§
Rod, having the same blood relationship to Tiana as Dilorè, was separated from her by eight degrees of consanguinity. Orestanian law prohibits marriage or sex within four degrees, and counts adoptive relationships, while fairy law considers four degrees the point at which it is becomes legal, and ignores adoptions, except for parent/child relationships. So, regardless of whether I look at it as an Orestanian or a princess of Faerie, Rod and Tiana being betrothed was no problem, and it wasn’t strange that they had never told Tiana about their blood relationship. Eight degrees of consanguinity is a mere three percent of shared ancestry.
In addition, since Rod’s and Dilorè’s great-grandfather and Tiana’s mother were half-siblings, rather than siblings, the true blood relationship is even less.
If my weak memory of what I learned on Earth is correct, Roman Catholic law is broadly the same as Orestanian law, as was the law in the US state where I lived. Some other places, like Japan, have laws similar to Faerie. So neither law is particularly odd.
Even if I look at my relationship to Rod from the perspective of Senhion, our separation is five degrees. It ought to be okay. But somehow, the fact that Senhion was his direct ancestor still made it sound very wrong to me. It’s true, from the genetic perspective, that I needed to view it based upon Tiana’s body, not Senhion’s soul, which removes me from the ancestor position, but it was still one more thing to find disturbing about the whole matter.
Dilorè kept me company through lunch (brought to me on a tray) and into the afternoon, gracefully tolerating my blue funk without comment. I think she sensed how deep my spirits had plunged.
It wasn’t just the emotional toll. It was also the very sudden loss of motivation. I had left Cara Ita on a singular mission to find Mother and save my king, as well as prevent Rod from doing something impulsive like leading a charge to go get his father back. That mission had vanished before I could even begin. All my reasons for coming to Langram had vanished in a decisive and unambiguous fashion.
What was left was just the grueling extended state of rest that my recuperation required.
My current self couldn’t be more unsuited to it. Although I had spent months inside the simulations within Sky Ocean, the time I had spent in the real world of Huade, as of that moment, was exactly…
Eleven weeks. Seventy seven days. Less than three months.
Looking back, the amount of activity I had packed in was more than Robert had managed in a full year. Or even two full years. I had hurtled non-stop through adventures spanning multiple countries and more than a dozen companions, hardly ever stopping to rest. Even in Sky Ocean, I had packed in activity after activity, exploring so many simulations and scenarios, always pressing forward, always pursuing some goal.
And here I was, dragged suddenly to a full stop, lying in a cot and staring at the underside of a tent roof, unable to do anything about it even if I had some idea what I needed to do next.
Vaguely, a desire still existed in the back of my mind to bring the rest of the Hero’s Party, and Ceria and Bruna and possibly even their mother Allia to Sky Ocean and train them too. But all the principals of that plan were currently guarding Amelia in Bray, and those I had left in Sky Ocean were here in Langram to protect Rod. My plans were now indefinitely delayed.
Goals? Plans? Missions? Did I have anything? My body was screaming at me to get up and move, but that was just force of habit. For eleven weeks, I had never stopped for any significant period of time. Even idylls like my time in Grandmother’s pond or the Fairy King’s Castle had been mere overnight stays.
“What the hell do I do now?” I whispered, but it was loud enough for my cousin to hear.
“Don’t you have that amulet to deal with?” she asked.
Right.
“This isn’t like you, Your Highness,” she declared. “And I am talking about you, not the first one. I never even met her, so you’re the only one I am able to speak of.”
I turned my head to look at her. She looked slightly fed-up with me.
“My Lady, most of what you know about me is the personality I acquired when I entered this body.”
She shook her head sharply. “Nonsense. The old Tiana was a fifteen-year-old child who apparently had considerable competence for her age, but would have nonetheless been a child. You have always been more mature than she could possibly have been, and more self-assured than any fifteen-year-old could be.”
“I’m going to have to agree with that, My Lady,” Elianora added. At that moment, she was seated to the side, making some notes on a writing case, looking no different than an Earth doctor jotting something down on a clipboard. “I remember being quite shocked at how much you had changed in six months, when you first returned from the North.”
Dilorè nodded, then stated, “So I shall repeat my words. This isn’t like you, so what shall we do about you?”
Part of me wanted to scream at them, don’t you get it? I’m a stranger! What are you all being supportive for?
But Elianora aside, Dilorè was right. The old Tiana never met Dilorè. For this particular fairy, I was not a fake.
I was the real one for others in this world, too. Ceria, Bruna, Aenëe… Even the various people I had met in Tëan Tír only knew me and never met the original. I even had cases of absurd but very real relationships such as the Fairy Queen, who calls me ‘Esteemed Mother-In-Law’.
“I can’t really do anything until I recover, My Lady,” I noted.
“Mm. Yes. About that,” Dilorè mused, then looked over at Elianora. “If I understand correctly, she’s suffering from severe anemia?”
“Properly speaking, blood loss,” Elianora corrected. “Anemia is merely the loss of red blood cells. My Lady is primarily suffering from pneuma deficiency due to exsanguination. A mortal would have died within minutes from the amount she initially lost.”
That was new information, and a little alarming, but it made sense. My body was made of far sterner stuff than a human’s, and I had been reinforced with [Body Fortification] at the time of detonation, yet I had been put in such a severe state despite it. The shock that had killed the original Tiana had not had the same lingering effects as this.
“So she just needs to replace the blood, right? As a vampire, isn’t she uniquely well-suited to handle that?”
Elianora frowned. “It’s more complicated than you think. Even if we can bring her suitable donors, of which she needs several, as a juvenile, she still has insufficient control. The donors are at high risk of falling into blood bondage.”
“Ah…” Dilorè sat in thought for a bit, then stated, “I seem to recall that vampire mothers have a way to deal with protecting the donors while teaching their children to feed, though?”
My aunt surprised me by blushing deeply. What the heck?
She muttered, “Why would a fairy know about vampire mothers?”
“I spent fifty years traveling in apprenticeship to a wonderful scholar named Princess Somire of the High Forest,” my cousin answered brightly. “She’s a student of biology, with a very wide range of study. She has made quite a broad study of monster biology. You could help my cousin the same way that a vampire mama helps her child, couldn’t you?”
“That’s… right, isn’t it?” I was thinking hard, scratching up the earliest memories belonging to Tiana. “Aunt Elianora, weren’t you always with her, when Tiana fed as a little girl?”
Why was she blushing so hard?
§
After I soaked for several hours (and took a meal) in a large tub that some soldiers brought into the tent just before dinner to deal with my rapidly worsening skin, I went to sleep with plans still under discussion. They could talk about sending me and Aunt Elianora to a whorehouse all they wanted, but the logistics involved weren’t so simple. After the ambush on the way to the camp, just letting me leave in a carriage was out of the question.
I woke up in a completely different place.
Technically, it isn’t ‘waking’, when I appear in an illusory reality. I simply become conscious in a place where my body isn’t truly present. Something about my current circumstances told me, this was probably not an illusory reality belonging to the HR Manager as usual. I was again resting in the water… Specifically, with my head resting on the steps leading into the pond of my ‘Lotus Pavilion’, the beautiful refuge that Kanon had created for me in the Sky Ocean training network. Blooming lotuses filled the water to the left and right, while sunlight sparkled off the water in front of me.
A stern, but not unkind voice spoke from behind me. “Since you were in the water when you fell asleep, I felt this would make a good location to meet with you, Little Sen.”
I sat up and turned around, to see the goddess I had prayed to while meditating in the bath seated in seiza fashion at the top of the stairs leading into the pavilion. She was in Dorian costume– an ancient type that looked more like historic Chinese fashion than like a modern Japanese kimono– with her hair piled into a spectacular do that I can only describe as ‘goddess-like’.
To my surprise, one of the spiritual beasts who work for Little Jia was in her human form, standing by to serve refreshments.
“Thank you for answering my prayer, Senior,” I said.
Gaia gave it a dismissive wave of the hand. “No need to thank me, when I was the one that requested you to contact me. Come and join me, little one.”
I hesitated just a moment– I was naked, after all– then stood and ascended the steps. As I walked, a warm breeze full of mana surrounded me, blowing my hair and body dry in seconds.
The goddess chuckled. “Looks like our husband is watching.”
Instantly alarmed, I covered myself with my hands, causing her to chuckle more. She waved, and a simpler version of what she was wearing appeared on my body.
Returning to her normal stern self, she waited for me to kneel and receive coffee from the attendant– I jolted as I realized that’s what it was, rather than tea.
“You were wishing for it earlier,” Gaia noted before taking a sip.
“Would you like milk or sugar?” the spirit beast asked.
“Milk, please,” I told her, and she prepared it for me.
I took a sip, savoring the aroma and rich flavor I hadn’t tasted in this world before now. I had not realized how much I had missed it.
When I was done, Gaia stated, “As you guessed, the ‘treasure’ that Eurybia mentioned was my amulet. She could have told you directly, but she was afraid of creating extra entropic load. After all, if she said too much, I would have to wait a few days before meeting you.”
“But what does it do?” I asked.
“You’ve already guessed,” she told me. “You just don’t want to accept what it means.”
“My mother’s soul is in it, isn’t it?” I asked.
She nodded.
“I originally designed it to protect your forerunner’s soul. We knew she would run into a threat that would possibly take her life. Unfortunately, Deharè was too suspicious of us, and didn’t give it to her daughter.”
“It was for her?”
Gaia nodded. “We knew she would encounter that dragon. And she might not survive it. That amulet was our insurance, to prevent her soul from escaping to Samsara, so we could revive her no matter what.”
She sighed. “I don’t know what possessed Deharè to wear it herself when she went to save her husband. So, I suppose we should ask her.”
“How can we…” I started. Then I broke off as I saw who had just entered from the garden side of the pavilion.
