Chapter 1250: His Other Soul

By the time the diminished convoy finally reached Infinity Chaos Hotel, the sun had climbed high enough to turn the colossal tower into a vertical sheet of reflected morning. Its glass caught the city, lake and sky together, while black architectural ribs climbed along its exterior and disappeared toward floors lost in brightness overhead. Security barriers recognized the approaching motorcade and withdrew, allowing vehicle after vehicle to sweep beneath the immense arrival canopy and settle across polished stone still faintly damp from the night’s cold.

The first doors opened amid returning conversation.

Then almost everyone stopped.

Four people waited near the entrance.

Melissa stood nearest the center, composed as ever, though anyone who knew her well could have found the faint exhaustion buried beneath that calm. Elena remained beside her mother, and the Ashford Madam kept one hand close to her daughter as though even that small contact had become necessary overnight.

Beside them stood Damien Ashford.

Conversation beneath the canopy softened almost immediately.

The Ashford patriarch possessed none of the vulgar habits of men who needed wealth displayed before anyone believed they were powerful. He stood tall beneath the morning light, broad-shouldered and strikingly handsome despite his years, dressed with elegant restraint and carrying himself with the ease; he had spent so long among the world’s highest circles that impressing anyone had become unnecessary.

Almost everyone present knew him.

Who didn’t?

Depending upon which measure one trusted, Damien Ashford was frequently counted as the fourth most powerful man in the world, and there were circles in which placing him even that low would begin an argument.

The Ashfords carried enormous wealth, but money was merely the easiest part of their power for ordinary society to understand:

Their influence ran through governments, corporations, royal courts of the current modern monarchy and the hidden world beneath all three, while the ancient weight behind their bloodline made even other great families careful about where disrespect ended and stupidity began.

The three young men who stepped from the first cars bowed deeply to him.

Several princesses followed with graceful inclinations of their heads, their own noble standing doing nothing to diminish the respect owed to Damien Ashford. He received each greeting with composed courtesy, neither encouraging excessive ceremony nor pretending the deference was unfamiliar.

One person remained inside his vehicle.

Phei watched through the glass.

He saw Melissa first, then Elena, the Ashford Madam and Damien.

Whatever faint warmth had remained in his face quietly disappeared.

Sienna turned toward him.

She did not need their soul-bond to understand this particular wound.

Phei had searched for Althea with power so vast that the entire Earth Realm had lain naked beneath his perception. He had searched hidden places, sealed ruins and even the past itself, yet the child had remained absent. His soul had nearly broken beneath the effort, and he had still fought Eira and the Void when they tried forcing him to stop.

Now Elena stood less than fifty meters away.

Phei could face World Transcendents but facing the older sister of a little girl he had failed to bring home required something else entirely.

Sienna studied him for another moment before opening the door and stepped from the vehicle, and the morning seemed subtly colder around her.

It was a small thing, almost too subtle for those without cultivation to notice. The shadow beneath the car deepened by a shade. A thin current of black-violet Nether aura escaped the edge of her presence before folding immediately back into her, while something colder and brushed the polished stones beneath her shoes without leaving so much as frost behind.

Several nearby cultivators instinctively lowered their eyes.

Sienna ignored them and walked directly toward Melissa.

"Mother!"

The Nether Goddess’s mother turned at once.

Perhaps it was Sienna’s voice to perhaps it was what Melissa saw in those violet eyes.

Either way, she followed when Sienna moved several paces away from the others; their exchange lasted less than a minute.

Melissa’s expression changed only once, the movement so slight most people would have missed it. Her gaze travelled toward the darkened windows of Sienna’s car and remained there before something maternal softened her features.

She whispered a question.

Sienna answered.

Melissa nodded, then she walked toward the driver’s side.

Elena immediately stepped forward. "Wait."

Melissa opened the door before Elena reached them, slid behind the wheel and leaned toward Phei. Whatever she saw inside made her expression soften further. She cupped his face, kissed him on the lips and forehead gently and murmured something only he heard before settling behind the wheel.

The engine awakened.

"Melissa, I need to talk to him." Elena moved again but her mother’s fingers closed around her hand. Elena turned toward the Ashford Madam, bewilderment and frustration already gathering across her face.

Her mother shook her head. "Not now."

"But Althea..."

"I know." The quiet answer robbed some of the force from Elena’s protest.

She looked toward the car as Melissa began driving from beneath the hotel canopy.

"He will do something. I know he will."

The Ashford Madam followed the vehicle with her eyes. Unlike Elena, she had caught the hollowness behind Phei’s expression through the glass. She had also watched Sienna leave the vehicle with all the quiet protectiveness of something ancient standing guard over an injured soul, and she had seen Melissa’s reaction after hearing whatever Sienna whispered.

"Then why won’t he talk to us?"

Her mother tightened her fingers around Elena’s hand: "Because whatever happened to him last night did not leave him untouched... the world doesn’t revolve around just us my love, we could even have the least problem to worry about compared to other. Let him go for now."

Elena went still.

The Ashford Madam looked toward the road where the vehicle had disappeared.

"We wait until he returns."

Behind them, Damien had followed the exchange without interruption. His expression hardened when his wife’s words reached him. "Something happened to the boy?"

"Looks like something serious, yes."

"You know what?"

"No."

She turned toward him. "But Melissa understands enough to take him away instead of bringing him inside. That is enough for me."

Damien considered that before looking toward Elena. His daughter’s fear made the decision easier. "Very well."

He turned toward Sienna.

For a heartbeat, the Ashford patriarch’s eyes met hers.

The difference between them was peculiar. Damien Ashford commanded the respect of nations, families and men accustomed to controlling fortunes large enough to influence economies. Sienna looked at him with neither arrogance nor dismissal, yet worldly greatness simply did not exist upon the scale by which something inside her measured existence.

Damien nevertheless sensed enough to incline his head first.

Sienna answered with a small nod.

The others gradually disappeared into Infinity Chaos Hotel, conversations returning only after the glass doors swallowed them. Elevators carried people upward, attendants began moving luggage and the vast arrival court slowly emptied until only the soft murmur of distant traffic and the hotel’s fountains remained.

Sienna did not follow; she stood beneath the morning light with her dark hair moving faintly around her shoulders.

For a time her gaze remained upon the road... Phei’s presence still existed inside her and she could feel the bruised weight of his soul even as Melissa carried him farther away. The damage on his soul had closed during the night enough that no longer threat on him hovered immediately over him, yet Sienna could feel the scars left where something vastly beyond his present realm had been forced through him.

Her expression cooled: ’Only Mom can heal that without having to let him revisit whatever it is.’ Perhaps Maya could but Phei needed something that would make everything he carried disappear in a flash than just a warmth of a lover... and as far as Sienna knew, only Melissa carried that part of him.

A black-violet light stirred somewhere deep inside her eyes before the air around her changed.

"Hayashi. Ashworth."

Ashworth arrived first as space gave a faint tremor several paces before Sienna, and the tall elderly man stepped from what had seemed an empty patch of morning. He lowered himself into a deep bow the instant his feet touched the stone.

’So flashy.’ She thought.

"My Goddess."

The elder Hayashi appeared a moment later.

Hayashi managed the Ryujin Tiamat family’s affairs this side, father to Ryuzen Raizen and Yuzuki... his outward restraint had long ago become more intimidating than the flamboyance of younger cultivators.

Age had scarcely touched his appearance beyond lending greater severity to his face, and his aura remained folded so perfectly inward that an ordinary person might have mistaken him for nothing more than an impeccably composed older gentleman.

The instant he appeared before Sienna, however, that composure altered.

He felt her changes:

The Nether Goddess had not released her true presence yet the suppression surrounding her could no longer completely hide what had consolidated within her since the previous day.

Her Body Cultivation had crossed firmly into the Divine Queen Stage.

Her Spiritual Cultivation stood within the Divine Empress Stage and about to cross into the next stage.

Nether Essence moved through her body with an obedience it had lacked only days ago, black-violet currents running beneath her skin and soul in such immense concentration that Hayashi’s perception instinctively recoiled when it brushed too deeply. Death rested beside that Nether, quieter and infinitely less forgiving, a cold principle woven through her existence so naturally that the old Immortal felt some ancient part of himself recognize a truth his mind already knew.