Chương 829: Day Eight Hundred And Twenty-Seven

Dear Diary, Kinda funny, but apparently me Reviving Cerberus really blew Doc G's mind. Weird, with shit being switched up all the fuckin' time back in the day, but I guess growing up in the third millennium CE really left me with the general assumption that New Facts shifted paradigms. Like, that's just Shit That Happens on the regular.

Big brain guys come up with ideas of How Things Work, they test it, it works, they build shit, some random bit of data doesn't fit, and a new big brain figures out new rules to account for it. Eventually, if the rules get hairy enough, some enormous brain dude comes along and figures out whatever underlying assumption fucked the whole paradigm, and that shit shifts again. Rinse and repeat, expect that to happen again next week. Yeah, I know there were and even here and now are laws of physics underlying things.

I'm also peripherally aware that must be how Mana works, especially for Deities, by altering the 'regular' laws of physics somehow. But even there, some things seem to hold true. The more you wanna tie physics over the table and rail it, the more Mana it charges. Little changes are easier than big changes. Really powerful casters either have a shit ton of Mana available, like Deities, or know how to make the biggest macroscopic effects with the tiniest alterations to those laws.

Yeah, I read that shit back in my second Season at the Academy, and it took until now for it to really percolate through my brain and connect to a fuckin' brick of a physics textbook from back in the day. Thing is, there's that underlying belief I grew up with that there are rules, but they're way beyond anybody's ability to really grasp from bottom to top all at once, and because of that we don't even fuckin' know them all yet.

Well, didn't know them when I left, and from my Scrying recently nobody's said 'oh, look, free energy and immortality and orgasms on demand for everybody', so I'm gonna assume that nobody back there has figured that shit out yet. Okay, the fact that my Kitten has figured that last one out for me is definitely a sign that if such a thing exists, this might actually be just a fucked up Good Place rather than the Bad Place.

At any rate, me Reviving Cerberus blew Doc G's mind so much that he hauled his ass over to the Academy and begged Marie to take him to see triple doggo. Fortunately, said Gooderest Boy still remained at the Homestead for the moment. I figured I'd take him back when I went back to Hades to talk to the man himself. For my part I'd sacked out, big time.

My ladies cycled through my Maw twice before I hauled my ass out of bed, and I might have stayed there bein' lazy if Isnomi hadn't stood there beside the bed, staring at me. Nothing quite like opening my eyes, still a little disoriented from sleeping and dreaming of my greater self, only to see a pair of eyes and a forehead staring at me from just above the covers.

"Menace?"

"Mama! Doccah Zeccahdi ith playin' wif Baby!" That did not leave me any un-adrenalized blood in my stream. I leapt out of bed, scooping Isnomi up as I went, stepping us both straight to the stables. The very empty stables, including Baby's very empty terrarium. I looked at Isnomi, who giggled and pointed straight up. I stepped to the courtyard to find our menagerie being far more pet-like than I'd previously imagined possible.

Of course, that might have been because of the massive three headed hound in their midst, or the even huger viper acting as an impromptu living fence around our little Water Panther. The moment we arrived, Isnomi leapt away to glomp Baby, who managed to look simultaneously aggrieved and terrified. Doc Z sighed, shook his head, and gently pried her off.

"What did I say, Isnomi? Baby is afraid of you, and you jumping on them like that only makes it worse."

"But I'm hugging her?"

"Does she know that? Or that you're not going to hurt her?" Isnomi frowned.

"But I might, though. If I has to." Doc Z saw me coming over at that point, and at his puzzled look, I explained, "unfortunately, part of what amounts to the domestication process for anything Draconic enough seems to be understanding that hurting people comes with consequences." His look melted into a frown. He looked down at the barely bigger than a toddler kid in his hands, then over at the bigger than a quarter horse Water Panther trying not to look like it was cowering away from her.

"Ah, am I missing something here?" I gently squeezed his shoulder.

"Only that she's my daughter as much as Saffron's. Or that she's my daughter as much as Hailee is."

"Hailee?"

"The one Siobhan brought along to visit Hades?" He nodded in sudden enlightenment. Then he paled just a little.

"Wait. She was the third Psychopomp?" At my nod, he shook his head.

"How?" Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. I shrugged.

"She was the last one out. I objected strongly to having seven daughters when I was supposed to have eight. Nobody argued." He took a deep breath, let it out.

"There are times I remember when I wish I could have done that." I nodded, then pulled him and Isnomi both into a hug.

"Yeah. I wish I could do it more, but," I shrugged.

"There's only one of me." He raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, I know, but the more of me there are, the less of me any of them has. When I pull shit like I did during the birthday celebrations? I can just about deliver soup." He sighed, then chuckled.

"It was good soup, though." I hugged him again.

"Thanks, Doc. Glad you liked it. What's up with you guys being here?" At that point Doc G came striding over from Cerberus. With a look that was half ultimate nerdgasm and half frustrated atheist talking to an actual 'the' he wasn't a-ist against, he spluttered out, "animals have Souls? Since when? Why have we not known this?" I shrugged.

"Somebody taught you they didn't?" He nodded.

"Probably based on Franklin's Inspect, right?" He paused, then said, "I suppose it must have been. Much of our more fact based research is based on that Shape." I grinned at him.

"Tried the new one yet?"

"Yes! Only today, of course. Well, since Archmage Aetos-Diaz informed us of its existence. We've..." He trailed off, looking at me with more than a little trepidation.

"Your Wives gave me permission to test it out on your daughters?" I shrugged.

"Hey, if something happens to one of them and none of the Healer type adults here at the Homestead are available? I can't think of anyone I'd trust more with them." He visibly relaxed.

"I thank you for your confidence and trust. But... Animals have Souls!"

"Really?" Yeah, he was kinda nerding out, and I found it hot. Not like he was interested in me, but I can window shop. Shit, the worst results of Just Happening to the pair of them would be two confused Patroc men and my ladies laughing at me later. I'd lost some technical details while I zoned out and let his nerdgasm flow over me.

"... weaker than what we've come to think of as Mortal Souls, but still detectable, even in simple livestock. Of course, in beasts like those you've collected here, they're comparable to Mortal Souls." He frowned, glanced at Mister Slither, then back to me.

"The snake seems odd, though. Almost as if Inspect isn't quite correctly displaying the information Divined from his Aura." I shrugged, then quietly said, "there are some rare Skills that can interfere with Status."

"That as well! The thought that Inspect is simply inverted Status, rather than Status being a self-focused Inspect!" And he was off, nerding out as Saffron dropped into the courtyard and immediately started nerding back and forth with him. So fuckin' hot. Doc Z just absentmindedly ran a hand over Baby's head, scratching the side of her jaw when she leaned into him a little. Something about that tickled the back of my brain, so I picked up the Menace and murmured into her ear, "is Baby a boy or a girl?"

"Yeth!" Well. That settled that at least. Not gonna argue with my most adorable Primordial about a critter that is very clearly right in the center of her wheelhouse. Instead I just followed Doc Z's lead with the big Draconic beastie, letting her sniff at my tentacles. I also noticed that she did not come anywhere near Mister Slither's border, which contained her, Cerberus, all of the kits, and our three smaller girls.

The four big ones each rode one of the Nightmares around the outside of Mister Slither's loop, with another Nightmare trotting alongside. All of them very clearly looked to Ria for direction, but when one glanced away and acted like they might break ranks, it was Maze who glared them back into formation. After spending all day just chilling with the girls, I walked over to Cerberus as Marie came out of the house with her cart bearing a big assed platter filled with sandwiches.

Funny, it had been quite a while since I saw her pushing her cart around, and seeing it again tugged at some things. Seeing Isnomi able to hop up and grab a sandwich off the top definitely left some other bits clenching as I realized that she wasn't all that much bigger than the kits, to whom she proceeded to distribute sandwich goodness.

"Hey, Cerb! Who's best doggo?" I got slobbered on by three different dog tongues at that. When I managed to stop chuckling and had hugged each of him at least once, finally splitting myself three ways to hug them all at once, I said, "you know I gotta get you home now, right?" All three heads whined. The girls whined. The kits whined. Fuck, I think Baby may have whined. I shook my head, sighed, and said, "look, you guys love Lucas, right?" That got nods all around.

"But he still has to go home eventually, because this isn't his home, right?"

"Bud he can come back!" Isnomi objected. I sighed, closed my eyes, and shook my head. Finally, when I opened them, I said, "nobody said this big boy can't come back. But right now I think his family misses him." Yeah, that got a bit of whining and agitation out of Cerberus. I think in doggie fashion he'd totally forgotten about the people who weren't right here. But the soft promise of future visitation calmed the kids' protests against his leaving.

Okay, it set off an entire wave of kids coming to give him hugs, and that shit lasted until Marie called everyone back to eat their lunch before it got manky. Before they left, Cerberus gave each of them three big whuffling licks. When Isnomi scampered off following the kits back to Marie, I looked him in the eyes of his central head.

"Ready to go?" He whuffed.

"Okay then. Here we go." I got a solid grip on the nape of his neck and stepped us both to Hades' throne room. Neither the man himself nor Persephone were anywhere to be seen, but the thrones had been set upright and the floor was more or less cleaned up. Cerberus whined, so I ruffled his neck and said, "go on, boy. Find Hades." He took off, and I followed him back into the residential area of the house. He got away from me a little bit, but he wasn't a small or quiet dog.

I caught up with him, more or less, in a big kitchen that looked surprisingly like Marie's setup back at the Homestead.

"Okay, boy, okay! I'll give you some, just aaaggghhhh! Dog drool! Dog drool everywhere!" Yeah, I'm not sure if he was normally this effusive, but I'm not sure if he wound up seeing Hades get the shit beat out of him or not, and he'd been away. Definite doggo behavior, acting like he hadn't seen his dude in an eternity. Of course, Persephone knelt next to where Cerberus had Hades on the floor, licking his face and both of his hands all at the same time.

I leaned against the obviously in use prep island in the middle of the room.

"Hey." The couple looked up at me, Hades having to cheerfully glomp all three of his dog's heads together in a hug to do so.

"I think we need to have a talk."