The cradle chamber - hell no

Despite telling me to come with her, Crea quickly changed her mind when it turned out that I was neither able to walk fast nor without leaning against the wall. Instead, she told me to walk in circles and improve the mind to body coordination, after which left to fetch some clothes. It was strange that the goddess had to do such menial tasks by herself, but I decided not to overly rely on my leftover common sense.

Unknown place, unknown rules, semi-unknown goddess, unknown names that I shouldn't claim as mine, and other unknown factors. All of that made it hard to decide how to act in order not to ruin anything. For now, I had to play it nice and safe, though I hated this feeling of dependency and powerlessness. Getting my body in working order and gathering intel was at the top of my list.

And since I could work on those two things at the same time, I decided to do just that.

First thing I did after Crea left, was to try and contact my sister. Two soul crystals were emitting silverish-blue light, but I instinctively knew which one was hers. It would help to alleviate a lot of my anxiety if she confirmed a few things for me. Moreover, I simply wanted to talk with her and start building a more traditional connection. During the earlier scan of her memories, I focused mostly on the inner zone, and it was still way too much to remember at once. Not to mention that even that had been damaged by the river. However, despite placing a hand on the crystal in which her soul resided, I was unable to establish a connection.

After a few more unsuccessful tries I moved to explore the rest of the room. There were two exits. One unlocked, through which Crea left, and one opposite to it, blocked by a thick layer of roots. Also, there were many round holes drilled in the wall with the blocked door. Through each of them, a thick root passed.

"W-w-whoa!" One badly placed step cost me my balance. Awkward flailing with hands didn't help much to prevent the fall, but two of the nearby roots shifted just in time to create a makeshift barrier between me and the floor. "Ouch!." Colliding with them still hurt, the roots were hard, and my heightened senses made everything way more intense than I was used to. Nevertheless, it would be much worse if I had nothing to support myself and smashed face first on the floor. "Thanks." The plant deserved a pat on the roots.

I liked it. It grew a body for me, the stay in the cocoon was comfortable, and despite being a plant, it was rather lively.

A few minutes later, since Crea still wasn't back, I decided to take a look outside.

The wooden door looked heavy but opened surprisingly easily. Behind it was a dark corridor devoid of any light sources. I kind of hoped to be able to see in complete darkness, but no such luck. There wasn't much I could do with the limited light produced by the soul crystals embedded into the cocoon room walls. And faced with a choice between blindly stumbling around a place that seemed to be some kind of castle's cellar or focusing on improving my movements coordination, I went with the second option.

Quite a lot of circles around the room were made before Crea came back. She walked into the room with a basket full of clothes, a really welcomed sight since being naked wasn't my favorite state of being.

Now, when the emotions connected to a giant magic wolf subsided, I could calmly take a look at the goddess dressed in black. I had noticed it already, but she really was a textbook example of a blonde elven beauty. Her charm was additionally underlined by the patches of glistening golden scales, and a modest chest that worked in her favor, at least in my opinion. Crea looked to be in late-twenties, but there was something mystical in her eyes that made treating her like a mere mortal hard. Probably the fact that her irises, scleras, and pupils were all in different shades of gold.

'Pick any you like.' She placed the basket on the floor and waited.

A wave of embarrassment tinted my pale skin red when I was dressing under Crea's scrutinizing gaze. True, I was quite proud of my new body, but not to the point of staying calm when she seemed to be taking mental notes about its every detail and occasionally giggled.

Without any further delay, I took out a black shirt, a pair of black lace panties that were made out of some silky, nearly transparent material, and had a slit in the middle of the lower part?!

'THE HELL IS THAT?!'

'For your sister.'

'No way she will wear something like that!'

'Why? They're clean, comfortable and pretty. I'm wearing a pair myself. If you prefer other colors, there's also a red and yellow pair.' The goddess honestly saw no problems with it, and apparently had no sense of shame.

'But it's improper for a young girl! And risky! And... and... and simply wrong!'

'Risky?' *Ha-haha-hahaha* "_____ __ ____!" *Hahaha* The goddess started swaying from left to right, holding her belly, unable to contain the laughter.

Without any idea what started this unexpected reaction, I decided to ignore it and went back to browsing through the basket's content. My completed set of clothes was composed of a simple black shirt, an elegant black doublet, black NORMAL underwear, comfy black pants, a pair of black socks, a pair of black shoes. I could recognize most of the materials used, such as silk, leather, linen, and cotton, but there was something else mixed within. The clothes didn't look as archaic as I expected, neither they were too fancy and elf-like. Actually, they were devoid of unnecessary decorative elements and focused on utility… but why was every male clothing article black?

At the same time, I found a lot of colorful girly clothes in various sizes. After removing the sexy, revealing, improper, shameful, and perverted options, a nice set was prepared for my sister's future body. She should like it.

Elves being skillful craftsmen and artisans was something I kind of saw coming, thanks to the magnificent elven cities my sister showed me, but I never expected that even the lingerie area would be so... developed.

'Ahh… that felt good, I didn't laugh so much in a long time. 'Risky' *giggle*, ehh… you've got much to learn.' The goddess sent me a telepathic message as soon as she calmed down.

'From what I saw in my sister memories, she never wore anything like that.'

'That was over three hundred years ago. The situation wasn't that bad back then, but now I'm truly desperate. There are a lot of problems I'm struggling with, and an enormous demographic crisis is one of them. But do whatever you like, forcing everyone to wear 'risky' underwear didn't help much.'

'Bad situation? Demographic crisis?'

'We will talk about this later.' Crea, made a small gesture, telling me to turn around a few times, then prompted to walk around one of the cocoons. 'Good, everything looks fine, and you're moving much better. Let's try creating a body for her. Come, put your hands on this one.' She moved with me to one of the three ripe cocoons, we both placed our hands on it. 'Can you control it? I want to monitor everything this time.'

'Give me a sec…' I closed my eyes, focused, and did everything exactly like before.

For a few moments nothing happened, the plant was unresponsive. Establishing the connection from the outside turned out to be more complicated. But I kept trying, not to control it, but to give it a general idea of what I wanted to do. I changed my perspective and recalled the comfortable safety of being submerged in the cocoon's fluid. Then... well, there was no need to do anything else. It worked. I felt a prickling sensation originating from the tips of my fingers that went through my entire body and started sending through it my imagination's output.

A character creation screen was quickly put together inside my mind, one in which the 3D model was floating in the center. All manners of sliders regulating each of that body aspects were placed on the sides. But the thing I was mostly interested in was the 'import' button at the bottom. Thanks to it I could insert one of the pre-made images from my memories, and the body would automatically respond to it. Then I would just have to adjust a few parameters and done - no need to regulate everything step by step.

There was a small chat-window in the corner, in which system messages were displayed. This time it said:

The many signals from the cradle were translated into easy to understand messages. It would be quite interesting if I could talk with plants, but it wasn't like that. The cradle didn't react to anything not involved with the body creation process.

'Uhm… there's a problem, it won't be able to form without a soul.' I told Crea.

'Hmm, so that's how you've done it.' She moved away from the cocoon towards the soul crystals. 'For a moment I thought that you may be able to control any mana infused entity, but unfortunately, that's not it. You simply allowed the cradle to recognize you as a part of its own body, then somehow started guiding its responses. I guess it's a unique perk given to those created by it. I'm curious why others didn't try using it. Anyway, that doesn't explain why your body turned out like that.' Crea seemed disappointed, but also relieved.

'I used the memories from my past life as a base for the body.'

'There were elves like that in your previous world?' Crea's focus was split between talking with me and preparing to transfer the soul of my sister into a smaller orb she picked from storage hidden between the crystals.

'Not exactly, just humans, but a lot of them, and we had a very rich culture and imagination.' This time, I made sure to exclude any otherworldly terms to avoid unnecessary confusion.

The goddess wrapped her palms with a golden light made out of myriads shining particles and touched the bigger crystal. In response, the soul inside began moving, as if tempted to come out, and started leaking from its safe container. It looked like molten silver with a blue hue mixed within. I thought that my heart was going to stop when a few drops of that precious liquified soul were about to fall on the floor, but right before that happened, Crea's golden light wrapped itself around them and guided back to her cupped palms. Then she shot me a short glance with a smile full of confidence.

I swore she did that on purpose, just to see my terrified face!

There were no more doubts in my mind, I couldn't take anything Crea said without assuming that she was lying. For a goddess who first tested if I was going to take good care of my sister and shield her from pain, Crea moved suspiciously fast to playing with her very soul.

'Done.' She held the smaller orb which now contained my sister's soul. 'Rich culture and imagination you say? That's fine, but don't say 'we had', use 'they had' instead.' Crea slowly came back to the cocoon and inserted the orb through a small opening at the top.

The cradle received the final necessary part and tightened its petals, ready to begin the last step of the body creation process.

'Wake up sleepyhead. It's time to lead the elves to victory.' Once more I tried to establish a connection - once more there was no response.

Crea was more successful in this field. She changed her expression from smug, to bored, to surprised, and then decided to maintain a kind one - the two of them were definitely talking. At the same time, she was checking the cradle from every side and shooed me away when I wanted to put my hands on it.

During the few minutes when I was being actively alienated, I moved closer the basket with clothes. Helping my sister, who was going to be unused to her new body, to put on some clothes was one of the reasons why I prepared everything so eagerly. I didn't want her to stay naked any longer than necessary. She would also need something to wipe the fluid with.

I was sure that between a possible fall connected with the danger of flashing her naked bottom in front of the goddess and her brother or simply allowing me to help with everything, she would choose the less shameful second option. Win-win situation.

Perfect plan.

'That girl questions were nearly the same as yours.' Sent Crea. 'And don't look at me like that, I didn't exclude you on purpose. You should know already that it's one thing to connect with someone in the realm of mind and something entirely different when psychical bodies come into play. Anyway, let's do it before she realizes what's going on.'

'Huh…? Just to be sure, you've told her that I'm going to help with the process, right?'

'You're going to push a body on her before she knows what hit her... Oh, you're worried about failure? No need, I will make sure to have the final word in it.' Crea put her hands on the cocoon and prompted me to do the same. 'What are you waiting for?'

'Make her body behind her back?' I asked to make sure I understood Crea's intentions.

'Yes, I'm worried that you won't be able to make something truly unique if she starts interfering.'

Hell no.

Even if I created a godly masterpiece, my sister's first action after coming out of the cocoon would be to tear my skin off and throw the rest into a barrel full of salt, or at least she would never again speak to me. I was sure of that. I would react exactly the same if someone made a decision that was going to define my entire life without bothering to ask about my opinion.

'Can't I work on it together with her?'

'Why?' A sinister flash of impatience flashed in Crea's golden eyes.

For some reason, she didn't want us to work together. If only I knew why exactly she didn't want that.

After a deep breath, to buy some time to think, I started spinning my tale:

'When I was connected with her in the river of souls, my memories became vivid and sharp like never before.' Truth. 'We even exchanged a lot of them, there might be something she still remembers which I already forgot, a part that will help with the creation process.' Possibility - I had all the necessary parts, but it wasn't exactly a lie. 'And since she's inside, it will be better to involve her in the process, I may not be able to do it from the outside…' Shit, that was a mistake - Crea furrowed her eyebrows.

'I already told you not to worry about it. Move already, and let's get it over with. And before you ask, I want it to be a unique, perfectly flawed, beautiful and charming, top tier silver elf. Just make sure to make her ears really short, and don't include any fairy scales. The rest is up to you.'

Any further excuses were pointless and would only earn Crea's ire. It was time for plan B.

Did I already mention that I hated the feeling of dependency and powerlessness? I also hated when someone was clearly trying to use me and thought that I was an idiot who wouldn't even notice it.

But why she didn't want my sister ears to be long and pointy and told to remove the scales? Was there some special meaning to them? All elves had those, right?

She wouldn't be a 'top tier silver elf' without them.