A Jaded Life

Chapter 1322

My eyes flickered open again, a headache pounding in my skull. This had been amongst the least pleasant things I had ever done, maybe even topping that particular list when it came to physical discomfort. Even trying to conceptualise the experience within my own mind ran into issues, namely that I lacked the words to describe what had happened. To make matters worse, I had only a faint idea what had actually happened in a few of those instances, leaving me somewhat confused and a little bit discombobulated.

I had learned a few things regarding myself, the system and the nature of Gods and Souls. Not that I could independently confirm any of those, unless Lady Hecate was willing to share, but I had a few vague ideas about how it all worked. Granted, my realisations could very well be completely wrong and might need to be revised in the future, but they were adequate for the present. And given the amount of pain I was currently in, I wasn’t overly interested in trying again, at least until the pain had faded away.

Possibly the most important takeaway of the whole thing was that the Mother was becoming a real, actual entity, the process somewhat similar to mitosis, though with a few key differences. I was fairly certain that the Mother wouldn’t be a complete copy of me, as only aspects of my being that matched her domain would be copied. Additionally, I was fairly certain that we would never be fully separate; there would always be a level of mental exchange and influence going both ways.

How much the Mother’s existence would keep influencing me was somewhat up in the air, but now that I knew about the influence, I felt that I had a much better chance of avoiding it. Or accept it, it wasn’t as if the Mother was some horrible monster. If anything, having a mainly benevolent entity moderate my more extreme tendencies might be a good thing, at least if it were only an influence rather than outright control.

The process of splitting the Mother off from me seemed to be my own fault, as annoying as that was. By leaving almost every aspect of the divine domain to the Grandmother and my subconsciousness, as indicated by the numerous dreams I had during the last year, I seemed to have initiated that split. My subconsciousness had continued to fill the role of the Mother, gaining power due to my own negligence, and now it was effectively becoming its own thing. I wasn’t sure what to think about that, but I doubted I could stop the process. It had progressed a little too far for that.

But, on the positive side of things, my connection to the Mother seemed to provide me some protection from divine scrutiny. Just how much, and how well the system enforced those protections, I wasn’t sure, but that was the impression I got from things I had perceived in the depths of my being.

If that even were the depths of my being, and not the depths of the being that would eventually split into the Mother and, well, me, as this was getting a little odd.

However, despite the oddities, I now had a somewhat better idea of my place in the world and how it related to the Mother and the divine domain connected to it. Sadly, that place wasn’t something I could readily change, though I felt a little more secure in my self-assessment. And in my understanding of the Mother, though, how this divine mitosis would work in the long-run was a little questionable.

It did, however, make me wonder just a little. If the Mother was effectively born from my being, did that make me the Mother’s mother? Which, effectively, would be the Grandmother, or did this mean I would eventually have to step aside and leave somebody else to become Luna’s mother, even if that somebody else was a different instance, for lack of a better word, of myself? I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel about that, especially when considering another possibility.

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One I had already considered: a way to remove the leash that ties Lia to me, allowing her to become independent and her own person. The leash I had tied into her very being during her creation, and that I had inadvertently tightened and secured every time I fed her blood and Astral Power, wasn’t something that could be removed.

But with the Mother becoming her own being, a being that was, at the moment, still fundamentally a part of me, I could see an opportunity to shift the hand holding Lia’s leash into the Mother’s metaphysical hand. The idea wasn’t without risks; for example, I had no idea what that would mean for Lia’s ability to feed. It was possible that she would need to drain more blood from different sources, effectively forcing her to lurk amongst humans, one of the species she could blend in with, or to continuously hunt for food out in the wild. Maybe she would be able to continue replenishing her powers from places like Jademoon Tower, where I had infused the stones with enough Astral Power that she could feed from the very air as if it were my blood, but I had no idea if that would work.

Or, maybe, she would be able to replenish her powers by simply visiting a shrine to the Mother and drinking in some of the Astral Power the people praying to the Mother within the shrine sacrificed. That would be rather beneficial to her, at least once the Mother had more shrines and a stronger penetration. For now, it seemed that there were only a few shrines. Strangely, some of those shrines I had glimpsed in the time I had experienced my soul were places I had never been to. And yet, those places had shrines dedicated to my divine persona, making me curious just how that image had ended up there. It could only be the ritual that gave people an image of their deity, the one Luna had taught Jess just recently.

Losing track of my mind for a moment, I focused on that idea, briefly tapping into that other half of me, the divine Mother I was now somewhat able to perceive beyond my physical, mental and spiritual being. By tapping into that connected, yet separate, being, I was able to briefly reach out and sense the numerous places and beings the Mother was connected to.

There were a lot more than I had anticipated, though the overall majority was clustered around places where I had travelled through and set up shrines to Lady Hecate. It made me wonder just how that worked. The shrines were dedicated to Lady Hecate, but they were also connected to the Mother, and the Maiden and Crone, for that matter.

Would we eventually replace Lady Hecate in her current role? Would we become her competitors or colleagues?

Or did the Lady plot to subsume Luna, me, and the Grandmother, somehow taking us over in some weird, body-jacking? I had no idea, but I was making a few mental notes to be careful, research that issue, and try to come up with countermeasures, as improbable as either concept was. If an entity as learned, experienced and ancient as Lady Hecate was hatching such a scheme, I doubted I would be able to find some miraculous way to turn her scheme back on her. I would still try, just in case, but I was confident it wouldn’t be easy by any definition of the word.

I considered it much more likely that we would become colleagues of a sort, especially given Lady Hecate's interest in research and new understanding. It made a lot more sense to establish a positive relationship early on, offer aid and assistance without acting overbearing and accidentally smothering any independence.

Looking at it from a certain perspective, Lady Hecate was doing her best to encourage Luna and me to take her place, or to become someone who would be able to take her place, which would effectively mean we could offer her some new understanding.

But which of those two possibilities was the truth, we would only see once the time came. I hoped it would be the second, the cooperative one, or my path might find itself suddenly cut short.

Regaining my focus, I looked through the lens my connection to the Mother provided, and let my gaze sweep across the land, sensing the many people who had prayed to the Mother and received some assistance from her. It was somewhat strange to see just how many people I had helped without ever meaning to. Humbling, too, making me briefly wonder if I had chosen the right path, or if I could have done more by focusing on a single place, establishing myself as some sort of leader and trying to build something. But that just wasn’t me, it wasn’t in my nature.

Maybe that was why the Mother was splitting off from me and becoming her own entity.