I had no real idea how to approach the conversation with Lia. It was a somewhat strange situation and I wasn’t sure how to deal with it. Normally, if somebody more than ten years older than my daughter tried to flirt with her, I would readily dismember them, no matter who they were. Stars, if anyone tried to flirt with Luna, my reaction would likely be a violent one, but that was due to the discrepancy between Luna’s chronological, biological and mental ages, making it difficult to come to a clear and simple conclusion. With a little luck, that problem wouldn’t occur before I was ready for it. Well, make that an infinite amount of luck, as I had no doubt my brilliant daughter would attract that sort of attention far before I was ready for it, no matter how much I hoped to be wrong.

But in the case of Lia and Samantha, I couldn’t really put the blame on Samantha. She had done absolutely nothing, other than failing to dissuade my daughter in her advances and even there, she had tried. Only verbally, sure, and in a manner that made her look more adorable than anything else, so she hadn’t tried too hard, but she had tried. Thus, I needed to talk with Lia, if only to make sure that my daughter understood what she was initiating, how far it could go and how she should be aware of what could happen, so she could come to a conclusion about how far and how fast she wanted to push things.

Laughing to myself, I thought about the various books on parenthood I had collected since the change in an effort to help my two daughters with their unique needs. This might actually be a case in which the books had some advice, all the other problems we had come across hadn’t been anything covered in those books. After all, before the change, there hadn’t been cases of children growing from the body of a young child into the body of a teenager, or maybe even of a young adult, as had been the case with Luna. Nor did their minds get drawn into magical spaces by a Goddess who gave the child lessons and helped their mind to grow at a similar speed as their body.

Those books certainly didn’t have any ideas on how to deal with a teenager who needed to drink blood to survive or one who could readily dismember a small army with enough time. In comparison, an inappropriate age difference, especially between student and teacher, was an almost mundane problem, even if the idea that the student was the older one and the teacher younger put a slightly different spin on things but the overall problem remained roughly the same. How could one make sure that neither party took advantage of the other or suffered for their involvement?

In this case, it wasn’t just my desire to protect Lia directly, I also felt a need to protect her indirectly and from the consequences of her actions. If things initially worked out but not in the medium term, if they formed a relationship but crashed and burned brutally, what would happen then? Lia would be hurt, yes, but we, as a group, could also get in trouble. At the same time, I didn’t want to try and dissuade Lia too much, if she was interested in exploring her sexuality, I should want to be supportive, or something along those lines.

Finding her was surprisingly difficult, given that she was limited to the tower as it was bright outside. However, she was in the last place I looked, on the roof of our tower, leaning comfortably against my throne and using it to access the Oculus. Seeing her like this, apparently aware that she shouldn’t use my throne to sit but still using its magical properties was somewhat amusing to me and I took note of the strange sensations the idea of her on my throne brought forth. There was something within me rejecting the idea strongly, though not quite to the point of violence. Other people, I felt ready to kill for the crime of sitting on my throne but Lia and Luna were different. I’d still mind but the punishment would be far less violent.

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When Lia didn’t react to my appearance on the roof, I decided to use the alter and see what she was observing with the Oculus, even if I had a fairly good idea already. It was as I expected when I used the altar to see through the Oculus without taking control of it, I immediately saw the five who had just left us, walking through the forest. They were again in formation, protecting Samantha and Daniel in the centre and talking animatedly. A part of me wanted to conjure a scrying construct and find out what they were talking about but it didn’t matter too much, Lia mattered far more.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I quietly asked, curious just how deep in her observation Lia was.

“No,” came her immediate answer, only to be corrected a few moments later with a “Yes,” before she settled her mind and gave me her definitive answer, with a “Maybe.”

“Glad that you have decided already,” I snarked, feeling amused at her rapidly switching thoughts.

“I just don’t know,” she admitted and I felt her control over the Oculus fade as she looked at me directly, “She’s brilliant, you know?” she asked, before launching into an explanation about some fundamental, alchemical principle I barely understood, as I hadn’t spent a lot of time or effort on Alchemy while using it to show just how smart that Samantha was. Privately, I was quite curious what her Intelligence sat as and how high it had been natively but that would be something to investigate later.

Curiously, Lia’s explanation failed to cover one fairly crucial point, namely, why Lia’s interest had started before Samantha ever talked to her when the woman had only been studying the writing on the wall, something anyone could do. Even a caveman would be able to look at the pretty pictures and be amazed by them, there had been no indication of extraordinary intelligence in sight at that point. And yet, Lia was fascinated by Samantha.

Still uncertain how to approach the topic, I decided to let Lia ramble on before finally prodding a little, curious about the result. And what a result it was, I had seen Lia in a variety of mental and physical states but the state she ended up in was one I hadn’t seen before. There was some resemblance to the face she made when feeding but at the same time, it reminded me a little of her birth, for lack of a better word. There was a fearful skittishness to her, alongside an appearance of deep, enduring hunger and I began to wonder just what was going on with Samantha.

Luckily, I didn’t need to wonder for long and Lia started to describe Samantha’s scent, a scent that apparently evoked the hunger of Lia, a slightly different hunger compared to the one she felt sated when taking in the Blood I infused with Astral Power for her. Maybe we should study the differences at some point, whether there was something special with Samantha’s Astral Power or if the attraction came from something else but regardless, I could easily hear just how confused and torn my dear daughter was, especially as we continued to talk.

There was her primal side, the vampire, craving Samantha’s blood and lusting for her scent. But at the same time, a side of her more in tune with her original, human mentality had a vastly different interest and then it sounded as if there also was some purely platonic, intellectual admiration going on. All those emotions and sensations were completely new to Lia, just like they had been new to me when I first started up Road to Purgatory. Sure, in Lia’s case, it was because she had never experienced that sort of situation, for me, it had been because of my old mental problems but the end result was fairly similar, a confusing situation that could sweep one away rapidly.

Knowing that there was no simple, obvious fix, I sat down next to Lia and started talking, explaining, trying to convey my old situation to her and how I had ended up in a similar situation to her current one and what I thought might happen, depending on her actions. What could happen, what consequences potential actions might have, though at the end of the day, what I emphasised most was that she was my daughter and nothing would change that. I needed her to know that I’d support her and try to get her through this situation in the best condition possible, even if neither of us knew what exactly this situation was or how it would turn out. But that was just life.