Fates Parallel Chapter 163 - Grace

“Pfhahaha! Tae In-Su!? How the fuck did he think that was a good thing?”

Eui was doubled over in laughter after hearing Jia’s retelling of what had happened. As promised, the caravan—including Eui—had been allowed entry into the city without any further issues. The ‘consulate’ was a four-story building that had originally been an apartment complex. Many of the walls had been removed to convert it into a single cohesive structure, which Hayakawa had immediately started setting up as their new headquarters. Apparently she expected that they’d be in Nayeong for quite some time. Lee Jia groaned in frustration.

“Ugh, I think even Seo realized that being represented by the person who had me beat up and thrown out of the city wasn’t the silver lining he was looking for. He was just trying to put a positive spin on it.”

Eui nodded.

“Well, it’s not so bad. Tae was usually pretty reasonable from what I saw of him. You think we can trust him to handle the case?”

“I don’t know. It kind of worries me that he’s working for Sun, but Hayakawa did say she was calling in some favors...”

Eui sprawled out on the couch they were sharing and stared up at the ceiling with her head in Jia’s lap. Their quarters were a converted apartment with a living room, bedroom, and attached bathroom. It wasn’t as nice as their guest quarters in Noguchi’s castle, but it reminded Jia of their quaint little dorm back at the academy. It was decorated quite sparsely, but the furniture was comfortable enough. It irked Jia a bit that such a huge building was being used for diplomatic purposes when it could have been housing dozens of families instead, but it seemed hypocritical to complain about it while staying there. She looked down into her lap and met Eui’s eyes as she stroked her silky hair.

“I guess we’ll just have to see. Whatever happens, we’re here now. We’ve made it back home, and they aren’t going to get rid of us easily!”

Eui chuckled.

“Damn straight! Although...is this really home anymore?”

Jia paused, considering the question carefully. In a lot of ways Goryeo had never really felt like a home to her, and Eui had been rather violently rejected by their home country, to the point that even travelling within it had become an entire ordeal. She shrugged.

“I don’t know. What’s the alternative, though? We have no home? Or our home was the academy and it’s been taken over by demons from another world. Neither option feels very nice.”

Eui scowled. It was a complex combination of irritation, fury, and helplessness that was unique to Eui. Jia had become something of a connoisseur of Eui’s various scowls, frowns, and occasional pouts. They were all adorable.

“Personally, I do miss my family home, but you’re right. The academy was our place, and those fuckers ruined everything. We should go take it back sometime.”

Jia raised an eyebrow incredulously at Eui.

“Those are demons that forced Ienaga and Hwang to go all-out—to say nothing of whatever happened to Do Hye and Elder Qin. At least one of them should be on par with that Sovereign Shen guy that gave Jianmo trouble. And you want us to fight them?”

“...call it a long-term goal.”

Jia and Eui giggled at that absurdity of the idea, but in the silence afterwards, the seed of thought took root in their minds. The academy was their home, and however long it took for them to gain enough power, they would take it back. Jia leaned down and kissed Eui gently on the lips.

“A long-term goal it is, then.”

---

The next few days passed fairly uneventfully, with Jia and Eui spending most of their time with Hattori Koji. The old onmyouji, like them, had very little to do since he had joined the envoy primarily to continue helping to tutor Heian. Jia suspected he had ulterior motives, but tutor Heian he did. Most of their lessons were focused on trying to teach her to manipulate essence. Though she was actually already better at manipulating essence than any of them, that essence was her. Heian had no ability whatsoever to control essence outside of herself, and it was that gap which they tried to fill now.

They had limited success. In her cat form, Heian refused to even engage with the lessons, but in human form she could be coaxed into copying Jia and Eui. At the very least, Jia was fairly certain that Heian could sense the mana around her, but manipulating it was another story. In theory, magic was the cultivation of the mind, and as a spirit, Heian had no such thing. The truth was a fair bit more complicated. Jia knew that Heian was capable of thought, and she’d seen more than a few magical beasts that displayed intelligence beyond what could be accounted for by simple instinct.

Spirits were absolutely capable of manipulating mana—Jia had seen it first hand with Hattori’s shikigami, and he frequently demonstrated it during their lessons with Heian—and Jia was starting to reject the idea that magical beasts had no souls. Rather, she was beginning to suspect that her understanding of the soul was woefully incomplete. In the first place, she’d already learned through her own cultivation that body, mind, and soul were intrinsically linked from the beginning. Cultivators could focus on one or another, but they were always present.

Do Hye had claimed that this was a unique property of humans, but was it? Were they really so special? Something was missing! Jia ran her hands through her hair and groaned in frustration—earning herself a smack on the shoulder from Eui for messing her hair up. She wasn’t going to overturn thousands of years of expert research by one of the greatest mages ever to live during a lazy afternoon’s meditation. That was it! She was focusing too hard on the theory. She had always just figured things out by doing them, and Heian was the same! It was like Kim Yongsun had told her—Heian didn’t learn like a person did, or at least not yet.

Jia snapped her eyes open. Next to her, Heian was sitting in human form, meditating between her and Eui. Bless her for trying, but Jia couldn’t help but feel like Heian was just going through the motions. She didn’t understand what they were trying to teach her, and all their explanations and coaxing had done nothing to educate her.

“Okay, new plan! Heian, honey, you can stop now. Come here.”

Heian nodded and stood up while Eui cracked an eye open and frowned at Jia.

“I can tell you’ve just had an idea, and knowing you it’s probably a bad one.”

“Hey!”

Eui snickered at Jia’s protests.

“I didn’t say that was a bad thing. You want to tell me first, or keep it a surprise?”

Jia blew out her cheeks indignantly, but opted to explain anyway.

“I think we’ve been going about this the wrong way. We’ve been trying to teach Heian like a person, but as far as she’s come that just isn’t how she understands things. She needs to feel it. The only way she can wrap her mind around this is by doing it.”

Eui crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow at Jia.

“Is that not what we’ve been doing here for the last hour?”

“No, I mean something more than that. We share our techniques and knowledge through Yoshika, right? Why not do the same for Heian?”

Eui’s eyes widened with understanding.

“You want to merge minds with her? Show her how to do it as Yoshika?”

“Mm, not quite. When all three of us merge together Heian gets drowned out a little bit—I think it would be more effective if it was just the two of us.”

Eui held her chin in her hands.

“I guess that makes a bit of sense. Doesn’t doing that use up a ton of shadow essence, though? We just used Steps of the Stalker less than a week ago and now you want to drop even more?”

Jia clicked her tongue irritably. Eui was right—shadow essence was a precious resource that Jia had to carefully cultivate within her, and it took a long time to produce. Yue had once told her that the best way to obtain more would be a solar eclipse. She also had the flower that housed the original panther spirit that Heian had fragmented from, but it felt wrong to use it. She shrugged helplessly.

“I still think it’s worth trying. What do you think, Heian?”

Jia looked down at the little cat spirit clinging to the hem of her robes. Heian looked up at Jia and nodded once.

“Show!”

She even used her words! Well, word. It was progress. Eui sighed, shaking her head ruefully.

“Alright. Ancestors know it’s impossible to change your mind once you’ve made a decision. I’ll be right here to support you.”

“Thanks Eui!”

Jia gave her girlfriend a quick peck on the lips before sitting back down with Heian in her lap. She closed her eyes and began to meditate, and Heian copied the motions. Jia withdrew her domain tightly to envelop her and Heian. Drawing a thread of shadow essence up from the depths of her dantian, Jia allowed it to spread out through her domain as Heian did the same. Heian’s manifestation grew transparent and sank into Jia’s body, and Jia felt the essence that made up Heian spread through her body and domain—matching her own shadow essence.

The results were almost immediate—Jia’s hair and fur turned black, and when she opened her eyes, the golden irises had turned a bright blue. The huntress blinked a few times to orient herself, stretching her domain back out like a cat waking up from a nap. Her mind was fuzzy as she tried to reconcile the differences between Jia and Heian. She was both and neither, spirit and human, mother and daughter. Rather than confuse herself further, she focused instead on using external elements to center herself.

Eui was next to her—a relationship too complicated for the huntress to put into words, but she loved her. On impulse, the huntress jumped into Eui’s arms and embraced her, purring happily. Eui giggled and returned the embrace as the huntress nuzzled her cheek.

“Hehehe, oh, you are going to be so embarrassed about this later. Can you still talk while in this form? What should I call you?”

The huntress paused, confused. A name? She hadn’t seen the need for one before, but if Eui said so... She tried once again to focus on herself—who she was and what it meant to her. She wanted a name that captured the essence of both parts of herself. Her family name was Lee. It was a stolen name, but stealing things had never bothered her before, and it was hers now. What about her given name? Jia? Heian? The characters didn’t fit together neatly, and she wasn’t clever with names like Rika. She only knew Goryeon names anyway, and the answer came to her in a moment. A Goryeon name that felt right for her.

“Lee Hei!”

Eui blinked in surprise at the sudden outburst.

“Hei? Like just the first character of Heian?”

Lee Hei shook her head.

“No! Just Hei!”

It was tiresome to articulate the concept in words, so she just sent the idea straight to Eui’s mind. Hei meant grace, like the graceful huntress stalking her prey through the night. Hei remembered weaving neatly through Bai Lin’s webs and snatching her stolen spirit fragments away—it had been a lovely meal. She also remembered passing out right afterwards.

“Uh oh...”

Eui was still reeling from the sudden flood of information that Hei had sent her, but her brows snapped together.

“What do you mean ‘uh oh?’ What’s wrong?”

Hei shrugged.

“Nothing, maybe. We have to hurry!”

Lee Hei remembered the purpose of this exercise and quickly produced the writing implements from Jia’s ring. Thankfully, she’d been able to restock on proper ink and paper since her return to civilization—no more blood and bark talismans. With practiced ease, she infused her brush and ink with her body’s natural shadow ki and scribed a fresh talisman with a few easy strokes. For a moment, she was worried that the technique might not be useful to her Heian half, but the act of infusing a piece of herself into her writing made perfect sense. Then, sensing the strain of her merged form beginning to take hold, Hei held up her talisman and willed the mana in the air around her domain through it.

It was a simple talisman—one of the easiest ones to create, a mana shield. The shadow element interacted strangely with the spell, forming a shield of shadow that hid her presence like Steps of the Stalker did—without moving part of herself into the realm of spirits to do so. More importantly, Lee Hei had an epiphany. It wasn’t that Heian didn’t understand how to use magic, it was Jia who had been mistaken! The mana in her domain was as much a part of her as the essence within her soul. For Heian, who normally existed as a part of Jia’s domain, there was functionally no difference between her casting a spell and Jia doing it.

Perhaps she could inhabit a specialized vessel like the shikigami did, but Heian didn’t want that. As much as she enjoyed existing, Lee Hei didn’t want to take Jia’s vessel either. She wanted Heian to have her own body, formed from her own soul. No matter how long it took, she was willing to wait. A sudden feeling of dizziness told Lee Hei that her time was up. Rather than allow herself to fall unconscious as she had in the fight with Bai Lin, she simply closed her eyes and meditated for a moment, carefully extricating Heian from her mind until her thoughts became clear.

Jia opened her eyes to find that Heian had returned to her lap while she had somehow ended up in Eui’s—who had happily wrapped her arms around Jia in a comforting embrace.

“Well that was fun. I’m really looking forward to teasing you about it later.”

Jia blushed, recalling her rather cat-like behavior from a moment ago.

“N-not a word of this to anybody!”

Eui grinned mischievously.

“I wouldn’t dream of it. Besides, it’s not like you wiggled your butt in the air in front of hundreds of people.”

Jia buried her bright red face in her hands while Eui giggled madly at her plight. After calming down, Eui shifted her attention to Heian, who was happily relaxing in Jia’s lap.

“So how about you? Did you figure something out while you were making your mom embarrass herself?”

Heian nodded excitedly.

“Yes! I can do magic! Like this!”

Jia felt the mana in her domain seemingly moving of its own accord, empowering one of the talismans she kept hidden inside her robes. Eui threw Jia and Heian off of her as she was struck by a sudden bolt of lightning—thankfully one of the much weaker shock spells—causing her hair to frizz out of control.

“Ow fuck! Oh, you little shit, get over here!”

Jia giggled delightedly as Eui chased Heian around the room. She felt like she’d grown to understand her little spirit-daughter more during their time as Lee Hei. ‘Lee Hei’... Jia grew pensive as she considered that she might have grown to understand herself a little bit better as well.