Chương 940: Day Nine Hundred And Thirty-Eight

Dear Diary, I am not a happy Elder Primordial at the moment. Nothing has gone horribly wrong over the last day. Not really. The reason I'm not happy is honestly that the knowledge of the Spartans wandering around getting ready to fuck shit up is weighing on me. It's ruining what ought to be a nice, relaxing bit of down time. Time when I can start maybe building, now that all the stupid hidden shit about myself has been revealed, and I can maybe, at long last, start building from the ground up.

I mean, okay, yeah, that started a few days after Yule. Once I finished my... I wanna call it a temper tantrum, but in the first place I didn't smash stuff or anything, just ran and hid, really. It was an epic depressive crash, no other word for it. I think in part it happened because I'd pushed too long without rest, too long hypervigilant, too long fighting against the kaiju and their source.

Even though I got some injuries fighting there at the end, nothing really went wrong in any kind of way that would force a crash, would make the problem come to the foreground. Then a few days prepping for Yule, all of which were really awesome. It's like every time that I might have gently settled to the ground after all that time airborne, instead life picked me up and let me soar higher. Yule itself, as well as I can remember it after the subsequent crash, was incredible.

If I ever feel guilty about what I did to the kaiju instigator, I'm gonna remember that one of my best extended periods of joyful family time got not only ended, but tainted in my memory by that crash. Don't get me wrong, finding that shit out was definitely gonna cause some kind of serious negative response in any case. Saffron was absolutely right about that. But I think where she erred was trying to pump me up beforehand, because I think she's missing one of those fundamental issues with chronic depression.

My Kitten, she is brilliant, but smart does not mean omniscient. That was always my problem with the way media depicted 'smart people' back in the day.

'This character is a really smart neurodivergent guy, therefore he knows fuckin' everything!' Look, that shit isn't even close to reality. Even polymaths aren't omniscient. Black... Holy fuck, Black Swans are a thing, and they're exactly why no matter how smart somebody is, they aren't gonna be omniscient. Emergent behaviors and synergy exist. Things where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Where something gets complex enough and shit just... Changes.

But to regress that brief digression into how I'm the reason smart people aren't omniscient, they're not. Even my beloved Saffron, who is a fuckin' genius smarter than anyone else I've ever met, who was clearly doing everything she could to make my self-revelation as painless as it possibly could be, had no way of understanding something that's so fundamentally divergent from her worldview. I mean, yeah, she gets depressed.

It's a natural state for humans to pass through at times, especially if they live really psychologically stressful lives. They just get emotionally drained and need to rest. But the difference between normal 'shit got crazy, now you need a break' depression and chronic depression is that while the chronic kind can be set off by some trigger, it's not like 'semi-rational response to events'. It's not the body saying 'hey, we've been using neurotransmitters faster than we can make them, give us a day or two'.

It's closer to 'yeah, you been reusing that same Serotonin and Dopamine for the past six weeks, and it's supposed to have a six second lifespan, so the moment anything goes meaningfully wrong, you're gonna crash harder than Vulcan's bolts firing from orbit'.

That's not normal, and it's not exactly predictable, and when things aren't anything like predictable is when smart people wind up getting their predictions off by some significant degree, or failing to predict shit that everyone else is giving them side eye for missing. Like, back in the day when we studied climate change in science class, we learned it was originally called 'global warming', because the first indicators shit was going sideways was the temperature creeping up.

Shit, they still had all kinds of issues with that original name, because nobody hearing 'global warming' is gonna think 'more rain' or 'temperatures plummet to record lows'. But it turns out that when you add enough energy to a complex system, shit breaks in new and exciting ways.

It's like if you run a car around without enough oil, the engine will eventually seize up and die, and the car will stop, but if you happen to be red lining that shit on the highway pretending like you're playing Need for Speed in real life when it happens, instead of 'car goes quiet and rolls to a stop', instead you get 'large pieces of metal fly out of the engine compartment, torque makes the car do cirque de soliel shit, and you wind up in the hospital missing important things like extremities and your spleen'.

Yeah, my sister had a boyfriend who was a tuner. She broke up with him after that, like while he was still in the hospital. I think that might have been another reason I didn't want to move in with her, that kind of subtle suggestion that if shit hit the fan, she'd dump me like three week old takeout. I mean, if she'd at least stuck with him until he was back on his feet, or prosthetics or whatever, I could maybe understand it.

But 'oh, you are my beloved' followed by 'yeah, no, you're damaged I'mma throw you out and find a new one' is not a great look. Shit, that might be why I've had such a hard time trusting that my ladies are okay with me being less than physically perfect, in the 'my skin looks like a detailed road map of the east coast of the USA' sense.

At any rate, when I hit my own metaphoric sieze up moment upon noting that the vast bulk of my physical Metaphoric Space form has as much self-direction as a typical filter feeder, then proceeded to mentally cartwheel down the road and bounce off the rocks of 'I Change everything I come in contact with into the image of my perfect paradise' and through the trees of 'I'm a fuckin' brain dead Lovecraftian Eldritch monstrosity', my ladies did not abandon me. They searched for me.

When I came back to defend them, they clung to me and wouldn't let me hide again. When I tried to hide my innermost self from them, not out of any desire for privacy, but because I considered myself too hideous, they coaxed me into opening up. Into returning to the existence that they and I had grown to love.

And now these fuckin' Spartans are fuckin' around making me have to worry about them and where they are and what they intend and what atrocities they're gonna commit instead of paying attention to important stuff like making dinner, exploring the texture of Tallulah's calves and thighs with my cheek, shadowing my Murder Mittens around her daily duties, gently caring for Siobhan as she bakes us kid number eighteen, staring at Saffron's ass, tits, hair, waist, and occasionally face as she remakes the world to everyone's benefit, and teaching my kits math.

I don't want to commit counter-atrocities. I'm fine with putting them back on their boats and sending them home, or even just killing the fuck out of all of them. But no, they're gonna sit out there in my subconscious making me more and more tense until I do some really sus shit like turning the whole fuckin' lot of them into an unholy hybrid of a dandelion necklace and a human centipede. Got home yesterday and wound up a little bit depressed. Not sad, just emotionally exhausted.

I think being able to spot that was a good thing, but that didn't make it any less awful. Like, seriously, Marie had done some amazing shit with deep frying, but I could barely taste it. In the Bath after dinner, Saffron rolled herself on top of me, normally a guaranteed conversation starter, looked me in the eyes, and hummed, "an obol for your thoughts, love?" If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Yeah, when a zero effort orgasm doesn't make you do more than kinda smile sadly, you know depression's got you by the short hairs.

"Sorry, Kitten. I think I'm depressed."

"What's wrong?" I shrugged.

"The constant tension about Sparta isn't helping, but a lot of it is," I shook my head.

"I think it's just part of me being me. Sorry."

"Don't be, love. Would physical intimacy help?" I thought about that for a bit.

"Maybe some holding? Dunno if I'm up for anything else." She pursed her lips, then glanced at Marie, then Tallulah, her eyes finally settling on Siobhan.

"May we try to gently entice you?" I chuckled.

"Really want to hear some word salad, huh?" She shook her head.

"Oh, don't get me wrong, I adore that, but no. I simply hoped that getting you physically active and pleasured might help you recover." I took another deep breath, thinking about it.

"Nah. I appreciate the offer, but I haven't really been sedentary these past couple. Okay, some of me are doing the physical work while I'm teaching, but I don't know that it will help." She smiled at me, "you don't know if it won't, though?"

"Okay. I'll ride the divan if you ladies want to get up to enticing shenanigans to tempt me." She smiled, but surprisingly it was Tallulah who quietly said, "yay." Then again, she was the one who wound up being my understudy in the Bedroom. Kept making comments like, 'now I understand why you enjoy this' and 'I'm sure you'd prefer this were you and not me', just everything she could say, when her mouth was clear, to get me to swap in for her.

Then Saffron went boy mode and Tallulah stopped talking, which I totally get. Didn't join in, I think because I was, as noted, kinda emotionally exhausted. Okay, Siobhan lay down on top of me like a cool blanket, pulling one hand under her breasts and the other down between her legs. So weird that even her warmer parts are still cool compared to my hands. Not bad. Just weird. Also, eventually she convinced me to demonstrate manual stimulation. I mean, not like it took a lot of convincing.

Just her hand on mine, silently pleading with me to guide her as I held her. She actually fell asleep right there in my arms right after while I enjoyed the rest of the show. Returned to Bed and watched the whole thing with the ladies all insisting on watching the divan rather than the Bed for some reason. So weird having remote control wars without an actual remote.

Dream time, even Mimic Dream time, is still kinda fucked up, because after dunking them all so I could watch the Bed from beginning to end, then letting them watch the relatively boring divan, there was still time to do each another couple times before dawn drew them away from my Maw, one lady at a time. Woke up to Saffron straddling me, the high slits of Glowing Midnight's skirts proving their worth.

"Are you ready for your briefing, love?" I blinked.

"Uh," a quick check of the sun later, I continued, "you let me sleep until afternoon?" She shrugged.

"You were exhausted. You needed rest. So we let you rest."

"Thanks, Kitten." I reached up, drew her down, and kissed her, Glowing Midnight's slick silk and ever so slightly scratchy stitching a whole assed buffet of tactile delight, what with me still sleeping naked.

"Okay. Still not up to snuff, but I think I'm a little better."

"How can you tell?"

"You? In that? With me all nekkid? Obviously I'm not fully rested, or you'd be fully engaged with tentacles while my hands were full of those." I stared at her breasts just to make extra double sure she knew what I was talking about. Okay, really I was staring because watching them made me happy. I'm a simple woman, I see magnificent tits, I press like. Only not when I'm depressed, because I didn't press jack shit. Her eyes slipped shut and she whispered, "Ledger Day."

"When is that gonna be, anyhow?" She just smiled down at me, her eyes half lidded.

"You will find out the moment it is far too late." I sighed, smiled, and said, "yeah, if that kind of comment doesn't get us fully involved, I definitely need more rest. But first," I rolled us over and upright and to the street cafe in Phileo, which currently only had two tables out on the street, a kind of stubborn refusal to surrender to the layer of ice and snow on the street. I was glad I'd slapped my uniform on as I settled down in the seat.

When the waiter came out, he asked, "would you ladies like to come inside?"

"Would it be too much of an imposition for you to bring us our luncheon here?" He shook his head.

"Of course not. I simply wanted to be sure you knew inside was an option. What would you like?" We wound up getting sandwiches and cookies and tea. Reminded me a little of Baba Yaga's stuff, only this was heartier. Even the cake at the end wound up denser and richer. Once we got settled, Saffron sat straight and asked, "are you sure, love?" I nodded.

"Yeah. Hit me with what you know. Then after lunch we can go home and you can tuck me into bed." She nodded in reply.

"As you wish. First and foremost, we've found the ships they arrived in. Large war boats rather than ships, really. Based on the size and uniformity of the vessels, my estimate is that they each carried five squads of five Heroes each.

"Why?"

"The Spartan squads of that size are known as 'fists', and each 'fist' will have a Hero commanding it. In one of those five 'fists' the Hero will also be in command of the ship and all twenty-five heroes as well. With six ships, that's one hundred fifty Heros. Or half of their forces at Thermopylae. It's a symbolic number."

"Well. Shit. That's a lot of Spartans." She nodded.

"Now, from what we can tell, you've already killed twenty-six of them."

"Twenty-six?" She rocked her head side to side.

"Well, twenty-five killed, one presumed dead. Twenty-four burned in the tower, one killed up near Boltophsberg, and one force commander thrown into the sea."

"Yeah, if he survived that, I'll be impressed." She shrugged.

"Prepare to be impressed. He might have. You would have."

"Yeah, but I'm me." She chuckled.

"There's that bravado I missed so much last night. Anyhow, Lemonkyenin would."

"Okay, yeah, but he's a demigod." She just nodded, humor melting away.

"That's the problem. In terms of sheer physical might and prowess, Spartan Heroes rival Demigods. The officers in a force this size almost certainly do. If they didn't, the rest of Greece would have done away with them long since."

"Why haven't they just conquered the whole place?" She shrugged.

"Infighting. Lack of desire for actual conquest, just combat and slaughter. Heroes from other Cities being strong enough to face them if they can be pulled into a fight where tactics, strategy, or something like Shaping might carry the day." She sighed.

"Honestly, I'm not certain why, but some combination of all of those is likely."

"Okay. Fair. So there are a hundred and twenty-four Spartan assholes wandering around?" She shook her head.

"Ninety-nine. Jack has... Delayed twenty-five of them."

"Delayed?"

"Were they less than Heroes, less than Spartan, I would say being frozen solid was a death sentence. But given that they are Spartan Heroes, some might survive that." I took a deep breath. Let it out.

"They killed our guys at the watch tower, right?" She nodded.

"Not up to it today, but when I am, show me where they are. None of them are thawing out in one piece." Her grim smile warmed some part of me.

"As you wish, Goddess."

"Anything else I should know?"

"We're looking for trackers willing and able to track them. I don't think they'll be moving far or fast." I raised an eyebrow in a silent question.

"They're from the Med, love. This level of snow, ice, and cold isn't really something they train for, something they're used to."

"Any chance they'll all just freeze to death?"

"All of them? When I'm not certain Jack Frost freezing them into sculpture killed all twenty-five he did that to?" I sighed.

"Okay. Yeah. Well then, let me know when the trackers are ready." At her unspoken question, I said, "can't risk them setting up an ambush for the trackers. Whoever goes after them has to be ready to take on at least fifty of them. Sure as shit they're gonna try and consolidate."

"How do you know?" I shrugged.

"Just my shit wrecking sense activating, I guess." Which it really kinda was. Which was an improvement over not feeling much of anything, I guess. Still gonna kick the shit out of them when I find them.