Karma connected us together, but God did so before we ever had eaten of the fruit that we know karma because of, knowledge of good and evil. Religious parallels were no mystery, it was a sign, one that God had seen to all of our interests in giving symbols for the wise to see and be fooled by theirself with. For fools to grow wise with the same were no mystery, either, 'cause you could drown by drinking too much water.
You just can't drink that much water without having long lost any sense of thirst, it is sated by no more than it needs and can be overfilled with plenty enough to comfortably strike a biologic balance. God knew what he was doing, we had plenty of senses to protect us, and the ones that are the most ephemeral are the most moving.
Dreams. Imaginations. Out-of-body-experiences. Births and Deaths. Love, Justice, Peace, or Hate which alone contends with superior forces around it like a backstabbing coward hiding in the dark, waiting for the best time to strike, vengeance that had long lost any motive or means but self.
Good does not outweigh bad like convention states, like knowledge, good just weighs less upon us than bad like the truth weighs on us less than a lie. Both have their own type of weight, like imagination states, where light is enlightening, and dark burdening. It seems this way more of a 3-D than 2-D type of weight, yet, the vessel sees it in opposition.
To give is to lose, not gain. Loss is loss. To weigh is to doubt, not gain. Time, effort, resources lost in trying to stop and think. Our one chance at it might slip away, forever, whatever it is manages to seem important at the time. It might be the difference we need, the edge we lost, the balance we can't find.
Need, drive, instinct, your flesh, your vessel, your body. All urges exist only in the body, remain only in the body, but how and who and what and why and where you feel these feelings say everything. It's the spirit you act in, the way you go about it, motive and means of action in your giving in to desires.
I am a sinner, no worse or better than you, and when I arrived with all the others I was not unmoved by sin. I moved in its spirit, and make no mistake, it would end up becoming my greatest successes and failures all for me to take the worst of.
I can recall exactly how we were arranged; Eleanor frontmost, Paige next, then Kate. Kate who had been mine, once, my wife. I could not tell Skulde was the fourths name then, but, she was the second quantum capable and most attractive human woman I'd ever sense. She was a relatively normal looking young woman, fleshwise, but it was undeniable all felt her heart.
Marguete herself was fifth in line, and, I couldn't glimpse at her twice with Skulde close. Fickle, the heart of man, don't tell me cause I know first-hand. Catherine was sixth, and Alyssa seventh. I didn't only lust for each in the negative, intensely, I just lusted for each of them.
There were thirty odd thousand of us, it would be estimated as close as possible later, but I could not enjoy any of the other females beauties. All manner of every humanoid species, of multiple races, and hybrids between all of these were present among my peers who had not shared this world as I had for twenty-one years.
Bodies that did not degrade the way they did on earth, with no genetic defencies, and no diseases or viruses who'd known no type of corruption except those that the spirits in them occurred, they were already more attractive by default. Add in every exotic variation, some sense of all minds but Skuldes, and the resultant boost in pride or ego from sense of being seen and percieves threatens to untame you.
For all of five seconds, I felt like I was the almighties chosen on earth, but the most humbling of urges came to me and I didn't wrestle with my urges. My urges were my desires, my will taking form, and my power in the world. So, whilst being observed like the head of a snake in this odd line, I passed the gas that wished to be pressed out.
It only stopped after the thirteenth second, and by then hundreds of others could smell the pride I'd gasssd them with, and all was properly humiliated and in its place. I was no exception, only, there was no shame in it for me. It served all of us, though.
'Not so attractive or mighty looking, to sound off at the front of this line with that, and wow how a first impression can swing votes. What kind of woman decides someone is 'Gay' for farting? If it wasn't for that shield that blocks my intuition of others intuitions, I'd be too curious to glimpse that mind, and find the focus between the logic and empathic reasoning there.'
"What gives, already? We show up here, a guy facing backwards at the front farts and turns around again, then nothing?" A man yelled about twenty off people between me and himself, but it was a nervous yell, no guts or spine to the tone of it. We always heard what energies of which chakra were out of balance. That's why we called them tones or pitches.
Not that it didn't happen through the vocal chords mechanically, it's just, we were programmed to hear the spirits of things the same way we can see them once we know what to look for. Most of us are better with one sense, or another, but we all have a habit for blocking out learning too much. Too much knowledge can make us seem to be a whole different being. Something unknown is feared, instinctually, never loved automatically unless a child that is your flesh and blood.
Another symbol, births, that man can have all of their faith in the unseen but know it's there. Exclude ultrasounds and pregnancy tests, women can know they are pregnant before they have to wait for a period that doesn't come, as they have greater empathy and that constitutes greater connection in all, not just to people, animals, and plants.
They tend to disconnect with their own emotions better, in order connect with others emotions the same way, though since they tend towards emotional manners it does not seem intuitive they are disconnecting from theirself to try and get a sense of what others feel.
Men don't disconnect from their own feelings as well, by tendency, although my fellow men loathe to admit they have emotional bias as well. Control seems impossible, if you even admit that you feel, but we have our own tendencies. We know them, as well. Logic, but it and the empathic are two in one, all of us are both more than either. They are tendencies, not rules. They can change, are meant to, and meant to be one in us.
We're given our differences to learn them, apply both, and so after maturity we begin seeking our other halves naturally to become more wise. All in us needs this, mating is only a byproduct of this drive, the urge to learn and create, to be complete, whole.
Every brain should function with harmony, and they do more than they do not, regardless of what scans show the big picture is a balance that we all can tell shows we are imbalanced. The logical and empathical need a harmony, but, what holds it together? The minds eye does, image.
Division separated, it sees apart, but vision percieved with the third-eye in place of the normal two is just perception. Percieving harmony creates harmony, you'll have it in mind, and then it'll be an urge to see realized. It won't be perfect, often, but finding unity in work and drives will make it so through trial and error.
There was a harmony between me and them, the seven women and I, but I didn't like what it was implicating. No, I didn't, seven womens estrogen was too much for what pitiful testosterone I produced. 'Is this an all or nothing thing? Why not the perfect one only? Is that really greedy, to choose one, isn't seven outright gluttonous? I don't have even the ego for more than two, and, that's myself and one woman.'
"You're in the groups decided by neutrality of fate of your own makings. Leave them at your peril, or stick with them to survive, but you'll soon be the only humanoids left. After today, all but one in a thousand here will be gone, only one in every thousand native humans will remain here. They'll be like you all are; players in this game.
"You'll forget everything if you die, all of you will go home at once, all at the same time alive. What changes occur in you during this time will remain, some of you will have new powers, one of you has seemingly the least to gain but yet stands to lose the most now. He can't be recognized for it, except by those already chosen, the rest of you stand to gain more but lose nothing.
"Only one spirit comes naturally; that individual has seven followers, by which he will be recognized among spirited players, but unrecognizable to those embodied players. He will lead this group, but not be it's leader.
"The rest embodied unnaturally; you are in groups with five, none of your parties must establish a leader as none are yet fit for it, but those who are candidates for good leadership will emerge in due time accorded to effort.
"You will all share the grandest city, but you will be the best and worst of them, and none of you are free from this causality. There will be every crime, and the city will be overfilled, but the potential for every individual to survive exists, and especially any lone one of you are more than worthy to survive.
"Sanctify buildings for your groups when the capitals divine-ward falls. The worst will come for this place, the worst that exists in this world, but the best become the bulwark and in this better bastion will be blessed. The bad bridge that comes will come in all ways, every way, and at every angle it will attack all over Akyria. Valkyria will be the last line, you must be the barrier before that line, or all here is doomed.
"Crimes will work against you most, urges will cost you precious time, and your own wills are best ally or worst enemy. Just one year. Survive that, in a city with a thousand years worth of food, and endless volumes of water. One year, you do what Akyrians have had to do for millenium, but this will be the meekest year of assault in record."
Gone, soon as it had come, the voice left and its presence went before it even finished echoing through the stone floored pavilion of some huge coliseum or stadium. It might have been either, or a great stage, with alcoves in stone, seats in rows on the ground, and more layered upon the edge of the cliff. There were so many inside the cliff face, the alcoves and their halls seemed like braced teeth.
Two trained layers tucked into stone, one high and the second low, but they were only accessible by walking through eaches respective hall. There were stairs outside the edges, and two more sets descending from the central cliff were the only break of alcoves. These were spiraling towers of stairs, not series of steps like the outsides.
Otherwise, we were near Valkyria, and it was an overgroomed granite rock, one we were standing on the similarly carved rock below and facing when we arrived. It had the feel of a field, a cave, and the surrounding woods with local open expanse under the sky clashed with you feeling surrounded. All of us together barely seemed to dent the space.
Then, the presence had gone, and the two mile circumference felt like we had been crammed into a corner of a container altogether. All the calm and peace I'd associated with everyone seemed to go with it. Nothing visibly changed, yet, I felt the light leave most everyone and I was one of the two most effected by it with Skulde.
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She was the only one I could relate to, as for a long moment, hers was the only feeling similar to mine enough to percieve. Inside we felt tormented, but on the outside we barely wept, while the rest had other experiences across the board. All manner of acts ensued.
Most were a little emotionally raw, but, all I could think of was to go home. So I did, I teleported myself to Eindlon and I went from the farthest edge of it I knew, but I wasn't long in being followed. It only took the others a few minutes to follow me generally, and know about where I was, but I had time to meet my mother and find my father there with her.
Time enough to get to spend with them both, until my mother was gone, and my father as well. Gregory had not been anything like I expected, for a sailor, he had been reserved and softspoken. Uncallous to a son he'd never met, and proud of accomplishments he scarcely believed, but wasn't more than impressed by.
Normal stories between me and others were what interested him, not airs, and that interested my mother Anne but for occasional elaboration. How I'd treated others and been recieved were what they wanted to know, until they'd asked about girls of my youth and the woman of my future. Then, surprising me for this world, men when I said none to both.
"I can't well take care of child or a wife until I make a home, and have good land for it, but I have neither. I was in training for fourteen years, and that was no position to start a family, I was too young to be a father then and I haven't prepared for it yet."
"What?" My Mom asked too calmly for the face she made, and twitching fingers, lips and eyes spoke for her. "Not prepared? You've been at least eight years prepared to give me one grandchild! Are you sterile? Is it a disfunction or are you not well formed? What happened?"
"Well, nothing like that happened, I was born into this world a bit different but nothing that different. On that note, I am functional and fertile, but, I only yesterday decided to court a woman for the first time. Now, seven women are looking for me, and while that one I courted is among them there is one who is special among them.
"I only saw her today, and looks are no good judge, but the feel of her heart at a distance called to me." "It was the same, for me, when I had but drew close to your mother. At a distance, I didn't look twice, but after I was close I could not look away. It's the feel of their heart we fancy, son. Cherish her."
"Hah. Looks are everything, Alyseus, so you just look twice at her." "Anne, how can you tell our boy that, when the same thing happened to you as me?" "You just stop there Gregory, I'm not encouraging him to bring home pups or kitts, not after the stories you've been telling me all these last five years.
"Alyseus, your father claims there is a weakness for demipixie blood in you, and all males of your line supposedly find that pixies are a close second." "I can vouch for that. Pixies are, well, a little too beautiful for my good. That does shed a little light Dad, I mean, there first woman was a pixie. The one I tried to court, and really fell on my face foolishly trying, in a manner of speaking.
"That's a far-fetched truth, but all I'll admit to." Both laughed at the end, but at first my Mom looked displeased, and Gregory had laughed smugly. "The second, she must be a demipixie, am I right?" "I don't think so. She had wings, but they were more like feathers, but they weren't any kind of wings I've seen.
"Not like a bat or flying-squirrels, or any mammal. Not like any insect, so neither a pixie or fairy, though their wings resemble those of insects and they dislike being offensed with that as a negative. They weren't like a birds, or raptors either, so demipeoples are not what I imagine but are the only answer.
"There weren't sizable feathers visible, but, her wings were extraordinary and almost completely ethereal. Even their physical mass was unapparent, and they looked like shadow, but they manipulated neither dark nor light that you could see.
"You'd swear she had a brass tone to her skin, but yet, if you tried to focus on her you'd see she had the fairest pale skin you've ever seen. Translucent would be better for it, because you could see she was rife with vitality and pink with it all over. The sun didn't bother that, neither was she flushed by emotion or exertion.
"When she looked at me, she was the only person in that group I could lay eyes on and not see through, though she had that translucent quality you only find in the terribly truthful. I had only just the day before fallen for one, and known it for true love, and been made an ever greater fool soon after by the others apperance.
"I didn't get her name, but she is the most fair living and breathing among us. Brown hair never seemed so lively to me, though it is the liveliest hair after black, and earth is where all life comes and goes back to. Black hair is like the void, where all exists around, and within, but never touches. It's the most startling color.
"Her hair was brown, a medium I've never seen as centered, but it was dark in the light. I haven't seen it so, but hair like that, it swore to be light in the dark though you could barely tell it from the hairs closest to her scalp and beneath the other hair on her head. It ranged all between void dark and divine light, but it had no major change to color, and fluctuated dark blonde to dark brown.
"I've seen more shapely women, in size and by comparing certain sizes to their bodies, but I have to say she seemed like a normal human woman for form. A bit toned, a bit fed, and a little lithe, yet all their opposites at once, she appeared a little weak, underfed, and like she could thicken if she had a mind to flex out her stance.
"I've always found women with contrast attractive, so a few traits are as many as I've ever seen, but all of her was like that. A-."
"A valkyrie. Our boy, gods be damned, has a valkyrie in the eye of his heart."
"Gregory! My boy was raised better than that! Alyseus said he would not bring a man home, didn't he, and mentioned other women."
"Woman, man, both, they're rarely either. Even if she is a woman, far more often than not, there's said to be male portions of themselves. Their beings and others are not compatible, at least not for reproductive purpose, so it is never done.
"For them it's no problem, they aren't like harpies whose organs are more like an actual birds. Their breed is for theirs alone." "B-both? I've only heard about that in fish and frogs, never in an animal, but there're people like that?"
I fell out of the discussion; had she been different that way? Her smell. It was a womans smell, her figure was a womans, and that was the way she carried herself and dressed. It was my understanding we could in theory change our sex, but not before you reached quantum, and if you changed your chromosomes it was permanent.
Surface changes were not as permanent, I had no reason or want to, but knowing I could do it might serve a purpose. Had this person changed, or had they remained as they were, or was she a woman before if not now? I couldn't answer one, by surface, but we could not lie directly. Nor could we evade truth, if cornered.
There was no need or will to lie with a quantum heart esper, it would be more possible to do so comparatively only. Peers of equal potentials and minds and manners, though, no way.
"It may come up, it may not, I'll leave it to them if it does and if I don't mind the answers I will approach her. They are those who come from the world I did, in my world some people are born like you said, and if she is the way she was born I can't justly judge her for that.
"If it means we can't even mate, or even produce children, I don't mind either way. Who would deny their heart?" 'I would've once. Not just for all the too shallow reasons, but for all the ones with depth. I'd have been most afraid of what other people thought. I wouldn't fear that from the people here, not like the 'modern earth' I was born to.
They'd mostly be gone soon, but the support they would give would be enough. "Are you sure? People, huh. Your mother figured you for the one from another world. I heard how you protected her as a boy. This isn't just your sacrifice to make though, figure out if they have to make one and be sure they're ready to make it too."
"That's it Gregory, get out! Alyseus, if she can't have kids, she isn't for you." "Mom, stop. They're not far, and there's no reason to be offensive, you're not used to the idea and I didn't go looking for it myself. But what'll be will be, you are talking about someone elses child, and a person God made. Just relax, because, we don't have the details.
"Besides, something said that most of all people, all but one in a thousand would be gone after today. Don't freak out or anything, tho-." "Oh, how nice. It's that time, again, in our life at that. I don't know about your mother here, but I am not fit for that, I had to kill in self defense and never did get over it."
"I lust for life too much, I'm not letting go until I get a grandchild, I don't mind if I have to stick around and make it happen. You clearly can not be trusted to, it's been this long already, and now I'm the only woman my age in town who doesn't have one. Jane has four grandkids by one child, and she is a year my junior. I can't die like this.
"You won't be rid of me that easy." "Wow, you and my old mother would have gotten along. I suppose I need at least a few, to honor both of your wishes enough, but-." "Each. A few each. You owe us that much, and you've a mages and knights respects. You should be able to have and home a dozen children easily."
"That many? No. Four is manageable. You're pushing things too far, I'm not going to spend thirty-odd years raising children. I'd like to have a few and spend twenty-odd years doing that, but still have plenty of life left to start that again before my wife and I get too old. If I do things your way, I'll have more than twenty kids. It'll never end."
"Good. I'll accept that, so if you want to suit us both, have a few children with all seven women early, and again when you have gotten the early generation out of the house."
"Hey, Dad, what do you-." "Stop ya' there, you and your mother figure this one out, I'm this close to setting sail again at the thought of it even if the whole crew disappears besides me."
Bap-bap-BANG-plap. The sharp crack at the end had sounded like someone throwing something into the door, and then, perhaps also like what probably occurred. "Someone just tried to dropkick the door down, fell back of the head first, and the pavestones there are pretty brutal. As a kid, I was too small for it to be bad, but an adults head would land on the stone step down from the road.
"I am trying to say they're probably dead." Bap-bap-bap. "Yeah, someone else knocked, then a fool tried to kick in a two inch thick oak door with a six by six inch solid oak doorframe." The first in was the knocker. "Alyssa, right?" The very black haired woman nodded, in response to my question. "Whose the fool who kicked the door?"
"Catherine. She was a martial-arts otaku, with a pension for isekai manga and anime, her desire for a reverse harem reincarnation be cursed and spat upon by all just gods. Your step took good care of her though, no chance of any truck sealing the deal for her one day, may she be reborn as a man amongst an all woman world."
"Fuh-. That's brutal, to spite her wishes so soon, when she has just perished." "Oh I did it to her face, I just want her spirit to hear me say it, now that she can't defend herself. It pleases me to think she will be annoyed, at least for awhile, though with her attention span it won't be soon she gives up."
"Hey, her neck is really broken, I'm going for a healer. She's not dead." Gregory called, but I stopped him before he left. "If she isn't dead, I can help her. Her neck, anyways, I can't do anything for her judgement. She did try and follow me here, after all."
"About that. I've come to claim you as my bride of battle." Alyssa claimed. "Right. We'll go for a healer, you two make my first grandchild, the silly girl who is whatever your new lover claimed was an invalid before she incurred the crippling injury. You and the valkyrie girl get busy."
"Mom, stop. Even now? There's a potentially dead woman, and an even crazier woman than her trying to claim me some way I don't even understand. I'm not becoming anyones battle bride. This womans killed more than a dozen men in my world for crying out loud."
That slowed Mom down a bit, even got a bit of a jaw drop. For a moment, before she shrugged. "She can't kill you, what does it bother us if she has?"
Oof. "I'm going to get Catherine. Too bad, I get the feeling your the Tsundere and she is the bonehead, but she has killed more men that you twofold. A little odd, that, but a bonehead must make more enemies of lower caliber."
"Yeah. That's my little sister, for you." 'I'm so done here. What must your childhoods have been like, and why had you not been born in my time when I could have found and married you, Alyssa? Before I would have let you fool me, and you hate things I wasn't.'
"You. Get up, don't kick any door that solid, unless the frame is weak or too simply made. These aren't thin metal exteriors with mesh inside, that's dense weather cured hardwood. Are you really like this all the time?"
"Alyssa said kick the door out of our way, and she was joking, but it sounded so cool and the door looked so hard to break I had to try. I was sure it would give, I wasn't far from being able to kick through. I know I wasn't."
"You broke your neck. I mean, why not open it? It wasn't locked, and the windows are open everywhere. I just, explain it to me again please."
"No. Shut up and follow me, I'm going to lay you, and make you my bitch. I didn't come here to explain shit to you, you knew what I wanted, and you ran from me after I saw you. That's all the patience I'll spare you for now."
"I get it. Your parents really never spanked you, it shows, we'll need to get all nineteen years in with one fell swoop. Don't make any plans to sit down soon, where I'm gonna take you, you won't be able to sit for days at the least anyway."
"I'll kill you. Not until I'm done with your body, but I'll kill- aaaahahahahiiiiiiiiii.
A few days in the swamp would do her good. A few dozen harsh slaps to the rear had infuriated her, but a few dozen miles would cool her off and take at least three days in the shortest direction.
"Good. I see you killed them, that's good, that'll make this next part easier." "All three murderers came first, impulse control is a problem you all share, you three would in theory be the ones to talk into becoming my harem? I reckon so. How about skipping your line?
"I won't be a battle bride." "I'm only here for the hidden class, or else people around here might start disappearing soon. Wait-." "Yeah. You really could have thought that out better since it's going to happen. Hey, Alyssa has a higher body count and already has my family hostage. She's boss now."