Chapter 304 – The Third Born

In one of The Mothership’s many training rooms, Emily and Silvia are partway through a dance of fists and blades, gearing up towards a proper spar, when Emily feels a pulse of energy run through her runic tattoos.

“She’s ready!” she mutters, her lips curling faintly in excitement as she freezes and pulls back from thrusting a blade from her left palm towards Silvia’s chest.

“She?” Silvia questions, dropping her guard and falling out of stance.

“I can just tell.” Emily shrugs, turning to leave the training room and leading the way back to her room where her other children are meditating.

When she steps in with Silvia hot on her heels, Mensacus and Silica both immediately look over. One look at the grin on her face and they understand. Mensacus rises from the foot of her bed, while Silica hops off it, scrambling over to weave between Emily’s legs.

“New sibling?” the fox huffs, batting her head against her mother’s hand in a request for attention.

“Yes. Would you like to come meet her?” Emily asks, gladly brushing her fingers through her daughter’s fur and feeling the energy thrumming just below the surface.

She should be reaching third circle any day now.

“Yes!” Silica yips, while Mensacus calmly nods in agreement.

Emily wraps them all in her spatial mana before pulling them into her Factory. They appear a few metres away from the centre of the dimension, standing on the dried, flaking structural circle that’s begun to fade away.

At the centre of the space sits a crouched figure with her back to them. Her body is all smooth, delicate curves of pale white metal that almost looks like marble in texture, with a soft glow emanating from her joints and several glowing lines arcing across her back in a branch-like pattern that stretches up from her waist. She doesn’t move at first, and Emily holds up a hand in a silent command for the others to wait as she takes a step forward.

“Hello, my child,” she greets softly, a name dancing on the edge of her tongue.

The homunculus slowly turns her head towards the sound, revealing a blank, featureless plate where her face should be. She has no mouth, but she forms words from a faint vibration of the dense qi pouring from her with little to no control:

“You…”

The sound is disjointed and harsh, and she pauses, tilting her head in what Emily thinks is displeasure, to take a few moments to adjust.

“Are my creator?” she finishes in a melodic whisper, her tone soft and airy.

“Yes, I am.” Emily nods, reaching out to offer a hand to help her child up.

The homunculus ignores it, twisting her body in a graceful but unnatural motion to face in the same direction as her head, rising to stand a head taller than Emily.

“I… feel tethered to you,” the homunculus tilts her head, glowing slits igniting on her face where eyes should be. “You have bound me.”

“I’ve marked you as my child, as I have done with all of my spawn,” Emily explains patiently, holding up a hand to wave Mensacus off when she feels him prickling at the clear hostility being directed towards her. “It simply designates you as my family, regardless of being born of my blood, and allows me to aid your development should you choose to let me. You are not restricted in any way; though I would ask that you don’t turn against me even if you choose to take your own path.”

It hurts to offer the child separation, but Emily ignores her own feelings on the matter and focuses on trying to read the sparse body language of the homunculus.

“You can aid me? But you are weak.”

Silvia scoffs at the comment, and when the homunculus turns her gaze towards the vampire, she visibly recoils, cowering in the face of the dense qi and lifeforce on clear display. Emily turns a warning glare on Silvia, and she smirks in understanding, withdrawing her energy and raising her hands in surrender.

The homunculus turns her gaze back to her creator and continues:

“I have been born at the same level that you have toiled to reach. I am greater. How could you aid me?”

“You may be fifth phase by birth, but you are certainly not greater.” Emily pushes outwards with both her energies, making sure they’re both easily detectable instead of blending into the energy suffusing the dimension. “I admit I may not be able to boost your development too much at the moment, but it won’t be long before I go through my next ascension, and even without it, I am anything but weak.”

The homunculus shivers at the display, her illusory eyes widening in surprise for a moment before narrowing again and tilting upwards at the edges in anticipation.

“Prove it, creator, and earn my loyalty.”

Emily meets her challenge with a feral grin, but she raises her hands in a calming motion when the homunculus drops into a crouch, ready to pounce.

“Gladly, but not here. I have an unfair advantage, and I’d hate to damage my other creations.”

Her child nods reluctantly, letting Emily wrap her in spatial mana with the others and pull them back out into The Mothership. Emily sends off a message to Wilder, telling him to bring the fleet to a stop and prepare for another show.

Silica wanders over to her little sister while they wait. Emily keeps a close eye on them in case of any hostility but lets her daughter do as she pleases. The fox sits before the homunculus and raises her head proudly, grinning up at her.

“Little sister!” she beams innocently, though Emily suspects otherwise given Mensacus’ proud nod that follows.

The homunculus appears unsure of how to react for a moment, before reaching down to pat her sister’s head.

“Little one,” she greets in return, watching Silica’s tail swaying in satisfaction with clear curiosity.

Silvia doesn’t bother to hide her laughter, and Emily silently reaches out to her son with a thread of mental mana.

‘She’s a little demon.’

‘I’ve taught her well,’ Mensacus responds proudly. ‘The youngest will know her rightful place before you teach her.’

Emily scoffs but doesn’t disagree.

The moment the fleet comes to a halt in an empty patch of space, Emily Blinks them all out into the vacuum, sending a message to Elwaine’s Terminal to ask them to meet them out there. The fleet’s pilots notice them and quickly move to create an encirclement, setting themselves up to get a good view and giving Emily plenty of space for her duel.

The homunculus spins in place, taking in the surrounding forces before turning to Emily.

“You command all of these people?” she asks.

“No.” Emily nods towards her partner. “Silvia does, though I am her right hand.”

Elwaine floats over to meet them, offering Silvia a polite nod before turning their attention to Emily.

“You called? I take it this has something to do with this…” the pause, glancing at the homunculus with a raised, curious brow, “fascinating creation.”

“This is my newest child, a homunculus, and she has asked me to prove myself worthy as her creator,” Emily explains, transmitting her voice across the fleet on a wave of machina. “I’ve decided that I might as well use it as an opportunity to introduce her to everyone. Elwaine, would you be so kind as to contain our fight once again?” She reduces the range of her transmission to speak to the elf alone. “I thought you might appreciate the chance to test that barrier we worked on.”

“Gladly,” the elf declares with an appreciative nod.

They step back, gesturing for Silvia and the rest of Emily’s kids to move behind them before drawing their wand and rapidly tracing out a slew of runes that dance through the vacuum, wrapping Emily and her challenger in a wide barrier.

“We’ll make this simple,” Emily says as the barrier’s being built, broadcasting her voice. “Come at me with everything you have; fight to kill. I shall aim to disable you, but I won’t harm you more than necessary.”

“You think me weak?” the homunculus hisses, copying Emily and transmitting her voice far and wide.

“No, I think you’re inexperienced,” Emily corrects gently, flooding her body with machina as her child drops into a combat stance. “You may have been born with a basic understanding of combat thanks to the memories I gave you, but I have been fighting my whole life. If you had my experience, you would’ve known never to take this fight.”

They burst into motion at the same time, taking the completion of Elwaine’s work as the starting signal. The homunculus blinks forward in a burst of light, sharpening her leg into a jagged blade and driving it towards Emily’s throat. Emily calmly meets the blow with her own foot, her boots wreathed in machina to protect them from damage.

Her youngest child throws a flurry of strikes, sharpening all of her limbs and aiming for the thinnest points in Emily’s armour, but her stance is a familiar one, and Emily easily matches her.

The homunculus quickly notices the futility of a straight brawl and backs up, taking a moment to flood her limbs with light and turn herself into a blur. Emily grins and calls upon her lightning connection, turning to a crackling figure of charge and weaving around each blow that comes at her.

She doesn’t throw any of her own attacks, which quickly frustrates her challenger, who begins forming bolts of light qi and firing them in sync with her blows. Emily calls metal into the mix, turning solid once again as her skin shifts to a metallic hue. She dodges each physical blow and bats aside those made of pure energy, the burning heat of the light barely phasing her.

The homunculus charges her blows with metallic qi and tries to circle Emily, forming a net of slashes and strikes. Emily catches the first conjured metal blade that flies at her without flinching, flooding it with her own energy and quickly forcing her child’s out thanks to her far vaster understanding of the element.

Interesting. Usurping control of a conjured object shouldn’t be so easy… being marked as my child must influence it.

She closes her grip and shatters the attack before her child can notice the change and drops her elemental connections, calling upon water instead. She bends and weaves around every blade and thread of metal flying at her, twisting herself into unnatural shapes but not quite embodying liquid entirely.

When the homunculus tries to close her formed encirclement of qi, Emily drops water and calls for fire, superheating herself and erupting with heat. Waves of orange-white flames roll from her body, swallowing the large-scale attack and melting it out of shape.

The homunculus cries in frustration and charges forwards in a stream of light once again, but Emily drops her elemental connection again and casts Blink, appearing on the opposite side of their enclosed arena before her child can catch her. She does this several times, toying with her opponent and dropping a single attack spell in her wake each time she vanishes, striking at her child’s joints with a variety of elements.

Pillars of rock and spinning blades of water, flaming arrows wreathed in charge and raw floods of pure darkness; she wears away at her without being caught a single time.

The homunculus dodges most of the spells, but it doesn’t take long for her to start slowing down, and once they start hitting their target, they don’t stop. Within a few minutes of the first blow landing, one of the newborn creature’s arms flies off, and not long later one of its legs joins it. Emily Blinks to and catches the lost limbs, sending them into her Factory while continuing their dance.

Before she can lose another limb, the homunculus takes several hits to the body, and her movements slow to a crawl. She pauses in the centre of the barrier array and freezes completely. Emily stops throwing attacks and approaches her, waving silently for Elwaine to dismiss their containment.

“You… are holding back,” the homunculus comments wryly, a hint of disappointment in her tone.

“I am.” Emily nods, drawing out an arm fully repaired by the energies in her factory and stepping in closer to join it back to the empty socket where it belongs. “I told you that you lack experience and that it was an unfair fight. Next time, you’ll know not to start it. If you’ll allow me to help you, I will ensure you never suffer such a defeat again against an opponent at the same level, but if you still wish to leave, I won’t hold you back.”

The homunculus remains silent as Emily reattaches her leg and pours metal mana into her to fix the damage she’s suffered. The moment she’s whole again, she drops to one knee, mirroring the stance Mensacus favours and lowering her head.

“I thank you for the lesson,” she says, broadcasting her voice to the entire fleet, “Mother.”

“It will be the first of many,” Emily smiles, setting her hand on her child’s head and activating Mother’s Blessing once again to solidify the link between them, “Lumaes.”