Chapter 1419 (Patreon)

“Hey, Mom,” Lia’s voice greeted me when I stepped out of the shadows in the evening. By the time Cassie finished showing me their village, she had decided I could set up an anchor nearby. Not directly in the village just yet, but the location she suggested was only about five minutes away from their homes, so I didn’t mind too much. The question I was truly curious about, but hadn't yet received an answer to, was whether Cassie had given permission herself, or if she had gotten the go-ahead from Frigg, her divine Patron. 

Either way, I now had an anchor near their home and was considering prodding Lady Hecate about the whole teleportation-or-portal-or-whatever spell, so I could try to get Maggie and Cassie into a room together and have them hammer out a trade agreement. By that point, I might even travel up to the Charland and talk to the Chief’s community; maybe they would like to join in, too. It would certainly create a rather widespread and potentially influential trade network, even if I wasn’t quite sure what the Chief’s community might contribute. Timber, maybe, or they might have figured out a way to make use of the Charland; I wasn’t sure. 

“Good evening, dear,” I returned. “What is it that you need?” I asked, knowing Lia wasn’t hanging around the anchor in my tower just for fun, even if she had a book in her lap and had been reading. There were more comfortable places to read in my tower, and she usually used them. 

“Well, I had a funny idea, but I don’t think I can pull it off alone,” she admitted, looking a little sheepish. Still, beneath the sheepishness, a spark of curiosity gleamed in her eyes, making it clear she was truly my daughter.

“So, tell me about your idea,” I chuckled, shaking my head a little at the similarities between the two of us. 

“Remember when we were testing things about the differences in our Mind Magic?” she asked, and I nodded in response. “You see, I asked myself, what else could be done? Messing with their memories is one thing, but could we do something else? Something more? That’s when I had the idea to switch up their bodies, shifting mind into the other body,” she explained, and I froze for a moment, thinking furiously. 

“It’s an interesting idea,” I admitted, partly to give some response while I thought. “Not an easy idea, mind you, but incredibly interesting. The biggest issue I spontaneously see is that you wouldn’t just have to shift the Mind, the memories and such; you would also have to shift their Soul. Or, if you only shift the Mind, you would have to somehow connect the other Soul to the new Mind, and I honestly have no idea what would happen then. Mind and Soul are tightly linked; their connection is closer and stronger than that between Body and Soul, maybe because the Soul is, well, designed?” I paused, thinking about the best way to describe what I wanted to say. 

“Well, let’s go with designed.” I shrugged before continuing. “The Soul is designed to leave the body, or maybe saying it’s destined to leave the body? Anyway, when a person dies, the Soul leaves the Body, so there is a natural mechanism. The Mind, on the other hand, doesn’t leave, but it doesn’t stay either. Part of the memories remain in the Body, but I believe part of them also leave with the Soul,” I explained, rapidly pulling together disparate bits and pieces of information and observations I had made over the last two years. 

“For your idea to work, we’d have to keep the Mind and Soul intact while transferring them over,” I mused, wondering if we could pull it off. If we did, it would be a massive step towards resurrecting Sigmir, making me eager to try it out. 

“So, where do we start?” Lia asked, getting rather motivated herself. Her original question had likely been born from boredom and a desire to mess around, but now that I was getting into it, she was being pulled along. Or maybe she had realised how complicated it would be before asking and had thought it wouldn’t work in the first place; I wasn’t sure. 

“To start, we need to make working Soul Prisons. So far, I haven’t been able to keep them stable long-term, but that’s not really necessary if we only want to store a soul for a short time. We only need the prisons to remain stable as long as we need to shift things over,” I explained, already thinking about the possible Crystal Runes I might want to implement. 

“Or maybe we should take the time to head over to the Slaughterhouse Dungeon; that might grant me the Death or Soul Runes I believe would help a great deal,” I reconsidered, thinking of that other project I had been pursuing these last few weeks. Those runes might very well be the key, but even if they weren’t, having more options could be crucial. 

With Lia’s idea temporarily postponed, we returned to the Den, only to realise nobody was around anymore. I really should have expected that. Luna had been awake most of the previous night, and she preferred to be well-rested rather than rely on her superhuman endurance to carry her through. Well, unless she was performing her own experiments, when she occasionally went into a fugue with them, completely neglecting everything around her in favour of her work. A tendency I shared to some extent, though maybe mine was even worse. But since I had told her I would likely be gone for the night, she had no reason to stick around instead of heading to bed. Similarly, the locals had no reason to hang around outside their town at night; there wasn’t anything to see here. 

“What do you think about a quiet race?” I asked, looking at my daughter as she exited the small shrine I had set up to house the anchor. “Just the two of us, running through the night? No stepping through the shadows, no flying, just what our physical bodies can accomplish?” I challenged, getting a wide grin in response.

“No magic?” she asked, taking me aback for a moment. Besting her without magic would be difficult, maybe even impossible, depending on which of her innate abilities were counted as magical. But that only made me want to try harder, so I returned the grin, though mine didn’t have fangs as impressive as hers. 

“No vampiric tricks either. Just raw muscles and attributes,” I returned, getting a nod of acceptance. “Do you remember the area well enough to race? I’m fairly certain the dungeon is in that direction, but that’s about all I recall,” I admitted, pointing in what I thought was the right direction. 

“Works for me: start when something hits the ground, race to the dungeon, see who is faster,” she summarised, and I nodded in agreement. She picked up a stone and tossed it into the air when I signalled I was ready.

The moment the stone hit the ground, we both took off like shots. Pushing myself like this, purely physical, without any magical assistance, was quite different. Also quite hard, but I noticed that Lia seemed to struggle for similar reasons; she wasn’t used to consciously keeping her vampiric abilities down and was obviously tempted to just speed ahead or use any number of her tricks.

Amusingly, that made us fairly evenly matched. Her vampiric body gave her some massive boosts to agility, but so did my draconic body. Ultimately, she was a little faster, but the difference wasn’t all that big, but it was noticeable.

Additionally, the terrain was mostly flat, with nothing either of us could use to gain an advantage, and both of us had enough stamina to run at our respective top speeds for hours, to say nothing of the relatively short distance we were crossing now.

“Over there,” Lia suddenly called out, slowly down as she spoke. Realising that the race was essentially over, I slowed down myself, falling in next to her and my eyes followed her gesture. 

It took me a moment to recognise some of the local landmarks, making me wonder if we had missed our destination during our race, or if our original course had been wrong. Either was plausible, but that didn’t mean we had to continue on the wrong way. 

“I guess you win,” I admitted, feeling just a little bit annoyed at that. Sure, Lia was primarily a physical fighter with a focus on speed, making it a minor miracle that the race had been as close as it was, but that didn’t mean that losing didn’t rankle me just a little. 

“Thank you,” she grinned, her fangs showing prominently. “Let’s find that dungeon of yours,” she continued, already looking around the area, matching landmarks with her memories.

Instead of trying that myself, I felt out the Astral River, trying to find the disturbance caused by the Dungeon’s presence. Like this, we had two ways to find our destination, giving us much better chances to succeed.