The Eldrim Cards

Nero was meticulous, and would not make a silly mistake such as leaving Unity’s Network out and about in his room for others to find. In fact, he made sure to purify his room regularly, removing even the smell of the ingredients he used in his card crafting, though the ingredients themselves remained in the room. Still, that was not nearly enough to give any hint of what he was working on.

Thus, there was nothing in the room that could, in any way, incriminate him of anything. Yet when he opened the door and found his mother sitting on the far end of the room, looking over the ingredient he had stashed, he felt like he had done something incredibly wrong.

There was no way to explain this - it was just a gut feeling. Her perfectly normal smile looked incredibly menacing to him, and that pleased expression she wore was to him a forbidding omen.

No Exarchs, no berserkers or curses could scare him stiff like the visage of his mother with a polite smile, even if there was absolutely no reason for him to be afraid. It was his own mother, after all.

"Mom! What a pleasant surprise!" he exclaimed, wearing a happy expression as he entered the room and looked about. Surprisingly, in the corner stood Irene.

She looked... weaker from when he last saw her. Her cheekbones were easily visible and her eyes hid deep in her skull. Even her hair, though made neatly, looked strained and fragile. It was as if she had been starved for a long time, or at least as if she had not been eating enough.

Yet she did not look upset, or angry or anything. In fact, she looked perfectly pleased, and in fact was looking upon Nero with a hint of pity in her eyes, as if she was anticipating some trouble in his future.

"What a surprise indeed," Marilyn responded, slowly turning her gaze from the ingredients to Nero who froze under the weight of her icy stare. "It seems that alongside your desire to inform your parents of your actions, you have also lost all your vigilance. Your father will be incredibly displeased to find that you have forgotten all your training. Where are the traps? The alarm? What’s the point of even controlling aether if you won’t use it? With just a little bit of imagination, you can fill this place with countless protective mechanisms.

"If you had something set to alert you if someone entered your room, you would not have needed to even come up. You could have been alerted from downstairs, and then you could have come up with some guards or security. Instead, you chose to enter the room alone, without so much as a hint of backup, and decided to face any intruders on your own. Tell me, my son, why have you been so halfhearted concerning your security?

"Are you hoping someone will rob you, or are you hoping to get taken by surprise by an Apparition curse appearing above your head while you sleep? Come on, tell me." Nero looked towards Irene, but she merely shrugged while looking at him with a mix of amusement and pity. Marilyn was strict but most of the time she wasn’t so unreasonable. The fact that she was being so demanding right off the bat could only mean Nero had already pissed her off somehow.

"Actually, ma, I thought that Abboton has decent security, and that I could hold out long enough for help to arrive in case anything happened," he answered honestly, though he already knew that this answer would not be good enough.

"Yes, I can see that you have risen to the rank of Initiate now, and that has given you tremendous confidence," she said while she nodded. "Let’s put your theory to the test. I will attack you, pretending to be a robber, and you defend long enough for help to arrive. Let’s see how that plays out."

Nero wanted to argue that no Mystic robber would be interested in stealing from a poor Initiate like him, but knew it was pointless. So instead, he held out his dagger and covered his body in flames, ready to fight back.

Marilyn did not immediately overwhelm him. Instead, she first activated Monarch’s Dominion - the active ability she got when she ascended to the Mystic Monarch rank. All those who became Monarchs received the same passive ability, called Regal Command, and one additional active ability at each rank starting from Mystic.