Chương 270: Day Two Hundred And Sixty-Eight

Dear Diary, Y'know, I know when people say 'some days are better than others' they mean it as a kind of positive thing, but some part of my brain always twists it around to the corollary, that some days are worse than others. Which, given how shitty some of my days are? That's a pretty fuckin' awful thing to think about, if some of them are gonna wind up shittier than that.

Still, if I survived the Temple of the Moon, I survived the Battle of the Walls, and I survived healing New Amsterdam, I guess the smart money is on me surviving whatever the hell else comes at me too, right? Of course, once in a while 'surviving' really makes me wonder whether the alternative would be more pleasant. But... I mean... where do Gods go when they die? Okay, I'm an Avatar of a Deity, technically, but from what Loki tells me that's not far off from being the real deal.

Like, if I can manage to express what I want done, she seems to do it. Like, I never told her to let Saffron tap directly into the Mimic Mana Fire Hose, but she sure as shit did, and I'm absolutely in favor of that. So it's not even like I'm expressing what I want done, it's just... she does what I would do if I didn't think about it? After our visit to Loki's yesterday, Saffron stepped us all home and Marie put Isnomi to sleep, then we all kinda bunked down in her room for the night on Marie's big floor bed.

It's cute watching her stretch out when she's asleep, both because she's just so much looser, less formal than when she's awake and doing her Maid thing, and because she definitely does some of the Cat Sleeping positions. She fell asleep first last night, and totally did round-loaf-cat followed by cat-croissant. I'd never tell her when she's awake, because something tells me it would embarrass the fuck out of her, but I can still watch and think she's cute.

That really does sound better in my head than it would saying it out loud, doesn't it?

'Oh, Marie, you smell so nice and look so cute when I watch you sleep'. Then again, given the levels of Uncanny Valley she's totally capable of, especially when she's gotten soaked somehow, I suspect she could totally outdo me on the creepy meter. So, talking about 'what I would do if I didn't think about it', Mimic dreamt of stargazing while trying to ignore the Stench from the South.

Really hoping we get back some scouting reports that, like, Norfolk's sewers are revolting, or that Calverton forgot to take the trash out before they abandoned their city. Of course, the moment I thought that I kinda realized that given the hundred thousand odd people living there pre-plague, and the ten thousand or so that made it to Lancaster, they might really have hit 'not enough left alive to bury the dead' levels of death toll. That managed to upset me enough to wake me up.

Or maybe I'd been about to wake up anyway and that just happened. I remember reading in my old dream journal that most of the dreams we remember take place in the last few seconds we sleep. But seeing the menace's still face in front of me after waking up with that revelation did not leave me copacetic. Before I could even think about it, I opened my mouth to say something. Then pain hit my jaw, and all that came out was a loud moan of pain. The bad kind. Moan and pain.

Isnomi's eyes popped open, and Marie tensed behind Saffron. Between the two of them, Saffron started her whole wake-up sequence, although her eyelids fluttered while her nose and mouth were still taste-testing the morning. Isnomi put a hand on my cheek and said, "mama?" Apparently even if I'm not in terrible shape before one of Loki's realignment sessions, I'm not gonna be in great shape the following day. Good to know.

Groaning and wincing, I pulled my hand around to hold up one finger, then worked my mouth until I felt like it would obey when I told it to talk.

"Bad dream, Menace. Need Mom." Of course she took that as a directive to rooch herself around to face Saffron, then start shaking her by the shoulders.

"Ma! Ma! Ma! Ub! Ub!" I'd only seen Saffron's emergency wake-up once or twice before, but just like then this time wound up just a little hilarious. She shot upright into a sitting position, one hand braced on my arm, which hurt a bit, and one hand braced on Marie's chest, which was apparently less than pleasant given the relative sizes there. Couldn't help it, the image of a woman putting her whole weight on a cat's tit and the cat doing the 'ow!' thing was just too much.

I started laughing, intermingled with groans. What's wrong, love? Pain-wise I think it's just the after-effects of Loki's soul massage thing. And you leaning on my arm. But I did need to talk to you when you're ready to apply more brainpower to something than I've got in total. She took a moment to take a deep breath, blink her eyes a little, and then she thought, okay, tell me. Thanks. Wanted to tell you before I forgot the whole dream-thing. You know how I talked about Mimic smelling something bad to the south?

At this point she smacked her lips a little and said, "yes, I remember." Yeah. Only ten thousand people from Calverton made it to Lancaster.

"Okay, then... oh." I forced my mouth to behave itself.

"Yeah. Oh." Groaning, I forced my recalcitrant limbs to obey and pushed myself upright as well. Marie scooped up Isnomi and started in on getting her dressed.

"Odds are most if not all of those corpses are still contagious. I don't think germs can mutate after the host dies, but they might have done that as well." Saffron, now fully awake, shook her head.

"I hadn't even thought of that, love. Thank you for reminding me. But we may have a larger problem." When I raised an eyebrow in lieu of painfully forcing my jaw to work, she asked, "what were the burial rituals like where you're from?" I shrugged again, unsuccessfully trying to hide the wince when I did so. As she moved around behind me and started working on my shoulders, I said, "depends on what religion you are, or if you're religious at all. Like, most people just get embalmed and buried. Y'know, in a casket.

I think some places they put a concrete shell around it, but that might just be places with low water tables or something. But some people get cremated, some people prefer being buried without being embalmed. I even read about a place that would put your corpse around the roots of a tree or some shit like that, so you'd have a tree as a headstone, I guess?" That last one made Saffron shudder enough for me to feel it through her hands.

"Do your people enjoy haunted forests? Because that sounds exactly like how you'd create a haunted forest." I shrugged, and it felt a lot less like my arms wanted to rip off.

"Yeah, a lot of people are into the occult and ghosts and shit." I snorted out something almost entirely unlike a laugh.

"Not like any of it's real. I sure as shit think my mom would have picked up the phone given all the ways I tried to get in touch with her, y'know?" I thought about it for a bit, then slowly turned my head around to meet Saffron's horrified gaze.

"Oh. Oh, shit." If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Yes, love. While not every restless soul rises as one of the undead, given ninety thousand people whose lives were cut short? I suspect there might be more than a few. Also..." She stuttered to a stop, then took a deep breath and continued.

"Death magic is also a thing. Both Spells to communicate with souls who have passed on, as well as darker ones to bind unhallowed souls to the caster's will."

"Lemme guess. Restless souls of Mages are particularly prone to doing that shit?" She nodded. She looked a little green. Like, not even just 'this subject is disturbing' green, but straight up 'just saw two girls one cup, gonna puke now' green.

"May we change the subject please?"

"Okay. You just need a minute, or are you gonna need a barf bag?" She shook her head.

"I still find how cavalier you are about some things disturbing now and again, love. I understand it may come from growing up elsewhere, but..." Isnomi interrupted.

"No." I forced my misbehaving arms to scoop up the now-dressed menace and nuzzle her.

"I really am from a different world, Menace." She shook her head.

"Na thad. Deff." When I just looked at her, she turned to Marie with a weird look on her face. Marie looked at her, turned to Saffron and I, sighed, and said, "Psychopomp." Saffron's hands went stiff on my shoulders. Not wanting to disturb her, I froze as well until she whispered, "Goof? Do you remember what I said about occasionally being terrified, as I am deeply in love with an incarnation of Primordial terror?"

"Yeah?" Her hands slipped down from my shoulders and her arms went around me.

"This is one of those times. Oh, my Goddess, this is very much one of those times." I waited, but nobody said anything; Marie started laying out our uniforms for the day, Isnomi just enjoyed the snuggle cuddling, and Saffron lay against my back trying to hide straight up sobs of fear.

"Okay, Kitten, I wanna help, wanna make you feel less afraid, but I gotta know what I'm dealing with here." She took a deep breath, then let it out, clinging to me the whole while. She wasn't shivering any more, but I could tell she did not want to let go of me, even enough to shift around so I could hold her.

"What do you know of psychopomps?"

"Uh, not much? I remember something about them taking souls of the dead to the afterlife, right?" She nodded, her forehead rubbing against the back of my skull.

"That's correct. However, they also inherently inspire fear in mortals. I've just come to realize that it may not be a supernatural thing, but a psychological one."

"How so?" At this point, the longer she talked, the more she seemed to calm down, so I just wanted to keep her talking.

"Psychopomps are typically only seen by the souls they are sent to collect."

"Okay, so why's that make them scary?"

"Other than the fact that they can manipulate souls? To the extent that they can rip them from a living person, as much as a perversion of their powers as that might be?" I shrugged.

"Sister Siobhan said I did something like that with Bill, right?" She froze again, then kinda melted across my back, clinging to me.

"Yes, love. You are, in fact, a psychopomp."

"Wait, I'm a what now? Why? How? When did this happen?" She giggled a little, but it sounded way less hysterical than I'd feared.

"Still my Goof, psychopomp or no. There is one key feature shared by all psychopomps, even those few who cannot manipulate souls."

"That is?"

"They all must be able to enter and leave the afterlife. Not just Metaphoric Space, but the realms specifically devoted to the dead." I shrugged again, this time as much to keep my shoulders from freezing up as anything. The fact that it jiggled the Saffron pressed to my back had nothing to do with it.

"Okay, so why am I one of those?"

"Not just you."

"Well, yeah. I mean, the Valkyrie, obviously. Thanatos. Uh... Morrigan? Maybe?"

"I meant in this room. It is deeply unsettling to be the only mortal in a room with not just one, but three psychopomps."

"Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Kitten?" She actually laughed a little at that. I think I must do a kind of 'quoting voice', because she always giggled when I quoted shit from funny shows. Probably at the voice more than the humor.

"There are two qualifications to becoming a psychopomp. First, one must be somewhere on that vast sliding scale of 'Deity'. I blinked, then looked at Marie.

"You're a Deity?" She just shrugged.

"I didn't realize until just now myself, love. But the Maenads are true Immortals in every sense, which would place them as, at the very least, Demigods like the Valkyrie." I looked closer at Marie; she seemed a little shy about the subject, so I waved her over, then pulled her down into a hug.

"You're you, Marie. That's all I care about. You're you, no matter what job the big D gives you." She purred a little at that. Saffron continued, "and we already knew about you and Isnomi, as unsettling at that may be. The other requirement? Is that said Deity must die and be reborn."

"Wait, then..." I looked at Marie again.

"Sparagmos?" She just nodded, so I looked at the Menace.

"Fall Equinox?" She looked over my shoulder at her mom, who said, "yes."

"Okay, then what about me?" Then, despite the pain in moving my arms, I facepalmed.

"Fuck. I can't believe I just asked that." That broke some kind of dam in Saffron, and laughter poured out.

"Oh. Oh, my Goddess. Oh, my sweet loving Goddess, thank you. I needed that." When she caught her breath, she stood, then helped me get on my feet.

"That's not all, though, love."

"Okay, what else?" Here she paused, and a moment later stood in front of me in Glowing Midnight.

"When I pledged myself to you, I pledged myself to Mimic Reborn. Because," she took a deep breath, "from what you told me of your dreams? Mimic died in that box on the bottom of the river." I stood there processing that while the three of them dressed me in my school uniform. I mean, it shouldn't really be a big thing, right? I'd already gotten over the fact that I'd died and been Isekai'd. Mostly. So the idea that the Primordial Goddess whose Avatar I was died too and got, I dunno, reborn? Resurrected?

Revived, maybe? Shouldn't be that big of a deal, right? When I stood there fully clothed, I said, "can you step us down to breakfast, then up to class, Kitten? I'm a little gobsmacked by that." She nodded, and the next moment we stood in the Dining Hall. I meandered to my seat and devoured everything anybody put in front of me, kinda on automatic. By the end of breakfast, my brain had chased itself around in circles enough that somehow the idea had lost whatever threatening flavor it had started with.

I polished off the leftovers, and when Marie carted last of the trays with Isnomi in her wake, I stood and put my arms around Saffron.

"Feeling any better, love?"

"Yeah, kinda, Kitten. Sorry about that. Just... I don't know why, but somehow my gut says that ought to be important? But no matter how I look at it, it doesn't change a fuckin' thing in terms of how I deal with it, y'know?" She nodded.

"I understand. Are you ready for class?" I snorted.

"C'mon. When am I ever ready for class." She smiled up at me, hopped up to plant a kiss on my lips, and by the time her feet hit the ground we stood in our Strategy and Logistics classroom. The rest of the class were mostly in their seats already, and the Marshall took one look at the pair of us standing next to our seats and said, "Imperator." When he said that, the rest of the class scrambled to their feet. Huh? The dress, love. Oh.

"Yes, Marshall. There is planning to be done, and with you being the head of well over twenty percent of the Alliance's active military, and there being sixteen Cadets in the room who could only benefit from taking part in the planning, I thought it best to, as Imperator, give you the directive to plan out our next campaign."

"One question first?" She nodded.

"Of course, Marshall."

"When exactly did you decide we needed to mount a campaign, and why?" She nodded again, managing to look regal despite being the tiniest person in the room.

"During breakfast, because I was informed just before breakfast that there is strong evidence that whatever measures the refugees from Calverton took regarding their dead? Were not enough." The whole room went tense at that. The Marshall worked his jaw like he wanted to spit, then swallowed and growled out, "Mimic told you that the dead of Calverton have risen as undead?"

"Just so, Marshall." He took a deep breath, then barked out, "yes, Ma'am, Imperator Ma'am." Then he looked around the class, meeting everyone's eye. As he did, Glowing Midnight disappeared, replaced by Saffron's uniform.

"Okay, ladies and gentlemen, looks like it's time for some on-the-job training." Y'know, that phrase always scared me a little when people used it when referring to food service. Hearing it applied to military actions? Not reassuring at all.