§
“How did this happen?” I asked, baffled, looking around the crowded room for a face that seemed willing to answer my questions. They were all looking at each other rather than back at me, except the cat-kin girl, who seemed ready to burst out in laughter.
Oh, so it’s funny? He may not be my real brother, but he’s my Big Brother! This is quite difficult for me!
Aunt Elianora and Miss Benedetta (whom people were calling ‘Lady Benedetta’ for some reason) were the seniormost in the room at the moment, and happened to be standing next to each other, so I ended up looking to them in the end, trying to appeal to them with my eyes.
Benedetta glanced at the vampire doctor with a sardonic expression. “You’re her seniormost relative in the room, Doctor.”
My aunt looked sidelong at her, shaking her head with a tightlipped smile. She turned to me and gave me a bow of her head.
“My Lady, you have always been expected to marry into the royal family. That’s why you were fostered into the Palace in the first place. It appears that you weren’t aware of this fact.”
“But how can a royal marry a monster like me?!” I retorted, aghast. “People would never accept me as a princess!”
I heard stifled gasps from a couple maids in the background, but then the senior maid whispered to them in Dorian, “Well, think about how we acted when she came here? She was surely aware of it!”
“But still…”
“Hush, all of you.”
The last line belonged to Miss Genette.
Aunt Elianora, who also possesses the vampire trait of superior hearing and could also hear them, sent a glance their way with a slight curl of amusement touching her lips, then told me, “I think you will find people more accepting of Deharè’s daughter than you know.”
I glanced down, muttering, “They’ve never accepted me, before.”
I could hear a quiet sigh from Big Sister, who took an arch tone as she insisted, “You should just ignore those who don’t, Tiana.”
Miss Benedetta had more encouraging words. “You took a rather dramatic step to change public opinion of you, five days ago, My Lady. That’s how you ended up unconscious. The entire city of Narses and the surrounding territories now knows you as the hero who saved their city from a second attack from the demons. Not to mention, you had taken previous actions in their defense since you took over the government here, and this fact has also become widely known in the last few days.”
After a moment spent uncertain if I was hearing correctly, I asked, “I did what?”
§
She wasn’t the only confused one. I posed my own frankly bewildered question to the other two watching.
“How did fighting one hellspawn turn into saving the entire city?”
Rhea’s eyes twinkled a bit as she answered. “Since I’ve been watching it happen through Mir, I have to confess it’s been quite a lesson in the quirks of public opinion. Your battle with Shindzha was exceedingly visible to the whole town, and it was probably much more of a spectacle than you realize. It seems you were blazing with white fire at one point.”
Fan Li nodded while adding, “It’s not that long since Narses was traumatized by a highly lethal attack. For them to then witness another massive battle, regardless of how few combatants there were, while not suffering a repeat of the carnage… To them, the differing results of the first attack, in which you weren’t present, and the second, in which you were the one in the front line, have made a deep impression. Add to that the news they’ve heard that you did so at extreme peril, and that the battle knocked you out for three days. They don’t know that you passed out again, as the prince had that news kept secret, but they know about the first three days, and that was a severe enough result to have a strong effect on public opinion.”
I frowned and tapped my fingers on the table. It looked like Elianora was going to get her way in the end. She and Mireia, who would assist her in the exam, were leading my Huadean self back into the bedroom.
They had yet to tell her the worst news, I noticed. This poor child had no idea her mother and her father figure were dead. They had also not yet told her that she’s pregnant, nor that she had five Servants now.
You know, all things considered, the last three months had really messed with her life, hadn’t they? Although I supposed I shouldn’t say that as if I wasn’t involved.
“So… this girl we are watching is not literally the original Tiana, right? She can’t be.”
That fear had begun nibbling in the back of my brain, the idea that original Tiana had somehow returned to reclaim her body. But to my relief, Rhea agreed.
“That would be impossible, Little Sen. The original Tiana has already been reincarnated. This child is still you.”
“But she possesses the personality and memories of the original Tiana.”
Fan Li nodded. “Assuming her mind has disconnected from every memory you brought from Earth, every moment you’ve experienced since then, and everything you’ve remembered from your past lives, what remains are the memories present before your first day on Huade.”
“So she might as well be the original, right?”
“No,” Rhea stated with a shake of her head. “Her personality will have unconscious influences from your soul that skew her thoughts. You are a considerably older and weightier soul than the child you replaced, so she can’t help being influenced by you.”
Fan Li nodded while pursing her lips.
“So… how do we fix it?”
Rhea contemplated her tea cup for a bit before answering.
“We don’t,” she stated. “I’m afraid the fix will only come internally.”
“Internally meaning, it also excludes those of us here in the old spirit vessel?”
“It does.”
“Is there any way for a healer to do something about it? Mireia and Melione…”
Rhea’s reply was flat and brooked no debate. “That child is not suffering from any physical cause of amnesia. Healers and doctors cannot treat something with no physical roots. These methods can only treat physically-induced memory loss.”
I had no idea that amnesia had medical treatments. My knowledge on the subject only covered comedy routine ‘cures’ involving questionable blows to the head.
The goddess gave me a mirthful smirk. “Trauma is indeed a potential cause, but it is a highly doubtful remedy.”
“I already know that!” I retorted.
“The root cause of the amnesia is a devastating entropic backlash,” Rhea explained. “The result was the washing away of her conscious memory, resetting her personality to a point before you arrived. Likely not the moment of her death, which was only in short-term memory at that moment, but some hours just prior to it.”
I felt an immediate chill. Entropic backlash occurs when one attempts to carry too much information back from the Immortal Realm. It’s the reason that Immortals communicating with me always have to be so careful of how much they tell me, and why answers through Divination are always so frustratingly enigmatic. Once the information blockade is triggered, it is insurmountable. The very laws of the Mortal Realm expunge the offending data absolutely…
Answering the alarmed thoughts filling my head, Rhea shook her head and stated firmly, “There is a critical difference this time. This is not fresh information attempting to enter from outside the Mortal Realm, so the information did not exist only in spiritual form. Those memories remain carved into your physical vessel. Only their imprint in her consciousness was washed away, when its mirror image in the spiritual vessel was deleted.”
“The memories are still in her brain, and just missing from her awareness?”
This wasn’t easy to follow, but I was sort of getting it.
“Quite,” she nodded. “The backlash occurred because the spiritual vessel is an immortal substance. The Mortal Realm seeks at all times to reject it, but while the vessel is still immature, the rejection is a gentle enough pressure that it cannot do so. But the pressure became suddenly stronger when your two vessels connected, with half of the vessel already outside the Mortal Realm, and you did not have sufficient spiritual strength or pneuma to resist it. But, because the backlash washed away everything associated with ‘Senhion’, leaving only what came from the original Tiana, it ended up including things that your primary body has already recorded within its physical substance.”
“So, it’s in her brain but she isn’t aware of it…” I was really struggling with that part.
“Your memories, whether made or remembered while in her body, including memories you recovered from Senhion or your other prior incarnations, already have a record in her brain. Information already in the Mortal Realm cannot be destroyed. Even your physicists on Earth know that.”
“So… Mortal Realm Tiana simply needs to reconnect with it?”
“Exactly,” the goddess nodded.
“But the spiritual vessel is still connected to her? It hasn’t actually been removed?”
“The backlash has wiped it clean of its data, but the vessel remains rooted in her blood core.”
My optimism grew even thinner with the words ‘wiped clean of its data’ as I remembered what all was contained in that data. “She doesn’t know how to use it. Or even how to use her blood core. She doesn’t even know basic magic beyond some combat and flying skills.”
“The situation is not as dark as you are imagining, Your Highness. She has two allies at her side who can aid her,” Fan Li stated.
“Allies?”
Well, she was surrounded by many caring souls now. Probably far more than she realized. Tiana, when I first became her, was a lonely girl, loathing herself as a monster and resolved to keep herself away from the only people she truly cared about in order to protect them. She had even treated the Hero’s Party, to whom she had felt genuine loyalty, with a distant and cold attitude.
Simply through accepting her acquaintances rather than pushing them away, I had wrapped her in a cocoon of people who cared about her, and brought her back in contact with the family that had always loved her in the first place. She had lots of allies.
Rhea chuckled. “While true, the scholar was referring to two who can help her in this situation. The first is myself, as I can contact her directly through Mireia.”
“Can’t you just speak to her yourself?”
“I’m hesitant to, until I understand her condition better. I and the rest are in agreement that it is best to exercise great caution with respect to spiritual contact.”
‘The rest’ obviously meant the other goddesses.
She nodded. “Not only them, but also the Afterlife personnel you have had interactions with, and Oranos too. You could say we held an emergency meeting. Or rather, we are still holding it.”
“So, with you and Mireia as allies, she can … what? You just said Mireia can’t cure it.”
“Probably we cannot do much on our own,” Rhea admitted. “And you are right, we should include Mireia in the count, and make it three allies.”
“So there’s someone else?”
“As we already noticed, there has to be,” Fan Li confirmed. But then told Rhea, “But Her Highness and this small one have no idea who it is.”
“Indeed,” Rhea nodded. “We have our ‘inside man’. Or woman, actually. Pardon me, Scholar, but I am lifting your prohibition on her now. I’ll also handle constructing her avatar, and then bring her here.”
“This small one would not dare object, Senior,” Fan Li stated, with a cupped fist and a bow of the head.
