A few hours later...

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Lunch was a highly uneventful affair for the trio, apart from all the predictable stares and difficulties in finding a waiter or waitress brave enough to serve them any actual food. Anne found herself rather amused by how Cherry would stare at Sarah's feasting gusto with no small amount of jealousy. Being a ghost meant that she couldn't affect the real world after all, much less join the two at the table and eat. That didn't stop Cherry from poking around, flying into peoples pockets, inspecting their weapons and busying herself with keeping an ear directed at every single possible conversation within a certain range.

One twin focused on espionage, an invisible ally to gather information.

Another focused on physical prowess, intent on carrying out whatever orders they were given.

Anne had to admit that this was an effective strategy and whomever designed it definitely knew what they were doing, though that hardly excuses the matter of the affected hosts being little girls. Not that the First Princess was hypocritical enough to speak ill of the humans who created Cherry and Sarah, for the simple fact that the Inerti themselves perform what are easily even greater atrocities upon their own spawn, Anne being the chief example of that. With that said, the lioness smirked to herself, knowing that she wouldn't change a thing. Her past, her torments, her training...

It had all served to forge her into the woman she is now; nigh invincible, self-reliant, powerful. All the things that she couldn't even dream of being in her past life.

As for the ghost twins, while they were given a childhood much akin to that of the average Inerti noble, their human nature seemed to have prevented them from achieving any greater measure of power, invincibility or even self-reliance, when the fact that they were found malnourished, dehydrated and inching ever closer to death is taken into account, though Anne had a suspicion that she knew why this would be the case.

This is why the trio could currently be found entering a certain room, in a certain nameless tavern. Well, it wasn't nameless so much as the first princess never cared to read the sign at the front gate, merely silently demanding to be given a room for two on the buildings highest floor, which was easily accomplished when the requisite sum of gold was provided. In fact, it was almost too easy, which would give Anne a clear cause for suspicion, had she not learned from her soulful arts that the owner was more than used to dealing with the rich, silent and possibly evil, types. All manner of darkened individuals could be found within this strange place, with hooded rogues leaning against nearly every pillar and scarred mages playing cards with upturned eyes pointed in the direction of every newcomer, though Anne was certain that the rogues had no desire to spill their life's story to anyone, much less randomly approaching strangers and the wizards were definitely not secretly good people, leading dual lives in order to prevent some doomsday cult from taking over the world.

The lioness found herself smiling with amusement, for this was an ironically honest establishment, even though it served the worst of the worst. "So... what are we going to do in this room, Miss Anna?" Sarah, having recovered some of her strength, as well as much of her voice, asked the first princess with a vary expression etched onto her frame, her tiny shoulders tense as her ethereal sibling flew around the room, poking through its darkened corners and sly curvature, likely attempting to find something that isn't supposed to be there.

"Why, Sarah, is it not obvious?" Anne smiled at the supposedly living twin as she locked the door behind her, eliciting the younger girl to raise an uncertain, curious eyebrow in her direction while opening her mouth to speak. She wouldn't manage to utter any other sound though, as the lioness roughly grasped the little girls head...

... and channelled a vast amount of magical power directly into her brain, effectively shutting out any form of resistance within an instant. "You've eaten well. So be a good little girl and go to [Sleep]." With a loud thud, the assassin fell backwards, stumbling over her own gear and guns, before falling down onto the floor. Cherry instantly turned her head around, flying in anger towards Anne, only for the lioness to point towards the ghost, who could no nothing but release a toneless vail as greenish, grey magic coiled around her, restraining her.

A sliver of power, an echo of Anea Sedea, a cruel thing to do, infusing the energies of that realm into an undead being, though it served the princess well, for it quite literally froze the ghost in time. "Now then... time to get to work." Carrying Sarah's body over to a nearby table and promptly undressing the child, Anne felt herself scowl as her suspicions were confirmed in full.

Both of the young girls were trapped by insidious magic, both confined to a strange 'middle-ground' between life and undeath, never crossing the line of either extreme. On Sarah's chest, lied an open wound, crudely sewn together with decaying, Mana-enriched thread and seemed to rot the very flesh it was binding. Anne grit her teeth in anger as she felt the black powers of necromancy, the stench of 'successful alchemy', one could say, radiating from the wound. For a brief moment, the first princess considered ending the lives of these two girls and taking their souls to the afterlife here and now, but she hadn't come this far just to give up.

Hovering a hand over the chest, Anne examined the strange, dark magic's that kept the girls in this state, feeling each thread and every pulse of mana present within their joined body. Hidden beneath the rotting wound, was a small heart, the organ of a child, half-decayed, etched with silvery, cold runes and brimming with magical power; a heart used as the soul prison for its original owner.

Cherry's heart.

Bound within the body of her own, perpetually dying, twin.

Existing solely due to the incessant, but fairly intricate spellwork that was subsumed into their very being. Anne theorized that an opposite host body existed somewhere out in the world, where Sarah's heart was trapped within Cherry's body, a form of back-up plan should this one be destroyed. With an uneasy feeling crawling up her spine, Anne placed a finger onto Sarah's forehead and channelled another spell, uncharacteristically soft light forming on the tips of her fingers and entering the young girls body. "[Heal]."

A tense few moments passed, as the lioness watched the lights movements and reactions with unnerving focus, for the outcome of this would determine the twins fate. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately for them, the healing spell did as it was intended to do: painlessly infused itself within their bodies looking for damage to mend, not as a violent force seeking to eradicate undeath.

Anne felt herself exhale in satisfaction, wiping the sweat from her brow. "Phew.. good. I can work with this!" Summoning forth her connection to the realm of the dead, Anne conjured several ephemeral objects formed from the very entropic stone of Anea Sedea; a scalpel, tissues, surgical gloves and the like. Naturally, she possessed no such objects within her manor, but the very dual-matter of that realm answered to her beck and call, reforming itself to whatever shape and form she may need. Cracked stone and broken metal may not seem like very good materials for surgical equipment, much less gloves of all things, but the wonders of magic never ceased to amaze the lioness.

Such was the case with what she was about to attempt; for it was much less 'surgery' and much more manipulation of the soul. You see, while the Inerti hold the art of Soul Reading in high esteem, to the point where only the higher ranks of nobility could be considered as its adepts, it is merely a stepping stone towards a far, far higher level of power. A certain 'art' called Soul Weaving. Far more than simply seeing into the souls of others, with the power of Soul Weaving, one could very well shape and reshape the souls of others, as well as oneself. It was the power of the Gods, put into mortal hands.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

On Aestra, all things have their inescapable roots within the 'soul', an ethereal consciousness tied to the mana coalescent around it and bound to an earthly body during life. Though bound and chained, the soul is the singular driving factor of all things; changes made to it, affect everything else. For instance, a master of the art of Soul Weaving, may change anything and everything about their target, be that gender, race, skin colour, talents, experiences, memories and hell, even existence itself should enough fuel be provided. Naturally, in order to change a soul, you need to draw upon other souls.

It was much the same as Anne building up her manor within Anea Sedea, for that entire realm may as well be considered an outpouring of her grandfathers soul, so she would need to use the essence of others in order to shape it. However, while affecting the realm of the dead came almost naturally to the first princess, the same could not be said for the souls of others, much less herself. She tried it, of course, as a fervent, childish dream, a singular hope to change the course fate had set for her; to remove the hero correction from herself. Alas, the hero correction, or better to say, all 'corrections' in of themselves, are just another effect of Soul Weaving, taken to a level so high that she couldn't even imagine it.

There was simply no way to undo a soul weave authored by the creator himself. It wasn't possible for Atlyon and it certainly wasn't a possibility for little Anne. Altering it however, was a whole other ordeal, though it would still have a rather ineffably outrageous price. Of that, Anne was sure. It is for this reason that she decided to not kill the twins, for their tormented souls were a curious object of study.

Hemomancy, necromancy, ritualistic etchings, rune-carving... all these dark arts were merely a fraction of the beauty that could be found within the supposedly frail body of the twins, with no small amount of Soul Weaving to hold it all together. Their bodies, even with all that magic infused into them, simply weren't something that is meant to exist. A state that is between life and undeath, the between of a between, neither natural or wholly unnatural, was an alien concept that Anne never even thought could exist, much less that she would one day see it with her own, disbelieving eyes. It was wonderful, and terrifying.

Mesmerizing and dreadful.

Horrific and beautiful.

It served to awaken a different side to Anne, a so-called 'mad scientist' persona that she'd almost forgotten about, her innate curiosities about anatomy were always overshadowed by an apparent need to understand her own body, as well as the weaknesses of her enemies, as a brawler, a fighter. Yet now, she felt a different calling, a deeper desire for understand.

A need for knowledge, no matter the sacrifices others would have to make.

With barely contained excitement, Anne took the ephemeral scalpel into her right hand and began to cut, widening the rotten wound on Sarah's chest and peering inside. Much as she thought, Cherry's heart wasn't actually connected to her sisters body in the physical manner, only managing to beat and serve its function as an organ due to the blood magic surrounding it. The inside of the girls cold ribcage was an artwork in of itself, with every bone etched with magical symbolism and every inch of flesh infused with a spell of its own. It had taken a lot to create these two, which made Anne wonder if there were others like them.

The Shadow Cradle was a supposedly feared organization and Anne had seen fragmented memories from the girls, images of fellow students, though none of them seemed to survive other than the duo. This was strange in of itself, because Anne knew from the girls souls that they weren't some special student, not the top of their class, but merely an average duo with a surprisingly high level of synchronization, which is likely why they were chosen for the procedure it took to transform them into their current state.

With her other hand, Anne wove brilliant light into the flesh of the child, cutting away the rotten parts and replacing them with fresh meat, formerly-inexistent blood flowing freely from and into the wound. This was merely a preliminary procedure, though it made Anne sweat heavily as she did her best to remove the damaged parts without breaking the intricate spellwork that kept the girls 'alive', for a lack of a better term. But even when she was done with it, she knew that this was merely a temporary measure, for the girls fresh flesh would rot soon enough unless something was done to change the very spellwork that kept them alive.

Anne then began to weave another spell, a holy spell, yet it served an uncharacteristically grotesque purpose, to sew the body's wounds shut and rejoin Cherry's heart with the body of her twin in full. At first, all went well, and the heart began to beat, performing its functions without the aid of the magic, which meant that Anne could remove the hemomancy etched into the girls ribs in order to reduce the magical stress on the heart itself.

But it wasn't enough.

As soon as Cherry's heart reconnected itself to a body, it began to produce mana for it, fuelling Sarah, who had, up to this point, had no mana of her own due to her half-undead state. One heart, especially since it was that of a child, could simply not fuel both Cherry's ethereal form, as well as keep the soul of her sister in check and if the first princess left things as they were, the heart would inevitably fail and both twins would die a final death.

Modifying the spellwork and healing the flesh simply wasn't enough. Anne had to do more, had to go further...

It was with this understanding then, that the first princess sacrificed one of her harvested hearts, the organ of an elf, along with a considerable supply of delicious blood. She nearly drank it and ate the heart before she could make good use of them, though she managed to stop herself on time, with her own heart feeling heavy as a result.

The heart of an adult elf was then implanted into Sarah's body, joined together with the organ of her twin sister and supplied with a generous amount of that same elf's blood. Anne twisted the hemomancy already in place to make sure that the blood would only benefit the girls, though she knew that it would inevitably replace their human blood with enough time.

Not that it would change much for the worse, the twins were already an abomination. At least, with this act done, they were a living one. "Well, Sarah is, anyway..." Anne muttered to herself as she finished healing the assassin girls body, her holy magic ripping away at the rotten threads holding the chest together, as she turned to look at the time-frozen frame of Cherry.

The ghost girl's expression was twisted with shock, but not sadness. It was almost as if she was used to betrayal and only leaped in an effort to save her sister from whatever dangers awaited them.

It was...

"Cute." Anne chuckled to herself and flicked the ghosts forehead, causing the time-freeze spell to break and the ghost to effectively fall through the floor with a silent scream. "STO-AAAAAAAAH?!..." The little girl flew through the wooden floorboards, only to quickly come back up with a confused expression. The ghost held a hand over her chest, then turned to look at the naked body of her sleeping twin, only to become even more uncertain.

"W-... what did you d-do? It-... it doesn't hurt any more..." Cherry looked down onto her own chest, poking it as if she could reach some ephemeral heart beneath, before looking back up only to see Anne washing her hands in their tub, a large rounded barrel of water held together by old steel. Blood and viscera pooled within it as the woman silently cleaned herself, though she did have an unnervingly satisfied expression etched into her own frame.

"I did what I could, for now. I'll do more later." That was all the lioness offered to the ghost girl, alongside a dark chuckle before she continued, not even looking at the now-terrified ephemeral child. "Keep watch over your sister. My spell should keep her asleep for a good bit longer. Have her wash herself when she wakes up."

Temporarily broken out of her spiking terror, Cherry retained a measure of her former aloof nature and then pointed towards the bloodied tub in disgust. "W-wash?... you mean, i-in t-that?... ew..." Anne threw a look back towards the tub, its waters now coloured a sickening red and black, filled with all manner of rot and filth.

The lioness merely shrugged in response. "I'm sure you two will manage, somehow. In the meantime, I have to the cathedral in order to commune with a particular goddess. If all goes well, I should be back by midnight." Anne let out another chuckle as she summoned forth another set of clothing and began to redress in front of the ghost girl, who shook her head out of a stupor and then covered her own eyes in embarrassment.