Chương 599: Day Five Hundred And Ninety-Seven

Dear Diary, I'm not sure why, but my stress level is rising. Tension spiking. Not sure if I'm headed for a manic spree or a depressive spiral crash, but something's gotta give soon. Okay, there are plenty of reasons why. Leonard Lancaster being my remaining go-to for dealing with my academic problem children. My mentor, Marshall duBois, on an extended diplomatic mission that I'm constantly worried is gonna suddenly turn into 'please come revive the Marshall and kill some bitches, poste haste'. Ria's missing sister.

The source of the Dire Bears. The super secret extra bullshit crisis Murphy has hiding to jump out and shove a sharpened stainless steel pine cone up my ass. Lenny's not that bad, I suppose. I've thought that through before. Mostly it's the vague sense of embarrassment I've got from having to go to him, hat in hand, saying 'please, sir, may I have some advice'. That just rankles, and the worst case scenario isn't the one where he laughs in my face. The worst case scenario is the one where he just...

helps me, politely, because he sees me as some kind of subordinate in need of help, or peer worthy of helping, or superior who can command him and deserves his obedience. Because not only do all of those mean he's now clearly accepted me as part of the extant power structure, they also mean I've been stressing over this for more or less nothing. The shit about the Marshall... Honestly, I ought to ask Saffron.

She's got to have some way to communicate with him, even if it's not the kind of instant mind-to-mind communication she and I have. Maybe she set up a Direct Message or Private Message Shape before he left? I'm not sure if I could set one up at this point, not without throwing so much power into it that Saint Boltophsburg would see it as an incoming attack just from the raw Mana expenditure alone. But even if all she can tell me is 'no news', that's still something.

Because I could follow on with 'should I be worried', and if she tells me 'no'; that means I'm spinning up disaster scenarios in my head for no good god damned reason. Adrienne Crow isn't a diplomatic crisis waiting to happen. I mean, she might be.

She's the Overlord's daughter, and Tallulah Crow is not only the Overlord, not only putting together our Naval Academy, not just one of my small but colorful collection of High Priestesses, she's also the co-parent of my little Sidhe girl, who has very pointedly asked me to find her sister for her. I mean, I think Tallulah asked us to find Adrienne as well, but if I disappointed an allied Head of State I'd just chalk it up to being a use-impaired dumbass. But disappointing my daughter... that just will not stand.

So... potential personal crisis, that one. At least I've got the support of the Phileo government when it comes to dealing with my Dire Bear problem. Six Senior Cadets might not seem like a whole lot when I'm the Walking Ragnarok, but once I'm outside reach of my tentacles, I've got a lot less kaiju killing power. I mean, the Homestead is clearly Tentacle Central. Shit comes at us there, I absolutely will treat it just like I did the most recent Dire Bear.

If it's any more dangerous than that one, I'm not even going to wait for the Cadets to get their training in, I will just end whatever the fuck is coming at us. But while I'm out of reach and hunting, unless I can get whatever it is to follow me into M-Space, where distances are as weird and fucked up as time, I might not be able to reach with the big tentacles. The little ones are still handy, but not all that much more than Co-Location and Translocation.

So having six ass kickers with me who are just waiting for a Hero slot to open up is... comforting, in a way. Yeah, I'm responsible for them, but they're not wilting violets or fresh faced Cadets in need of constant babysitting. That just leaves Murphy lurking with the pineapple.

So yesterday, between me flattening the beginning of our pathway, no new snow since our last trip out meaning we could run along the path we'd forged before, and the hunters not slowing us down, we managed to hit the furthest we'd gone by around mid afternoon. No offense to the hunters, they're definitely professional badasses their own selves, but Marshall duBois stresses getting in positively inhuman shape in terms of Endurance.

I think most of the Senior Cadets had to be past where I started when I arrived, and I of course can pretty much run forever at this point. Lack of sleep might get me, but running fatigue won't. At any rate we kept going until sunset. As the sun touched the horizon, I looked at the Cadets and said, "set up camp. I'm gonna try something a little stupid, just to get my bearings. I'll be right back." I stepped to M-Space, then rose into the sky, holding the sun in place.

I hadn't done that for a while, but then I wasn't tryna turn back time or even really extend the day for any stupidly long duration. Just long enough to get a good look at the terrain under me. After rising at an accelerating rate for less than a minute, I leveled off. A big shoreline to the northeast had to be Lake Erie. The West Tower glinted in the light of the setting sun, the me made structure sticking out as a straight line in a world of curves and natural forms.

Kinda weird, a lot of shit didn't show in M-Space, and it usually had to do with how 'permanent' something was in the minds of people who lived near it. The West Tower stood out. Stark. Imposing. As I'd said before, my Kitten's giant middle finger to the monsters of the world. God I love that woman. She loves you as well, Daughter. Yeah. I know. Thanks for reminding me, Dad. You're the best. I know. We'd come about two thirds of the way from the Homestead to the coast of Lake Erie.

The bear's arrow-straight path from it's bivouac to the West Tower hadn't continued for longer than one Dire Bear-day of travel. After that it meandered a little. Not a lot. Not as much as you'd think a kaiju bear looking for food would have wandered. But from what we'd seen in the Mortal Realm, it meandered a little. I couldn't see shit of its path from here in M-Space.

Just to check, I stepped back to the Mortal Realm, and could only pick out the West Tower because I knew exactly where to look, and I think even then I was either fooling myself or subconsciously doing some Deific or Mana bullshittery to see it. Of course, plummeting distracted me a little until I stepped back to M-Space, lowered myself gently to the ground, and stepped back, letting go of the sun as I did. Stolen novel; please report.

"Anything we should know about, Ma'am?" I glanced over at Ryan, who'd found a reasonable hide in a nearby tree.

"Nothing special. The West Tower's visible from here on the other side. Can't help but think that matters somehow. Dunno if that's drawing the Dire Bears, or if it's pissing off somebody who's sending them."

"Are you going to camouflage it somehow?" I shook my head.

"Nope. Imperator's dead set against it, and I kinda see her point. Something big and ugly wants to come and hurt humans, better it comes against humans dug in and hiding in a fortress with Heroes and Senior Cadets and a Demigoddess of Bloodlust in residence than some random farmer whose best defensive item is a pitchfork."

"Most farmers have at least a few serviceable axes." I chuckled at her.

"You know what I mean, Ryan." She nodded.

"I do, Ma'am. Just... surprised?" I tilted my head, and she said, "nobody ever questioned the Lancaster's bravery, or commitment to Phileo's Heroic Ideals. But Lancaster House is in the middle of Lancaster. Not right out on the sharp end."

"Yeah, well. Maybe in a hundred years the Homestead will be the middle of Alliance territory. You never know." She thought about that for a bit, then said, "I see your point, Ma'am. But still, it's kinda inspiring, in a way. Knowing she could be sitting pretty outside of Newark, but instead chooses to bed down right out on the front lines." I nodded.

"Yeah. Well. Both of us are kinda like that. So's Marie, for that matter." Ryan grinned.

"What about Sister Darling?" I shook my head.

"Sister Siobhan, or Archmage Darling." Her eyes popped a little.

"Really?"

"You catch the second round of improvements to Assess Health a little while back?"

"That was her?" I shrugged.

"Saffron did a lot of the nitty gritty of the design, but the Shaping? That was all her." She nodded.

"Yep. That'll do it." Then she cocked her head.

"Where'd she get the Mana?" I just looked at her. After a minute she chuckled self-deprecatingly.

"Yeah, that was a stupid question. wasn't it?"

"Eh. On a normal person scale, maybe. But on the Tabitha Scale, where 'one' is mildly embarrassing and 'ten' destroys economies and governments and any chance of ever getting laid again, it's only maybe a three." She laughed. I laughed. The tree she was in did not laugh, so I didn't have to Mana Blade it into submission. She pointed toward a nearby copse.

"The rest have set up over there."

"Thanks. See you in the morning." I stayed up all night, Blend boosted and doing laps around the outside of the Alarm Ward. Which I could just barely make out, a flicker in the air, thanks to Murder Mittens' Fae Grain Medicinal Waffles. In the morning, the Cadets got themselves up and in order before sunrise, including a fairly good warm meal to get us started. Stew and oatmeal and other 'put stuff and water in a pot, add heat, eat', but still not half bad.

Surprised me, but they had something with a decent kick in it. Not peppers, although maybe black pepper. Something else, like maybe wasabi. Still, it was warm and knocked the morning gumminess out of everybody's mouth, so I ate it with my Cadets, shared some of the jerky Marie sent with me, and we all got rolling again. Late in the afternoon, following the trail of trees that had been knocked clean over within the last couple weeks, we hit the shore of the Lake.

"I didn't know there was a sea here." O'Brien sounded almost offended at, y'know, geography.

"Yep. Five of 'em. If I remember right, this is the small one. There's another to the northeast and three more to the northwest, each one bigger than the last. Big one's probably three, four times further than we've come so far."

"That's quite a ways. You've been that far?"

"I meant across. Gitche Gumee is fuckin' huge. Erie here is, like, a big pond in comparison. Like, just a wide spot on the Niagara." He snorted.

"Now I know you're messing with me." I stared at him.

"How do you know all that?" I shrugged.

"Go to M-Space. Go straight up, like a Deity can do. Keep going up until you can see the land spread out under you like a picture. You'll see them. Five big assed lakes." He shuddered a little.

"As you say, Ma'am." As the others spread out to look for clues, Brown came over to me.

"It's easy to forget, you know."

"What d'you mean?"

"That you're a Demigoddess." I gave them a look, and they laughed quietly.

"Seriously. You come across as a prodigy Cadet. I totally get why they've set aside a Hero slot for you as soon as you qualify. Though I'm not sure the Hero Title is going to give you that much of a boost after the Titles of Champion of the Alliance and Champion of Loki."

"Not to mention, y'know, Goddess." They nodded.

"As you say. But like I said, you don't come across as a Goddess."

"Do the Maids?" They looked at me oddly, and I quietly said, "they're all, each and every one, Demigoddesses in the service of Dionysus. Psychopomps, even." Their mouth dropped open.

"Why... why didn't we all realize that?" I smiled.

"Because they don't act like entitled assholes?" They glanced around, like they expected lightning to strike, or for a tidal wave to spontaneously form from the shore of Erie. I reached out, touched their chin, and they looked back at me.

"If they wanna come at me directly? I fuckin' dare them. They're powerful, yeah. But they've got jobs they should be doing and aren't, and that's turned this world into something of a shithole. I aim to fix that, and if they don't like it, they can sit in their M-Space palaces and stew, or they can come to me and I'll pull their heads out of their asses." They coughed, still with their head on a swivel. I gripped their shoulder until they looked at me again.

"I'm serious, Brown. People I gotta be careful with. Monsters I'm mostly worried about collateral. But Gods? Ones who are too full of themselves to protect people, to do their fuckin' job and make the world a better place for Mortals? I will show those assholes what 'bloodlust' means." They took a deep breath, let it out, and nodded. They looked like they were about to say something, but Chloros called out from a few hundred feet out on the lake.

"Ma'am! You need to see this!" I stepped Brown and myself over to her. The surface of the lake was frozen over, which seemed really fuckin' odd. I mean, it was cold as fuck, don't get me wrong, but I thought Erie had enough contamination to freeze lower, or maybe to not freeze all the way. Then again, the surface was pretty clear, and I saw some shit moving down near the silt on the bottom, so maybe we were just standing on a surface layer of ice. She held up a light and pointed down.

Where, in the light of the setting sun, I saw a big assed bear print.