Music for today (Fancy Embed isn't working today):
Rok Nardin - Traces
https://youtu.be/6zqZC0qMouI
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Chapter 484: Hope
N/A - N/A : Year 39 (2nd Year in Void) : Within The Void
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-Fuck...- Anxiety ate as me like nothing else at I stared into that young, soulless hatchling—watching its mana ebb and flow with the echoes of the void.
Biologically, it was in perfect condition. Cellular health was good, and anatomical density and flexibility were great.. however, I couldn't help but feel uneasy looking at the tiny thing...
Without a soul, it was simply.. empty...
Its brain would grow, yet neurons would never sprout—its mana would circulate, yet a core would never form.
It was simply a mass of coexisting cells. -Will this body even be possessable if I let it keep growing like this..? Will Mom even.. be the same person..?-
Previously, I had planned to grow the body until it was of similar maturity to Mother's current self, around old adult stage, and transfer her soul over then, but the more her new body grew, the more problems with that plan made themselves apparent.
After all, just as her physical body changed despite having the same genetic blueprint.. who was to say that even if I built the neurons in her new brain to be identical.. her mind wouldn't be different... Thanks to the deep frostbite, her organic mind was already dead.. unlike with Hera, it needed to be rebuilt...
But without her soul strong enough to hold consciousness on its own.. I couldn't tell at what point I was just making a Frankenstein...
...I couldn't tell at what point.. I was moving with my own greed...
"Krystallo..." My voice fell as that reality sank in.. as my eyes fell onto that lifeless husk I had created. "Is this.. really something she would want..?"
Krystallo froze on the spot. "W..What.. do you mean..?" It looked like her heart stopped.
"What if she wakes up.. and doesn't recognize us... What if she doesn't know who we are? What if she doesn't know who she is..?"
Her breathing stopped, and silence hung...
"The more time goes on, the more I question if, after all this.. it will even be Mom anymore..." Dropping my gaze to my paws, I turned it over to find myself quivering, oh-so faintly... -Just what.. do I do...-
A hundred thousand years I had lived.. standing before gods, monsters at the limit of biology, and civilizations older than entire solar systems...
And yet in that moment.. I quivered...
It wasn't fear, no... That should have been something I shed long ago...
It was something deeper...
"I..." My voice broke. "I don't know what to do, Krystallo..."
Staring at me with wide, pleading eyes, Krystallo's demeanor collapsed—her wings fell, shoulders sank, and tail stilled.
To her, I was the embodiment of certainty, yet in that moment, I wasn't even certain with myself... "Should I really.. keep trying..?"
Silence fell on us for what felt like hours—our minds racing to search for an answer yet our mouths never finding the will to move.
Morality simply ate at us... At what point was it hopeless greed? At what point should we have just let her rest..?
But then, Krystallo repeated... "What.. would she want..." Turning to look over at Mother's ruined body, laying frozen in time, the look in her eyes shifted. "Can I.. ask..?"
Knowing she wanted to try and talk to her directly through a tether, I tensed... Looking at Mother myself.. at her scattered, fragmented soul.. the thought of tethering them together made my jaw clench. "I'm.. not sure that's possible..." Afraid of what could happen with such an unstable connection, I held my tongue.
But Krystallo didn't accept that as an answer.
Moving through the space with a gentle flutter, she tried moving up to Mother's side, lifting her paw to lay it on her, only for me to stop her at the edge of the fabric of space. "Krystallo..." My voice should have been reprimanding, but came out like a pitiful plea. "Please..."
But she didn't budge. Holding her paw firmly at the edge of time, her snout fell, eyes closed.. and the air shifted.
Without a word, she had begun twisting her mana like her struggles over the last two years were nothing—circulating the mana in the space without regard for time's flow.
It was like she was sinking into a dragon sleep, but unlike that rampaging, turbulent flow, it was slow and smooth... *Woooom*
Before a second could pass, a frost settled over her feathers, ripples of color moved through the hatchlings scales, and after creating a bubble of mana around herself.. Mother moved.
Like an exhausted beast being woken by the touch of a cub, the scattered cloud in Mother's reserve twitched, and her rampaging, turbulent mana slowed to form a flow, not mimicking Krystallo.. but rather complimenting it.
Releasing mana out of the sides of her reserve, and focusing the suction on the poles, the opposite of Krystallo, it was like they had become two interlocked puzzle pieces...
Pieces that together, formed a circuit...
Their auras blended and flowed through one another no differently from their own mana, freely flowing around the room like two interlocked stellar bodies.
But while I was focusing on Mother's soul, ensuring the sudden shift in flow wasn't going to scatter it more.. something else was happening.
Hidden within the flows of their mana, a connection had formed.
Not simply sharing each others presence.. but sharing their senses no differently from a tether of divinity.
Krystallo was communicating on her own, and Mother.. was responding...
Though subtly, over the course of what felt like another eternity, Mother's soul began moving once again, not tearing itself apart within her reserves own shifting currents.. but reforming itself.. twitching and growing.
Until, just before reaching a sense of stability, the flow fractured...
*Wooooom* Feeling the circuit wavering, I finally snapped my attention away, turning back to Krystallo. "W-Why are you—" But I couldn't finish my words.
Beside me, Krystallo was encompassed in frost, sweating profusely, and straining herself with a look of grit.
Time had slipped from us.. and before either of us realized, her dragon sleep had actually arrived.
She had reached her time limit in the void.
"HAAH..." Letting out a strained, heavy breath, her eyes, sharpened to needles, snapped to me with a pitiful look. "Mother.. wants you to try..." *Crackle* Breaking off the circuit, the flow of her mana snapped into chaos instantly.
*WOOM* I was quick to contain it, isolating us from the surrounding space, but the pressure was immense. -I can't keep her here...- Trying to flood her with as much enriched mana as I could, I hoped to ease the suction of her reserve, but to no avail.
"Krystallo..." Seeing the look in her eyes shift as I called her name.. she knew what I was going to say. "I can't keep you here during your dragon sleep..."
But she already knew. "I.. know..." She was straining herself just to stay conscious. "Just.. promise me you'll trust yourself.. and try..."
My jaw clenched...
"Mother trusts you more than the world... She knows you can do it, you just.. need to.. trust.. yourself..." Finally losing consciousness with one final push, her body went limp, and the suction of her mana exploded. *WOOM*
Nearly rupturing the gate, I formed a second, larger one that included Mother, before collapsing it all to release Krystallo with Hera and Father, and return to the void with a sudden, horrifically eerie silence overtaking everything.
Having spent so long with Krystallo's presence, it felt suddenly empty.. but turning toward Mother, that loneliness never found room to settle. -If it's Mother's wish... I'll give it my best shot...-
But effort could only go so far...
Attempting to mimic the effects of the artifact that separated my soul from my body as a hatchling, I tried to recreate the runes that could tether Mother's soul to her new body from memory, having to test the limits of my knowledge and logic, only to then have to then figure out how to move her soul over in the first place...
Having let the young body continue to grow, hoping it would trigger some sort of dragon sleep on its own, it had grown quite a bit—now almost three meters tall, or twice the size of the largest hatchlings—but such growth was far from enough.
And I no longer had a choice...
Without a soul, the young body would never transition to larger stages.. no matter how long I left it to grow...
So, in the end.. I had to come up with a plan to send it.
Unsure whether her soul would even tether to the body.. whether the brain, now compressed to fit into the young skull, would retain any memory.. or whether the runes to detach and form a tether to the body would work.. I had to simply take the leap...
Even if the mere thought of doing something so careless killed me.
"~This.. might be the end, Mom...~" Leaning over her with my head hung, I spoke with my soul, not even sure if she could hear me.. let alone understand. "~I'm.. not sure what will happen after this... I don't know if you will remember anything.. or if you'll just feel like you woke from a long nap, but...~" Gritting my teeth with a wince, I gave her soul one final chance to breathe—to speak—watching it spin like a cloud trapped in a bottle, hoping for a response that'd never come...
Until finally, time ran out...
Taking hold of the young body, I let out a long, slow breath before Mother's body burst into a cloud of frosted glitter, leaving nothing but the reserve behind.
It was all...
Or nothing...
*tink-KRAKOOOM* Rupturing her reserve, mana blew through the space.. leaving me to push the young, empty body before me into the fragile cloud that remained the only remnant of Mother's existence.
However, instead of the soul quickly grabbing on, and attempting to recollect the mana that had been released, silence settled with stillness.
Trying to kickstart something by manually swirling the mana in the young body, her soul shifted as if wanting to respond, only to stay quiet...
It.. didn't work...
I hadn't realized, but her soul had already detached itself from her body before I even tried to sever the connection...
Whether her choice or not.. she had already let go...
...And all I could do was watch as the world stilled...
I sat there for eons.. pushing enriched mana into the space hoping simply to spark something, only for the silence to eat at me.
Using cleaned pieces of my soul, I tried to stimulate hers.. to give it just enough life to grab on.. but time only continued to pass.
It was the end...
Before I could even make the gamble I was putting everything I had into, stillness found its home...
For centuries after that, I held on... Hoping with enough time, a spark would appear...
But it never did...
Sitting in that void.. in that silence.. I prayed for a chance I knew would never come. I asked the void questions.. tried to reminisce with Mother.. but never did a sound or motion spare me the pain...
Until eventually.. I had to give up...
It took hundreds of years.. but I had come to terms with it.. with the fact that I couldn't save her...
But in the end, time reclaims all.
Sitting beside her.. beside that young body her soul seemed to crudely intersect, I had to hang my head in defeat.
Hoping merely to get one final word with her as she did Krystallo, I formed a tether with my divinity, threading it together before crossing space to try and link our souls.. even if just for a moment...
I just wanted a word.. a final opportunity to thank her for everything and tell her I love her before having to say goodbye...
But as my tether floated listlessly in her soul.. gently nudging the small core at its center.. it never grabbed...
It never caught...
...Until... *tink*
For the first time since I had to send Krystallo out of the void, Mother's soul.. moved...
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