I’d gotten so used to wearing a set of cultivator’s robes, clothing you could find almost anywhere here, that I’d forgotten how nice it felt to be a little less swaddled in fabric. This evening, I stood under the moonlight dressed in a loose black pair of pants and a simple white shirt. I’d also gone barefoot, not just to accommodate potential shapeshifting, but because it seemed fitting. The grass was cool and spongy under my feet. There’d been a light snowfall earlier today, but it had melted away quickly. Adzur didn’t get much in the way of snow.
My simple clothing should have made me look underdressed, maybe even shabby. Instead, judging by the way the people looked at me, the austerity made it seem ethereal, pure. It sent the message that this was not a worldly matter, but something more solemn. I would still have preferred more privacy, but I knew I had to be realistic. The temple had not made too big a deal out of it, but people had still seen my approach. Now, mostly priests lingered on the edges. At least they didn’t disturb me.
I took another step forward, craning my head back to gaze up at the stars. The city still had enough lights there weren’t as many visible as in the wilderness, but I stood in an island of darkness. This longest night of the year didn’t coincide with a full moon, but it was waxing and there would be a full moon soon, in a few days. I remembered that it had aligned with the winter solstice the year I was born, although I was actually born the day after. When the sun rose in a few hours, it would be to my twentieth birthday. At least physically. I suspected Mother had deliberately interfered with Rijoko’s timing, but I didn’t really care.
From outside this courtyard, the voices of the gathered celebrants drifted in, sometimes starting a hymn or song. Although courtyard was a bit of a misnomer. This was a secluded place at the edge of the temple island, facing the open sea, deep within the temple complex proper, and it seemed larger than it really should be. It prickled in my qi senses just slightly, though not the same way as standing before an altar to the Moon would feel. I glanced around, then turned my gaze back towards the moon. It had risen steadily, but was now nearing its apex. I’d say it’s about time.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I’d waited long enough for this, and I was itching to get going, but I couldn’t suppress a bit of nervousness, either. I felt the change my surroundings slowly underwent. Putting a bit of a spring into my step, I walked forward. I didn’t open my eyes right away, since for all I knew, that might just help, but it wasn’t like I needed them. My other senses told me enough. Even the smell of the courtyard shifted a little.
When I opened my eyes again, the edges of the place seemed to fade slightly in the corner of my vision, and qi like humidity was condensing everywhere. I kept walking forward.
The place looked a bit different from where I’d seen Rijoko the first time. Instead of a mountainside, the landscape was closer to the sea. I wondered if I was actually walking above the ocean through some dimensional shenanigans, but I couldn’t be sure. Not that it really mattered, either way. It wasn’t like I had to worry about drowning.
After a bit, I noticed the first spirits show up, or maybe I was just able to notice them now. They kept their distance, but I could tell that they were all relatively weak. Their shapes were different, some of them humanoid, but others resembled sea creatures more closely. I waved at the nearest ones and walked on.
After a few more meters, I slowed as I recognized a familiar presence approaching. The humanoid figure seemed to coalesce out of the mist, although a closer look with my qi senses told me that was essentially an illusion. I stopped. “Mior. Good to see you again.”
The spirit smiled. ‘And you, Inaris.’
After a moment of hesitation, I stepped forward and hugged them. It felt a little weird, since Mior was surprisingly solid, but at the same time they had a little too much give, not necessarily in their physical structure, but in their form and qi. It was hard to pin down. The spirit reciprocated the hug, putting their arms around me briefly before stepping back.
‘I was half-expecting you to show up,’ I admitted. ‘Though I hope that doesn’t mean Rijoko foisted me off on you.’
They shook their head. ‘Oh, no. He won’t be able to spare you much time — things are a little dicey with Jideia up here at the moment — but you’ll definitely get to talk to him. About time, I’d say. My father used to complain that he had to approach ascension to exchange more than a few words with the Moon, but he doesn’t need to make that a habit.’
I chuckled. It was actually a little nice to know that it wasn’t just me. ‘Good. Are we supposed to go somewhere?’
‘Right this way, my illustrious lady.’ Mior gestured grandly in what seemed like a random direction. For all I knew, it might be.
But they started walking and I followed. The other spirits kept even farther back, though I didn’t know if that was because of Mior or because of the place. I hadn’t forgotten how they had basically eaten a hostile spirit one time, but I doubted whoever got to be a guest here had to worry about that.
“So,” I asked, “does Rijoko limit contact with his descendants on purpose?”
Mior’s faint suggestion of eyebrows drew together in a frown. ‘That’s possible,’ they answered. ‘Maybe even likely. He prefers to act in indirect ways to provide guidance, generally speaking, but there are other dangers when it comes to spirit-children.’
I frowned. Did they mean that it risked friction or disagreements between us and him?
Before I could continue the conversation, the landscape around us shifted. It seemed we’d arrived.
I could feel the Moon’s presence in the place, a small glade marked more by the edges of shadow and light than any tangible boundary, but it wasn’t really because he extended across it. Rather, this felt more like a place he’d established a connection to. His actual presence was tightly confined, and as I walked closer, blinking, I got that feeling like when you looked at a 3D puzzle and the picture snapped into place. Rijoko was standing there in human form, the same one as I’d seen him in last time, with similar coloring to Carston and me. He wore a black robe, and although his presence didn’t weigh against me like it had last time, his eyes still had that gravitational pull. I felt like I couldn’t look at them for more than a moment without starting to get sucked in.
He smiled at me. ‘Daughter.’
Involuntarily, I shivered. His mental voice had a weight to it, one that was perhaps thrown in sharper relief than before by his proximity.
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‘Father,’ I replied, returning his smile. ‘I don’t suppose you could turn down the volume?’
He shot a glance at Mior, then looked back at me, something that might have been amusement on his face.
“It might make the conversation go easier if you actually talked,” Mior noted. It felt a little weird to hear them use physical speech, even if it sounded like their mental voice.
“Very well. You wanted to speak to me, and you have questions.”
I raised an eyebrow. Rijoko’s actual voice sounded completely natural and didn’t have any spiritual hijinks. It was a smooth, deep voice, but entirely forgettable.
“I need to know who I am, what I am,” I replied bluntly. “In general, and to you.”
Rijoko cocked his head to the side. “You are my daughter. That is the most salient point here, I believe. To Greater Spirits, spirit-children are, in a sense, anchors. In what some call the human world, or the material world.”
I nodded slowly. That sounded interesting, even if it didn’t tell me much. But I was aware I’d asked a very broad question. So I decided to switch tracks slightly. “What about Mother’s bargain?” I asked. “How did you go about it? How did you make me?”
Mior snorted. “Someone must have talked to you about the birds and the bees, surely?”
“Their implication is correct,” Rijoko said. “I used the form you see me taking here. That was the most essential part of it. Of course, I also guided the less tangible aspects somewhat.”
I frowned. “So, you made a body specifically for the task, to create my genome the mundane way. And besides tugging on the more spiritual aspects, those to do with qi — however that works — that was how you shaped what I was to become. Not just the visible parts, but half of my DNA, my inborn traits and predispositions. Essentially, you used a magical version of genetic engineering. Eugenics.”
He inclined his head.
I grimaced. I’d never liked eugenics, and learning that I was a result of it didn’t make me feel any better about the idea. But this is kind of important, I thought. It means he could only prepare and guide things, but they still have to develop. He can give me the capacity for something, but it’s still up to me, or at least my environment and development, to actually realize it.
“I’m not happy about this,” I stated calmly.
“Bargain was struck, bargain was fulfilled,” Rijoko said. He didn’t sound bothered or surprised. “What child can choose their parents or their birth?”
I shook my head, deciding it wasn’t worth it to argue about this. “You still shaped things to decide what talents I would have, what skills awakening your bloodline would give me,” I said. “Presumably, to increase my ability, in the ways you wanted.”
“Are you complaining?” he asked.
I started. It seemed like such a human thing to say that, for a moment, I was stumped. “Could you give me a straight answer for once?” I then asked.
“Yes, I did,” he replied without hesitation, again seeming unbothered.
I sighed and pushed a strand of hair behind my ear. “Not that I’m complaining, but a few things about this strike me as odd. What makes me different from your other children? For that matter, it seems like you invested a lot of resources into this. Is it all about Jideia?”
Rijoko clasped his hands behind his back. “My situation is complicated and fluid,” he said. “I took a calculated risk in creating you. So far, you have done quite well, but there are no guarantees for anyone. And your existence pertains to more than my struggle with the Storm.”
I frowned. “Does this relate to how you called spirit-children anchors? What exactly does that mean?”
Mior shifted their weight and sighed, looking at Rijoko. ‘Just explain things to her, grandfather. She’d figure it out on her own soon enough, anyway.’
I hid my surprise, and watched as Rijoko traded a glance with his grandchild for a moment, before the greater Spirit turned back to me. “Think of it this way,” he said. “Am I male?”
I blinked. “Um, kind of?” I answered. “Spirits don’t inherently have any gender, but people sometimes come to ascribe one to you. And you seem to adopt that, present that way. Do you?”
My father smiled slightly. “Ah, but am I presenting to fit people’s expectations, or did they guide how I identify?”
I paused. It sounded like the kind of question where the answer was something in-between. “You’re saying that your nature is impacted by belief,” I said slowly, realizing what he meant even as I spoke. “The same way that qi is shaped outside of the normal, physical rules, like the way concepts play a role for affinities of qi?”
“Not quite, but along the same lines,” Rijoko said. It wasn’t something in his voice or expression, but I could feel that he was vaguely pleased by my answer. “And the matter has somewhat more weight for our descendants.”
I frowned, glancing at Mior. “You mean the psychic connection or whatever you want to call it between us?” I guessed. “It’s actually not just one-way?”
Rijoko nodded. “It certainly doesn’t only go in one direction, no. As I said, you can think of people like you as an anchor, but anchors are connected to what they hold.”
That sounded really interesting. I could actually shape my father, to some extent? I looked at him for a moment. For a Greater Spirit as experienced and canny as Rijoko, I knew it couldn’t be that simple. He must have considered that carefully. Maybe, I realized, that is why, at least in part, him designing me is so significant to the Greater Spirits. He was mitigating risk, although I guess he was also kind of opening other avenues of risk.
“Then, if I believed wholeheartedly that you loved me …?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“It’s not quite that straightforward,” he said. “But I would certainly find myself regarding you with more affection than I otherwise would.”
I hesitated for a moment. “So, do you actually care about me at all?”
“Of course,” he answered, tone faintly chiding. “But ‘care’ is a complex and nuanced concept, daughter, and humans and spirits experience and effect it in different ways.”
I nodded. A part of me wanted to dig deeper, to ask whether he cared about me because of my role or as a person, but I didn’t push. I didn’t even know what answer I would have wanted to hear.
“Thank you for answering, in any case,” I said.
My father inclined his head. “I will need to depart,” he said. “My attention is needed elsewhere. Be careful, daughter, but know that I am with you even when your hours grow dark.”
I straightened up and nodded at him. “See you later, father.”
There was a faint sensation of amusement, then his body started to somehow fade into the surrounding qi.
“I’ll show you out,” Mior said.
I gave a final glance to where Rijoko was leaving, before I turned to follow the other spirit. We walked out of the glade in silence. I noted that the other spirits around seemed to have all left, but most of my attention was on the conversation I’d just had.
“I feel like all of this is a little over my head,” I finally admitted. “At least, I don’t have the experience I need to really understand and deal with it.”
‘You’re doing fine,’ they answered. ‘It’s good to be aware of your limits or weaknesses, but don’t let doubt fester.’
I nodded, glancing at Mior. ‘That’s easy to say, but I get the feeling that I need to know this stuff to deal with Jideia.’
They were silent for a moment, before they cocked an eyebrow at me. ‘Perhaps it’s time for you to invest yourself more into the matter, then. Have you really been dealing with Jideia, Inaris?’
I paused. ‘Well, no,’ I admitted. ‘I’ve been evading their attempts, and I suppose I’ve started to work on Isuro. There’s little I can do about the Storm himself, even if wanted to.’
‘You’re not wrong, but you can’t afford to ignore him.’
I frowned. Mior sounded very serious. ‘You mean I can’t leave him to you to handle?’
The spirit shrugged. ‘Perhaps, but in your place, I wouldn’t. You might have to fight him before this is over, Inaris. You think this little war with the Zarian will decide everything? You might only be involved because of Rijoko, but that doesn’t mean he’ll restrain himself.”
“I guess,” I muttered.
Mior turned to face me. “He’s not going to leave you alone, Inaris.”
I sighed and nodded. We walked the rest of the way in silence.
Mior stopped and said in a lighter tone, ‘It was nice to see you again. Tell Aston hello from me.’
‘Of course. Same.’
But even as I said goodbye to Mior and went back to the temple, my thoughts kept circling back to our conversation.
I can’t afford to stay entirely on the defensive. That was what Mior meant. I knew I couldn’t outright attack the Storm, but they were right. If I didn’t want to end up used and traded like a pawn, I couldn’t afford to act like one. It wasn’t any immediate problem, but something I needed to keep in mind going forward.