Chương 1035: Day One Thousand And Thirty-Three

Dear Diary, Really not sure what I'm gonna do with Aphrodite. On the one hand, she's obviously done some seriously shady shit. Given that not a single one of her former Worshippers will come out and say 'she raped me', I'm finding it very hard to justify just killing the bitch.

I'm not even gonna comment on the fact that some part of my continent spanning braindead hindbrain is salivating at the thought that if she's not technically a rapist, I shouldn't have any problems eating her and taking my time savoring that sweet, sweet Olympian Deific power.

Yeah, she's tangentially connected to the dude ultimately responsible for the Betrayal at The Walls, for the Undead Infestation of Calverton and the winter refugee train that followed, not to mention inspiring the fuckin' Spartans to attack the Alliance in general and my Darling in specific. But from what I can tell, at worst she's the kind of abused spouse who can't let themselves see how badly they've been abused. They've grown up surrounded by abuse, to the point they think that abuse is normal.

They're in constant pain, to the point that they don't realize that pain isn't the normal, healthy state of being. Worst, maybe, is that the only painkiller easily available to them was, you guessed it, abusing somebody lower on shit pyramid. On the other hand, she literally told me I should kill her. No ifs, ands, or buts. She's assuming I'm gonna kill her. If she's fully twigged to the fact that I'm Mimic, she's gotta be assuming that I'm gonna eat her corpse before it goes cold.

Or maybe she's assuming that I'll eat her alive or some shit like that. When I'm trying to figure out a way to do the right thing, it does not help my commitment to that right thing to have the person in question actively, openly encouraging me to do the wrong thing unto them. Thing is, I'm not sure she's wrong about whether it's the smart thing to do.

She's pretty much said that her piece of shit husband Ares has not only made her High Clergy, he can and will use her as both a remote spying platform and maybe take her over to do surreptitious destructive shit as well. I've read way too many fantasy and sci fi books about shit like post-hypnotic suggestion to think that kind of thing would be impossible for a Deity here and now.

Which I can only guess means that maybe shithead did that to her instead of making her High Clergy, but I can't see how that would be better, or how he'd be able to see what she sees like that. Then again, maybe she's shaping some kind of reverse Scrying. Or maybe he's Scrying on her. So the Camden Yards Cadets kicked ass with their lifting yesterday, and even if Obol had to do some extra sets, I wasn't actually punishing her. Not really. She asked me about it.

Okay, what she actually said, as she pushed herself to complete the final rep of the final set I'd insisted on after all the other Cadets left, was, "I'm very sorry about being a smartass, Ma'am." I snorted, helped her rack the weight, and said, "yeah, no, I'm a smartass too. That's not why you're still out here." Her arms flopped down, and she got a thoughtful look as she panted. Finally she managed, "punishment for abandoning the other Cadets?" I shrugged.

"Yeah, leaving your crew behind is never a good look, but I'm not really intending this as punishment." I reached a hand out to her. She took it, and I hoisted her to her feet, then held her there until she got her balance.

"What is it then?" I smiled at her.

"Teaching your ass to cash all the checks your smart mouth is gonna write." She snorted, looked like she was gonna say something, so I spun her around and gave her a gentle shove toward the doors.

"Now go get some dinner." After racking up that last set of weights, I stepped home to my own dinner. Apparently we've got enough rice and fish to get some nice sushi and sashimi. Funny thing, even the less carnivorous of our girls like sushi. The new kids seemed a little doubtful, but Marie had pulled together some tamago sushi for the kids along with the raw stuff. Enough of it that the new kids wouldn't have wound up hungry even if they ate nothing but that.

Which they mostly did, although by the end of the meal watching the rest of the girls chow down on the raw stuff had them trying it. Boy did the classic macho thing of nom and swallow in one big thing. Meanwhile Girl added the ginger and horseradish to hers and savored it. I have got to convince them to pick names. Seriously. A long soak after all the weight work today felt great. In case it's not clear, I'm not a 'stand around watching' trainer like duBois.

I'm a 'demonstrate and work out right along with them' trainer. Which might be burning a few more calories, but I need to keep in shape, because I don't think I've really plateaued yet. Yeah, that's a frightening fuckin' thought when I think about it. I need to be getting more precise, not more powerful. Maybe I'll have them do more obstacle course running or something. Dreamt of my ladies doing all kinds of wacky hijinks in my Maw. Absolutely ignored the mostly Blended planning table floating through the chaos.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. About halfway through the day, as I was delivering Ria's eggy grilled cheese, planning on grilling her regarding her birthday wishes, Karen showed up.

"Goddess?" I took one look at her, standing there at Parade Rest in her Yandere Shobitch Wedding Gown, and sighed.

"What's she done this time?"

"Nothing terrible, but she did ask for you specifically."

"What's going on?" I ruffled Ria's hair, said, "I'll be back as quick as I can," and stood to follow Karen toward the oubliette. We could have stepped to the entrance, but this gave us a chance to talk before I had to deal with fuckin' Aphrodite. Shit, maybe I needed to find somebody who wanted to get with her in a physical sense, because as far as I know she hadn't actually been fucking at all since she arrived, and I would sure as shit be feeling some kinda way being celibate for that long.

"Alexandra is feeling better, and her Assessment is coming up relatively clean, so I was going to let Aphrodite visit her, but she refuses to leave the oubliette," Karen explained as we walked down a set of steps to the level of the oubliette entrance. As far as I could tell, the thing was directly under my Altar, buried deep in the foundations of the building.

"Has she said why?" Karen shook her head.

"I asked, which is when she asked to speak with you and stopped answering questions except to ask for you." I sighed.

"Why didn't you just leave her there to stew?" Karen shot me a crooked grin.

"Alexandra requested to see her."

"Shit."

"Yeah, I know. They each want to speak with one another, and neither has done anything I could call 'bad behavior', and I know how forlorn I would be denied my ability to commune with you." I returned her wry grin with interest.

"Yeah, we haven't 'communed' much lately." She laughed at that.

"Not all connections need be lustful, Goddess." I reached out and hugged her.

"Yeah, I know, Karen." We arrived at the entrance to the oubliette.

"Can you bring Alexandra down here?" She nodded.

"Thanks." With that I opened the oubliette and dropped down into it. Kinda funny, before Yule I really didn't get why it was so hard for me to lift myself here in the Mortal Realm, when most Deities seemed to be able to hover or fly or whatever one way or another. Once I realized that I am not, in fact, a tall-for-a-girl Human Adjacent person, but just Blend to look like one, I figured it out.

It's more like moving a hand around than anything else, and if you've ever tried to move a numb hand around by using your other hand, you've got some idea what I was tryna do. Thing is, the oubliette isn't really that deep, and by now I've got enough leg strength that a drop of a couple dozen feet doesn't even require a superhero landing. It's more like hopping off the back of a pickup truck.

"Yo, Phro. You wanted to see me. Here I am." She looked up from where she'd been sitting on the side of the bed. She looked like the platonic ideal of 'I haven't been crying, what are you talking about'. I mean, no smudged makeup, because we hadn't actually given her any cosmetics, but the puffy red eyes, the faint residue of salt making the normal adult wrinkles in her skin deeper than they'd normally be, all of it just reeked of her sitting here weeping until I showed up.

"If I am to be denied the company of my own High Priestess, I must ask you to kill me now rather than prolonging my torment." I shook my head, sighing.

"Shit, Phro, why you gotta be like that all the time. We're not tryna torture you..."

"And yet you starve me." I glanced very pointedly at the fancy dinner tray on the table in the room, and she scoffed.

"A Mortal repast cannot suffice for a Deity of my standing. You should know, you cannot possibly eat enough Mortal food to sustain you." I opened my mouth. Closed it again. Felt really fuckin' sheepish as I realized what I'd been doing with all my power nomming back in my early days at the Academy.

"Okay. Fair. But speaking of food, I was taking my kids lunch when..." She interrupted me with a sob that half turned into a scoff.

"Children. Like you have any children of the body." That got my back up a little, but I held back, because I figured she might be subtly trying to piss me off enough to give in and end her.

"I'm pretty sure Isnomi counts, somehow, but even if she doesn't Marie and I have eight."

"Marie?"

"Maenad Marie? Dionysus' Champion?" Her mouth dropped open, horrified.

"You and she... How?" I flickered to Boy Mode and back.

"Like that."

"How many times?" I smirked at her.

"As often as she's asked. But yeah, no, just the one pregnancy. Overachiever that she is, she popped out eight kittens. Catgirls. Well, tiger-girls. Shit, Isadora's probably a liger girl or something like that, big as she is." She tilted her head.

"You'd tell me the names of your children?" I leaned in, suddenly still.

"You're a mom. Do you really think it's a good idea to threaten my children, even obliquely?" She shook her head.

"Any knowledge I glean from you is a threat, should I ever leave this place."

"Yeah, well. That's on your husband, douchebag that he is. Part of me wants to go hunt him down and end him for being such a mega-douchebag, but another part of me thinks that's exactly what he wants, and that he'd show up here and fuck my people over while I was out hunting him."

"You do not fear his wrath?" Long buried internet troll instincts reared up, and words slipped out of my mouth before I could stop them.

"Yeah, there's a reason he only has one uncle." Her mouth slowly slid open, her eye twitching but before she could fully process that, I pushed my focused Blend at her brain just a little bit and said, "just... Don't threaten my kids. I dunno if I'm gonna kill you or not. I dunno if it would be justice, or mercy, or what. But I'm gonna be a little pissed off if you jumpscare me into doing it. So don't threaten my kids."

"You... You care for your children." She sighed.

"I wish I could say the same." I settled onto the bed next to her. Put an arm around her and gave her a hug. Because holy shit I would be devastated if something came between me and my girls.

"I'm sorry, Phro. Is there anything I can do?" She nodded.

"Kill me, that I might mourn their adoration of their father no longer." I sighed, glanced up at the entrance, then looked back at her.

"Yeah. No. Not today. But... I don't want to torture you either." I reached up with a tentacle, then two, then a dozen, each gently wrapping around Alexandra before lowering her into the oubliette.

"Be gentle with her. She's had a rough time since you saw her last."

"I know." Don't know what hit me harder; hearing Dad's habitual sign off here in the oubliette, or the fact that it was Alexandra who'd said it.