Blessed by Night

Chapter 298: Hard Lesson, Hard Decision

Despite Thea making the claim that she would be back in only a few short minutes, she ended up leaving Malachi in the training room for a few hours.

But he didn't even realize it himself.

The entire time he'd been trying to break the glass block created by Thea, Mal had hardly moved from his spot even by a couple of inches.

Next to no progress had been made towards the goal of shattering the glass.

The most he had been able to do was imbue a few cracks into the block, but even then he just had to watch it repair itself seconds later.

'Ugh…'

Malachi finally noticed that he was running a bit of a fever.

He felt something wet running down his snout and brought his hand up to investigate.

"A nosebleed, huh..? Haven't had one of these since B made Anna that leather-"

"Bu?"

Camille, lured by the smell of blood, approached her father silently and without tipping him off.

Her head tilted to the side curiously as she seemingly waited for her dad to finish his sentence.

"U-Umm. Nothing, munchkin. Dad is just reminiscing to himself a bit. About some very… very good times."

Camille seemed not to understand what Mal was talking about in the slightest.

"Bwa?" Ignoring her father's degeneracy, Camille pointed to her own stomach that was awakened by Mal's impromptu nosebleed.

He quickly checked the time and he realized that Cami should have been fed thirty minutes ago.

"Oops… Don't tell your moms about this, yea?"

Camille looked like she wanted to ask, 'Well what do I get out of this?'

"…Ten extra minutes to your hour of tablet time a day."

"Bu!" (Thirty!)

"No way in hell. Your mothers would wring my neck." (And deprive him of affection)

Sei, Luna, Jo, and Bianca were the most concerned about Cami having proper development.

Anna, Mal, and Nadine had to be monitored carefully by them, or else Camille would have ended up even more spoiled than she already was.

"Bu." (Twenty-five.) She argued.

"…Twenty, but it has to be animal planet or something else educational."

"…Aba." (Deal.)

Mal and Cami shook hands like two crooked business partners.

With their deal struck, Mal sat down on the ground and reverted back to regular size.

He sat down on the floor with his back against the block of glass and lifted his daughter into his lap.

He pulled out a small container and spoon from the shadows and peeled back the lid.

Inside was a concoction of mashed sweet potatoes and carrots, blended with a few drops of Mal's own blood.

After tying a simple bib onto her neck, Mal began feeding Camille in the silence.

As he sat there, he allowed his body to recouperate from the burden of overusing his powers.

This new limit of his wasn't all that noticeable at first but when it hit… boy did it hit hard.

He yawned and his body was engulfed in a bright light.

Once it died down, Serosh, Zazu, and Ajani were lying on the floor around him, and he was right back to normal.

But all of his animal aspects looked like they were exhausted beyond belief, because they hadn't opened their mouths to greet him or even crack a performance issue joke.

They just went straight to sleep; leaving him awake and mildly envious.

Once Cami was done eating, she began rubbing her eyes as if she was also tired.

Lifting her into his arms, he rocked her to sleep gently and it wasn't long before she was out as well.

Now, Mal really felt alone with just his thoughts.

It should come as no shock to anyone that they mostly consisted of his inadequacy in completing the exercise Thea assigned to him.

He thought that this would have been a fairly simple task to accomplish, but leave it to the three dragon siblings to show up and make something difficult look easy.

'No, don't be jealous. Just keep thinking… I can do this somehow.'

Mal's brainstorming session went on for only a short while before a visitor stepped into the training hall with him.

He opened one of his glowing violet eyes and tilted his head head a bit when he realized that he didn't know this person.

I mean, he'd seen him around the base and stuff, but he didn't exactly remember his name off the top of his head.

He was a man in around his mid to late twenties with unkempt dark brown hair and crooked glasses.

He would have likely been fairly handsome if he were taking care of himself.

Once the man saw Malachi was rocking a sleeping baby, he nervously began backing away while apologizing in a low voice.

"I-I'm sorry, sir.. A-Am I supposed to call you sir..?"

"No, but that doesn't really seem to deter anyone else in this place from saying it.. Do you need something man?"

"I-I, uhh.."

Malachi slowly leaned forward as a sneaking suspicion formed in his mind.

"I-I don't mean to impose, but… I haven't been sleeping well for the past few days a-and I was wondering if you could maybe… use your power like when you first saved us..?"

Sometimes, Malachi hated it when his intuition was correct.

"…What's your name, man?"

"Everyone j-just calls me Eddie, sir. I-I mean-"

"Come sit down for a second, Eddie." Malachi beckoned.

Eddie absolutely did not want to sit anywhere near Malachi.

For one, he was 6'5 and wildly intimidating even when he looked 95% human.

In addition, there were three supersized animals lying on the floor around him.

Eddie was practically positive that if he so much as breathed too loud, they were going to bite off his head.

He timidly came towards Mal and the sleeping animals.

Because he was concerned for his safety, he elected to only stand a few feet away from Zazu since he seemed the least intimidating.

Malachi sighed deeply as if he was struggling with the words that were about to come out of his mouth.

"I'm sorry, Eddie, but I can't help you like that again. It's not good for either of us."

"W-What..? What does that even mean??"

Malachi occasionally got requests like this from members who were having difficulties with PTSD.

His ability to eat the negative emotions of individuals is kind of like a band-aid.

The euphoric happy effect eventually wears off and needs to be re-administered after a time.

Mal didn't know if that side effect was accidental or intentional so that he would always have a fresh 'battery' waiting around.

Oddly enough, the one who helped Mal see the dangerous implications behind his power was Joanne.

As someone who had her own personal battles with addiction long before Anna was born, she knew better than else the kind of slippery slope that his power could lead to.

Joanne was relatively laid back and she didn't particularly ask a whole lot of Malachi, but she did make him promise that he would never use his power on her, or anyone else, more than once.

It made for hard conversations with some of the members sometimes.

Some reacted poorly to his refusal.

They would either cry and beg, or become irate and storm off.

The most desperate offered their body to him.

But all of those things only reaffirmed his decision not to use them.

If things were this bad after just one use, he could hardly fathom just how much worse they could get.

Mal explained all of this to Eddie calmly and carefully without skipping over a single step.

He could tell that it was taking some time for him to process everything in full- and Mal waited anxiously for the next critical moment.

As mentioned, some take his refusal alright.

Some do not.

Mal had no clue which side of the line Eddie was about to fall on.