Hadrian's heart ached at the sight. He got closer.
The baby lay motionless in a pool of afterbirth discharge while the woman held the girl tightly in a shoulder embrace, suppressed sniffs and snobs coming out of her as she swung back and forth, her shoulders shaking.
"Please…. " The woman pleaded, "Please Reverend Mother…. " Her embrace got tighter, "Please Fate empress…. Please All Father…. "
She sobbed to more of these new age gods, paying little mind to the small rat standing strangely, observing them.
With a mental sigh, Hadrian altered his sight. He saw past their flesh and bones and into a vast space within their centres filled with fog. His small snout twitched.
The Woman's essence fog was just like the other humans he'd tried taking over, only more restless.
The girl's essence fog was fading, and fast. It was calm as its hue got lighter and Hadrian's Vision of the space slowly disappeared.
She's dying.
The baby's essence was fragmented wisps struggling to come together. They would connect for a second then break and disperse.
They both won't make it.
Hadrian told himself as his heart picked up pace in his tiny chest.
Perhaps there is a chance.
His heart tightened as his paws rose hesitantly. He called on to the dying girl's fading essence first. Though the baby's seemed weaker and would be easier to grasp, he felt the better risk to start with would be the girl.
Not much he would accomplish with just a baby's body.
The girl's wet eyes were rolled back, open to a slit, her hair damp with sweat. If she sensed Hadrian's intrusion, she did not give any reaction to show.
Unlike the other Humans' essence, this one offered little resistance. It rushed to Hadrian like it had found a branch to hold onto on the side of a cliff.
Stunned, all of Hadrian's vessels were frozen for a moment. The fog tendrils didn't just wrap around Hadrian's paws, but his entire small body.
As this happened, Hadrian glanced at the baby's essence fog fragments that looked to be giving up and disappearing.
Wait for me.
He thought.
Wait for me.
His teeth gritted. This girl's essence fog was bitter and shouting, filled with hatred and sadness. It felt like drinking black tar while thousands of tiny needles poked your throat.
These emotions flared up within Hadrian himself, and it was only when he stopped fighting them did his control finally tighten.
As the woman's shoulders shook, her eyes pressed tightly shut, she felt a soft hand grasp her cheek. The woman's eyes tightened further and her head tilted away from the face of the girl in her arms. Her cries rose as she swung more.
The weak hand gently rubbed on her hair and the mother winced, opening her eyes slowly as she turned to her daughter.
Her puffy eyes darted, scanning her daughter's face. A long moment passed with nothing being said.
"Waaa!"
The baby's cry cut through the night air.
Hadrian found himself inside the dull white space once more. His gaze went to a specific spot and the fog cleared up. There, a naked girl and baby floated.
Hadrian glance lingered on the baby for a long moment and he felt distress and ache within him.
After taking over the girl, he'd immediately taken over the baby. It was different however. The fragmented wisps were too broken and most had disappeared for any tendril to form. Instead, a river of essence flowed from somewhere inside Hadrian and into the baby.
This essence fog felt familiar. His own. Or from this foggy dull white space.
Trying his best to suppress the pang of guilt eating at him, he looked at the girl. Focusing on her, misty information rose and danced next to her.
[ Basic Sentient Lifeform. ]
Her eyes were black, her hair the same colour, her features soft and youthful.
Not even sixteen yet.
Hadrian sighed. He'd already got glimpses of her memories just like he did with the memories of the rats of the sewers.
After her father abandoned them, her mother started taking her to work with her where she worked as a maid to a rich Lord's House.
There, the son of the lord took advantage of the girl and it resulted in her pregnancy. The Wife of the lord threatened the girl and her mother when the girl's mother confronted the House.
The Lord of the house, filled with guilt and shame over his son's actions, gave them gold and a horse before the wife made good on her threat.
Six months later, no gold, no horse and in a different city, the girl gave birth in a random alley where she and her baby would have died were it not for Hadrian.
Hadrian's gaze floated back to the baby for a moment. His thoughts wondered as he considered the similarities with his own birth and early childhood.
With a mental sigh he sent out his intent and the fog rose, covering the naked body of the thin girl.
I'm sorry for everything the world did to you.
Hadrian thought, not sure if the flaring emotions were truly his considering the rising bitterness he felt towards the lord's House.
He looked past the floating girl and baby and onto his rat vessels. Their soul bodies had changed.
He had lost them all. After taking over the girl and mother, he needed to substitute their essence, energy, and even flesh to heal the girl and support the baby's fragmented essence.
They are still here, though.
However, unlike their realistic versions. The remnants were made of the fog. The details of them, however, were still there; up to the individual hairs that made up their furs.
He summoned his soul information.
[ Name : Hadrian . ]
[ Authority : Unity . ]
[ Authority attributes; ]
[ 1. I : Take over the Mind. Soul. Body. Of another existence. ]
[ 2. Chain : All vessels are one. ]
[ 3. Substitute : Mind. Essence. Flesh. ]
[ Current vessels.]
[ Basic lifeform : 0 ]
[ Basic Sentient Lifeform : 2 ]
[ Mutated lifeform : 0 ]
[ Ascended sentient Lifeform : 0 ]
[ …. ]
What purpose do they serve if they are no longer in my vessel categories?
He looked back to the misty rats.
Not knowing what to make of it, Hadrian looked over the information for one more short moment and simulated the sinking feeling, leaving the dull white space.
The girl's eyes fluttered open. Hadrian's blurry sight cleared up to a makeshift low-rise wooden ceiling.
The girl's head rolled to the left on the piles of dirty clothing she laid upon. The smell was damp and not that much different from the sewer.
"Alia…. " A voice called out. The girl's black eyes rolled to the foot of the pile of clothes where the woman held the baby in her arms.
"you are finally up." the woman muttered, her tone gentle. The weak smile on her face died before it even formed.
Hadrian let out a sigh. He rose to support his back on the wooden wall.
"You shouldn't move yet." The woman stressed.
"It's fine." Hadrian muttered, hearing Alia's voice for the first time in his skull. It was tired, but still the voice of a young girl.
"It's been ten hours or so," the woman said.
Hadrian looked at her dark brown eyes. They were tired and old. She looked like she had not slept for days, but inside them, Hadrian still saw a sliver of hope and happiness.
His feelings towards the woman were complicated, to say the least. He could separate Alia's emotions and not recognize this woman as his own mother. What he was sure he felt for her, was pity.
The woman had lost everything the past few months, and though she did not know it yet, she had lost her daughter and grandson.
"Do you want to hold him?" Alia's mother said, already shuffling to get up. Her hands stretched forward and she handed the baby to Alia. Alia's hands were weak and could barely hold up the baby. Hadrian placed it, him, on Alia's lap.
He looked down at his baby self, his almond eyes narrowing.
"What do you want to call him?" Alia's mother asked as she stroked the baby's head. Hadrian's eyes darted to the woman.
In Alia's memories, her mother was in her early thirties. She looked a decade older than she was supposed to.
His gaze went back to his baby self.
"Hadrian." Alia's soft voice said after a moment of silence.
"Hadrian…. " it rolled off the mother's tongue as if she was tasting the word, "Hadrian…. " she repeated, her hand caressing the baby's exposed forehead, "it's beautiful." She said with that smile of hers that did not reach her eyes.
Hadrian felt uncontrollable emotions flare up as tears welled up behind his eyes. Unable to hold them back, they rolled down his cheeks.
The mother placed her rough hand onto Alia's left cheek, "it's okay my baby…. " she wrapped her arms around Alia's shoulder in a tight embrace, "it's okay my baby…. " she repeated.
Hadrian gave up on fighting back, he shook as his cries were muffled in the mother's clothes.