Chapter 580: Chapter 580 - Disembodied Dissemination Doctrine

When Elua had stepped toward her Silver dress, draped over on a sitting chair like an important piece of loungewear, Qatrand made a short cough that was *not* an order but was definitely felt as a strong suggestion. Which is why the hem of a spare house robe from the guest wardrobe now kissed the floor while the brunette made her way toward Rezzue’s room. She’d owned a few of the garments as a child, but did not actually possess one that would fit her well... at her current height. Nor were there any dresses around except her new white one fit for size at her current bust.

’A dress is a dress, I guess. I’ve lived in places that fully considered these proper clothes after all. Pretty sure the continent took the design from the southern isles in the first place.’

During the bit of wait for her teasing spouse to leave *ahead* of her, the coffee brown, geometric patterned fabric that Yatrel had picked out for guests was still cooler than her skin. However, it started to quickly trap the warmth that her body let off the moment the swordswoman left the room. Rather, the moment right before that - when strong hands settled on her hips and called her... *very pretty* before declaring she needed to go talk to Navuill alone before the rest of their day began.

’I hope she doesn’t think that’s how I become acceptive of her behavior... just compliment me and then walk away and do whatever. Clearly she can just compliment me, whenever, and do whatever, whenever she says! Why link the two?!’

Pretending to be upset - and pretending she didn’t understand Qat was *not* being the same sort of underhanded schemer as herself - was all just an attempt to blow out the steam still stuck roiling between her ears. As had been using the time spent plodding over to her own room, fiddling with a half dozen boxes and many other belongings inside, and thinking of anything else she could try to burn off more seconds of the morning.

All while her ’fortress’ seemed to take a bit of it effort convincing her cousin - to actually step away from the three children and his wife again, so soon.

Though if anyone had a chance of doing that, it was Qatrand gil Yecine... backed by a needling distant presence. One that Navuill knew well as the heiress of the estate he was visiting, with her emotions that somehow all but suggested he would regret it if *she too* had to be apart from her most loved one for any longer than Elua had been this morning! Considering he had a lot to be thankful to the brunette about, he let that kind of pressuring slide over his spirit without taking any umbrage to it.

Braided back red hair, eyes still red from her emotions at getting to be held by her husband for the first time in ten months, Rezzue herself quickly flicked El right between the eyes after she entered the room. Both because she had seen her husband’s wry look ’upstairs’, that could only mean the ancient cultivator was prodding, and because Qat had whispered it as a suggestion on the way out.

"Ow."

"I thought you’d dodge..."

"Why would I do that? You had no bloodlust and I was eighty percent focused on what else is going on in this house and around it."

Rubbing the spot that did not really hurt in the slightest - despite being delivered with an Enchanter’s strength - mint eyes sprouted tears anyway to set off her negotiation. Slightly blurred from the actress quality liquid wetting her rapid blinking lashes, her vision panned across the three bassinets that the house staff had rustled up on such very short notice.

"Do you mind if I give them a look this morning?"

"Of course not. You’re always welcome. The contract says so, doesn’t it? Seven times, if I recall."

"You sound awfully agitated about that for someone that just tried harming their innocent benefactor..."

"Innocent my foot. I can feel you plotting something. Why scheme *and* show me that you’re doing it? Wouldn’t it be simpler just to tell me?"

A noncommittal sound escaped her throat as El considered how the requirement of good servants was knowing how much whimsicalness your employers tended to impose upon your hard work, but even she was impressed that they had managed three identical pieces that were a quality a bit more than might have been sitting around in storage or servant quarters. Someone had gone into the city to purchase things like this, and more... and she would have to remember later to ask if it was by request or initiative.

’Initiative to give good things to my goddaughters should be rewarded. Not that I expect the same in turn. But I could probably get any of their family looking for work assigned to take care of these children. Once I take over... once I *settle* things with the Yecine.’

"Simple, you say. It would have been simple just to tell me what was upsetting you instead of using your scary finger to bash my brains in..."

The brunette crossed the room with a continued ’pout’ to crouch down level with the baskets. Two of the babies were fully asleep, but Number Two specifically was awake and staring at the ceiling. Until she was suddenly staring at a Goltbred woman’s familiar face, far more lazily and uninterested in that than whatever was up above. She was sure if the child had the reach and energy, she would have been shoved aside!

While they were still only a month old, Elua noted that they certainly didn’t seem to ’take’ to her yet the same way that Onya eventually had. Not that they cried or fidgeted too much in her arms, but as mortals they did not have *quite* the same young spark of spiritual energy that seemed to sense qualities and attach more than it respectfully should.

An attribute that the reincarnator herself now believed had something to do with a kind of cosmic recycling of the energies in the first place, even if she didn’t understand the mechanisms. Certainly, there was finite physical energy and essence energy in the universe, but spiritualists often liked to think of the third energy - which was like both and neither of the other two all at once - as being much more *boundless*. It didn’t seem to ’come from’ anywhere other than by self-multiplication... at least in any way that even a Peak Demi-God could tell or experiment with.

However, reincarnation was a myth in her time but it clearly was known to the Divinities she had spoken with. Her own existence led her to believe that *becoming deceased* was supposed to return you to some kind of universal pool of this energy, wherein everything about yourself would be stripped away just like the process of Element tinged essence being purified into raw form.

While she had no good answers - beyond narcissism - as to why this did not happen with her even after what seemed to be over ten thousand years... the very idea that every living person could potentially be made up of bits of previous spiritual existence explained a lot, she felt. Epiphany, genius, all of it *seemed* like a random stacking of probabilities that were expected to be unexplained and envied.

But if viewed through the idea of those chance happenings being even subtly affected by imperceptible fragments of the past joining their spirit in a way that altered the fabric of the present? It was still random! But a far more acceptable kind of mathematical random to the sigilist, who had lived her first life working hard constantly against her talented betters. Only to be a prodigy suddenly in this life...

"And Aligned Trinities are so often what feel like very pure, newborn souls when they are young. Is that because so much of what makes them up has been successfully washed away for an optimal start? Or have they been formed together by some section of still yet untouched energy in the cosmos..."

Unconcerned that the baby wasn’t interested in playing with her, El still ’bothered’ it with her theorizing voice and some gentle motions of her hands, meant to elicit cognitive responses and motor memory imitations. She had also had Rezzue sing to them while still inside the womb - or sung herself if the mother wasn’t up to it. Because even if they weren’t cultivators, doing her best to make their mental faculties outstrip others was the least she felt she could do for a set of not-disciple-mentees... as stipulated in the contract.

"And further, if spiritual energy qualities do play a part in that special formation of cultivator... that means that it must have an effect of some kind on shaping the other two Aspects. Possibly. I wonder what that means for my children? Will the one made from Qat be more likely to align because she also was, or has my own spirit ’washing’ against it-"

"Why are you showing her gems and a little bar of gold...?"

"Oh? I’m babbling about something so very interesting but *that’s* what you ask me about?"

Rezzue sighed before taking a seat on the edge of the bed. While she still had a vast amount of respect for the heiress, she had learned over all this time together that living and working with someone you admired so much meant you learned every one of the reasons their enemies - and close friends - sometimes hated them.

"While *I* might choke on your words, my baby will choke on those objects if you are not careful. Of course one is more concerning to me than the other."

"No worries at all. I am holding them in Adhesion and the item we will put together will be carved with two things. The names I am sure I heard Qat call them earlier after she was told... and the same ritual that I placed on the wedding favor I gave my little sister. Those bookmarks I handed out. A compelling force will act upon them and they won’t be able to stick them in their mouths at all - and if by chance it happens anyway, they won’t be able to swallow it down."

Covering her mouth, closing her yellow-green eyes, and finally letting out a held breath... the Yecine woman didn’t have tears left in her after earlier with her husband. But she did have plenty of appreciation left, despite launching quite a lot of that at him when the first thing he did was show up with perfect names all ready for her to agree to.

"Remember how I said I will choke on your words? Consider myself suffocated."

"Huh. Did I say something so startling?"

"That you were thinking ahead for them as much as you did for your sister. That means a great deal more than I know how to swallow down, Elua. Thank you."

"Well. I appreciate the thankfulness, but I wouldn’t go *that* far."

Smiling brightly while starting up a sort of blueprint illusion, detailing what she imagined the crafting process ahead of them would look like in all its stages, and spinning to her feet on the new guest wing flooring... in the brown dressing gown that somewhat matched the pattern - Elua er Goltbred delivered her theatrical bow. One that revealed more prepared gold from the Exclave floating on one side and more black onyx beads she used to collect her on the continent on the other... the current symbolic colors for the Yecine family.

"These children are in the top twenty people that I feel the need to care for, probably. Surely. But depending how they grow up, they might even pass you on my list... so you should be more careful about flicking me in the forehead so early in the morning from now on, hm?"

With a flourish, one of the beads flew out from beside her hand and *sharply* gained the new mother’s ’attention’. Today was one of those hated close friend days - Rezzue was *entirely* confident in that...

"I believe I’m going to tell Qatrand that her advice needs work."

A day just like the afternoon where she was shown an illusion of her bow being broken by the brown haired young woman. Who tried ’using’ it as she described the many problems with the materials for cultivators above the Primalist realm. And the prankster didn’t give her back the *actual* weapon - or let on that the wood fragments she made such a show of kicking off the cliff were *never real* - until the next evening’s dinner!