Fates Parallel Chapter 401 - Tear (Patreon)

With her domain free of suppression, Yoshika could sense the flow of divine essence around her and begin tracking it to its source. The sterile white halls of Chou’s inner palace felt cold and empty as her steps echoed around her. She moved with caution, wary of a trick or a trap—some other deception to let her guard down—but nothing came.

The halls were a winding labyrinth of identical halls, and it was nearly impossible to tell where a turn even was until she’d already found it—if she were relying on sight alone. Her domain made the path trivial, and she simply followed the flow of essence until she came to the end of the maze, where it opened up into a large expanse.

The expanse was filled with chaotic essence of every element, creating a treacherous roiling storm of power. It would have been difficult and dangerous to navigate, even for her. Instead, she absorbed the loose essence and dispelled the formations sustaining it.

“This feels wrong. It’s like we’re defacing someone’s artwork or something.”

Jianmo gave her the mental equivalent of a shrug.

“You’re the ones who talked him into giving up. That’s on you. Are you really going to complain about your job getting easier?”

“I guess not. I just—I don’t know. I wanted to prove him wrong. To show him that the world isn’t as bad as he thinks.”

“You’re a few billion years too late for that, girls. I don’t hate the way you try to save everyone, but my master was beyond saving long before he died.”

Yoshika sighed, half-heartedly cutting down a construct that would have been a nasty surprise if she were trying to navigate a deadly mana storm.

“Maybe. I guess we’ll never know now, huh? He’s really gone.”

“He’s been gone a long time. Don’t feel too bad.”

They reached the end of the expanse and arrived at a shockingly plain sliding door set into an otherwise innocuous outcropping of stone. If not for the divine essence emanating from it, she might have missed it entirely.

She pushed the door open and found herself in a large, spartanly decorated throne room. She could see places where ornate decorations once hung—carelessly torn down and never replaced. The throne itself was made of white jade, but had been cut in two.

The room had been repurposed, with all traces of opulence and luxury replaced or ignored in favor of cold pragmatism. A forge had been built on one side of the room, with ingots of rare metals stacked neatly next to a careless pile of discarded blades and bits of armor—failures, maybe.

On the other side, a simple cot with an obvious rut in the center, where someone—presumably Sovereign Chou—had sat in meditation. There was no sign of food, drink, or any other amenities.

Then finally, in the center, was a dais almost disdainfully removed from where the throne had been. Above it, a palm-sized jewel floated. Crimson colored and uncut, it was a simple, ugly little thing—like a frozen drop of blood.

After all she’d been through, there it was—the Sovereign’s Tear.

“Ah, how nostalgic. This is definitely it, girls. Congratulations!”

Yoshika frowned.

“I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished anything.”

“Nonsense! You worked your cute little butts off getting here. Don’t let my curmudgeonly master get you down—you earned this.”

She walked in a circle around the dais, ignoring the treasures she sensed beyond the forge. Power emanated from the dais in heavy, nearly overwhelming waves. Just standing near it was filling her meridians with power, forcing her to refine the essence just to prevent it from overflowing within her.

“How did Chou ever handle this as a mortal? Just standing near it would kill most houtians, much less mortals.”

“It’s normally inert. Master must have set up some formations to tap its power to maintain his tomb—and the realm beyond.”

“Did he know the divine realm would seal us off?”

Jianmo chuckled.

“Oh, probably. I’m guessing he knew that it would eventually overflow and destroy the realm as well.”

“And he still trapped you here with it anyway?”

“Nobody ever accused him of being a kind man.”

Yoshika crossed her arms and frowned.

“If we undo this tap, doesn’t that deprive the entire world of its essence? You know—exactly the thing we originally came here to prevent?”

“Yes and no. The essence starvation would be a slow process—tens of thousands of years at a minimum before anyone even started to notice the effects. Plenty of time to either find a way to destroy the divine seal or find another way to use it as a power source. Your more immediate concern should be keeping the thing.”

Right. Once she left the tomb with the Tear, she’d have to contend with the most powerful beings in her world and beyond fighting over it. Yoshika had known for a long time just how difficult things would be once she took the Tear, and Kaede had been hard at work with Dae trying to prepare.

Even while exploring the tomb, that had felt like a distant problem, but now here she was, staring it in the face. All of her preparations felt inadequate. Her power wasn’t enough. She wasn’t ready—could never be ready for the burden that it would place on her.

Yet at the same time, she was comforted by the fact that she wouldn’t bear that burden alone. Not just because she had Jia, Eui, Meili, and Kaede together at all times, but because she had people like Rika, Yue, Ja Yun, and Eunae by her side. Friends and allies that would never abandon her.

Sovereign Chou had tasked himself with the impossible quest to free reality from the powers of fate and the demiurges alone. He’d left behind his tomb in the hopes that he might produce one person with the strength to do what he could not.

In his hatred of rulers, he’d closed his heart to all forms of cooperation, even to the point of abandoning the one person who truly cared for him. Perhaps Yoshika couldn’t finish what Chou had started, but even if she wanted to, she could never bear to do it on his terms. Such a path was just too lonely.

“Jianmo, I’m sorry about your master. If there’s ever anything we can do for you, please tell us.”

“That’s sweet, darling, but where is this coming from?”

“I just...I want to do better by you. And everyone who relies on me. You’ve all sacrificed so much that I can’t even begin to repay it, but I want to try.”

A long silence stretched between them, and when Jianmo’s response came, they were uncharacteristically quiet.

“Thank you. I can’t say that anyone’s ever told me that before, though I think that probably says more about me. I’m the one who got you into this mess in the first place, so don’t feel bad on my account. Still, I’ll let you know if I ever get bored.”

Yoshika nodded, then set herself to analyzing the formation around the Tear. She wished she had Ja Yun or Iseul with her—this sort of thing was why she’d brought them in the first place. The formation was deceptively large, its roots permeating the entire throne room and weaving in and out of dimensions in ways that bent her mind.

Perhaps owing to his status as a divine sovereign, Chou’s soulscape extended through the spiritual, physical, and elemental realms, and the formation housing the Sovereign’s Tear took full advantage of that.

Although the administrator had self-destructed, the more Yoshika explored the depths of the Tear’s formation, the more she found traces of the formation that had powered him—now inert. It was all connected—interwoven into a single grand spell that sustained the entire demi-realm of Chou’s tomb and drew essence from the Tear.

It was impossible to break or alter any part of it without taking apart the entire thing. For a moment, Yoshika thought that it might be possible to revive Chou’s administrator by reactivating that portion of the formation, but it wasn’t to be.

The administrator hadn’t simply turned its formation off—that would have been impossible. Instead, in his morbid foresight, Chou had designed the administrator such that it could permanently erase all traces of its memory from the spell. Apparently that had been within the scope of his designated function.

In the end, she could only come to one conclusion. It was all or nothing. Perhaps if she spent decades, or more likely centuries studying it, she might have found a way to remove the Tear while preserving the rest of the realm, but it was just too far beyond her ability to understand as she was now.

The only thing she was certain of was that there was nothing stopping her from simply taking it. All she had to do was reach out and grab it, and the entire formation would break down on its own, bereft of a power source.

The tomb would fall apart, and the power keeping them within it would fail—probably dumping them back out where they had entered, but possibly stranding them hopelessly within the void.

“Jianmo, if we take the Tear, it will destroy the tomb.”

“Makes sense. I don’t think he wanted to leave anything of himself behind.”

“I’m starting to pick up on that, but I’m a little worried about what will happen to us if we do that.”

Jianmo chuckled.

“It’s probably fine. This place is still anchored to the physical realm, even if most of it has been carved into The Void. Besides, even if you get stranded, maybe the old monster will appreciate you taking the proverbial thorn out of its side.”

“Okay, but then there’s also the matter of the small army of xiantian cultivators and divine avatars waiting for us outside.”

“That does present a bit of an issue.”

Yoshika started pacing, trying to come up with a solution, but the more she thought about it the more she went in circles. It was obviously designed so that the Tear could just be taken, but that could be a trap, and even if it wasn’t, then what?

She rubbed her temple and groaned in frustration. What a stupid thing to be stuck on after coming so far.

On a whim, she made her way over to the cot and sat down, crossing her legs and closing her eyes in meditation. Thinking wasn’t getting her anywhere, so she needed to clear her head.

She calmed her thoughts and emptied her mind, freeing herself from her concerns for a moment. Yoshika let the world fall away beneath her, shut out the sensation of the divine essence in the air, and in a rare moment of total relaxation let even herself disappear, falling into perfect stillness.

Yoshika spent so much of her time cultivating that it was easy to forget just how relaxing meditation could be. No heavenly insights to chase, no mortal danger threatening her friends and family, no world to save, not even Yoshika.

Just perfect, silent nothingness. A brief reprieve from all that troubled her. She let herself sink into that nothingness, embracing it for a time.

Then, much to her consternation, the nothingness returned the gesture.

She wasn’t alarmed—she couldn’t be—but it wasn’t what she expected. Nothing wasn’t supposed to do things, but Nothing pointed out that things weren’t supposed to touch it either.

Yoshika couldn’t argue with that. She wasn’t even sure where the idea had come from. It was rare for Nothing to get the opportunity to speak candidly. Most living things couldn’t understand it, and those that did were rarely adept at interpreting its intentions.

Now she was starting to get properly nervous, but those emotions were too distant yet to break her concentration. Nothing was thinking too quickly for her to keep up, but it was confident that she’d be able to handle it—already her mind was starting to come to grips with what was happening, though it expected to be finished by the time she could bring herself to react.

The Void apologized on behalf of its representatives. Insinuating itself into physical reality without destroying it was a complicated affair, and communication through such media was taxing. Ice and Magma did their best to affect its will, but they were limited by their natures.

It was pleased that Yoshika had made so much progress with Iseul. It had not expected the emissary to survive, much less thrive beyond its original purpose, and it was happy to be proven wrong. No, that was Yoshika projecting onto it—it wasn’t pleased, but it recognized the new knowledge as worthwhile and useful.

Learning new things was rare for the oldest being in the universe.

Yoshika was very nearly about to start thinking for herself again, so The Void elected to keep things brief. Destroying Chou’s soulscape would be a mistake. She would survive it, but the others would not. While any outcome would be to Void’s benefit, it currently preferred scenarios that resulted in Iseul’s continued existence.

It was within her power to preserve the soulscape while also removing it from Void, but to tell her any more carried unacceptable risk of destroying her fragile human mind. It would have to rely on the chance that she could find the answer on her own, knowing that it was possible.

Yoshika realized what was happening and shot to her feet, breaking out in a cold sweat and breathing heavily. Then she was struck by a wave of vertigo and nearly collapsed as a spike of pain shot through her head. It was a familiar pain—the same one she’d experienced when she first learned her Absolute Awareness technique.

“Yoshika?! What happened, are you alright?”

She shook her head. Whatever the Void had done to contact her, it was gone now.

“No. Jianmo, the Void just did something to my head. It was like it was...thinking my own thoughts for me.”

“Oh, that’s just how he talks to people. It’s a real pain in the ass. That's weird, though, usually he can only do that if someone opens a hole in reality or gets stuck within him.”

“I see...”

Maybe it was because they were in the tomb, or perhaps it had left something behind when she’d sensed the boundaries of Chou’s realm before.

She wasn’t sure whether she could trust it, but she felt frustratingly certain that nothing it had said was a lie. There was no way she could risk removing the Tear now—she couldn’t risk her friends like that.

But how the hell was she supposed to move the entire soulscape?