Chương 460: Day Four Hundred And Fifty-Eight

Dear Diary,"Equity also judges, Based on the circumstances, The actions were taken in." Doctrine of Tabitha, Book of Egalitarianism Yeah, I definitely wanted to go back and forth between equality and judgement, but it feels like I'm leaning heavy on the judging and not so much on the equality.

Which makes no damn sense, since when I read through what I've got so far, I only mention judgement like, twice, and I've talked about the various implications of everybody being equal by default like half a dozen times already. Objectively, I need to make sure I mention it's about judging fairly. But subjectively I just feel like I need to really get across that I'm not really talking about equality of outcomes. I mean, yeah, there's some things that everybody ought to just have. Food. Shelter. Medical care.

Opportunity. Because without all those things, Agency is a joke. If somebody hasn't eaten in days, saying 'scrub my toilet and I'll give you food' isn't Agency.

'Do this or you die' as an imposed choice isn't Agency. Yeah, I get it, sometimes circumstances screw with shit.

'Come with me if you want to live', or 'there's a famine on, everybody's gotta pitch in or we all die'. But there's a big fuckin difference between, 'lie to me and call me pretty or no vagina entry for you' and 'give me your rent money or no insulin for you'. Damn, do I have to put something in here about not doing an extortion?

Is that clear enough from the shit I wrote about Agency, or do I gotta spell it out, that the appropriate judgement for forcing someone to obey or die for profit and amusement will eventually wind up with me trying to thread a tentacle all the way through somebody, then seeing how far I can ram a Cat-Five tentacle up their ass until there's nothing left of them but a greasy stain.

Speaking of judgement and shit I've done while pissed off beyond the bounds of sanity, I'm still feeling all weirded out by the fact that Past Tabitha seems way more emotionally impacted by me teaching Maze a bit of self confidence and reading fluency than me killing ten thousand people in sixty seconds or less with my bare hands. Right around dinner time, Oscar knocked on our suite door and handed something over to Marie.

She brought it back to the bed, and past me realized what was in her hands before she managed to slip it on me.

"Wait, please," she whispered. Marie just stopped and cocked an eyebrow. She nodded to Maze, who hadn't wrapped up for the day. We sat there like that, Marie patiently waiting, past me listening to Maze read, until our little horse girl closed the book and announced, "we should finish up Thorsday." Past me waited until everybody started getting up to head to dinner, then pulled Maze into a hug.

"That was awesome, Maze. I'm so proud of you." Maze just smirked and said, "thank you, papa." Past me snorted out a little laugh, then turned to Marie.

"Okay." Marie gently slipped a much finer, nicer tiara onto my... I looked down at Maze and smiled.

"You know, when I'm under the curse I don't think I have any idea why you call me 'papa', right?" She just smirked again and said, "I know." I did my part during bedtime, and for the first time in I don't know how long settled in to sleep surrounded by not just my family, but all the folks I'd gotten used to having myself surrounded by. The Maenads, the refugees, Menace's posse, all of them.

Even in a room where everyone is asleep, even when nobody's sick, snoring, or otherwise not sleeping quietly, there's still that quiet susurration of dozens of people just breathing. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed that. Took me a while to fall asleep, and I really don't think it had anything to do with me just lying there all day. Woke up in the morning kinda early, too.

Just sat there listening to a few people snoring quietly, the rest of them just breathing that slightly less even way people do when they're closing on getting up, whether that's because they subconsciously know there's an alarm coming, or they can tell other people are awake, or they've got to take a piss. Watched as Siobhan blinked and popped up faster than anybody else. Then Menace, followed by the rest of our kids, who spread out waking up their friends and the moms and other women in the room.

Funny how they just nodded to the Maenads in greeting, assuming they were awake. I mean, they were, but just struck me as odd how they knew, and knew how much Maenads relied on body language instead of vocalization. I'd never thought about it before, but it just made sense that the further from Human a Human adjacent somebody was, the harder time they'd have with shit like talking. The Trolls talked even less than the Maenads, although the Maenads had the advantage of being built to interact with other humans.

I mean, you don't need to talk much at a Revel, but at least a little bit of talking can really smooth things along. Before Saffron finished stretching, Maze and Menace returned to tug us both upright and tow us into the bathroom. I slipped into my role toweling folks dry almost like I'd never been gone. Everybody had something nice to say when I dried them off. Okay, almost everybody. Devorah didn't so much say something nice as slip right up against me and whisper, "so it's after, right?"

I caught her around the waist and lifted her away from me, setting her on her feet an arm's length away.

"Nice try." She shrugged, laughed, and let me towel her dry without any further shenanigans. She didn't deserve to get yelled at just because I had a bit of a headache. Kinda felt warm, too. Wondered if I was coming down with something, or if I'd spent so long away from the warm, humid environment of the bathroom that I wasn't used to it any more. It wasn't until I started walking over to join Saffron in the bath that I realized what was happening. Okay, I didn't realize. Marie did.

One second I was walking toward Saffron, wondering what we'd been using to heat the kettles. Smelled acrid, and I knew I'd smelled that smell before, but couldn't remember where. Saffron looked up to me, her welcoming smile dissolving into horror, but before she could shout anything, Marie tackled me and dunked me headfirst into the water. I tried to right myself, only to have Saffron scrabble at my head as something hissed. Then Marie raked her hands through my...

I tried to blink water out of my eyes, tried to right myself, but strong hands held me under the water. I flailed, unable to get leverage or traction. Then whoever held me under the water slipped her fingers under my armpits with their long fingers, and lifted. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"What the fuck, Marie?" I inhaled, coughed, gagged, and said, "and why the fuck does it smell like burnt hair in here?"

"Siobhan, heals for myself and Tabitha, please?" The smaller blonde did that hand waving first to Saffron, whose fingers lost the lobster red lines that the tiara at the bottom of the tub had seared across them. Before Siobhan even got to me, I figured out what happened and put my arms around Marie, who knelt next to me with her arms around my waist, clutching at me. Something that felt like mint tastes rolled over me, and the lines of fire around my head cooled.

"Shit. Thanks, Marie." I turned to look at Saffron.

"What the fuck happened?"

"I'm not certain," said Saffron, picking the tiara out of the water.

"But I think in an effort to make your curse dampening headgear less onerous, we discovered a limitation of Cold Iron. Or the power of the curse." I shook my head, "uh, explain it to me like I know jack shit about Mana?" She held up one finger, then waved me toward the tub. I stepped in, and she settled me down in front of her, my back resting against that magnificent rack of hers. Kinda wanted answers more than distraction, but fuck it, distraction works in a pinch.

Then she poured some warm water over my head and started scrubbing.

"I'm speculating, but to simplify it, Cold Iron, which is what the helmet and both tiaras were made of, disrupts Mana and Shapes made out of it. Until you, it was assumed that Cold Iron was completely sovereign against Mana."

"Until me?" She chuckled.

"Yes, Goof, until you. Mana is energy. Cold Iron disrupts it, but apparently does so by absorbing some of it." I dunno if it was the head massage or what, but my brain kicked into gear.

"Oh, shit. Energy, like heat?" I felt her shift as she nodded.

"Exactly. The first time I saw that in action was the duel of your Champion Laurence Lancaster against Ares' High Priest Garland. Larry's weapon is a Mana Blade, a sword of pure Mana. Garland's armor, shield, and weapon were made entirely of Cold Iron. Larry apparently realized that areas he'd struck multiple times heated up, and proceeded to eliminate Garland's shield by striking it along the same line until it melted."

"Cool story. So what, my tiara melted?" She snorted, then shuddered, the motion rippling the water and vibrating every bit of her against me.

"No. No, it did not melt. But it did get hot enough to light your hair on fire. I'm stunned... no, wait, I've..." She petered off.

"What?" She took a deep breath.

"Your life here has not been entirely pleasant." I glanced at my arm, ran a finger across a scar at random, and said, "no, really?" She chuckled.

"Trust you to take that in particular so calmly. At any rate, you have experienced the pain of injuries to your Soul before."

"Yeah.

'Conrad' and his fuckin' machine."

"No, love. Before that. Every time you die, your Soul is damaged a little more. And before that, when Bill died, you gave Siobhan a portion of your Soul to revive him. Your arm burned with that pain for... for months." I wasn't quite sure where to start.

"Bill? Who the fuck is Bill? Wait, wait, wait, did you say, 'every time I die'? How many fuckin' times have I died?"

"Tabitha?" Siobhan asked. I looked at her, and a moment after I met her gaze, there were two of her, standing about shoulder width apart. I blinked, trying to clear my eyes, but she said, "you're not hallucinating. This is a Boon granted by our Goddess, to be in two places at once when the need arises." A moment later, one of her disappeared.

"Although having both in the same place is a touch disorienting. Maybe painful?"

"It can be so," continued Saffron.

"But our Goddess, from whom this Boon comes, is orders of magnitude more powerful than we are." The free floating clue finally landed on my poor abused scalp and bored its way in.

"Wait, aren't I your Goddess?"

"Yes." said Marie.

"Oh."

"Oh, indeed. That's how you won the Battle of the Walls. You've used that ability in almost every major battle you've fought. It's not uncommon for some of you to die when you do."

"Oh. Oh, fuck. How... what... So if one of me dies, the rest of me...?" She shrugged.

"None of us have ever died." Marie cleared her throat, and Saffron clarified, "none of us but you and Marie have died, and I suspect that Marie's Maenad nature makes her deaths less.. traumatic than yours."

"Yes." Saffron lay one soapy hand on Marie's arm.

"I do not value your sacrifice any less, lovely Maenad." Then she turned back to me.

"But you've told me, Lord Loki has confirmed, every time one of you dies, it damages your Soul." She took another deep breath.

"It appears that sufficient Worship allows you to heal that damage, and with Lord Loki's assistance, when he realigns your Soul as he did the other day, I believe that your Soul heals without the kind of scarring your body has accrued."

"Where the fuck do the scars come from?"

"Wounds." said Marie. Saffron nodded agreement.

"Not every wound is mortal, love. If a wound does not kill you, and you collapse that duplicate back into the rest of you, the wound is... distributed among the rest of you as pain. And a scar. A wound of the body, though, and not the Soul. At least as far as we have been able to tell." I sat there silently as she scrubbed me. Stood when she told me to stand, turned when she told me to turn. By the time Marie upended a kettle of steaming water over my head to rinse me off, I'd digested enough to say, "I...

think I'm gonna need some time to process that. The wounds. The dying thing." Saffron put her arms around my waist and pulled me into a hug, burying the side of her head in my belly.

"Take all the time you need, love. The Alliance is at peace. Your strength could be useful on half a dozen different construction and recovery projects, but unlike when we go to war, it's not critical. There are others who are strong." I snorted, still trying to get past the very obvious denial roiling in me at the idea that some of me had... died.

"So if there are others who are strong, what's my thing? Why would you need me when..." I paused, and she nodded.

"I'm the shit kicker. The one who fucks shit up." I laughed, no humor in the sound.

"The one who's good with her hands."

"So good," purred Saffron.

"So very good," whispered Siobhan, who'd climbed into the tub behind me and snuggled her head into my lower back.

"Yes." agreed Marie.

"Yeah, not what I meant and you know it." They pulled away from me, and Marie lifted me out of the tub and started toweling me while the two of them set to washing each other.

"No," said Saffron, "but we all know the best way to distract you from your black moods, and are absolutely willing to do so whenever you need it, love." I blinked away some water from my eyes.

"Thanks, guys. But... right now I really do think I need to think about things."

"As I said, take as long as you need. I'd advise against leaving the suite; few outside it know of your Isekai nature, and only a very few more know of your curse."

"Uh, how big is the suite?" She chuckled.

"Four rooms. This bathroom, the bedroom," she pointed toward the room we'd slept in, that Maze had read in, "an office," she pointed toward a door on the wall adjacent to the bedroom wall.

"And the living room," she pointed to the last corner of what must be a square shaped suite.

"Since it's Wotansday, Maze is playing with Isnomi rather than reading to the group, so you've the whole suite to yourself until evening."

"Oh. Okay, thanks." I paused, stepping toward the bedroom door, until I realized that I didn't have to just walk away.

"Is there any way one of you could stay with me?"

"One, or all?" I smiled at Siobhan.

"I didn't want to be greedy." Marie stepped to me, leaned over and took my face in her hands, and kissed me.

"Be."

"Okay. Preference noted, advice taken. So... uh, I don't really want to get busy or anything, but could you," I paused, the words seeming so weird yet somehow so right, so comforting.

"You three keep me company today?" Saffron frowned.

"We've all duties to attend to today," she shook her head and smiled at my frown.

"But as our dear Ice Pop has just pointed out, we can all be in more than one place at a time. Although none of us but Marie can focus on more than one thing at a time, so we might be a little quiet for most of the day." I smiled, thinking about times I'd spent just vibing with friends, each of us scrolling on our phones, or playing stupid mobile games, or just reading.

"Y'know, that sounds like exactly what I need."