Liberty eventually collected herself and left after several reassurances from Morgana that I’d be back in a few hours. My frown never went away even as the young sorceress slipped out of the room while throwing frequent looks in my direction. The beginnings of my human sentiment urged me to say something but I clamped down on the insubordinate emotions. I did don a smiling façade to avoid arousing any inconvenient suspicion though.
After she left, Morgana helped me with some clothing. The necessity of her aid illuminated a problem that I would need to rectify quickly. My fine motor control was underdeveloped for a human of my “age”. Since Akasha had ensured a healthy, optimal vessel and I sensed no internal issues with my body, I could only think of one reason why I found the tiny buttons and strings vexing.
I wasn’t used to being human.
Thanks to the largely automatic nature of the human body, most of the actions necessary for normal movement came naturally. However, small, complex motions like tying a knot on shoes or buttoning up a shirt exposed my inexperience. After all, I had used a mass of protoplasmic ooze as my physical body in ancient times and I merely hollowed out a cavity in a corpse then used sorcery to pilot it if I needed to put on a human guise. As I thought back on the matter, even since being incarnated within a human vessel, I haven’t done much: during the fight with the sorcerer, I used sorcerous techniques to pull my body along like a puppet and after that, I had merely grabbed the man’s wrist.
I sighed as Morgana finished buttoning up my shirt.
“It’s fine, Eric. Your body is still getting used to moving around so it’ll take a while for you to get used to the little stuff. Besides, if you go on huffing and puffing, I’ll mistake you for an actual teenager,” she said while she fixed the collar of my button-up shirt. Once she finished, she took a step back eying me up and down. “Your hair is messy but we can handle that later.”
Without further ado, we left.
She led the way out of the room, down a set of stairs at the far end of the hallway, and out a door. Before I exited the building, I caught the scent of food coming from a doorway not too far from the stairs. I could also hear the sound of metal clanging and what sounded like sizzling. At the other end of the hall, I also heard some voices and music.
The morning sun greeted me with its bright rays although something seem slightly off about the sun. I couldn’t tell what it was but I stopped in the doorway, staring directly at the celestial orb as I puzzled on the matter. Morgana’s voice broke my trance.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, her face scrunched by a frown and furrowed brow. She followed my gaze to the sun. “Ah, that.”
“So, you see it as well?” I asked. “My memories of the sun are faded but something has changed.”
It was a strange phenomenon. The sun’s light wasn’t the issue since I hadn’t noticed anything off about the rays shining through my room. I might not have noticed anything if I hadn’t looked directly at the sun. Even as I stood there, I couldn’t have articulated exactly what about the sun seemed wrong, only that the wrongness existed.
“Indeed, it has. You’ll have to forgive me. Many of these things have become normal and most people hardly notice nowadays,” she said. “What you’re seeing is the Flicker. I don’t know much about it but it’s been there since the Shadow’s Passing.”
I nodded, easily accepting that the phenomena had something to do with the Crawling Shadow. I made a mental note to look into this Flicker later since an issue with Earth’s sun wouldn’t bode well for the future of the planet. Temporarily satisfied, I fell in step beside Morgana.
“How far is this Grove?” I asked after several minutes of walking.
The unpaved road on which we walked had gotten rougher as more vegetation decorated the area. Looking back, it became apparent that the buildings of Holsburg didn’t extend to wherever we were going. I guessed the place that I had been staying at marked some sort of boundary.
Morgana didn’t answer and I huffed causing her to smile softly. I wouldn’t have minded the long walk normally since I hardly lacked patience but my body wasn’t agreeing with the journey. The problem rested in another shortcoming borne of my inexperience in controlling a human body and tied to the first issue.
My balance was awful.
I had almost no issues when moving around in short bursts but after a few minutes, small imperfections revealed themselves causing me to stumble or trip over the uneven earth like a bumbling buffoon. Thankfully, I never fell over completely yet Morgana’s soft chuckles resounded in my head after I refused her assistance for the third time. I added improving my coordination to the long list of minor tasks I had accumulated.
I spent a good portion of the walk lamenting my shortage of mana since I surely could’ve maneuvered my body perfectly with a bit of mana. A voice in the back of my head argued that such a use of mana would be wasteful when I could simply improve my maneuverability the old-fashioned way and save the mana for something else. The practicality of that thought made me grit my teeth as it warred with my quiet pride.
An hour of trekking through the woods led us to a ward of some kind. I felt the vibrations of anchored mana against my skin several minutes before we encountered the formation. I noted the location in the mental map that I had started taking special interest in the distant sound of a river and the unique shape of some of the trees.
A bit of focus with my augmented vision yielded a tapestry of softly flowing yellow and green mana that passed from the ground into the few oddly shaped trees before traveling back into the earth. With my mundane vision, I saw only lush woodlands extending far into the distance but I knew from its composition that the ward obfuscated something more— a gateway of some kind if I had to guess.
Morgana extended her hand and I took it without question. I watched with my “mana sight” as the archdruidess stopped before the ward with barely a hair’s breadth between her and it. She took a deep breath and started moving her mana. I nodded in approval when I saw the skill with which she manipulated her mana. It was such a fundamental skill and I could see how much practice it must’ve taken to execute the smooth motions. Many of Libbu’s children had neglected it instead only bothering to learn how to move their mana to perform specific techniques. Of course, none of my mortals who learned from my teaching ever got away with such foolishness.
After a few seconds, Morgana’s mana circulated in the same pattern as the mana within the ward. She stepped forward without hesitation pulling me along with her. I didn’t resist since I trusted her to a limited degree and I saw little reason for betrayal at such an early stage.
We passed through the ward and as I guessed, the particular energies that denoted a magical gateway, particularly one which led to a demi-realm similar to Brigantī’s Otherworld.
Instead of woodlands, I saw a massive grove with a gargantuan tree in its center. Between us and the tree was a lake with a small dock accompanied by a few dinghies. On the opposite shore from the dock, a shack with open windows sat as the only manmade structure within the Grove. A quick sweep across the space revealed only shrubbery, small trees, and grassy earth filled the space. At the edge of the demi-realm, thick trees of various shapes marked the boundary of the space.
In the center, I spotted a few people in the shadow of the tree. I also heard the faint notes of what sounded like music but the distance made it difficult to be sure.
A phantom wind carried the scent of lavender and juniper berries. The smell sent a tingling sensation over my body like hundreds of microscopic firecrackers dancing across my flesh. I shivered.
“She’s at it again,” Morgana said as she untied one of the small boats at the dock. She gestured for me to get in and I obliged with only a moment of hesitation used to scrutinize the dinghy’s condition. The ride ran smoothly to the other side. Neither I nor Morgana spoke during the short trip. I was too caught up being immersed in the mana of the Grove.
It bore the same signature as the ward but the mana wasn’t attuned to the earth or plants, unlike the ward. The entire space felt like Libbu but different in subtle ways. I didn’t find the familiarity strange since these ley lines were the non-core structures that I had transferred into the Earth millennia ago. Those structures had been suffused with mana specifically created before the ritual for optimal integration. My intervention and improvements to the process only made the ritual smoother and eliminated the majority of the mana loss.
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I took a deep breath pulling in the familiar mana like I would any other type of ambient mana. Her presence wrapped around my body and soul, filling my mind with memories and a deep nostalgia that caused my chest to tighten.
Inside my soul, the fragment of Libbu’s core structures resonated with the mana. My entire body hummed with power and for a moment, I felt connected to the entire world. Something foreign and intimate invaded my thoughts pulling my mind close like a lover.
I was massive, powerful, and ancient but an insidious taint festered at the edges of limited awareness. The darkness whispered inevitability in my mind ensuring nightmares to my children. I cannot win but I feel a shift happening on my surface. An old promise will come to fruition and I will be given the greatest gift. This gift will set me free.
“Stop this now, Sibyl!” Morgana shouted snapping me out of my reverie. I had somehow gotten to the base of the central tree and I had my hand against its mighty trunk. Powerful pulses of mana surged through my body into my soul, each one striking the fragment of Libbu like a cathedral bell. With each strike, a shockwave ripped through the demi-realm. Every part of the space was known to me.
Several meters behind my current location, Morgana and Regis struggled to stand under the force of the power on display. Another individual, a young man, lay on the ground unconscious only a short distance from me. Lastly, a young woman sang at my side.
Her hands twisted with each word of her song as her glazed eyes stared into mine. I focused my vision. A complicated weave occupied the space between us yet the threads of it weren’t solely made of mana. No, she wove strands of the Grove’s mana and soul-stuff, the same essence that created the connections between souls. Only after a few seconds did I realize what she was doing.
She was attempting to bind me to the Grove with a pact. Similar to my arrangement with Lucille, the pact would make the Grove or the one who controlled it, my patron, or master. I wouldn’t be able to resist certain commands from the Grove and there would be no privacy between us if the Grove didn’t wish it. In exchange, it would give me power, as much as I needed to fulfill its wishes, and my desires so long as they didn’t infringe upon the former.
To most others, I’m sure the arrangement would’ve been favorable, if not downright desirable. What’s more, even those who wanted to resist the process would have likely failed to do so because of the sheer power funneled by the node into the binding. However, I was not most others and while I was inferior to the Grove’s power at the moment, this process was a matter of the soul.
In matters of the soul, even then, I reigned supreme.
My reaction lacked finesse or gentleness. I utilized the same connection forged by my would-be patron to bring the full strength of my soul to bear. My will lashed out like a whip severing the woman’s control of the weave and seizing control for myself. The young woman fell to her knees yet her song never faltered.
She met my gaze despite her eyes rolling to the back of her head. I stared at the whites of those eyes and knew that whoever the young woman was, she wasn’t in control and had not been since the beginning of this mess. I didn’t sense another soul within her body but I felt another presence, similar to Yotta’s situation. Her soul had an ancient presence like that of the Languid King’s but the force of it came from an intimate coexistence with the mana of the ley line node.
I could’ve flipped the positions of myself and the Grove at that moment, making myself the patron and master but I didn’t. This place and this young woman, whoever she was, were a part of Libbu. Normally, I might’ve modified the soul binding to fit other purposes and completed the process but I dared not take the risk given the shadow’s latest escapades within my soul.
I wouldn’t allow myself to become a medium for the Crawling Shadow to corrupt the ley lines which as per our covenant, it couldn’t touch. I wasn’t sure if a sympathetic binding would endanger the ley lines but I didn’t want to take a chance.
So, I began to unravel the weave.
“Please… no,” the presence within the woman said. The words were strained like each utterance was a struggle for her. She reached for the weave; her song left unfinished. Her fingers slipped off the strands as they failed to find purchase. I continued unraveling the strands of the binding, unperturbed. Unfortunately, she didn’t give up easily and her hands grabbed at my arm. “I need you.”
Faster than I could react, she slashed the wrist of her left arm with the nails of her right hand and brought the bloodied flesh to her lips. My brow furrowed but her form blurred as it surged with a strengthening technique and before I knew it, her lips were against mine and the taste of salt and iron filled my mouth.
Her mana twisted, resonating with the blood and I recognized the technique. It was an old favorite of Libbu’s in ancient times when she wished to connect with her followers or children.
Blood Resonance.
This was a crude version of it but the result was the same: communication between two minds.
Emotions and images assailed my consciousness all at once like a deluge of raging water from a broken dam. Piercing sorrow born at the behest of billions of deaths, a steady flow of lost souls crying out for something greater. The hollow ache of a lost identity. The stinging sense of loss that came with fragmented memories gave birth to questions without easy answers. Who? What? How? Why? The weight of obligation toward the confused and arrogant mortals who walked her face. And lastly, the sole feeling keeping a broken consciousness together.
Hope: hope for a better future for the mortals, the children; hope for a reunion with an unknown love, hope for a light in the darkness.
Simultaneously, the presence embodied by the Grove reached for the memories of my soul. It didn’t consider me one of its wards, its children. It knew I was something more and was desperate to find out what.
“Please,” It said again, the broken consciousness grinding out the words like mountain learning to speak. “Who… are you?”
I resisted, for the reasons stated above and more. I showed nothing to the presence and with a spiritual shove, I broke the connection pushing the woman away. Our lips parted as she fell backward onto the grass, unconscious. With barely a thought, I completely unraveled the would-be binding and scattered the mana robbed of its intent.
My knees quaked with weakness and I fell to one knee breathing heavily. I coughed and a warm liquid trickled from my nose. I swiped my hand under my nose. It was blood. I had overtaxed my new body. Even such a brief exertion of my soul had caused damage. I could feel it in my quivering muscles and labored breathing.
This body wasn’t ready to wield the full strength of my soul, not yet. I resolved to take the first steps on that road soon. I wouldn’t always be in safe conditions when forced to make such strenuous exertions. Still, it fared better than expected; that I wasn’t in critical condition spoke volumes to Akasha’s mastery and Yotta’s skill at ritual sorcery.
“You’re an animist?” a raspy voice asked. I looked over to see Morgana also on her knees, next to an unconscious Regis.
“I’m unfamiliar with that word,” I said, still trying to collect myself.
“You… you can manipulate and form the connections between people and objects,” she said, her eyes had a frantic look about them but her voice was calm. I could hear her heart racing. I reasoned that the latest ordeal must’ve shaken her a bit especially since I had accidentally knocked out her husband. “I saw you pull the binding from her and mold it as though you had created it.”
She could see that? I wondered. Perhaps, it's because she is this Grove’s Keeper or because she is a druid?
“I told you that I pursued the mysteries of our eternal souls,” I said. She nodded slowly although I saw that my answer didn’t truly satisfy her. My face transformed with a scowl and I held her in my gaze, my mood turning cold. There was an important question that needed to be asked. “Did you orchestrate this nonsense? Did you think you could enslave me?”
She paled slightly but shook her head.
“No, I had nothing to do with this,” she said. Her hand slips into Regis’s and despite being unconscious, his fingers intertwine with her. “I tried to stop her. I’ve never seen her act like that. I—”
“What is she?” I asked cutting her off and throwing a glance at the young woman. Her auburn covered her face leaving only her bloody lips in full view.
“She’s a Siren,” she explained. “Sirens are… special. They’re women who can communicate and control the power of ley lines without any training or undergoing the rituals to become a druid. They are favored by Mother Gaia above all and there are only ever four of them alive at a time. Their abilities over the ley lines make them dangerous if they don’t learn to control their power.”
My mind worked furiously, piecing together the situation.
“And her name is Sybil?”
“Yes,” the archdruidess answered. “She is my apprentice. Her mother brought her to me over a decade ago when she realized how special Sybil was.”
“You are a poor teacher if this is your idea of control,” I said my tone flat. I got to my feet and walked over to Sybil’s unconscious form. Kneeling, I brush the hair from her face.
“I’ve never seen her enter a spasm that intense,” she said through a scowl of her own. “I think it’s the piece of Mother Gaia that you carry. It must’ve awakened the Mother Spirit within her and it forced her to try to claim you.”
“The Mother Spirit?” I raised an eyebrow at her.
“She is the force that takes over a Siren when they channel their full power. The Mother Spirit is… she is an unpredictable and dangerous extension of Mother Gaia’s consciousness.”
I took in the information with a stony expression letting nothing slip of my inner turmoil. The explanation was incomplete but I didn’t expect much better. Morgana was just a human after all. She couldn’t understand, but I did.
I had miscalculated during the ritual. I had been so fixated on securing Libbu’s core structures and afterward, the process of getting her back that I had never considered the structures integrated with the Earth.
I’ve said it before during this telling but an astral being’s consciousness is synonymous with their astral body; the more complex the astral body, the more advanced and mature the astral being. The structures of an astral being were no different from facets of their mind through which thoughts could form and develop. The core structures act as a nexus for all of the activity and in a sense, contain the most integral portions of the astral being. However, consciousness occupied the whole, not just the core.
I had taken Libbu’s core structures and placed the majority of her structures into the Earth. Or, in other words, I had put a collection of conscious fragments of Libbu’s mind into the world without giving those fragments anything in place of the missing parts that couldn’t be transferred, the most important parts.
In the hole, the structures had formed a replacement of their own, or at least, they had tried. I had seen her; a broken consciousness filled with conflicting emotions and fragmented memories. She was an echo of Libbu formed by the skeleton of a mind that I had left unattended in my callous self-isolation.
My heartbeat hammered like a drum in my chest as I used my thumb to wipe the blood from Sybil’s lips. This is my fault.
The Mother Spirit was the ley lines attempting to create a new set of core structures and the sirens were her sub-cores.