"WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU DID?"
One could think that by this time Aidan would be used to get screamed at by princesses, but the truth was the opposite. Dawn's stunt at the conference room spread like fire in dry hay through the castle. It really felt like that for every problem solved two more would arise. The proverbial hydra. Claire dragged Aidan to a private room and was having a fit because of what Dawn did.
"I did nothing. And it was on your suggestion." Aidan defended himself.
"I was joking, for crying out loud. How can you say with that clean face that you did nothing? Isn't you and her the same person?"
"That is correct." He answered with a poker face.
"Doesn't she do exactly what you want?"
"Yes."
He just nodded. Claire considered tearing some of her hair off.
"I don't get it. How, then, wasn't it you who did that? Explain."
"Dawn is her own girl. While we are the same person, we decided to have our own personalities. What happened there was a hundred percent of her own doing. Dawn does what Dawn does."
"You are insane." Claire sighed.
"Yes." He chuckled. "the Headmaster agrees with you. I'm clinically insane, and it is all your sister's fault." He tapped his temples.
Claire was irritated. She thought he was lying.
"Oh. Did Archmage Astromelicus declare you insane? Why aren't you behind bars then? I'll fetch some mana-sealing manacles for you." She said with sarcasm.
"Imprisoning me would be counterproductive in the resurrection of your sister, and I am not a dangerous kind of insane person. I am needed to design the spells that will bring Lumina back. And probably once we are separated the insanity will end." - 'As if I would be so lucky'.
Claire broke down.
"There is an insane Underworld mage holding my sister's soul hostage, walking around in her own body and making policy for the Kingdom." She mumbled.
"And you locked yourself alone in a room with him, don't forget that, your Highness." He grinned.
Claire groaned. She sat and looked at Aidan.
"Can we roll back the conversation a little?" She wiggled her fingers in a roll. "What do you mean by 'Dawn does what Dawn does'?"
"I recovered a fragment of memory from when we were little. I was playing in the castle garden with Lumina and the Queen. We pretended to be adventurers and Lumina called herself Dawn. I think we modeled her personality on good old Lumina's childhood."
The reveal made Claire pause to think. Aidan didn't remember his early childhood and he recovered only a fragment. She was shocked when they told her that they named her sister's body Dawn.
"Is that why you named that girl Dawn?"
"No. I made up the name Dawn way back, when we were in Gohar. This body was still comatose. I don't know, it felt right to call myself Dawn back then. Later when I recovered that memory I thought 'it all makes sense'."
"Good, good."
Claire was afraid Aidan would decide to not revive Lumina and just go away taking her body with him. The whole Realm would be powerless to stop him. He didn't flaunt his status, but the scion of the godslayer is untouchable. She remembered when Lumina came back from her meeting with the Headmaster, fuming. She went to ask him to expel him and returned empty-handed, livid. Of course, Astromelicus wouldn't expel Aidan or Lumina for that matter. He was a close friend of both families.
But if Aidan recovered all memories of his childhood, it was impossible to know what he would do to Lumina.
"Anything else? Shouldn't we go back to sift through the endless paper trail of the country's corruption? To find out the darkness in the Kingdom of Light?" Aidan asked after she was suspiciously silent for a while.
"No. It is all good. Could you go ahead and ask Sora to come here talk to me? I need to check something with her real quick."
"Yes, why not. Oh. There is one thing. Dawn found Lumina's diary. Is there a problem if she reads it?"
Claire was aghast. She immediately denied. "Of course there is. It is absurd to read someone's diary without their express permission."
"That is why I didn't read it already." He rolled his eyes. "I wanted consent from her family. Claire, there might be a clue there to bringing Lumina back. I'm working on a spell to allow her to take over this body and make her able to talk."
She eyed Aidan, trying to read his real intentions. "And how will her journal help in that?"
"I don't know. I'm grasping at straws here, the spell research is not progressing. Maybe there is something in the journal that will give me an insight into Lumina's persona to finish the spell."
This naive fool might be telling the truth, she thought.
"Very well. You can read the diary, but only as Dawn and alone in her room."
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They returned to the academy late that night. Two carriages and a knight detachment for escort.
Back at the dormitory, the women flooded the common room with a barrage of questions. Dawn was forced to retell everything she did to the girls, re-enacting the whole thing. Aidan went to his room, amazed that Dawn was getting better and better at handling these girl things.
He felt he was missing something in the conversation he had with Claire. That princess was hiding something from him. But eventually he shrugged and pushed that thought aside. He had to trust the people around him. If he added paranoia to the list of things afflicting him he would become exactly what Claire feared. A completely insane dark mage.
Stolen novel; please report.
Aidan kept going through his spell notes, reviewing his repertoire of spells until Sora came in and they slept.
The next four days went by in a blur. Morning lessons in spellcraft and wizardry with Astromelicus and afternoon accounting with Claire. Justin the tax officer joined them and the guy was doing his job with a zealot's fervor. It bothered Aidan that his worship was all over Dawn, but he blamed the Hydras.
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The day they completed one week after the ritual, Astromelicus brought a new magic tool. It looked like the affinity sphere they used on the first day at the academy, but fancier and bigger.
"This tool can view the affinities with more detail. I got this on loan from the Assembly. Who wants to go first?"
In the end, it mattered little who went first.
> Aidan, Mana A+, Fire A+, Earth A+, Darkness A-, Light E-, Water F+, Wind D-.
>
> Dawn: Mana S, Fire A, Earth A, Darkness A-, Light D-, Water E, Wind E+.
>
> Pearl: Mana B+, Fire B, Water B+.
Pearl's readings were astonishing. It would allow her to handle the greatest magic spells like, ironically, summoning otherworlders. However, she was not happy.
"Stop devouring Lumina! I can't believe this. These ratings are already in otherworlder territory."
"Isn't this what we were trying to do for months already? And don't worry, I'm sure my affinities will plummet once I have to cut almost half of my soul off. I'd be lucky if I got B-tier in them after all is said and done. It is not like someone that got from nothing to B-tier in a span of months, like some envious princess I know."
Pearl pouted. "This is so infuriating."
Aidan looked at her seriously. "Say, there is one way. After we develop the spell to grant the soul co-host control of a body, I can absorb your soul, plant a clone of mine in your body and mix our affinities. Then I'll use that spell to grant you control of your body back to you. This way Dawn, you and I will share all thoughts and feelings. Wouldn't it be awesome?"
Pearl heaved Aidan up from his seat and slapped him in the face. Aidan thought that by this time he would be used to being abused by princesses, but the truth was the opposite.
"Insufferable!" She pouted.
"Maybe do this with all the princesses in the world. We would become a hive mind and dominate everything. Can you imagine all princesses sharing one mind?"
She threw her hands up. "Don't force me to imagine something worse than hell. You have but one princess in your mind and look at what she does to you when she talks."
"I bet you'd be much gentler to me than Lumina."
They were grated by the Headmaster. "Are you two done flirting? Yes? Good. Since it has been a week since the last ritual, we can conduct another one if we need. The circle is already drawn in the ritual room. We shall repeat the soul jar experiment with student Dawn now."
"Yes, I'm all up for undescribable, insufferable pain. Let's do it." Aidan joked.
Dawn put on the soul vessel necklace and using the book as reference she reluctantly cast the spell.
"Soul Jar."
The results were the same. The spell attempted to separate Dawn's soul from her body, failed and the safeguards built in the spell diagram triggered, restoring the soul to the body. But both Aidan and Dawn went down with indescribable, insufferable pain. Astromelicus healed them and placed them in the bed.
"How are they this time?" Pearl asked her teacher while he examined the two unconscious students.
"I don't think attempting this spell caused any damage on them this time. They are probably unconscious from the indescribable, insufferable pain they just went through."
"Even you, Archmage. Even you."
It didn't take long for them to wake up this time.
"I guess it failed." Groaned Dawn. Her soul was the most stable of the two. She rouse Aidan.
"Indeed. It means that your soul cannot be removed from this body without killing you and Aidan by definition. Even if he survives, he will become just a mindless husk."
"Would it be possible to put Lumina in Aidan's body permanently?" Pearl asked.
"It could be done, but there is a little problem."
"Lumina would never accept living in Aidan's body. She hates me." Dawn completed.
"Headmaster, do you have a plan B?" Aidan asked.
"Yes, but you won't like plan B. I don't even know why I labeled this one plan B, I think I labeled them in the order I thought them."
"Oh, please wise Archmage, don't leave your pupils awaiting, the tension is killing me." Pearl pleaded.
"Fine. Plan B is putting Lumina in a baby's body. We have a perfectly healthy male and female specimens here." He pointed at Aidan and Dawn. "They make a baby and we put Lumina in that baby before it is born. Depending on her mental condition we can even accelerate her growth after she is delivered."
A shiver ran up the spine of all three students. Aidan was fine living as a woman, but would he be forced to go through all the hoops? Childbirth hurts, and it hurts for hours. He'd rather have his soul ripped out again. At least it goes out in a flash. And he was bound to become Lumina's father? And mother at the same time? And he would have to do it with himself. He was right, they don't want the plan B. Pearl was having similar thoughts.
"Plan C, please?" Dawn asked.
"Yes, plan C. It is only possible because we already crossed the boundary into forbidden magic. We can create an artificial lifeform for Lumina to inhabit. And by artificial, I mean man-made, not a fake one. But you won't like plan C, student Dawn."
"Try me." She chuckled, nervous. Would it be worse than a man having a baby?
"Harvest enough flesh from your body to make a second one for Lumina. Once the second body is ready, we will transfer her soul to it."
Dawn shivered and locked up. She could only open and close her mouth in shock.
"Does it mean what I think it means?" Pearl asked.
"Probably yes. It means cutting her body and harvesting flesh, bone, and organs until there is enough to make a homunculus of Lumina. I have several vials of trollblood potion that can regenerate her body as long as she remain alive. And since they know Undying Resilience, they won't die anyway. The problem is that we can't harvest flesh while under the effects of the trollblood potion. So we will cut her, harvest flesh, use the potion. When the potion is washed from her system and she is healthy again, we will repeat it as many times as needed."
Pearl winced at every verb. She could only imagine what was running in Aidan's shared mind right now. They were frozen, wide eyed, and clammy.
"Will it hurt?" It was all she could think.
"It will. Probably an undescribable, insufferable pain, as the potion would also regenerate any abnormal and unconscious status. You know how trolls are masochists."
A solitary tear ran dowm Dawn's eye.
"Is there a plan D. Please tell me there is plan D."
"Yes, we are in luck. There is a plan D."
"Headmaster, please. No more teasing or suffering."
"Plan D is pretty painless. We just need to find some girl that looks exactly like Lumina. We remove her soul and swap it for Lumina's. Even so, there is a very small chance of success, so we might need to go sacrificing a lot of girls until one of them sticks. Plan E is to just eliminate Lumina, by the way."
"Is there any chance plan D a joke?" Pearl tentatively asked.
"I'm afraid not, student Pearl. It is not one I recommend or endorse enacting though. I only listed it for the sake of completeness." One could think he was getting stressed. Stressed Archmages are no good.
It is the head of the Hydra once again. They got what Dawn wanted, she will keep existing. But now they had to choose between abhorrent, abominable or despicable.
"You don't have to make your choice right now. Take your time and think about it. I personally recommend making the baby but that is the longest method."
That was the weirdest way someone told a person 'screw you', ever. A long pause, some hugs and cups of tea later and the dual-bodied creature was able to talk again.
"Doesn't the baby has their own soul?" Dawn asked.
"It was never proven. We could find a pregnant woman and check it." Headmaster was stressed and creepy.
"But the baby is in the mother's womb, surrounded by the mother's own spiritual energy. You aren't suggesting we cut open a pregnant woman just to look at the baby, are you?"
He scoffed. "I'm not suggesting it, of course. I just included this for the sake of having the broadest discussion possible."
Dawn resigned. "Cut me up. Let's make Lumina a new body. This is the only method that doesn't involve murder, right?"
"Indeed. Willingly offering your own flesh in sacrifice is the only ethical method. Also the quickest and the one with the bigger chance of success. It will cause only indescribable, insufferable pain." Astromelicus was borderline psychotic by now.
"Why are you so cranky, Headmaster?"
"Coffee. Someone forgot to go fetch my fix and it has been a week already." It came with a blast of mana. Not harmful, but he was getting moody.
"Right. We are riding a fast horse there tomorrow morning."
'Look, mom, it grew even more heads', Aidan thought.
"Congratulations are in order, student Dawn. You now are officially an independent person. This body is unfit for hosting Lumina, so it is yours to keep."
"Yay for me!" She cheered in a hushed voice.