Chương 436: Day Four Hundred And Thirty-Four

Dear Diary,"I am not handsome or sexy. Of course, it's not like I am hopeless." - Keanu Reeves Sir. Oh, sir. Sir, I must protest this vile calumny. This crime against goddess and vajayjay that you have spoken. This base slander of a man who has been the inspiration for the self-actualization and nocturnal self-exploration alike for generations of women.

If I must state it plainer, which I really should, since we're both self-admitted dumbasses, if you were any sexier I would have died of dehydration in my room and the coroner would not have been able to get the smile off of my face. If you were any handsomer, I would have been saving money for the plastic surgery I'd demand my future husband have in order to make him look like you. Fuck, if I were able to step back to the world of my birth, I would woo you in a womanly fashion, because you're pretty.

I mean, seriously, sir, were you here and now, I would not be speaking. I would in fact be sorely pressed to maintain my own moral standards long enough to ask permission. There would probably be shrieking squees and squeezing and running off to parts unknown with you clutched above my head. I would insist my wife place a room in our new house with the most comfortable chair known to man or god, exclusively for you to sit on while we stared at you drooling and incapable of speech in your magnificent presence.

Because I would absolutely share the work of art that you are with my lovely wife, because she too is a woman of culture. Yeah, Keanu may be my personal Hilde, in case you hadn't guessed. Weird fuckin' day today though. Last night was restful. Apparently Sister Siobhan decided she wanted to sleep over with us, and I woke up with her and Saffron snuggled under my arms, their fingers interlaced atop my belly.

I dunno if the Sister is gonna wind up joining with the three of us as, y'know, a fourth, or if she'll be more like a prettier, more petite version of Lachlan and Carruthers' 'friends with benefits' situation, or... fuck, I dunno, maybe she'll slot into the Concubine role once we marry the fuck out of Marie.

I really tworked my own brain with that thought, what with my general opinion about having a Concubine in the first place being 'oh, fuck that noise', what with Concubine and Consent not normally being things that coexist. But I haven't unilaterally ravished Marie without her explicit consent, so I guess maybe it'd be more like a backstage pass, or one of those special badges convention staffers get, that let people know not to be too much of an ass, because they Know Somebody.

Of course, I couldn't be all that upset about anything, because as noted, Saffron and Sister Siobhan being the bread for a holy shit I was a thus far platonic Tabitha sandwich. I think I started purring just realizing that. Of course, it might have been just having the two of them snuggled in. Sadly, even though I didn't move, the purring got loud enough that Saffron started her nuzzling wake up and Sister Siobhan blinked and looked up at me.

"Good Morning, Hero."

"Good Morning. Still not gonna say my name, huh Sister?" She smiled up at me. No, she grinned up at me. My wife was definitely a influence on the Sister. Not bad. But... definitely naughty.

"You know how to correct that, and I am ready and willing whenever you are, my Hero."

"Not your Hero specifically," I leaned in to whisper, "yet," into her hair, only to have her giggle into my side. Right about then I felt Saffron squeeze Sister Siobhan's hand, and something about it just left me all warm and fuzzy and gooey.

"Good Morning, Ladies. Tabitha, I think you've some errands to run today, so lets be about it." Nothing super interesting to report about bath time, although Sister Siobhan hung around for long enough to get her bath on. I think Saffron deliberately took her time with the Sister, like making sure I got a good view of everything. Shit, for all I know they're... no, fuck, they actually straight up told me they're conniving. Oh, no, first world problems!

Whatever, the view was nice, almost as nice as the giggles when I got to dry her off, and the squeak when I gave her a shove on the butt to send her over to Marie to get her habit and robes on. Sans underwear, which really filled me with mixed emotions. On the one hand, she'd made it clear going commando had started with me telling her to minimize her undergarment situation, which made me feel kinda fluttery in the belly.

A woman doing that shit not because she wanted to give the girls and the pubes some fresh air, but because she wanted to be ready to get her freak on specifically with me was super flattering. On the other hand, I'd made an offhand flirtatious comment and she'd changed her whole intimates wardrobe. That's... Not sure I want that kind of power. But I've got it, so I just gotta make sure I use it properly. Again, oh, noes, first world problems!

In class today I took everybody who'd been studying Smite on personalized field trips. Specifically I stepped them down to Calverton, pulled the Soul out of one of the Undead waiting to be restored, let them Smite them, then Revived the poor bastard formerly known as Undead before dropping them off on the Black Dragon.

One Cohort of Trolls had been assigned back to the battleship to watch over the restored Calvertonites, quite a few of whom had volunteered to do basic, safe work like scrubbing decks and washing clothes. Nobody quite trusted them enough to let them handle food yet. Baby steps. The final Undead of the day I brought Doc Glass down, and when it came time to do the Revive, I said, "would you mind taking care of the Revive?"

"I... how?" I Shaped a basic Mana Network, holding my hand out to him, and he nodded and took my hand. Then took my Mana to Revive the poor bastard in front of us. Weird, when I Revive somebody they do the whole 'holy shit I've just gotten an electrified ice cold caffeine enema' leap to their feet spread eagled convulsion. When he did it, the guy just kind of shuddered, blinked, and sat up.

"Welcome back to the land of the living."

"Thank you." The guy, who wore the tatters of a leather apron and not much more, sat up and hugged Doc Glass. I gently pried him off, stepped us over to the Black Dragon to drop him off, then hopped us back to class. One quick Assess later, and I had everybody do round robin Cures, because apparently 'no longer Undead' did not mean 'fully cured of every variety of nasty bug that had been growing in their bodies since last winter'.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. The me on the mast of the Black Dragon, who'd been letting Marie handle watch while I hopped around the deck and down to chat with the restored Calverton folks, had them all gather on the after deck, then stood on the leather barrel cap that had replaced the cement plug and did a Mass Cure Disease to clean them all up.

One or two of them rushed to the rail to start feeding the fish, but most of them looked a lot better afterward. At that point Marie spotted Skasn lifting some cargo onto the foredeck, and I called out, "okay, everybody, looks like something I had the smiths ashore working on has finally made it over here. Follow me!" I hopped down and led them to where Skasn had set a bunch of big crates on the deck. I popped the top off of the first one, then waved Orla over.

I nodded toward the interior of the crate, and she looked inside.

"Champion... is that what I think it is?"

"Go on, take one. Afraid they're 'one size fits most', so they might not be comfy, but..." She lifted the first helmet out. It looked the tiniest bit like a simplified Spartan helmet, but simplified to the point where it could have been from any of the Greek cities. None of those had been my inspiration when I described it to Johann, though. Magnus would just have to deal with me biting off his anti-mind-control helmet styling.

"This is Cold Iron."

"It is. From what the Archmage and I can tell, it should interfere with any Liches trying to take advantage of the fact that you guys used to be their puppets." One of the guys, by the mess on the front of his shirt definitely one of the ones who'd been good and sick, staggered forward, pushing his way up to us and dropping to his knees.

"Champion... please. Please, forgive me. I..." I looked down at him.

"Master sent you?" He nodded, his eyes on the deck.

"Regretting your unlife choices?" He nodded again, weeping. I rolled my eyes, shook my head, and slapped a helmet on his head. Then rapped it with my knuckles, which dropped him to his hands and knees.

"You know I gotta keep you in the brig now, right?"

"I... understand." I reached down and lifted him by his chin until he stood more or less upright in front of me.

"Not planning on executing you, doofus. You guys all got a shitty deal, and from what Orla tells me, the Master pretty much decided early on that he liked the Lich life more than his old one. But you're the most recent person we have with insight into what he's up to. So you're going in the cage for our generals to squeeze for information." He looked up, a look I'd seen so many times back in Camden, someone wanting to Hope but not daring to, because Hope was always a lie.

"Truly?" I slipped my thumbs under The Dress' straps, ran them down the inside of the straps as I cracked my neck, and said, "look, you're probably gonna feel like a badly used sponge by the time they're done with you, but yeah. I'll be checking around to make sure you weren't responsible for any of that skeevy dumping babies in a hole shit, but yeah, you do right by us from now on, you get a second chance. A real one." I nodded to two of my Trolls, who escorted him off to the brig.

I'm nice and forgiving, not stupid as fuck. I nodded to Orla.

"Get the rest of those distributed to folks who are ready and willing to do some heavy labor, because we've got some heavy labor to do, okay?"

"Yes, Ma'am!" She snapped off a salute, then got to work. Menace had the kids playing Hide and Seek all throughout the House. I ruled that since Liam was still allowed in the Ladies' Quarters on account of being, y'know, prepubescent, the Ladies' Quarters were in fact legal hiding spots. I also ruled that the livestock pens were not, in fact, legal hiding places, because some of the kids were small enough that a fuckin' sheep might be able to hurt them, let alone a full grown cow or hog.

The pens are getting roped off so nobody can 'accidentally' wander in. Menace's suggestion, that. None of the human adjacent kids went missing at the end of the day, but one of the small goat kids was. I'm not saying Menace ate a goat, but I'm not saying she didn't eat a goat, either. Hell, maybe she's got it hidden away somewhere for some new deviltry. I know I did weirder shit as a kid. None of that was the weird part. That came with a knock on the Academy Suite door just before dinner.

Maze had finished Amazing Maurice about an hour before lunch and started in on Hogfather. Yeah, it's some deep shit, but I thought she could handle it. She reminds me a little of Susan, really. The knock interrupted her reading. She looked up at me, and in the other room I hooked my chin over Saffron's shoulder and said, "were you expecting someone?"

"No?" With that I stepped Maze to the office, sat her on Menace's dust-gathering toddler bed, and stepped back to our front door. I straightened my uniform enough that I didn't look like a total slacker, then opened the door.

"Good Afternoon, Champion Diaz."

"Good Afternoon, Cadet Smith." I nodded politely. My side still twinged involuntarily sometimes when I saw her. No actual long term damage, but when somebody goes ham on your kidneys with a dildo with delusions of swordhood, that leaves a mark.

"It's Senior Cadet now." Then she shook her head, saying without words that her correction had been more of a knee jerk thing than any kind of disrespect. Fuck it, not like she hadn't worked for it. She took a deep breath, nodded as if trying to psych herself up, then said, "it has become common knowledge that you, Tabitha Diaz, Phileo Hero-in-Waiting, Highest Priestess of Loki, Champion of Loki and Champion of the Alliance, have at some point Ascended to Divinity."

I chuckled, leaning up against the doorframe, a stark contrast to her own ramrod straight posture.

"Yeah, rumors get things wrong sometimes." She shook her head, another sharp jerk she seemed almost unware of making.

"Not in this case. I've amassed an incontrovertible body of evidence pointing to that conclusion. I have no doubt that you are a Demigoddess, and no sane, rational person reviewing the evidence would come to any other conclusion." I didn't tense up at that, but I got real still.

"That could maybe be taken as a threat to blackmail me or something. Bold choice, coming here alone to do that." The moment I said the word 'blackmail', I knew that hadn't been her intent. Either that, or she was a way better actress than I took her for, because the sheer horror that swept over her face eclipsed even her normal nearly Lancaster like rectal clenching.

"I... I... Never, Champion! I am a loyal daughter of Phileo, and a loyal Citizen of the Alliance! I..." Her voice got real quiet.

"I would... I could never consider betraying the Patron Demigoddess of the Alliance." I opened my mouth to say something, I'm not sure what, when she dropped to one knee in front of me, head bowed.

"I, Senior Cadet Karen Smith, declare you, Tabitha Diaz, Patron Demigoddess of the Alliance, my personal Patron. And I... I..." she stuttered to a stop. I lay a hand atop her head, because it seemed like the thing to do.

"Go on, Karen. I don't have a lot of people who I know have declared me their Patron, but I try to do right by them. What did you need?" She looked up at me through the hair I'd knocked loose when I carelessly patted her head. Her eyes glistened, although I'm not sure whether she was sad, mad, or glad, and she whispered, "please, Champion... Demigoddess... allow me the honor of being your Priestess."