Chương 252: Day Two Hundred And Fifty

Dear Diary, Y'know, I've mentioned I hate waiting a couple of times now, but I think it might not be the waiting I hate most. It's my response to the end of the waiting. It's not the anticipation. Anticipation is just... an amplifier. Anticipating debauchery for a couple days? Mind-blowing climactic resolution. Anticipating violence for days? I lose my fuckin' mind and do shit that would haunt me if I had things like functional memory and object permanence.

Then again, how permanent is any object when you drop it in a Mana Blade? Okay, yeah, Cold Iron, I get it, but still, you get my point. I just kinda wish I could get the point across to these rogue assholes that if they'd all just walk up to the gate and say 'we're here to fight you now', I'd probably be a lot more gentle with them than keeping me on edge. Got to sleep at a decent hour last night. Mimic dreamt of stones games and connect four and disco dancing.

No fuckin' clue what Big Black is going on about, but I kinda wish she'd find some more metaphors, y'know? How hard can it be? She lives in Metaphoric Space, right? So she's where metaphors come from? Or where they live or whatever? Woke up to Isnomi's posse and the horde hoard piled up on and around our bed. My hand dangled off the edge of the bed, fingers interlaced with Marie's. I just lay there, soaking up the feels.

So much of what I've had to do here, the stuff that sticks out, at least, has been mind-blowingly violent. I wonder sometimes if that's why I'm here, to visit all the violence the Powers that Be have dumped on the Mortals of this world, thousands of years, maybe tens of thousands, all returned at once. Part of me looks forward to that. To being the 'find out' in response to all the Deific 'fuck around' that's happened. Part of me. The rest of me? Doesn't give a shit about all of that.

The rest of me just wants this; to lie around with the people I love, maybe spreading that category around a bit, one way or another. I dunno what I'd do if I wasn't Heroing, though. Then again, that was pretty much true even back in Camden. I was good at a lot of things, good enough I could have done it as a career. Wouldn't have broken a sweat driving a cash register, or a reception desk, or a grill. Okay, not that last. My cooking is best described as 'technically edible'.

I could have gone to school and done whatever. When I took the ASVABs, the military aptitude tests, the answers came back 'you can do anything you want; there's a signing bonus if you go Combat Arms'. Which had an appeal even back then; you take a kid, wait for them to get a dream or two, crush those dreams to dust, rinse and repeat on the daily for a dozen and a half years? It builds a deep and abiding rage, a lust for violence that keeps burning no matter how much you try to drown it.

But even there, it wasn't even 'oh, hey, look at this method of doing unto others', it was 'yeah, choose your fighter'. I guess I'm saying that there's a downside to being blessed with talents in every direction you look. You've got no idea what direction you ought to go. I mean, if I had one or two choices? Just try one, see if I like it, or maybe try both and see which I like better.

But there's this thing about getting a new job every year; eventually employers start giving you side eye, like, 'how can we exploit you properly if you won't stick around?' So, yeah. I guess Heroing, at least Phileo style Heroing, isn't the worst fit for me. The Heroes I've seen from other Cities in the here and now seem to fall into a couple really broad categories.

Warrior types who focus on purely physical asskickery, Mage types who focus on Mana Shaping, and Priest types who call down the always available, if somewhat imprecise Wrath of the Gods on their enemies. Or, y'know, the whole battlefield, so I'm guessing they go last, after their own side has already lost. Hell, that might be one of the big problems with the here and now; too many people were focused on the other side losing instead of just making sure their own side won.

Hell, I saw that back in Camden, too, so maybe it's just part of the Human Condition? Or even just part of the Sapient Mortal condition, since I don't see any difference coming from Bag or Dan, Aesir or Vanir, Jotnar or Olympian. Hell, even the immortals seem to run that way. Then again, if your brain is stuck on everything being a zero-sum-game, maybe you'd start thinking that if the other guy loses, that means you win?

As I lay there pondering, Marie's hand squeezed mine; not enough to hurt, but enough to tell me she felt me, that she held part of me in a kind of symbolic holding of all of me. A moment later, Saffron rolled over and hummed that little endorphin releasing tune. I smiled and whispered, "okay, you two, I get it. No more chasing my own tail in self destructive circles."

"Good," murmured Saffron. After a little nuzzling at my neck, she asked, "what were you thinking about?"

"Dunno. Philosophy? What I'd do if I weren't a Hero? Whether any of us have any real choice or if it's all an illusion?"

"Deep thoughts." I shrugged.

"Kind of the thing that happens when I'm awake and let the wheels spin, I guess." She pushed herself up just a little and turned my head to look at her.

"The day cannot come soon enough that all we need do is lie around discussing such things." Then she pulled me in for a kiss. Funny, as we lay there kissing, I felt the rumble of Marie's purr through my hand, which still held hers, our fingers still interlaced. By the time we came up for air, the little ones started to stir. Marie managed to exfiltrate from the pile around her and, before she went to clear the armoires from the doors, leaned over and kissed me just as tenderly and thoroughly as Saffron had done.

Then she leaned across me and did the same to Saffron. Pinned underneath her, with one arm under Saffron and the other still held in place by our interwoven fingers, my whole world narrowed to the sight of the two of them, the smell of them, the gentle sounds of their lips against one another, and the ongoing vibration of Marie's purr. She pulled back and I couldn't resist saying, "Y'know, a girl could get used to having you lying on top of her like that." She just grinned at me as she pulled herself free.

"Yes." With that, the three of us started our new morning routine of scrubbing up Isnomi's posse and the horde hoard. As we did, I asked, "can you stay for breakfast?" If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Saffron shook her head sadly.

"I can't, love. I'm one of the few who have the Mana reserves to cast Mass Cure, and the only one who can do it more than once."

"It sounds more and more like you need me up there." She sighed as she handed another kidlet off to me.

"Yeah, we do, but we need you here hunting down those Rogues just as much. Even more, really." A crooked grin leaked onto her face.

"I'm not the one duBois called 'preternaturally talented at visiting harm unto others'."

"Shit, he said that?" She shook her head.

"Well, no, but there are children present. Also, that's the way General Lancaster rephrased it, and he agrees."

"Really?" She nodded.

"Love, you've got a reputation. An earned one." I sighed.

"Y'know, sometimes I wish I had a different one." It had been a while since Saffron gave me a 'really, Diaz?' look. I'd kinda missed it.

"Why would you want that?" I mirrored her look back at her.

"Who wants a reputation as a vicious, violent, vigilante?" Her look melted into a chuckle.

"That's not the reputation you've built, love."

"Then what is it? The Imperator's Attack Dog?" She finished rinsing the latest little one and scooted them on toward me for toweling. As she soaped up the next one she said, "No, love. Not that, although I love it that you feel so protective toward me. Us. Those we consider 'ours' by any stretch of the imagination. No, your reputation? You're the avenging angel, against whom no one, be they man, or beast, or god on high may stand." I gave her a lopsided smile and sighed, "yeah, I guess that's not all that bad.

Still wish I could have a reputation for, y'know, saving people rather than just bringing the pain." Saffron froze for a moment, then went back to scrubbing.

"Marie?"

"Yes?"

"Can you please take care of Isnomi and the rest of our children here during breakfast?"

"Yes." Part of me wanted to ask what my wife had planned, but some of me really worried that I'd done or said something so awful that she needed privacy to tear me a new asshole or something. That fear only got worse as she remained silent all the way through morning baths, even bathing me and while I dried her off. When I opened my mouth to ask, she just held up a finger for silence.

The moment Marie shepherded the kids out of the room, she said, "Just the other day I had to force a resolution through the Inter-City Council. Well, mostly I proposed it and showed them the relevant wall, at which point only Ophelia voted against the resolution."

"Why?"

"Because she doesn't like you. Unless you meant why I had to push the resolution through? That's because as Imperator, I cannot dictate to Headmaster Miles, although the Inter-City Council as a whole can."

"Huh?" She'd lost me entirely. A moment later, we stood, her in Glowing Midnight, me in my Academy Uniform, atop the Academy steps. Over her head I saw the Boulevard; the last time I'd seen the view it had been obstructed by a line of plague victims that stretched out to the urban horizon, the snow dirty with vomit and even blood. Now a fresh coat of snow covered everything but the roads and steps; those had been swept clean by traffic and maids.

"Someone did it over the course of several nights, at a guess. No one knows the artist or artists. I wouldn't have known about it, but Mrs. Driver waxed poetic about it the morning it finished."

"The moment what finished?" She took me by the hands and gently but firmly turned me around. I'd only seen the front of the Academy a few times, and I'd never really looked at it. I knew the outside was some kind of white stone, probably marble, and the doors were the same thick black ones as we had inside. Other than that I couldn't have told you much about it. Now it had a mural all the way across the front, both the dormitories to the sides and the central area that held the classrooms and gathering areas.

It took me a little to take it all in. On my far right, the eastern edge of the mural, four figures stood in front of a pair of massive, blood coated walls.

Somehow I knew despite never having seen them before that they were Indech, who looked in horror at the walls, Balor, who looked on the line of refugees at his feet, his vision falling on figures here and there in the crowd, Elatha, who held a tiny golden figure in his hand, rays stretching out to strike down those in the procession, and Sengann, caught in the act of placing winged, clawed imps on the refugees near him.

The ones Balor looked on, most of whom seemed to be either elderly or babies, had been caught in the act of falling. Not 'caught' in the sense of 'captured in paint', but in each case a brilliant red sash wrapped around them, holding them on their feet. All those sashes led back to the center of the mural to merge with the dress of the pale skinned, dark haired woman whose gaze burned the imps to ash.

To my left, toward the west, the crowd streamed out, dancing, working, even a unit of refugees marching under the baleful gaze of a Dragon. A Dragon hogtied and hung by a noose of that same flame red slash of fabric. Saffron spoke, her voice reverent.

"This, love. This is your reputation. This, this captures in painted images the emotions your image brings to the people of this Phileo and the Yards, This is what we made a resolution to preserve, when the Headmaster wanted it removed." I looked at my feet.

"Makes me look like I'm the only one fighting." Saffron lifted my chin, her eyes sparking over her smile.

"You're not, love. You know that. I know that. They know that. The difference? You're the first one to stand up to the Gods and say, 'no, this will not stand'." I snorted.

"I can't be the only one who's ever done that." She shook her head.

"Maybe? Maybe not? What matters? You're the first one who did it. Who looked at the gods, told them 'no', and forced them to back down, whether all at once like you did with Ares, or one victim at a time ripped from the dominion of Balor and Sengann." I slumped a little, unseen weight pushing my shoulders down. I barked out another laugh.

"No pressure, right?"

"You remember what happened right here, where we stand, on these steps."

"Yeah, I healed folks until I passed out and left a bunch of them unhealed." My face stung where she slapped me.

"You held until, due to your example, an incarnate God was shamed into forcing his fellow Deities to do what they should have been doing all along."

"But..." My other cheek didn't sting quite so much, despite the fact that she'd backhanded me.

"NO! No buts. You went to Lancaster after that."

"Yeah, I know, they heard about it somehow. I saw the Dragon." At that she smiled up at me.

"He won't admit it, because if he did, he'd have to insist the entire mural be taken down, but you slew a far greater dragon than one of scales and acid, love."

"He?" A free-floating clue landed on my burning cheek.

"Lancaster? But Larry did that!"

"Who stood next to him? Who backed him up and cheered him on? Whose example showed him that monsters, even the ones we can't see, Can. Be. Slain?" She looked down, her voice dropping to a whisper that barely carried to me.

"Who showed me that Deities need not be cruel, childish, tyrants to whom we are nothing but playthings? Showed me that they could... should... will be better." I heard the crackle hiss of a Mana Blade in her voice when she breathed, "or they will be no more." I pulled her to me, a sudden need expressing itself through my lips on hers, my arms around her. Long moments later we pulled apart the slightest amount, forehead pressed against forehead.

"Thank you, Kitten. I... Thank you." Her lips curved into a Grin.

"So, I know you deserve the rewards I have planned for you, but right at this moment I need to be Curing plague victims, and you need to be hunting Rogue Heroes."

"But when we're done?"

"When we're done, love. No matter how long it takes. When we're done." She kissed me once more, then stepped away, and was gone. I stepped back to the Scrying Room to begin today's vigil, two dozen fighters and Marie's countless horde hoard eagerly awaiting their game of 'spot the Bad Guys'. Who, much to my dismay, refused to play today. And my tension ratcheted one notch higher.