Twelve years into where I was sent for my crimes, the divided world from the division worlds, I found what made me whole. I was alone all that time with only my shade, and old by the time I found the way to exit in forty years after I'd begun. That was when I did realize I had been alone, but my fate was binded to those with me.
Natalie had been cast inside the divided world as well, by choice, and Heitir appeared after we were released because I'd lost every magical and ethereal and esperal potential when I was placed inside. I didn't get them back because I'd used the key to get myself and unknowingly them out as well, though that knife-key could have given my powers back.
Powers or escape from hell was no contest.
There'd been only men where I went, like there'd been only women where Natalie went, yet the places had been identical challenges meant to kill off all entering. The further in you went, the sooner you were meant to die. I hadn't died, but the gains were more than I deserved, and the losses were more fittingly justified than my gains.
Remembering was worth the pain, getting out was worth the cost of being heralded as powerful where all others were weak. Most dreamed of getting someone to the end who would be able to use alchemy and change their world, someone to force the weak to become women for the strong men. Prison-planes from which there was no believable escape will do that to you, if you let them get the better of you.
Conscious memories more than fully restored or not, I had made a change to myself I could only overcome some of. It had been a beautiful lie to tell myself I'd be whole again when I returned. I was made whole only in one way, a return to youth, made once more to be as I was around thirteen from an age of over sixty.
On the twelfth and fifth highest floor, the eighth being the highest two parties of five had reached, there were only a few children. Even among these, Me and Natalie, plus Heitir were among a few hundred children and just over a few thousand adults. Plentiful adults or not, there were few men or boys, while one in eight were male adults the figure for kids was similar.
One in four were male, and there was no good reason why. Such a thing might seem anomalous and without reason, but I could imagine no inherent cause in our nature that should make combative lifestyles or increased stresses decrease the volume of males in human populations.
I'd heard once that more attractive couples produced female children more often, but I couldn't remember if the logic given was widely supported or not. Surely it wasn't impossible some trait or marker one could find in men and women could effect the volume of offspring slightly one way or another. Many such differences were physically detectable, so, maybe.
Thing was, such effects would never have radically altered the population at large even if everyone had been beautiful there. Never to that extreme in a population with that volume, not naturally.
It took no time to figure out what caused this, I just asked others who were wiser than me about it, some with alchemic ability I retained more of than anything else but only related to Materialization space. I could produce what I had stored, but not put anything back any longer. Here folks had noticed the same and sought the answers out, themselves.
I reflected on the answer about every way I could.
It wasn't people who discovered it first, or not so much directly by having done it themselves, but like I had found possible people had begun to alter their gender when they discovered that they could do so. Only these individuals had realized when they had done so, they could not revert back. It was permanent, and not only that, but a complete transition of gender and reversal of all natural differences.
Whichever gender you were attracted to, it was flipped just like yours, so it made for some interesting mindfucks.
The heterosexual people remained so, and yet, by their existing ego they very well struggled with the concept they were now homosexual.
Homosexuals remained so, but they could arguably be said to have developed heterosexual attraction by their old views.
While it seemed like a cruel and manipulative concept I had to wonder in another part of my mind if it wasn't to protect people from forcing changes on each other. Nobody could force others one way or another, nor vice versa, even if their gender was changed then so would orientation. They flipped together, in that.
While it seemed unnatural to others besides the individual, a different attraction that way, at the same time it was also a deterrent from anyone trying to play God.
More had become female to do what they couldn't as a male than had become male to do what they couldn't as a female. There were reasons I was presented, none sexual, and curiosity was pretty high on the list. At least the conversions were minor trauma, to the people themselves, although there were others confused later.
Meeting someone you had been with that had changed that much, it could be traumatic for both depending on whether or not the former lover accepted it.
The individuals themselves never seemed to be bothered by such changes, even when they'd once been confident with their former sexuality and gender besides loved one, there seemed to be some impossibly perfect acceptance of the change incurred. That was when I decided it wasn't at all only something purely good.
Some had done this to survive one way or another, if only because they were being sought for assassination or to escape slavery, whilst some were trapped in a place they could almost escape from and a slightly smaller body would allow them to. Some had escaped imprisonment or death sentences that way.
Men engaged in risk-taking behavior more, and not only had becoming a woman seemed to save them far more often short-term, but in these worlds women survived long-term better. Even if most built muscle a bit slower than men, and were a little smaller of build to put muscle on, those same features of narrower shoulders had saved plenty unable to escape a deadly grasp more than once as well.
After this change, the individuals change had a fifty percent chance of also effecting the gender they had been if their child was that gender, which meant the bulk of changes being into females was slowly eliminating males. Every individual changed that way had the same effect, and so, the females changed from male carried that onwards.
While the few women who'd taken the same risk became men who were likely to take more and reproduce more often, the results spoke for themselves over more than two millenium, there were still few men and while some had gone on to make it further a slightly smaller number perished. Since there were more who became women long before, and they outnumbered the others that long, it only grew.
It could only have been equalized if many more had made that change, except most never dared unless it was a life or death scenario, and human psychology had worked against itself due to a devious and toxic thing that like me others long before had seen as something that was far fairer. It made change, but gender and orientation both changing seemed less offensive in some deeper way.
That beautiful depth and charm, this change that had preserved more than a few in its time, it was a wolf in sheeps clothing against humanoid-kinds in that it was gradually decreasing the male population. There was little beautiful or good about it, not for men, and certainly not for women.
As a man I loathed to imagine what was reality, that women would throw their lives away for men and those who had always been women without change would put themselves on shelves above others who hadn't.
That wasn't something you wanted to see, nor people seeking the few men who had been women either in the womb or changed later, trying to literally combat the population drop by having children who could neutralize the effect with counter-effect.
Of course it was a noble cause, and yet, while it would lead to love here and there, natural love and relationships were what individuals deserved. The thought sex had become political was a frightful thing, it meant some were killing and dying for causes, and that type of cause and effect leading to escalation meant that all of it would only grow worse.
Wars and vendettas would be normal, eventually. Men and women would die, and while everyone would suffer, the humanoid species would most.
Parents had learned to orphan children they had who were changed into females just after birth, that way they could not have their minds peered into to tell they had been males, both for their childs protection and theirs. There were more than one group, besides many individuals, all of whom would eliminate any with that 'curse'.
Philosophers established very official pedigrees, three randomly chosen under heavy scrutiny were the normal way for every natural woman to prove what she was, like every unnatural man could prove what he was and be taken under the capitals care for all their life. Few women did, although it was still supposedly more common for men, that was only a rumor.
Even in life or death scenarios it was rarely done.
There had been no official wars fought, but even in the capital the Valkyrian capital of division world twelve there was plenty of oppression against careless reproduction, and women had to prove pedigree unlike men. It was mainly to protect the population, which made it somewhat acceptable, except that put many down.
They called them witches, after a fashion, the implication being as well they were hiding an evil that was denying that which they had been.
Everything was just messed up.
You could say that the division worlds were harder on men, yet for the men alive life could be as easy as they wanted, and it was common for a man to have two wives with pedigrees who protected him as if he were the more fragile and delicate. Nothing most men did could change that, few dared, not with their wives so overprotective and their prospects seeming infinite.
Men could in fact get away with murder as long as it was a woman they killed, and that was too much for me to stomach, but true and lawful for division worlds twelve and higher. Even their wives or daughters, and if they were witches they'd suffer no fine or prison sentence at all. The sentence was a year for murdering a woman for men, or ten gold pieces to her closest family if any otherwise.
Women got twenty years and a hundred gold fine to closest immediate family, for murdering other woman anyway. The penalty for killing men was execution, even self-defense kills against men were treated like a murder and a manslaughter as if the man was carrying another life in them, but the fines started at a thousand gold for a commoner killed outside self defense.
Which basically meant they'd be executed and then their holdings would be sold as reparations if found guilty of being too offensive in protecting their life against a man.
If it sounded like a good place to be male, it was as far from that as it got instead, because this hadn't just made men arrogant and weak. Women were stronger and more capable. More men were criminal and prickly than ever, whilst more women were lawful and deadly than life lived forever should have seen them become. It was as if the roles had swapped.
Yet women kept their old burdens with these new ones whilst men had accepted this reality. Witches would pretty much be executed for murdering anyone but their own. There were just new prejudices now besides faults that went against all our natures.
I'd gone through being younger once, so I wasn't as intimidated as the Natalie or Hale, though to be fair Natalie only mostly acted as such to cow around adults poorly. They could not see through it, but a few wiser ones caught hints of it in her tone they never mentioned. It was written on their faces.
Without parents to more clearly verify their pedigrees, I'd had to seek a very unconventional favor in finding one for each. There was no way to prove it even for me without her parents, her sensible conscious memories began about the time she was a couple of years old and had begun understanding more words.
Our minds think in words, though they are not limited to that or they would be very flawed, we think in words like we can think in time or math, or very many other especially broad logical and empathical thought training excercises all think in at some point.
Even thinking in all senses at once, you can only get so much from a mind, and that mind may begin before the age of two but it's around then almost all minds developed enough constant focus and solid foundation sufficient to be viewed telepathically.
I couldn't prove they had always been women, but I could vouch they had anyway and suffer the repurcussions if not, which I gladly did although as a common freeman instead of an imperial old-god. I'd never outlive my debt and I'd become a serf or slave if even one wasn't, depending on the station of who they offended if so.
It was a risk I'd gladly taken to increase their quality of life, otherwise being parentless here they would have a harder time finding husbands one day. Like me they didn't even consider being orphans, there were plenty of tiny abandoned homes we could renovate in the slum of the capital.
Heitir and Natalie were both Old-Goddesses, both of the two fruits I'd found in subconscious wonderings made that so, as for me those had somehow burned out as much as the rest of me had. A platinum penny each as insurance meant I was unlikely to be imprisoned, although, I asked each to vow never to be with a reigning imperial man.
I doubted anyone would shell out platinum coins as insurance, but, another thing was the two would be able to get that insurance money back one day after they had a couple male children, or when they were too old to have any more kids. Or, it could very well end up all gone, mostly gone or less than half, if not barely touched. It depended on who they married.
I was glad to do it but sad to have to, the divisions they were in now were harsh for women. Life was already harsh enough on men and women both, but it was worse here, and if you were weak and few like us with no connections then life could see you in serfdom or slavery quickly. At least materials and resources were no problem, nor skills and attributes for me personally, and I had my abilities.
If I could no longer rely on even defensive magical, ethereal and esperal qualities, I still had abilities of every dodging and defending sort. My traits of elevation and the like remained besides transcenscion. Techniques of implementing defensive maneuver were still plausible, and by bypassing attack or defense utilizing traits, if they took more effort.
My intrinsic experiences were all there, and so was plenty of materials.
With what we had our trio was sure we would be fine on our own, except it was just nor normal for children to be alone and free our age, and the world would refuse to stomach us like we were refusing to swallow it trying to force us to be orphans or slaves. None of us sought to serve another but that was about all anyone saw in us.
Even with fewer people almost universally in the capital area of divison world twelve, we were literally unable to leave as we were surrounded by groups, and while most were neutral there were those too good and bad to leave us to our devices. Rather than get pulled into their traps, we agreed to try and find someone with no station or moral agenda to live under.
It wasn't hard to decide where to go when you wanted to be free in the world, there will always be small communities of regular people who aren't out for much more than shared security and general civic unity. For us a guild there at that time was perfect. We hadn't wanted to do what we'd had to and join others, yet it was vital.
We'd been almost robbed, repeatedly close to force recruited, and severely reprimanded by people whether it was robbing or recruiting they were after. I didn't need to be told it was me that most were after, but three youngsters in general walking around as if they are way too world weary and mature will really make people pesky to said 'kids'.
Merchants, mercenaries, musicians all in one each of them was, and a band that constantly moved. Then they'd do it all over, wandering, making their profits before spending most of that, buying what was profitable to sell higher later if not make use of in their next ventures or destinations.
None had slaves or stations, so they passed my foremost criteria.
They had witches among them and so, criterion two could be checked off.
Criterion three, the last, it wasn't one you could get right off. While they seemed trustworthy, there was always potential for the trouble in paradise that was a snake in the garden. I did see that some were particularly religious, and various hymns and prayers in many languages of the old world were sung by a few that only collected such songs.
Instruments and songs were what they seemed to be most unified about after each other, their group consisting of many very motivated individuals keen on reaching the indivisible prime division one world in their lifetimes. They were all Old-Gods, however there were a few of them old. That drew me in particular, along with their unified group of diversified cultures and religions and languages.
Joining the Corporeal-Composition-Clan was as simple as jumping in, no hoops or loops to be kicked out that weren't clearly out of bounds.
Doing it with Natalie, who literally only minded whether they had a cow or not for her singular criteria, and Heitir, who only wanted to make sure there were boys besides me in their group as hers, well that was a more embarrassing to me than that they could both sing and play an instrument when I couldn't.
Heitir had been pretty upset for every obvious reason to learn I'd kidnapped her. Who would blame her. When I'd revealed my intentions for it, well, I certainly could have told her after she trusted I was not as bad all over as I had been. There was no reason to keep the truth back though, she had deserved that and more, I wasn't one to pull a punch in that type of sense.
I did make sure she realized I wasn't like that before or now, though I'd never really met her I had seen her mind and remembered it.
Why I had thought making a master manipulator into a subordinate and submissive and secondary wife was a good idea, I can only imagine, but to kidnap her and mislead her into it before making the revelation clear was just despicable. Much of what I'd done was sick, and there was plenty more until I regained memories, little as bad yet plenty still awful. Most of the worst was before the divided-world. Hell.
In the two-hundred and thirteen division-world, I'd committed plenty of murders besides other crimes, and even developed a heinous technique of making people percieve only their own self while they remained conscious and could feel inanimate objects. It turned their senses inwards, to themselves, Reversal-Refractal had.
Heitir was merely annoyed at suddenly finding herself twelve, but knowing she'd missed forty years and change to get to the twelth division a twelve year old brought tears of joy to her eyes, until she learned she had been kidnapped by someone basically planning on fooling her into being a subservient sex-slave. Tears of joy that had been like cooling and refreshing showers inverted.
They became tears of rage, blistering and excruciating lava. But of course I'd seen why she was that way, destroying her arrogant ego with no remorse would have been a death blow for us both, had I anyway. Planning and acting on it were almost enough to. Looking at Natalie after what I'd done with her, well it was too easy on eyes and heart, but there was still that change to my heart. Locking in and out love in it was a mistake.
One I couldn't change, nor would retreat from unless she needed me to.
The plans in Heitir's head were worse than my own, yet they were hers to deal with. As a child again she could not handle what she'd done the same way and cried often, but that was to be expected anyway, it's pretty traumatic to become a lot more genuine again. The looks that Natalie were giving me did not at all resemble what they had once.
The dry distance was gone as if an ocean repaced desert, in her mind where we couldn't have been further apart we were now like an island together in the eye of her heart, yet she still did not love me. The possibility existed now however, and as much as I hated to admit it, I knew she would seem ugly if she did fall in love with me.
Her perpetually shallow and long relationships with similar individuals were weighing on her.
Heitir's misuse of men sexually and emotionally, they dawned from darker memories back to light on her as what they were, over defensive and passive aggressive manners of keeping men as apart and below her as she had been convinced to believe they made her feel. It wasn't nearly true, not of the two she strung together to herself, those she treated the worst.
She'd treated the worst best.
The things they talked about and their prior minds I'd delved were enough to have made it clear before they started to talk about them, except I'd lost my voice and sight, Natalie could use telepathy to read my mind but she was the only one who could speak for me. At least myself without memory had not lost trust.
Shallow in relationships or not there was nobody more trustworthy than Natalie, not even myself. Manipulative or not, Heitir had loved a young man once who was too capable for her to have ignored how she treated him, and while she'd loved him more than anything she had stuck to her guns trying to replace him when he'd died young. Every failure, and she'd double down again, until she needed more.
One bet wasn't enough of a chance at some point, when gambling became habitual. Heitir never gave up, not even a bit, though she'd known a true low as it was and regretted her ways. They'd been good enough for him, someone had to match that. For Natalie there had been noone so long, when there was, she had no idea how to take it. This clan was good for them as children once more.
The 'Corps', short for the name of the clan we had joined with by tagging along, it was full of families that were mostly small. Relatives and familial ties of marriage and children were found in it, rampantly, and there was a familiarity for all their group largely lived and died by as a whole. Even a few rotten eggs couldn't touch it, the bigots kept their mannerisms inside in this group, or only pestered each other.
As for me, my faults were plenty, I was still so distraught for Kate I was poison. I had no powers where I'd had all you could of all but one, and the ninth spirit esper was reserved for spirits. If anyone was calling anybody shallow and distant as I had Natalie, or manipulative and arrogant as I had Heitir, then I was those and worse.
We'd all wound up someplace that could be better by our actions though.
I did my best to be as useful where and when it was most needed, for all of us but especially the two here by my recklessness. It was them I owed even more than myself. Natalie had made it clear to Heitir, although she watered down my words three times she had repeated them the fourth, I would be their debtor for life in essence and existence.
Stolen novel; please report.
Anything less was too little.
Very dark nights, sanguine skies full of rusty colored dust in the daytime, and possessed individuals achieving dark bodies were all worlds-wide results of my actions. There was a part of me wishing it had all been imagined, that I was maybe drooling somewhere in a bed until I died, only I couldn't be so lucky. There were mistakes I could fix.
There were more I could never.
The evening saw us and the Corps all set to retire for the night, wagons and bedrolls were all put in their places while the mounts were let to graze amidst the semi-circle placed wagons and a creek, few were hobbled although ropes were used to erect a makeshift fence where necessary. Many were mules that pulled wagons. Horses were most of the rest being ridden, few were pulling anything.
The ones that did were pulling carts.
Oxen were the rest, the beasts pulling the largest wagon and larger carriage. We set out with the carriage as fully loaded with water and feed for animals as there was space for. There was more of both for them, and people in each wagon, besides smaller amounts in each persons saddlebags.
Shade wasn't plentiful, but by night it was still hot, and I produced an ice crystal for each of us to sleep with.
When I woke up I felt a little less poison to existence, except slipping out of subconsciousness into the other came with a physiological shaking of my body. Others could not sense it, and I wasn't one to rise early or late. I awoke while it was still hours from sunlight and ran to the creek.
A cold dip did not help me shake off the feeling. Breathing longer and deeper and slower did not help, actually I could not even force myself to breathe much better. Tingly and shaky, I sat on a precipice I was not aware of threatened with a senseless panic I found no cause for. Yes I'd had some trauma over this long life I'd lived but it had been too long since I found myself feeling so vulnerable.
It wasn't any of the old experiences, I could theorize it was residual effects left over from my pitiful and unuseful quantum esper connection that was so minimalized, the way all of my espers were gone except for deepest roots. But that was only a potential for how I felt like I did as the effect, why and the cause were what were in question.
It was then I'd found the young man with a dark body, a completely possessed individual, the person who'd been watching us as we slept and who somehow roused the feelings I felt in me even as I'd slept. I wasn't the only one awakened by him, but I was the only one who seperated from the group and happened to end up being confronted by him in doing so. A few had woke, and others were by them.
They'd known better than to isolate. I could tell by everything about him what would happen. Aura, tone, stance, over-measured approach, the vibe I had even before waking were only my original sum of him before ever laying less indirect mental faculties and senses on the individual. That was just the impression of his surface, the guise he tried to hide it under failed.
Evil. Just pure evil that lived when it should have died, heart long dead, yet he seemed to walk and talk like a man. He wasn't, men and women had hearts no matter how evil, you could live until your heart killed you early for trespass against yourself and others.
"Hello. Feeling a little off, this morning?"
'Yeah, I smelled some shit, you're it.' I could only respond in my thoughts, rolling my eyes internally, but I kept my senses about him while I kept washing myself. I was already cool and wet, so I continued bathing while it was convenient, though there was little grime or stink on me the cold flushed my skin and made me feel livened up even if it was unnatural at this time.
"Disdain and silence are poor ways to treat a stranger you don't know. You have offended me there, boy, and I'm starting to think you are trying to."
I pointed to my throat while shaking my head, then after a few seconds of that shrugged while I kept about my washing. I still had to wash my small clothes, socks and loincloths were best washed daily. Both articles were of weaves that held moisture and bacteria better, but the finer linen shirts and trousers you could go a week without washing, as long as they weren't soiled you'd not suffer for if.
I had other clothes in my inventory space, which unlike my material space I still had full use of. While the washed small clothes dried I produced a towel to use and dry myself, before hanging the towel along with the rest to dry I put on clean articles. Once every few wash cycles I'd use soap on an article. The young man had all he could watching this.
"Blind I could see, but mute, I did not. Just sit there, little lamb, disciplined as you are I hope you can handle pain so well. I'm going to teach you to fear the Belonged."
It was hard to put what happened next to words, without chakra to even agitate I would have never imagined or known what I did was possible at all, that mastering a magical element was not the only way to use one.
That anxiety peaked as he started to close, and lightning streamed from my fingers together into one pouring weaved from each hand, then those both converged spontaneously before reaching him like he was drawing it in. He caused this somehow, but that went against much of what I knew about magical laws.
You could use magical power as a delivery method to transfer your magical energy to a person or crystal, but that type would lose a tenth of its potential to be converted back into power, since the energy used was technically returning to the user right after enchanting or sharing it. The fact you could get energy not your own was somewhat mysterious.
A person or dynamic crystal would eventually regenerate their own energy, and if the shared energy went unused, it would naturally dissipate over time. Ones own energy would replace it.It would require no effort, nor cause any effect, just fade.
Theory was that amount of energy was lost via energy transfer, and that crystals and chakras stored the rest out of time. Energy crystals did not regenerate, they would hold what you put in unless destroyed, and neither lost over time.
Energy regeneration was not a constant over short periods of time, it could rise and fall with emotion, the constant was long-term over a day in which your chakras would fully replenish when you mastered them. In a way mastery was like having a triple-dynamic crystal inside you for an element. Time was a factor for chakra and dynamic crystals gaining energy from regen, but not losing it.
Enchantment was basically taking it a step further however.
Suspending magical energy outside of the wane of time passing into crystals of chakras other than yours, using power as the delivery method to put it where there was space for it to fill, that was called charging. While it was a bit mysterious, it was only because few did it, and though it was easier than enchanting less were willing to do it.
Enchanting was suspending power, an act called conducting. The difference was mainly in time and effort involved, while energy waxed and waned, power did not. It could be added to by using it as intensely as possible for the best gains like a muscle, whereas energy would be like calories used to fuel that. Only, those calories were also stable in a way, in that they returned in time.
Emotions, positive or negative, they added to chakral energy both equally. It was minor, and it actually taxed the body of very real caloric energy by strain on the metabolism, but even the most centered person could not be said to be free of that. There was a little bodily and physical connection to the chakra, that was the known sign of it, besides health and sickness.
I thought I might have somehow turned harsh anxiety and shaking into lightning somehow, as if all that extra fire in the wire of my nerves could literally be conducted as lightning. I could only guess why later, because in that moment I saw something like a memory I was given in retrospect.
I'd gone some place I could not know. I'd come back alive and met some trial in its challenge, gotten a boon I never imagined possible, and only the faintest recollection remained.
The young man was smoldering into himself, ashes burned off from him and scattered into the void itself, returning into the energy of matter. All the while what had remained of him as if burning unto nothing kept smoldering and caving into itself as if being sucked into the point his heart was supposed to have been.
An empty socket in the chest was where he seemed to have gone into.
Blackness and darkness and silence.
I remembered an intense sparring without intention to kill either way, even though my failure would mean death it was the way my supremely superior foe had charged, and so it was the way I met him in contention. There was a fruit like no other in the division-worlds, the divided-world that had once been earth, earth before it became that divided-world, or even any fruit in the ethereal Akyrian world.
Man had consumed the fruit of knowledge, that of good and evil.
The fruit of suspense had never been consumed, this of life and death.
It was the only way I could have seven states, it was the supreme one I had sought, yet all that it should have been it could not be more than a bit of where I was. I could only think of it as having a distant memory of what true bliss was, a chip only off of that block, even the loss of Kate and forgetting God and Jesus hadn't been as traumatic for me as that emptiness.
This was to be made whole, yet whole surrounded by emptiness was so shallow I brimmed with insanity like never before. Madness was all I was and had ever been, even when completed and fulfilled towards a divine-body. Even should I fulfill it, that would only increase every stress and strain upon me, stresses and strains that had only been meant for the best and worst single individual. The self.
Any self could reach it here, but they all others were heading from it, even the closest others were slipping away.
One-tenth the developmental speed and ten times development potential. Echelons-of-Eidolons; Fruition as a supreme seventh state was just a part of having a sub-divine-body, a body with full growth and cultivation cycling available, all nine espers adjoined about as if towards one point. My heart, where quantum and heart and spirit formed three espers, with a new third element after air and shadow.
If unsealed a divine-body was not theoretically impossible, it just opposed all in a way I never would be able to, it required a perfect environ of justice and peace and love that would never be in the division-worlds. This was not a new level of weakness and power, everything and nothing, it was the point of no movement. Adding or subtracting to it was impossible.
I lacked quantum power or energy sufficient to restore love to myself. Even using all I was at once together, I was shy of the ability to move my internal self, I could only do so with my own personal powers and energies. They were insufficient. Nobody could undo it unless they were more powerful, yet, I knew none had or could exceed my efforts.
None who existed in all the division -worlds.
It was in reality only a little of an upgrade, one the conditions for growth of which couldn't apply for lack of the proper environment, and the change I had made upon myself were crippling.
All of truly terrible tormenting, all of boldly bearable blessing, both struck at once upon actualization of the new element. The spirit esper seemed to mean so little without the grand element, but only because I had been worldly for a moment, a single second of complete contention in which I was both dying and living more.
Vessel.
I could not be this emotionally moved more than the once, right now, but I dared not waste it on trying to make myself any more than I had been. I'd learned that was a mistake, rushing towards power as I had, and trying to fix myself was no answer for the pure pain I felt. With one shot left, one must aim like they never have, and that's a shot not even amateurs miss.
"Kate."
Spirit, quantum, heart, air, shadow, vessel. Heart. Mana, matter, divine. Crown. Miasma, earth, void. Root. Chi, lightning, light. 3rd-eye. Ki, ice, dark. Sacral. Qi, fire, alchemy. Throat. Chakra, water, illusion. Navel. Inside out, rather than outside in, this was not a typical birth. Birth starts with the navel, Rebirth starts with the heart. Backwards, starting from the seat of the soul, ending where life typically starts with a cutting of umbilical cord.
Only a spirit-weapon could cut a spirit-cord free, severing a spiritual umbilical from where her spirit was sealed, and bringing her back to me as she was. Light body and all, twelve and a day younger than me, all memories intact.
My life and death fruition was also a life and death choice, for her life returned I could find only death forward, yet I couldn't imagine living and breathing without her. I couldn't live and breathe with her any longer either, she would find death around me as well. My future fate had been unveiled, front to back, I could not see still yet I could see my future clearly.
I dared not let her embrace me, else I would fail and fall both with her and in every way, but it was the most difficult thing I'd ever do to push her away. I faced the challenge of my life brazenly when it meant her life was the one on the line and I could see it all at once surely. To admit some things could never be changed no matter what you tried was infuriating, maddening.
Only grace under fire prevailed.
"Kate. I need you to go to Pharoah and stay there, I might never be able to come back to find you, but you need to go now and build a bastion like no other until you can eventually make it to the prime division. I'll be waiting, you need to be surviving what will eventually come after I reach it. It'll be much worse than what we saw in Akyria, that ether-reality.
"I have no idea what to expect. All I know is that we'll escape this, and that you need to stay alive as you are to truly stay alive after this house of cards comes crashing down, but our reunion has to be short and sweet. I doubt we'll meet again in earthly bodies to be precise, but that isn't all. It's hard to accept, what I'm saying and still have to say.
"When I learned you died and we were somehow separated, I wasn't able to cope, for the last four decades I've survived by sealing love from coming in or out of my heart. In a way I'm as good as dead, hard as it is to hear, I can only tell you that there's no way I can achieve my goal of cultivating the most important things I need to in life.
"I can't love anything but the memory of you. Not God, nor Jesus, and yet their memory I love just the same as you. The problem is I can't reconnect my love to you now or onwards nor undo the damn change, I lost all my powers, and whag I regained back I shouldn't even be able to develop here. Not as I am.
"I'm going to somehow, because my perception of love is skewed, my memories and skewed outlook and intake of love as I see it now are my ticket to one day try and reverse this. It'll happen too late to change our fate together, but apart, we have a chance to be together again as spirits forever. It's a lot to take in, but facts are facts, and some of this is subject to change.
"Maybe we survive physically, maybe not, but there's no way our relationship can survive with me as I am. I won't let that happen to us the long ugly way, not if that slim chance of change that could put us back together exists, the things I can accept slipping away can somehow exclude love even if I know I can't know what it is. I remember what it was.
"If I can't see the difference, I'd still see it if it started breaking your heart, and if I made you stop loving me I know I would trouble myself to death with it even if I can't love. The memory is more than enough to use like a crutch, that crutch is all I stand on right now, so neither of us can let it fall. I'm a cripple in that regard, but one with a responsibility to try and remake the division-worlds in the image of the old.
"We need a vision-world, once more. Failing that, holding the prime world until reinforcements arrive will be my job, you have to hold out until there are no more demons, then you come."
She left silent and stoic. It had been a long time she'd lived with no memories, remembering all of it after so long, who knew how many lives and experiences she'd lived here. Every death was a rebirth as an adult, with the exception that the higher level you died at the less far you fell, only by growing weaker your odds to keep falling were high.
She left without filling me in on so many knowns, yet gave me the most desperate and pained and troubling of looks. Needing had been there most, love I remembered though I'd never met her when she was twelve, so much beautiful potentials to grow up with my wife again were unobtainable and yet in reach. I could just call out and change her mind.
I needed to. I wanted to. I could and would not, it would kill us and everything. These worlds were endless destruction that had barely begun, meant to end with all under the weight of many worlds, all in division four-hundred and fifteen where they would be incessantly slaughtered by the demons over them. A cycle of losing eternally, dying, fighting, weakening and waning endlessly.
It was worth it. It was not.
'Somewhere in me I still love you.' I sent out towards a long severed telepathic connection she would have lost in death. She was reborn, there would be no such karmic connection, it had existed once and faded though she lived again. Watching her go was the only damnation I feared to face, certain it was forever and my efforts futile. I would never admit that to her.
She'd seen everything in my conscious, so I'd tucked what should be there for her to see carefully, and painted a prettier picture of the pieces I'd seen of a whole. Success was not as sure as I'd selectively showed. That was when I became the things I hated even more, as if mirroring a mask of a personality I provided on the spot, becoming of all things an actor.
A worse person than ever.
Reversal-Refractal would be a tool limited to providing pawns, recruiting rooks, for to make kneeling knights, for boring bishops to combat centered commanders of communities, even for conquering queens and killing kings. I needed plenty of queens on this board. One for the capital, eight more for each city, nine women where I knew of only two. Both would help. Neither wanted to, not even to be made queens.
Nobody would want the power of being an emperor this way. The costs and sacrifices..
I may as well be burrowing down a hole bare bodied into a world of broken glass and needles, aiming for the center. For me this was nothing I wanted or needed, but to break this filth I had to become it, and still then remember to destroy it. Infinite insanity, your pal Jack Legand, the master of madness. None would ever say that.
I wouldn't be mistaken as a savior to anyone here, I couldn't afford to. They needed a devil in order to realize where they were, reject it, and make the impossible possible. This was the daring dao of mine, a dark dream in a place of forever fading and dying dreamers, but I didn't want to be dark like they didn't want to forever fade. I was not afraid that the devil here would defeat me.
But I was almost terrified of what happened to everyones soul here when that victory came about.
I'd handed Kate a very particular storage ring. One that could not be lost or destroyed, there were few of them I'd made, some resources were more precious than others after all. You could not make things you did not understand the formation process of, not even with all the potential power to do so. I had no such power yet, if I could, as I had shown possible.
It would be a long road to power, once more, if only a decade.
To get to the prime division from the twelfth so fast was the largest gap to make up for, but ahead of that was trying to do the impossible and achieve bliss and peace with justice here.
Beyond underdog, I would either amount to a flea and die long before the dog I was biting or else manage at best to infect it with the deadly disease I carried, it was like that. This was realistic. In even the tenth division, threat became a constant anywhere. I could not afford to be realistic.
'Better start biting, it takes time to infect and this place is quite sterile.'
It took days to get Heitir back on foot to the capital, time in which I started deeply taking into my new persona, losing who I'd been even for those I wanted to limit severity with as long as I could. It was better to start now and get them coming around to the idea, so I was just a little moody and pushy towards them. Starting slow was the key. Too fast or hard, and they'd break.
There were already minor stirrings of gains when I made them annoyed, in particular the more attracted and hated Natalie became of me, although it was easier from Heitir who was more willing to engage in either deeply. It seemed intensity of hate was detrimental, while frequency of lust was beneficial.
That made clear and concise a plan.
Have them fall for me, learn to accept each other as competitive lovers, and constantly make moves on both. In essence, become Heitir before she had become a child, and make them like the toys she had puppy-dogging behind her like drooling shadows, going where she said when she did.
Minimal hate and frequent lust. There was only very little love created from these I could cultivate, corrupt love was hardly pure, and those two were both required as they were energies close to the heart.
I could not rely on establishing thorough methodology and trying to make them live lives that produced more efficient results, it was bad enough to play with lives. This was the kind of fire that burned both ways, destruction of self and others, hellfire in every sense of it. Double-edged, as was any proper war-blade, single-edges were barely fit for a battle.
Trying to allign all of their chakra towards my corruption was too much, their hearts and voices were easiest to heal, though Natalie would have a harder time with the latter chakra, her navel would take more time and care to prevent permanent damage. This was no mere physical balancing act.
Two corrupt love energies together could be refined and leave behind some pure extract, one of either was useless, but I would need time to undo the curse I put on myself. There was no way I could make it up to them but serve them forever after, however they decided. Kate would never be able to accept a part of me, that was worse than being apart from me.
In a year I could undo this curse, I judged by the third days results. Micro manipulation of the adjoined powers and energies made everything seem superfluous and consistent. I could float and coast through it all dreaming in subconscious state, but, I was going to face it all consciously. That was only just, to face fate.
Hally Valkyrian was a descended empress of the same one I'd served so short a time, considering how long I'd trained to, and knowing her sign and station clicked with my own was the first step.
Step one was immediate and easy. It was more than a thousand mile journey with a single step involved to start though, in every fashion, how this descendant of hers saw me would make or break me. An empress would never marry below her station, though, technically they could marry below their position. The reagents that made people old-gods in essence were a hint as to what imperialism was seen as.
It had been difficult for me to grasp it wasn't merely being an old-god or one who at least reached the state of transcension once. You had to have held onto it, not just gained it as a state you could enter and exit.
Fruition was similar, and I held it unlike transcension, yet could alternate it after the other six states I now could slip over it on the fly. Elevation of body and reflection of action, ascension of mind and deliberation of thought, transcension of soul and actualization of spiritual reach. The only thing I'd ever actualized was chakral before. Now I didn't manipulate others, yet control was over and under stating.
I could literally make and remake people, but it was overstating to say I could make them do anything.
Moving spirits was not impossible, but I could not destroy a spirit even with my spirit-sword, an understatement I could not remove them from this world was something only the male spirits and female earthly-spirits species of the nine humanoids could attest. They would soon do just that.
This meant a certain measure for limited control existed, but to say it was a pyrrhic victory by that alone was foolish. Here were those with all the experience at higher combat, schemes and connections, allies and enemies, more combined resources of higher quality and volume than I had by far. A potentially more powerful rogue element coming out of left field faced a certain assured level of oppression when trying to be an oppressive power.
Plenty of powerhouses were about to do a lot of foot stamping, teeth grinding, ass kicking and chewing, but most of all they'd be plotting.
Me, I had an emperor to emulate, and a king to kill who was my age. The young Hally had a suitor who didn't suit, by anyones standards, and her father would only accept someone as clever about when to be wise and foolish as he thought himself. For him, this meant gambling and drinking and smoking. I wasn't a fan, but it was what he thought of as cutting loose. Masculine, in his eyes, a mans way to play.
I wasn't gambling anything, but he didn't have to see it that way, did he?
Too young to smoke or drink, a boy who would boldly proclaim himself and place a bet for his daughters hand against a boy he saw as too serious already for his age would take after his heart, and I'd have myself the straight start directly blocking me from shooting to the legendary league.
I put the other two up in a great inn. They were easy to please all exhausted and a little hungered. Heitir and Natalie were not going to be happy, where they were headed, soon. They deserved the week off.
"I'm the prince of Papow, kingdom of reknown assassins and thieves, my ancestral holdings were within the forty-sixth divisions where my parents sacrificed their lives in a ritual to produce me. My state is the supreme one, Fruition, above even the hold of Transcension that typical imperials hold. I seek to submit all empires in every division under my rule.
"Here I come now in order to plant the seed of my future will into fertile soil, your empire and daughter both Emperor Valkyrian. Her suitor I challenge to a bet for her hand, a duel of his choosing, for which I wager the contents of the dozen-dome. Twelve heavenly-horses, celestial-camels, majestic-mules, divine-donkeys, and origin-oxen.
"Twelve mystic earthly-spirit guardians, arcane spirit warriors, divine-steel suits and traditional weapon sets, void-steel suits of similar sets with the traditional weapons as well, assorted triple dynamic crystals of every type numbering twelve each and of smallest size, and last twelve mythical humanoid familiars of choice.
"This amounts to seventy-two animals, thirty-six mythical servants, thirty-six sets of both divine and void suits, twelve each of light chainsuits, moderate layered platesuits, and heavy platesuits with three size and shape shields and weapons of any type chosen. All three weapons can be heavy and long, of any type, the armor sets are not negotiable.
"Three-hundred tiny triple dynamic crystals are the last contents. I'd bring them except if I did then the choices would be mine to make, and that decision shall go to the victor. To be clear there are a dozen tiny triple dynamic planar-prism crystals, and an uncounted dozen triple dynamic colossal sized with one in each dome."
"I'd almost believe your nonsense, but the math on the types of crystals was off in any case. There are twenty-three known types excluding planar-prism and none have ever found a spirit crystal of any type. You're suggesting there are twenty-five types as if you know of one existing. There is certainly no tenth esper, nor fifteen chakra facets." The emperors advisor spoke.
He was quick on the draw, more than I had foreseen, yet I had not seen things occuring this way. Shortcuts for the win.
"Wrong. There is a third facet of chakra besides a third esper about the heart. It's useful for resurrection back to the division one can be killed in, however the price to refill it's energy is killing humanoids, hominids and the like or undead result in only minor refilling. It is the vessel element." I neglected to say only I could use it. Who'd admit that when trying to inspire another?
"A thousand platinum coins collateral should befit all parties, a prince will only agree, although you'll have to concede your tongue being burned out if you can't produce what you owe after. I'll accept that bet if you will." The prince added to my surprised chagrin. The emperor was taking his side. "I can't simply concede my daughter. Neither of you can, but her hand is not taken and her head is her own."
I relaxed at that at least, disconcerted for my faces expression may have inspired him to take the neutral ground he might not have, because he'd given me an admonishing look for a moment. "Let me duel him, and test wit with him. I'm eager to dispel the illusion he is some type of superior imperial blood, born of a dark ritual or not, he is smaller and thinner than me. I'm the most powerful and wise my age."
Perfect.
"So be it, but remember if you lose, you have no forgiveness from me to win back Hally. This isn't a victory you want or need, it's foolishness." The emperor was speaking to him like his own fucking consciousness, and the doubt stripped me of any future hope for a minute, then the sheep shagging fluffy fucker looked at me and it was game on.
"You're right, but I have to prove worthy of her, and when someone who isn't tries to intercede I have to put them in their place."
He would get plenty of things needing to be put in place by the time I finished with him, the more angry he became the less wise he'd be later too. I'd throw a feast afterwards and have dragons meat and legendary fruits wine served for the imperial table, with the same put in soups of various grade and quality by station for the capital. Bread and chicken stew for the slums, with plenty of beer and liquor, as well host the capitals inns for a week.
I'd made and found plenty of value for every day of over two thousand years, losing very little, gaining generously everyday even that I did not have to leave home. A week of a capitals needs that had a few thousand at most was nothing to shake that stick at, as far as resources went. It would all pay off later.
"Let's have it then, duel of wits and weapons, our physical and mental arsenals against the other for the prize of courting her. I won't even need a reagant to be her reagant." It was never to early to start pissing him off even more.
"Have the courts wizard and the imperial command-sergeant attend us." The emperor commanded, thus setting things into the exact motion I hoped. It was not at all what I wanted, but I needed this to go as I hoped it would. Every soul was at stake, some more than others.