Ignoring the terrified cries from the civilians and Cultivators on the main road, I continued casting my senses outward in search of the demonic essence I had detected within the tiger. Combined with my authority, I felt confident that a Demon or Demonic Cultivator wouldn’t be hard to find.
Detecting a small gathering of individuals with Demonic energy to the west, I looked toward the city and couldn’t help but frown.
The energy was located beneath the city, deep below the foundation and bordering the vertical limits of the territory.
They were not alone.
There was also a scattering of energy signatures in their general vicinity that did not possess any Demonic energy.
Indulging my curiosity while still exercising caution, I used my authority to draw one of the owners of the Demonic energy to the surface.
Another large green-furred tiger appeared where I directed. Surprised by its sudden change in locale, it was too slow to recognise the danger and disintegrated into a bloom of Demonic energy as my right foot crashed into its ribcage.
Pulling the other sources of Demonic energy, I found all but one of them were the green-furred tigers of identical appearance to the others I had dispatched earlier. However, the exception in their midst gave me pause.
Skin black as coal and packed with muscle, a tall man with wolf-like teeth and a ragged beard cast a baleful eye toward the surrounding tigers. “What is this? Who dares disturb my feast?!” The stranger snarled, sending crimson spittle and fragments of meat and bone tumbling over his lips and down his beard.
Despite bearing a passing resemblance to an Ogre, the stranger was not identified as such by any of my Abilities.
Drawn to the bloody chunk of mangled flesh clutched in the claws of his right hand, my body began moving of its own accord. Seizing the stranger’s head and crushing his skull between my fingers.
The stranger screamed, outrage forgotten and replaced by terror and excruciating pain as my grip continued to tighten.
I could have ended it immediately, killing him in an instant. However, my enhanced senses had identified his meal and I was determined to drag out his end on general principle.
Powerful Cultivators began pouring out of the city, racing over the open ground and soaring through the air with weapons drawn. However, their collective momentum came to a shuddering halt as each wave of newcomers came close enough to witness what was unfolding with their own eyes.
All the while, the coal-skinned Demon desperately flailed his fists against my chest and arm in a desperate bid to free himself from the pain.
Struggling to suppress my rage, I turned to the growing ranks of cultivators. Fingers burrowing through the broken plates of the Demon’s skull and into his brain. “NO ONE IS ABOVE MY LAWS,” I stated grimly. Driving the point home by incinerating the Demon’s head with superheated magical flames.
The Demon’s muscles and sinews ran like melted wax, causing his lifeless body to fall to the ground and the blackened ruin of his skull to follow shortly afterwards.
“SUBMIT TO THE AUDIT WITH THE KNOWLEDGE THAT YOUR DEEPEST SINS WILL BE LAID BARE. THAT THERE IS NO ESCAPING JUDGEMENT,” I growled. “YOUR ONLY CHANCE AT LENIENCY OF ANY KIND. OF MERCY. IS UNCONDITIONAL COMPLIANCE.” I drove each word home by releasing a wave of concentrated Mana, driving Cultivators from the sky and forcing them all to their knees. “THIS IS YOUR FIRST AND FINAL WARNING.”
Exercising my authority, I left the city behind. Cycling through several different locations before arriving in an isolated territory that was pending a sentience audit.
Sweeping my senses through the territory, I found no signs of anything resembling humanoid life and few Beasts.
Falling to my knees I released a torrent of hot bile from my guts and struck at the ground with all the strength I could muster. Venting the hatred, fury and revulsion from inside of me before it could lay permanent claim on my soul.
Through repeated exposure, I had achieved a degree of numbness to the horror. So it came as a complete surprise that my other self, my original selves, was so vulnerable.
I could feel him, them, raging and screaming inside of my mind. Driven berserk by…
My thoughts turned to my children, inciting a fresh wave of emotions, like poking at a raw nerve.
“My children! NEVER!!!” I spoke the words, but they were not mine alone. Claimed by my other self, the parts that had not yet blended with the core of my mind.
The selectivity was enough to make me sick.
“All of them!” I snarled. “We. Don’t. Choose!”
“Any. Price.” The reply was made with absolute confidence and I was ashamed by the truth it bore.
If I was forced to choose. If there was no other way. I would allow another child to die if it meant my children would survive.
Of course, that only made the extreme reaction that much more perplexing. Insisting only our children mattered, only to lose control when faced with the brutality visited upon those belonging to another.
Which made me realise something about my other self. Despite possessing a collective set of life experiences dozens of times greater than my own. Those experiences were incredibly limited or shallow. Our lives were almost completely alien to one another, connected only through a shared understanding of pain.
My other self gradually settled back into my subconscious, leaving me alone with my own thoughts once more.
Psychological instability…Not an ideal trait for someone responsible for millions, coming up on billions, of lives.
Making no attempts to hide what I had done, I Summoned a projection of Gric and explained my concerns in great detail. Submitting myself to an invasive scan just to make sure I wasn’t going insane.
When Gric only confirmed what I already knew, it didn’t come as the relief I had hoped it would be.
My other self and I were combining, but the integration process was slow going and would almost certainly generate future outbursts similar to the one I experienced already.
Sending the projection away to audit the second Monarch’s territories, I used my authority to draw Gric’s true self to my side.
“I need you to promise me something, Gric,” I insisted grimly.
“Anything, my Tyrant,” Gric agreed, only too eager to obey. Although I doubted he would be so ready to do so if he knew what I intended to ask.
“If I ever become a danger, to my wife or children, to any of you…” My voice failed me and I needed a moment to collect myself. “I need you to do whatever it takes to neutralise that threat…”
Gric grew incredibly still, his reptilian eyes scanning my face with desperate intensity.
“This is not a test, Gric…and I hope it won’t come to it, but I need to prepare for the worst…” I explained quietly while trying not to take away from the enormity of what I was asking from him.
“I…” Gric grimaced and cast his gaze toward the ground. “I…” He repeated, his claws balling into fists and cutting into his palms. “My Tyrant…Do not ask this of me…” Gric begged. “Surely another, even Sebet-”
“I wouldn’t be able to trust them to do it for the right reasons…” I interjected, all the while hating myself for what I was asking of him. It was beyond cruel that I should demand such a thing of someone so loyal. However, there was little alternative.
Sebet would follow any agreement to the letter. Making it close to impossible that she would limit the scope of such a demand to anything resembling the spirit to which it was intended.
I needed a contingency plan in case the worst should happen and I became a deranged lunatic. Not a pretence to allow Sebet the means to void our existing Contract and stab me in the back without warning.
I made no attempts at hiding my thoughts, even going so far as to invite Gric to look upon them and know of my intentions and reasoning first-hand. Denying any potential grounds for debate.
Eventually, and with extreme reluctance, Gric relented and agreed,
Which left the small matter of guaranteeing he would have the raw power required to carry out such a contingency.
Returning to the Oba estate with Gric in tow, I checked in on the Patriarch’s recovery. Unfortunately, with so little time having passed, his condition had not changed.
Establishing myself in the estate training courtyard, I Summoned two projections. The first was a projection of Lurr, the first person I had managed to integrate into the Cultivation system. Albeit completely accidentally and at the expense of his powers in the other system.
The second was Mud. The formerly stunted Ogre outcaste that had become my banner bearer. I had no conscious memory of making the alterations. However, he currently possessed Abilities from both Systems. More than that, he demonstrated an almost natural affinity for the Cultivation System. Progressing without submitting to formal Cultivation training or meditation. Although there was an argument to be made for a lack of brain activity allowing a near-constant zen-like state, replacing the need for active meditation.
Armed with my new understanding of the Cultivator circulatory system, I was momentarily taken aback by what had to be two examples that defied those very same principles.
Where a Cultivator had a central power core located in their abdomen and dozens of secondary power cores scattered throughout the body, Lurr and Mud only possessed a primary core. However, the core was not located in the abdomen, but within their head.
Lurr’s Dantian had replaced his mana stone outright, occupying the cavity within his skull and connecting to the veins that carry blood to the brain.
Mud’s Dantian was located in the same place and similarly connected. However, it was considerably larger, forming a cushion around his brain and occupying some of the space normally occupied by cerebral fluid.
Performing a quick comparison against another Ogre confirmed that they had ‘space to spare’ in that particular regard. However, it did raise concerns regarding potential complications that might arise from future concussions. Although I supposed they would be no worse than what Cultivators faced regarding abdominal injuries. Especially since the Dantian organ itself possessed an unnaturally high degree of resilience compared to mortal organs.
“You want me to bridge the two Systems, my Tyrant?” Gric asked warily. He had an enormous volume of MP already, and it was growing with each passing second. A key perk of sitting atop the Daemon hierarchy and taking a tithe each time a subordinate was Summoned. Combined with the ambient MP harvested from Sanctuary, Gric had few rivals within my Realm.
Giving Gric access to the Cultivation System would potentially increase his power by two or threefold depending upon specific synergies. Of course, such a conversion would no doubt carry inherent risks as well.
Lurr had lost his mana stone outright, and while it was not conclusively the result of integrating with the Cultivation System, there was no evidence to state it wasn’t either. Mud’s retention of his mana stone could be the result of a hundred or more factors aligning in just the right way to avoid outright disaster-
Gric entered a trance-like state, triggering a flurry of activity on a cellular level as he designed and integrated, abandoned and reabsorbed several new organs in rapid succession.
Initially taken aback by Gric’s preparedness, I realised that Gric had almost certainly been entertaining thoughts of such a transformation from the beginning. It was, after all, in a Daemon’s nature to constantly evolve and pursue power.
After what must have been more than a hundred major and minor variations, Gric settled on replacing his second heart outright and partially converting a portion of his vascular system.
Almost immediately, his body began taking in raw energy and converting it into internal energy to form a Foundation around the Dantian. A protective shell that reinforced the organ while also serving as a filter that allowed energy to enter but greatly inhibited its ability to escape.
Watching the process take place before my eyes, I gained a greater understanding of the Cultivation System. Perhaps not as great as Gric himself, but certainly greater than I had possessed an hour earlier.
Leaving Gric to continue on his own, I returned to Momoko’s mountain with Lurr and Mud in tow.
Despite possessing an instinctive understanding that Kwan and my children would regain consciousness in due time, it was important to respect the feelings of Hana and my wife.
So I set aside my remaining duties and settled in to wait alongside them.
Three days passed and Suzy was the first to awaken. Despite her Evolution progressing at a snail’s pace, it was difficult not to notice how much taller she had become. Just the same as what had happened to me, Suzy’s body had grown more compact, her limbs gaining a litheness that through her hybrid genetics lent her movements an almost Elf-like grace.
Allowing Lash’s first claim to smother Suzy with affection, I wrapped them both in a firm embrace. Adjusting my grip to avoid crushing Toofy when she abruptly inserted herself in the mix moments later.
Pete awakened only a few minutes after his sister. By chance, our eyes met as Lash dragged him into her arms alongside Suzy.
In those fractions of a second, I came to a deeply disturbing understanding.
He knew.
Thick salty tears ran freely from Pete’s eyes. To my immense surprise, he fought free from his mother’s embrace. Wrapping his arms around my neck and burying his head against my chest. Thick salty tears ran down his cheeks and splashed over my bare skin.
Cradling my boy with all the tenderness I could muster, I gently rocked him in my arms.
Generational trauma was a term I had first encountered during Social Studies class in school. The general concept is that an event is so horrific and traumatising that its effects persist from one generation to the next. Either through the retelling or the dysfunction the event generated.
I didn’t know why Suzy had been spared, but there was no doubt in my mind that Pete had gained first-hand experience of some, or perhaps even, all, of my memories.
It hurt me to know that my experiences, my life, were causing my child pain.
Cradling Pete protectively in my arms, I felt a mounting sense of concern for Suzy and to a certain degree, for Momoko as well.
Suzy was not acting like her usual self. Quiet and somewhat sullen, it was obvious that she was only reciprocating the bare minimum affection to avoid hurting her mother’s feelings.
I felt so helpless. Keenly aware that everything was the result of my choices. What made it worse was not knowing how I could try to fix it. What I could do to help them. Because I had never figured it out for myself.
Burying the trauma, forcing it down in the hopes of never having to deal with it again was all I knew. Any semblance of healing I had experienced had been after I had met Lash. Learning to accept myself for who I was and not hate myself just for being different.
Only now my children had experienced hatred for the first time, and it was because of me…
I felt so ashamed…
As I had suspected, Suzy pulled away from Lash at the first opportunity, leaving the stone hut and perching herself on the cliff’s edge. Hugging her knees tight against her chest in an open show of isolation.
The hurt in my wife’s eyes only compounded the shame and guilt gnawing at my soul. This was my fault, but she was being made to suffer for it all the same.
Gently transferring Pete to take Suzy’s place, Lash spared a moment to share a small smile of gratitude in recognition for including her. Which only made the negative feelings inside of me that much worse.
Sparing a moment to gently plant a kiss on Pete’s head, I rose to my feet and followed after Suzy.
Facing away from the door to the hut, Suzy’s face had been hidden from view. Concealing the tears freely running down her face and tumbling down the mountainside. At my approach, Suzy rubbed at her eyes with the back of her forearm, stemming the tide and allowing her time to replace her mask of sullen indifference.
Taking care to afford her a respectful distance, I sat a dozen feet back from the cliff’s edge and off to Suzy’s left. I may have risked drawing closer, but there was a risk the cliff might collapse under my weight. A fact she may have been aware of and a contributing factor for her choice of perch.
A long silence dragged out between us, with me struggling to find the words that might bring a measure of comfort and her seemingly content with maintaining the status quo. Until Suzy abruptly turned her head slightly and glared at me from the corner of her eye. Her mouth twisted as her teeth and tusks moved behind her lips, working up the nerve while finding her voice.
Strangely, I was relieved that one of us had something to say. Although I was keenly aware that it almost certainly wouldn’t be something I wanted to hear. Even so, any form of insight I might gain would give me the means to help reduce her pain.
“Am-is-are…” Suzy croaked, scowling and grimacing as her foray into a more mature, or at least modern English syntax appeared to fail her. She growled in frustration, the claws on her fingers scraping across her legs. “Is. Suzy. Ugly?” Suzy grunted, enunciating each word with care despite the pain and shame it brought her.
Her words pierced my heart like a knife. “Suzy…no, sweetheart…” Without thinking I reached out to comfort her. However, I stopped and withdrew my hand when Suzy tensed and made to shy away. “You aren’t ugly Suzy…and you shouldn’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise-”
Suzy narrowed her eyes at me with renewed resolve, the determined accusatory glare voicing her doubts as surely as if she had spoken them aloud. “Even when that person is you?”
“I…” I struggled to find the right words. She was my daughter and deserved the truth, but the risk of inflicting further harm paralysed me with indecision.
The intensity in Suzy’s glare softened, revealing the sadness in her eyes as she turned to face the empty expanse before her.
I was too late. The window to confront and excise the trauma at its source had passed.
“I could never think of you as ugly, Suzy,” my heart aching in my chest, I had to fight hard to keep talking instead of pulling her into a hug.
Suzy glanced at me for a moment and then looked away. Unconvinced.
“Suzy…” I hesitated, fumbling over old scars I had long ago learned to leave alone. “When I was young…I thought my parents had thrown me away…because I wasn’t like the other children…My ears were too big, my skin was grey, everything about me was just…wrong…” For my daughter’s sake, I fought against the urge to repress the negative emotions the memories dredged up in their wake. “Even knowing where I truly came from…It doesn’t change how I felt about myself, or how others treated me…”
Suzy lowered her head and fresh tears began trailing down her cheeks. Taking my words as confirmation of her fears.
“For a long time, there was only one person who insisted otherwise…” I hadn’t thought of my mother in quite some time and couldn’t help but become choked up at that realisation. “No matter how often or how adamantly I argued, she insisted the opposite…I…I used to get so angry at her…I was convinced that she was just lying to me, because how could anyone ever love someone like me?…”
Suzy wiped at her nose with her wrist and looked back at me morosely.
“I couldn’t find the strength to love myself for who I was. I let that hate poison me from the inside, destroying every chance at happiness under the pretence that I didn’t deserve it…I had decided to be miserable, and…” My voice gave out and I had to take a few moments. “And then the one person who was on my side…When she died…I was alone…locked away with the person who hated me the most…”I took a moment to breathe and settle my thoughts. “The words I screamed in the dark and the hateful thoughts thrown at my reflections were never meant for you or anyone else…”
The distrustful glare had left Suzy’s eyes and I could see that I was slowly getting through to her.
“I didn’t know or even dare to dream that another world existed. Even after I was brought here, I didn’t expect anything to be different, and for a while, that appeared to be true.” I still remembered how quickly the adventurers had turned on me. Despite all I had done for them, I was still the ‘other’, a monster in their eyes. “But little by little, I learned that I was wrong and my mother…she had been right all along…” I blinked back the tears but made no attempts at stopping them. “Through your mother, your brother and you, Suzy, I learned to do what I had once thought impossible…I learned to love the parts of myself that I had once so determinedly despised. Because how could I hate those parts of me, when I love you so very very much!”
For a moment, Suzy just stared back at me. Her eyes searched mine for signs of deceit like she was expecting the rug to be pulled out from beneath her at any moment. What felt like an eternity passed but couldn’t have been more than a few seconds at most. Suzy’s defences collapsed, the doubts and fears cast to the wind as she scrambled over the stony ground and into my waiting arms.
I held my daughter close, sheltering her from the world. Serving as her anchor while she purged the dark thoughts, my memories, or whatever form they had taken, from her conscious mind. At least that was my hope.
Still cradling Suzy in my arms, I retreated to the stone hut to rejoin Lash and Pete. If my son was suffering under similar misunderstandings, I wanted to be there to nip such thoughts in the bud. However, before I could think of how I might broach such a subject, Momoko and Kwan awakened within a few moments of one another, generating a considerable degree of excitement from those who were gathered to provide their support.
In stark contrast to Pete and Suzy, Kwan exhibited barely contained manic excitement from the moment he regained consciousness. Leaping about the mountain in his human form, cleaving cliffs from the mountainside with his bare hands and feet. Shattering the boulders and large stones into dust with his palms.
Momoko reacted altogether differently, wearing a melancholic smile as she reassured her aunt and mother that she was fine and apologised for worrying them. The way she made a point of meeting my eye throughout made it clear that we would need to talk. However, unlike Pete and Suzy, Momoko appeared willing and capable of waiting for a more opportune moment.
All three of my children now possessed the capability of independently producing Mana. However, with Pete and Suzy otherwise indisposed, Momoko was the only one actively demonstrating her proficiency in manipulating it.
The mountain had already been saturated with Chi and raw energy produced by Momoko’s tree. Which had in turn caused the plant life and to a lesser extent even the stone itself, to take on and become enriched by these energies. Now that Momoko was producing Mana, that enrichment had been kicked into overdrive.
Even the most scraggly grass had now taken on picturesque and photogenic qualities, waving of their own accord and exhibiting a lustre that would not have been out of place in a shampoo or skincare commercial.
Of course, it didn’t take long for Hana and Kohana to begin taking in the Mana themselves, undergoing several Evolutions in as many minutes before they realised Momoko was the cause.
I had deliberately avoided flooding Sanctuary with my Mana for this very reason. There was no telling what dangers lay in undertaking dozens of minor or major Evolutions in such rapid succession. However, in the circumstances, it wasn’t Momoko’s fault. If anyone was to bear the blame, it would be me.
After all, I was the one that had triggered her Evolution, and her tree, which was every bit as part of her as my arm was to me, was just doing what it was designed to do.
In the beginning, when I first met Hana, I didn’t understand how the Dryads were capable of living such peaceful lives. It wasn’t until later that I realised the consequences that resulted from Hana’s sacrifice, altering her Evolution to accelerate her growth and support Sanctuary.
Dryads, like her sister, had a pacifist effect that protected them from other monsters. Even Variants would struggle to deliberately cause them harm, assuming they could even justify doing so in the first place.
The MP concentrating properties of a Dryad Grove made them valuable elements of any ecosystem they were a part of. Which caused nearby intelligent monsters to protect the Dryads when the Grove was endangered. It was an idealised symbiotic relationship that worked to everyone’s advantage.
Corrupted Dryads, like Hana, broke that balance in favour of rapid personal growth. Skewing the symbiotic relationship toward a darker parasitic nature. In exchange, Hana lost her protected status and a measure of her control.
When comparing the trees of the two sisters, those created by and belonging to Hana produced a quarter of the same volume of MP as those belonging to Kohana. With the noted caveat that they also concentrated ten times as much MP at the same time. So while they produced less MP independently, they generated a greater ambient MP level through biopiracy.
Hana could also advance her Evolution by consuming mana stones. The very act that had ‘corrupted’ her in the first place.
Knowing all of that, Momoko was different from the beginning, bearing a greater resemblance to her aunt than her own mother. Both a Dryad and Nature Spirit of the Cultivation System, a daughter formed from my soul and Hana’s ‘flesh’.
Bearing none of Hana’s corruption, but ‘tainted’ by the Cultivation system itself, Momoko fed upon the world simply by the nature of her existence. However, the impossible dichotomy of the Cultivation System also allowed the world to feed upon her in turn. Creating an absurd chain of concentric circles where Momoko’s presence as an apex predator generated resources in excess of what she consumed, promoting ever greater growth.
Producing Mana in place of Chi, Momoko had now dialled that relationship up to eleven.
The barrier at the base of the mountain was swarming with wild Beasts. Drawn by Hana’s Mana and driven to murderous abandon by the barrier denying them entry, the Beasts tore one another apart in a vicious orgy of violence.
All the while, Momoko’s roots fed upon the dead and dying. Making their power her own, fuelling her growth through the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.
The Taotie and intelligent Beasts I had charged with protecting the mountain had kept to their word. Patrolling the edge of the barrier and gathering raw materials as the opportunities presented themselves.
Hana and her sister appeared to be aware of what Momoko was doing but showed no signs of being for or against it. Appearing quite satisfied with Momoko’s return to consciousness and unwilling to investigate anything that might cast her recovery into doubt.
I couldn’t blame them for it either.
After a few hours, Momoko had her mother and aunt convinced that she was fine and just needed to rest. Sending them back to Sanctuary after promising she would send for them if she felt even a little ill or out of sorts. Once they left, Momoko beelined straight for the hut, and for me specifically.
Despite her initial confidence, Momoko became dramatically less certain of herself as she made her final approach. “Father?” Her voice trembled slightly and she worried at the hem of her sleeves.
“Yes, Momoko?” I replied softly, trying not to disturb Pete and Suzy, who were both lightly resting in my arms.
“You don’t talk about her, grandmother I mean…” Momoko commented uncomfortably. “I have heard stories of my mother’s mother and even her father…” She looked at me expectantly.
Momoko wasn’t alone in her curiosity either.
Lash wrapped her arm around mine in a show of support and solidarity. Although it was a comparatively easy stance for her to take, given she knew more than most.
Toofy was less gracious, gaining an avid interest and making no attempts at hiding it.
Clarice was more subtle by far but looked all the more awkward for it.
Even Pete and Suzy had begun shaking off their torpor, silently listening with mounting expectation.
Ultimately, it was for their and Momoko’s sake that I relented. There was no telling how much of my memories they possessed, and if I refused to speak of my mother, all memories of her would die with me when my own time came.
She deserved better than that.
With care, I gathered my thoughts and remotely shaped a statue in her likeness. Doing my best to match its appearance against those of my earliest memories.
“She…She’s beautiful!” Momoko exclaimed, rushing forward and fawning over the statue with adoring eyes.
Clarice seemed to choke on her own spit and became caught up in a violent coughing fit.
“Pretty!” Toofy agreed, ignoring all sense of etiquette and rubbing her thumb over the teeth exposed in the statue’s wide laughing smile. Paying particular attention to the canines.
“I didn’t appreciate it in the beginning…I was too young to know any better, but my mother was quite young herself when she chose to adopt me.” I explained, taking my time and allowing the emotions to pass through me with as little interference as possible. “She would have been…twenty-four…when she found me in the garbage and took me home with her…The formal adoption process took a while longer, requiring police investigations that I now know were a waste of time despite being performed with good intentions…”
I did my best to relay the memories from my childhood with as little bias as possible, or otherwise making sure to include perspectives with the benefit of hindsight. I was generous, perhaps more than I should have been. However, I believed it was all well deserved.
Inevitably, things took a darker turn all too quickly when I began retelling events from the period when my mother began showing symptoms of the illness that would claim her life. Ultimately I decided against a second statue. I would rather they remember her as I had shown them, in her prime, not the withered shell that haunted my dreams…
Barely clinging to life amidst a tangled mass of tubes and cables…Fighting against the pain because the pills would rob her of her mind…The grim acceptance in her eyes…
Regaining my senses I found myself as the centre of attention amidst a crowd of concerned faces.
“I…I just want you to remember her as she was…Not how I do…” I explained hoarsely, my voice raw with grief.
“Tim…uh…I don’t know what that was, but…” Clarice sniffed and pawed at her eyes, wiping away her tears before they even had a chance to show themselves proper.
“That was the sickness?” Momoko asked quietly before Clarice had a chance to elaborate.
I stared back at her in confusion for a handful of moments before realising what I had done. Subconsciously using my Mana as a medium, I had acted against my own intentions, projecting the memories from my mind into theirs.
Disgusted and disappointed with myself, I had to fight back a rising wave of revulsion.
Lash tightened her grip on my arm, digging in her nails just enough to break my train of thought and concentrate on her instead. “A burden is lighter, together,” She insisted, more or less paraphrasing the same words I had used when convincing her to open up about her deceased sister.
A part of me wanted to reject the advice out of selfish pride and continue brooding in isolation. However, that same possessiveness served as a damning example of why what I had been doing was not only bad for me but was also dangerous.
“I know,” I agreed with a tired sigh. “But it’s hard…The memories…The pain…They are all I have left of her…” It felt like such a shitty thing to say, especially to my wife, but dismantling the walls I had raised in my heart was a process. On that count at least, I knew she would understand.
Lash smiled supportively and nodded in understanding. “Creating pain, hurting you, is not what she would want,” she pressed, carefully enunciating each word. Once more using my own words against me.
“I know,” I repeated, only this time with more conviction.
Momoko spun a wreath of wildflowers and laid it to rest on the statue’s head. My mother had never been particularly fond of flowers, but I felt certain she would have appreciated the gift all the same.
I felt my other self shift in the depths of my subconscious and received a reminder of debts yet unpaid.
Although they had once numbered amongst my captors, I owed them my freedom. Including all the pain and happiness that same freedom had allowed.
The two cadavers had been spared destruction by chance alone. Removed from the Storage Ring and stowed away out of sight because of how their proximity unsettled my already burdened mind.
With a thought, I retrieved their remains and deposited them each in a stone grave.
Even if I hadn’t known what they had done, what they had sacrificed, on my behalf, they deserved to be remembered for the good that had come from it.
Sealing their graves, I took my time shaping a statue for each of them, showing them as my other self had known them while living.
Even as I worked, I could tell by the strange looks in my children’s eyes that on some level, they recognised them.
“Were they from your world too?” Clarice asked somewhat awkwardly.
“No…” I replied quietly. “Just like you, they were once my jailors…”
“Oh…” Clarice winced and wrung her hands while trying to think of some sort of reply.
“They died releasing me…I owe them a debt I cannot possibly begin to repay…” I continued while hugging Lash and the twins all the tighter. “They betrayed their Species, turned their backs on humanity itself, to guarantee my freedom…”
“Well…if you put it like that…I guess I can see how we are kind of the same,” Clarice commented, her voice choked by conflicting emotions of embarrassment and pride.
“Their names?” Lash asked respectfully.
“Kaine…” Pete answered with a croak, pointing to the armoured male statue.
“Eliza…” Suzy and Momoko answered at the same time, just a half second after their brother, pointing to the newest female statue in the stone labcoat.
It struck me as strange that they would know their names and recognise their faces, but hadn’t known my mother…
Unless…
Unless they hadn’t gained memories of my time on Earth. I had just assumed it was so. Assumed the trauma of MY childhood and MY self-loathing was the source of their distress. When, in reality, my other self had entire lifetimes of trauma to be drawn upon, and I had only skimmed its surface before repressing it.
Melting away the stone walls and roof of the hut back into the mountain, I raised the three statues and the two accompanying graves and then hardened the stone with an Empowered Shape Stone Spell. Casting the Spell a second time, I engraved their names beneath each of the statues.
I was part-way through an accompanying epitaph, [ Lest they be forgotten. ] When Momoko knelt beside my mother’s statue to read the engraving of her full name. “Claire Marie Ross…” She read aloud slowly, unused to the unfamiliar structure and pronunciation. “Grandmother had three names?”
“It was common where I was from,” I explained patiently. “The middle name was to make it easier to identify people, but people also used it instead of their first name sometimes as well.”
“Do you have one?” Suzy asked somewhat reservedly.
“I did,” I replied tiredly. “Or, I suppose I do,” I corrected. “I just never used it…”
“What is it?” Pete asked quietly, drawn briefly out of his lethargy by his insatiable curiosity.
“Robert…” Despite myself, a small smile crept onto my lips. “It was a sort of joke, naming me after her favourite artist. Although she always insisted it was ‘just in case I wanted the option if I took up painting’.” With the joke failing to land due to cultural differences, I let out a deep sigh and contemplated whether it was worth the energy to explain it or whether I should just let it lie.
“Pfft! Your mum called you Bob Ross?!” Jacque snickered in an entirely unladylike manner, bending at the knees, cradling her stomach and cupping her mouth as if fighting hard not to laugh. She hadn’t left earlier but had remained uncharacteristically silent for so long that I had forgotten she was there.
“She did,” I confirmed, smiling a little wider. “I couldn’t pick up a brush or a pencil without getting her hopes up. She was so sure I would become some sort of artist…”
“Well, I guess that’s one more point for women’s intuition,” Jacque cackled with a grin. “I mean, sure, you aren’t much of a painter from what I have seen. But your sketches are incredible, and then there is your sculpting work!” She pointed to the trio of statues. “And unless I’m mistaken, you have made dozens of buildings too. That’s more of an artist than most people I knew who went to fancy schmancy art schools!”
“I don’t think any of the buildings I have made would count…” I countered, “Most of them are barely more than mud huts made out of stone.”
“Which would still leave the other two,” Jacque crowed victoriously, “Mister tortured artist!”
It stung how close to home the accusation came, but I also felt a measure of peace and fulfilment as well. While I had never wanted, or even seriously considered becoming an artist, it was nice to discover I may have accidentally fulfilled one of my mother’s former ambitions.
Allowing things to die down again, I spent the remainder of the day with my family. Allowing Jacque to provide a welcome distraction for my children with stories of her own life from back on Earth.
It came as little surprise that she had spent a considerable amount of her life on the wrong side of the law. Initially for the trill, but later out of necessity, when the length of her rap sheet created a formidable barrier to legitimate employment. By her own confession, Jacque had developed a specialty for identity theft. Discontent with simply gaining access to people’s finances, she would throw herself headfirst into her assumed identities.
A fact that came as little surprise given her assigned Species as a Doppelganger. What was a surprise was the life she had taken that earned her place as an Awakened.
An angry victim had been my initial suspicion. However, the truth was considerably stranger and carried an almost poetic justice for Jacque’s crimes.
Jacque had killed, and was killed by, the psychotic ex of the woman whose identity she had stolen and the life she was impersonating. Fatally wounded in an ambush before she even had the chance to identify him as a threat. Jacque got lucky and managed to nick a femoral artery while fighting him off. Guessing that she had outlived him by less than a minute.
Which, given what I knew of the Systems’ selection criteria for awakened, begged the question of how differently my time in this world would have played out if Jacque had died first, and the psycho ex had been chosen in her place.
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