Theodulus Aies Olcay I May 3rd, 20XX

“I see you've been having fun.”

My flustered great-grandson who ran here after being pinned down by his own fiancée ignored my comment and instead focused on his breathing. Sweat ran down his face and off his scalp as he maintained the difficult position but he didn't falter or bother trying to wipe any of it off.

His hair was almost completely white at this point and a promising horn was starting to take shape on his forehead. It wasn't nearly as imposing as mine of course but more than impressive enough for a goblin his age.

In his concentration, he clenched a heavy fist around the ring and the armband that had once sat loosely around his upper arm now sat securely after all the training he had endured.

Despite all the harsh words I tended to use I couldn't hold back the wave of pride that coursed through me as I watched over him.

Balancing three types of reality with only a thin consciousness divider as a barrier was a very impressive feat. What was even more impressive was he never slacked off on trying to be the best he felt he could be, even if he tried to hide it under a blanket of apathy and bland humour.

Even the thin layers of consciousness had begun to fade and he didn’t need to ‘switch’ between two of those personalities.

As for the third.. well we would see.

It was so different that I couldn’t imagine Finley would have an easy time accepting that side of himself.

Aies was different from Cai, who despite his obnoxiousness and intense superiority complex was an all-around admirable person. Aies was unpredictable and powerful and unlike Cai who had to operate in a society with strict rules against him or Finley who had so many emotional debts, Aies would be free to act as outrageously as he wanted to with little to no repercussions.

I let out an exhale as I realized that I would most likely have to exit retirement to handle some damage control... unless the Cáel family was still around, but it had been so long since I went down to my empire that I didn’t even know if it was an empire anymore.

Between the fool of a son I'd had or the even more idiotic grandson that lost an easy bet, managed to get a fairy pregnant and locked himself into a political marriage I wouldn’t be surprised if the goblin empire was nothing more than a little hobbit at this point.

I also hadn’t been able to contact anyone proper from the winter court at all lately and it was getting annoying. I had forgiven it when they had retreated into themselves like cowards after my grandson’s death, but it was time for them to awaken and prepare for the return of my great-grandson.

It wouldn’t do if he found himself making comparisons to the fairy kingdom and found the goblin courts inferior.

The chain between the ring and the circlet glowed a bright red as I moved blood from myself to my great-grandson and veins bulged heavily in his arms and neck.

“If you scream we’ll have to start all over again. Try to hold back as much as you can.”

If he had opened his eyes I was sure the surrounding white would have been stricken with veins and reflected how much pain I knew he was going through, but I was once again made proud by the fact that he stayed silent.

Because it had been left so late I felt it would be too dangerous to try a full awakening but at the same time, he wouldn’t be able to learn any proper goblin skills as he was.

Although as a monarch the risk was significantly lower than for others he was still my flesh and blood. I wouldn’t put him in danger if I didn’t feel he needed it.

What I was doing was a ‘Pseudo-awakening’ Which was a regular awakening, but he would be able to switch them ‘on and off’ like with his fairy powers.

The fool was so trusting that he believed it was just a simple disguising spell that he pulled every time he made his wings disappear. But in the same vein, I couldn’t help but begrudgingly admit what a genius his mother had been.

Rather than try to take a fairy infant to another world and saddle him with those extremely inefficient machines that they used to breathe in the human world she had instead borrowed the Witch’s research on their dual efficiency in both oxygen and magic and had essentially optimized his body to do the same and operate as a ‘human’ without any need for magic when the spell was ‘on’. She had also used the theory of the machines that the fairies used to turn some of the metals in the air into magic and impressed that into the locket she gave him so he could use magic without ‘switching’. His father had been no slouch either, prematurely pulling out a few goblin traits that should have been locked until awakening to supplement Finley’s inherently weaker physique as a fairy without magic as well as his capacity to sustain the harsh changes that his mother’s spell would have brought about.

That locket though was nothing less than a magical treasure since it could change non-magical substances into magic both in on and off mode.

I could only shudder in thought of what sort of monster the kid might have grown into if he had been able to grow up with both his parents at hand.

It wasn’t like he was a dunce himself either, so with the combination of those three minds…

Ah, I preferred not to think about it lest I lost my temper and went to attack those useless fairies for not only bringing about the death of my grandson but also endangering my great-grandson like that.

If not for my not wanting to override Finn’s decision on how to punish that insolent bug I feared I might have razed that palace to the ground and every fairy in it.

The powers would naturally be a lot weaker than through a true awakening, but they would always be there through a thin barrier. And in the case of an emergency, a high ranked goblin would be able to truly awaken him.

Finley eventually collapsed from exhaustion and crumpled onto the ground, completely defenceless.

I wasn’t sure whether to be happy or annoyed that he trusted me so much despite him not knowing who I was. Blood called to blood so he would have an idea but he had never even asked.

I had even let his secondary personalities know with the anticipation that it would strengthen his premonition, but he still hadn’t asked.

I could guess that he just chose not to think about it until I confirmed it as a sort of self-defence mechanism against potential disappointment, but it didn’t make the wait any less annoying.

There weren’t any big rules stopping me from admitting who I was, but I had used it as grounds for a small bet I didn’t want to lose.

I didn’t believe that I couldn’t make the kid realize it and admit it before I had to tell him.

Cai Finley Aies Hall May 3rd, 20XX

I had taken over the body after Finn passed out earlier and had rushed out of there before Theodulus realized and tried to awaken Aies to complete the training Finn had passed out in the middle of. We all shared a body and going through it once, even if it was somewhat second hand was less than pleasant.

It was even worse for me than for Aies since Finley had almost completely accepted me as a part of his personality. Rather than fading away into obscurity as I had anticipated I was more slowly merging into his personality and would now experience things in full as Finn did and vice versa. I still had a bit of autonomy and could seal off any information from Finn that I wanted but that was conditional on the fact that he didn’t think about it too much.

He seemed to respect my privacy a bit too much for a primary personality but well, I wasn’t complaining about it.

Although a certain old man was about to lose his mind because of it.

I soon landed in the pink tiled bathroom that showed I had landed in Sparrow’s workshop and quickly gave in to my nausea, having learned that it was more effective than trying to fight it. It was past the middle of the night, so I didn’t hold out any hopes that Sparrow was still up.

I also didn’t particularly want to see her right now, knowing that she had almost been harmed in another world’s politics because of me.

I wouldn’t be able to leave through the front door since that might've woken her up, so I just sat on the floor and waited to regain my energy before using the transport again.

It was while I did that that I suddenly got the idea.

While it wouldn’t be possible to put bonds on Finley’s friends because they were human I could at least put taggers on them that would let me know if they were very taken to the other world. I could also overlap it with something that let me know when their lives were in danger.

It wasn’t going to guarantee my being able to save them if someone was bold enough to cross me like that but it would at least give me a chance to try.

As a last-minute thing, I cast a small aversion spell over it to avoid anyone noticing it and if they were skilled enough, removing it before I could get a proper lock on its location.

Rather than Esmeralda’s complex set up that cast both the aversion to the topic as well as to the aversion itself. I just sandwiched two of the kind and shoved a group of protective spells in between, layering the Tagging spell in as well.

They wouldn’t be able to use the majority of these protection spells as they required some sort of activation sequence that I didn't know how to put in yet. But maybe one day, when I knew enough and was strong enough to tell them everything about me, I would even be able to take them over and teach them how to use them.