Hecate is the goddess of magic, secrets, and the night. She rules over all elements not under the domain of the other eleven gods. She reigns over spells and magical items. Her taboo is faking one's affinities or destroying important magic. Blessings come to those that unveil secrets or further the field of magic, crafting new spells or discovering new elements in the form of enhanced understanding of spellcraft and wizardry or inspiration for even more magic.
Excerpt from The Twelve Gods.
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"Twenty-seven."
Cythrel was tasked with gathering the cores after each fight. They spent around three hours delving the catacombs and both Dawn and Aidan were very tired. The more mana you pump into the spell, the bigger the cores become. It meant they were overcharging each casting to the maximum.
Aidan looked at the cores and separated the seven smaller ones in a different pouch. He separated the two biggest ones, gave one to Dawn and pocketed the rest.
"Time to go back then. Maybe we can find some other roaming undead on the way back. At least they made clear the path. I'd hate to get lost in this place."
During their trip back they kept charging the cores in their hands.
Sora was a few meters ahead of Gurf. Then came Pearl, Cythrel, and Dawn with Aidan closing the formation. Cythrel's ears twitched and she complained.
"It became eerie quiet. When we came down I could hear the distant rattling, but now there is nothing. It is unnerving."
Pearl looked at Dawn and asked. "Is there a chance we got all the undead in the first and the second levels?"
"I have no idea," Aidan answered. "But we didn't explore the whole catacombs. While it takes a long time for the undead to form, it is hard to believe that all of them would be along the main path."
Nothing indeed. Aidan triggered his mana sight and felt the flow of ambient mana greatly reduced. In fact, there was a visible flow of Underworld and Death mana flowing from the deeper levels into the surface.
"The flow of mana is shifting. There is power emanating from downstairs." He announced.
"Is this a good thing?" Sora asked.
"With him around us? No." Pearl pointed at Aidan. "This boy is a trouble magnet. What do you think, Dawn?"
No answer. Aidan spoke after a brief silence. Pearl glanced between the two.
"Let's hurry up then. If there is any undead in our way either Sora or Cythrel will detect them."
They climbed the stairs to the first floor and the atmosphere was the same dead quiet.
"We'll follow the main tunnel," Sora called from up the stairs.
The catacombs were a maze, but the main tunnel had no branching. It snaked as a single-line from the entrance to the exit. The secondary tunnels also ran from the main tunnel fanning outward without crossing. Finally, the tertiary tunnels crisscrossed everywhere. There were shortcuts through the tertiary tunnels, but at a risk getting lost.
Until halfway to the exit, there was nothing except the bones. And then Sora felt.
"Wind?" Her tail twitched. Squirrel-kin could detect the faintest wind currents with their tails. They could do a lot with them, actually.
"What?" Asked Gurf.
"I can feel a tailwind. It is coming from deeper down and from some of the side tunnels."
Pearl stared at Dawn and asked again. "Could you do the same as you did back at the kobold dungeon? That spell to sense the tunnels?"
"I could try," Answered Aidan.
"Cavernsense."
His perceptions expanded and the whole network of tunnels dozens of meters around him were revealed. He could even sense part of the third floor. Ten of thousands of skeletons laying on their loculi. And nothing else.
"No. Everything is fine."
Pearl approached him while they walked. "I'm getting pretty comfortable with these crypts." She lied.
"Are you now? I thought you would be dying to get away from here." He joked.
"Oh, no. Absolutely not." She lied again. Aidan just kept walking, oblivious.
They reached the surface. The Templars stationed at the entrance doubled.
The captain approached them. "Hey, Listen. I have a proposal."
"I'm not interested in giving up my inheritance. I won't join." Aidan shot him down immediately. He knew the church sought Holy magic users and right now he regretted his earlier bravado. These guys would not give him rest if he were a commoner. However, joining the church means tithing all you own to the church and abandoning any temporal titles. Only nobles on the path of ruin choose to join.
The Templar captain caught the glare from the two princesses and decided to give up. He had more information to gather.
"The mana flow downstairs has changed, did you do anything?"
"It is weaker now, isn't it?" Aidan could see with his mana sight.
"You didn't purify the catacombs, did you?" He spoke with a small amount of concern in his voice.
Aidan was surprised by one thing. He realized he noticed the fluctuation of the Templar captain's voice through Dawn.
"No, it is fine. We just destroyed a score of skeletons with magic." He half-lied. 'And sucked all the ambient mana around them. Does it count as a purification?'
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"Then it should be fine."
"Well be on our way then."
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Afternoon in the Royal Academy. Regular classes were already over and students were enjoying their free time under the first days of Spring. A time for leisure, to forget the harshness of Winter, to nurture a new love.
Not today.
"Attention all mage students. You are all required to present yourselves for a special mana cultivation training session. Attendance is mandatory."
The headmaster's voice echoed in the whole campus and adjacent areas. In his office, the party of gravediggers and their twenty-seven cores.
"Isn't this a bit overboard?" Aidan asked.
"No. We are talking about healing the princesses. It is a grave matter. You two go to sleep and recover your mana. I'll organize the students to charge these cores. You need to be in top condition for the ritual tonight. I should summon every mage in town and suck them dry of mana. Maybe I should talk to Helios..."
"You heard the headmaster, and I believe it was an order, cadet Aidan." Pearl started to drag him out of the room. "You come too, princess."
Pearl shoved Aidan inside a cloister cell for tired researchers and took Dawn to the laboratory they used this morning. With Sora and Cythrel in tow.
"Put Aidan to sleep. We need to talk." She told the possessed princess. "Let us know when you are on your own, Dawn."
The girls ignored Dawn and began to talk about the most inane subjects like who started to date whom during the winter at the academy. Pearl didn't even know these people, but she joined Sora and Cythrel in the gossip session.
"Why does it matter?" She asked. "I'm the same person. He is asleep by the way."
"Yes, but there is something I want to talk about that Lumina cannot eavesdrop." She lied.
"I can tell you are lying," Dawn stated. "What is your problem, Pearl?" She asked with a good dose of irritation.
Pearl closed her eyes, took a deep breath. She looked at Dawn and moved to sit by the bed. The other girls followed her.
"Why are you doing this to yourself?" Pearl asked about the behavior Dawn was exhibiting the whole day.
"I have no idea what you are talking about." She answered, defensively. It was a partial lie. Dawn felt she could pick cues from Pearl's speech, facial expression and body language that complemented what she was talking.
Pearl gently grabbed Dawn's hands and glanced at her two fellow females. "Now you don't know what I am talking about, do you?"
"She is lying." Cythrel quipped.
"Yes. She is not a hundred percent sure, but she understood what you mean." Sora confirmed.
Dawn felt cornered. What were their intentions? Women were impossible to read. But these three were concerned. She had no idea how, but she could tell. Was this some sort of magic?
"You poor little scared thing. Take a deep breath and talk to us. We are here to listen to you."
She felt the need to talk to them. She needed to make sure they were on her side. Dawn felt alone and it scared her. But she fought back those impulses. They were strange. Aidan didn't feel like that.
"Yesterday at the ball, something happened. Something changed. Am I onto something?" Pearl asked.
"Yes." She nodded but averted her eyes.
"And it is not about Sora and Aidan becoming an item and outrageously making out in front of the entire court. It is about you and the other you. Congratulations by the way."
"Thank you, your Highness." Sora mocked in a friendly tone.
Pearl also noticed an utter lack of sexual harassment from Cythrel the whole day, but she would kill only a dragon at a time.
"When you danced with the King, what happened?"
"He was encouraging me to remain as Dawn if I wanted to. He thinks I am Lumina's split personality or something like that." - 'But I liked so much the idea' was what her body language was saying.
Pearl thought about what the Archmage told her after the failed experiment. "I know. When I stepped on the ritual floor to summon the heroes, my only thought was, 'I don't want to die'."
"When I was left behind by the slaver caravan with that piece of rusted metal hurting my neck, I wanted to keep living," Cythrel added.
"It is natural to desire to live." Sora caressed Dawn's ears in a very familiar way.
Her last wall broke. "I don't want to vanish." She repeated her wish out loud. "But this is not my flesh, this is not my voice. This is Lumina's."
Dawn's head hanged and tears began to flow.
"And ever since the ball, you were slowly killing Dawn in your heart. Trying to turning yourself into a puppet. Ever since Aidan sent her upstairs to dance with me." Sora figured out.
She nodded without raising her head.
"Because you think that either you or Lumina have to go." Sora continued.
Dawn lifted her head to look at the squirrel-kin. Her mate. No, Aidan's mate. Which one?
"Isn't that the truth?" She asked.
"I don't know. But nobody does. Not even the headmaster." Pearl answered.
"And the great Godslayer is giving up before the end." Provoked Cythrel.
"Yes! If there is anyone that can do it it is you." Sora followed Cythrel.
"And there's two of you." The elf concluded.
"Not two. We are the same person." Dawn protested.
"Are you?" Pearl challenged her. "Back when I told you there was something Lumina couldn't hear, you told me I was lying on the spot."
"Yes. It was an obvious lie. What about it?"
"Was it? Hold on to that thought. But when I lied to you in the crypts, you didn't pick it up. Of course, I didn't lie to you, I lied to Aidan. And it was an even more obvious lie."
"What?"
"Remember when I told you that I was comfortable being inside the crypts? Right before we reached the exit?"
"Yes. You didn't seem like you were lying."
"Of course. Because boys are stupid." Cythrel intruded to retort.
"Now try to focus on the memory of the same conversation but from your point of view as Dawn. Not the memories you got from Aidan. Relax. Just try to remember."
> Pearl looked at me and asked. "Could you do the same as you did back at the kobold dungeon? That spell to sense the tunnels?"
>
> Her eyes darted between the loculi filled with scary skeletons. She was walking on the tip of her toes, ready to jump at any movement. She was obviously scared.
>
> I shunted the answer to Aidan. "I could try." And I used a spell with him.
>
> "Cavernsense."
>
> Through his perception, I detected the tunnels of the first floor, several on the second and a few of the third. No undead in range.
>
> "No. Everything is fine." I answered as Aidan.
>
> "I'm getting pretty comfortable with these crypts." Pearl lied to Aidan. Her arms were tense, ready to fight. He didn't realize.
>
> "Are you now? I thought you would be dying to get away from here." He joked to dismiss what he consdered idle banter.
>
> "Oh, no. Absolutely not." Her voice quivered, trying to hide her fear.
"By the twelve! You are right, Pearl."
The princess of Gohar sighed in relief. She was not sure if it was going to work, but she had a hunch.
"Yes. You have two sets of eyes and ears, two minds. Each one of them with their own special traits. Just as you have two mana pools. Why neglect one of them?"
Dawn was scared, her eyes darting everywhere. "What does this mean? I'm not Aidan? Who am I? Am I insane? Was it all a lie?" Her face was pale. Her heart was running so fast she could bolt through the window.
"No!" Sora hugged her. "We believe you are Dawn and Aidan. Two halves of something greater than a single person. But you can't neglect whom you became. You can't shut your heart to yourself. I know you are afraid. You are trying to protect you. But it is fine to be afraid. Because I am here for you and I love you, Aidawn."
Sora planted a soft, brief kiss on Dawn's lips.
"That's a good name. Aidawn." Cythrel remarked.
"We want our friend back," Pearl smiled. "After all we went through, there is no way we are going to be appeased with just a bland hero. So please don't kill Dawn in your heart."
"It is too painful for us to see you hurting." The elf completed Pearl's line.
The realization hit Dawn. She didn't want to vanish but what themselves were doing ever since the dance was exactly that. Neglecting the female half to lessen the impact of the separation. She couldn't make heads or tails of the scrambled mess of emotions running in her mind right now. Fear of death, anxiety about the separation of their souls, the hopelessness of never getting Lumina back, anger at the assassins, frustration for being stolen by Kazuya, the paranoia of being discovered, guilt for using Lumina's body, and so on. The list was as endless as the abyss.
Dawn cried to sleep on Sora's arms.