Chapter 40.4 - Merging

Keeping my face carefully neutral, I lifted my hand and extended it toward her, fully intending to stop before anything happened.  However, when I saw the look in her eyes… the slight hitch in her breath, the way her shoulders bunched together, her lips parting in anticipation, somehow I forgot I was only pretending.

As gently as caressing a flower petal, I traced my finger across her cheek and drew a lock of hair over her pointed ear.

“As you wish,” I murmured softly… before cringing almost to death.

Oh, you absolute dork!

Mia seemed to take it pretty well, though.

Stepping close, she looked up at me and purred, “Oh, here and what a disgrace, I am.  I’ve gone and gotten your finger all dirty…my lord.”

About a dozen follow-up comments sprang to mind, ranging from how dirty a girl she really was to asking exactly what it was she had gotten my finger dirty with.  And had I not been so self-conscious, I might have.

Instead, I quickly turned to one side and coughed into my fist.  “Uh… so.  Housekeeping, you say.  I can’t imagine what you must have found in there to leave you in such a state.”

The tip of her tongue parted her lips as she suppressed a smile.  “That way leads to your Core, mine sovereign.  Your activities today have put quite the strain on it.  I’ve needed to use some… creative storage solutions to contain that Gem your precious little Do-lilim fed you.”

I nodded slowly.  “Right.  The Grand Rank III.  That actually happened?”

“Oh, yes…” she breathed.

Moving on.  “So, my Core, huh?  I think I’d quite like to see that.”

“Myeah~?” she replied a tad too excitedly.  But then she realized what I was actually asking and plastered herself across the door.  “I mean, no!  No, that isn’t—a goat-fucking thunder-pus—puss-possible.”

“And that would be because…?”

Her eyes widened and she shivered at the question, but then she turned her gaze from me.  Firming her lip, she shouted, “Don’t you dare!  Your honeyed words will not sway me.  Only I may enter your Core.  It is my place.  Mine and mine alone!”

I was about to pursue the question—she had hardly answered it, after all—but then something else occurred to me.

“Your birthright.”

She started to nod, but then she looked at me sharply.  “You remembered that?”

“Maybe… some,” I replied softly, considering.  “Not that it explains much.”

She grimaced, then took a deep breath and held it.  “I am sorry.  Just… please do not ask to look inside.  I—I cannot… I cannot stand against you, if you push.  And were you to go in, I’m not sure I could pull you out again.”

“So it’s dangerous.”

A nod.

“Then you should have said that,” I said reasonably.

Which seemed to relax her somewhat.  “I am sorry.  Again.  It is an old argument, and there have been… incidents.  People think I hide secrets, or that they can unlock untold power.  Even those that listen assume a simple accumulation of Wisdom can protect them.  They do not understand.  Only I was created to handle Mania.  Not even—”

She stopped short at that.  But it was still enough to give me plenty to think about.  “Mania, huh.  As in Manic Energy and all that?”

She moaned slightly and arched her back toward me.  Then bobbed her head almost as an afterthought.

Good grief.  If I had not been so tired, I doubted I could have resisted the urge to question the Faen into a coma of her own.  But I was.  And I was honestly struggling to sort through the hundreds of quandaries dribbling out of my ears.

“Huh,” was all I managed.  Then I yawned.

Mia shot me a quick look, then plastered herself over the door a bit more dramatically.  “No, my lord!  You mustn’t ask me such questions!  I fear you are not prepared to hear the secrets behind Manic Energy.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I mumbled.  “So uh… I guess we should get to distributing my stats or something.”

She made a strangled noise in her throat and then deflated.  “I assume you want the same arrangement as last time?  Wisdom and Toughness?”

“Sounds good.”  Probably.  It was good enough for my past self, and the current me was having a hard time thinking of why it might not be.

Mia’s expression slowly began to crumple and, from the way her eyes were shifting about, I could tell she was struggling to think of something to say.  But then she brightened.

“Oh!  Uh…”  She delicately cleared her throat.  “You have had such an awful day, and here I am nattering on like a loon.  And so filthy, too.  I really must draw myself a bath.  And this dress!  Absolutely ruined…”

She took a few steps around me before slowing to look over her shoulder.

Some of the fog began lifting from my brain at the mention of a nice hot soak, and I sucked in a deep breath.  “A bath, huh?  Man… that does sound good.  Does that mean you’ve found the bathroom again?”

She stumbled a bit at my thoughtless questions and had to grip the doorknob to the exit to keep from falling.  “Ah~hum… my aching puss-pu—pretty sure I can find it.  Yes, my lord… if you’d like to… join… me?”

Mia’s suggestive question petered off as she stared into the now empty room.  To say she was non-plussed would be a mild understatement.

“Gone?!” she exclaimed.  “No, you can’t be… I was just about to… argh!”

Turning, she snatched open the door and began stomping back up the stairs.  It slammed behind her on its own, suiting her mood perfectly.

“First time I get the man to myself where he can even somewhat think for himself, and what happens?  Rolls over and falls asleep!  That’s what!  Ha!  Think you’re the only one that’s been working hard?”

Her grumbling became inaudible for a moment as she rounded one of the many flights back to the living quarters.

“Bloody imbecile!  What does a girl have to do?  Fish out her breasts and rub them over his…”  She paused her tirade to giggle slightly.  Then sigh.  “No, no.  We can’t be so crass as that.  We have to play this smart.  We’re only a mental construct right now.  We don’t have the advantages his others have.  Have to remember:  he is far less beholden to his own body while in the fabric.  Can’t just expect…”

Before she knew it, she had arrived at her door and barged into a familiar hallway.  Though, notably, this exit was nowhere near where it had been in the first place.  At least there was no sign of the Third, for which she was immensely grateful.  That was not a conversation she was anxious to resume, and not just because she was wet enough to give herself a sponge bath.

She winced slightly and rolled her hips a few times.  Talking to him always got her riled up.  He always had so many questions, but his damned propriety usually got in the way before anything interesting came of them.

Although, now that she had some space to think about it, she had not been in any real mood for that sort of thing, either.  She was still covered in Manic residue and her dress was absolutely ruined.  She and this ‘Arx’ character were going to have a serious conversation about putting their master at unnecessary risk.

“Simple Rank II would have been more than sufficient…” she grumbled.

In a huff, she rounded a corner only to discover an absolutely massive hole in the wall.  Exposed bricks were tilted in and dangling along its edges, and if that were not bad enough, dust from the crumbling mortar had scattered all over her carpet.