Chương 681: Day Six Hundred And Seventy-Nine

Dear Diary, Some days I'm not sure if I'm the good guy or the bad guy. I'm really, really not sure. Of course it helps sometimes to remind myself that I'm just a dumb bitch from Camden who wound up stumbling into Vast Cosmic Power, and I didn't go looking for any of this. Which is a fancy, self-loathing way to say I'm not the good guy or the bad guy, I'm just a guy. Okay, I'm not a guy, but you get my point. I'm a girl tryna grow up and do the best I have with what I've been given.

Which, here and now, is a whole shit pot of stuff, but none of it came with instructions, so I'm having to make shit up as I go along. I kinda wish I didn't swing so easily to 'torture, murder, and cannibalism' though. Wait, is it cannibalism if I, a Mor, a Divine Being, eat a Human? Or a Dan? Is it cannibalism if a Human eats a Dan? Or if a Sidhe eats a Dwarf?

Yeah, I'm gonna go with Human Adjacent eating Human Adjacent is cannibalism, and therefore generally both pragmatically bad because of all the potential diseases, and morally bad unless there's some cultural significance and a general lack of murder involved. I'm really not sure how Souls figure into that, whether in the 'final destination in my belly' sense or in the 'nocturnal visitation' sense.

Although I'm really thinking Consent and lack of lasting harm has got to factor in, because I swallowed plenty of swimmy bois back in the day, and between Saffron, Lachlan, Carruthers, Silk, and a couple of my Worshippers, I've only done so more here and now. Shit, now I kinda want to get a tattoo on my scalp, visible from above, with golden arches and 'billions and billions swallowed'.

Yeah, I'm full of self-loathing and really not sure of where I stand morally, but I'm really easily distracted by bullshit, and as I've noted before, I have an endless supply of bullshit. So when I got home from teaching and my other duties yesterday, I flopped into my chair in the dining room while Marie puppeted a couple of me bringing out a couple big bowls of fried rice, salad, and bear liver bisque. I mean, I think she sort of puppeted me.

Really, it's more like she's, I dunno, sitting on my shoulder just kinda nudging me into motion when I finish something. I can do shit that I don't have to think about just fine, but figuring out what to do next always uses just a little bit of executive function, which is something else that's tough to do with Co-Location. At any rate, I put the food in place, then collapsed back to my seat. The girls descended on the food, as did the women visiting.

Marie brought me my dinner, at which point I Translocated up to the bedroom with a bowl of bisque for Siobhan. She wasn't quite asleep, although she'd mostly settled in on the bed rather than staying on the cot in the water closet. Which I always thought was a weird word for a bathroom, but in this case there wasn't a bath, and we had an actual room with a Bath upstairs which was the bath room. I guess I could call it a lavatory, but that never sounded quite right to me, and there wasn't really a sink.

Okay, a little one atop the lower tank that fed into the toilet, which was clever, but it was a closet, and it had water access, so I decided somehow to call it a water closet. At any rate, when she smelled the bisque, she smiled and let Saffron prop her up. I took turns feeding them each spoonsful of bisque, stepping back down twice. Most of it went into Saffron, honestly, but I think at least most of a bowl got into Siobhan.

I had a bit too, but I still wasn't really hungry after the Friday night Revel and the subsequent terrified torture session. Thought of that put me completely off my food, and by the time we finished the third bowl the ladies noticed.

"It's bothering you?" asked Saffron. I nodded, and Siobhan quietly asked, "what did I miss?"

"Oliver and Octavio Orange are gone." I'm not sure what made me phrase it that way, but after a moment Siobhan, her voice still quiet, asked, "what did they do?" I sighed.

"Oliver tortured, raped, and sacrificed two girls." Siobhan winced, then her brow furrowed.

"How?" I shook my head.

"Before then. One of my Priestesses, Mimic's Priestess, from New Amsterdam, came to me wanting Vengeance. Their mother. I..." I trailed off, unable to continue. Siobhan waited patiently. Eventually Saffron whispered, "she rescinded her commutation of his sentence for Treason." I barked out something superficially similar to a laugh.

"I let her torture him to death." Saffron lay her hand on mine, her touch feather light.

"You would have been within your rights to do so after his Perfidy before the Battle of the Walls. The fact that you left him and his father alive and maimed was seen by some as equally just, by others as mercy, and by yet others as undue torment. But that argument is entirely based on you leaving them alive; the actual harm you did to them was seen by most as just."

"Okay, maybe, but..."

"Then Oliver compounded his Perfidy with outright Treason, giving the knowledge of newly developed battle tactics to an enemy commander he knew intended to attack the Alliance." I shook my head.

"I don't think he was ever really loyal to the Alliance, Kitten." She sighed and shook her head.

"I'm certain he wasn't, but that doesn't matter. He was still sworn to New Amsterdam, and New Amsterdam had signed the treaty that formed the Alliance. He committed Treason. Again, death by torture was well within your right."

"But I'm supposed..."

"To be the Patron Goddess of the Alliance, not to mention a Demigoddess of Vengeance. Did your Priestess have any remaining family? Any way to recover?" I shook my head.

"I didn't check real close, but I don't think so." Saffron nodded.

"Then she followed your Holy Writ, love. Oliver had done her irreparable harm, she had no way to recover, and had he the ability, he would have done so again."

"He didn't exactly have the ability, though." At that point Siobhan, who'd been lying there listening to us talk, clearly distressed by the whole topic, shook her head and whispered, "I could have Healed him." Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. I shot her all the side eye.

"Yeah, but you wouldn't, though." She sighed.

"No. But I'm training new Healers. All of them have the Mana Shaping Skills and Mana Reserves of Academy trained Heroes. Or, well, they will on graduation." I thought about that for a second.

"Okay. Yeah. I guess if you trained somebody, they'd know how, and if they had enough Mana, or if the Oranges paid for enough people to Network in, he could have had all that shit I did to him Healed."

"Exactly," said Saffron.

"So to the best of your knowledge, one of your Worshippers came to you asking for your assistance in seeking vengeance against Oliver, and..." I remembered just then, and interrupted my Kitten.

"She originally wanted to do that to Ora." Saffron's eyes slid closed, as did Siobhan's. Canta give me strength. Siobhan's voice whispered through my brain. A moment later Saffron, eyes still closed, waved me forward. I leaned over toward her, and she leaned forward and smacked me on the back of the head.

"Thank you, Saffron."

"Of course, Siobhan."

"Ow." The two of them opened their eyes and half glared at me.

"What was that for?"

"You, who seem so dead set on flagellating yourself for allowing a woman to seek Vengeance under exactly the conditions you laid out, kept her from making a terrible mistake. You refocused her from an innocent girl who just happens to be related to that bitch and her waste of oxygen relatives to the actual perpetrator of the crime." Saffron picked up one of the bolsters we'd stolen from the Bed and started bonking me with it.

"Stop. Blaming. Yourself."

"I'll be very sad if you don't, Tabitha." I dunno why, but Siobhan saying my name just kinda took all the wind out of my sails. I crumpled down next to her, and we slipped into one another's arms.

"Okay," I sniffled, although I couldn't tell if I was crying from relief, grief, or guilt. Saffron shifted around behind Siobhan and snuggled her from behind.

"What of Octavio?"

"He refused to give up on coming after Celeste. The woman who mur..." I stopped myself mid-word as the bolster bonked me on the head again.

"Executed Oliver."

"Again, well within your rights to rescind his commuted sentence for Perfidy. Or as protection for one of your Worshippers. Even more so for Clergy." I shrugged.

"I dunno. I guess."

"What of Ophelia?" I shrugged.

"She gave up on the idea when I told her I'd come after her if anything happened to Celeste." Saffron nodded.

"There's no love lost between anyone in that family. Well, perhaps Ora cares for the rest, but even there I think she knows it's not returned. Do you trust Ophelia?" I shrugged.

"She offered to let me make her a High Priestess. So I could check up on her."

"Or hollow her out and use her like a puppet." I looked over Siobhan at Saffron, horrified.

"What? You could do it to any of us, should we deserve it. I trust you with that kind of power, as do all of us."

"I don't want that kind of power," I whispered. Both of them held me. We know. That's why we trust you with it. We lay there for a bit, until Marie poked us mentally to let us know the kids were headed for the Bath. Saffron asked, "anything else you're at odds with yourself about? Especially regarding the Oranges?"

I thought about it, then realized something else that had been getting to me, and as stupid as it sounded, in the spirit of being completely open with my ladies, I kinda whined out, "they tasted so fucking bad." I realized a moment later that I shouldn't have said anything, when Siobhan idly pondered, "what did they...?" I felt her rummage in my memory, then her face paled.

"Oh, Goddess!" A moment later she was gone, although we both heard where she'd Translocated to as she very noisily lost every bit of bisque we'd fed into her. Saffron and I took her to the bathroom and cleaned her up, then carried her to the Bath and gently massaged her to get her to relax enough to sleep.

I dreamt of Siobhan in a funky looking hybrid of a suit of armor and a hazmat suit, directing the rest of my ladies, who were back in their hazmat suits, as they scrubbed out the inside of my Maw with ever longer handled brushes. Marie even sprinkled that dark gray powder all over everything. Tasted weird, kinda metallic. In the morning I returned to all of my duties, including ferrying the kids to school and teaching my Cadets.

Near the end of a morning spent cycling them through practice with the 'old model' Crossbows, the Terrible Trio rolled up looking curious. I nodded without taking my eyes off the Cadets on the firing line. Vulcan's little brothers couldn't do the same kind of mass destruction as he did, but ricochets were still a thing, and I could get somebody to the Infirmary faster than anybody else if someone needed it. Or, y'know, just Stabilize them and send them down with a partner if it wasn't that critical.

"Pardon, Ma'am, but why are we still training with these if we have those... charges? Or Shapes like that?" I nodded.

"Solid question. Couple answers. First, those charges are still a little thin on the ground. The group of Senior Cadets who fought against the Dire Bears with me were issued one, I think. But only one. So they're not something everybody's gonna be carrying a bandolier of any time soon. They use the same powder as the Black Dragon's guns, and I think that might be the bottleneck, although that's just me guessing. Also, do you think you could throw one of those as far as a Crossbow can shoot?"

All three of them shook their heads in unison. So fuckin' cute. While I tried to hide that particular reaction with a duBois scowl, I continued, "good call, and eventually there might be charges like that you can shoot from a Crossbow, too. So even if we have enough for you to carry a shit ton, you might still want to have a Crossbow for a couple reasons." I waited until they all nodded, although this time it was more a Vickerson, then Citron, then Hildegarde thing.

"As for Fire Bolts, while we train Cadets to have as much Mana and Mana recovery as possible... wait, you guys have learned Stabilize, right?"

"Yes, Ma'am," answered Vickerson for the three of them. Hildegarde looked a little iffy on that, but when I gave her a look, she dropped her gaze and said, "I passed the class. I made the Shape." Citron of all people reached over and squeezed her shoulder.

"You did. You'll get it as a Skill eventually." I nodded.

"Okay, you know how you can pour Mana into that? Like, more than just the basic amount?" The three of them looked a little mystified, so I Shaped a Stabilize and started pouring Mana into it. When the shadows of the Cadets on the firing line danced across the far wall, I said, "like this?"

"I don't think I have that much Mana, Ma'am."

"I don't think I have that much Mana," muttered Hildegarde.

"Yeah. I've got a lot of Mana. A whole shit pot. Which, when I Shape Fire Bolt, I kind of instinctively use, even if I tone it down a little. But Fire Bolt is like Stabilize; you can pour more into it for more range, more heat, more hurt, but... have any of you completely depleted your Mana yet?" Hildegarde chuckled, and Citron hissed, "it wasn't funny." Hildegarde held up her thumb and forefinger the tiniest bit apart.

"Little bit funny." I nodded.

"Yeah, so Shaping a lot of Fire Bolts in a battle where you need to be awake, aware, and at your best? Not really recommended."

"Understood, Ma'am. Thank you, Ma'am."

"What I'm here for. Also... Hildegarde?"

"Yes, Ma'am?" I reached over with my overpowered Stabilize, "if you manage to learn Stabilize, you can use an overpowered one to deliver Mana to someone who's low, maybe keep them from being completely depleted, or help them recover faster from it. Also can keep someone from passing out from exhaustion, or any number of other things when a big influx of life might be useful." She looked at me, looked at my hand, and reached out her own.

I nodded, and she looked cockily at the other two, then back to me, and grasped my hand. When she finally stopped convulsing, I handed her over to Citron, who scooped her up into a princess carry.

"also, and you can let her know this when she wakes up, since she seems so proud of her Mana capacity, it can take somebody down without hurting anything but their pride." Yeah, I know, a little mean, but it really didn't hurt anything but her pride, and Hildegarde has enough of that for six normal Cadets. Also, I might have been feeling some kinda way, because despite me slowly drip feeding like six bowls of bisque into Siobhan over the course of the day, I doubted she'd managed to hold down half of one.