“Then you consider him a Doppelganger?” Leegaain asked.
“I don’t know what it is, but look at that.” Raaz pointed at Lith cooing at Elysia while she cooed back, both of them in their Abomination form. “After spending so much time with you Guardians, after listening to Bytra’s and Zoreth’s stories, I know how an Abomination is born.
“Not anyone can turn into one or Mogar would be overrun by Abominations. It takes someone with a powerful will or with an outstanding mana core and as far as I know, a newborn has neither.
“I was there when Strata… I mean Lith was born. I remember his limp body and Nana doing everything she could to revive him. I remember how scared I was when the possibility that my son was born dead hit me.
“Then, Lith started to move like nothing had happened. As if a switch had been turned on.” Raaz could still picture those first moments when the baby had come back to life, acting so weirdly that to justify his behavior, Nana had claimed that Lith was blessed by the light.
“Also, that’s not my son’s face.”
Leegaain looked at the vestiges of Derek McCoy’s visage and had to admit that the only thing the two men had in common was the eyes.
“Abominations are creatures made of energy. Their physical appearance has nothing to do with the features they were born with. It’s merely a reflection of how they perceive themselves to be.” Leegaain replied.
“And that explains the wings, the horns, and the rest of the demonic features.” Raaz countered. “But what about the haircut and that face? I could get if Lith saw himself more monstrous or handsome, but that’s just a man. Different, but still a man.”
The Father of All Dragons had to admit that even he had no explanation for that.
Derek McCoy wasn’t bad looking and that was the issue. An extreme deformity might have been explained by Lith seeing his Abomination side like something revolting or dangerous whereas it was just human.
Another human.
“Whatever that thing is, whenever it sees me, its eyes spark with hatred and contempt until Lith recognizes me.” Even at that moment, the Abomination glared instinctively at Raaz.
Ezio McCoy, Derek’s Earth father, kept overlapping with the figure of the farmer and the Void’s first instinct was to protect Elysia from him just like he had protected Carl.
“It didn’t make sense to me until Zoreth explained to me the different kinds of Abominations. Eldritches, Empowered and… Puppeteers.”
Zoreth took her role as godmother very seriously and was the only one besides Lith who could trigger Elysia’s Abomination form. While she took care of the baby, she had explained to Raaz the dangers of her species and how to protect himself in case the baby went wild in fear.
“And why do you ask me?” Leegaain said. “You are of Salaark’s blood, not mine.”
“Because of what you said during the last visit to the tower.” Raaz replied. “That your eyes can understand what something was, is, and how it works. Does it apply also to people or just to magical artifacts?”
“It does work on people, but not in the way you think. It’s no mind reading and people don’t come with blueprints or instruction manuals. It might give you more questions than answers so think carefully about this.” Leegaain took a meaningful pause.
“Do you really want to know? Does it really matter who inhabits that body?” The Father of All Dragons himself had no explanation for Raaz’s doubts and had pondered the origin of Lith’s Abomination side for a long while.
He knew that his and Salaark’s bloodline had been added artificially by Mogar but the how and why were beyond him. In the end, Leegaain had disregarded those questions since knowing would have achieved nothing.
Even if Lith really was an Abomination, no Guardian would kill him just for that. What he did was much more important than what he was in determining his character.
“I want to know.” Raaz wringed his hands. “I need to know if my son really is my miracle baby or if I lost him on that day. Otherwise the doubt will consume me.”
After living with Lith for twenty years, Raaz loved him like one of his own. Yet ever since the day Lith had revealed his nature as a hybrid to the family, a constant doubt had been nagging in the back of Raaz’s head.
He was tired of doubting Lith’s paternity, Elina’s faithfulness, and most importantly, himself.
“The problem is that I didn’t raise Lith. No one did. He raised himself.” Now that Raaz had finally admitted it out loud, the words kept coming out of his mouth like a river breaking through a dam.
“For a long time, I felt like a shitty father and a horrible parent for that. Whenever I needed him, my boy was there for me. Whenever Lith needed me, I was useless. I couldn’t understand how someone so young could also be so mature and now that I think I know the answer, it’s all I can think about.”
“Fine, but don’t say that I didn’t warn you.” Leegaain placed his hand on Raaz’s shoulder, activating Soul Vision.
To the mystical sense, Lith now appeared like it was supposed to be.
Like himself.
Even though in the real world Lith was still in his Abomination form, Soul Vision saw him as a perfect Tiamat. While holding the baby girl, there was no trace of aggression on his face or blood on his hands.
The creature was at peace, wrapping Elysia with both his hands and wings to keep her warm and protected.
Yet there was one significant difference between Lith’s Tiamat form and the one revealed by Soul Vision. A small blue flame enveloped him, leaking out of the spaces between the black scales.
Then, the Guardian also activated Leegaain’s Eyes and shared them with Raaz. The figure of the Tiamat was split into three parts. The human, the Abomination, and the Voidfeather Dragon.
Each one of them was broken down into smaller pieces, the three forms regressing in time as they all went from being an adult to a teen. Then from a teen to a child, from a child to a newborn, and then back in time again nothing remained.
Raaz was about to question the vision when the three forms merged before splitting again.
Now he could see two babies, one in his left eye and the other in his right. For a moment, he thought that they were the same person since they moved in unison and there was no difference between them.
Yet while one cried and sought attention and care, the other just slept. The one on the left behaved like every child Raaz had encountered his whole life while the one on the right was Lith.
Suddenly, a blue pyre erupted from the baby on the right, surprising Leegaain. The blue flames burned stronger and higher than ever, much more than on the day the Guardian had sicked Lith against the two assassins from Verendi.
Time moved forward and the babies quickly grew into young children.
