Fates Parallel Chapter 256 - Connections

Ja Yun flew into a panic when Muddy disappeared, but rather than flounder as she usually did, something in her snapped. All the stress and frustration that she’d been building up over the last year boiled over at once, summoning courage she didn’t even know she had to finally give the ones responsible a piece of her mind.

“Ancestors damn it, Yoshika! I told you this was a bad idea! But no—you always have to get your way, no matter what anybody else says. Would it kill you for once in your life to just fucking listen to somebody else for a change? I swear if anything happened to Muddy I’m never going to forgive you.”

Yoshika stood in stunned silence while Jianmo, the purple-haired menace, snickered as he floated past lazily.

“Oh dear, it looks like the cowardly little kitten’s found her claws. You tell ‘em, girl.”

Yun whirled on Jianmo, letting herself be carried by the flames of her fury before she could think.

“Fuck you too! You’re just as bad—no, worse! You give a couple of kids some vague goal to save the world from catastrophe, then fuck off and leave them with nothing but this shitty copy for guidance? How irresponsible can you possibly be?”

Jianmo’s laughter only made her angrier, and Ja Yun thought she was going to punch the smug bastard before she felt a hand on her shoulder. Seong Eunae shook her head slowly.

“Yun, I understand that you’re upset, but calm down for a moment, please.”

That was the last thing she wanted to hear—especially from her.

“And you—”

Ja Yun’s breath caught in her throat as she met Eunae’s eyes. For a moment she thought she’d made a horrible mistake, but the princess she was looking at was just an illusion created by Yoshika’s technique. Nevertheless, that moment was enough to kill the momentum that had been carrying Ja Yun on her furious tirade.

That couldn’t be it, though—could it? The adrenaline had faded, but the righteous indignation still burned strong. Was she really so easy that one look from a pretty woman could dispel her? Ja Yun glared at Seong Eunae—the woman who could probably mold her soul like clay if she put her mind to it, the woman who had made Ja Yun’s already tenuous new relationship a thousand times more complicated just by existing, the woman who was not only her direct superior, but also her literal superior by every conceivable metric.

Her next words were born out of petty jealousy and anger, and she regretted them before they’d even left her lips.

“Misun is right about you.”

The look of pain and betrayal on Eunae’s face broke Ja Yun’s heart, but Yoshika stepped in before she could utter an apology.

“Okay! Look, I know you’re upset, and I’m sure you didn’t mean all that—or at least, not all of it. Let’s just take a step back and breathe, alright? Muddy is fine, I can still sense it in my domain.”

Ja Yun froze. Muddy was okay?!

“Why didn’t you say that sooner?! Where is she? What’s happening?”

Yoshika held up her hands—it was still so strange to see them as a single person, but everything about those two was strange.

“I’m not sure. It’s hard to explain, but its aura is still there. It was connected to us through the already tenuous link to its soul, but the Soulfire severed it.”

Yun grasped at her hair, overcome with worry.

“That’s not making me feel any better!”

“It’s hard to explain! The aura doesn’t seem to be in any distress, but I’m not sure how to read an elemental’s emotions. Here, I can show you what it’s doing.”

The world shifted again, and suddenly they were standing over their own bodies, still sitting in a meditation circle—Ja Yun had almost forgotten that they were in an illusion. The control that Yoshika had over her senses was unnerving, even if Yun did trust her. Sure, she had asked permission, but did she really need to? Supposedly, the one they’d learned it from didn’t. Ja Yun was not looking forward to meeting her.

She turned her attention to Muddy’s form, and felt her heart leap into her throat at the sight. Muddy wasn’t a wobbling blob of slime anymore—it had melted into a limp puddle, with its mana core exposed and the slime that normally protected it leaking away in all directions.

“Yoshika! That doesn’t look very alive to me! I thought you said it was okay!”

“Shit! But...its aura is fine, I swear!”

Ja Yun opened her mouth to argue, but she was struck by another wave of intrusive emotions. The concepts rushed through her like a nauseating wave, and she barely had time to grasp at their most surface level meaning before the feeling faded again. Outside?

Yoshika turned to her familiar—or, daughter? Ja Yun was still a little unclear on that relationship—and frowned.

“The spirit realm? Okay, we’ll look.”

A pair of mismatched gloves appeared on Yoshika’s hands—one was white leather with blue threads and some vicious looking claws, and the other was black and red with silver studs over the fingerless knuckles. The same gloves appeared on the image of her real bodies, one each for Jia and Eui.

At the same time, the image around them shifted dramatically. A second world was overlaid on top of the one around them in a way that her mind struggled to process. An imperfect visual representation of something that Ja Yun should have been experiencing with her mana sense. She tried to shut out the visual noise and concentrate only on Muddy’s form.

Sure enough, there was a ghostly image of a flaming glob of mud—pale green like Eunae’s flames. It was screaming—not in a way that Ja Yun could see or hear, but she felt it deep within her soul in a way that she couldn’t possibly explain.

“She’s dying! We have to help her.”

Yoshika looked around uncertainly for a moment, then did that thing she did where she froze for a bare instant and suddenly acted with absolute confidence.

“Okay. Yun’s right, Muddy is struggling and probably won’t survive without our help. I’ve got an idea but...it’s going to be really weird, and we’re all going to need to figure it out as we go. Especially Eunae.”

The princess blinked in surprise.

“Me?! Are you sure about this, Yoshika? I’m not a swift learner like you.”

Yoshika gave the princess a weak smile.

“Well, actually, maybe you will be...”

Ja Yun wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that, but she’d do whatever it took to help Muddy.

“We don’t have time to waste, Yoshika, just tell us your plan already!”

“Actually, it might be easier to just show you.”

“What do you—?”

Before she could finish asking, Yoshika’s plan slammed into her mind like the first time she’d tried to commune with Muddy. It took her a moment to parse it, but after a moment, she understood.

“Ow! How did you do that without my cooperation? You literally learned the technique this morning and now you’re using it to inject information into my mind like a living jade slip.”

Yoshika winced.

“Sorry, I wouldn’t normally be able to, but the Melody already has us partially linked enough for me to do that much. I didn’t know I could until just now—ancestors, Yue is going to be a monster if she figures out half of the stuff we’re learning about this technique.”

Eunae shook her head.

“Focus, Yoshika. Your plan is insane, even for you, and I’m not sure if I’m comfortable with it.”

Ja Yun felt her blood run cold. Eunae was right, it was insane, but Yun hadn’t even considered just refusing. Yoshika nodded solemnly.

“It’s the best I could come up with, but I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to. I’ll think of something else.”

Muddy’s silent scream tore through Ja Yun’s heart, and she shook her head, grabbing Eunae’s hands and looking straight into the shocked princess’ eyes.

“Eunae please! We don’t have time, and this is the best option we’ve got! I’m sorry for what I said earlier, I didn’t mean it. But please! Please help Muddy!”

Eunae wavered for a moment before squeezing her eyes shut and heaving a long sigh.

“Okay fine! You’re right, we don’t have time to argue. Yoshika, this had better work.”

—-

The plan was far from simple, and it relied on a lot of questionable assumptions and guesses, but the girls hurried to put it into action.

First, Ja Yun left the soulscape and connected her mind to Muddy’s. It wasn’t easy, but Yoshika had been right—despite its sad state, the elemental’s aura was still strong, and even responded to her when she reached out with her own.

Muddy’s mental state was hard to bear. It was in extreme pain and focused wholly on desperately trying to stay alive as it fought against the traumatic and alien experiences. Thankfully, the pain wasn’t transmitted to Ja Yun, it was more like a memory of a painful experience—unpleasant, but not all-consuming.

Yun got to work with her next task—force-feeding Muddy as much Mud essence as she could muster. Yoshika’s reasoning was that its physical form—which was just manifested essence—was melting away because it was consuming it to survive. Giving it more essence would buy them some time, and Ja Yun’s matching affinity made her the perfect candidate to do so.

That was the easy part. Next, Ja Yun needed to return to Yoshika’s soulscape without breaking her connection to Muddy. Yoshika’s song still echoed through the meditation chamber, and normally all Yun would have to do is relax and let herself be caught up in it, but she couldn’t do that now. To relax too much would break her concentration and separate her from Muddy.

It was strange, splitting her attention like that. The music wanted to overwhelm her senses, and she needed to let it do so while still maintaining concentration. It was an awkward paradox that she would have assumed was completely impossible if not for Yoshika’s confidence.

It did start to work after a moment, but the transition was slow and strange. Ja Yun felt as though she were being stretched, but not in a physical way. As though her spirit was being pulled in multiple directions. She let it happen—once more, she would be nothing more than a bridge for her elemental friend.

When the world of Yoshika’s soul finally appeared around her, she no longer felt like herself. She didn’t feel like she was Muddy or Iseul, either—this was an entirely new experience and she wasn’t sure what to think of it.

“Ja Yun, did it work?”

It took her a moment to realize that Yoshika was speaking to her, and she blinked slowly—nothing felt real.

“Yes, I think so. I—we—yes. I think so.”

Yoshika frowned.

“Ooookay, you’re acting super weird, but I don’t really have time to figure that out. Are you ready for the next part?”

Ja Yun nodded distractedly. The next part of the plan didn’t really require her participation, just her cooperation.

“Okay, try to relax. This might feel a bit weird at first.”

She nodded, even though Yoshika was speaking nonsense. She already felt weird, and relaxing was impossible. Still, when she felt a thread of foreign essence snaking its way through her soul, she clamped down tightly on the instinctive reflex to reject it. This was part of the plan.

The essences weaved its way into her soul, through her body, and finally up towards her mind. Normally, she might have panicked or worried, but she felt strangely at peace with it. After all, the mind wasn’t the entirety of her being as she’d been taught in the colleges. It was only a part of her, and there were many forms that it could take without violating the core of her being. Yoshika had been the one to teach her that.

Finally, the thread of essence completed the connection. From Muddy’s mind to Ja Yun’s, through Ja Yun’s body to her soul, through the Melody of the Dreaming Moon to Yoshika’s soulscape. A confusing jumble of spirits, souls, minds, and consciousness.

The feeling of uncertainty increased a thousandfold. Who was she? What was she? She felt like she was drowning in an ocean of experience—overwhelmed by the sheer volume of sensations that began to flood through her. She reached out for anything that she could grasp as a lifeline.

The plan. She had to stick to the plan. She opened her eyes—which pair, she couldn’t be certain, but it wasn’t important. She glanced back and forth to gain her bearings and found who she was looking for. Seong Eunae, the princess, her friend, her lover’s lover, her boss—there were too many feelings to process, so she gathered them together and placed them in a box. Dae’s technique came so much easier to her in that moment than it ever had before.

“Now, Eunae. We’re ready.”

The princess shuddered, but she did as she was meant to. Eunae raised her head and lifted her veil to reveal those striking blue eyes of hers.

The world stopped. Yoshika had done this before, but this time would be different. This time she wasn’t trying to steal from the Kumiho—she was returning what she’d taken. Her divine spark flew across the bridge of Soulfire and the final piece of the puzzle fell into place.

For a single brief instant, four girls and a blob became a singular entity. Then the world shattered around them.