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(6x16) The Children of Antiquity: Part 3, Episode 1

As Keius and Tatia have worked side by side in the founding of the school of mages and the creation and taming of the Asiran, their relationship has continued to grow closer, Keius finally relenting to the advances that Tatia had always made on him. But their relationship is strained somewhat by the transformation that Keius has undergone: the person now living on in his body is not just the Keius that Tatia always know, but rather a much older being, Meij, the ancestral spirit of Keius' entire lineage, who is partly composed of Keius, but not exactly the same person. That Meij spirit once thought itself a god, and was worshipped as such, many ages past; and it seems people may be worshipping Keius as such again now. But the Meij spirit now embodied in Keius has learned better since those long ago ages, and now aims not so much to be in charge, as to be positively influential on a large scale; but it's still this ancient once-megalomaniacal if now-humbled being, whereas Keius was just a scientist. One with grand dreams of unlocking the secrets of life, but still just a scientist.

Tatia doesn't know what she feels about that. Keius points out in response that she herself is "two people" as much as he ever was; Tatia the persona of this lifetime, and the spirit of her ancestral lineage inside her, shaping her throughout her whole life. He asks which one does she, having both of those still separate, feel is more "the real her"? The voice she speaks with to the public world, or the private voice speaking to her in the back of her mind? Keius is able to speak (telepathically) directly with that inner voice, and the surface persona of Tatia is able to "overhear" that conversation.

Keius concludes that the "new" him, post-resurrection, is just his own deepest inner voice, now speaking directly, unmediated by any surface persona, to the world at large. Tatia thinks on that and in the end feels like she is talking to the "more real" Meij, who is everything she knew of Keius, plus everything Keius, like all ordinary people, was keeping locked away inside. In time, they decide to consummate their relationship, which is Keius' first time ever; an oddity, as the Ehrban are naturally promiscuous and non-monogamous. Tatia finds that oddly endearing, but also slightly disturbing, a sign of how Keius may have always been a little stranger than he ever seemed.

Next: The Children of Antiquity: Part 3, Episode 2