§
With my body still low on pneuma, I needed very little stimulus. By the time Lady Chiara removed her uniform blouse, my fangs were already grown. She insisted on a kiss first, but I went directly from her lips to her neck and fed. I was frankly still too tired to do anything else.
Which was probably good, with Mireia right there, and not yet in a deep sleep.
With her intelligence job at an end, Aunt Elianora pulled strings to get assigned as my physician. I’m pretty sure the ‘strings’ consisted only of contacting Rod, who is well acquainted with her. She showed up while I was feeding, but having used [Vampire Sense] to check inside, she knew what was happening and waited before coming in to give me an exam.
The diagnostic healer assisting her scanned me and took vital signs, then my aunt felt around my various injuries and did some spell with Dark magic that I could feel passing through my body but I couldn’t follow. Their conclusion: Mireia had not yet completely healed my bones, so they were still in danger of refracturing. And I was still anemic and fatigued, and had to sleep immediately.
Elianora ordered the soldiers to bring an additional cot, because Chiara was using mine. She wasn’t asleep yet, but she needed to, since I had fed quite a bit.
“I’ll just meditate,” I suggested.
“You’ll sleep,” my aunt ordered, with a tone that brooked no argument.
Chiara lobbied to just have me sleep in the same cot as her, but Elianora won the argument and I soon had my own.
§
I slept well into the night, but when I awoke… I was not awake. That familiar feeling, the texture of existence within an Immortal’s Illusory Reality, warned me of circumstances before I even opened my eyes.
“You’re growing more skilled,” a familiar voice observed.
I opened my eyes to see the army tent where I had fallen asleep still over my head. Orestanian army tents have two lines of vertical poles forming the side walls with two taller center poles at each end, tied together with a horizontal beam to form the roof and create a basic house shape. The lamp hanging from the horizontal beam, which my aunt had extinguished earlier so we could sleep, was once again shining.
I turned my head to see the HR Manager, seated on a trunk along the wall of the tent on the opposite side from Chiara and Mireia. She was tucking a paperback novel into her purse.
“I’ve grown quite a bit since we first met, Senior,” I replied.
The ‘I’ in this sentence was not Tiana so much as the personality my seniors dubbed ‘Little Sen’, the person who couldn’t be Senhion because she had far too much left to recover, and because she had too much of her more recent lives influencing her thoughts, but was a broader awareness than either Tiana or her other lifetimes.
“That is incorrect, Junior Wife,” came my great-grandmother’s voice. “You are now the sum of all your lives that you recall, and you will remain the sum of all your lives once you recall all of them. You do lack several facets of your original immortal self that are not yet available to your conscious mind, and that is the main thing keeping yourself from identifying as Senhion.”
While Eurybia was speaking, I raised my head to see her also seated(?) along the tent wall, near the foot of my cot. I include the question mark because, although she was in seiza, she was floating perhaps a foot higher than my toes.
Deciding that staying on my back was rude, I pulled back the covers and put my feet over the side to sit up.
“Somehow, it seems from my viewpoint that I am lacking much more than that,” I countered.
“The memories of your formative years as a juvenile immortal are certainly vital to the personality of Senhion,” she agreed, “but once you recover them, they will only add to what you are now. Nothing in you now will be subtracted, so the future Senhion will be just as much this Little Sen as she will be the Little Sen of my memories.”
What she said was certainly true. I would probably have to accept it, eventually.
I stretched my arms upward, pulling the sleep out of my back, then noted, “I feel quite a lot better, right now. Is it because of the Illusory Reality, or have I recovered?”
“I’m afraid you are only feeling a boost from my Illusory Reality, My Lady,” the HR manager answered. “Your Mortal Realm body remains considerably fatigued, and still lacking sufficient pneuma for normal activities.”
She pressed her glasses to her nose, then stood and walked around my cot to a chair behind the head end of Chiara’s cot, where Aunt Elianora was sitting, her arms folded and her head down, sound asleep. She had fallen asleep while monitoring Mireia and Chiara, who had both fed me.
The HR manager set her hand on Elianora’s shoulder, then nodded. “This child came here planning to feed you. Perhaps you should take her up on the offer. You are still significantly low on pneuma.”
“Feed me?” I echoed, surprised. “Aunt Elianora is a vampire though?”
“Vampiresses breast-feed their young, as does your species, the X’n’e. That’s why this one was able to be your wet nurse, after all. If they have sufficient stabilized mana to spare, they can feed an adult the same way. She would only need to have [Healing] cast on her while attempting to feed you, in order to begin.”
I blushed hard, even though I’ve fed on more than one mortal there, because she wasn’t talking about drinking blood, she was talking about…
“You can’t be serious.”
She said it anyway. “She can breast-feed you and replenish some of your pneuma. It is the unique specialization of a vampiress’s reproductive anatomy, after all.”
I knew all of this already, of course. It’s the answer to the riddle, ‘How do baby vampires survive long enough to grow teeth and feed?’ Although baby vampires do eventually start biting while feeding, it’s actually the vampire mother’s milk that they depend upon. They actually breastfeed to a much older age than humans because of this, usually until about three years old.
But even I have to draw the line somewhere! I would be drawing it here.
Judging by the slight rise at the corners of her mouth, the HR Manager probably read my thoughts, but she didn’t comment. Instead, she looked at a spot behind me and asked, “Have you completed your analysis?”
The person she was addressing responded while I was turning my body to see who it was.
“I have. This is indeed the abducted holy wizard we’ve been searching for.”
The Field Agent from R&D, smartly dressed up in Japanese office lady fashion as always, was tapping away on a tablet while standing over the sleeping form of Mireia.
She saw me looking at her and turned to face me, holding the tablet in front of her skirt in both hands to give me an excellent Dorian… or Japanese… bow.
“It is very good to see you again, My Lady,” she stated.
I bowed my head in return, responding, “Likewise.”
The tablet, of course, was a prop, just as their chosen costumes are props. Immortals using Illusory Reality to interact with Mortal Realm inhabitants adopt appearances that are familiar to their guests. In reality, she might have been using some Immortal tool to record data, or the tablet might simply represent a memory technique she employed. From my perspective, I had no way of knowing.
The Field Agent turned back to the HR Manager and continued, “The senior who reported her abduction can rest assured she will be alright now. My Lady has taken care of the main issue of concern.”
“Who, me?” I responded.
She nodded, lifting the tablet once more to consult something on it before telling me, “The Immortal from this child’s home world’s tutelary council who contacted us had a contractual bond with this child. She worshiped the Immortal in question as her patron goddess. The contractual bond created a connection she refers to as ‘communion’. When her abduction robbed her of that bond, she fell into serious danger of withdrawal and catatonia.”
My reaction was pretty close to horror. “A ‘connection’ with an Immortal? Mireia was an oracle?”
The HR Manager nodded. “Precisely. As the people of this world are well aware, such a connection has a great impact on the sanity and cohesion of the mortal mind.”
Huade’s tutelary council– in other words, Huade’s gods– discourage the mortals from trying to become oracles. Unfortunately, the knowledge for how to force the issue and form that bond anyway is known to some religions, and they see it as a great act of devotion. The consequences to the poor women who fall into that role are always severe.
The Field Agent had left Mireia’s side to circle the cots, following the HR Manager back around to where Eurybia was still sitting.
As they returned, Eurybia responded to my thoughts. “It seems that the people of Miss Mireia’s home world have the ability to avoid those negative effects. Their so-called Divine Arts start from forming such a connection with a patron, through whose guidance they learn to access the Sea of Knowledge and use Holy Wizardry. Before they are permitted to make that connection, they first must train in how to limit it.”
The HR Manager added, “However, they never learn how to do without the connection.”
The Field Agent nodded. “Losing that bond is not normally possible. The effects of having lost it were severe. The demons counteracted the symptoms through the geas they put her under. When your colleague broke the geas, he substituted a temporary measure that kept her functional, but he had no means to stop the resulting depression. And unfortunately, both measures prevented us from identifying the lost individual, until now.”
I had already noticed the depression. The Mireia I met originally had been a bright, bubbly girl… which was amazing considering her life story. Probably it was partly due to the ‘geas’ put on her by the demons, but some of it had to be her natural personality. But that happy girl had been nowhere to be seen, during the last couple days. In fact, just a little while ago she had been unfairly blaming herself for all my ills and believing she had no right to be forgiven.
“She should quickly become better now, My Lady,” the Field Agent assured me. “You have provided her a much better solution.”
“Exactly what are you saying I did?” I wondered.
“You formed a bond with her which rather nicely replaced her ‘communion’. Frankly, it is very nearly an identical connection. In fact, the only thing you lack at this time is the ability to communicate via spiritual voice with her regardless of her location. Of course, you had that ability as Senhion, so it’s only a matter of time…”
“Wait a minute!” I interrupted. “She’s only charmed a bit! I haven’t formed a bond with her!”
The HR Manager and the Field Agent exchanged glances. Then the HR Manager pressed her glasses to the top of her nose and declared, “My Lady, my colleague from R&D has determined otherwise.”
The Field Agent stated, “Your bond with this child is fully formed. Her home world’s oracular training simply grants her the ability to choose how much it affects her.”
“You’re saying she’s already my Servant?”
Eurybia answered, “Her control over the bond is already at the level of your retired Servants in the old days who achieved the ability to voluntarily leave active service. She can choose to be your Servant or not. Of course, she must choose to be your Servant in order to receive the benefits. But she can decide whether it is worth it to do so or not, and she can control how much it affects her, and whether to continue or stop, entirely at her own discretion. In a sense, you could say she is immune to you. To be more precise, she is immune to the coercive aspect of your connection.”
I looked over at the young woman sleeping on the other side of Chiara, my mind filled with several conflicting emotions.
“However, whether she does so or not, your connection with her has filled the void that her patron goddess was so worried about,” Eurybia added. “She receives that benefit regardless of what she chooses.”
“Thank you for bringing me here to confirm things,” the Field Agent said to the HR Manager, then turned to Eurybia and added, “And thank you for allowing me to speak first, Senior. My Lady, it was good to see you again.”
After having bowed to each of us in turn, the Field Agent disappeared.
I looked at Eurybia. “If she spoke first, does that mean you’ll speak with me as well?”
The goddess’s robes had a wonderful blue iridescence that reflected the lamp light like a watery surface, and she herself is an ethereal beauty. When she stepped down from her floating perch and walked over to my side, it was hard not to be mesmerized.
She grew a slightly sad smile as she reached out and stroked my hair.
“I shall, Junior Wife, but what I have to say is quite short. I have many things I would tell you, but cannot. The impact of the news is too severe and the entropic backlash would destroy your memory of it all. But the course of events in the near future will give you the most important details, so I will simply tell you the one thing you absolutely must do.”
Taking my hand, she stared me in the eyes and stated, enunciating carefully as if to make sure I remembered each word, “Once your mother’s treasure falls into your hand, pray to Gaia as soon as is practicable. Pray to her, then either go to sleep or return to your Sky Ocean so that she can meet with you.”
“My mother’s treasure…?” I echoed, very perplexed.
Her expression turned severe as she stated, “After you do so, for your mother’s sake and for your own, you must do exactly as our wife directs you. I expect you will dislike the task, but in the end you will be thankful that you did it.”
