Chapter 38 - Mavel's Dilemma P1

Chapter 38 - Mavel's Dilemma P1

~38.1~

*****

The beautiful pink-haired catgirl rose up and waved a hand in front of my eyes. "Eli?" I snapped out of it and smiled, staring up at her bare body. She noticed of course and just smiled at me. "I'm reminded of something you said a few times this past week."

"Hmm?"

"'You can look all you want but don't touch unless you're prepared for the consequences.'"

"Haha, yeah." I rose up and pulled her in tight. "I'll take on those consequences anytime, love."

"Love?" She was smiling when I pulled away. "I like that."

I stood up from the bed, magically clothed us, and held my hand out to help her up. "There's so much I want to show you, wife."

She smiled wryly, "I like the sound of that, even if it is just a joke."

I chuckled. "So if we tell your father we're married?"

"He would tell Mom, and she would probably be excited for us. Dad would probably assume things and start asking about grandchildren."

Grandchildren… about that…

I laughed dryly as I scratched the back of my head. "I can't say I haven't thought about kids, and I did happen to fall in love with a girl who is capable of… doing that with me."

She took my hand and pulled herself up, then whispered in my ear. "We can go another round if you want to make sure it happens."

I felt a rush of lust across my entire body. "Talk sweet in my ear like that more and I will."

She grinned and wrapped her arms around me. "How in the world did we fall for each other so hard so fast?"

I smiled and kissed her. "Love is mysterious and takes hold of people in very different ways. We only started talking Tuesday, and now here on Saturday we're together."

"Hmm… in some cultures, a couple dates a while before making it official. In some cultures, it's boy or girlfriend before dating. In some, a pair gets to know each other for a while before either. Serendell does the first, Nacht does the second, Gallia and Wavecrest do the third."

"What about Weltwald? I only know what is common in Gallia."

"I should amend part of that. Serendell and Nacht do the first and second regardless of social status. Gallia and Wavecrest do the third in most cases, but do sometimes have arrangements among nobility, though you would know that better than me being a Gallian noble yourself. Weltwald commoners do the third, and nobles do either the first or third when not in an arranged engagement, though most nobles are arranged by age 10."

"I don't like arrangements."

"I don't either. I told my mom I wanted to find love on my own, and given my mixed blood descent, she agreed to let me find a spouse on my own, provided I find one by age 25. Though she does still want to officially arrange the engagement as soon as possible. Oh, I should have talked about that much sooner." She held a hand up to her mouth.

"I take it if your mom finds out about us, she's going to contact my family and start arrangement talks?"

I saw a bead of sweat drip off her cheek. "Most likely."

"Well, I suppose that would be okay. I'm sure my parents would jump through the roof if they got an official arrangement offer from the Beast Queen."

"Will they force it on you?"

I shook my head. "No, they won't accept if I don't want it."

She smiled. "Okay good."

"Why do you sound relieved?"

She averted her eyes, but I turned her head to look me in the eyes.

"Please be honest with me. Are you having any doubts?"

She hurriedly shook her head. "No. I'm not. I'm happier now than I've ever been, but I don't want you to feel forced into anything."

"Please promise me if you ever have thoughts like that, talk to me. If you ever worry about what I might think, ask me, no matter what it is. If you ever have doubts or worry that I have doubts, talk to me. Even if you think it might hurt me to tell me, I want you to talk to me."

"Eli…?"

I realized the expression I was giving her suddenly turned very serious when I said that. "I'm sorry if I startled you."

"No, it's not that. I…" She smiled. "I guess it hasn't sunk in yet."

"What?"

"That this is real. That you're so wonderful, and you're mine."

I smiled as I led her into the living room. "That's right. I'm yours. But I'm still sorry. That came out a bit more intense than I wanted."

"You speak from experience, don't you? You have three wives back home."

I shook my head. "I have three wives, almost had a fourth, but we've never had a communication problem. It's not personal experience I speak from. Communication issues happen a lot among couples. I hear about them every time a couple prays. Lots of people talk about their relationships when they pray, and most of their problems would be solved or easier to manage simply by communicating."

"Pray? Do you mean like somebody praying to a god?"

I nodded. "I mean exactly that. Prayer is the most powerful magic in existence. The most powerful spells I know all require prayer, be it spoken aloud or in the mind. In Eden, I heard the prayer of every Transcendent and every mortal in every world. In this world, I don't hear the prayers of anyone in Eden or other worlds, but I still hear everyone in this world."

"So if I prayed right now?"

"Rather than test it in front of me where I could cheat and listen to it telepathically, let's do it this way. I'll send you to-" I felt blood rush to my cheeks.

"What?"

"'I pray for Eli's happiness.'"

Maya's eyes widened and slowly stood up. "You really can hear it. I didn't even mean to do that. I was just imagining what I would pray, but you heard it."

I nodded my head. "Yes. But you know, you don't need to pray for that. You have that power already." I grinned.

She hugged me tightly and said, "I promise to talk if I ever have a problem. But, Eli… what if you get pregnant from today?"

I hesitated for a moment. I was wondering if she would ask. "Will you ask if I mean to keep the child or abort?"

She shook her head frantically. "Please don't abort!"

I smiled. "It goes against my morals to abort. I'm happy to hear you say that." I held a hand to my stomach. "If I got pregnant from today, I'd like to think we'll be good parents."

She nodded. "You handle my weirdness so well. I can't imagine most people would hear that question and not be turned away."

"I like your weirdness, and people with autism always seem to be more genuine."

She gasped. "How did you know?"

"Just a guess based off interactions we've had."

"Oh, I see. So you figured out I'm not normal already."

I smiled. "You are just the right normal for me."

"Look at you, putting on these lines trying to win my heart all over again."

"By the way, do you want to know?"

"Hmm? Know what?"

I gestured to my stomach.

"If you're pregnant? Of course! I really doubt we succeeded in one go, but if you happen to not get your next-"

"Hehe, I can tell you right now."

Her eyes widened.

"Do you want to know?"

"How in the world? There's no way. Gestation won't even start for a couple of weeks if it does succeed!"

I shook my head. "The biology will take a bit to show, but that's not the only way to know. A new soul will form the moment conception occurs."

"Wait, what?"

"The timing can vary after sex, and most doctors will argue this because it's simply not possible for them to know exactly when conception occurs." My eyes glowed as rainbow mana wrapped around me. "You can confirm conception with the formation of a soul, if you are capable of detecting a soul. Which is exceedingly difficult to do even among Transcendents, but I can see souls." I laughed dryly, not wanting to think about the negative part around that time. "It's how I knew my first three daughters were coming the night of."

"Heh. It's gonna take a bit for the magnitude of your abilities to sink in. You have three daughters?"

I shook my head. "I have eight."

"Wow, that's a lot. Most families here have two to four."

"Well, I had four partners, three I married, one… I mentioned I almost had a fourth wife. I don't want to go into the details, it's rather painful, but when we were seventeen, three of us had a wild night. I knocked up both of them."

"You knocked up both of them?"

"Well, all of us were normal girls, no male stuff to speak of. And one of them knocked me up. But, we are also Transcendent. That night was very intense and we were young. My origin powers are to blame. I fertilized an egg in each of them accidentally, but magically. Someone like me can also use origin powers to do it biologically."

"Biologically?"

"I could turn myself into a hermaphrodite."

"Huh? Really?"

"Either method is far from easy for most, but for my partners and I, it wasn't difficult. Your homonym and I are especially unique."

"You mean Maya Velinova?"

"Yes. And the other girl I was with that night that I never got to marry is Luma Valentine. She ended up becoming my personal guard several years later, but…" I shook my head. "Never mind that part. Luma gave birth to a girl she named Lux. Maya gave birth to a girl we named Kaede. And I gave birth to a girl we named Azalea." I laughed dryly again. "My guardians weren't so enthusiastic at first, but my godmother was ecstatic the moment she saw us. She can see souls, too."

"That sounds lovely. You have such a big family. I wonder if that sort of thing is in my future, too."

"If that's what you want, it certainly can be." I smirked. "If you want the female side of love, I can give that to you."

Her eyes were sparkling. "I'll take you up on that, but next time. I'm not in heat now, so I wouldn't enjoy it fully. But next time?"

I smiled and nodded. "Whenever you want, love."

"You're so good to me! But…" She looked down at my stomach. "You can really tell the moment conception happens? Will you tell me, then?"

I smiled. "You're gonna be a mom."

"HUH?!"

*****

I cut off the memory magic for everyone except my partners at the part where we were talking about getting back at those girls that made fun of her, I told them as such telepathically. I called a break in the story telling and told everyone to meet back in an hour.

Most of the room was emptied, it was just us, Joey, and our partners left. Joey had woken up from her nap just before Maya and I got together in the memory. Joey, my stubborn daughter, stayed throughout it and was completely unbothered by the romance between her parents.

"So that's how it happened!" She stated at the end, matter-of-factly. She was happy to find out how she was conceived here, though most kids would be very weirded out by learning such things.

I was feeling nostalgic. In living world time it'd only been seven years, but to us, it'd been eons. The flow of time between the two worlds were equalized when a living soul visited, such as right now with Mabel and Velarus here, but otherwise it was drastically different. A blink of the eye there was millions of years here.

"Thanks for not showing the entire room the last bit of that memory," Mavel said. "And you even censored our nudity in the bathhouse."

"Well... I don't mind everyone seeing me, but I felt a bit jealous just thinking about letting anyone except our partners see you."

"Eli?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you think there's any way we go back to the simplicity of our lives back then? Just taking a day at a time enjoying each other's company."

I glanced over at her. She was showing no outward emotion, but I could feel the intense longing through the telepathic link between us. "I don't know for sure. We won't have peace in the Living World without destroying Phantom. I think we will win. I won't say I don't worry about losing. As powerful as we are, his ability is just that dangerous."

"I know we're going to have to fight at some point, but Eli... I've looked into countless futures. There are countless more possibilities I haven't seen, but every one that I've seen... we lose. That is, except the ones where you, Sanae, Alethea, and I go back to just being the Transcendents Elysia and Maya. We win every single time when it's both of us, and a majority of times when it's either of us."

"There has to be a way to win without that level of sacrifice."

Mavel got up and walked over to me. "Hey."

"Hey yourself."

Our other halves and our other partners stopped in their tracks, all of their eyes glued to us.

She held her hand out without another word. I smiled and took it. She teleported us away. I recognized the place she took us. It was that very cabin where we started dating in this world. She pulled me over to the couch and had me sit down. She then sat on the couch next to me and laid her head on my lap.

"You brought me to the living world," I said.

"I did mess with your DNA back when you rescued Athanasia, so your body is allowed to come here. You and the others I blessed."

"Yeah." I smiled as I ran my fingers through her hair. "I wonder how everyone is doing."

"Everyone that entered Elysium is still sleeping in the pods and our healthy. Everyone else is doing fine. Charlotte is doing well in Wavecrest. Celine and Christine are helping their family run their territory. Aindrea is being managed by Serah and Stella's grandmother since Zalen, Zaldin, and Zane tried to kill Alfia, and she put them in the celestial prison. Lanti's parents finally chose another to crown. Her youngest sister is now the Crown Princess."

"Everyone seems to be okay."

She flipped over, with her face toward my stomach. "Eli. I miss you."

"I don't want to miss you."

"You're saying things weird again."

"Come stay in Elysium with me for a while. You can come and go as you please. Just... come stay for a while. I know you and Alethea see each other as mother/daughter, but... Sanae and I had a conversation along these lines a few months ago. She and I are like sisters, but we're also two halves of the same soul. We both love the same people, and it's not fair to either of us to exclude the other. She went for eons thinking she wasn't allowed to love our partners just because she inherited a different name. She took on a different role, and it ate at her the entire time. Luma went just as long... longer even, holding herself back because of that damned oath she swore in Eden. And you're no different. It hasn't been seven years for you. You have watched us every step of the way. Every day of every worldline. You've gone even longer than Alfia."

"I'm reminded of before right now. You're doing the same thing right now that you did the day we got together in this cabin."

I didn't know what to say to that.

"You care so genuinely for us."

"I do. I can't imagine my life without you and the others. I don't want you to go another day without the love you've missed out on. You know, I've been thinking about this since the hundred years in the past."

"You have?"

"Every day. I won't try to convince you and Alethea to see each other differently. After all, despite the part where you're two halves of one soul, the way Maya set it up for you two you literally carried Aya and gave birth to her. I know that feeling very well. I'll never be able to look at any of my children as anything other than my children. Even the one that's technically my niece in this life, and the others that I haven't told were my children at one point or another."

"So then what are you thinking?"

"That said. I want to be selfish. Sanae and I are comfortable with group dates with our partners and even group activities. Even if you and Alethea don't cross that line, I want you with us. I want to wake up with you in my arms. Neither of us are truly the girls in that memory, but it's still our experience."

She turned over and looked up at me, tears in each eye. "I've been so lonely."

"I won't have that." I pulled her up to where she was sitting on my lap. I caressed her cheek then pulled her face closer to mine.

Her eyes widened, and her face went red. "El-Eli! W-wai mmpf." I silenced her with my mouth.

We stayed like that for a minute. When I pulled away, I put my forehead to hers. "You are my wife. No less than the others."

She smiled. "I love you, Eli."

I picked her up, carried her to the bed, and laid her on her back. I climbed on top of her and snapped my finger.

"You did not just use magic to strip us bothmmpf." I kissed her again. She pushed me away and flipped me over on my back. Her demon wings appeared as she leaned in. She whispered into my ear. "If that's how you want it."

As she leaned down to kiss me again, my twin appeared next to the bed and casually sat down. We both looked up at her. Mavel was frozen in embarrassment, and I giggled.

"Hello."

"Hello yourself," I replied.

"Getting it on again, I see."

"Well, you know."

She reached down and pulled Mavel up toward her. "Hello, love."

"F-F-Fia?"

She kissed the beautiful demon catgirl above me.

"Heh."

"Shush, you."

"Wh-what are you d-doing?" the catgirl said.

"I let my dear sister have Luma all to herself earlier, and I'll have my time with her later, but I don't want to be left out twice in one day." She ran her fingers through Mavel's hair. "Alethea wanted to come, too, but she decided not to, saying you would feel very uncomfortable with her here."

Mavel climbed off of me and sat on the side of the bed. "I shouldn't be doing this."

"Because you feel as though you're stealing from her?" Sanae said.

The pink-haired girl barely looked up, only enough to meet Sanae's eyes. "I suppose you would understand the feeling the most."

She nodded. I rose up and hugged Sanae from behind. "We act like sisters because that's the sort of relationship we've always had since Worldline Alpha, but we both understand that we are two halves of one soul. We are the same person with separate personalities and experiences. You and Alethea are no different. Maya created a body for Aya's half of her soul to inhabit, and your half remained in her own body. She did so herself because she didn't want any of us to feel like a mother or father to her. So that she could develop relationships with the rest of our partners with no restraints. That doesn't have to mean you are her mother. If anything, your original should be. She didn't think about what it might do to you leaving you in her body pregnant with your other half."

"I gave birth to her. She's my daughter."

I shook my head, but Sanae was faster. "She's less your daughter and more your sister, whom you acted as a surrogate for. She's basically your twin, just like Eli and me."

"Semantics."

I sighed. I shifted over behind her and embraced her. "Do you remember that conversation we had the day we got together here? About looking at things from the other perspective and always talking about any issues we have."

"I don't want to."

"Fia, would you please bring Alethea here?"

"What? No! I'm leaving."

She snapped her finger and clothed both of us, then tried to get up, but I held on to her. "Don't you even think about leaving me, Maya Velinova!"

"I can just teleport whenever I want. You can't-"

I felt a tear fall on my arm. She was crying, and so was I. I let go of her and she stood up.

"I'm sorry, Eli. The guilt is too much."

I grabbed her hand. "Please don't go." I could no longer hide the crying in my voice.

This must be what Luma felt earlier. How could I allow her to hurt like that. It brought her happiness afterward, but it hurts so much now. The pain I felt losing people in my mortal lives is painful enough, but even that is nothing to this.

I couldn't bear to look up. It was all I could do to hold on to her hand. "Maya…"

Then there a loud slap followed by her hand getting closer to me and the bed shaking. My eyes snapped open, and Alethea was there standing over Mavel.

The one on the bed held her free hand to her cheek and looked up at her other half in silence.

No, it wasn't in silence. It was in shock.

"You're hurting them." She glanced at me for a moment. I hadn't seen anger in her like that for so long that I couldn't think of when the last time even was.

Sanae sat down next to me. She pulled me up and held me in her arms. "Let them talk it out now." I nodded and nestled my head against her shoulder and neck.

"Okay."

"Kye, Sanae, are you sure you want to stay in the room?" Alethea asked. "I'm not going to be nice."

"Whatever you're going to say, I will stay and here it," Sanae said. "I'll speak for Eli as well."

"Alright. I can't believe my other half would take it so far as to hurt someone we love with all our heart… just because she is feeling guilty that she's taking them away from me."

I felt a plop on the bed and a small bit of rustling.

"I'm done with this act of mother and daughter. You've been hurting thinking you're not allowed to love them, and now she's sitting there crying. She's not crying because she loves you, she's crying because you love each other, and you're not letting yourself be loved. It's the same as with Luma and Sanae… I'm not letting you go on like this."

"It's my choice to be alone."

"No it's not. That's not what your choice is. You are trying so very hard to tell yourself that, but you're lying to yourself."

"If it means all of you can be happy, then I'll be the one that's alone."

"Or we can all be happy together."

"I can't be with your partners!"

"Our partners. I said I'm done with this mother-daughter charade. We both have the same memories from before we split. You want to talk about stealing from me? You're only thinking about our partners. What about our parents? The Demon Lord and Beast Queen. If this is how you see it, then you stole my parents from me. And you're stealing you from me, too."

I sat up just in time to see Mavel's reaction. She grasped her breast.

"No… No, that's not-" Her breathing became dangerously uneven.

"She's hyperventilating!" I cried.

She jumped up, but couldn't maintain her balance. "No. That's… I…" She fell over, and Alethea caught her.

I froze. The mere idea of either of them being hurt like that was no less painful than the rest.

"She'll be fine," Alethea said. She knew me better than anyone. She knew what my first concern was. "She'll probably wake up in a few hours with a headache. When she wakes up, we all need to be there… as well as Mom and Dad."

"You're talking about Mabel and Velarus?" Sanae asked.

Alethea nodded. "Once I was grown after our split, I talked with them about Mavel privately. Neither one of them saw me as their granddaughter. Just their daughter. And I never thought of them as my grandparents, nor did I think of her as my mother. Not once. We all played along with it because it seemed like that's how she wanted it, but she's the only one of us that has this idea in her head. She's so extraordinarily protective of me to the point that she is hurting herself to allow me to be with you and our other partners, but that very act is causing as much or more pain than what she's afraid of."

She sighed and laid Mavel on the bed. I ran my fingers through her hair. "You want Alethea to be happy. You want us to be happy. You think yourself being happy will cost one of us our happiness, but that's the opposite. You have a deep-seated maternal instinct toward Alethea. An older sister can have that instinct toward her younger siblings. An aunt can have that instinct toward a niece or nephew. Even a friend can have that feeling toward another friend. I don't believe you think of Alethea as your daughter. You just act like that's the case. Your protective instinct toward her is genuine, but it's because she's your other half, not your daughter or anything else."

I looked up at Alethea. "I'm not saying this for her alone. I'm saying it for all four of us. You've had your own misgivings. I know you feel guilty the same way she does. You feel like you've had all this happiness that should have gone to her."

She smiled. "I know better than that, but yes. It feels like that. I know the correct answer is 'should have gone to both of us'."

I patted her head. "And that's the key. We all deserve happiness."

Both Sanae and Alethea nodded at me. ""Yeah.""

*****

My head was pounding as I came to. My vision was blurry, but I could make out the ceiling. It was the ceiling of my bedroom in the Beast Castle.

"She's perfectly fine, Your Majesty," came a familiar voice.

"Okay. Thanks, Berthold. You may go. We'll call you if anything comes up."

"I'll be in my office."

The sound of a door opening and closing came soon after. I opened my eyes and tried to raise up, but my body wasn't responding properly.

"Mom, she's awake," came Alethea's voice.

What? Aya's here?

"Mavel?" came mom's voice.

"My body feels weak."

Alethea helped me sit up and propped pillows behind me. "You had a heart attack."

A heart attack?

And then it came back to me, and I clutched my chest out of instinct.

"Hey, hey, hold on!"

I felt a warm aura of mana around me and I calmed down.

"Better?"

I nodded. "Better." I held my hand out to her, and gestured for her to take it. After she did, I pulled her toward me and made her sit down. "Do you really feel that way?"

"Are you sure you want to talk this soon?" she asked. "I think you should rest a bit before."

I shook my head. "I'm not going to get any measure of rest while this is on my mind."

She looked up at mom, who nodded, then back at me. "Fair enough. Eli, Fia, and I meant to have all of us here to talk about this. You, me, Eli, Fia, mom, and dad."

I shook my head again. "Just us. At least for now. And mom?"

Mom sat down on the bed next to Alethea. "You're not contesting that she's calling me 'mom'?"

I looked away, but Alethea pulled my face back toward them. "What do you want?"

"What does it matter what I want?"

"Why would you say that?" mom asked. Her face told me she was disappointed.

It seems being a disappointment is all I'm good at these days.

"You're not a disappointment," Alethea said. I looked at her, shocked, for a moment, then remembered she can read surface thoughts as easily as me or Eli or Fia. Of course my other half can do everything I can do.

"I feel that way right now." I shook my head. "But that can wait. Alethea… you said a lot of things in the cabin. You said you're done with 'this mother-daughter charade'."

"You said that?" mom asked.

She nodded. "Yes. I said that. It came up. Mom, it's been seven years for you, right? Since we sent our consciousnesses into Elysium."

"Yes. Seven years. You're forty now."

She chuckled. "That young, eh?"

"I know you've spent a lot of time in fast-forward dilation in Elysium, but you're still forty. You're not … what even is the number?"

"Twenty-four worldlines, seven hundred trillion years each… so sixteen thousand eight hundred trillion years in total."

Mom gave her a blank look. "That number is just ludicrous. It's unfathomable." She sighed. "Okay, never mind that, we're getting off-topic. Yes, it's been seven years."

"No, that number is still important. That's how long Mavel has been suppressing all of this. That unfathomably ridiculous amount of time. I admit, because of the constant reincarnations toward the end of each world line, it doesn't feel like it's been that long. Mavel, what do you actually want?"

"Regarding which thing?"

"All of it. What do you want from me? What do you want from our partners? What do you want for yourself?"

*****

Revision: 2025-4-12