Ninecloud City, crown jewel of the Ninecloud Continent
Lesser Palace of Celestial Radiance
Leiala 237 / 982 ADW
I didn't remember being this aware the last time I was a baby.
Actually, I didn't remember anything from the last time I was a baby. So it was a huge improvement all round.
Some kind of weird energy was running through me. It felt a little like mana, and a little like licking a battery, but it filled me with a startling clarity as it looped and flowed through my pudgy little body.
Even better, when I had pushed it out of my skin in shock over finding myself as an infant, it had done something amazing. For an instant I had been able to see a room straight out of an emperor's palace, instead of the blurry mess that was all I got when I opened my eyes for a second look.
Unfortunately the room had no signs of modern medical equipment, despite my mother having just finished giving birth. But I would happily endure medieval conditions if I got magic vision and incredible wealth. I could reinvent anything I really needed, probably.
My mother had been smiling even though she looked like a soldier freshly dragged from a battlefield, and the dignified man at her side wore a stoic expression despite the bloody ruin of his hand. Clearly they'd been attacked recently but none of the functionaries passing around ornate bottles and boxes of herbal medicines had looked too worried, so I wouldn't be either.
At least, not about the risk of violence. I was plenty worried about the risks of being an infant in a place where 'doctors' dressed in fine robes instead of sterile gowns and treated their patients with things out of fancy gold bottles. Hopefully that weird woman who reincarnated me this time hadn't sent me here just to die of an infection while these quacks tried to treat me with mercury and incense.
I blinked at the blurs of colour that surrounded me, listened intently to what were either words or nonsense baby talk, and promptly started trying to make the energy do the thing again.
It took a few tries to get it to move how I wanted. The energy wanted to pool just beneath my belly button -or where I would have one once the last of my umbilical cord dropped off- and my attempts to make it stop all failed. The bits not in the pool were all in threads that looped through me, and even those were either moving towards or away from the pool.
It was extremely disconcerting. Like suddenly having an extra circulatory system made of static electricity and propellant. Not to mention that it somehow felt multi-coloured.
I couldn't make it stop flowing through me, and trying made me feel weak and heavy so I decided that was probably unhealthy. However, when I went with the flow instead of fighting it I found it a lot easier to control. A little nudge and the energy began trickling out of me, like my skin was a filter I had to let it drip through.
Out in the world it didn't simply disperse to nothing, but branched out like I was pouring water into the top of a whole network of streams. Though a spider web might have been a better comparison since the energy hung in the air like it had never heard of gravity.
And wherever that three-dimensional web extended, I could see perfectly. See and hear and even feel the bare edges of other senses. Obviously this was an awesome power that would let me extend my senses however far my energy could reach. Which was about ten feet for the moment but that was exponentially further than a baby's senses would have reached with any clarity.
I confirmed that my mother was carrying me, and that her appearance had been rendered immaculate while I was figuring out my energy -I spared a moment's appreciation for the skill of her servants, hopefully we compensated them appropriately- while the man at her side wasn't as badly injured as I had thought. His hand was bloody but only bruised beneath it, and between that and his martial bearing I assumed he'd dealt with whoever attacked us. Given he seemed the likeliest candidate for my father, that was reassuring.
I'd barely managed to take in their appearance when both my parents reacted in shock, looking at me and talking rapidly to one another. My lack of comprehension was frustrating, but they seemed happy at least. Then my mother's face loomed close enough for me to see it semi-clearly even with my actual eyes, and I felt an energy that wasn't my own.
The drifting webs that let me see were suddenly caught on a network like steel threads strung through reality. They had such a solidity to them that I was amazed I couldn't see them, not even the branches that fell between my mother's face and my own. They also extended out far past where I could see, with none of the weakening that my own threads had at the edges.
One of them shifted to brush against mine, and I knew it could have smashed right through but it just gently nudged it back and forth.
All while my mother fixed deep blue eyes on my face and offered a softer smile than she'd been showing the world when I first looked around.
The stronger threads had to belong to her. Which meant I wasn't the only one with this strange new magic. It also meant that other people with this magic could sense my threads, which would make them a lot less useful for spying.
A large hand engulfed much of my torso as my father -I assumed- rested his palm lightly on my stomach. Then something swept over me and I was reminded of observational magic. A moment later I felt another foreign energy poking at my own. This time it felt even more like my own, with the same paradoxically multi-coloured texture, and it dripped directly into my body.
Just a tiny drop and it felt so dense and powerful that it would sweep away my own energy completely. An ocean condensed into a raindrop, poised to blow me to pieces.
Only, instead of washing over me like a wave, the energy pushed softly at the loops inside me, and I suddenly remembered seeing a dog using his nose to nudge his pups back into their bed. I couldn't remember where I'd seen it and trying to recall broke my concentration on my threads, returning my world to a claustrophobic kaleidoscope of nonsense sounds and blurred vision.
When I got them back up it confirmed my vague sense of movement. My parents were striding rapidly through the halls of a palace that only became grander as I saw more of it, with everyone they met either standing to attention at the walls or bowing aside in deference.
They met it all with stoic assurance on my father's part, and a mysterious sense of amusement on my mother's, but both were equally at ease. The reappearance of my threads didn't slow their stride this time but their pride was palpable.
Clearly my parents ruled over this land with their magic, and having inherited it was a mark of my quality. I purposefully didn't imagine what might have happened if I didn't inherit their power. They had obviously not expected me to show it as a newborn infant after all. If there were any expectations to meet then I had time to meet them still.
With that in mind I was feeling remarkably confident in my new life and somewhat grateful to the celestial being that had -literally- thrown me into it. Then we reached a great hall, so vast that I felt like the area my threads were showing me was an island in the midst of a sea of empty space, and a new energy swept over us.
My father and mother were both enormously stronger than me. As expected of grown adults.
Just the edge of the presence that was coming made them seem like ants.
It made my threads hum and stretch out of my control, another foreign energy merging with them even as they continued to show me the expanding world. Where they brushed against my mother's I could feel her own steel cables of power being treated just the same as my delicate threads.
The power drew my threads out until they pressed against the walls of the enormous entrance hall of the palace. It let me take in the endless ranks of statues and countless other works of art that complimented the opulence of every inch of the building itself. Yet my attention was somehow fixed firmly on the great doors, my threads piled up against the densely engraved images of battles against mythical creatures that covered the strangely glimmering wood.
The oddity of a lot of the materials I was seeing would normally have occupied more of my thoughts, but I hardly noticed even before the doors opened and after…after they opened I couldn't focus on anything but what came through them. I wouldn't have been able to even if my threads hadn't started swirling about her like they were falling into a black hole.
She, definitely she, was radiant. Like a supernova.
She wore a dress made of feathers that glimmered with impossible colours, and a delicate silken mantle that floated like the raiment of a god. All of it was finer than anything I'd ever seen and none of it could begin to compare to the figure wearing it.
She was a woman made of light. Shimmering as though a nine-coloured rainbow had been poured into the shape of a goddess, she took command of the room just by entering it. Eyes closed and seated in a meditative position atop a towering palanquin, her sheer power still engulfed the room and demanded every drop of attention be focused on her.
The seat she'd been carried in on was more like a mobile shrine than anything, and the figures that carried it on their shoulders were something out of a legend, each one a mythical creature that seemed to have been painted onto the world with brushstrokes of energy as much as matter.
At any other time and -assuming I also had a neck more functional than a newborn's- I'd have stared at them with my mouth hanging open, but she made them into an afterthought.
The palanquin led a whole parade of people in incredible finery, most of them old and all of them exuding power like my parents did. None of it could touch the woman made of light.
The doors closed on their own accord and the crowd of hanger-ons dropped to their knees in sync with my parents. Still she did not move or speak.
Then there was a voice. It came from everywhere in the room -my power letting me know that for sure- and it sounded like a princess had taken a job as a receptionist.
"Upon this unworthy spirit is bestowed the honour to introduce Her Radiance, Monarch of the Ninecloud Court, Protector of the Ninecloud Continent and the Scintillant Seas, Most Blessed Beneath the Heavens…"
The list of titles went on for full minutes while I ignored the question of how I could even understand the words and did my best to commit them to memory. The omnipresent voice never paused or took a breath. The kneeling ranks never so much as twitched. The only thing that moved was the power in the room, expanding and contracting like the lungs of a colossal beast.
Finally the list concluded with, "...The Luminous Queen Sha Leiala." Which must have been the cue for everyone to say something I still didn't understand but could infer as acknowledgment of her power over everyone. Hopefully that power didn't include an ability to read my mind and have me executed for thinking my family were in charge.
I tried to think deferential thoughts just in case.
A ripple went through the energy in the room, and the voice spoke again, a tinge of joy disturbing its previous calm, "In her great mercy, the Luminous Queen bids this spirit to carry her words, for an infant in the Foundation realm may not withstand the voice of a Monarch."
I redoubled my efforts to think nice things about the god queen who could make me explode by talking to me.
"With the voice of the Ninecloud Soul, we speak." The voice carried an echo of power this time, with the sudden absence of humble speech serving as another clue that the Queen had taken over. Though I was almost more interested in the implications of the spirit itself. Did these people have AI? Was that how it was translating for me? Were they primitives or not?
Everyone said the same thing again. I mentally translated it as 'We obey.' for now. Hopefully my elastic baby brain would make it easy to pick the language up because I hated having to guess.
"Cousin to our exalted line, Sha Rallan. Envoy of the Raging Sky Monarch, Julia Arelius. You are blessed with a child, yet you have not presented this blessing before us."
I caught my parents exchanging a look I couldn't make sense of, then they said the thing again before my father raised his head and said something that sounded disturbingly short and lacking in the flowery deference I assumed he should be using.
"Did the resources invested in the health of your family not make our interest clear cousin? The Medical Sage is not a servant to be commanded on a whim."
That must have made him realise he had overstepped, because my father bowed his head again and spoke for a while in a way that sounded much more appropriate for the situation. Though the only thing I could actually understand was the Queen's name.
"There is no need for such humility. No threat to the health of the Sha shall be tolerated, and regardless, the prophesied death of the Arelius Envoy was reason enough for us to act."
My head was spinning from the implications of that, but my father didn't hesitate to launch back into a long speech of some kind and I had to focus on trying to read the tone.
He sounded respectful, but I was getting increasingly worried that I had been born to some kind of scheming lesser prince. I'd have to make my own loyalty clear as quickly as possible once I could talk. Though I would also have to show the proper respect to my parents.
"We are truly pleased to have such a loyal Overlord in our service." My father's face tightened a little at that, though Overlord hardly sounded like an insult. "To have birthed such a prodigal talent is proof of the exalted line of the father, and the mother alike."
There was a slight stir among the kneeling ranks and I ratcheted up my estimations of my parent's reaction to my threads. Whether it was a good thing to have exceeded expectations remained to be seen, but I'd definitely done so.
My mother spoke, briefly and without raising her head. Then my father said something and my frustration at not knowing what any of it meant was enough that the energy in me started to move faster. I'd have lost control of my threads if the Queen's power hadn't been maintaining them for me, and the way my mother flinched and pressed a hand to my stomach had me remembering too late that others could sense it inside me.
Nobody else seemed to notice at least. Plus, the soothing pulses of my mother's energy were surprisingly nice. My own slowed down enough that I started to feel tired and had to fight not to yawn in the presence of the Queen.
I was already drifting off to sleep when she spoke again, "Fear not that our line shall be eclipsed by such talent. Let it be known that the heir to the Path of Celestial Radiance will be born before the new year, and her advancement will exceed her cousin's from the moment of birth!"
That was enough for the kneeling old men and women to start cheering, and my parent's were quick to add their own congratulations.
As I gave in to sleep though, I stayed focused on what was really important about that statement.
I had to find out what advancement was, and make sure I kept mine below the heir's.
Though I also had to make sure I met expectations…
…so…
…just behind…should…
…do…
Ninecloud City, crown jewel of the Ninecloud Continent
Lesser Palace of Celestial Radiance, Sanctum of the Seventh Dawn
Leiala 237 / 982 ADW
After an hour of badgering her, Rallan had finally managed to convince his wife to get some rest.
For all her protestations Julia had been dead to the world ever since. Which made two out of the three members of their little family since Tanya had exhausted her madra and passed out.
It was no true danger to her, even at such a tender age, but it still concerned him. Pushing herself at birth could not be a good omen for his daughter's attitude later in life. Prodigal talent or not, he'd rather a child who advanced slowly and safely than one who rushed ahead into dangers he could not shield her from.
He had little doubt that her cousin would drag her into enough of those without any help.
His own cousin certainly had.
That was perhaps unfair to Leiala, especially given the support she'd given him before the court, but he could certainly have used some warning of what she was planning. What she'd been doing for more than a century.
Pacing back to the bar built into the corner of his room, Rallan kept his spiritual perception on his wife and child while he poured himself what was technically a very valuable sacred elixir. They were both fine. Sleeping peacefully.
Which meant there was no reason not to drain the glass of Fermented Crescent Dew and pour another to hold while he went back to pacing.
Though long experience had him pouring another glass to leave on the bar first.
For thousands of years the Sha family had claimed each heir to be born an immaculate daughter of her mother alone, no matter the dalliances of their mother. That it was a lie was technically a secret, but not a particularly dangerous one. Nobody of any real power would believe the claim to start with.
Of course since a mere Overlord had no real power he personally shouldn't have known that, but then he'd always been proof that advancement in the sacred arts was not the only form of power in the world. In practical terms, he ranked more highly than most kings.
So he knew what most of the Ninecloud Court did not. Sha Leiala's daughter would be the child of a man long dead and gone. There were any number of ways to accomplish such a thing with the right preparations, and if she had simply announced the impending birth of her heir then he would have assumed she had preserved a fragment of her love a century ago and thought little of it.
But the Luminous Queen could not speak lies before her court. She could not take even the slightest risk of doing so. So for her to declare her daughter would surpass his own could only mean one thing.
Heaven's Womb was absolutely not a secret he should know about. Whatever his rank might be, it wasn't Monarch. He had no business knowing anything that needed to be kept secret from the handful of people on the planet who could match the power of the Luminous Queen. If Leiala's mother had not been kind enough to layer protections of that level over his mind, then he might have been slain in his youth for his cousin's decision to tell him about it.
The hidden technique was one of the foundations of the Sha family's power, and of the Heavenly Path that had allowed them to create more Monarchs than any other legacy in the history of their world. It was said, by those who thought themselves privileged to know it even existed, that the Heavenly Path let a Sha family Monarch elevate their heir to the same advancement in an instant. Albeit at great cost.
By all logic and reason, the power to simply force advancement was impossible, but that was the supposed power of the Sha family and the reason that in all of history they had never lost control of the Ninecloud Continent for more than a century. So believed the most powerful and knowledgeable beings on their world.
The truth, known to exactly two and a half people out of the six hundred billion or so on the planet, was that it was nonsense. Forcing advancement, depending on the scale of the act, fell somewhere between madness and impossibility. To elevate a child to Monarch with a single technique was far beyond an impossibility. It would be easier to snap the universe in half.
The true Heavenly Path was a complex sequence of techniques to manufacture a perfect heir and speed their growth. While it could grant instant advancement, such was an emergency measure and one with countless limitations and flaws. None of which the other powers of the world could be allowed to know about.
The other Monarchs made frequent attempts at stealing the secrets of the Heavenly Path and failed principally because they were striving for a treasure that could not possibly exist. Such was his ancestors' design. The greatest treasure of the Sha could not be hidden, so it was obscured in an even more brilliant light instead.
Now that ancient deception meant he could not even whisper his worries to himself. The only other person he could share them with was the very person who had gifted them to him.
It was beyond maddening. So much so that when the Ninecloud Soul announced, "The Luminous Queen asks if you are in a state worthy of her sight." He almost told her no.
Instead he took a long breath and said formally, "This Sha Rallan is honoured to bid her welcome."
The world split in a glimmer of colour to reveal a glimpse of deepest blue. Then a woman stepped through the opening and it closed behind her even as the Ninecloud Soul's presence receded and he felt layers of protections slide into place.
He couldn't begin to comprehend the workings of a Monarch, but he knew what they meant. This would be a truly private conversation, without the presence of even the artificial spirit network that was the second greatest treasure of the Sha family.
So of course his cousin had not bothered to dress herself for court.
Sha Leiala was, as befit someone reforged thrice in soulfire, perfect in every physical sense. She was also dressed in a loose combination of robe and pants, with her long red hair tied back like a young sacred artist ready for a day's training. The effect was somewhat offset by her sheer presence, but she had adopted a slouched posture like she was fighting to have as little dignity as possible.
It made her belly, round with a child well on its way to birth, stand out more than it would have otherwise. Her shirt was even riding up to reveal a broad slice of her skin.
As a matter of principle, he threw his glass at her head.
She caught it with a wink, sweeping it through the air to catch the errant droplets and getting it halfway to her lips before he held up a hand and pointed to hers on the bar.
She sent his own floating gently through the air towards him and he snatched it up with a scowl.
When she'd had a drink and her amusement at his futile aggravation had passed, Rallan asked the only question he had. "Have you been using it the whole time?"
Leiala nodded. Patting her stomach she said, "My little girl's all natural. Conceived in-"
He held up a hand again, cutting her off before she could regale him with the exact location, circumstances, a blow-by-blow recounting of her conquest. He didn't have the patience for her usual attempts to disturb his bearing. Not after that confirmation.
"The risks. You have to have known them."
"Why do you think I never told you?"
For all that he knew his advancement had long fallen short of what she needed in a confidant, it was still a blow.
"Apologies. My weakness has kept you from good council."
She was at his side in a moment, bringing a hand down lightly on his head in a blow that would have crushed stone to dust. He rubbed the slight redness it left on his forehead and met her gaze as she muttered, "Always jumping to conclusions cousin. I didn't tell you because I knew you'd bug me about it, not because I worried someone would tear the secret out of you. Mom took care of that problem before I even took the throne."
He'd been thinking more that she had considered him too weak to have meaningful insight on the matter, but the confirmation of her actual reasons had him returning her blow without any attempt at keeping it light.
His return chop would have pulverised any metal he had encountered in his life, and predictably failed to even redden a Monarch's skin, but it did ruffle her hair and he could consider that a victory.
She did him the kindness of clutching at her head like it had actually hurt. Or possibly she was trying to mock him.
Either way, "You have been hobbling yourself for more than a century, and you didn't think you needed someone to tell you to stop?"
She flapped a hand at him, "It was fine. Heaven's Womb is a foundational technique. It hardly takes more effort than cycling madra."
"You fought the Dreadgods three times in the last century."
"I turned back a Dreadgod three times. Dangerous for sure, but going all out against those things is a bad idea anyway."
"And the other Monarchs?"
"A few minor scuffles here and there?"
"As I recall it, you nearly killed Reigan Shen over the Trackless Sea some decades past."
"And wouldn't that overgrown housecat be humiliated to know I did it while heavily pregnant."
Despite her amusement, Reigan Shen learning enough to be humiliated would have been a true disaster. For a Monarch something like pregnancy should have been no hindrance at all. Else the Monarch of the Akura clan would have spent most of her time weakened given Akura Malice's apparent determination to render all attempts at transcribing her family tree to require the widest piece of paper possible.
Heaven's Womb was an exception. The technique was immensely complex and draining, and didn't allow the slightest margin for error. Without any benefit to the user, it was merely a technique that weakened the strongest piece any Monarch had to play, themselves.
In exchange for that absurd cost it allowed the user to take complete control of the development of life within them.
To shape the body was the least of its effects. With more time it could shape the nascent mind and soul to ensure a prodigal sacred artist in every respect. With more than a century he could hardly imagine the benefits it might grant.
But it placed all hopes in a single vessel, and the danger of that was self-evident. No technique could guarantee the future. Safer to use it just enough to grant any child a solid foundation and trust that one of the resultant candidates would prove a worthy heir.
That was why he existed in the first place. His mother had been less talented than her younger sister and ceded the position gladly.
Then again, his aunt had gone on to favour aggression for most of her reign and her nation had paid the price, while Leiala had spent her own centuries as Monarch of the Ninecloud Country fixing the mess she inherited.
He couldn't blame her for choosing her own path over that which had brought her such troubles.
He just resented the pressure that she was putting on both their children by doing so.
His aggravation drained out of him and he sagged against the wall while Leiala sprawled across a couch.
"Trust is a rarer thing than power." She said into a pillow. "Birthing my heir any earlier would have guaranteed her neither."
"This does not guarantee either. Ensuring our children grow up together will not turn them into us. Nor will any amount of talent make up for a lack of drive."
"You betray your lacking comprehension cousin. At the level I have elevated it to, Heaven's Womb is more than capable of instilling such a thing."
He took a moment to consider that revelation, but found it changed nothing. "Endow her with a thousand virtues, and they will remain worthless if she does not choose to embrace them."
That earned him a turn of her head and an eye fixed on him, with more than a little of the Luminous Queen shining from its depths. His Overlord soul trembled, but he would fear his cousin when she wiped the memory of their childhood days from his mind and not a moment sooner.
She huffed a laugh and rolled to her feet in a movement that the poets of the Ninecloud Court would have lost decades trying to capture. With the eyes of a hero, she looked out to a future he could not see and boldly declared, "Uncertain as the future might be, I put my faith in our children."
"What about the fate of the continent?" He said dryly.
"I'll trust them with that too."
Rallan found himself swept up in her wake despite himself. "Are you sure your heir will be able to keep up? You saw what my child was doing today."
"You mean when I had to intercept you before you dragged your family into a formal audience?"
"I've never dragged Julia anywhere. I doubt I'd survive the attempt."
"Marrying a fellow fool makes neither of you less foolish."
"She could hardly be seen to snub you after you gifted such a fortune to keep her alive. The Court would only see an Archlady demanding time after a minor exertion, no matter the truth of her struggle."
Her opinion of that went unsaid. Instead she looked through the walls to where he knew the birthing chamber was being poured over by his agents even as they spoke. Something of the Herald of Scintillating Wrath showed on her face as she did.
"See that you find the one responsible for that cousin."
"It is likely a Monarch."
"Good." The word was almost a sneer. "I won't be pregnant much longer."
He blew out a sigh and put aside the implications and concerns for a moment.
Even with her so relaxed, embracing his cousin felt a little like wrapping his arms around a star. He squeezed her anyway and said, "Congratulations Leilei. I am happy for you, truly."
"Good job dumping all the work on Julia." She said into his collarbone, before returning his embrace with a grip like the gravity of a star. "Congratulations to the three of you."
Then she pulled away, her clothes already shifting form as she donned the guise of the Luminous Queen once again.
She tore upon a hole in the world and paused before stepping through to say over her shoulder, "By the way, Miara will be born in the Copper realm. Hope your Tanya can keep up."
Then she was gone, and he was left wrestling with yet another impossibility in a day full of them.
Copper was nothing -the first realm above Foundation- but… to reach it before even being born?
He cast his spiritual perception over Tanya once again, and found her well. Then he blew out a sigh and got back to work.
The poor child. With a monster like that to follow around, she wouldn't be sleeping peacefully for long.
