Chapter Thirty-Eight: Valentine
From there, it was continuous work.
Day after day, larva after larva, Elias divided and submerged and sealed, and slowly but surely the cocoons multiplied across his tables—blood-red shells, each one a small life carried through the surgeon’s blade. It was long, draining, careful labor, and he gave it everything he had.
And yet, by the final count, the losses came to around a hundred and fifty.
A hundred and fifty larvae, out of the nine and a half thousand he’d started with. It still sat heavily on him, every one of them—but he made himself remember the proportion, too. A hundred and fifty lost meant well over nine thousand carried safely through, a survival rate that, for a procedure this brutal and this new, was frankly remarkable. He mourned the ones he’d lost. He was proud of the rest. Both feelings rode side by side, the way they always did now.
At last, only one remained: the special larva.
Elias stood before it, alone now—he’d saved this one for the end, wanting to give it his full and undivided attention. And even now, even after everything, it was exactly as it had always been: the moment he drew near, it went wild with eagerness, lunging and wriggling toward him, hungry as ever for his blood.
This time, Elias relented.
He made a small cut on his own hand and let the larva feed directly from it—and the little glutton fell upon the offering with pure, ecstatic abandon, drinking from him at last after so long denied. Then, while it fed, Elias spread out his spiritual energy toward it, an offering of a different kind.
The larva accepted instantly. There was no hesitation in it at all—it had wanted this, perhaps, longer than he had. The contract formed in a rush, and the moment it did, the larva’s emotions flooded down the new bond and washed over him: pure, overwhelming joy, a happiness so complete and so simple it nearly made him laugh. It was drinking his blood, bonded to him, and could not possibly have been more delighted by either.
“You ridiculous thing,” Elias said, exasperated and helplessly fond, as the larva gorged itself on his blood and radiated bliss. “All right. All right, you’ve earned a name, at least.” He’d had one in mind for a while now, for this strange little creature so consumed by blood and so devoted to him. “Valentine.”
He wasn’t entirely sure he liked it, in the end. But Valentine—newly named, freshly contracted—promptly stuck to him like glue, and the matter rather settled itself.
Some might have called it reckless.
The safer course, certainly, would have been to wait—to contract Valentine after the evolution was safely done, or at the very least during the cocooning, when the danger had passed. To bind himself to a creature now, on the very eve of the most perilous step, was to risk the pain of a broken contract if it died on the plate.
But that had felt wrong to Elias. Deeply wrong. He believed in this strange little bugger—believed it would pull through, as it had pulled through everything else, gluttonous and stubborn and impossibly alive. And more than that, he hoped that the contract itself might help. That the bond between them, the closeness and the trust, might give Valentine something to hold onto through the worst of it, might help carry it through the tough moments ahead. If his presence in its soul could tip the odds even slightly toward survival, then contracting now wasn’t reckless at all. It was the most caring thing he could do.
Though he did wonder, with a flicker of worry, whether his blood alone would be enough to see such a voracious creature through.
Then it was time for Valentine’s evolution.
It went as all the others had—the anesthesia, the careful cuts, the healers at the ready—but with one difference: this time, Elias added his own blood to the honey mixture from the very start, feeding it to Valentine throughout. And Valentine drank it down with a vigor that put every other larva to shame, healing between cuts more energetically than anything Elias had yet seen, its wounds closing almost as fast as he could make them.
It endured far beyond its fellows. Eight, sixteen, thirty-two—and still its life force held strong, buoyed by the blood it loved and the bond it now shared. For the first time, Elias was able to divide a single larva into a full sixty-four clones, more than double what most could bear, Valentine’s extraordinary constitution carrying it where no other had gone.
At last the blood mixture was poured—and the divided pieces went mad for it, squirming and drinking with a hunger that dwarfed even the others, drawing in the blood faster than it could be absorbed. Instinctively, Elias added more, and then more still, feeding the insatiable little fragments all they demanded. And from that feast rose the largest blood cocoon he had made yet, swollen and rich and deep crimson, Valentine sealed safely within it.
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Elias sat back, let out a long breath, and smiled. It had gone perfectly. “Rest well,” he murmured to the great cocoon. “I’ll see you on the other side.”
Over the following weeks, Elias kept careful watch over the cocoons.
So did the others. Holly, Honey, Hope, and Briar took to observing the rows of crimson shells with open, curious fascination, drifting among them, studying them, plainly as eager as he was to see what would emerge. The whole strange family kept its vigil together, waiting for the moment the cocoons would stir.
And then, one day, it came.
Several of the cocoons—the very first ones he’d made, the oldest of the batch—began to shake and stir.
Elias held his breath as the first one split, and from it a butterfly emerged. Finger-sized in body, it climbed free and slowly spread its wings—and those wings were enormous, each one fully the size of his hand, vast and impossible against its tiny frame. They were a work of art: clear as flawless crystal, and as the light passed through them, they scattered it into a shimmering rainbow halo, the whole creature wrapped in drifting color.
It fluttered, testing its new wings—and then, before his eyes, clones of it began to emerge from nowhere at all, identical copies winking into being around the original until a whole shimmering cluster of them filled the air, a single butterfly become a dancing flock of itself.
His companions reacted at once, each in their own way.
Hope was utterly enchanted. The new butterflies were shimmering, multiplying, light-scattering things—which was, as far as she was concerned, everything she had ever wanted in the world—and she shot off after the rainbow flock immediately, chasing the drifting copies in delighted, dizzy loops, trying to catch lights that split and scattered the moment she reached them. It was the light-vine all over again, and she was in heaven.
Holly, by contrast, was deeply suspicious. She planted herself on Elias’s shoulder and buzzed sharp, wary opinions at the new arrivals, clearly unsettled by creatures that could be one moment one and the next a whole crowd. A thing that multiplied without warning was, to an organized mind like hers, a logistical nightmare waiting to happen. She watched them the way a stern governess watches children she suspects are about to break something.
Honey, ever gracious, simply drifted forward to welcome them, radiating the same gentle warmth she gave every new member of the ever-growing family. If the realm was to have butterflies now as well as bees, then Honey would see them made to feel at home, and she set about it at once with her usual sweet diplomacy.
And Briar, coiled about Elias’s neck, observed the shimmering newcomers with calm, curious interest—and a flicker of something almost proprietary. These were its caregiver’s newest creations, after all, born of the same patient love that had once saved a frail little vine. Through the bond, Elias felt Briar’s quiet approval, as though the vine had inspected the butterflies and judged them worthy of the family.
Elias looked at it all—the rainbow flock, Hope giving chase, Holly fretting, Honey welcoming, Briar approving—and laughed, breathless, before checking the butterfly’s status.
Race: Blood Crystal Butterfly
Type: Insect
Attributes: Illusion, Blood, Fighting
Current Rank: Elite Rank 10
Potential Rank: Lord Rank 6
Mood: Content
Skills:
- Graceful Flight — Lv1
- Blood Absorption — Lv7
- Blood Affinity — Lv7
- Poison Resistance — Lv2
- Prism Veil — Lv1
- Rainbow Refraction — Lv1
- Escape Flight — Lv1
- Blood Manipulation — Lv3
- Blood Clones — Lv10
- Crystal Shatter — Lv1
- Sharpness — Lv1
- Wing Slash — Lv1
- Swarm Cut — Lv1
Elias stared at the shimmering, multiplying creature, a slow, incredulous grin spreading across his face.
Elite Rank 10, with a Potential Rank of Lord 6. A common ornamental butterfly, the kind sold as party decoration—lifted into a Lord-potential beast that could dazzle and kill in the same breath. He’d done it again. A third worthless creature raised into something wondrous, a third new species drawn from the overlooked. And this was only the first cocoon to open; thousands more waited their turn, with Valentine—greedy, beloved Valentine—somewhere among them in the largest cocoon of all.
“Hello, you beautiful thing,” Elias breathed, as the rainbow flock wheeled and shimmered through the air of his laboratory. “Welcome to the world.”
Blood Crystal Butterfly