Novel A Little Evil Makes Them Cuter (Ch. 1-20)

​

Synopsis:

***'s reincarnation turned out to be a big letdown. Not only it involved losing half of his memories, it also had another huge price attached. The ‘merciful goddess’ who fished him out from the river of souls, wasn’t merciful enough to provide a supply of new bodies free of charge.

Not to mention that his nameless soul wasn't compatible with the fantasy world, making him the only silver elf who was unable to cast the simplest spell. A very poor combination in the world where nearly the entire elven population was enslaved and silver elves were seen as a valuable commodity.

But not all hope was lost. Working directly for a goddess, even a fake one, came with a unique set of privileges. And he gained the access to something that could possibly help with the hard task of rebuilding the elven kingdom... as soon as he figured out the various rules behind each of those nightmarish doors.

**********
**********

Tags:

Adventure; Drama; Fantasy; Psychological; Grimdark; Magic; Reincarnation; Slice of Life; Supernatural; Kingdom Building;

Table of content:

Chapter 1 - The river of souls - forgotten names
Chapter 2 - The river of souls - unbrakable bond
Chapter 3 - The river of souls - patting illusion
Chapter 4 - The river of souls - chaotic
Chapter 5 - The cradle chamber - Crea's side
Chapter 6 - The cradle chamber - unique silver elf
Chapter 7 - The cradle chamber - hell no
Chapter 8 - The cradle chamber - the goddess reasoning
Chapter 9 - The cradle chamber - striving for perfection
Chapter 10 - Reality check - who am I?
Chapter 11 - Reality check - finally honest
Chapter 12 - Reality check - of elves, fairies, and doors
Chapter 13 - Reality check - parasite
Chapter 14 - The world around us - aranea
Chapter 15 - The world around us - surface breach
Chapter 16 - The world around us - the shelter
Chapter 17 - The world around us - mercy
Chapter 18 - Crea's training regime - city hall
Chapter 19 - Crea's training regime - Rinne and Nerion
Chapter 20 - Crea's training regime - talent

I often forget to update the story here after making small corrections. Up to date version can be found here:

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/20336/a-little-evil-makes-them-cuter

 

Spoiler: Chapter 1 - The river of souls - forgotten names

I was submerged in countless soul flames - each representing a separate being, a minuscule part of the eternal river of souls pulled forward by an invisible current. The river had no surface, no bottom, no borders, it seemed to be endless - at least from my limited perspective.

The happiness that came with the realization that death wasn't the end was really short-lived, quickly squashed by a wave of understanding that flooded my mind. It seemed that some knowledge about this posthumous journey was granted to everyone participating in it.

All of the souls in this place were undergoing a gradual removal of their previous life memories and things connected to them such as personality, character, and finally the sense of self. Everything deemed unnecessary was to be cleansed until a pure, untainted soul remained, ready to be reborn.

The souls' reactions to this process varied greatly.

Some soul flames were thrashing around wildly, trying to fight against the inevitable, clinging to their fleeing memories. Some were searching in vain for the people who died before them, wanting to reunite for the last time. Some were wailing in despair, either passively flowing with the current or madly rushing forward to cut short their suffering. Some were calmly preparing for the process of cleansing. And some, bloody red ones, were laughing loudly, happy that there was no eternal damnation awaiting them… although something told me that it wasn't so simple since they were the only ones whose color was clearly distinctive from the bluish rest.

As for me, I was one of the wildly thrashing ones. Doing my best to rein in the fear, and slow down the process of losing memories, or at least offer the meaningless ones first - I had a lot of those.

In my eyes, restoring a soul to its factory settings was no different from being sentenced to eternal oblivion. The reborn person wouldn't be me anymore. I had way too many unfulfilled dreams and unrealized desires to accept this cruel ending without fighting. Especially after I saw that some lucky bastards were able to avoid that outcome.

Numerous smaller and bigger portals were opening all over this shapeless river, offering an alternative to the chosen few who managed to reach them on time. Most of the portals seemed to target only one, specific soul before disappearing, but there were also less discriminating ones that accepted everyone around.

I didn't really care what was on the other side, everything seemed like a better choice than reaching the end of this journey. However, the problem was that I couldn't do much. I lacked both time and power to effectively fight against the current and swim towards one of the short-lasting escape routes.

All I could do was to hold onto my most precious memories, count on luck, and pray that somewhere out there was a merciful god willing to rescue my poor soul.

'Any bored goddess around? A free spot in a white room? Or a king that could use an otherworldly hero? I'm...'

I wanted to add that I was an intelligent, courageous and hardworking soul, one without a flaw, one that could easily tackle the greatest challenges, but lying didn't seem like the best course of action in the current situation.

There were way too many souls to pick from, and mine was by no means special. That was why I quickly started to lower my expectations, hoping to attract someone's attention eventually. Those thoughts doubled as a great anchor to remind me of my core self and tripled as a means of staving off the overwhelming despair.

'I've got no problems with fighting on the 'bad guys' side. I can even start from zero, without any power, in a harsh environment… I can give up on a good looking body… I-I'm f-fine with reincarnating as a normal human, even c-changing my g-gender is acceptable!'

After lowering the bar a few more times, I was on the verge of panicking. There was no guarantee that any of those portals would respond to my internal voice, and it was getting harder and harder to keep my sense of self intact.

'Eternal gratitude, eternal servitude… damn it, I'm fine with eternal celibacy! I offer everything. Just please… someone... help me!'

To my surprise, as if responding to this desperate proposition, a massive portal opened merely two meters away. There was only one huge problem - millions of tiny flickers of blue light representing the countless souls, all rushing towards it. It looked like I wasn't the only one prepared to risk everything in exchange for salvation.

Despite my best efforts at wiggling my soul flame, I barely made any progress among the sea of souls, unable to break through the wall formed by my competitors. But not everyone had this problem. Some souls were clearly bigger and stronger than the others, easily pushing average ones like mine out of their way. It felt as if a giant hand pulled me back by the shoulder, which was strange since we were all composed of the same incorporeal flame. They were screaming something, but the cacophony of sounds coming from everywhere made it an impossible feat to distinguish each individual voice, and the few that somehow reached me were in an unknown language.

The big portal that loomed nearby only welcomed the stronger ones; any other that touched it was repelled with great force. One of such rejects swished through the crowd, bounced off a few souls until it finally collided with mine and stopped.

It didn't hurt, but felt… bizarre, as if a small girl fell right into my arms and stayed in my embrace. We somehow became connected, or merged, or joined… it was hard to find the correct way to describe this feeling. Not entirely two in one, neither two that became one, but half and a half that somehow made two.

A larger murky blue flame with a smaller silverish blue one protruding from its side.

Thanks to the newfound mental connection we shared, I instantly realized that she was doing exactly the same thing as me, desperately protecting the core of her being while sacrificing various other memories. All in order to slow down the cleansing process. But she was about to give up after her big lucky chance turned into a spectacular rejection. Her resignation seemed to speed up the memory leakage.

Finding someone who was in a worse mental state than me helped to regain a lot of my own fortitude and made me realize just how important the proper state of mind was in this place. The fact that her soul was that of a young girl, probably half my own age, also played a significant role.

'Don't give up!' I sent her a mental shout, hoping that she understood my thoughts.

'...?!'

'Throw away your fear and despair, feed them to the river together with other negative thoughts. Get rid of them and let me help you regain clarity.' It wasn't as easy as I made it sound, but my message was filled with additional wordless explanation and support.

It was enough to rekindle her resistance.

I helped her achieve a superficially calm state of mind, reinforce her mind's defenses against the external influence, and calm down. Then she started probing around the outer layers of my mind, the same way I did inside hers.

It was a bit ticklish.

'Who…' She didn't finish this question, realizing that neither of us could answer it anymore. No matter how much we wanted to protect some precious things like our names, they were already gone by the time we regained consciousness inside the river of souls. However, we could still focus on retaining the most fundamental sense of self.

'Why…, how...? I see.' As soon as she asked, I provided the answers by using the connection between our souls. It was a lot faster compared to communicating with thoughts alone but lacked in sharpness and felt unnatural. 'Can I?' A lot of mental content was packed within those two words.

She politely asked for permission to further probe inside my mind and in exchange offered the access to the deeper parts of hers. There were two reasons why she decided on this approach.

One, such permission wasn't even required, it was just a mere courtesy. She was going to scan my mind in depth with or without it, unwilling to cooperate with a random suspicious soul before checking it for potential sources of danger. Nevertheless, she still found it proper to notice me about it first.

Two, it was done in order to see if this would somehow help us to resist the cleansing influence.

'Go on.' I gave her clear permission, and we began investigating each other.

A lot of memories connected with places we came from were already gone. Still, my remaining ones were enough to give her a slight rush of panic interwoven with amazement and disbelief when she realized that my soul originated from a completely different world - one without magic, one a lot more technologically advanced, and one where only humans lived.

That was also the moment when she finally took notice of the race I used to be a member of and sent me a deep wave of repulsion mixed with anger. In the world she came from, silver elves and humans were bitter enemies. On top of that, the former were losing.

The soul link between us began to tremble significantly, it was connected with a sudden premonition that severing it entirely would be a very foolish choice. Each of us made a quick decision to avoid that outcome if possible.

Luckily, due to the incredible sights she kept discovering in my memories, she managed to convince herself that my previous race was an entirely different one, not even slightly connected to the humans from her world. She HAD to believe that it was a different race. Because for her, the mere thought of her noble soul being half merged with one of those 'worthless dirty human trashes' was inexcusable.

I also learned a few things about her origin and not only. The proud elven girl never saw me as her equal, and now the chasm between us was a little wider.

It was also caused by the fact that after sending me numerous images of great forests from her childhood, beautiful elven cities in which she grew up, and wonders of nature that took her breath, she still failed to obtain a truly amazed, full of disbelief reaction from my side. It might have been a different story if I saw them in person, but in this format, it wasn't much different to admiring screenshots from various games.

'You really think souls have races?' I sent her a direct thought message to change the topic since she stubbornly kept flooding my mind with something like her personal collection of national geographic pictures of the year.

'Can't help it. But don't worry, I think your race is an equivalent of normal elves from my world. There's no way those human barbarians could achieve so much. By the way… what's national geographic?'

She knew that I found her reaction highly racist, but dismissed this accusation with a thought that it wasn't something that a person who lived in a world with only one dominant race could possibly understand.

There was no point in arguing, so I wanted to move on and answer the letter part of her question… but I was stopped by the nature of this place. One second of inattention was enough to make us forget about whatever it was she asked about.

The overly familiar sensation that a memory which was here just a moment ago slipped through our fingers was a really nasty one. Neither of us knew anymore if it was an important or a worthless one, and this time it hit her stronger than me.

'Calm down, it's ok.' As soon as I felt that she was on the verge of panicking I began helping to refocus her mind. 'Don't worry about it, instead, put more effort into wiggling your soul flame. Don't make me do all the work.'

'Hah! I stopped only for a moment, and we are already flowing with the current just like the rest. Your work ain't worth much... but thank you…'

When one of us was close to losing against the overwhelming feelings of terror and hopelessness, the other helped to calm down and purge the negative emotions. It wasn't the best solution, but it worked... for now.

Thanks to the combined effort of our soul flames we managed to slow down our posthumous journey significantly. Two or three times we even broke through an incoming wall of souls, not allowing them to push us down the river. That bought us some extra time, now we only needed a convenient portal to open nearby.

 

Spoiler: Chapter 2 - The river of souls - unbreakable bond

We went back to scanning our minds.

When the silver elven girl started going through the first part of the things I was trying to retain at all cost, she erupted with a wave of admiration and pure joy. She immediately told me to move my attention to the things she was protecting herself, it turned out that many of our core dreams, values, and experiences were highly compatible with each other, such as:

She dreamt of having a dependable older brother, while I always wanted a cute younger sister.

We both yearned for a true friend, a person who would always unconditionally stay by our side. At the same time, we looked down on lukewarm relations that were enough for most people to abuse the noble term 'friends'.

For us, a promise was something that had to be honored at all cost, a person who didn't value promises wasn't worth talking to.

Serious trust issues were plaguing our previous lives and were at the root of many mistakes we regretted greatly. While she surrounded herself with slaves that were unable to disobey, I chose the path of solitude. Each of them led to the overwhelming feeling of loneliness, apathy, and resignation.

We were both convinced that given a second chance in life we would do much better, easily becoming the greatest and most powerful among our peers. While she wanted to find glory and fame on the battlefield, I craved for power and authority connected with ruling others.

She was extremely interested in the remains of my technological knowledge, while I found her magical and fantasy filled experiences fascinating.

On top of that, it turned out that each of us was making the best use of the current situation to selectively remove the most significant flaws of our respective characters - especially the parts that we hated and that literally ruined our previous lives. Of course, not all of them and not completely. We feared that removing too much wouldn't be any different from reaching the river's end and being reborn as a new person. As for which parts exactly… it was hard to say. For example, only a general disgust for procrastination was left in my mind.

This made me realize that I already wasn't the same anymore...

'Neither am I. Don't worry, I will bring you back if you change too much. I've got a great memory, and your soul is a very simple one.' The elven girl helped to redirect my mind away from the incoming wave of fear, although it was hard to take her thoughts seriously. I bet she already forgot about the previous two times when she had used the exact same phrase to reassure me.

However, not every value, dream, and memory each of us treated as important was readily accepted by the other.

'Quite disturbing…' A wave of distaste and aversion was sent my way when she moved to the second part of the things I was sheltering in my core.

'You're not much better.' I wasn't the only one who tried to smuggle elements that the other party deemed as highly controversial, immoral and somewhat sick.

In her case, the non-compatible elements were connected with her racist and slightly sadistic tendencies, her slaves didn't have an easy life. She was also bloodthirsty and rarely accepted apologies of people who wronged her without inflicting a lot of bodily harm upon them first. I doubt that me getting on her good side would be possible if not for our merged situation, and even that would be unrealistic if she still was the same person as before.

Her previous self was mentally unstable, suffered from extreme mood swings, and demanded absolute obedience. She hated those elements and cut them off right after finding herself in this place, leaving behind only their shadow as a reminder to prevent herself from ever again falling into that atrocious state.

On the other hand, hidden within her core were also some really meek and heartwarming dreams that easily won me over. Under the spiky and warped exterior was a small, scared girl who wanted someone to hug her tightly and hold her hand while she was falling asleep. But while doing it, one had to be careful not to hurt her pride or embarrass her publicly. Otherwise, that would be a very costly embrace and five broken fingers.

In my case, the non-compatible elements were connected with everything that was cute, twin-tailed, flat chested and small. My desire for an adorable younger sister wasn't exactly a pure one. Nevertheless, I wanted to retain this part of my old self since it was relatively harmless. I was perfectly content with hugging and patting alone. For the proud elven girl, it was hard to understand and slightly alarming, but it wasn't the thing she found the most disturbing.

I also left an echo of my previous self to stop myself from rolling back to the same horrendous state. It was composed only of four words:

Weak. Lazy. Boring. Victim.

I couldn't recall how exactly each of them influenced my previous self, but I remembered that hiding in my own room, limiting the connection with the outside world to the minimum, and unconstructively wasting time in front of a computer screen, wasn't a good long-term solution. After a few years of such 'existence', everything lost all meaning, leading to a state of apathy and depression. However, this wasn't the thing that the elven girl deemed as sick and controversial.

On the contrary, she mostly ignored my previous state with a message that doubled as a pat on the back 'that's not you anymore'. After which she went back to browsing through my memories for an explanation of various technical terms such as 'computer screen'.

She wanted to help me realize that just like her, I already started moving in the opposite direction to my previous self. We could only hope that it wouldn't turn out to be a different type of a dead end.

Strangely, the thing that she found the most off-putting and barely tolerable, to the point of weakening the link between our souls, was the fact that I was trying to preserve my collector's heart. Collecting books, games, and especially anime figurines was always one of my greatest joy and passion. Given a chance, I wouldn't think twice before starting a new figurine collection in a new world-

'Figurines?' She didn't wait for me to answer this question and found the explanation by herself. 'Oooh~… so those weren't enslaved fairies. This explains a lot.'

'Enslaved fairies?' I asked to refocus her mind on that topic and scanned it for an answer, it was the fastest way to convey a large amount of information.

In her eyes, the existence of fairies and only one dominant race in my world weren't mutually exclusive. When she saw the static memories of my figurine collection, she thought that those were enslaved fairies. On top of that, she was convinced that I forced them to wear skimpy outfits and did perverted things to them… well, I kind of did, but to plastic figurines and not living beings. No wonder she had sent me that huge wave of distaste and aversion.

'You know… the fact that those weren't living beings but inanimate objects raises an entirely different set of questions and problems.' Underneath the layer of chuckling and mocking was a large dose of relief. She understood that figurines were something akin to dolls and relaxed.

Apparently keeping slaves was fine as long as they belonged to one of the lower races such as humans, but only a truly corrupted and cruel person would do such atrocious thing like enslaving and collecting innocent fairies. Her double standards were irritating.

It added fuel to my desire to pay her back for that mocking comment.

I picked one of her most embarrassing memories, planning to voice it and make fun of her, but the proud girl noticed my intentions and sent me a short warning 'don't'. In her eyes, tolerating the fact that I knew all about her remaining memories, and treating me like a member of the elven race, were already the biggest concessions she could provide me with. She was prepared to pay any price to avoid further shaming - including cleansing her entire mind and dragging us both into the oblivion's embrace.

In other words, she wanted me to silently accept her teasing as any retaliation from my side would cross the line.

'If you truly want to stop hiding your insecurity by surrounding yourself with obedient slaves and make your dream of finding a true friend come true, then you will have to learn how to take a hit or two. I won't be able to stay on the receiving end all the time.' Interwoven into my message was the importance of accepting another person as her equal.

It was only thanks to the power of soul link and her craving to change that I was able to convey this adequately. Her previous self would never take it to heart, especially if I were to use the traditional verbal methods, instead, she would probably order the slaves to execute me on the spot.

The result of poking a hole in her once impregnable barrier was immediate.

'You may be right... Having someone to tease me back from time to time may be rather fun… A-anyway! I will think about it some more if we will get out from here... together.'

She was unwilling to raise her hope to such an ungodly level as obtaining a 'true friend', and the idea of us being equals clashed strongly with her deeply rooted selfishness and racism. Nevertheless, her soul flame moved to snuggle a bit closer to mine.

We learned a lot about the other without even a tiny bit of falsehood mixed within. At the same time, we understood that the dark side each of us treasured was a vital part that made us unique. And even if every minute spent submerged in the river of souls changed us slightly, we protected each other from drifting too far.

She was finally ready to take the first step in the process of true acceptance, one I had already made.

The soul bond between us changed. It stopped being a shaky, temporary connection that was only created because our soul flames were somewhat compatible - hers literally made a dent into mine. The bond evolved into an unbreakable chain that was going to permanently connect our souls even if we were to be separated… although there was still a lot of room for improvements, especially on her side where it looked more like a barely visible thread.

Still, it was an unbreakable barely visible thread.

The desperate afterlife situation didn't really change, and yet the pressure of the incoming doom was slightly easier to withstand.

 

All's fine now.

 

Seems really good so far write me some more chapters

Edit: Read the second chapter I would have totally saved my memories of lolis too.

 

I will say that it is pretty good from the foundations of it but need to have more things to gain interest or
else it might became boring to the audience..

 

it's only been two chapters there is only so many things you can cram in without making it feel info dump-y

 

No, I understand but I am just giving advice
So she/he won't focus on one scenario too much..

 

ahh I see. That's cool. I didn't want you to discourage them cause I want to read more chapters xd

 

Spoiler: Chapter 3: The river of souls - patting illusion

During the time we spent on investigating each other some portals opened relatively close. We tried to reach every single one of them, hoping that they were willing to accept an immense amount of soul flames. But our struggles were in vain. In most cases, only the bastards who were lucky enough to have a portal spawn in front of their non-existent noses managed to jump in before it closed. In the remaining situations, we were unable to break through a wall of souls who for one reason or another decided to stick together and make the afterlife difficult for others.

Some of those moving obstacles were hell-bent on dragging down the river as many soul flames as they could. What was the cause of their behavior? I had no idea, and this was neither the place nor the time to investigate it.

Nevertheless, if we wanted to maintain the proper state of mind, it was essential to fight against the odds every single time. Especially when the alternative - staying in one place and counting on luck - wasn’t a viable option, it would make us too susceptible to losing focus.

‘Next one is ours!’ I tried to raise the morale after yet another failure, each of them hit my companion harder than me.

‘...’

But it didn’t work.

For the first time, she had completely lost her mind’s focus and slipped back into the depressed state. It nearly caused me to panic as well, but there was still a way to bring her back and avert the worst-case scenario - an idea that was born when that stronger soul had ‘grabbed’ my shoulder.

Instead of reassuring her with words alone, I decided to give her an illusion of fulfilling one of her many small dreams. A taste of what she could obtain if we managed to escape from this place.

I focused on shaping my soul flame. The power of the mind was overwhelming in this place, it was possible to simulate the feeling of my hand gently caressing her silky hair. Albeit It took a few seconds to make it feel as real as possible, it finally worked.

The unexpected sensation snatched her from the confused state and helped reclaim the sense of self. I was also learning how to retake some of the memories that seemed to be already lost, yet were still around. It was a bit like collecting spilled groceries back into the bag.

‘What’s that warm feeling? It feels really good… please don’t stop.’ Underneath the request to keep patting her head was the request to help with clearing her mind from the negative thoughts. She actually wanted to voice the latter harshly and hide the former inside but messed it up.

‘For once your words and feelings are harmonized. You should do it more often, it’s rather cute.’ Smoothing out her hair was fun, and I kept adding various little details like the texture of my hand or-

‘Wait… what?! Forget about it!’ The proud silver elf immediately shattered the illusion after regaining full clarity of mind, negating all the work I put into it. ‘Give it to me!’ She demanded as soon as she remembered the content of the message she had sent. Her goal in wanting to wrestle my side of this memory wasn’t to feed it to the cleansing process. Although, me forgetting all about it would be a welcomed bonus.

‘I refuse. It’s also my new treasure, and it’s only a fair price for bringing you back.’ This message was filled with the conviction that the true importance of shared memories lied in actually sharing them with others and not collecting all of their pieces for yourself. Although, I wasn’t sure if a transfer of an entire memory was even possible, but taking into the account the nature of this place it probably was.

In return, she sent me a really graphic presentation of flogging one of her slaves for a much smaller offense. Attached to it was a short label ‘your fate will be worse’. In exchange, I sent her a compilation of gore scenes from various movies with a description ‘you’ve got much to learn’.

To our surprise, the memories were more vivid and precise than ever before. Possibly due to the fact that we were both focusing on them, or maybe because we were getting better at using our soul bond. Whatever the reason, it improved their quality so much that even I was amazed. The images in those memories probably looked better than the source material.

In the meantime, we suffered two more failures. One portal turned out to be a personal one, closing right after a single soul was sucked inside, and the other was just too far.

While hectoliters of blood and tens of kilograms of spilled guts wouldn’t do much against a desensitized modern person, it was more than enough to shock her into silence. Especially when she found it hard to tell the difference between reality and fiction.

True, it didn't take her long to discover that all of those brutal scenes were fake, but she couldn’t even begin to imagine how they were created since I as well lacked this particular information. Instead, she tried to substitute the missing elements with the knowledge from her world. Which often resulted in such thoughts as ‘just how many slaves were killed during the production of that movie thing?’, or ‘... suffocating someone with his own intestines?! Disgusting… yet innovative’, or ‘which part of that is fake?! That headless slave for sure ain't a wooden doll!’.

‘Hmm… you’ve made a foolish choice by teaching me all those various techniques. I will make sure to test them out on you. By the way, what’s a tv? How is it connected with that zombie girl who came out from the well?’ Her death threats weren’t effective, not in this situation, and not when I could easily tell that she was sending them only to uphold the spirit of our mental wrestling match, while in reality, she wanted to watch more scenes from the movies.

I would love to take her to a cinema and show her the real thing. Simply watching her reactions would be worth the trouble of developing a dimensional travel technology. And I would finally have someone to watch the horror movies with, she proved to be strangely resistant against that genre.

‘You still want my part of that memory?’ I asked, suspecting that she already forgot why we started doing this.

‘What memory?’

‘The patting illusion.’

‘Oh... fine. You may keep it, but- You felt that?!’ The elven girl tried to send me something inside her message, but I was unable to comprehend the attachment. It seemed to be a voice, or an emotion, or a warning, or a set of orders… whatever it was, my mind lacked something essential, something that was required to fully decipher that thing. I only knew that it got my companion really excited and full of hope. ‘We need to move! It’s our only chance!’

It was hard to probe inside her mind for a further explanation, maybe because her entire focus was converted into the movements of her soul flame. For her, it was all or nothing, and since I had no other ideas, I decided to follow her lead.

‘Faster! Put every ounce of your reserves into moving!’ She urged, unhappy that I still had a part of my focus directed to keeping my core self intact, and to a certain extend hers as well. ‘I can’t miss this chance! Don’t make me regret taking you with me!’

‘No. We will break into pieces if this turns out to be a false alarm.’ My old habit kicked in and I refused her request, unwilling to trust her to such a degree. I felt that it was petty and stupid, but without knowing what exactly caused this sudden change in her behavior - even if she was convinced that it was our only hope - I was unable to break through this particular mental barrier.

Yet, I had no other alternatives to offer and knew that we were slowly reaching our limits.

‘Idiot! Why do you keep such a glaring flaw in your character?! This is one of the ‘do or die’ situations, can’t you see it?! Being careful is fine, required even, but don’t take it to the extreme! Take my previous self for example, you want to become like that?!’

She easily sensed my immediate rejection of her words.

‘Coward.’ Her genuine wave of disappointment was incredibly painful.

The thing she was most unhappy with wasn’t my reluctance to trust her but my hypocrisy. Previously, when I was trying to influence her core values, she listened to my advice, took it into consideration, and accepted it. But when it was my turn to change... I failed spectacularly, not even willing to check if there was any merit to her words.

And to think that I had been irritated with her double standards.

This realization hurt, but also finally pushed me toward the decision to correct myself further.

‘... sorry about that.’

‘You’re lucky it’s an emergency. Hurry up.’ She wasn’t satisfied with a single 'sorry' but ultimately accepted my apologies. The fact that I was about to risk tinkering with my core due to her words won me a lot of points.

My goal was to become a person who could accept a ‘do or die’ situation without trying to run away. The first step was the hardest one, that was why I first threw away a lot of my hesitation.

The following corrections… turned out to be very easy.

However, due to my newly found eagerness, I overdid it. Once I started removing various flawed memories and unnecessary values from my soul’s shelter, it was nearly impossible to stop. After all, the memory that I had to correct myself ruled above all others, and I couldn’t tell how many times I threw something away only to forget about it a second later and threw something else, convinced that I had yet to improve.

But she could.

‘STOP!’ Her sharp inner voice together with a painful sensation, as if she slapped my cheek with a metal glove, put a stop to my errant behavior. Then she immediately helped to collect the memories that were yet to be devoured by the river of souls and gave back some that survived under her protection. But I could tell that something vital was forever gone.

The sudden and unexplained feeling of loss pushed me into a confused and depressed state. I was about to start looking through everything that was left, hoping to find any hints that would help to pinpoint the nature of the missing element.

‘There’s no time for it!’ Her initial angry reaction didn’t help to stop me from gradually losing the clarity of mind - her inner voice was becoming more and more distant. She quickly realized that and made a desperate attempt to help me collect myself:

‘B-brother… do you really want to leave your c-cute t-twin s-sister alone?’ I could only imagine how much pride she had to swallow to send this one sentence. On top of that, attached to this message was a genuine longing for its content to become a reality, and a tiny question if she was the only one who felt this way.

Actually, she truly believed that this wish could come true.

Just having her call me ‘brother’ was more than enough to bring me back from the verge of oblivion. It convinced my sense of self that a strong connection to the person I used to be was still present, which in turn allowed to calm down.

Although, I would prefer a younger sister instead of a twin.

‘Alright! All or nothing!’

‘Good… you’re going to pay me for this later. Now shut up and follow my lead, we’re getting out of here.’ Interwoven within her thoughts was a lot of joy. She was delighted that the crisis was averted, that we had some means of escaping, and that I removed my irrational fear of death thanks to her advice…

… I couldn’t recall too many details about the last part, and it got me a bit worried, but she was right. Getting out of here as fast as possible should be our priority.

‘Your wish is my command, little sister!’

‘Shut up!’

A new point was added to my list of things to do - make her repeat that line three times in quick succession. But I couldn't tell why exactly this strange idea seemed so amusing.

 

Thanks

 

Spoiler: Chapter 4: The river of souls - chaotic

We purged any unnecessary thoughts, removed the mental barriers protecting our cores, and focused entirely on the movements of our connected soul flames,

Taking that risk immediately paid off.

The heavy resistance of the river's current became almost nonexistent. Before, trying to move around felt like crawling through tar, and involved constant fighting against the force pushing us down the river. Now, it was almost like gliding through the air, the speed we achieved was greater than any of us thought possible, and we were still able to accelerate.

On top of that, our memories stopped trying to escape, as if we broke free from the river's influence.

The elven girl chose the general direction, often changing her mind in the last second and forcing us to make a sudden sharp turn. While I took care of the finer maneuvers, making sure we didn't hit any of the obstacles.

Earlier, it was tough to pass through the numerous walls of soul flames - first, we had to find their weakest point, then use the brute force approach. Sometimes even that was impossible, and we had to avoid them entirely. We knew that those walls were full of small openings, but were unable to make use of them.

Now, things were different. For us in this state, those opening became no different from widely open doors, as if we were forcing our will onto others. We could pick any of them and flow through with grace, leaving behind an elegant bluish trace. From time to time, I added an additional barrel roll to further stun with amazement every soul watching this spectacle.

Despite the frequent route correction and the unnecessarily showy acrobatics, our cooperation was flawless. It might have been only the result of our instinctual wills to survive briefly merging into one, additionally enhanced by the soul bond. Nevertheless, being connected with another person to such an extent was exhilarating.

It made me feel as if I finally found the place where I belonged. Gone were the days of blankly staring at the wall of my room, wondering what I was doing with my life. So many little things were going to gain a second breath of meaning if there was a person who I could share them with, even a simple act of drinking a hot tea during a rainy day would-

'Over there!' She happily announced finding the goal and turned the speed to the maximum. 'And stop sending me that fluffy wave. It's unsightly and pointless.'

That one hurt, but it was mostly her pride talking. She rejected her own emotions, almost as if we were in a public view.

'There's no need to be so guarded, the guys around us don't-'

'FOCUS! It's important.'

Our goal turned out to be a single small portal, placed inside the space that at first glance was exactly the same as any other in this shapeless river, but the difference lied in its content, or more like the lack of it. There were no soul flames inside the area the size of a basketball court. It was protected by a barely visible barrier that easily stopped the hordes of souls who were madly trying to get inside.

Whoever or whatever was responsible for creating this protected zone must have possessed a lot of power. Or the portals I saw before belonged to really small fries - clerics casting resurrection spells maybe? The existence of magic was pretty much confirmed at this point.

The protected portal looked like a miniature black hole, and it was shrinking with every second. But there were still a few good minutes left before it completely disappeared.

'We've passed the first test.' Her thoughts were full of relief and determination. 'Full speed, don't hesitate, we're breaking through. My goddess wants to check the durability of our unusual 'unbreakable' bond.'

'You could have told me about this earlier.'

'I tried, but you weren't allowed to understand.'

With nothing else to say and a bit of light shed upon the reason behind her sudden change in behavior, we focused entirely on speed. Way too many memories were already taken from us by this place.

'Let's do it!' 'Let's do it!' Our inner voices, thoughts, efforts, minds - everything became perfectly synchronized for a very brief moment.

The distance to the target was no longer an obstacle, neither were the average souls standing in our way. We smoothly swished in between the blue flickers of light, almost as if they were moving in slow motion. Pulverizing through them with sheer force was also an option, but there was no need to take an unnecessary extra risk.

However, the last group blocking the path was composed of the strongest and biggest souls we ever saw in this place, two among them were bright red and oozed an unholy aura. That group not only somehow realized that we were capable of breaching the barrier and entering the portal, but they also wanted to hitch a ride, or at least stop us from escaping.

Which was something I could perfectly understand since I as well had been jealous of the lucky bastard who made it out before me - another low priority memory added to the 'feed the river with those' category.

They began to form a big-scale illusion, a barrier of their own. It was bloody red, with a surface that was created out of something that looked like skin removed from various human and monster faces. The entire thing was growing, constantly shifting and was utterly disgusting. Different eyeless, toothless, and bloodied faces fought with each other, every single one of them wanted to rose to the surface and wail about its eternal suffering, or drag beneath the layer of skin one of the unlucky average soul flames that were a bit too close to it.

This horror show sent a shiver down my spine... which shouldn't be possible and was a very bad sign. This thing could probably affect others with some kind of a twisted illusion.

But it wasn't something we had to worry about.

Well, I couldn't see any clear openings in it, and forcing our way through didn't seem like the best idea, but we could easily change our trajectory and bypass it entirely. There was no point in flying straight at the portal, we had enough time to go around and force our way through the primary barrier from another side - one that wasn't additionally protected by a bunch of bloodthirsty maniacs.

At least that was how I imagined it, but at the same time I sent her my plan, she sent me hers.

'We're breaking through!' 'Let's avoid it!'

The desynchronization between our minds caused our soul flames to spin uncontrollably and lose force. Perfectly smooth ride changed into a desperate attempt to regain balance, and our speed and momentum turned against us. Salvaging the situation required full attention, leaving us no time to leisurely scan each other's mind.

I quickly realized that it was me who made a mistake - since I agreed to her leading the way. I was supposed to wait for her decision and help to refine the finer details.

Nevertheless, it was still possible to correct this error. I quickly changed my mind, intending to provide her plan with full support, but...

... for some reason, she also changed hers and tried to avoid it now.

In the end, we merely swapped our stances instead of joining forces.

There was no more time to make further corrections, we were about to collide with the edge of the hideous barrier - without the necessary momentum and focus to break through. And that horde of vicious souls wouldn't let us go, for sure not before the portal closed.

I was never a person who would sacrifice himself for others, but in this case, it was entirely my fault for disregarding our previous agreement. And even if it was only momentary wishful thinking, comprised solely of a few memories... I had to protect my precious little sister at all cost.

'Let's-'

'GO!' I interrupted her message, created the illusion of grabbing the small girl, and threw her away. This single action used the entire willpower I could possibly muster together with the momentum still left in my soul flame.

It caught her off guard, without a chance to resist or react. I wanted to give her a very selfish gift, the perfect memory to force her to remember about me even when I would be long gone.

The small silverish blue soul flame shot out from my side like a cannonball, in the direction that allowed her to avoid the barricade and drill holes in the weaker souls. Finally, she easily passed through the original barrier, and then, without sparing me a farewell glance, immediately corrected her trajectory to fly towards the portal…

...I secretly hoped that she would hesitate a little before leaving me behind. Especially when I was already glued to the hideous obstacle, desperately struggling to move away from those meaty foul bags of excrement, those deformed faces who were crawling my way like maggots.

The illusion they trapped me in, gave me some random guy's body with all of its senses, and it looked like those face-skin abominations wanted to test every single one of them to the extreme.

"Fuck! Get lost! Fuck off!" Despite my best efforts, mostly consisting of insults, I made almost no progress at escaping. I couldn't focus on moving my soul flame... / ... my body... how was I supposed to move a body again?

Thank the heavens, it seemed that I had no further value to the surrounding souls. After watching the ease with which the elven girl went inside the barrier, they were more interested in making various ineffective attempts at breaching it and left me alone.

The single red soul among them was leading the charge.

They didn't bother with maintaining their illusion, allowing it to shatter into a hundred pieces that quickly disappeared. Which was great since I was about to be consumed by the deformed faces... although, it would be even better if it happened before I emptied my bladder.

This memory had to be destroyed... / ... at all cost.

As soon as I allowed myself to relax just a tiny bit, I was attacked by an intense feeling of loss, connected with the lack of the shared mental connection. And it hit me hard. After I had removed my inner defenses, it was the only thing that stopped me from falling apart, and now I lacked the mental strength required to reform them. It was only the matter of a few minutes before the river's cleansing procedure would wash me clean from memories.

'It's not fair that I'm the only one who had to sacrifice himself. Wouldn't it be more romantic if we stayed together till the very end? Why was she the only one to escape? She tricked me into protecting her. Used my weakness against me.'

My mind was already a barely coherent mess, I started sending random inner thoughts as if she was still by my side... / ... but she wasn't. She left me.

'By my side, heh... I was born alone! I lived alone! I will die alone! That's the truth of this world.'

The empty space left behind by the elven girl quickly became a perfect nest for the dark and corrupted thoughts. The precious memories were being defiled... / ... but who cared. I should be allowed to at least vent my irritation before reaching the end of my story.

Something was wrong... / ... chaotic I guess.

'Stupid girl, she could at least give me the illusion of a kiss or something before leaving...'

Why did I even want to protect that little... / ... little?

'Little bitch who left me here. Hehehe-'

'Don't you dare to ruin-!' A loud, angry voice erupted inside my mind, preventing from rolling down the spiral of despair. Though it felt as if only a part of the message reached me. However, she quickly resumed sending her thoughts. ''Go' HE said! For a moment I thought you were pretty cool, but it IS all ruined now. Twenty damn seconds, that's how long I had to focus on moving and couldn't talk with you! What's so hard with HOLDING against the river's influence for twenty seconds?! I'm sure YOU just established the world's record in the time required to move from a chivalrous knight to a damn loser who's insulting his 'precious little sister'!'

With her gone from my side, I was no longer able to detect the hidden layer of infused emotions, or directly access her mind. Nevertheless, it seemed that some kind of a connection between us remained.

Her soul flame stopped right in front of the portal... / ... I could still use her!

'Hey little girl, would you kindly come back here for a mo-'

'Shut up and get ready, it will probably hurt a lot. And you deserve it for forgetting that our soul bond ain't that weak. And it's our bond! Get los-' Again, her message seemed to be cut in the middle.

'... oh…' I focused on her words and understood her intentions. The warm feeling that she wasn't going to leave me behind was almost like a guide, helped to regain some clarity and briefly pushed back the chaotic. '... ooOOHHHHH!' I desperately started to gather the memories that were on the verge of being lost. Dumbstruck, that for a moment I forgot all about our soul bond, to the point of ignoring its very existence.

It was still there - the unbreakable soul bond.

It was going to connect us even if our soul flames were separated - only visible when I wanted to see it. And it looked more balanced now, a bit thinner or my side, a bit wider on hers. It looked like three intertwined silver threads.

She gave me only three more seconds and then jumped into the portal.

I felt a sharp pull, quickly broke out of the surrounding souls and collided with the barrier... / ... my body hurt, but it was still tolerable. However, it soon turned out that the scary part didn't even start yet.

The ungodly force I was being pulled with flattened my soul flame... / ... making me scream from illusory anguish. Pure terror started flooding my mind when I realized how she was planning on dragging me inside. There was only one way through which I could enter this barrier - the tiny opening the size of three intertwined threads. There was no way my body would fit through it!

'Fucking shit! This is just an illusion… the pain isn't real… mind over matter…'

With each second the pulling force increased until it finally reached the level when my soul flame started losing its shape and was being sucked inside like a spaghetti - straight into the almost closed portal... / ... the little bitch lied, 'it will probably hurt a lot' wasn't even close to describing the suffering I was going through.

It was becoming harder and harder to treat it like a mere illusion... / ... not when I could literally hear the sound of crushing bones, smell the spilled blood, and momentarily lost vision after my eyes popped out due to the pressure... / ... yet I still saw them being minced into tiny bits.

Chaotic... / ... oozing fat, covered with a tiny layer of skin. Were the nerves in my body always that long? Illusionary heart! Who needed a heart anyway. But the lungs shouldn't be black, or should they? Was I a smoker or not?

Chaotic... / ... I once saw a meat grinder, a big one, industrial type, it worked just like this. Minced meat.

Chaotic... / ... not the fingernails... they were small enough to push them through together with fingers. Not neeeedded to fuuucking tearrr them ooff!

'It fuuucking huuurts!'

'Calm down, you're a soul and souls don't have a real body that can be hurt.' Her inner voice was warm and calm... / ... of course it was calm. It was me who was being minced into goo, not her!

The mixture of chaos receded... / ... and that was bad because it was protecting me from the pain... / ... strange, it was protecting me from pain, yet it was running from it? I was missing something.

Not even in the middle of that procedure... / ... I was already begging for it to end. Wishing for that hellish soul bond to snap and leave me behind. Cursing the bitch who said that I deserved that. Oblivion's embrace was a blessing compared to this torture!

'My tongue! It's pulling out my tonguee! Goddamnit! Fuck!'

'Just a little more, remember normal souls are immune to psychical pain. Don't be swallowed in hi-'

'It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hUUUrRRtsSS! Make it stop I beg you… I will do everything, it hurts… please help me…'

'Don't give up, you're the soul of my future twin brother!' Her soothing voice was the last barrier stopping me from madness... / ... and I fucking hated it. I wanted the madness to show me the way!

'...'

'Almost there! Don't lose consciousness now!'

'... why… why couldn't it be me? Why I am the unlucky one left behind, rejected. What's so good about this loser? Why is it me who has to suffer?!'

'That's enough. Do you really want to pass this pain onto someone who can become your true sister connected by blood?' This question was asked in a completely different voice compared to everything else she had ever sent me. And it seemed like a crucial one.

The pain became a lot easier to tolerate, as if someone turned down its intensity, waiting patiently for my answer... / ...I wanted to scream 'yes', this was going to be my answer... / ... but there was no guarantee that the pain wouldn't come back no matter what I said. I used this momentary respite to collect myself and think... / ... think? But first... I had to find my brain. Thinking couldn't be done-

'Stop! Stop! Stop! Fucking resistance, fucking memories, stop hijacking my illusion! I don't need any of them!' They could be still important, and I was mostly inside the portal. The river shouldn't be able to influence me here. 'Off to the river with you! Come on, go, swim... why you're still here? There's no river! Where's my river?!'

'... he's going to fail. There's no point in trying anymore.' Unfamiliar inner voice... / ... I hoped it wasn't mine, there was no room for more.

'No! Give him some more time. I know! Let me send him just one thing. One image, please... I beg you...'

My sister was begging someone. That proud girl did it for me. Heh, and she deliberately allowed me to hear it. She wanted to repay for prioritizing her existence, and at the same time made me feel indebted... / ... and that was exactly why it was a fucking trap! Fuck, I needed to gather my innards and-

SHUT UP! Something was wrong, very wrong - interfering in my mind and defiling my precious memories. It felt red? I saw this kind of red somewhere before. Everything started to make sense. But I had to reveal what made sense. There was a cloud of illusion inside my mind, hiding something within.

'You're already testing my patience by bending the rules... fine... only one.' Agreed to my sister's request the unknown female voice.

'Thank you.'

I received an incredibly vivid image through our soul bond. It depicted a young silver-haired petite girl, laughing happily with an evil gleam in her eyes, stepping on a head of a human bowing in front of her.

I really liked this wicked image of my younger sister, it was way better than if she was an easily subdued meek type. She only had to show her warm side to me. And there was even a hidden challenge attached to it. She wanted to know if I was capable of convincing her proud self to call me 'onii-chan'. Her eagerness to use the new terms she learned from my memories was a pleasant surprise. But first, I had to answer 'no' to that earlier question.

'Huh? That elven bitch is going to be my sister? She needs to learn her place! Treating a superior human like a slave, ridiculous. The answer is 'yes'. GET THE FUCK OUT FROM MY HEAD! THE ANSWER IS 'NO'!'

The moment I regained control over my inner voice was the moment the entire illusion of pain shattered into pieces. It was never mine to begin with, neither was the illusory psychical body. The full clarity of mind was finally back.

Without even the slightest bit of discomfort, the rest of my soul flame easily slipped through the barrier and was pulled into the portal. Left behind were the mangled and shred remains of the red soul who tried to take my place.

Without any mental defenses prepared, I must have been an easy target after colliding with that skin-barrier.

Everything around turned black, and I slightly panicked. I expected the portal to immediately take me to... well, somewhere that wasn't a pitch black zone.

'I'm still not entirely convinced if I should or shouldn't kick you out before you reach my place. The girl literally did everything she could to help you maintain control, and it was still a rather confusing show. But fine, since you're already connected with her to such an extent, I guess you pass. But just to make sure, can you repeat your answer?' Asked me the goddess who was probably behind this whole mess from the moment my sister had received this undecipherable message. The hints were all over the place, but only now I was able to recognize them and connect the dots.

Being freed from the mental pressure of continually losing memories felt awesome.

'My answer is 'no', I would never pass such suffering to my precious twin sister.'

'YES! Good answer! My goddess is willing to convert your soul into a silver elf's one. Ha! See? Souls have races after all! You are going to become my true twin brother! Can you imagine it? We will be the first pair of twins in the entire history of silver elves!'

It was a bit hard to say if she was so excited because of the fact that we were going to become real siblings, or because she was already thinking about leaving her mark in the elven history books.

I need a better title than 'The Plasma Archmage'. If anyone has any ideas, let me know! I'm running low on mental juice.

 

I would try to suggest something, but I don't know where the story is going to go to. Also you should try posting on RoyalRoadl (although it's down right now because something happened, they're working on it though)

 

Don't worry about it and give it to me, the current title looks worse each time I see it and it's starting to drive me mad, yet I still can't decide on a one that would be appropriate to replace it. Not to mention that I'm running low on ideas after fighting with the synopsis... in the end I've decided to include both the short and the long version heh.

 

hmm maybe Something like Bond of Souls? or Soul-Bonded Siblings? Soul-Bonded Sibling Sorcerers? or some combination thereof

 

Spoiler: Chapter 5 - The cradle chamber - Crea's side

Delicate facial features, long golden hair, prominent lips, slim figure, and perfectly smooth skin made it hard to distinguish the gender of a tall person who briskly walked through a narrow corridor covered with marble slabs. Being taken for a woman by the members of other races was a common problem of many male elves. Wearing masculine clothes, trying to speak in a low tone, and no sign of breasts hardly helped - especially when all elven females sported really modest chests.

However, with a little knowledge, one look at the ears and the forehead should be enough to distinguish between the elven genders easily. Males had short, slightly pointy ears, almost human-like, and lacked any other signs of their shared ancestry with fairies. Females had slim, long pointy ears, and in some places of their bodies, right underneath the skin, could be seen the remains of glistening butterfly-like scales, usually small patches in the corners of the forehead.

The tall person was definitely a male elf.

He walked while staring silently at two crystal orbs held in his hands. Inside one of them was the beautiful soul of a proud and noble silver elf, one of the precious few that still remained in this world. While the other contained the soul of a common dirty mongrel, albeit an immensely important one since he came from another world. How did the two of them manage to form a soul bond was a mystery. Nevertheless, it was exactly what he needed.

Breaching Erluna's natural barrier, that was protecting their world from the influx of foreign souls, was a part of the hardest and the most expensive of his many projects. But he finally succeeded. Well, it was a close call. But even if had to personally get rid of that red parasite and risk being detected, smuggling this guy inside should be worth it. The situation was that desperate.

Luckily, his direct intervention wasn't required. The girl perfectly fulfilled her side of the pact and earned herself both the brother she always wanted and the right to a second life.

Out of the many valuable baits he released into the river of souls, only a handful found someone they believed to possess useful knowledge. And the soul of that infamous little girl was the only one who actually managed to form a bond strong enough to drag her chosen target through the barrier. The very first otherworldly soul inside their closed world.

Who knew. Maybe there were some incredible magic formulas in this human's mind? Or he had some special abilities? At this point, even a recipe for a potent aphrodisiac would be greatly appreciated. Whatever it was, the tall elf had long ago learned that it was better to establish a long-lasting friendly relation rather than pursue a quick gain. Especially when he lacked the means to tear open the minds of those two.

The tall elf opened a heavy wooden door and walked into the accursed chamber that used to be like a knife stabbed in his side, causing his treasury to slowly bleed to death. But today, for the first time in many years, he saw its content in an entirely new light. This costly investment was about to bear fruit.

There was only one more thing he had to do before starting to work on transferring the slumbering souls.

After a quick stir of his internal mana reserves, his identity changed.

The ears grew longer and slimmer; the neglected golden hair became silky and combed; the entire forehead and a large part of the neck was sprinkled with hundreds of tiny golden scales; the barely visible masculine facial features were exchanged with alluring feminine ones; the robe's chest area shifted slightly forward, hiding underneath the biggest elven breasts in the history - the size of a pair of oranges; the height was cut by a centimeter or three, caused by the changes in the shape of the hips and overall balancing. A multitude of other small details was shifted accordingly. Finally, even the grey robe was swapped with an elegant one-piece black dress, a long one that covered most of the body.

He was no longer Vertuel, the oldest one of the three still living golden elves. Now in his place, stood Crea, the elven goddess.

It was another thing she learned a long time ago. Nearly everyone's first impression was better when she played the role of the kind and beautiful elven goddess. Though it was a bit sad that among her remaining believers there were none who knew that Crea and Vertuel were one and the same.

She moved forward and very carefully stepped inside the chamber. The entire stony floor was covered with a thick layer of interwoven roots that could suddenly move without any warning, she wasn't going to make the same mistake again, not when she held two essential soul crystals.

One soul was transferred inside the cradle, the other was temporarily stored in a more stable crystal container.

'The cradle' could be both used as the name of this chamber and each of the five leafy cocoons that grew inside. Three of them were big and ripe, half-ready to release their humanoid shaped content - they still had to be provided with the final ingredient. The fourth one was much smaller, still immature. The fifth was almost complete, it had just been injected with a soul, now only needed some time for the final adjustments.

Embedded into the chamber's polished walls were numerous transparent crystals. Nearly all of them were inactive and empty, but the remaining ones shone with a warm bluish light. Three among the latter were clearly special, two emitted a silverish blue hue, while one was shrouded in a radiant blue light saturated with a golden tint.

The humanoid shape inside the fifth cocoon shifted slightly as if trying to look around.

'What's happening? Where am I? And where is she? Why can't I talk to her?' This inner thought was received only by the lone silhouette who waited patiently inside the chamber.

'It's simple. You're inside the psychical body I've made. It automatically tries to protect your mind, hindering the delicate nature of the soul bond you share. Well, you may be able to reconnect with her if you grow closer, but for now, I will be your conversational partner.' Sent the telepathic answer the silhouette, and moved closer to the cocoon, carefully checking if there were no irregularities.

Its recipient instantly recognized the gentle inner voice of the goddess.

'She's safe?'

'Don't worry about the girl. It's easier for me to handle you one at a time. Instead, focus on getting used to your new body, I doubt you have any previous experience at being an elf. Also, remember that the finished product will to a certain extent reflect your inner image. Take your time and imagine yourself handsome.'

With the safety of his sister confirmed, the unnamed soul finally relaxed and decided to take a well-deserved break. This might not have been the best place for that, but the constant fear of losing his sense of self had long exhausted his entire reserves of caution.

Even a bed made out of nails would be fine if lying on it would mean that he was allowed to rest. Being submerged in some unidentified fluid, inside a big leafy cocoon, was fine as well. Actually, it wasn't that bad, warm, comfy, and made him feel safe.

'Heh, all that talk about us being twins made me expect something more natural. You know, being born, getting to meet our new parents, enjoying our childhood, learning magic or training martial arts from the earliest years, and gaining an edge over our peers who would be still amazed by the mysteries of walking... I really wanted to slowly grow up with my sister and make a lot of memories.'

'Trust me you wouldn't want that kind of slow. All elves are real late bloomers. Reaching the mental and psychical equivalent of a ten years old human takes three times longer for a common elf, five times for a silver one, and don't even get me started on how long you need to change the diapers of a golden one.' Answered the goddess telepathically, while turning her head toward one of the shining crystals embedded in the wall. "One of the reasons why I'm doing this shit… every other major race is happily breeding all year round, but noooo, we elves are too good for that, goddamn romantics. Young ones don't even think of sex before dating for fifty years." The latter was said in the traditional verbal way, having someone listen to her grumble helped to release a little of the irritation accumulated over the long years - even if the recipient couldn't understand anything due to the language barrier.

'... wait.' The cocoon's content twitched, startling the goddess. 'Does it mean she's actually way older than me?'

'In theory. Let me ask you this. Do you remember how old you were at the moment of death?'

'More than twenty…? Less than forty for sure… damn river. Nevermind, I will just treat her like a younger sister anyway.'

'Good choice. Oh, and before I forget. Technically, you're going to be twins connected by blood. Each of the bodies in the cradles starts exactly the same, gaining a gender and forming finer details only after receiving a soul. The two of you will be just a little more 'created' than born, and with a slight time lag in between. Like I've said, focus on your inner image, and be careful. If you think about breasts too much, like most human males, you may actually start developing your own.'

'Slander and defamation, it doesn't apply to me. Alright, time to think of my perfect self.'

"Heh, I bet your image is going to be the ugliest elf in the history. Deformed muscles, square jaw, eyebrows like clubs, and bald on top of that. There's no way a human sense of esthetic can compete with that of an elf. Oh well, I will just correct it later." Muttered to herself the goddess dressed in black. Her mood improved as everything seemed to work as it should.

'... a pair to play with... hehe... no, no, no, focus.'

Finally, the cradle chamber that took hundreds of years to build became the cause of a smile and not of an angry spasm. The road to reach this point was harsh and full of mistakes. Somewhere along the line, what was just a failed side project to increase the elven population turned into their only remaining hope. Actually…

The goddess took a long look around the chamber and sat down on one of the bigger roots. Every single one of the five hundred crystals embedded into the walls used to house a soul. But now? Nine common, two silver including the girl, one golden. Those were the only ones left. So many precious lives were sacrificed, so many important souls never returned from the river.

... even that hope was already lost. There was no way that only one otherworldly soul could change much. The initial plan assumed that at least half of the elves who signed the pact would return successfully.

It was a bit ironic that the infamous girl who was practically forced into this, proved to be one of the most tenacious ones. Six times her soul had found the way back without succumbing to the river. Each of those trips cost her a part of the memories, and each time she returned as a different person, yet three hundred years later, she still persisted and fulfilled her pact.

During her seventh attempt, she finally freed herself from the obligation, probably without even knowing about it anymore. Nevertheless, the promised rewards had to be given to her. A second chance at life and-

'I'm done. Whoa, it feels strange, I think it's being formed now.'

'What?' The goddess instantly shook off her melancholy and ran back to the cocoon. He was right, the body inside the leafy cradle was undergoing rapid changes. It shouldn't be possible to trigger this process without her confirmation, yet he somehow did that. And now it was too late to stop. 'You moron! I gave you the chance to create a godly body, and you're fine with some random shit?!'

'It's not some 'random shit'. I'm pro at character creation, honed by a mountain of games. Once for a change, I've made this really cool elf, recreating his image was simple. Well, I've included some adjustments and the stuff he lacked, but it turned out better than the original.' Somehow a portion of his memories was sharp and vivid like never before. He could rewatch a movie just by closing his eyes. It was rather scary, he still remembered a lot of horrors.

'I've got no idea what you're talking about!' Crea was on the verge of crying. The fact that he was already done could be only explained by putting together a bunch of random parts, without sparing even a second to think about how everything needed to fit together perfectly. The finished product would be nothing short of an abomination. 'How did you even start the process without my approval?!'

'Out of habit. I kind of imagined the 'confirm button' and clicked it.'

"Damn it. I tried to be nice. I will kill you as soon as you're out and move the soul to another body. What a horrible beginning and a huge waste!" The symbol of hope she wanted to use as the flagbearer couldn't be ugly! "Wait, you took control over the cradle with thoughts alone?"

'Ehmm... you seem mad... forgive me, uhmm... my goddess? I'm really sorry if I ruined something, or if I sent you an inappropriate thought. I'm still not entirely sure how to treat a goddess, and it's hard to act humble inside my own head. It would help to teach me the language first, and it would be great to learn your name. I've already picked a new name for myself. I'm-'

 

Cool chapter

 

Spoiler: Chapter 6 - The cradle chamber - unique silver elf

'I've already picked a new name for myself. I'm Torvic, nice to meet you.'

Upon hearing my new name, the goddess who was spouting a stream of words that for sure weren't friendly, suddenly stopped. I hoped that it was a good sign, but the following message she sent was soaked with something ethereal - something that made me fear for my new life as if she was about to flush me back into the river of souls:

'You dare to use that name?!'

'W-well,' I quickly cut in to explain, convinced that otherwise, it would lead to a very grave misunderstanding. 'I actually wanted to go with Victor, to remind myself that I won't lose in my second life, but it wasn't elf-like enough, so I modified Vic-tor into Tor-vic. But it was just a silly idea, let me know if you have a better one.' This though was formed and sent in record time.

For a long while, I listened carefully. But other than the various subtle sounds produced by the morphing body and an occasional gas bubble making its way through the liquid, I didn't hear anything that could help to ascertain the situation.

Until the goddess broke both the telepathic and verbal silence.

"Crea." 'Crea.' She gave me her name, her tone was devoid of the previous threat, but for sure it wasn't close to the friendly one she had used before. 'That's the name you can call me with. And yours is Victor. It has saved you once already. A good sign that the victorious meaning behind it may actually bring us all good luck. But you're right, it's not very 'elf-like', that's why your surname will be Yelvesfor.'

'Victor Yelvesfor, not bad, yet it's kind of strange...' I repeated the full name a few more times in my mind, shuffled it a little, separated into three, and it quickly became apparent why that name felt somehow wrong. There was a message contained within it. '… seriously? Can we rethink it, please?'

With a name like that, I would become a living symbol of elven supremacy, something I would prefer to avoid since I actually wanted to get along with other races.

'No. You're the ignorant who wanted to have a meaningful name, right? This is a perfect one, no need for any modifications. And it fits the role I've prepared, you will get used to it.' Crea's inner voice left no room for further negotiations.

That didn't mean I wasn't looking for a way to change her mind. But then, a wild revelation made it much easier to accept my 'meaningful name'.

One, the bodies my sister and I were going to use were made by Crea.

Two, she was also the person who named me.

Three, it seemed that she had already planned my future for me.

Didn't that mean that she was my mother?

... though I probably shouldn't call her 'mom'.

When my mind was submerged in thoughts about possible family ties to the elven goddess and the following implications, my body finished changing. The cocoon opened like a flower bud, spilling the contained fluid all around.

"____ __ ___." Crea said something ominous, but I was too busy to pay it much attention. All bodily functions were switching on, one after the other, flooding my mind with a sea of stimuli. I had to re-learn how to use a body, an entirely different model on top of that.

The hearing and sight were already working when I found myself in this body, at least that was the false impression I had. Only now, kneeling naked among the cocoon's remains, I was given a taste of their full potential. If I focused a little, I could easily hear my and Crea's beating hearts, the slowly shifting roots covering the floor of this chamber, and the quiet melody of twirling souls - easily pinpointing which one of them belonged to my sister. Getting used to many other background noises would take some time, but it shouldn't be much different from learning how to ignore the ticking of a clock.

As for the sight. Who would have thought that a simple wet root could be so interesting and intricate! Not only my brain was registering an enormous amount of data about various little details that would otherwise be filtered out by a human's one. I was able to distinguish between a broader range of different shades of the same color. A seemingly small change, but it made everything look so different. No wonder my sister had been irritated by my poor reaction to her collection of breathtaking memories, the world she perceived was more gorgeous than the one I saw.

Unfortunately, it also confirmed her theory that souls had races. One's body shaped one's mind, to the point of leaving a mark upon the latter that remained even after death, causing the mind unable to break free from the limitations it used to have in life.

This also explained the improvement in the quality of my memories, a process which was started by the growing soul bond with my sister. Her mind had better specs than mine, and she lent me some of her computing power. Then it was finalized by my new body. I was quite sure that this change couldn't be reversed. My mind permanently shifted from that of a human into a silver elf's one.

My soul had been 'converted'.

But the smell and some of the other senses… I had mixed feelings about those. It could be summarised as: a more sensitive body equaled more pleasure and more pain. As for the rest, like strength and agility, I would have to carry out various tests to check where my limits lied before concluding anything.

All of those thoughts were produced in the time it took me to take two deep breaths, another nice perk of the increased processing speed. Now, it was time to see Crea's reaction, I was sure that the body turned out exactly as I wanted it to - a cool and handsome silver elf.

Good that I saw my sister in her memories and learned about the most important features a silver elf should have.

I slowly stood up, a bit unsteadily, still not used to all those changes, looked at the goddess, and… instantly stopped marveling about the wonders of my new body and other non-critical matters.

There was an enormous wolf, frozen in mid-air with a widely open maw full of sharp fangs, half step away from tearing off my head. The front of its body was fully formed out of constantly shifting mass of wind mana, while the rear gradually lost its form until it was no different from a leash coiled around Crea's outstretched arm. The beast made no noise as if the sound around it was being removed, providing the hunting predator with the additional stealth factor.

A good spell for sudden and silent assassinations.

I didn't move, not because I didn't want to, but I just couldn't. There was something in the unreal eyes of that beast that froze all my muscles with primal fear. This feeling of dread was additionally enhanced by the realization that Crea, who I secretly wanted to give the title of my mother, was either trying to scare me to death or was actually about to kill me.

Escape was impossible, it took all I had just to stand up with this new body. My only options were to fight against the fear, stop the incoming tears, and pray that it was some kind of a test. Otherwise, it made no sense.

She wouldn't give me a new body just to take it away a moment later, right?

"___ _____ ____ _______." Said Crea. This time her tone was different, slightly confused and strangely happy. It didn't sound as if she was asking for my last words.





*****





"Time to die." Said Crea ominously when the cocoon opened and revealed the naked form within.

She instantly sprang into action, wanting to destroy something that should be no different from a hideous abomination. At least the reason behind his mistaken use of that name was acceptable; otherwise, his fate would be much worse than being torn to shreds by the air wolf.

But the elf in front of her wasn't anything like a deformed lump of meat she imagined.

Victor's body was that of a silver elf, it had to be - the cradle was incapable of creating anything else. There was no point in spending resources on making the bodies of normal elves who were only slightly better than humans, and the golden ones were too complicated to grow them like vegetables.

But she never saw a silver elf like that.

Crea's original identity was that of a male, and like any other elven male, she had gone through the period called 'gender crisis' during which every known method was used to make Vertuel look like a proper man instead of a pretty boyish girl. She learned firsthand how impossible of a task that was.

Firstly, the muscles. Elves weren't known for their physical strength. No matter how much training was put into it, they would never develop anything more than a slightly underlined musculature. Yet right now, in front of her, stood the first example of a well-built elf, and it wasn't the overly muscular human type, or the vulgar orc type, or the stoutly dwarven type. It was the perfectly balanced, muscular yet slim type. The maiden part of her heart skipped a beat when she saw all those captivating shapes. She nearly wanted to check if those strong-looking biceps were more springy or hard, and that clear six-pack… if only her male self could have a one like that.

Secondly, the face. Just how… how did he make himself look so handsome? He lacked the prominent lips, delicate nose, bewitching expression, and the overall alluring features - each and every one of those was replaced with its attractive masculine counterpart. But neither it was the face of an adult man. It had a boyish charm and rakish look, a combination that made him seem youthful, adventurous and brave, yet it wouldn't be strange to find him playing with kids.

Nevertheless, the body would be a failure if it was too removed from that of an elf. But it wasn't. His skin tone was pale without any blemishes, the eyes were bloody red and full of murder, the hair was the silverest shade of silver she ever saw. All three main features of a silver elf were present in top shape.

Although Victor's hair was short and unruly, a haircut that was frowned upon in the elven community, it only made him look better. His height could use a few centimeters more, but it wasn't that bad. With slightly over a meter and eighty, he was about her height.

In Victor's case, there was one more thing, the strangest part that somehow fitted perfectly with the rest - completely disregarding the elven common sense. He had slim, long pointy ears, ones that would make any elven girl green with envy. Moreover, underneath the skin in the corners of his forehead were patches of mesmerizing silver scales. The two main features that allowed to recognize the elven gender easily, screamed that this handsome guy was, in fact, a girl.

Crea had to take a few additional looks at the area between Victor's legs to ascertain herself that he didn't change his gender by mistake. Albeit a bit shrunk from fear, the indicator was there. But… Victor lost this match against Vertuel.

However, this gender contradiction didn't cause him to be a freak of nature. On the contrary, it gave him a mystique aura. He would very easily stand out among the others, turning the head of every elven girl in the world. On top of that, instead of earning the hostility of elven males, he would still share their burden of being mistaken for a girl, and such a heavy one at that!

"Who would have thought." Said Crea in a slightly confused and strangely happy tone.

Crea saw a seed of potential, one that might sprout and turn the stray human soul that somehow ended in this place into a real victory for elves. She silently took back all the insults thrown at him, ready to forget even about his ignorant attempt to desecrate that important name, not many would have a heart big enough for that. She also decided to try and stop herself from thinking of Victor as a dirty mongrel… or at least make sure that he would never find out.

"Damn… unique, never heard of, easily draws attention, not overly manly, a fine representative of silver elves, and the most of all - perfectly flawed. This may actually work way better than expected… if the girl could somehow equal his uniqueness without clashing with it… it's worth giving a try." Murmured Crea and canceled the halted air wolf spell.

The figure in front of her started to retreat very slowly, watching her closely in case she made any sudden moves.

'Don't' mind it. Just a simple test of courage, you passed.' She sent him a bright, full of kindness message. 'Come, let's get you some clothes first. Then it's your sister's turn… say… what do you think about giving her a little help with making the body? You seem to have a knack for it.'

This message helped Victor to calm down. He was relieved that it was just as he thought, Crea only wanted to scare him. Probably in order to show a part of her power and prevent from having any stupid ideas.

'Actually, I'm even better at creating female characters.'

'Perfect.'

 

Thanks for the chapter! I love his name XD

 

Spoiler: Chapter 7 - The cradle chamber - hell no

Despite telling me to come with her, Crea quickly changed her mind when it turned out that I was neither able to walk fast nor without leaning against the wall. Instead, she told me to walk in circles and improve the mind to body coordination, after which left to fetch some clothes. It was strange that the goddess had to do such menial tasks by herself, but I decided not to overly rely on my leftover common sense.

Unknown place, unknown rules, semi-unknown goddess, unknown names that I shouldn’t claim as mine, and other unknown factors. All of that made it hard to decide how to act in order not to ruin anything. For now, I had to play it nice and safe, though I hated this feeling of dependency and powerlessness. Getting my body in working order and gathering intel was at the top of my list.

And since I could work on those two things at the same time, I decided to do just that.

First thing I did after Crea left, was to try and contact my sister. Two soul crystals were emitting silverish-blue light, but I instinctively knew which one was hers. It would help to alleviate a lot of my anxiety if she confirmed a few things for me. Moreover, I simply wanted to talk with her and start building a more traditional connection. During the earlier scan of her memories, I focused mostly on her inner zone, and it was still way too much to remember at once. Not to mention that even that had been damaged by the river. However, despite placing a hand on the crystal in which her soul resided, I was unable to establish a connection.

After a few more unsuccessful tries I moved to explore the rest of the room. There were two exits. One unlocked, through which Crea left, and one opposite to it, blocked by a thick layer of roots. Also, there were many round holes drilled in the wall with the blocked door, and through each of them, a thick root passed.

“W-w-whoa!” One badly placed step cost me my balance. Awkward flailing with hands didn’t help much to prevent the fall, but two of the nearby roots shifted just in time to create a makeshift barrier between me and the floor. “Ouch!.” Colliding with them still hurt, the roots were hard, and my heightened senses made everything way more intense than I was used to. Nevertheless, it would be much worse if I had nothing to support myself and smashed face first on the floor. “Thanks.” The plant deserved a pat on the roots.

I liked it. It grew a body for me, the stay in the cocoon was comfortable, and despite being a plant, it was rather lively.

A few minutes later, since Crea still wasn’t back, I decided to take a look outside.

The wooden door looked heavy but opened surprisingly easily. Behind it was a dark corridor devoid of any light sources. I kind of hoped to be able to see in complete darkness, but no such luck. There wasn’t much I could do with the limited light produced by the soul crystals embedded into the cocoon room walls. And faced with a choice between blindly stumbling around a place that seemed to be some kind of castle’s cellar or focusing on improving my movements, I went with the second option.

Quite a lot of circles around the room were made before Crea came back. She walked into the room with a basket full of clothes, a really welcomed sight since being naked wasn't my favorite state of being.

Now, when the emotions connected to a giant magic wolf subsided, I could calmly take a look at the goddess dressed in black. I had noticed it already, but she really was a textbook example of a blonde elven beauty. Her charm was additionally underlined by the patches of glistening golden scales, and a modest chest that worked in her favor, at least in my opinion. Crea looked to be in late-twenties, but there was something mystical in her eyes that made treating her like a mere mortal hard. Probably the fact that her irises, scleras, and pupils were all in different shades of gold.

‘Pick any you like.’ She placed the basket on the floor and waited.

A wave of embarrassment tinted my pale skin red when I was dressing under Crea's scrutinizing gaze. True, I was quite proud of my new body, but not to the point of staying calm when she seemed to be taking mental notes about its every detail and occasionally giggled.

Without any further delay, I took out a black shirt, a pair of black lace panties that were made out of some silky, nearly transparent material, and had a slit in the middle of the lower part?!

‘THE HELL IS THAT?!’

‘For your sister.’

‘No way she will wear something like that!’

‘Why? They’re clean, comfortable and pretty. I’m wearing a pair myself. If you prefer other colors, there should also be a red and yellow pair.’ The goddess honestly saw no problems with it, and apparently had no sense of shame.

‘But it’s improper for a young girl! And risky! And... and... and simply wrong!’

‘Risky?’ *Ha-haha-hahaha* “_____ __ ____!” *Hahaha* The goddess started swaying from left to right, holding her belly, unable to contain the laughter.

Without any idea what started this unexpected reaction, I decided to ignore it and went back to browsing through the basket’s content. My completed set of clothes was composed of a simple black shirt, an elegant black doublet, black NORMAL underwear, comfy black pants, a pair of black socks, a pair of black shoes. I could recognize most of the materials used, such as silk, leather, linen, and cotton, but there was something else mixed within. The clothes didn’t look as archaic as I expected, neither they were too fancy and elf-like. Actually, they were devoid of unnecessary decorative elements and focused on utility… but why was every male clothing article black?

At the same time, I found a lot of colorful girly clothes in various sizes. After removing the sexy, revealing, improper, shameful, and perverted options, a nice set was prepared for my sister’s future body. She should like it.

Elves being skillful craftsmen and artisans was something I kind of saw coming, thanks to the magnificent elven cities my sister showed me, but I never expected that even the lingerie area would be so... developed.

‘Ahh… that felt good, I didn’t laugh so much in a long time. ‘Risky’ *giggle*, ehh… you’ve got much to learn.’ The goddess sent me a telepathic message as soon as she calmed down.

‘From what I saw in my sister memories, she never wore anything like that.’

‘That was over three hundred years ago. The situation wasn’t that bad back then, but now I’m truly desperate. There are a lot of problems I’m struggling with, and an enormous demographic crisis is one of them. But do whatever you like, forcing everyone to wear ‘risky’ underwear didn’t help much.’

‘Bad situation? Demographic crisis?’

‘We will talk about this later.’ Crea, made a small gesture, telling me to turn around a few times, then prompted to walk around one of the cocoons. ‘Good, everything looks fine, and you’re moving much better. Let’s try creating a body for her. Come, put your hands on this one.’ She moved with me to one of the three ripe cocoons, we both placed our hands on it. ‘Can you control it? I want to monitor everything this time.’

‘Give me a sec…’ I closed my eyes, focused, and did everything exactly like before.

For a few moments nothing happened, the plant was unresponsive. Establishing the connection from the outside turned out to be more complicated. But I kept trying, not to control it, but to give it a general idea of what I wanted to do. I changed my perspective and recalled the comfortable safety of being submerged in the cocoon’s fluid. Then... well, there was no need to do anything else. It worked. I felt a prickling sensation originating from the tips of my fingers that went through my entire body, I started sending through it my imagination’s output.

A character creation screen was quickly put together inside my mind, one in which the 3D model was floating in the center. All manners of sliders regulating each of that body aspects were placed on the sides. But the thing I was mostly interested in was the ‘import’ button at the bottom. Thanks to it I could insert one of the pre-made images from my memories, and the body would automatically respond to it. Then I would just have to adjust a few parameters and done - no need to regulate everything step by step.

There was a small chat-window in the corner, in which system messages were displayed. This time it said:

<This fruit still lacks a seed. It won’t grow healthy without it.>

The many signals from the cradle were translated into easy to understand messages. It would be quite interesting if I could talk with plants, but it wasn’t like that. The cradle didn’t react to anything not involved with the body creation process.

‘Uhm… there’s a problem, it won’t be able to form without a soul.’ I told Crea.

‘Hmm, so that’s how you’ve done it.’ She moved away from the cocoon towards the soul crystals. ‘For a moment I thought that you may be able to control any mana infused entity, but unfortunately, that’s not it. You simply allowed the cradle to recognize you as a part of its own body, then somehow started guiding its responses. I guess it’s a unique perk given to those created by it. I’m curious why others didn’t try using it. Anyway, that doesn’t explain why your body turned out like that.’ Crea seemed disappointed, but also relieved.

‘I used the memories from my past life as a base for the body.’

‘There were elves like that in your previous world?’ Crea’s focus was split between talking with me and preparing to transfer the soul of my sister into a smaller orb she picked from storage hidden between the crystals.

‘Not exactly, just humans, but a lot of them, and we had a very rich culture and imagination.’ This time, I made sure to exclude any otherworldly terms to avoid unnecessary confusion.

The goddess wrapped her palms with a golden light made out of myriads shining particles and touched the bigger crystal. In response, the soul inside began moving, as if tempted to come out, and started leaking from its safe container. It looked like molten silver with a blue hue mixed within. I thought that my heart was going to stop when a few drops of that precious liquified soul were about to fall on the floor, but right before that happened, Crea’s golden light wrapped itself around them and guided them back to her cupped palms. Then she shot me a short glance with a smile full of confidence.

I swore she did that on purpose, just to see my terrified face!

There were no more doubts in my mind, I couldn’t take anything Crea said without assuming that she was lying. For a goddess who first tested if I was going to take good care of my sister and shield her from pain, Crea moved suspiciously fast to playing with her very soul.

‘Done.’ She held the smaller orb which now contained my sister’s soul. ‘Rich culture and imagination you say? That’s fine, but don’t say ‘we had', use ‘they had’ instead.’ Crea slowly came back to the cocoon and inserted the orb through a small opening at the top.

The cradle received the final necessary part and tightened its petals, ready to begin the last step of the body creation process.

‘Wake up sleepyhead. It’s time to lead the elves to victory.’ Once more I tried to establish a connection - once more there was no response.

Crea was more successful in this field. She changed her expression from smug, to bored, to surprised, and then decided to maintain a kind one - the two of them were definitely talking. At the same time, she was checking the cradle from every side and shooed me away when I wanted to put my hands on it.

During the few minutes when I was being actively alienated, I moved closer the basket with clothes. Helping my sister, who was going to be unused to her new body, to put on the prepared set of clothes was one of the reasons why I prepared everything so eagerly. I didn’t want her to stay naked any longer than necessary. She would also need something to wipe the fluid.

I was sure that between a long struggle and a possible fall connected with the danger of flashing her naked bottom in front of the goddess and her brother or simply allowing me to help with everything, she would choose the less shameful second option. Win-win situation.

Perfect plan.

‘That girl questions were nearly the same as yours.’ Sent Crea. ‘And don’t look at me like that, I didn’t exclude you on purpose. You should know already that it’s one thing to connect with someone in the realm of mind and something entirely different when psychical bodies come into play. Anyway, let’s do it before she realizes what’s going on.’

‘Huh…? Just to be sure, you’ve told her that I’m going to help with the process, right?’

‘You’re going to push a body on her before she knows what hit her... Oh, you’re worried about failure? No need, I will make sure to have the final word in it.’ Crea put her hands on the cocoon and prompted me to do the same. ‘What are you waiting for?’

‘Make her body behind her back?’ I asked to make sure I understood Crea’s intentions.

‘Yes, I’m worried that you won’t be able to make something truly unique if she starts interfering.’

Hell no.

Even if I created a godly masterpiece, my sister’s first action after coming out of the cocoon would be to tear my skin off and throw the rest into a barrel full of salt, or at least she would never again speak to me. I was sure of that, I would react exactly the same if someone had made a decision that was going to define my entire life without bothering to ask about my opinion.

‘Can’t I work on it together with her?’

‘Why?’ A sinister flash of impatience flashed in Crea’s golden eyes.

For some reason, she didn’t want us to work together. If only I knew why exactly she didn’t want that.

After a deep breath, to buy some time to think, I started spinning my tale:

‘When I was connected with her in the river of souls, my memories became vivid and sharp like never before.’ Truth. ‘We even exchanged a lot of them, there might be something she still remembers which I already forgot, a part that will help with the creation process.’ Possibility - I had all the necessary parts, but it wasn’t exactly a lie. ‘And since she’s inside, it will be better to involve her in the process, I may not be able to do it from the outside…’ Shit, that was a mistake - Crea furrowed her eyebrows.

‘I already told you not to worry about it. Move already, and let’s get it over with. And before you ask, I want it to be a unique, perfectly flawed, beautiful and charming, top tier silver elf. Just make sure to make her ears really short, and don’t include any fairy scales. The rest is up to you.’

Any further excuses were pointless and would only earn Crea’s ire. It was time for plan B.

Did I already mention that I hated the feeling of dependency and powerlessness? I also hated when someone was clearly trying to use me and thought that I was an idiot who wouldn’t even notice it.

But why she didn't want my sister ears to be long and pointy and told to remove the scales? Was there some special meaning to them? All elves had those, right?

She wouldn't be a 'top tier silver elf' without them.