I just couldn’t help but cackle softly to myself. There was something deeply satisfying about manipulating these simple creatures, especially the one we called Naya. She might just be a masterpiece, and if things worked out as I hoped they would, I could see myself adopting her as yet another of my daughters. It wouldn’t happen for some time, as things were right now, Naya was less mentally developed than Sasha was, meaning she would be a pet at best, not a daughter.

Given my plans for her, that didn’t work. She couldn’t be a pet, but if I were being honest with myself, a daughter didn’t work either. If I wanted her to be my Chosen to lead the giants and transform their society, their entire existence, into something better than their current bestial state, she needed to be more. First, I would have to turn her into a paragon, not a Paragon of Giantkind but a Paragon of Intelligence, maybe with magic added in for flavour. Then, once she was transformed into an actual person and a leader for her people, I could start working on the rest of them.

Meaning she couldn’t be obviously under my control or command. As far as the world could know, she had to stand on her own two feet. Faith in a spirit or deity was allowed for a leader, but if a leader was obviously under the control of another, they were no leader; they were a puppet. With what we had observed of the giants’ psychological make-up, as far as they currently had one, they wouldn’t follow a puppet; they would only follow a physically strong and sturdy leader.

So, if I wanted to make that work, Naya had to be the strongest and most intelligent, while following my lead without seeming to be under my control. Meaning, I needed to be something other than a person; people generally allowed their leader to have faith or follow omens, at least to a degree, but those didn’t control them. A theocracy came to mind, only that I had to take the role of the deity, as annoying as that was.

When I first realised that the best way to get what I wanted from the giants was to take on the guise of a deity and guide them that way, I couldn’t help but laugh. To make matters worse, the deity in question couldn’t be the Mother, Her domain didn’t really work for the giants, it had to be the Pale Lady or an entirely new deity.

Which made me wonder, how did deities usually come about? Did they gather disciples during their lifetime, and, once they were dead, these disciples started to speak of their former leader’s deeds, thus immortalising said leader. Once their fame and glory were immortalised and remembered, the said leader would turn into a legend, their story potentially taking on a life of its own until enough people had heard about them and, more importantly, believed in them and their deeds, until their personality somehow reformed and became divine.

This sounded like a bit of a stretch, especially given the, to the best of my knowledge, multi-dimensional nature of deities. Unless dying automatically meant that they were in a different dimension afterwards, at least to the classification of the system, and, if that were to be the case, I might have stumbled across an interesting opportunity.

Suppose deities were created by their followers and believers talking about them. What could stop me from introducing a divine Sigmir to these giants, to use my memories of my beloved to tell stories about her and her deeds? We had some adventures during our time on Mundus, some of which could easily form the basis for a legend. Some might need a bit of embellishment, but I could do that, though the question was, how long would all that take?

Could I be that patient, or was there a way to speed up the process or, perhaps, use parts of it to guide my efforts, allowing me to find Sigmir’s soul, wherever it might be?

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Given that the plan to resurrect Sigmir had three major parts: to create a body for her, to draw her Soul into it and, lastly, to somehow restore the memories of her life on Mundus, this might be big.

So far, I only had a vague idea regarding the body’s creation, namely to rely on Luna, her Life Magic and possibly the local giants. With them as the base, Luna might be able to create an appropriate body, especially if I managed to extract the divine Influence within my own blood and, somehow, merged said link to the giant’s blood. Maybe with some appropriate additional material mixed in, to turn the result from a Giant into a Giantblood, as she had been. Alternatively, we might want to refine the Giant form used for her, giving her the greatest advantage possible.

I even wondered if the creation of said body would be contained within the domain of the Mother and if I might be able to assist and support the creation. Not that I was all too enthusiastic with that prospect, it felt deeply wrong to even consider becoming Sigmir’s mother for obvious reasons. I didn’t want to be her mother; I wanted to be her lover, but I was willing to take any role that would reunite us.

While the whole plan was somewhat vague, it was all based in currently available abilities. Luna had already demonstrated her ability to turn seeds into fully grown plants and had been working on stabilising the outcome. Usually, in combat, she didn’t need the rapidly grown plants to last more than a few minutes, but for something like Sigmir’s body, that was obviously unacceptable. Therefore, she needed to modify that part of the process, which she had already been working on, as the ability to magically accelerate the natural growth process without harming the product would be highly valuable in agriculture. It had been a major part of the economy on Mundus, with certain, often religious, groups trying to hold a monopoly on such abilities and their usage, but there had obviously been pushback. Not much happened during the time the travellers created additional instability on Mundus, but I vaguely remembered reading about conflicts of that nature when we visited Torop.

Regarding the aspect of the mind, I had even less of an idea. Sure, I was getting better with my Mind Magic, especially when it came to transferring memories as I had done with Naya a few days ago, but there was still a lot missing regarding the restoration of Sigmir’s mind. I might be able to give her my memories of her on Mundus, but in order to have those memories make sense, she needed a foundation. Additionally, those memories were how I saw Sigmir, which meant they were highly biased, making them less than suitable for recreating her personality. Maybe I could somehow draw the EXP she had gifted me as she was dying out and extract the ‘experience’ held within the ‘Experience Points’, but that was just the barest motion of a notion.

Sadly, even that bare notion was more than I had regarding Sigmir’s soul. Soul Magic was, quite frankly, a hugely difficult endeavour, which was to be expected given its potential. Luna and I had learned to manipulate some aspects of a soul, but everything we could currently do was predicated on having the soul. If we had SIgmir’s soul, we would probably be able to install it in a suitable body and smooth out possible issues, but getting the soul in the first place? That was difficult, and I had, quite frankly, no idea how I would go about it.

But if we somehow managed to create a link of faith between the locals here on Terra and Sigmir’s soul, the essence that made her who I loved so very much, I might be able to use that link to find her soul. The faith, and her potential ascension into a deity, might even help with the recreation of her mind, as a deity obviously had to have some idea of who she had been, or maybe the deity’s mind was formed by the thoughts and prayers of their worshippers, based on the stories and legends told about them. If the second were the case and Sigmir’s mind was based on stories I told about her, would that be a good enough solution? Or would my personal biases and deep, adoring love for her somehow change the stories enough to turn the result into someone who wasn’t my Sigmir but a warped copy of her? I would have to think on that and try to find other ways.

Just thinking about this and putting it all together made me smile and even want to dance. What had once been born from nothing but my desperate need to reject a reality without SIgmir was slowly starting to congeal into a plan that might even work. Sure, the plan was vague and had enough holes to leak like a colander, but it was a start and could be refined and perfected. I just had to put in the work and, maybe most importantly, have faith in my family and myself.