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I watched in rapt wonder as the horizon gradually expanded into a thin blue arc and the sky above turned to night. The thought nibbled at me that I had seen this site before, although I couldn’t say when.
This was not the strange magic projection I beheld from my bed while using [Blood Presence]. Even though I could feel the mana flowing, proof that my spell was still active, I had no contact with it anymore. Rhea had intercepted it using some divine ability.
No, I was seeing this vision with my own eyes. Except that they weren’t mine. My eyes were shut because I was, quite frankly, asleep in my room while my awareness somehow flew here, attached instead to the body of my tiny ‘little sister.’
<Kiki fly fast fast! Go high high!>
I’ve decided that the double words are her intensifiers. And we were indeed traveling very fast and oh so very high.
As the little pixie continued climbing and accelerating, the broad plains of Pendor to my right and the grand mountains of the Arbolian Range to my left dropped away long past the highest I had ever flown, as even the sheets of thin cloud fell far below. Off to the right I could even see flashes of lightning in storm clouds that must have been a hundred miles south of us.
I knew the world was a globe. I even had already seen the sufficient evidence of its curvature when I flew high. But there could be no denying it at this amazing altitude.
<Can you even breathe?> I worried. Our thoughts were reaching each other the same way that Lydia’s reached me because, somehow, the goddess had arranged for me to be present in her tiny skull the way Lydia was present in mine.
<Nope Nope! Too high!>
<And that’s not a problem?> I wondered, a bit astonished.
(“Kiki is an extremely experienced flier, My Lady,”) Rhea assured me, sounding amused. (“She knows mana tricks that completely negate any chance of suffocation. Frankly, I don’t think she can suffocate. She magically regenerates her oxygen entirely by instinct at this point.”)
I eyed the arc of blue ahead, the curvature of which had become even more pronounced, and argued, <That’s fine, but Uncle Matthias taught me that, at a certain height, the lack of air pressure itself becomes lethal. That was why he always warned me to not fly too high. Isn’t she in danger from the vacuum?>
(“You’re already well above the critical height,”) Rhea replied dryly. (“Kiki knows how to deal with that as well. She knows because you knew, long ago. You were capable of flying up to artificial satellites. You even visited the White Moon a few times.”)
Remembering what Lydia told me about not letting me remember too much of previous lives, I worried, <Are you supposed to be telling me things like that?>
(“The current view has already triggered a memory on its own,”) she answered. (“Telling you as much as I did is a way to forestall you remembering more.”)
When Rhea first put me to sleep and I woke up like this, I panicked. My body lay motionless in the bed below us as Kiki hovered above it. Strangely, my first thoughts were on my babies and whether they would be okay without me there in my body with them.
But Rhea, still using Mireia’s body, which we were looking down upon while she was still snuggled up to me, had giggled and told me, “You are still safe and sound inside your body, My Lady. I am simply giving you Kiki’s senses in place of your own. Oh, but I will speak into your ear and both of you will still hear me. I can mix the audio that your body hears into Kiki’s hearing so we can communicate. Now you need to hurry to the Highlands. We will speak on the way.”
Now, as I thought back to that brief exchange, Rhea agreed, (“It’s certainly time to discuss the situation.”)
<So you are going to tell me why we are doing this finally?>
(“Mm,”) she agreed. (“Actually, it’s the same reason why I’ve had you do everything you’ve done, all the way back to sending Lhan to join the expedition.”)
I admit, I had been growing confused. It was almost as if we were trying things at random. For a good Temple girl who had learned properly to trust and revere Heaven, this erratic behavior on the part of the gods was not good for my faith.
Rhea chuckled into my ear. (“Well, My Lady, the erratic one is actually you, and most of what we have done has been to keep you safe from your internal dangers as you keep perversely courting them.”)
I had no face at the moment. I could not wrinkle my brow up like I normally would at a perplexing statement like that.
<I’ve been behaving myself!> I protested. <I’ve stayed on Castle grounds and taken care of myself the way everyone wants me to, even though…>
I broke off, suddenly not wanting to complete that sentence.
(“Even though, deep inside, you’ve been boiling to grab your armor and Durandal from the wardrobe and take off, to go fetch the bodies of your parents yourself so all your people on the expedition don’t have to put themselves in danger,”) she completed. (“Quite.”)
This is where I would have frowned.
(“My Lady, you have privately wondered several times already why a goddess is spending so much time looking after you. I think you’ve realized it by now, that the goddess Rhea putting aside her normal affairs to concentrate on one troublesome juvenile Elder is abnormal.”)
<I… might have had that thought,> I admitted.
(“And you’ve rejected every one of the various explanations you’ve hypothesized, because they involve assigning yourself far more importance to the world than your naturally humble perspective permits.”)
<Well, obviously!> I retorted.
<Kiki go down now! Fun fun!>
The sudden intrusion of the pixie’s laughter-filled thoughts, out of the blue and completely unrelated to our topic, prompted a bubble of laughter that left me wondering how I could possibly laugh in this state.
(“You just did so physically, in your sleep. People do laugh and cry while asleep at times.”)
Kiki was really enjoying herself, though. She fell happily toward the planet below us with her arms spread wide, while yelling in her mind, <Yaaaaay! Fun fun!>
Rhea waited for a bit, letting the pixie have her moment, then got back on topic.
(“My Lady, the immortals I work for, the gods you grew up calling the Three Highest, have an interest in you and your babies. They very much want you safe, alive and well. So, because I also have a personal connection to you, they charged me with keeping you from doing something stupid that would endanger all three of you. Putting aside the fact that I can multitask and still do other work while looking after you, you are indeed occupying a large fraction of my total awareness. We immortals don’t actually spend the majority of our time minding the mortal world, or even thinking about all the things we are doing, but right now, I actually am doing so, with my attention entirely on you.”)
<But I’m not doing anything to endanger myself, or my babies!> I shot back.
(“I would like to think you can at least partly thank me for that,”) she answered, and I could imagine the wry smile that must be on Mireia’s face as the goddess said it.
<I won’t!> I insisted. <I’m behaving myself!>
She gave a sigh, then noted, (“When you first heard about the Oto Expedition, and the reason for it, your first impulse was to do exactly what we fear. It took some extremely dextrous persuasion on the part of your husband to get you to agree not to, and even when you agreed not to, you were still boiling to go.”)
I wanted to insist it wasn’t true, but I had enough awareness of myself to know I had done exactly that. I had even threatened my husband that I would go anyway, just to force him to tell me exactly what they were doing.
(“I decided to involve your senior incarnations because they understand you the best. They sent Sirth to you, to teach you some rudiments of magic in case you went anyway, and they followed that by having you send Lhan to join the expedition. As long as you felt like you were doing something to back up your people, you restrained yourself from going in person.”)
Well, it wasn’t wrong. The frequent sensation of magic flowing in support of the mysterious girl, proof that she was working to protect my people for me, truly did help me be good for a time.
Kiki was hitting much thicker air now, and, rather alarmingly, it was glowing red, then yellow, then white, burning flames surrounding a bubble of mana she projected.
It didn’t block everything. I could feel hot air buffeting her body as it passed through the bubble. But it was clearly only a tiny fraction of the air we were punching through.
I could see her purpose in her thoughts. She was simply letting enough air into the bubble to prevent carrying a pocket of the vacuum from above down into the thicker air. Although she was increasing that airflow by a safe amount because it was fun, she somehow did so while keeping the fantastic heat outside the bubble.
As we descended, the goddess continued.
(“It was working fine until you felt Shindzha’s shout in your mind, and had Mireia call, whereupon you overheard the fighting through the link. Instantly, a plan began forming in the back of your mind to go to their aid personally, so I interrupted it by having Lydia teach you the [Blood Presence] spell instead.”)
<Was it not enough?> I wondered. <I hardly did that for an hour when you suddenly switched plans again!>
(“I mentioned my bosses, right?”) she answered, then chuckled. (“They were keeping an eye on you, and warned me you were rapidly slipping again. The [Blood Presence] spell bore an unfortunate and unexpected resemblance to an experience from one of the lives we don’t want you remembering yet. So they overruled my plan and substituted one of Gaia’s devising.”)
<So how does doing this instead help?> I wondered.
(“It only helps indirectly,”) she admitted. (“But with peace holding for the moment, we needed to remove you from the experience that prompted the memory, before you started reflecting upon it again.”)
<You’re just doing this to keep my mind off things?> I retorted. This exasperating goddess!
(“Not exactly. I sent you via [Blood Presence] in the first place in order to disrupt the standoff, and you successfully left the warring fairies spooked, as I intended. Your sudden presence did indeed change the narrative, and Lhan’s actions ended up enhancing the effect. Fairies hate mysterious occurrences they don’t understand. They prefer to think they are in control.”)
<That’s what you meant by ‘fairy psychology’ when you sent me out here.>
(“Quite. And now, we’re giving you a safer way to assuage your worries. And helping you deal with a potential crisis with that child while we are at it. To that end, I needed a different way for you to reach the Kasarene Highlands, and so, here you are.”)
Somehow, I knew who ‘that child’ meant.
<Shindzha?> I asked. <The hellspawn girl?>
(“I took over your [Blood Presence] spell to go look for her,”) the goddess explained. (“My pets were keeping an eye on her. But she’s at risk, and I can’t navigate with perfect positioning like you can. For that kind of precision, my range is limited to the vicinity of my priestesses.”)
<And what can I do, when I am just along for the ride?> I repeated. I was hearing a lot of ‘why’ without hearing any ‘how’.
(“Kiki will be able to find her, and together, you two will have the power to help her.”)
I still wasn’t satisfied. Something was definitely missing. <Why do you care what happens to her?>
(“Well, it would cause you trouble as her mistress if something happened to her,”) the goddess stated. (“But that’s minor. We are also not sure what the demons could do with the back channel into your mind, if they discovered one of their half-demons was blood-bonded with you. That’s also minor, since it is probably a low risk. I’m saying these things because you will think of them eventually, so I will tell you now, they are not the reason.”)
The ‘re-entry’– a word that had come to mind but that I couldn’t say where I had heard it before– drew to an end. Now, Kiki was simply hurtling through the sky at breakneck speed, and the mountains that had looked so far away, only a few moments ago, were directly beneath us. Snow-capped peaks passed by, one after the other, at speeds far faster than I could fly in my own body.
<Why say all that when you could just tell me the reason?>
(“Because all I can tell you is that your other incarnations want to protect her,”) she stated bluntly. (“For your safety, I cannot explain to you why.”)
The constant information blackout annoyed me, but wasn’t it also quite annoying that these older incarnations of me had so much say in what I did? They already had their turns! Wasn’t this my life? I would have frowned in frustration, if I could.
(“You just did, back here in your bed,”) she answered with an amused tone. (“Did you know, you have a very cute frown?”)
I stifled a retort. Instead, I replied, <Fine. What do you need me to do?>
(“I gave your little sister your memory of Shindzha, so she can look for the child,”) Rhea answered.
My little sister meaning the pixie who calls me ‘Big Sis’.
(“That’s your mission. The two of you will find and protect her.”)
I knew it. No matter what she said, she was still just distracting me from the expedition. But she guessed correctly that I couldn’t ignore Shindzha.
