Chapter 198: The Wildcard

Chapter 198: Chapter 198: The Wildcard

The morning’s combined drills had run long enough that most of the family carried visible fatigue by the time Silver called the group back together, sweat and exertion settling over all of them in roughly equal measure.

"Elemental training today," Silver said, scanning the gathered group. "Erik, Kai, Ben, Dahlia, Killian — pair off, work combination drills the way we ran yesterday." His gaze shifted toward Penelope and Persephone. "You two, sit this one out. We’ll find something separate for you tomorrow."

Penelope hesitated, glancing between Silver and the rest of the group already moving into position. "Actually — I should be included. I have a power too."

Silver paused, brow lifting slightly. "You’ve never mentioned an element."

"That’s because it’s not one," Penelope said. "Not the usual kind."

Ben, Kai, Erik, and Aunt Mary settled back with the particular, unbothered ease of people who already knew exactly what was coming. Silver, Dahlia, Victor, Killian, and Persephone, by contrast, turned their full attention toward her, none of them having ever seen this before.

"My power is Mimicry," Penelope said. "Once I enter someone’s Sea of Consciousness and copy a fragment of their Spirit Root, it becomes mine permanently. Not borrowed — mine, for good. I already carry Ben’s earth and Kai’s fire from weeks ago."

Dahlia’s eyebrows rose. "You can copy any of us?"

"Theoretically," Penelope said. "It’s more complicated in practice."

"Show them," Silver said, already recalculating the morning’s structure around this new information.

Penelope raised one hand, focusing, and a small ridge of stone rose from the field beneath her, controlled and precise — no need to reach for Ben’s consciousness at all now, the ability already fully, permanently her own.

Victor’s brow furrowed, working through the mechanics with obvious fascination. "That’s incredible."

Killian said nothing for a moment, something quietly recalibrating behind his own composed expression. "I didn’t know," he admitted, glancing toward Penelope. "I’ve only ever seen your space ability and the katana. I assumed the rest of what I couldn’t explain was just more of the same power, somehow."

"Ben’s power still works fine, even now that I’ve copied it," Penelope added, glancing toward him. "Taking a copy doesn’t take anything away from him. He’s not weaker for it."

Ben nodded, demonstrating with a small tremor of his own through the ground, strong and undiminished. "Still mine, still full strength. Hers too, now, apparently."

"Try Erik’s," Silver said, already testing the boundaries of what he’d just learned. "Both elements at once. I want to know if there’s a limit."

Penelope’s posture shifted, something more hesitant entering it now. "This one might not work."

"Try anyway," Erik said, steady. "We should know the limits, not just the successes."

She reached for his consciousness, and the connection opened easily enough — Erik offered it as freely as Ben had — but the moment she tried to close her grasp around the Spirit Root itself, something resisted from within her own effort rather than his. Ice and lightning, twin currents braided together, proved too much to isolate cleanly, her own strength straining against the attempt to hold both at once.

She staggered back a step, breathing hard, the connection snapping loose before she’d taken anything at all.

"I can’t," she admitted, frustration threading through her voice. "It’s too much. Two elements bound together like that — I don’t have the strength to pull them apart yet."

"Yet," Silver repeated, something approving in the single word despite the failure. "That’s useful too. Now we know dual-element roots are currently beyond her. That’s not a weakness to hide. That’s a variable to plan around."

"So she’s not all-powerful," Dahlia said, something thoughtful in her observation rather than disappointment.

"No one in this family is," Silver said. "And every ability she does successfully take, she carries permanently. That’s worth remembering — this isn’t a power that runs out or resets. Whatever she manages to copy, she keeps for good."

Silver turned back to the wider group. "This is what I want all of you to internalize. Penelope’s value isn’t fixed. She’s not another blade in the formation. Every ability she adds to her own becomes another gap she can fill, permanently, provided the right person is willing enough to give it to her."

"So her toolkit only grows," Erik said, already following the logic. "The longer this goes on, the more versatile she becomes."

"Precisely," Silver said. "Which is exactly why I want the rest of you thinking about her as an evolving asset, not a static one."

Silver’s attention shifted then, turning toward Persephone, who’d been quiet through most of the demonstration, watching with open curiosity rather than the tension of someone bracing for her own turn. "Your bow," he said. "Show me what you’ve got left in the quiver."

Persephone blinked, caught off guard. "Now?"

"Now."

She retrieved her crossbow from where it rested nearby, and Silver gestured toward a cluster of loose targets — scattered stones and a few broken branches — positioned at varying distances across the field.

"Five shots," he said. "Fast as you can manage."

Persephone raised the weapon, and what followed happened almost too quickly for anyone watching to fully track — bolt after bolt loosed and reloaded in a blur of motion, her hands moving with a speed that bore no resemblance to the deliberate, careful reloading she’d shown weeks earlier during ordinary supply runs. All five bolts found their marks within seconds, the last one striking before the first had even finished falling.

Silence settled over the field.

"That’s not normal reload speed," Killian said slowly, studying the scattered targets with genuine surprise.

Persephone stared down at her own hands, breathless. "I didn’t — I wasn’t even trying to go that fast. It just happened."

"Do it again," Silver said. "Different targets."

She reset, and the second attempt proved just as fast, if not faster — her reactions firing ahead of her own conscious decision-making, each shot landing before she’d fully registered choosing where to aim.

"You’re not just quick," Erik observed, watching closely now. "Your reaction time’s ahead of your own thought process. That’s not training. That’s an ability."

Silver studied his daughter with new, sharpened attention. "You’ve awakened something."

"I don’t understand," Persephone said, lowering the crossbow slowly, something baffled crossing her usually confident features. "I’ve been shooting like this for weeks. I thought I was just getting better with practice."

"Practice doesn’t explain what we just watched," Killian said. "That’s raw speed. Enhanced reflexes, at minimum."

Dahlia crossed to her sister’s side, studying her with open concern and curiosity in equal measure. "Have you noticed anything else? Moving faster than you expect, reacting before you think to?"

Persephone considered the question seriously, some old, half-formed memory surfacing without full shape yet — a boat crowd scattering before she’d consciously aimed, footsteps that always seemed to arrive somewhere a half-second before she remembered deciding to move. "Maybe," she admitted slowly. "I hadn’t really thought about it until now."

"We’ll test it properly tomorrow," Silver said. "Today’s already given us more than enough to work with." He glanced around the field — at Penelope still flexing her exhausted hand, at Persephone staring at her own crossbow like it belonged to someone else entirely, at the rest of the family absorbing two significant revelations within the same hour. "Rest, all of you. We continue in the morning."

Nobody argued. The family began drifting apart in loose, tired clusters, and Penelope caught Killian’s eye across the field, something warm passing silently between them, though something faintly unresolved lingered underneath it too.

"You did well today," he said, once he’d crossed to her side.

"I failed at half of it."

"You demonstrated real limits instead of hiding them," Killian said. "That’s not failure. That’s exactly what Silver needed to see."

"I should have told you sooner," Penelope admitted, quieter now. "About the Mimicry. It never came up, and then it felt strange to bring up out of nowhere."

"You don’t owe me every piece of yourself at once," Killian said, something steady and unbothered in his voice. "I’d rather learn you slowly and completely than have you hand me a summary all at once."

Penelope managed a tired smile at that, some of the earlier discomfort easing. "That’s a generous way to look at it."

"I have my moments." Killian glanced back toward Persephone, still turning her crossbow over in her hands with open, unresolved wonder. "Feels like there’s more to find out about all of us, not just her."

"Probably," Penelope agreed. "We’re all still new at this. Even the ones who’ve had weeks longer than everyone else to adjust."

Killian didn’t answer that immediately, something quiet passing behind his eyes that Penelope didn’t quite catch — the particular, private weight of a man who’d already lived through far more of this than anyone standing on this field currently understood, choosing, once again, not to say so aloud.

"Get some rest," he said instead. "Tomorrow’s going to be just as long."