona.
