The Arks - Chapter 407

“The Dark Mage’s main power is Necrosis… Do you think I’ll allow him to come in? And Z is a Galaxian Mage, he doesn’t require a library. None of them has any reason to step in, so I didn’t bother giving them access to this place.”

“How did Mavislin create the place? Did she dig it up using her true form? And I thought Ysabeau would be powerful enough to do so?”

“Boy, you’ve got a lot of questions, you know. Learn to ask one at a time,” ordered Gillian, flicking Raiyen’s forehead.

“Sorry… My thoughts are all over the place… Hard to collect them all at once and ask questions one by one. They have a processing speed of a 21st-century computer…”

Gillian sighed as he proceeded to answer the boy’s questions.

“Ysabeau might be able to handle it but we allowed Mavislin to try instead. Luckily, young Mavislin wanted to destroy something. During that time, we couldn’t find a way to properly go about training Mavislin’s attacks without destroying a whole town.”

“We wanted to measure how much destruction Mavislin could cause at her then age, which was nearly a century ago. And boy, she did anything but disappoint us,” said Gillian, remembering the situation all those years ago.

“Wait, I thought she met you guys a few decades ago… Has it been that long for all of us?” asked Raiyen, shocked.

“She met everyone a few decades after she joined us. Though it seemed like a few months to her. It has got nothing to do with her environment, just her thinking. You see, years on Earth feel like months for Valkyries. That’s why Mavislin can go through missions without sleeping.”

“But the drawback is that she wouldn’t know when to rest. That’s why she was hit with a wave of sudden fatigue just now,” continued Raiyen, finally understanding why Mavislin’s sleeping patterns were all over the place.

Ever since they’d met, Mavislin would only sleep occasionally, like it wasn’t needed for the Valkyrie. Even with the whole world sleeping, she would be awake somewhere, just training or using her powers freely. Though she does take naps at times, for around an hour at most.

“Her sleep schedule isn’t all over the place, it is messy in human terms. But it is normal for Valokia’s standard. To think that, throughout these years, her body clock is still the same as Valokia’s clock.”

“She has got some adaptability issues,” replied Raiyen.

“Well, she did try to fit in the sleeping patterns of humans but she complained that sleeping too much would give her headaches. And when she was very young, when she tried sleeping, she would have nightmares… And cried a lot throughout the night…”

Gillian felt his heart hurt as he remembered those dark times. Fresh out of the war and seeing her best friend being snatched away… It terrorized her to no end. Little Mavislin would often keep herself awake by either pushing the boundaries of her powers or just staring into space.

Most of her thoughts and daydreams consisted of trying to plan, with coming up with new spells out of mixing different Element types. Anything but remembering her past or relating to bad memories would suffice for her.

Though he did not show it, each time Mavislin was crying from a nightmare, Gillian’s heart would break into pieces as he tried his best to comfort her. When Ysabeau is away for missions, he felt hopeless as his wife was the only one who could soothe the crying Valkyrie properly.

When he was around, the poor child would often cry herself to sleep. This made Gillian feel useless, seeing that he couldn’t even comfort a young girl. That changed when the study was being built. Well, to be precise, it changed when Gillian read stories to the young Valkyrie.

“How did you get her to stop crying? Or you completely gave up?” asked Raiyen, breaking Gillian’s daze.

“I didn’t give up… I could never do that to my little girl. The weird part about that solution was that I didn’t mean to put her to sleep.”

Raiyen paused, looking at Gillian with a few question marks floating above his head.

“You see, I was busy looking through some of the books that I had. At that time, I had a few bookshelves of books that I needed in the Old Chapel and the rest was at the Congregation. I was trying to find something for an ongoing investigation, though I’ve forgotten what was it.”

“It was something minor so I was taking my time. And before I knew it, I turned around to see Mavislin standing in the room with her bunny, staring right at me. I thought she wanted food or something, so I asked if she was hungry.. But I was wrong.”