A/N: In case you don't remember the warning from last chapter, this one is gonna be a heavy hitter. You've been warned.

Chapter 4

What Happened to Ria's Dreams

By the time Ivan returned from buying them some lunch, Raistlin had filled the front and backside of a page with notes on the properties of light, words in Sihir that he knew related to light and those properties, words for what he hoped to accomplish with the light, and components that he knew of that might potentially be utilized for constructing a light spell of some kind. When Ivan walked through the door and announced his presence, Raistlin was busy trying to narrow down what his best options were to try forming his spell around.

Ivan wouldn't let him get away with continuing his work while he ate; the elder magic user insisted on him handing over the notebook so he could have a mental break as well as a meal. Raistlin conceded to the request with only a frustrated sigh, knowing it wasn't up for debate. Besides, he had accomplished what he felt was a decent amount of progress for one morning. Ivan was allowing him more experimental room than Master Theobald ever had, Raistlin was growing more confident as the morning had worn on that he stood a decent chance of getting this spell figured out, so he shouldn't press his luck. He really wanted to be able to get more spells into his spellbook and expand his capabilities, and he finally had that chance. He couldn't let his own eagerness get him censored somehow by the mentors.

As they ate a sort of sandwich Ivan called "gyros" and said came from a Turkish restaurant downtown, Raistlin filled his elder in on how his theories were shaping up. Ivan listened to the update without interruption. Then he gave the student mage a lesson on what their world understood of light from observations with machines they had that could better follow light particles as they moved and interacted with things, sometimes drawing out rough little sketches on one of the notebook pages to help illustrate the points. That was immensely helpful to narrow down what ways would be most natural to direct his magic to accomplish his goal and was well worth the hour it took them to go over the information.

Ivan glanced at the watch on his wrist as Raistlin finished eating his sandwich; his had long since been eaten. "Little Ria's class finished not too long ago. She will be on her way to Maggie's shop by now. I know you might wish to continue your studies today, but I think perhaps Ria might appreciate a surprise visit from us and seeing you up and about."

That reminded Raistlin of the state he was in this morning, and that Ria had found him like that. He gave a nod to Ivan's suggestion. "I think I owe her an apology for making her worried. Did she make it to school on time, or did I make her late?"

"She made it to school on time," Ivan assured him. "When she called me, I asked Maggie to come here and pick Ria up so she could have more time to get ready and not have opportunity to get overly worried about such; or start picking up on what was the actual cause of your state of being, and then wonder why you were in such state and perhaps divine some of that."

Raistlin nodded to that reasonable line of logic, and appreciated that Ivan had done so. Even still, he felt more than a little guilty for the concern he had caused Ria, and wondered just how long he was going to have to keep such secrets from her. He knew that Ria had a lot of other responsibilities to tend to and her mentors didn't think it wise to add more stress for her, but there was this little part of his conscience that said it didn't feel right to keep hiding all these things from her.

"If she should enquire as to what we've been up this morning," Ivan said, standing and collecting the wrappers from their meals and the mugs of tea they had brewed to go with it, "I think it will be safe to tell her we allowed you to get some much needed rest, and then spent some time satisfying both of our curiosities on some of the similarities between our two worlds' magics and discussing some theories on the properties of light. That is true enough that it will not set off her mental lie detector, and therefore make her want to sense out what things we may be omitting."

Raistlin nodded to that slowly, then gave a small, frustrated sigh. Ivan put the mugs in the sink and tossed the wrappers out.

Raistlin's conscience was getting the better of him now. He usually didn't find it difficult to lie to people or misdirect them as needed, but he really didn't like the idea of continually lying to Ria, of constantly sneaking behind her back to do things. He decided to bring up these thoughts with Ivan so that he could hopefully put his mind to rest before seeing Ria. "Ivan, if we could delay going to Maggie's shop for just a short while, I feel like I should talk to you about something."

"Of course, it is not as though we are expected," Ivan said, taking back up his seat at the table instead of readying to leave. "What is it you wish to speak about?"

Raistlin needed to consider how to phrase his thoughts before he could give voice to them. Ivan was if nothing else patient and gave him that chance, which he appreciated. Finally, he said, meeting the mentor's gaze, "I can fully appreciate everything you, Yevgeny, and Maggie have mentioned at various times about Ria having many responsibilities with work, school, and her training in your traditions, and trying to balance that with also having time for her friends and creative pursuits; and that you feel like the reality of this current situation would be just a little too much for her right now. However, it doesn't feel right to me to continually be hiding things from her, multiple times a day, especially as those things are things that will directly affect her at some point in the very near future. It feels like we are leaving her open for potential attacks because she doesn't know to try protecting herself by being a little more careful right now, or at the very least be able to mentally prepare for when the moment comes so she won't be so frightened when it does."

Ivan's expression became more remote and he looked away from the mage. If Raistlin had to guess, he'd say Ivan wasn't angry with him for questioning their working agreement on how to handle this, he was simply debating how to respond on this sensitive subject.

Eventually, Ivan turned his gaze back to the mage and said, clearly picking his words carefully, "I can understand why you do not like keeping things from Argyria. I assure you, we do not like having to keep such things from her either. However, we cannot control that the false wolves will come for her. We can only control how we prepare for that attack, how to maximize our chances in stopping them when they make their move, and how to keep the fallout of the attack to a minimum. No matter what we do, little Ria will be caught in the middle of this fight, and it will be frightening for her, and we are going to have a process afterwards of helping her recover from that scare. So we must balance what we do before, decide which is the least harmful course leading up to the fight. Might alerting her before give her a chance to mentally prepare for it, as you are doing?"

Ivan gave a small shrug in answer to his own question, a small frown forming on his thin lips. "This is possibly true. However, Ria cannot protect herself. She does not have your capabilities. We feel as though the foreknowledge would make her feel even more helpless than she already will. It will be distressing and distracting and could deeply upset her life as she worries over it. We feel it would be best to try to give her what peace of mind we can, for as long as we can."

Raistlin's brow furrowed in thought, turning the reasoning over in his mind. "I suppose I can understand why you three feel that way. But despite the initial fright my appearance in her home in the middle of the night gave her, Ria was able to reason through the situation on her own because of a few clues that had been given to her by 'Ferdinand' before my arrival, and it didn't cause her lasting unrest. Why should we think the events in the future will be any different if we were to tell her?"

"Those are two very different situations," Ivan said, a faint note of consternation leaking through his attempt to maintain stoicism. "You did not mean her any harm, even if your unexpected presence and the manner it was come by was startling. These false wolves will mean her the worst kinds of harm; they are coming after her because of her gifts and potential. We are trying to minimize such harms coming to her as much as possible, both physically and mentally. This could drag out days or weeks or maybe even months. We do not know. And little Ria would be fretting over it all that time; scared for herself, scared for you as the one who will try to protect her, scared her friends or those of us who mentor her who could be caught up in it as well. She will be questioning why it is she that is being targeted, what may she do to subvert the attack, what may she do to hide from future potential assailants, whether or not it is worth her training and future if it means people may come to harm because there are those who do not wish to see her fulfill them. We have had difficulties enough trying to keep her course on track and stabile. There will be enough explanations needing to be given after the attack, enough worries to try allaying. We are hoping we may at least be able to give those explanations on the heels of victory and lessen the potential damage by presenting the irrefutable proof that such attempts can be successfully averted and therefore should not divert her studies and upset her state of mind."

Raistlin considered that explanation. Then some of Ivan's wording began to stick out in his thoughts, and brought to mind some other things he had been told by the mentors, and some things Ria had said in passing to himself, or he had overheard when she was arguing with Darlene and Lexi had mediated between the two girls.

The mage turned a narrowed gaze on Ivan, asking perhaps more sharply than he meant to because of the metaphorical alarms sounding in his head that this was something he couldn't overlook asking, "Ivan, what exactly happened in the past to upset Ria's state of mind and make her training more complicated than it already would be? And do not gloss over it as Maggie did, because I am quite certain that this is something I need know if I am to understand your reasoning and be of proper aid in this situation. Does it have something to do with why Ria left her father's home 3 years ago and you three have had to try to be surrogates for her?"

Even if Ivan wasn't willing to confirm his suspicions, the thunderous look that crossed the paternal mentor's face as Ria's birth father was directly mentioned in such fashion certainly did. As did a dangerous flash of magic flaring out from his pendant and around him for just a split second. Ivan's jaw clenched, clearly trying to keep his reactions in check.

After a minute of tense silence, Ivan managed to unclench his jaw enough to say venomously, "Yes, it has everything to do with why she left that good for nothing bastard's house, and it is why I will gladly spit on his grave someday."

Were it not for the urgency of the conversation, Raistlin would have been shocked to hear Ivan of all people use such language. As it was, such a response only reinforced in his mind that he needed answers. "What happened, Ivan?"

Ivan gave a furious grunt, abruptly stood from the table, and walked into the living room, clearly needing more time to collect himself.

Raistlin waited for Ivan to return, knowing he needed to discover what this was all about, but starting to dread what the answer was and not wanting to be in the path of the High Priest's rage.

It was nearly ten minutes before Ivan returned to the room, but when he did, he looked far more in control of himself. He sat down in the chair he had abandoned and when he spoke there was some anger still in his voice, but at least it was far more reined in. "Argyria's biological father is not one of us. Her mother was, but her mother was untrained. As I am sure you know from your own experiences, that does not end well for the untrained."

Raistlin nodded soberly at the indirect mention of his own mother. "Yes, I know how that ends."

"Ria's mother died while giving birth to her, leaving her father with a silver eyed infant he had neither desire nor patience to raise on his own, and feared might take after his wife. His parents lived with them, so he left Ria's upbringing to them. Ria's grandparents were decent people and raised her kindly. However, they died when she was quite young, I believe she was only four years of age. It was a car crash during a snow storm. Rather than finally uphold his duties as a father, he remarried the first woman he could and left Ria in her care."

Ivan's tone was becoming venomous again as he explained things. Given what Raistlin knew about Ivan and Maggie losing a child that had been wanted, it wasn't hard to reason out some of why Ivan would feel so furious.

"That woman, like Ria's father, was not one of us. When Ria's gifts started to manifest noticeably beyond seeming a precociously observant child, the wife became convinced Ria was touched by evil, and her father's worst fears about having a child who took after his wife were confirmed. Her father has quite the visible business empire, many people knew he had a daughter by his first wife, and our authorities are very good at tracking crimes down to their sources when done by mundane means. He could not kill her or abandon her to get rid of what he saw as a problem and placate his harpy of a wife, so he contracted doctors to start giving Ria experimental drugs, under the pretenses that she was mentally ill and needed it to be controlled."

Raistlin's stomach felt like it had dropped to the floor as understanding started to wash over him. He didn't know what drugs this world had, but he knew what drugs his world had and some of the results of such attempts on magic users. None of them ever worked that way, it always made things much worse. Those were cautionary tales passed from older mages to younger mages of why one should try to at least learn the basics of magic control if they had a natural gift, why they shouldn't try to deny it outright. Raistlin had lived through having a mother who couldn't control her gifts, but Rosamun was mostly harmless because she got lost in her dream walking and then confused when brought back to reality.

The mage from Krynn wished Ivan would stop talking. He didn't want to hear this. He didn't want to imagine something so terrible being done to Ria, or hear just what damages it had caused in her case. But Ivan continued speaking, venting his rage. And Raistlin was stuck where he sat, frozen in horror, receiving the answer he had asked for.

"Ria spent many years being force fed, sometimes in the literal sense, various cocktails of mind altering drugs to try destroying her gifts and make her placid. They caused many imbalances in Ria's mind. She had a few psychotic breaks where her gifts went out of control and she lost her grip on reality. She would spend months struggling to feel any emotions of her own, then suddenly having wild emotional swings she could not control. The drugs damaged a portion of her brain that was responsible for processing the dream state. Ria knew this treatment was wrong and would try to fight back, which only increased the abuse. Sometimes she would try to pretend she was normal in hopes they would stop drugging her. She could not keep her gifts fully suppressed, however, especially when her mind was not properly her own, so such abuse continued. When she was fifteen years of age, Ria ran away from home with Darlene's help. Darlene's parents had moved to this city some years before and they were willing to take her in for a time. They worked with different doctors and managed to get all the drugs out of Ria's system, but detoxing is a very difficult process and Ria was hospitalized through it to keep her from hurting herself.

"Maggie knew the girls from earlier times on the occasions Ria was allowed to come visit Darlene and the girls came into the shop for new books to read. They often spent hours at a time there and Maggie made it clear that her shop would always be a safe haven for them should they need it. She came to me asking if there was some way we could intervene, but legally we had no rights. We were not family and we would not be able to prove the abuse she suspected was happening because the courts allow parents to make such medical decisions and they neither recognize magical gifts nor the abuse of them. Darlene knew Maggie was a Reiki Master from some of Maggie's advertisements. So once Ria finished detoxing, Darlene went to Maggie for aid, hoping Maggie could use her reiki skills to help return Ria to a more balanced state. It ended up taking combined efforts by Maggie and Yevgeny to do so. Maggie repaired energy imbalances and what damage she could to Ria's physical mind, and Yevgeny used his mentalist gift to help her brain rewire its thought processing and handle on what was real or not.

"Ria has much improved in the last three years, thank the gods above. It has been five months since the last time she had a hallucination and she was able to distinguish it for what it was and ride it out. However, we could not repair her ability to properly process her dreams. Dream state is where people confront things that plague their subconscious and work through them, then bring those revelations to the waking world with them, and little Ria is denied that ability. So she has to make careful efforts to be aware of her stress levels and what is causing that stress, and try to work through it while she is awake so she is not overwhelmed. We have been working very hard with her to encourage that through her art and through many different exercises in sorting her thoughts out properly so she can identify them, and then seek counsel from us on how to resolve what worries she may have until she gains enough worldly experience to be able to reason such things on her own fully. And whatever damage the drugs did to her physical mind, they have impacted her ability to take control of her magic. She still has her passive gifts, but she cannot access deeper magic properly. We can sense it is there, she can sense it is there, but she has not been able to get more than momentary grasps on it before it slips away from her.

"So, because of one ignorant bastard's callous treatment of a special daughter he did not deserve being blessed with," the High Priest concluded, rumbling voice absolutely murderous in regards to the man not present in the room and magic likewise flaring but unable to lash out at the one he wanted to aim it at, "our little Ria is left defenseless for the time being, the Gods' plans such as they were for her struggle to remain intact, we have been struggling to set matters to rights, and now we have these false wolves to try deterring. That is why we are saying, we must not allow Ria to know of these things before the attack, we must try to keep her stress to a minimum, and we will have to do the best we can after the attack to make sure this does not break her."

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A/N: SoI needs to chainsmoke a few after finally writing this scene. I've dropped a number of hints since chapter one, it's one of the critical pins for the whole series, but this was still hard to write. Next chapter will be up by tomorrow, it's still going to be heavy, but not nearly as bad as this one.