Having dealt with Nephthys and the clone possessing her for now, Percy and Micky’s main bodies were free to work on their next project. Despite having converted their blood to spiritual blood over a year ago, they had yet to find the time to experiment with the strange resource properly. Of course, their battle against Machaon had already given them a few clues, but there was plenty that they still needed to understand about it.
Just as Percy was about to start, his clone reached out to him once more. ‘Nesha’s back! She’s trying to enter the hive!’
The message was accompanied by a few images that the wasps had probably transmitted to their princess. Thankfully, Percy’s girlfriend appeared uninjured, though her face and clothes were caked in dried dirt and sweat, her dark hair even messier than usual.
Percy ignored all of that, focusing on her location. He didn’t recognize the exact tunnel through the grainy image, so he asked his familiar to point him in the right direction as he enveloped himself in willpower and took off.
Leaving a booming shockwave behind him, he shot through the colourful caverns like a meteor. His Sage’s Pond stretched before him to map out his path, allowing him to travel through the winding corridors of the underground kingdom with shocking precision. Accelerating by the second, he tore a hole through the veil of magical motes dancing in his path, the odd crystal or protruding mineral shattering into powder against his domain.
Percy only cared enough to slow down when he judged that he was close enough to his girlfriend, not wanting to crash into her by accident. He crossed the final stretch of the journey on foot, his steps hurried as he neared his target. His sharp senses allowed him to spot Nesha before she saw him, though it didn’t take long for them to fall into each other’s arms, hugging tightly.
“I missed you,” she said, her voice soft. “The real you, I mean. Not your clones, familiars, or aspects.”
Percy replied by planting a kiss in her mouth, not even minding the grime smearing her face. The silence of the mana-lit tunnel was only broken by the sounds of their racing hearts beating in sync. Only after having his fill did Percy bother with words. “Whose blood is this?” he asked, gesturing at her clothes.
“Mine, but I’m not injured anymore. Your grandfather has already fixed everything. I stumbled upon your family on the way here,” she explained.
Percy’s heart leapt to his throat. “Did you run into trouble?”
“Not much. The Syndicate’s Blues chased me for the first quarter of the journey, but they eventually realized that they weren’t going to catch me. I’m not even sure they would have done anything to me, since hurting me or handing me over to the Divine Root would have broken their neutrality. I’m pretty sure that they just wanted to give me a symbolic slap on the wrist for causing trouble in their city before letting me go, though I didn’t want to risk it. The most troublesome part of the trip was finding safe hiding spots to rest, since I don’t have your Insomnia trait, nor your Sage’s Pond.”
Percy felt a pang of guilt upon hearing that. Perhaps he should have gone to pick her up after all. At least she’d made it back safely in the end. “I take it you succeeded?”
She nodded. “There were some complications, and my victory ended up being narrower than I would have liked, but they’re dead. And you? Your grandfather has mentioned some of what happened, but not everything.”
Percy shook his head. “Not good. Machaon is still alive, and his side is about to grow even stronger. Come. Let’s get you cleaned up while I fill you in. There’s no need to have this conversation while standing in a tunnel.”
Leading her to his residence in the settlement, Percy went over everything that had happened in the Whistling Woods, as well as his actions since.
“Volunteering some of your secrets to expand our alliance was the right call. We can’t afford to be too stingy given the circumstances,” Nesha said as they entered his house. “Let me have a look at the terms of the soul contract you’re asking them to sign later – just in case you missed something. Also, it might be a good idea for me to be there when you possess them, to ask a few key questions and make sure that they aren’t lying.”
Percy nodded, having already planned to do both of those things when she arrived.
“We can go over the boring stuff later – you must be tired. The bathroom is over there. I’ll be in the living room if you need anything…” he started to say, though his voice trailed off as he thought of something that caused him to scratch his head in embarrassment. “Erm… unless you’d rather get your own place? Sorry. I guess that we’ve been apart for a while, so I shouldn’t have assumed. It’s fine if you’re not ready to–”
She was the one who kissed him this time, sealing his mouth mid-sentence.
“Percy… I haven’t run all the way from Twilight City to ‘get my own place’,” she said once their faces parted, her lips curling up into a playful smile. She gave the house a quick scan before shifting her gaze back at him. “I’ll miss our little hut in Bogside town, but I’m not going anywhere.”
***
A few hours later, Percy and Nesha were lying together in the former’s bed, their bare skin glistening with sweat. They’d already filled each other in with their latest news between… other activities.
“I guess it’s a little weird that only one of us needs sleep,” he said. “I’d offer to place a clone in your body, but that’s only going to make other things awkward.”
She chuckled. “No need. I know that your cords are on short supply, and we’re both going to be busy anyway. If we can spare a few minutes for each other every other day, it’ll be more than enough.”
Percy sighed. He hadn’t enjoyed anything this much since Bogside town – though the first Honey Roll he’d eaten after reuniting with Freddy had admittedly come close. Had it been up to him, he would take a break from everything for a week or two to spend with his girlfriend. Unfortunately, there were too many people counting on him to grow strong enough to defeat Machaon, Theseus and Morpheus.
“What’s your plan for the foreseeable future?” he asked.
“I’ll reach out to my associates in Twilight City and try to salvage as many of my connections and as much of my information network as I can. Afterwards, I’ll work with Orin, Archibald, and the leaders of the allied Houses to grow our coalition, so that you can focus mainly on the things that you’re good at. I also had a few other ideas that I’ll have to discuss with House Etna,” Nesha explained.
“Such as?”
She shrugged. “I was thinking about those spatial pins that double as communication devices that you saw on Thess’kala. With my affinity and current magiscript skills, I think I should be able to create something similar. If you can get us some dimensional marble from the hive, we might be able to upgrade all of our allies storage devices and give everyone a way of communicating from across Remior in an instant.”
Percy nodded. This was something that he had considered before, which was why he had purchased the corresponding runes from the Vault. The problem was that the enchantments would be significantly weaker if drawn with anything but space mana, and Nesha hadn’t been ready to work on such an ambitious project a decade ago.
It wasn’t like there was no form of long-range communication on Remior. There were bloodlines and devices that allowed for it, but most such means were either slow or otherwise inconvenient. For example, the objects that Jason and Deimos had used required one end of the connection to be fed with karma mana and the other with sound.
House Avalon also possessed a couple of people capable of transmitting vague messages over a vast distance, which was how they had managed to reach out to their allies during the recent battle. However, the enchantments that the artificial world and most greater springs had access to would make everything a hundred times smoother.
Even better, Nesha wasn’t done. “I also recall that you drew a mana-gathering formation around the Fungal Spire.”
“That was a while ago,” Percy confirmed. “It helped both the alchemists and the bugs slightly, but its impact on the hive is somewhat limited.”
“If the Ruby Empress allows it, I was thinking of getting House Etna to help me draw a much larger, multi-layered formation around her entire kingdom. We aren’t as good as you at runecrafting, but we’ll have a lot more manpower at our disposal.”
Percy couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow.
The Alchemists’ Guild had already increased their output enough to supply everyone on Remior with regular elixirs, but giving away Aurora Dew to the commoners and Red-borns was still out of the question.
Not that such people were likely to help Percy much in the war, but having grown up in similarly-humble conditions, he strongly empathized with the children that couldn’t cleanse their cores properly, and he’d always intended to do something for them as soon as possible.
The Starry Commanders and Breeders were still improving, though their progress had slowed down greatly in recent years, and would probably remain so until their second cores’ next advancement – which was still decades away. The alchemists had also expanded their ranks and raised their average brewing yield after incorporating Percy’s teachings, but that was another thing that suffered from diminishing returns.
Raising the density of ambient mana inside the hive might just be the fastest way to increase the Guild’s output again in the short-term.
“I’ll talk to her later,” Percy said. “It does sound like we’re both going to be quite busy, but I don’t want us to repeat our past mistakes and neglect each other again. Let’s make time for each other – even a little bit.”
She nodded, clenching his hand tightly and leaning in for another kiss.