She’s crying again.
I understand why… but…
Despite everything we’ve been through, that she’s been through, this is the hardest I’ve ever seen her cry.
And I don’t know how to comfort her.
I already tried resurrecting Pearl, in the same way I reconstructed Omorth…
When I got to the point of restoring her Akashic Self though, the entire process fell apart… something about a Trait I’d forgotten the sludge tentacle monster had had.
Impure Soul.
She’s been disconnected from the Record this entire time… ever since I changed her.
Why, though? Was it related to consent, or lack thereof?
…
Was it because of my nature as an outsider? Did I turn her into an outsider?
I don’t know.
I don’t know, but what I do know… is that of my retainers – if she ever was one of those beyond technicality – she was probably the closest to my own monstrous nature.
So maybe that’s why.
Izzy continues leaning on me and sobbing as I hold her close, gently rubbing her back and saying nothing.
What could I even say?
She lost her best friend, entirely because we were too late, by a matter of minutes. I’m not even sure how or why she died.
Just that she did.
Maybe all that time away from the purpose I gave her weakened her enough that she destabilized, and it was just a matter of time.
I just don’t know.
…
There’s really just one thing I haven’t tried yet.
And so I flick on divine sight.
Why don’t I leave it on all the time? Would you!? Everything is strings and streamers and spiderwebs of light! I can’t focus on people when they talk or even just exist!
And what see isn’t… exactly what I expected. Not exactly.
Yes, the gray smear that was once a… gray smear of a person… is made of divinity, no different than me, or Izzy, or the furniture in this room for that matter.
I wonder if the Body is really just a physical container for everything… I’ll have to research that more later… but that’s not important right now.
Probably.
Anyway, above and around that gray smear is a blur of divinity… more or less a shapeless blob that seems to be slowly, very slowly, dissipating.
A familiar shape.
A soul. Her soul. Pearl’s Akashic Self and Ego, mussed together into an indistinguishable blob of divinity.
I wonder if I could…
There’s no way it’s that simple. Not that this is simple… it’s not any god that can perform actual soul surgery, not to the extent I can…
But I’m more likely than anything to simply destroy her.
“Izzy… I’ve had one last idea to try to save her, but it’ll probably fail… I’ll have to directly modify what’s left of her soul to be… something, anything usable for it. Is that alright? I promised so long ago that I’d talk to you before I did anything that could be… well, an atrocity. This is technically doing even more horrible things to her, or what’s left of her… and what’s here, it’s… it’s a mess. It looks like her Ego and Akashic Self got all mixed up together… I’m not sure she’ll ever be herself again, or even a person…”
My wife says nothing.
She’s still mourning… I don’t think she has any faith this would actually work.
And neither do I, to be fair. It’s way too much of a long shot. There’s a reason why the gods never do this, or generally even have the ability to.
I’m not supposed to be able to do this.
And yet I can.
…
…
Or could.
…
…!
Wait!
I… I have an idea.
One that I’m almost surprised didn’t come to me sooner.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
It’s me.
She’s like me.
Not Astraea… the old me… the real me.
She’s like the real me.
That mess of matter… those strings of light all mixed up and tied together…
But again, not that simple.
I’m still going to try.
I start with, “{create Body homunculus}.”
Envisioning the former healer’s former body seems to have made a difference, because sure enough, a plain nude body resembling her weaves itself together from… wait! Stop!
I immediately break the process as it starts pulling in parts of Pearl to weave itself together. Maybe it needs a source material… why didn’t it just use my own!? The words of creation always did before!
Maybe I have to be more deliberate…
So first… I…
Hm.
Hm hm, yes, I see.
New information keeps just… feeding into my mind.
And now I know why, probably. I’m mother’s toy.
At least she keeps choosing to help me though, and far be it for me to refuse her help, at least now.
And it’s so simple.
“{create AkashicSelf source information}.”
And sure enough, right in front of me, the bits and pieces of… oh. No, that didn’t work either… it started to, and then that fell apart too…
…
Oh.
I’m doing it wrong. Of course I’m doing it wrong.
I need to do it right for it to work. I almost laugh to myself at my own foolishness…
As mother no doubt continues to move me around like a glove on her hand, no doubt.
So I try a different first step.
“{create AkashicSelf empty}.”
And just like that, an empty soul appears. Completely empty, mysteriously still something I recognize as an Akashic Self… probably because I can feel that it’s already connected to the Record despite being empty…
Oh, and there’s an Ego tied to it. I didn’t even make an Anima or Body, and the Record already slapped together an Ego.
Fascinating.
“What are you doing right now?” a quiet voice asks, muffled by my chest.
I lightly smile down at my wife. “I’m trying to save her. Or some part of her at least. She’s like me. Too much like me, probably, but I have a better way to do this than the Administrator did with me. Probably, anyway. We’ll see. I hope it works.”
More quiet sniffles are my response, and maybe it’s a terrible idea, but I choose to interpret that as quiet acceptance.
And so I continue.
“{bind Ego}.”
It’s as simple as focusing my will on both the mass of divinity that was once Pearl and the new empty almost-a-person I’ve constructed.
And sure enough, the sludge tentacle’s spiritual remains slurp right into the newborn soul as if it were a simple cup of tea.
It… definitely feels wrong. Some part of it has some wrongness to it, it’s definitely going to break somehow if it gets processed through the Record…
But that new Akashic Self is already connected to it, and I’m going to bend this system right to the edge of breaking if I have to.
The rest… is as simple as creating a Body and Anima to hold it all together.
Simple as in I’m already done creating them before I’ve even finished thinking about doing it.
Only thing left to do is the same trick I used on Omorth all those years ago…
“{bind Anima}. {bind AkashicSelf}.”
And with all of that coming together…
The very last step, aside from waking this new old person up.
“{bind Ego}.”
The nude human body standing in front of me jerks suddenly… before collapsing to the ground as though lifeless.
Which I know for a fact isn’t true, from how it’s breathing. It just needs me to wake it up…
My years have taught me better though, so let’s take a quick peek with Appraise…
[Human]
[System: None]
Yeah. That’s no good, is it? No good at all, no. I’ll have to fix that. But hmm… what flavor will I go with? If I’m going to create some spirit… thing, specifically for the purpose of…
Oh.
Izzy isn’t going to like this. I’m about to force some critter against its will…
Well, I just won’t make it sapient. That’ll fix it for sure… if it’s not aware it’s being forced into this, and in the end it’ll grow stronger and smarter and everything else as a result of me doing this, I don’t know how it could complain!
It also helps that I’m not going to tell her about it unless she makes me… which hopefully she just won’t.
Anyway, she used to be a priestess, right? I’ll go with radiant then, everyone seems to stereotype that with priests and so on.
“{create LeastSpirit radiant nonsentient}. {create AscendantSystem bind spirit}.”
For a split second a floating ball of light appears before being immediately sucked into the mortal body… and it’s time for another peek.
[Status]
[Name: (None)]
[Race: Artificial Human (Homunculus)]
[System: Type E – Level 0 – XP 0/1000]
[Inherent Skills: None]
[Class: N/A – Level N/A – XP N/A]
[Class Skills: N/A]
[General Skills: N/A]
[Traits:]
[Not-so-silent Passenger]
[Synthetic Construct]
[Titles:]
[Remade Whole]
Alright, that’s all well and good, but… I know something else that’s missing.
“{bestow Skill [Language: Interplanar Common], [Thought Projection]}.”
And another pittance from my enormous reserve of divinity later, those Skills show on this creature’s Status.
I nod in satisfaction… or at least enough satisfaction, I guess. It’d be much easier if I could have just restored Pearl the normal way… I should really do more experiments with manipulating souls. Obviously there’s some amount of research considering what big sister did to me all those years ago.
“Izzy? She’s not quite the same, in fact she’s a lot more like me than she was…”
My wife looks up at me sharply, her face stained from a great many tears, the same tears currently soaking my ancient robes. Maybe it’s unfair to wonder now, but is her attachment to her friend another effect of her Mantle? Maybe I’ll need to experiment with that later.
“What do you mean, not the same?”
“Well,” I continue, “A long time ago, when I was remade, I had a new ego that used Astraea’s Akashic Self plus Nyx’s Body and Anima, with Astraea’s Ego stuck to mine as a passenger. Right?”
The goddess in my arms sniffles, but then nods lightly.
I offer her a sad smile. “Pearl’s soul was too damaged to just rebuild normally… apparently it was that ‘Impure Soul’ trait she got when I… well. I guess I broke her like that too. Anyway, I made a new Akashic Self, shoved the remains of hers into it so it’s almost completely her. The Record made it a new Ego on its own, so I just shoved hers into it as much as I could – I think that just worked on its own, probably. Lastly I made her a new Body and Anima and stuck it all together. See? Right there.”
For the first time, Izahne glances at the body on the ground. “Huh. I see,” is all she says.
Which is fine.
And then she glances back.
“Anyway, the seam between the new Ego and Pearl’s isn’t perfect, and as near as I can tell this person is going to start like I did; they’ll be their own person, and we’ll have to raise them like any other. They’re going to have Pearl herself in the back of their mind though, steering some of their decisions like Astraea did for me… and eventually their Egos will merge and they’ll become one person. Yes, that mean’s they’ll become Pearl again… but at the same time, not really. They’ll always be someone else.”
…
It occurs to me that I just made Pearl into something not unlike what I am for Arty. Someone else, who is also almost someone important that she used to know.
“Okay. So I’ll get to see her again someday? Sort of? I hope so. I really hope so.”
I’ll take that as her consent, even though I guess in some ways this is just going to break her heart again.
Probably.
This won’t even take the words of creation. I simply give the human a jolt of mana.
Once it finishes convulsing its pale-yellow eyes shoot open and dart around the room…
…To stop on me.
“Mommy?”
…
Huh. In hindsight, I should have expected this.