When she and Kazue had gently laid their hands on Svetlana's core, Moriko had slid into a ditative state to help facilitate the flow of information between her earring and her ring of core matrix, not unlike when she'd helped channel Mordecai through Kazue's core when they'd first t, but with a lot more involvent. Had it only been a year and a half ago now? So much had happened since then, and she’d changed and grown so much. Moriko pushed her own thoughts and mories away and turned her attention back to Svetlana's core. She found the subtle swirls of light in the ice blue of her core to be an excellent ditative focus.
Much of the information was unintelligible — data presented as equations, values, and images — but it wasn't entirely unfamiliar to her. She recognized at least the general shape of the data, such as which blobs were information about materials, and which ones were about creatures, but even that much was only because of how much she'd 'overheard' between Kazue and Mordecai's cores.
At first, it was difficult to just let the information flow, as part of her wanted to examine or think about many of the things passing through her consciousness, but she eventually achieved the right stage of her ditative trance and could just help the information move through the outskirts of her consciousness.
The longer she held that state, the easier it beca to just be there and observe. After a while, Moriko found the state so stable that she could add her own information to so of the data that was flowing by, such as the mory of a fight or her impressions of one of the inhabitant types. She didn't think about the subject; she rely attached what was already inside her without interrupting the flow of information.
Combined with hearing the instructions that Kazue was giving Svetlana, being part of the information stream allowed Moriko to form a fairly cohesive picture of everything that was happening with their new friend. She could even hear the occasional echo of Svetlana's responses to Kazue.
After half an hour or so had passed, Moriko finally began to feel the first faint hints of strain from holding on to the trance while also channeling the flow of information and the energy that carried the information. This didn't bother her much — doing sothing new like this was bound to push her limits. At least, it didn't bother her until it started to notably affect her ntal state.
Objectively, she was handling the information stream better than ever, passing it along at ever increasing speeds while reflexively adding her own relevant information, even information that she hadn't realized that she knew. However, the stream felt slower than ever to her, as if ti was being stretched out, and her awareness of the world was breaking into distinct parts that Moriko had to recombine manually, such as matching what she heard to what she was seeing.
Eventually, Moriko realized that she was also feeling a strange sort of pain. If it was pain — she didn't have any words to properly describe what she was feeling, but pain seed closest. That was worrying, but her role as a conduit for the cores was important for making Kazue's job a lot easier, and there were so many little things that Svetlana needed help with.
She did her best to isolate the discomfort to ensure that it did not interfere with her task, when she was surprised to realize that at so point it had already stopped being. The part of her that was passing on the information was acting entirely independently now, almost separate from the rest of her mind, which was very strange.
Then Moriko realized that she was purely observing that process now; stopping it was an option that she didn't have. Now real fear awoke in her, and she reached for her link to Kazue and Mordecai, only to find it missing. Panic blood, and she tried to break out of her trance, but that was out of her control, too. Everything was being taken over by whatever was now acting as the conduit between the cores.
Panic turned into fury as she ntally attacked that connection, attempting to wrestle back control over those parts of herself. The conduit broke as this other being reacted, apparently startled by her presence, before attacking back with equal fury, as if Moriko was the intruder.
A wave of healing energy flooded through her, touched by the warmth of the sun, but that energy also flowed through her foe, and both her mind and the other were suddenly wracked with agony as their very selves felt like they were trying to pierce and grow into each other.
They were both stunned and struggled to recover while the pain partially subsided. It still felt like the other was piercing her, but the other seed to feel the sa way, and both halted in confusion. Moriko heard Bellona say sothing, followed by Thunder's panicked voice, and then Mordecai replied right before her familiar snuggled against her and she was wrapped in Mordecai's aura, a sense of warmth and security blanketing her.
And the other? Mutual confusion again, but she could also hear Kazue and Moriko talking to the other, telling her to remain calm, that Mordecai was bringing her ho and that everything was going to be fixed, but that she had to hold herself together.
No, that she had to hold on to herself. To her other self.
The implications were overwhelming and extrely confusing, but also clear. This other was also herself. Other self, the phrase she'd heard Mordecai and Kazue use so many tis. The 'how' was beyond her, either of her, but the instructions they were receiving, that her other self was now making sure Moriko could hear clearly, were explicit about what they needed to do. They needed to hold on to each other, hold themselves in balance, no matter how hard it got. Nothing could be allowed to change until she was told otherwise; both of her selves needed to remain as stable as possible.
There was no room to ask questions or ponder what was happening. Moriko was still ntally grappling with her other self, but this ti they were simply holding on to each other, balancing the pain between them, and trying to keep anything more from happening. Despite this, there was growing pressure around and between them, trying to crush them into each other even while it was trying to rip them apart.
Reality tunneled down to just the awareness of these two pieces of her, struggling to hold on to each other as they both suffered through ever-increasing pain and pressure. She had no more awareness of ti, but it felt like a small eternity before she finally heard Mordecai whispering to her, promising her that it was all right, that she could let go now. Kazue and Mordecai's cores were saying the sa thing to her other self.
Letting go was hard — Moriko could feel a terrifying void pulling at her, threatening to tear her away from everything, but Mordecai and Kazue were promising that everything would be well, and she trusted her husband and wife completely. So Moriko and herself let go of each other.
Agony seared through her and obliterated her existence.
Nothingness.
"Moriko?" Kazue's voice.
"We're right here, you're safe now." Mordecai's voice.
Quiet and soft, but close, and clearer than she'd ever heard them before. They were right there; she could feel their presence touching her, but she couldn't feel their bodies. She wanted to see them, but she couldn't open her eyes or move at all. She couldn't even feel her body to try to move it.
"She's awake," Kazue said with relief, "but, um, when I woke up like this, I already had my avatar. I had ti to figure out my focus. I don't know what to do."
"I'm the opposite," Mordecai said. "My focus was the first way I knew how to sense the world. Hmm. Moriko, can you hear us?"
Of course she could hear them, but she couldn't say anything; she couldn't even feel her mouth or her body breathing or anything. How was she supposed to reply? Oh, wait, her soul link, of course... but sothing was different. It was there, but it didn't reach anywhere? No, it did, but it reached an impossibly short distance. Like they were inside of her. Or she was inside of them.
"Did I die?" she finally managed to ask, focusing her thoughts across the link.
"No," Mordecai replied with relief, "or at least, not exactly. You're not going to be leaving when you have a new body, or rather, not all of you will. But I think we're going to have to change so of our symbology to include your color more completely."
An image flashed into her mind of the Azeria core, only it was different. Half of the seam between purple and gold had a stripe of red; a stripe of red that was slowly growing wider, and the entire sphere was growing in size to accommodate the red portion.
"The mana for your part of the core is going to set our next zone behind by months," Kazue said in a teasing tone, then more softly, "Welco ho."
Her recent mories started to return as she processed this, and how she had been interrupted by sothing else in her mind trying to wrest away her connection to Mordecai and Kazue.
No, she'd been trying to take control back; the other had been the one who had stolen it.
Conflicting mories pushed against each other, each set trying to vie for dominance between two different points of view.
"They're both you," Mordecai said, interrupting the chaos building inside of her, "they were always both you, and from each of your perspectives, both tales are true. There was simply you and another you in the sa body, copied between flesh and newly-born crystal. You'll always have both sets of mories, but when we recreate your body as an avatar, there will be two of you again. Your core, and your avatar."
"I'm a core now..." Moriko said slowly. That was what she had already realized they'd implied, but she hadn't been able to quite believe it.
"Yes," Kazue said, "but, um, that seed rather traumatic. When the next reset cos, we think you should probably resist having your body manifested just yet. I think you might want to take ti to understand being a core and get used to stuff like how to use your focus."
Her focus? Hmm. Moriko already knew how to form a strong mind's eye to examine herself; could she just... "Oh, that was easy," she said as the world ca into focus.
In all directions at once. "Or not." That was new in an entirely different way. Being aware of things in all directions wasn't new, but had been more like hearing. This was seeing in all directions, and everything was in the center of her focus at once; there was no peripheral vision.
That took a little while to sort out, but only relative to the speed of her conversation with Mordecai and Kazue. All of her ntal training was needed to help her handle her new perspective, and she could feel how her core was designed to handle this way of experiencing the world; it was just her mind that needed to catch up with her physical capabilities.
Once that was done, she had the ti and concentration to pay attention to the area around their core.
The exhausted, torn-up-looking dragon had to be Mordecai's avatar. Especially as he was still cradling their core with a very worried-looking Satsuki hovering over him with Sparks still wrapped up in her tails. That was sort of adorable; it was rare to see the nine-tail so completely open with her softer emotions. Then Thunder and Lightning both bit at her tails to try to make her let go. Moriko let out a ntal sigh as Satsuki slowly turned to level a glare at the hatchling dragon, the force of her will quelling both heads of the energetic hatchling. When both looked sufficiently cowed, Satsuki let the hatchling go.
Hmm. Moriko was distracted from the show by a thought: shouldn't her original body be here? Not that she was certain she wanted to know what her headless corpse would look like.
Huh — how did she know her corpse would be headless? Oh, Mordecai's core had already cleaned up her body and deposited all of her stuff in their chambers, and so she simply knew as part of their shared knowledge. That was nice.
Shouldn't Satsuki have blood on her or sothing? She was pretty close when everything happened. Moriko swung her focus around Satsuki to get a better look, even if she was aware that she could see all of Satsuki at the sa ti. That all-around vision worked for seeing all sides of things too, though that was harder to really process properly, at least, for now.
Then she dodged away, startled, as Satsuki swatted at her with a tail. What?
"Hello Moriko," Satsuki said as she looked at Moriko's focus with a small smile. "I'm glad to see that you've recovered this much already, but you are going to need to learn to be a bit more discreet. It's not polite to hover and dart about like a mosquito looking to take a bite."
Whoops. Maybe she had gotten carried away. "Um, Mordecai, could you please tell her I'm sorry? I got wrapped up in the new experience."
Mordecai smiled up at Moriko's focus, then looked at Satsuki. "She apologizes for having gotten distracted by exploring with her new senses and not thinking about propriety."
Eh, close enough. That was a very Mordecai way of saying the sa thing.
"I feel like I should be jealous of how fast you are adapting," Kazue's core said, "but I'm mostly just happy that you are taking this so well. I thought you'd be more shocked than this."
"Silly fox," Moriko said, "I've been trying to accomplish a lesser version of this for a while; I just never imagined that I was going to beco a part of the core. Becoming a Faerie Queen with you put on more even footing, but I always wanted to do more with the nexus side of things. How did this happen, though?"
"I think it goes back more than a year," Mordecai said. "Starting with the day you were ditating while in contact with our combined core when the daily reset occurred, and the autonomous aspect of the reset process tried to rebuild you while you were already alive. Then all the ways you've been pushing yourself to interact as if part of the nexus, and the final touch seems to have been the way you were acting as a conduit for the information we were sending to Svetlana. I'm not entirely certain when it sparked core matrix into growing inside of your brain, but it's going to be an interesting problem to work on."
That reminded her. "Speaking of more than a year, I think we can agree that Deidre is safe now, and everything is pretty stable. I did say that we'd revisit terms after a year's ti, and while maybe it's not quite the ti to talk over everything, I think we can agree on one thing. Even if we can't fully claim her as a raid boss per Kazue's initial plan, I'm not sure it's fair to make Satsuki wait that long, even if so specific things will need to wait until then." She was watching Satsuki fussing over Mordecai as he returned to his normal form. Sparks flitted about, still confused and worried, and Moriko sent soothing thoughts his way. It was nice to know that connection remained intact after that and her familiar remained linked to her soul.
"Agreed," said Kazue, "though I am feeling a bit nervous about the rest of this topic."
Mordecai was silent for a long mont as he thought, then he said, "Alright, this does seem like a good ti, especially as I have a perfect way to tell her while letting her then approach when she's ready."
His avatar closed his eyes for a mont, then said, "Satsuki, I was wondering if you could do a favor?"
"Of course."
"I don't think I am going to feel like moving for a bit, so I was wondering if you could take this down to the dark lake? I am certain that Lady Cliodhna will know you are coming." He presented the soul stone holding Dimitri's soul.
Satsuki's eyes went wide with surprise, but she quickly recovered and smiled. "Of course, my dear, I'd be happy to. Why, the crystal might even arrive there unhard!" Her smile teased the threat, but Moriko had no doubt that Satsuki would be properly careful.
"Thank you, Tiny Storm."
You'd have thought that a true lightning bolt had struck Satsuki, given the way that she froze and seed practically rooted to the spot.
"Is sothing wrong, my little rain cloud?" Mordecai said with a smirk.
"You— your mories of us, you've unlocked them?" she whispered.
"In part, and in ti, in full. There are a lot of mories in here to unlock still, but there's no reason to not allow myself to rember more now."
With the way Satsuki kissed Mordecai, Moriko was pretty certain that she was fighting with herself to not simply take Mordecai right then and there. It was still a rather entertaining show, and Moriko took so ntal notes while also thinking that Satsuki was going to need to eventually let the man breathe again.
When Satsuki was done practically ravishing Mordecai, she stood up and straightened her robes, then looked briefly at Moriko's focus. "Thank you," she said softly, then slipped away to carry out her quest.
Now, with that taken care of, the earlier thought about claiming Satsuki as a raid boss had stirred up so other ideas. "So, if there are three of us now, does that an we get another share of inhabitants and bosses?"
"Yes, it does," Mordecai's core said. "What are you thinking of?"
"Show how to make soone a raid boss. You said sothing about nodes previously. What do those actually look like?" When she was satisfied with her understanding, Moriko cast her mind out into the network of minds that connected their inhabitants. "There's my favorite sparring partner."
"Mistress Moriko," Betty said, "I take it you are doing well? We all knew when you beca part of the core, and it felt right, but I've been worried about how it happened."
"I'm doing quite well, thank you, and I have a boon for you. After all, I need to make sure that you can keep up with ."
"What do you an..." Betty trailed off as Moriko forged a connection between one of her two raid boss nodes and the usagisune zone boss. "Oh. Thank you, I am honored to accept." Then she grinned. "And I promise to use this power to beat my generous boss black and blue."
Perfect.
After that, it was ti to find her next victim. Or at least, soone who was going to enjoy playing the part of victim.
"Look what we have here, my eldest daughter simply lounging about without a care while her dear mother was fighting for her life."
"Moriko!" Carmilla shouted as she leapt off her couch, where she had been nervously fidgeting as her familiar Udup circled around her, filled with Carmilla's restless energy. "Um, I an, Mother, I am glad that you seem to be doing well."
Being called 'mother' by Carmilla still felt a little weird, but Moriko certainly felt like the more mature one between the two of them, despite Carmilla being at least a few tis older than Moriko. "Have you been having fun with your role as a zone boss?" Moriko asked.
"What? Well, yes," Carmilla admitted, clearly confused by Moriko's sudden line of questioning.
"And you liked being strong enough to beat Silvander, right?"
Carmilla grinned at the mory. "I have to admit, that was a lot of fun."
"Then you will be happy to have more of the nexus's power, yes?"
"I suppose that makes sense— hey wait no don't you dare!" But it was too late; Moriko had already connected her to the second raid boss node, which she couldn't have done if Carmilla's objection was sincere. As much as Carmilla loved playing the part of the lackadaisical faerie swamp witch, part of the reason that she had run away to begin with had been because she had felt that she was not being given any responsibilities of real worth.
And a nexus would always value its raid bosses.
Moriko was really going to enjoy being one of the cores. Oh, how did one make new inhabitant designs?
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