“What can it do?” Percy asked.
“Not much,” the patriarch admitted. “I can share its senses – or sense, I should say, since there’s just the one. It’s surrounded by complete darkness, though I can just about feel the souls in its surroundings if I concentrate. If I’m not mistaken, that’s the same version of Soul Vision that your own clones possess in their disembodied state.”
Percy nodded. This wasn’t ideal. So far, it didn’t sound like Archibald would be able to use his soul clones for more than scouting, but the difficulty in handling them and their limited senses would render them somewhat useless. They were objectively worse than Micky’s sentries, since those were far easier to control and possessed a copy of his Sage’s Pond.
“Have you tried placing them inside a body?” he asked.
“It doesn’t work,” Archibald said.
Reaching behind his back and to his right, the patriarch picked up a furry carcass that Percy hadn’t noticed earlier. No. Not a carcass. The squirrel was still breathing slowly, its soul faint and dimming, but still there. Archibald must have kept the unfortunate critter alive through the careful and frequent application of life and soul mana.
Gently placing the creature on his lap, the patriarch spent a few minutes trying to send his clone into its body. The silver wisp shot through Percy’s sensory sphere dozens of times, only managing to pass through House Avalon’s camp twice. It wasn’t until the fiftieth or so attempt that Archibald finally managed to aim the whizzing clone directly at the squirrel.
The collision happened too fast to observe carefully, but the outcome was obvious enough. The squirrel’s body had rejected the clone, causing it to bounce right out and to exit Percy’s sensory bubble once more.
“That shouldn’t have happened,” Percy said.
The rodent was definitely injured enough to attract a soul clone rather than reject it. If anything, its wounds were so bad that the creature was probably beyond fixing, but that was all the more reason for it to have allowed the disembodied wisp to join it.
“So… is it completely useless?” Percy asked again. “An hour to create one, just to end up with the world’s worst scout?”
Hell, Archibald couldn’t even send them to other planets, since he wouldn’t be able to maintain a manual connection over such a vast distance. Even if he did, it wouldn’t mean much without the ability to possess people.
“Not exactly,” the patriarch said. “I’ve found a use. It’s not the most exciting thing, but it’ll make me stronger.”
A man entered the tent, looking identical to Archibald, except for his listless eyes: a life clone. The Violet spent a few minutes trying to bring back the soul clone as well. Luckily, he managed to do it a little sooner this time.
The disembodied wisp shot right into the mindless thrall, lodging itself within its flesh. Unlike before, the soul clone didn’t get rejected. Instead, it fused into the even tinier silver wisp that had always existed within the minion, causing it to expand and burn more fiercely – almost as if the two beings had always been meant for one another.
The life clone’s soul didn’t reach the size or brightness of a normal person’s, but it came pretty close. Its grey eyes remained mostly blank and unfocused, though the faintest spark of awareness lit up in the depths of the minion’s pupils.
The thick flow of Violet life mana drifting aimlessly across the clone’s body converged at its sternum, as the thinner trickle of Green soul mana coursing through its soul did something similar at its abdomen. A pair of strange cavities that vaguely resembled peanuts appeared in those two spots. They were too small and irregular to be called mana cores, though Percy didn’t have a better word to describe them – and their affinities matched those of their owner.
“My theory is that they can possess my life clones because they’re copies of my flesh. But they can’t cast spells with those tiny mana cores of theirs,” the patriarch said before his grandson even asked.
“What are they good for?”
“They passively breathe and convert small amounts of ambient mana from their surroundings, making it less costly for me to maintain them. The same is true of the mental toll they exert. They still can’t be considered fully autonomous, but the addition of the soul clones has done something to them. It seems like I can get away with providing them with mere intentions rather than having to control every muscle in their body,” Archibald explained.
“How much better are we talking about?”
His grandfather rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a couple of seconds. “It’s hard to tell with so few tests. I also can’t use the boosting art with the new affinity yet, and my second core is two grades lower. Once it catches up, I wouldn’t be surprised if I can sustain three times as many clones.”
Percy drew a sharp breath. The theoretical maximum for a Violet with the Dance would be seven hundred and twenty-nine life clones – though Archibald hadn’t dared to produce more than three hundred. He still wasn’t able to keep his boosting art constantly active, and he preferred to retain some free mana to cast other spells with.
With the addition of the soul affinity, he would be able to approach a thousand clones, and this was before even factoring in his artificial advancement!
“It’s a major upgrade,” Percy said with a sigh. “Just… not what we were hoping for.”
House Avalon’s bloodline had always been considered a strong one – even before Percy’s emergence – and the synergy between Archibald’s affinities would push it to even greater heights. However, it still didn’t hold a candle to Percy’s version of Clone. Then again, few things in the universe did.
Archibald patted his grandson on the shoulder consolingly. “It looks like you inherited a mutated version, after all. The wording in your Status is the same, but the fact that it didn’t get automatically bundled with the life affinity should have clued us in.”
“What about Aunt Isolde?” Percy asked, not expecting much. The woman had inherited the bloodline from Archibald, so she would either have the same strain as the patriarch or a different one entirely.
“She’s been much slower at clearing her channels and experimenting with it, since she lacks my experience and your clone’s help. Judging from what little she has accomplished so far, she’s in the same boat as me.”
“Phoebe won’t be happy,” Percy realized. “She won’t be able to mould another member of our family into a second me. Do you think she might reconsider allowing Machaon to kill me?”
“I’m not sure,” Archibald admitted. “She’ll still probably want to send challenges your way to accelerate your growth. If anything, she might even give him permission to slaughter the rest of us with impunity, since we’re not as useful as we thought.”
Percy’s features twisted into a grimace, which only deepened as his grandfather kept speaking.
“I’ve been putting this conversation off for years now, since I don’t want to involve myself in your personal matters, yet I suppose that this is as good a time as any to ask: have you considered having children?”
Percy sighed. It was an awkward topic, but one that he couldn’t keep avoiding. Now that they knew that he was quite possibly the only person on the planet with the “correct” strain of the Clone bloodline, his own descendants would be the only ones who stood a good chance of inheriting it. No matter how he thought about it, having kids was simply the responsible thing to do. Many would argue that it was Percy’s duty, even.
“I have considered it,” he muttered. “I’ve never discussed getting married or starting a family with Nesha though.”
“And? What did you decide?”
“I’m not opposed to the idea of having children one day. I just don’t want to be an absentee father, and I’m too busy working on a million different things to see myself raising kids properly in the foreseeable future,” Percy explained.
“It’s your choice.” Archibald shrugged. “I’m not going to press you, but I’m sure you don’t need me to explain what will happen if you die.”
Percy nodded solemnly. Many of the things that he had set in motion on Remior would continue – the planet would still steadily develop into a greater spring, the nobles would retain the knowledge of the Vault’s magiscript and the boosting art, and even the hive would probably survive without Nephthys, since the gods had kept the original Starry Princess alive and well.
However, humanity would instantly lose access to some of its greatest assets. At the very least, there would be nobody left to keep spreading the Moirais’ Decree, which would be quite a shame.
The Void Hand had gone so far as to sacrifice multiple titans just to produce a lesser version of the Decree, yet Percy could just pass it along to whomever he pleased. This was the sort of thing that even greater springs wouldn’t dare to dream of – let alone a world that had practically been an undeveloped lesser spring until yesterday.
Letting this priceless gift slip through their fingers before figuring out how to perpetuate its inheritance would be a crime.
Percy left his grandfather’s tent and his family’s camp feeling a little bummed out. Evidently, Phoebe’s Decree hadn’t named Percy and Micky “the Lone Wanderer” by accident. It had clearly understood things about them that they didn’t – things that not even the titaness who had created it was privy to.
‘I better not die then,’ he decided upon reaching his residence. ‘Not that I was planning to.’
At the end of the day, nothing had really changed. Percy had simply been told that there would be nobody left to pick up his mantle should he perish. That was arguably the assumption that he’d been operating under already, though the tiny hope that Phoebe would have found a way to make up for his untimely demise by investing in House Avalon was now gone as well.
Sighing, Percy finally summoned the plaque in his hands, activating its enchantments with grim determination. There was no time left to waste. He had to grow stronger than his enemies – be they a bunch of corrupt nobles plotting against him, a sadistic god ruling over his friend’s people with an iron fist, a furious greater spring seeking to punish him for spreading information that was best kept secret, or a cosmic cancer growing stronger and more malicious by the day.
The runes on the object lit up with a deep crimson colour, causing a foreign influence to rush into Percy’s mind.