Chương 773: Day Seven Hundred And Seventy-One

Dear Diary,"If Bloodlust gets you Vengeance, Do not fuck around with it, Or they just might get away." - Tabitha Diaz, Doctrine of Tabitha, Book of Bloodlust Here our Goddess reminds us of another, far more pragmatic danger of Bloodlust. While previous verses have made it clear that the power of Bloodlust can cause us to harm our loved ones, our reputations, or ourselves, in this Verse Tabitha makes it clear to any who no longer care for any of those things, Bloodlust can harm our Vengeance itself.

As she made clear earlier, Bloodlust is seductive, and powerful, and capable of blinding us to things. While it can blind us to our own mortality, our own weakness, our own fear, that we might boldly reclaim our Agency despite the best efforts of those villains who victimized us, it can also blind us to those same villains conniving to escape Justice. Even should we have no loved ones, and have lost any cares for ourselves, we ought not let Bloodlust steal away the very thing we embraced it to achieve.

- Priestess Most High Above All Others, Archmage Imperator Saffron Aetos-Diaz, Commentary on the Doctrine of Tabitha Y'know, I spent so long, so much time and effort back in the day tryna make myself understood. I mean, objectively I don't think it was all that long before I gave up. Probably, all told, less time than I've lived here and now. But the younger you are, the longer any given period of time feels. At least that's how it was for me.

Which is really weird, because when we're young we've got more time than we ever will again, so we've got more capacity for waiting, if we only had the ability to use it. But we don't, so we can't, because so much about time is subjective. Wow. That got away from me. What I meant to point out was that after I gave up on explaining myself back then, I completely flipped over into TL, DR mode.

Did not care if people understood what I said or not, just dropped one or two words to acknowledge communication, maybe another couple to send a return message, and every other word out of my mouth was a verbal shitpost. When I wrote my Doctrine, I didn't exactly lean on that, but I definitely had to keep things concise to fit the meter I'd chosen.

Yeah, sometimes I put some humor into the Doctrine, because I couldn't realistically not do that and still have it be, y'know, mine, but for the most part even when the individual lines are a little hinky or humorous, I mean every bit of it sincerely. Reading Saffron holding forth on all of them, expanding them, is just a special kind of treat for me now. It's like the opposite of TL, DR.

It's the kind of feeling where you pick up that stack of old assignments you turned in, got back, and never looked at again, and discover that some teacher gave you actual encouraging feedback on everything. Yeah, that happened to me once. Made me feel guilty, stupid, and sad for throwing away so many papers without looking at them beyond seeing what grade I got. Ten out of ten for nailing what I meant on this one, and expanding it to cover a whole lot more.

I think yesterday's reveal of my Temple in Norfolk being the centerpiece of their new Academy hit me kind of hard. I made my farewells, made sure Olga knew how impressed I was by them putting together an Academy that managed to support such a diverse population, then stepped straight home. Spent the afternoon mostly focused on Siobhan. Yesterday was a bad day for her. Nothing life threatening, just couldn't keep from retching.

Mostly the only things that came up were clear, and the food we'd fed her wasn't, so hopefully she digested it all. Saffron told me her Assess Health came up in support of 'healthy, just miserable', and I'm not a fuckin' doctor or anything, so I'm not worried about her health. More about her mental health. So I just held her and sang to her. Before I give anybody the idea that Saffron doesn't care or dumb shit like that, she has a full time job. Two of them, if you include researching.

When there's no imminent threat, no asses that need kicking, I'm basically a figurehead at best. My Kitten shows up at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, Assessing Siobhan multiple times a day just to be sure we don't miss something. But for most of the day, her attention needs to be elsewhere. I'm the one who can spend the time focused on keeping Darling's spirits up. I mean, yeah, I've got a lot of other shit I'm doing, but none of it really needs my attention, exactly.

Just my presence, maybe my physicality, but there are no problems to be solved, next to no dynamic decision making to be done. Just strip the sheets, chop the veg, massage the thighs, look vaguely bored and dangerous. Decided to make soup for everybody, mostly so Siobhan could eat with the rest of us. Bisque. Stew, although she pretty much stuck to the thick, gravy-like broth on that. Gumbo, which while mine still wasn't a patch on Jack's, was a big hit with Ria and Lindsey of all people.

Did not peg my near-vegetarian kids for liking 'whatever meat didn't run fast enough or hide well enough' paired with 'whatever was growing in the swamp'. But there you go. Tried adding some rice to it, which Darling liked. Funny thing. After we all spent some time soaking away the cares and aches of the day, and settled down in bed, I lay there with a kitten on each breast and Siobhan tucked under one arm, Saffron curled up behind her. She looked at me, reached up and touched my face, and said, "what's wrong?"

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. I tilted my head.

"I'd say 'that's my line', but we all know it's morning sickness." She shook her head, smiling.

"You've been pensive since you returned from Norfolk." I sighed quietly, keeping my voice low and calm to let everyone keep drifting off to sleep.

"They built their Academy around my Temple."

"Does that offend you?" I shook my head, but took a while to form an answer.

"Not offend. No. Kind of... It's kind of the opposite, maybe? I feel really complimented, but I feel like it's a compliment I don't deserve."

"Why not?"

"I didn't go down there to do good things for Norfolk. I went down there to kick the shit out of some assholes who were keeping us from fixing the Calverton Undead problem out of stupidity and greed." She smiled, ran one hand down Eratos' back, eliciting a quiet, snoozing, nursing purr.

"Yet removal of those very stupid, greedy men was what let them start anew."

"So I get that kind of 'they're enshrining me as a keystone of their culture' because of shit I did as a sort of side effect?" She lay a single finger on my lips, and I went silent. After a while, she nodded and said, "you felt guilt over the fallen at the Battle of the Walls. You felt guilt over the troops and Heroes you slew in fighting against Calverton in Lancaster. You even felt guilt over the Undead you could not save in Calverton." I nodded.

"Yeah. And?"

"The Levies were collateral damage. As were those Heroes. As were the Undead you could not save. You feel guilt over all that collateral harm, yes?" I nodded.

"So stop feeling like praise for your collateral help is undeserved." I had no response to that. I just kinda sat there as Saffron sandwiched Siobhan closer to me until I fell asleep. Dreamt of my ladies stirring my Maw like a gargantuan soup cauldron. All but Siobhan, who they lowered into the center time after time, her icy slushy self shattering into cool minty goodness time after time after time.

Woke to her smiling contentedly at me, squirming a little as Saffron did her boot up behind her back, obviously taste testing her shoulder blades in the most ticklish way possible. Spent most of today with my kids. Playing with them, which involved a surprising amount of work when it came to Lindsey, Alex, Ria and Maze. Lindsey had really poured herself into the whole farming thing. Like, not specifically sowing and harvesting or one particular crop, but she did a lot of weeding, pruning, and caring for the plants.

I quietly checked with the women responsible for the various farm plots, and they all confirmed she wasn't hurting anything, wasn't stepping on any toes. They all seemed really surprised that I'd even care, and I made it clear to them that just because she's my daughter doesn't mean she gets to boss them around or ruin their hard work. She's there to learn, not be bossy. Which, to be fair, she seems to be doing. She's not Alex or Menace. Speaking of Alex, she'd connived D to teach her wrestling.

I mostly gave her a target for holds that wasn't completely outside her ability to grapple. Okay, I did that in part by shrinking down a little, but still, that's not in D's wheelhouse. He's a surprisingly patient teacher, for all that he's loud and boisterous about it. Like all 'yah, do it', 'do it this way', 'do it harder', 'stronger', but I heard surprisingly few actual negative statements.

Everything was 'more this', not 'less that', and I think that helped her a lot, giving her things to strive for rather than things to avoid. Ria and Maze were working with the Nightmares. Well, not the Nightmares per se. Menace took Marie, Diana, David, and Daya out to exercise them while Ria, Maze, and I mucked out the stalls.

If I were more of a horse girl I might have felt some kinda way about that, but while I find the Nightmares cool as shit, I'm not bonded to them or anything, so not spending time with them wasn't a big deal for me. I got to spend time with my Fae girls. Once the stalls were cleared out and Baby had some fresh meat laid out, the three of us trooped back to the kitchen. I made pancakes for just the three of us. Fae grain pancakes, with lots of butter. They came out kind of savory, but all three of us liked them.

After that I took them both up to the roof of East House, where Marie, Saffron and I had the kittens. Saffron had decided everything was going well on the Council, and she needed a break from bug fixing on Inspect, and... she remembered. Before trooping the two of us and our spawn to the roof, which she'd thoughtfully warded the edge of to be kitten proof, she revealed something I'd totally forgotten about. Something Murder Mittens had made, put away, and now revealed. Bikinis.

Okay, I'm not sure mine exactly qualified. Or Marie's, for that matter. Saffron, of course, wore her black bikini. Curves. For. Days. Mine was technically a one piece, which by texture and color reminded me of The Dress. Two swatches of maybe silk on the front, neither one more than half an inch wide, that started on either side of my neck and met at my crotch.

One thin red leather thong ran from the back of the choker all the way down to between my butt cheeks, where it met up with the silk swatches right around my taint. Coverage minimal, but otherwise surprisingly not awful in terms of comfort. Marie's top was technically a halter. A single rectangle of white fabric just big enough to hold her nursing enhanced boobs in place by stretching from one nipple to the other. Maybe an inch tall and barely wide enough to cover anything.

Held in place by what had to be two lengths of magician's thread wrapped around her back or some shit like that, because I couldn't see what else would be holding it on. She hadn't glued them to her nips, because she did pause her sunbathing to nurse kittens when they crawled over for noms. I mean, I did too, but my bathing suit was just scandalously skimpy, not held on by happy thoughts. Speaking of, I could not figure out what kept her minimalist crotch covering in place. Stared at it off and on through the day.

Eventually she smirked at me and quietly whispered, "Later, Vlickies." I snorted equally quietly and said, "not sayin' no, but I was wondering what's keeping that bottom in place. I can't see any strings or nothing, and it's not really even shifting." Which is when she kinda blew my mind and reminded me that the mother of my kittens is still Queen of the Murderfuck cult, emphasis in this case on fuck, by saying, "Grip Strength."