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I haven’t gone anywhere. I’m still here.
I repeated those words within my soul, while channeling my identity as Lydia.
I didn’t know how long I could maintain this condition, functioning as one awareness containing both women, while another instance of me does the same in another body, but the reassuring knowledge that I had not swallowed Lydia whole and metaphorically digested her, that I remained every bit as much her as I was Tiana, helped me keep it together.
At first glance, it might seem confusing that I had so much trouble with this combined identity. Not only does my spiritual vessel easily accommodate Fan Li, who is surely more than all of my other personas combined, but I’ve expanded to far more as “Little Sen”, especially while in one of the Illusory Realities of the Immortals. But when I have been “Little Sen”, it has been as an expanded version of one persona, that being Robert who has become Tiana. I continue to have one sense of identity.
Not so in this new case. I had not one but two senses of identity, but with only one awareness wearing both of them. I actually was Tiana while I was simultaneously Lydia. My nature and my thoughts combined the two.
It’s actually much more perplexing than the problem of living in two bodies.
The ‘living in two bodies’ part might be a little difficult to imagine, of course. It’s a reduced form of how the hekatoncheires exist in so many bodies, and that, in itself, is mind-bending. Simply put, I’m not one awareness seeing out of two sets of eyes and moving two sets of limbs. Two of me exist, but do not exist in isolation. As the thoughts and experiences of one occur, they register in the memory of the other, even though we are two discrete streams of thought. I operate separately, but not independently.
<You are multi-processing,> came Daq’s clinical reply. <Your current awareness is running on two CPUs, while additional CPUs support the other Incarnations.>
<We aren’t computers!> I protested.
<Speak for yourself,> he replied, with the thinnest veneer of humor that occasionally colors his thoughts. <Much of me actually is electronic.>
Still, no matter how perplexing, no matter how disturbing, this state had remained achievable so far, for over twenty four hours. I completed a full day of work in Narses Castle and a full day of cultivation in Sky Ocean with two Incarnations remaining in this combined state, maintaining both bodies.
As I rose from my night of cultivation at the deepest part of the lake and broke the surface, the dawn of Sky Ocean had already burst forth in full, glorious majesty. Amelia and company should be arriving at our breakfast spot soon, so I continued the motion into the air, growing my wings and my half-baked raiment, which resembled a rather scandalous nightie now that I had managed to add a textile effect. It isn’t that difficult to fly with my marine and aerial forms combined, but I balance better as a winged biped, so I shifted to legs as I left the shelter protecting that place. The greater vista of Sky Ocean spread out before me and I set course for the Central Island.
<Why are you able to speak to me?> I asked. <Are you multiplexing as well?>
<I am as yet unable to do that, Your Grace. We have paused time compression for now, in order to assist you.>
<What do you mean, you can’t do it?>
<Right now, you are probably the only one who can, other than Fan Li. Your ability to do so is largely built upon your own advancement.>
<Even though I’m also Lydia? Don’t we average out?>
<It does not work that way. Certainly, her position as the least advanced worked in her favor in merging with you, as perhaps she is still the only one who can merge with you at this time, but your spiritual attainment remains what you have attained.>
From Daq onward, all the incarnations except Robert were spiritually advanced to some degree. Lydia was the last of the ‘ordinary’ incarnations, with an unknown number of other sapient and semi-sapient incarnations who lived before her. So she had little of her own spiritual character to interfere with the merge.
I frowned, then wondered, <What about Fan Li? She’s more advanced than me.>
He hesitated, then admitted, <Fan Li seems to be a special case. The distance between her and the rest of us is too great. She says she would overwhelm us if she tried to merge with one of us, but I suspect there is some other problem she won’t explain.>
I could feel his frustration with her. She still had the ability to hide her thoughts from us, and kept far too much about herself under wraps, but…
I replied, <It might be less distance and more difference. Sometimes I suspect that Fan Li is not merely an Incarnation.>
<You felt that as well, then,> he replied.
<And of course she knows that I feel it, yet neither attempts to explain or deny it.>
<Perhaps… is she another fragment? Like Kiki? Or perhaps a divergent soul, like Kanon?>
<That neither makes sense, nor does it entirely not make sense,> I stated. <She must be one of our Incarnations, or she wouldn’t be connected to us. But if she were in the process of diverging… no, I’m not sure that makes sense either.>
Fan Li was pointedly not responding to any of this, but that did not surprise me. As I descended to the pavilion where the maids had taken to serving our meals, I had the sense she was well aware of our conversation, and chose not to reply.
<So you are… supporting me?>
<All three of us, and Fan Li, are standing by to support you today if you need it.>
My feet settled on the path leading up to the pavilion, where the maids and guests were getting ready for breakfast. As I dismissed my wings, I could already see Melione eyeing my highly questionable outfit, but this time, I didn’t feel anything like embarrassment. As a hetaira, I often wore thinly woven garments while entertaining, some as gauzy and revealing as this. Even with a baby bump, my body is lovely, and I felt no shame in displaying it.
I felt a disturbance behind me before I could ascend the steps, and a cry of “Lady!” as I turned around. Ceria happily glommed onto me as she arrived, rubbing her cheek against mine. Oberon, who had apparently brought her here, appearing just now, smiled from down the path as he strolled toward us.
I would have to resolve the mystery of exactly what he had done to apparently teleport to that spot later. At that moment, I had my arms full of cat girl.
“Is the honeymoon over?” I wondered after leaning away. “You’ve been more focused on my son the last few times we’ve met.”
She shook her head. “That’s not it, Lady! This is you you, right? I mean, I like Lydia too, but…”
The side of me that was Lydia was wondering if I should feel offended, but Tiana is her Mistress after all. I chuckled instead.
“This is me me,” I confirmed. The awareness inside my real body was in fact myself. Even if Lydia was still here. But I honestly couldn’t tell you how she could tell I wasn’t Lydia on her own.
She glanced down at my bosom, quite visible through the ‘cloth’ of my raiment, and grinned. “Are you trying to seduce me or my husband, Lady?”
I snorted. “Oberon is my son. If I’m seducing anyone, it would be you.”
“Your Grace,” came Khortys’s voice from behind. She was holding a robe for me.
“Miss Melione’s recommendation, Your Grace,” she stated with a smile. “Of course, what you have on is quite lovely, so nobody else objects.”
I let out a single syllable of laughter, gently moved Ceria back, then dropped the raiment while extending my arm for her to slide the sleeve on. Ceria intercepted the robe and helped me into the other sleeve.
Melione’s recommendation was surprising. The robe was a compromise between her preference and my raiment, rather than the covering she would prefer. The outline of my body remained revealed through the thin silk. But she made no comment as we ascended the steps with Oberon following, so she seemed okay with compromising this far.
“You look a bit different somehow,” Amelia commented as we dined, with a slightly perplexed expression suggesting she couldn’t put her finger on exactly how.
“Different how?” I wondered.
The others at the table, being Chiara, Amelia, Melione, Ceria, Oberon and Kanon, all hesitated and pondered.
Amelia suggested, “More… poised, I suppose? And you were completely relaxed just now while naked, even though His Majesty was right there.”
“Her Grace is growing into her role as a duchess, perhaps?” Chiara suggested.
I don’t know what they were seeing, but I assume it had something to do with the combination of Tiana’s and Lydia’s mannerisms. Lydia has something of a ‘peerless beauty’ vibe, just like Fan Li. But if that were it, wouldn’t they think it was Lydia controlling my body again? She had been doing so for months.
Ceria asked, “So why did you need me here today, Lady? You said it was vital I show up this morning, but this is just breakfast.”
I daubed my lips with the napkin, then commented, “Yes, I suppose breakfast can’t be considered ‘vital’, can it?”
“It’s all that magic we’ve been learning, My Lady,” Melione answered for me. “Diurhimath’s people depart on their expedition today. Before they go, we need to teach Her Grace.”
“Huh?” Ceria puzzled. “You just pick it up from us when we cast it, doncha?”
“Not quite,” I replied. “I do pick up the magic forms directly from your mind, but while I feel them, I must also see you casting it, see the magic formations, hear the incantations, and especially, see the results. That’s why I don’t learn anything when you are casting magic somewhere else, even though I can feel you doing it.”
“So we’re gonna… do what? Cast all our magic?”
I nodded. “And Kanon will be recording it for my reference. I might not get everything on the first go, but her record will allow me to review your spells without making you cast them a second time.”
When they first began the project, Fan Li and the men hoped that they could get all of that for me through [Cosmic Deduction], but they could find no way around the basic requirement, the need for me to learn through my Servants. Kwelabi surmised that a very specific inhibition had been written into the design of the Elders to prevent circumventing it in any way. Blood Magic had been the only exception, because Huade didn’t have it until the Elders came along.
“Some of the spells I know are awfully destructive,” Ceria worried.
Kanon answered, “We’ll be introducing you to a new facility. We would normally do this in the simulation, but that environment isn’t good for fetuses, so Her Grace can’t enter.”
Ceria frowned, her hand going to cover the baby within her.
I immediately told her, “Your baby is still an embryo. You don’t need to worry about it.”
Her head tipped slightly. Probably, she didn’t know the difference. I explained, “Right now, your baby does not yet have bodily organs. We don’t call it a fetus until they’re all present and growing.”
My cat girl Servant didn’t have much of an education, and even I with an Earthly education didn’t know much. Frankly, I had learned more from Fan Li over the last couple months than I ever learned on Earth or Huade.
Kanon nodded and added, “The important part being, your baby does not yet have a brain to be negatively impacted. So don’t be concerned about the time you’ve spent in the Training Hall.”
“So this new facility isn’t a simulation environment?” I asked.
“Correct,” Kanon confirmed, “It’s simply an enclosure. A nearly indestructible one.”
“We don’t have a lot of time before they launch their mission,” I worried.
“We are going to compress time for a single day of local time, Your Grace.”
I winced. That was going to make holding my merge together harder, with one of me here and one on Huade. I hoped it would be alright.
