28. Limits

  “Father,” Atla asked. “Father are you you ?”

  “Yes, Atla. I’m me. I’m sorry if I scared you,” I answered, flying through the air as I crossed the globe. I did not use the waygates, as that would bring me too close to people. Should I stand to close to a mortal in this state, I would drive the soul from their body.

  “Are you really?”

  “Yes, Atla, I’m really really me,” I promised. “I just don’t have a handle on my new strength, so I’m going somewhere to cultivate until I can be around people without putting them in danger again,” I explained.

  Atla’s disembodied voice was silent for a moment. “I protected them as best I could.”

  “I’m so proud of you, Atla. I love you, my precious daughter.”

  “I’ve decided I’m a boy again,” he said.

  “And I love you exactly the same amount as when you were dancing during the wedding and when you protected people from my tribulation,” I told him.

  He was quiet for a moment. “Father, you scared people today.”

  “I know.”

  “I scared them too. I had to speak to so many people to get them to run. I shook the ground beneath their feet and turned things on in their minds to make them afraid and run away. When I realized what was about to happen, I knew that … I don’t know how I knew but I knew that it would be bad if it happened in the middle of people, so I scared everyone away.”

  “And you did right,” I assured him. “Thank you. It would have weighed heavily on my conscience if I’d killed people during my tribulation.”

  Atla was silent. “Nine people died, father,” he announced eventually. “One old mortal with a bad heart. A girl who was trampled. A woman who had a vein shaped wrong in her head. A--”

  I processed this information for several moments. “What were their names?” I asked.

  He told me.

  I nodded. “I’ll make sure that their families are taken care of,” I promised. “And I’ll make certain that anyone else who was injured is compensated as well.”

  “Di Ram and Lady Tonilla are already working on it,” He informed me. “You don’t have to do anything but get better.”

  I shook my head. It felt wrong to delegate these tasks…

  But would the families want to talk with me, after I had accidentally killed their loved ones?

  “Extend my thanks to them for their efforts in this matter,” I said to Atla.

  “’kay,” he said. “Father, I’m not as strong as I can be.”

  “I know.”

  “Why not? Why aren’t you making me stronger?”

  “Because I was waiting for your mind to mature before I brought you to the next level,” I informed him.

  “You should make me strong,” He said. “So that next time, I can save everyone if this happens again.”

  I was quiet, flying through the air over the ocean. “Okay,” I said. “When I get to the island with the monkey and the boar, manifest your eidolon, and we’ll cultivate you until you’re as strong as I can make you.”

  “Okay,” he agreed.

  ~~~~~

  Di Ram nervously watched the shining figure of Little Bug fly off into the distance, then turned back to the avatar he had left behind. He nervously extended his sense, but felt only the presence of a mortal. Not a … whatever that had been before. He waited for the mortal aspect of Little Bug noticed him, then approached.

  “What happened?” Di Ram asked.

  “I underestimated myself,” the avatar answered. He slumped, looking around at the deserted city. “How long did it last?”

  “You’ve been roiling with power for six hours,” Di Ram answered.

  “It felt like moments, and also much longer than that,” the avatar said, looking at his hands. “This changes things. I’m not sure how. I didn’t see this coming. I think … I think I did something which I perhaps shouldn’t have done.”

  “And what is that?”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “I’m not certain how to explain it,” the avatar said, looking off in the distance. “I think that the part of myself that I sent to Duke Doe challenged fate to a game of tug of war for the fate of the universe. And I don’t know if I won or lost.”

  Di Ram nodded as though he understood. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you to the house, and we’ll talk about what happened while you were away.”

  “I’d rather not,” Little Bug’s avatar admitted, “But you deserve answers. Okay. We’ll talk now, while the dust settles, and then we’ll figure out how to pick up the pieces.”

  ~~~~~

  I didn’t dare look too closely at the mortal avatar I left behind, lest some of my power leak out through it. Instead I trusted the parts of me that I had left behind to deal with everything that needed dealt with. Once I arrived at my destination, I pulled up a small island north of the tea plantation so as not to disturb the mortals that were working there. The earth came so readily to my call, both because of my own power and my connection to Atla.

  Sitting on the limestone rock, I spent a moment simply staring at the night sky.

  “Father?” Atla asked. He manifested himself in his boy-form in a green and blue outfit.

  “I’m just thinking,” I told him.

  “What about?”

  “Everything and nothing all at once,” I answered. I shook my head sadly. “I’m sorry. My tribulation had me melancholy even before I realized that it had cost the lives of mortals.”

  He nodded. “You didn’t mean to hurt them.”

  “No, but I did. And until I can manage my power properly, I’ll need to avoid people. I think it’s best if we cultivate in isolation for a while, Atla, until you’re stronger and I’m in control of myself once more.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “But I don’t know how to get stronger. How do I—”

  “Give me your hand,” I told him.

  He nodded.

  And I flooded his eidolon with power.

  Atla gasped, channeling the Qi into his core as naturally as breathing.

  He instinctively reached out with his other hand and took mine, and I felt Atla’s power refilling what I was sending into him.

  We cycled like that for days, with my power blending with his endlessly. But it was not a zero-sum game. I emptied my Qi capacity to expand his, and he filled mine until it was bursting. His capacity continued to expand to ever greater heights, while my mastery over my own power slowly improved.

  He gave to me. I gave to him. And we each got back more than we gave in an increasingly expanding cycle. I knew eventually he would reach a limit, a maximum capacity beyond which he wouldn’t be able to progress any further. Every world had one. Every being had a limit, even Atla. Even me.

  But as the weeks passed, we never found it.

  ~~~~~~

  Nadia opened her eyes.

  “Welcome back to life, Mistress,” her servants said in unison. Peasants all of them, they had barely managed to form their identity cores required to withstand her presence. They were beneath her notice, even as they kowtowed and waited her acknowledgment.

  She sat up, the silk veil that separated her from the masses concealing her modesty. The transference process disliked anything getting in the way of the process, including clothing. So the vessel had been stripped, and secured for the ritual, and purified. The useless soul that had raised the vessel until it was ready for Nadia’s possession had been ejected, sent off to whatever came next. Nadia didn’t particularly care. She would never go there, so why did it matter?

  “Show me,” she said, standing. She looked to the other bed, where she had gone to sleep before the ritual had been performed. On the sheet was a decrepit corpse, half rotten and twisted. Ugly. Hideously deformed, now that the power of her soul and her cultivation had left it.

  She nodded. Just like the last six. Just like this vessel would be, once she was finished with it.

  The servants appeared behind her and draped her in silk and cloth of gold. She didn’t acknowledge them even as she was dressed by them. “How is my compatibility with this vessel?” she questioned the ritualists.

  “If you were to remain at your current level of cultivation, it would last you six centuries,” the head priest answered. A student of the necromancer who had perfected the ritual in the first place, he was a pale shadow of his master, but needs must. The hooks that she had set in the necromancer Ant had come free, and he was loose from her control.

  “That is unacceptable,” she stated simply.

  “You might extend the duration of the vessel if you—”

  “Not that,” she said. “I must advance. I must return to my full power. I cannot stagnate at the platinum realm when my enemy is free to push to ever greater heights. I will advance to the mythril realm, and push through it all the way until I am on the cusp of the celestial, as is my proper rank.”

  “As you say,” the priest said. “However, if you do that, the vessel will burn out within a decade or two.”

  “How many spare vessels do I have?” she questioned.

  “There is one that is twelve years old, and another that is eight. They might be ready in time for your next necessary transference,” he answered.

  She nodded. “See that they are. And make certain that the breeders are ready to replace them.”

  “Yes, your majesty,” the priest agreed, and she left the room as the same woman she’d been when she’d entered, despite the fact that her soul had changed bodies.

  It was slightly more inconvenient than changing gowns, she reflected, as it required her to enter isolated cultivation to reclaim her power. But with the grasp of six dimensional nexuses at her fingertips, it would only take a few months.

  Then, she would revisit Lord Loshi’s realm at her full power, with all of her forces behind her.

  And she would crush both him,

  And the one who had cursed her to this desperate existence.

  ?