Fates Parallel Chapter 73 - Reunited (Patreon)

The flood of energy was almost too much to bear. It reminded Eui of her breakthrough to the second stage, when she and Jia had absorbed a tiny sliver of the divine essence that Jianmo had used to suppress them after it broke down into more mana than they could contain within their domain. That had been the birth of Yoshika—the gestalt entity made up of both Jia and Eui’s consciousnesses.

Back then, with the combined mental capacity of Jia and Eui, Yoshika had barely managed to handle the surge of mana and break through to the second stage. This time, Eui was by herself, and had only the demonic core to assist her, as it greedily gobbled up anything she couldn’t handle. She felt extremely uneasy about that—she still wasn’t sure what the demonic core did with all that essence.

Already, Eui felt a hundred times stronger than she ever had before. The manic energy she had felt the first time was being magnified beyond her imagination, and her mind was racing with the possibilities. As the flow of energy began to slow to a trickle, though, Eui noticed something was wrong.

Though her connection to Jia she could feel the ki in her body, and it was obvious that she had nearly run out. Somehow, the flow still didn’t stop, as Jia drew essence in from elsewhere to continue feeding her. It was like when they had drawn mana out of their auras to power their bodies back before they had awakened their ki, except the first time Jia had done that she—

“Wait, Jia, stop! That’s enough!”

Jia didn’t respond—of course her eyes were closed, and she couldn’t hear. Eui tried to pull her hands away, but Jia’s grip was tight. She tried to stop the flow of ki, but the core wasn’t cooperating, and Jia was giving her essence willingly. Eui felt tears running down her face as she pleaded with Jia.

“Please, don’t do this! I can’t lose you! Please!”

Jia’s arms grew weak, and her grip slipped out of Eui’s. Eui caught her, but Jia had gone completely slack in her arms, and the flow of essence still wouldn’t stop. Eui clutched Jia’s limp body to her chest and wept, too distraught to even think about the tiny trickle of ki flowing into her.

Suddenly, something other than ki passed through the connection. Eui didn’t know what it was, but she intuitively knew that the brilliant mote of essence was not the spiritual energy she was used to. Her demonic core seemed to go into a frenzy, trying to absorb it as quickly as possible, but Eui put all of her willpower into preventing it from doing so, directing it to her domain instead.

As soon as the strange, brilliant essence reached her domain it seemed to explode, and the world changed. She reeled as her mind was overwhelmed by a sudden surge of thoughts, feelings, and memories—

Jia whispers an apology in her heart as her consciousness fades. I’m sorry, Eui, but I can’t let you die here either. Please forgive me.

Idiot! Eui would never forgive her for this, what had she been thinking? She had a moment of strange cognitive dissonance as she tried to make sense of her own thoughts. She was worried about how Eui would react to her death—no, she was Eui, and she was incredibly upset about—no Jia wasn’t dead yet—she wasn’t—she was—

Yoshika took a deep, steadying breath. That had been the most jarring transition into her complete state since the very first one, but she understood who she was now. She only had one body at the moment, but she was whole in a way that she hadn’t been in a long time. She extended her domain as far as she could and thought through her situation as quickly as she was able.

Zheng Long was approaching, but Dae was trying to hold him off. He wouldn’t last very long, but Yoshika’s mind was working faster than it ever had before, and time seemed to be almost standing still. Han Yu—no, it was definitely Yue. Yoshika could sense the thread of qi that led back to her real body, hiding behind the wall. Xin Wei and Guan Yi were there as well, apparently waiting for some kind of signal. Jia—

Jia’s body was dying. By mortal standards, she was already dead. Her heart had stopped, she wasn’t breathing, and even her brain had stopped functioning. By immortal standards—she still probably didn’t have a chance. She had no essence of any kind—already a death sentence for a half-spirit—but even worse than that, her soul was gone. There was nowhere for the essence to go.

Of course, Jia’s soul wasn’t actually gone, it was part of Yoshika, and likewise, Jia wasn’t actually dead—she was Jia. However, this wasn’t a sustainable form. A mortal body could only house a single soul, and she could already tell that Eui’s body was slowly being torn apart from the strain. She needed to figure out how to return Jia’s soul to her body, and soon.

For a start, Yoshika flooded Jia’s body with qi, using the Tranquility of the Verdant Marsh technique to begin healing the physical wounds, and force the body to keep functioning. Hopefully that would give her a little bit more time, but she really had no way to be sure. It was strange healing a soulless body—without the natural framework of meridians, there was no resistance at all to the intrusion of her qi.

While she kept Jia’s body on life support, Yoshika tried to consider how she would even begin to solve the puzzle of transferring the soul back. In the first place, she had no way of telling where Eui’s soul ended and Jia’s began. In theory, there should have been another dantian, another set of meridians, another everything for Jia’s soul to match those of Eui, but if they were there, Yoshika had no idea how to sense them without a body to match them to.

She felt a tug on her attention coming from her domain as she tried to find Jia’s dantian.

Kin.

She recognized that thought! Focusing as much of her mind as she could spare on her domain, she followed the feeling—an odd sort of demand for attention, like a bright light in the corner of her vision. When she reached out to it, the world around her seemed to shift, and she found herself on that snowy field once again.

This time, the snow was stained with blood, and corpses littered the field. Yoshika felt the weight of all the people that she—Eui—had killed. She vaguely remembered the last time she’d been here as Yoshika, as well as her visits as Jia. Putting it together was a little jarring, but she gained some insights into the nature of the soulscape that Jia hadn’t quite reached on her own.

For one thing, it was obviously not a physical space, and trying to move around in it was a silly notion. Instead, she could only change her perspective. Look in one direction, and she could see the rats, nibbling away at the corpses. Look in another, and the field was nothing but pristine, undisturbed snow. However, the perspective that she was looking for—

Yoshika turned, and found the icy mirror exactly where it had always been. The reflection showed the rats glaring at her with their beady red orbs, as well as the white cat and it’s golden irises. Heian lay sleeping at the white cat’s feet, seemingly unconcerned with the current state of things.

“There you are. I was a little curious about what I would look like in this state, but I suppose it’s a meaningless distinction.”

That is correct. There is no such thing as appearance in this place, what you see is only your mind’s interpretation of a concept far beyond your ken.

Yoshika blinked at the white cat. She knew that the voice had come from it—it didn’t make any actual sound, but she interpreted it as a sort of haughty, self-assured tone, with Jia’s voice.

The vessel’s voice was mine. She only borrowed it, along with a few other gross facsimiles of my divine form. Now it has been destroyed, and what little remains of me and my kin has been usurped.

Yoshika felt a bit of a pressure in her head as she tried to listen to the spirit. It was similar to the pain she had felt when Jia spoke to the shadow spirit, but far weaker.

“Usurped? I don’t know what you’re talking about—also, wait, you can talk? Could you talk this entire time?”

Fool girl. My ability to communicate hasn’t changed—only your ability to perceive. I speak to you as I always have, it is only now that you have the strength to understand. We have been usurped by the vessel of the rat. It is unfortunate—imperfect as it was, the former vessel was preferable. This one is even uglier.

Yoshika felt her face heat up as she scowled indignantly.

“Fuck you! Both of my bodies are beautiful, and I don’t give a shit what you think! Besides, I don’t plan on giving up on Jia’s ‘vessel’. I don’t think Eui’s body can last very long in this state.”

This vessel will collapse in time, as all mortal forms do. Whether it occurs sooner or later is no concern. This fragment of myself will fade, but my true self is eternal.

“O...kay? So you don’t care if you die? Who the fuck are you, anyway?”

A meaningless question. I am a fragment of a greater being, I am a fragment of this vessel, I am a fragment of you, I am a fragment of my kin. As are you. All that is here is a single being, one self. We are each part of that self.

Yoshika tried to process that and frowned.

“Did you try to pack all of that into the word ‘self’ before?”

My answer is unchanged. Your perception—

“Yeah, yeah, I get it! I’m dumb and weak and ugly and I suck and you’re so much fucking better and smarter than me, and I bet you’re just pleased that it’s finally possible to dumb things down enough for my tiny mortal mind to comprehend.”

It is good that you understand.

“Ugh, being able to talk did not make you less confusing. I’m just going to ask—do you know how to put Jia’s soul back in her body? Or a way that Eui can survive holding two souls? I’d really prefer the former option, but—”

The former vessel remains? You would return half of yourself to it?

“That’s the idea, yes. I’m still keeping her alive—or I was, shit! How long have I been here? Last time we spoke it took all night.”

Form a connection to the former vessel. I and my kin will do the rest, you need only allow it to happen and keep your other half in check.

“My other half?”

The words were barely out of Yoshika’s mouth when all of the rats immediately trained their eyes on her. Their red eyes glowed brightly, and she was struck by an indescribable hunger. They were starving—she was starving. If she didn’t consume something—everything—then she might—

Heian woke from its sleep and looked up at her. As it did, the reflection darkened until only the golden eyes of the white cat and Heian’s deep blue remained.

Control your other half. We will do what needs to be done.

Right—her other half. Of course Eui had her own spirit half—but the rats seemed to be far less cooperative, even to the point of being malevolent. Had the demonic core affected them somehow, or was that just their nature? Even thinking about them was making the hunger return, so Yoshika tried to put it out of her mind.

Returning her focus to the world around her, she found that almost no time had passed—she wished she had some way of telling how much time was passing while she meditated, but she wasn’t going to complain now. The spirit had told her to make a connection to Jia’s body, but how?

She already had a steady flow of wood element qi desperately trying to sustain the body and keep it from expiring completely, and she supposed that she could focus her domain on it—though she’d rather not lose track of Zheng Long. Her biggest concern was ki—Eui’s destruction element wasn’t exactly conducive to keeping someone alive.

Yoshika shook her head—she was thinking of it the wrong way. She wasn’t Eui—at least, not exclusively. She could use Eui’s destruction easily with this body, but Jia’s lightning was still a part of her too. More natural to her than either of those options, however, was warmth.

The element of warmth—or heat, she supposed—was the neutral aspect of lightning and destruction. It had always been the element that resulted when Jia’s lightning met Eui’s destruction, and recently they’d even been practicing a martial art that cultivated it.

Heat and wood, warmth and life—it seemed like an excellent combination for what Yoshika was trying to accomplish. She focused on Eui’s body for a moment, suppressing her natural affinity and reattuning her body for the Soft Fist technique. As if it had been waiting for that moment, the lightning ki from Jia surged into Eui’s body, neutralizing the destruction element and filling her with a comfortable, warm sensation.

The attunement had taken more time than Yoshika would have liked, and Zheng Long was now fully engaged with Dae. For all that he was a superlative mage, Dae struggled quite a bit with his martial arts, and Yoshika doubted he would last long by himself against the third stage cultivator. She was running out of time, but she wasn’t going to give up.

Yoshika retracted her domain—this was going to be the riskiest part, since she wouldn’t have any awareness of the world around her, and she had no idea how long it would take. In the worst case, she’d be interrupted by Zheng Long. Yoshika felt conflicted—this was the opposite of what Jia wanted, but it wasn’t like Jia wanted to die, and Eui was adamant about saving her. The end result was that Yoshika was uneasy, but willing to take the risk.

She focused her domain entirely on Jia and Eui’s bodies, and began to flood Jia’s body with ki. Yoshika split her attention two ways, with one half of her focused on manually replicating the pathways that ki took through the body, while the other half focused on her domain and Eui’s core, watching for any sign of change.

Almost as soon as Yoshika’s ki began to infuse Jia’s body, there was a reaction from within Yoshika’s domain. That brilliant spark of essence reappeared, surrounded by what seemed to be a living mote of shadow essence—Heian, she realized. Yoshika wondered what exactly that bright spark was, it seemed similar in nature to divine essence, but wasn’t quite the same as what she had sensed from Jianmo, or the domains of other cultivators.

She didn’t have long to ponder the nature of the divine spark, Eui’s demonic core reacted the moment it appeared, and Yoshika felt that inexorable hunger returning. As before, Yoshika did her best to shield the spark from the core’s attempts to absorb it, but this time she was fighting against more than just the core.

Her own nature seemed to betray her. How could she be giving away something so precious? It was hers—no, it was her! A part of her being, half of her own soul! She didn’t want to lose it. She couldn’t stand the thought of being without it. If it was between not having it at all, or keeping it forever within her core...

Yoshika fought off the feeling. This was Jia’s life—her very soul! Yes, it was part of her, but hadn’t she already come to terms with her existence? Yoshika was Jia, she was Eui—as long as one or both of them existed, so did she. If she allowed herself to completely subsume them, then they would no longer exist, and so neither would she...

She would be reborn! A new individual, greater than Jia, Eui, or even Yoshika had been before! So much power was in her grasp, she could feel it! All she had to do was reach out and—

No! She loved Jia, and she loved Eui. No matter how tempted she might be, she couldn’t do that to them—to herself. She wanted them to grow, she wanted to grow with them. Their happiness was her happiness, their sadness was her sadness, and their death would be her death.

With renewed focus, Yoshika concentrated on the demonic core. The spark had come dangerously close to being absorbed already, and she couldn’t allow that to happen. Yoshika focused hard on her domain, and withdrew it from her core to separate it from being able to access the divine spark.

It reacted violently. As if it had a mind of its own and took the rejection personally, the demonic core began releasing the destructive essence that it had been cultivating for Eui. The essence rampaged through her body as a deviation like the one that had resulted in the creation of the core in the first place. Yoshika scrambled to redirect the destructive essence away from her heart or the divine spark.

Without being able to focus entirely on the deviation, Yoshika could only desperately try to control the damage as it spread through Eui’s body. She was fairly certain that it would return to the demonic core if she returned it to her domain, but she couldn’t do that until Jia’s soul was safely returned to her body. All she could do was grit her teeth through the pain and wait for the spirits to finish doing whatever they were doing.

As if it understood the urgency of the situation—or perhaps simply because it was no longer being pulled in by the demonic core—the divine spark moved much more quickly, slamming into Jia’s body with an almost tangible force. It brought a portion of Yoshika’s domain with it, and after a painful few moments, Jia’s body lit up within her senses and drew in a gasping breath.

She was alive! Albeit barely—Jia’s body was still severely injured, and her meridians were in absolute shambles, but her soul was safely back in her body. That body was still near death, and in a great deal of pain, but Yoshika could handle that part later. For now, she returned the demonic core to her domain, which thankfully reabsorbed the destructive ki that had been rampaging through Eui’s body.

Yoshika extended her domain once more to take stock of the situation, and found that it was rather dire. Dae had been defeated while she was distracted, and Zheng Long was staring down at her with contempt—though he had either just gotten there or had seen fit to let her finish what she was doing. Yan Yue, in Han Yu’s body, was sweating nervously and watching on with a conflicted expression.

Yoshika stood and turned to face Zheng Long, wincing a bit at the pain from the leftover damage caused by the ki deviation. She had two bodies, but one was far too injured to move, and the other was now badly injured and attuned to the wrong kind of ki for a fight. This might be more difficult than she thought. She still focused her healing energy on Jia, since her injuries were far more dire than Eui’s.

Zheng Long crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow at Yoshika.

“I’m not entirely sure what I just witnessed, but I dare say we’ve found our demon, don’t you think, Han Yu?”

Yan Yue glanced nervously between Yoshika and Zheng Long before nodding slowly.

“That...would seem to be the case, yes.”