328: Sorrow's Troupe (Patreon)

Deidre woke with a gasp, clinging tightly to Sakiya in the aftermath of her nightmare. The nine-tail had already drawn Deidre close and was soothingly petting her hair.

"It's alright, my dear," Satsuki said softly, "I'm here."

It took a few moments for Deidre to collect herself. At least the nightmare frequency was beginning to drop. The really pitiful thing about having nightmares was that having them at all was a sign of her recovery. When she'd first arrived, nightmares and dreams of any sort were not part of her sleep process.

She sighed, then drew herself up to kiss Satsuki briefly on the lips. "Thank you for being here. Well, I don't think I'll be getting any more sleep for a while, so I'm going to get cleaned up and see if I can finish writing out those ciphers before everyone gets back later today."

Deidre was under no illusions that what they shared was love. At least, not romantic love. There was certainly mutual affection and physical comfort, but while they were friends and lovers, it would be correct to say that either of them was in love with the other. Complicated, but that described her life recently anyway.

The past several months had been extremely different from most of her life, and Deidre let her mind wander as she cleaned up and got dressed. When she'd first been captured, her emotions had ranged from numb to confused to angry, then, when hope had first begun to appear, it was swiftly followed by fear. The fear faded slowly as hope grew, but there was still a small, sharp sliver of it lodged in her heart.

Letting herself be seduced and enthralled by Satsuki had been an act of desperate trust, a gamble on being able to change. Working her way free of the enthrallment had helped her work around and push aside more and more of the commands that had been instilled in her, and the effects of becoming Azeria's contractor had finally suppressed those commands entirely.

Not that they were gone, but they were forced to be quiet. This allowed Deidre to finally talk more about what had happened to her, and tell what Azeria needed to know about 'invading' the territory of her other self.

But once the compulsions were no longer in play, it had still been difficult to talk about much of it. The easiest part had been describing what each of her zones was like. Zones that she tried to not compare against Azeria's equivalent zones. It was painful to see what she could have been doing compared to what she had been forced to do.

Being able to talk more freely had also made it easier to work with Azeria on a cipher so that messages could be discreetly passed to her other self.

However, before she finished that work, Deidre needed to eat. She had a brief breakfast with Satsuki and Payne, and Payne went with Deidre to the office where all this work was being done.

Deidre needed to write each piece of their secret message by hand, though the cores made sure everything was ready for her reference. One part of this was that the nexus couldn't simply generate the scraps and ink from their mana, so Deidre was using paper and ink that had been either brought in from outside or had been processed from plants that had been grown in the nexus territory.

The other part was that this put the entire thing in Deidre's handwriting and allowed her to imprint a trace of her aura on everything. It was not as thorough as a properly done seal, but keeping the signature of her aura faint was part of the point, as delivering the message was intended to be done subtly.

There were actually two ciphers, and the ciphers were broken up into small pieces of mathematical equations written on random scraps of paper. There were also two messages, written in seeming gibberish on the other side of each scrap of paper. The first message was written on the messages containing the second cipher, and the second message was written on the flip side of the first cipher.

Thus, decoding either message would take having all of both messages. It would also require the processing power of a core to sort through possibilities and tease out the two equations.

One message was from Azeria, giving reassurances that they were there to help her and free her. The other message was from Deidre, to verify that she trusted Azeria. But direct words seemed insufficient, and in the end, Deidre decided on an old ballad about a small group of heroes leading a group of mercenaries against the army of an evil king.

She also cut off the ballad before it could be determined if the mercenary army would prove loyal to their word or try to take advantage of the situation after the victory. Her other self knew the answer in the actual ballad, of course, but that was not the point. Cutting it off there in the message carried a secondary meaning — Deidre did not trust Trionea.

With the ballad transcribed, there was one scrap of paper left with a blank side. Deidre glanced up at the floating image of all the pieces of this project, and there, too, it was blank. Waiting for her to give a name.

"Svetlana," she finally said, her voice soft as she spoke the name that had been suppressed for so long. "The first name I was given, before I met any of the Puritasi, was Svetlana." It wasn't a name she really associated with herself anymore, but it was better than using the name that the Puritasi had insisted she use.

Deidre refused to even think that name; it was already dead to her, and she knew her core felt the same.

A moment later, the encoded version of her name appeared on the illusion, and she transcribed that encoded version into the final scrap of paper in silence.

It was done.

Deidre felt nervous as this final piece of preparation was completed, and simply watched as Payne flitted out to collect that last piece and put it in the waiting pouch where the others had all been stored. When everything was done, if it went according to plan, then her return home was scant weeks away. Payne would be coming with her, the tiny pixie had made that clear long ago, and it had taken Deidre a while to notice that Payne had made herself Deidre's familiar.

It was an unusual way to acquire a familiar, to have the bond simply form slowly like that, but Deidre did not mind. At least it meant she wouldn't be alone.

There was no one she was looking forward to seeing when she was reunited with her other self. Her sapient inhabitants were in even worse mental shape than she was. Many of them had been people whom she had been forced to take on as inhabitants, and those people had been forced to accept the invitation. Or rather, tortured until they complied.

It was such a convenient way to have someone disappear; they were still alive, so attempts to contact their soul in the afterlife failed, and they were both cloaked by the nexus's aura had and their own aura changed by the process, making them very, very difficult to search for with magic. Much cheaper than capturing their souls and imprisoning them, too.

By the time Mordecai, Kazue, and Moriko were done assisting her core in recovering from what had been done to her, all of her sapient inhabitants were going to be free, whether freed into the world, or, if they were too mad, freed from this cycle of life, so that they might have the chance to reincarnate and begin a fresh life.

Mordecai said he had some ideas on how to help those who would be free, but he needed to verify something before he committed to one of his options.

Deidre wondered if it might not be easier if Azeria's plans did not quite succeed. If something happened to her core, and if the unattuned core material that she had been rewarded with could draw her soul here instead of core and avatar both dying, then she could maybe become a subsidiary core.

Of course, no one knew what would happen if she started to reflexively try to claim territory around her new core while already inside of Azeria's territory. A subsidiary core started as either an independent but adjacent nexus, or more rarely, was deliberately developed by the primary core.

Not that Deidre had known this before she'd been told by Mordecai. Yet another thing she had been denied learning about or discovering on her own.

"How long until your other selves arrive?" She asked as Payne settled onto her shoulder.

Kazue's mental voice answered, "They seem to be a little more than an hour away."

Deidre was looking forward to seeing them all again, but the thought brought up even more conflicted feelings. Two sets of desires that were inherently in conflict, and neither was truly possible.

One of them was tied to the idea of becoming their subsidiary core; Deidre did not feel ready to become an independent ruler of a territory again. Most of her existence had been that of a slave, and just being an independent person was a challenging enough prospect at the moment. Who was she to direct others? It would be so much easier to continue to serve, in much the same way that she knew Satsuki wanted to serve, and even becoming a lover to the trio would not be a burden.

To want to continue to be bound by the will of others might seem like a strange thing for a slave to possibly want, but it would be a different sort of servitude, someplace safe where she could explore being an independent person while knowing that there were others who could be responsible and take care of any mistakes she made.

That applied to the other, conflicting desire as well. To become as a daughter to them, the way that Fuyuko and Camilla were. The base impulse was the same: to not be responsible for too much while having the chance to figure out who she was now. It was also the much saner desire. But at the same time, Deidre was already involved with Satsuki, who had previously been Mordecai's lover and who might become consort to the trio in the future. That alone made the idea of having a parent and child sort of relationship awkward, even before considering the issue of how she had met them and become their prisoner.

Her emotions were quite clear to Payne, even if Deidre's exact thoughts did not come across, and the little pixie leaned against Deidre's head. "Don't worry, you won't be alone. I'll be with you, I promise." Deidre smiled at that and nuzzled back. It was hard to truly be alone around pixies.

Hmm.

She had an idea.

A brilliant, wonderful, awful, sort of horrifying idea.

Deidre held out her hand and said, "Payne, I have an idea." While her familiar curiously shifted position to land on Deidre's palm, Deidre sent to Kazue, "Do you mind if I 'steal' a volunteer army of pixies?"

Kazue laughed before answering, "Deidre, I love the idea, and I will do you one better. Any of our tinier inhabitants who want to move in to help you may join your nexus. We're limiting the size only to make sure it doesn't look like we are invading. Oh, and I have some other ideas now. By the time you leave, you will have all the help and company you need."

Deidre grinned at Payne. "So, how would you like the title of Major General? Your job would be to recruit an army, within the bounds that Azeria sets, who want to come north with me and be my personal, permanent honor guard."

Payne's eyes widened with excitement before she started dancing in place and talking so fast that Deidre couldn't keep up. But she was pretty certain that was a 'yes'.