"You must be thirsting for information. And you won't find them chasing after your father's memories. So I'd just answer them all here, and now." Maia nodded at her predecessor's words. She knew he was right. There was no way she'd get the answers she hoped for so quickly if she followed her father's memories. For starters, who knows how long the memories would continue for till she got a few answers? It could be months, years, or worse, decades. According to Reiki, she would only be able to observe for a month, after which she'd have to wait till he had enough energy for her to revisit the rest. A month in the memory scape was equivalent to a day in the physical realm. She was hoping to ride her luck, and successfully gain a few answers before her time ended. Now that she had a person willing to answer all her questions, she was more than pleased. It seems her luck was better than she thought. Rather, fate was on her side once more.
"Who are we?" Maia asked. Of all the questions she wanted to ask, that was the most pressing. She wanted to know how her mother could still wield even as a seer, and it had been answered. The prior conversation had informed her that it was due to tapping into a person's power that her mother, and her entire family had gotten so powerful. She had many more questions to ask, including how the Usurper had taken the throne when he was nowhere near powerful enough to do so. She'd have to find a way to ask the question concerning the Usurper without letting Grandpa Winks know what was truly going on. She couldn't possibly say, "So you see in the future your grandson will be killed cruelly by one of the nobles." She had to find out if there was something that could weaken eternals to the extent that they would lose all their strength. However, these questions would come later.
Grandpa Winks smiled at her question. The older gentleman stroked his beard stubble as he sat down more comfortably. He was expecting this question. And he had already prepared a reply, "We are eternals. Eternals are an ancient race, one as old as time itself. We were present when the Universe was made. And we will be in millions of years to come. Only the destruction of the universe, would cause our race to die out."
Maia was startled by the answer. How could a race exist from the beginning of the cosmos itself? She looked at her ancestor in doubt, hoping the man would be clearer with his explanation.
"I know it sounds farfetched and downright arrogant, but it is true. That is why we are referred to as Eternals. We have been present since the beginning. And we aren't going anywhere. I'm not going to bore you with our history. It's quite long, and we don't have enough time." Grandpa Winks explained with a smile. "Unfortunately, our strength isn't as dominant as our age. Unlike many other races, our talent isn't set in stone. We aren't born as geniuses. We are made into geniuses depending on the situation. I'm certain you heard us talk about the Supreme One."
Maia nodded her head in reply. Over the past few hours, she had heard that term over and over again. From the various conversations that she had spied on, this Supreme Being was the lifeblood of her race. As to why that was, she was eager to find out. "Is this Supreme Being an eternal?" she asked eagerly.
"No, he isn't. And that is never possible." Grandpa Winks shut the doors to her speculative mind with his reply. He went on to say, "The Supreme Being, or the one referred to by all who have any knowledge of this character, as the Supreme, isn't really fixed to a race. Once every million years, a child is born with talent and latent power that put him/her at the top of the universal food chain. We don't know how this happens, but every time the universe was in dire need of saving, a Supreme was born. They are seen as the universe's own means of fighting back. The birth of a Supreme is both good and bad. For eternals, our talent depends on the Supremes. When a Supreme is born, we undergo a metamorphosis, allowing us to exceed the limits of any world we occupy. Without the Supreme, our strength lingers around the mortal stage, with the most talented of us all only reaching its peak."
Maia was a bit startled by the information she was receiving, "How is that even possible?" All her life, under her master's tutelage, she had been labelled a genius. Even her mysterious master was very impressed with her talent, calling her arguably the most talented person in the universe. She wasn't a proud person, but she had lived all her life with the belief that she was a peak level talent. And that she was, but not in the way she thought. If she was to believe her great grandfather's words, then it would imply that it wasn't because of her own gifts that she was able to attain this height, but because of someone she hadn't even met.
"Don't look so distraught. It is the harsh truth. Eternals have no true talent, apart from our abnormally long lives that is. Before the birth of the first Supreme we were nothing, just playthings and objects of pleasure for the stronger races. No one knew why were able to live so long with our meagre strength. We were hunted down, experiments performed on us in order to discover the secret of 'everlasting' life. We grew weaker, and far fewer in numbers. I guess even those with 'eternal' life would die with their hearts ripped out. We were at our wits' end, with only a handful of us remaining. And that was when she appeared, the first Supreme."
"No one really took notice of her in the beginning. But there were signs before her birth. Two decades before her birth, a seer of our race saw what was going to be- she predicted the birth of a prodigy that was meant to save the eternal race. She claimed that our strength would see a steep rise before this prodigy is born. 'A welcome from the universe to its child', she said. Our race had no amazing fighting strength, but we were so talented in other areas. We had several seers, peak level alchemists and weapon smiths that made many races blush in shame. Perhaps, it was God's compensation for bypassing our race when giving out the talent to wield. But even with such versatile members, none of us could possibly see why the genius would want to shelter us. That didn't last for long though. A warrior broke into the above-mortal realm that day. There were so few of us left that it was easy to notice this. A few more broke through before the week ended. By the time the year had passed by, we were all believers- believers at the profound realm, our seer who had never cultivated included"
Maia had her eyes open in shock. If she was considered a talent, then her ancestors were gods! To jump two major realms in just one year was an unbelievable feat. And to think that all this happened because of someone else was even more improbable.