Chương 990: Day Nine Hundred And Eighty-Eight

Dear Diary, So yeah, way back not long after I first got here, back before the Battle of the Walls, I remember somebody telling me that both Marshall duBois and Lord Lancaster agreed that my core competency, and one which I was preternaturally gifted with, was wrecking shit. I wondered not long after, many times since, and maybe even a couple times before that, if I'd missed my calling when I started cutting ROTC.

Back in the day I'd never have thought of myself as some kind of operator with a trail of bodies longer than I was tall to my credit, except for how much fuckin' time I spent playing Call of Duty not because 'ooh, look how badass I am', but because 'this just feels right'. Like doing unto others was somehow part and parcel of something deep inside me. Weird how my conscious brain doesn't link that with 'maternal'.

I mean, I shouldn't think it's weird, because you don't see somebody with blood up to their shoulders, mud up to their crotch, and sweat and scars everywhere else and think 'Mama!' Okay, I don't. I guess my kids kinda do. Which is only half of why I think it's weird, because forty percent of the Mom Collective could absolutely be considered top tier conveyors of carnage. Deliverers of destruction. Purveyors of pulverizing.

Okay, now I'm low key fantasizing about sex so intense, rough, and intensely rough that neither Murder Mittens nor I have any desire nor capacity to think or move afterward. Wedding night. Murder Mittens Kitten fittin'. Good times, the kind that warm the cockles of my heart and stiffen all my bits.

Unfortunately, while I am the most talented shit-wrecker William duBois has ever seen, I seem to have forgotten about one thing, despite how fully and frequently the Fates have conspired to remind me, despite their deep and abiding love of mixing LSD and crack cocaine to fuck with their own homeostasis and perception of existence. I really ought to give them something nice for their dedication to their jobs, even when they're working with such an obvious handicap. Blue fire exists. Yeah, I wreck shit.

Unfortunately, I have been perniciously incapable of entirely exempting myself from said list of shit to be wrecked. I am apparently perennially on my own shit list. So yesterday, after a day of alternating between doing Soul shiatsu and having me move around and Shape stuff to see my Soul in action, Dad wound up once again asking me what the fuck I'd done to myself, with a strong side order of how the fuck I'd done it. I sighed.

"I dunno, Dad. I haven't taken too many bad hits lately."

"Really? Are you certain?" I shrugged.

"I mean, I'm pretty sure the Spartans tagged me a couple times. The Cold Iron stung like a bitch, too." He winced.

"It would. While not as hard on us as Undead Miasma, it is still toxic to us."

"Not as hard on us as it is on Fae though." Now it was his turn to shrug.

"I'd posit it's more that we're more durable in general, which means that which would burn them to death merely leaves us charred."

"What are we, just bigger badder Fae then?" Saffron, who'd been idly listening in since Dad and I started chatting, piped up.

"I have a theory about that." We both looked at her expectantly, so she lowered her voice a little and explained.

"The Fae, the Sidhe most especially, are descended from living things which made their way to M-Space and became stuck there." I nodded.

"Okay, that makes sense." Loki added in, "while I cannot say whether that happened, it might well be." I definitely wanted my medical team to figure out what the fuck was wrong with me and make it right, because my Kitten had moved into full on nerd mode, and I had a deep and abiding need to reward her with orgasmic bliss given and received, which while I enjoyed it, I did not enjoy it slipping away as quickly as it filled me.

"The Souls and Bodies of Sidhe are bound so inextricably that when one fails, the other does as well. They are far past halfway to the point of being Souls made flesh." Before I could reply Loki hummed, then quietly said, "you make it sound like the Fae, the Sidhe especially, are Divine." She just dropped one shoulder in a shrug.

"Given that most Fae can deliver some form of Blessing, which parallel Boons and other connections between Divine and Mortal so well that only a Skilled Archmage can tell the difference?" Loki snorted.

"I can tell the difference." She looked him right in the eye, which gave me a burst of humorous joy as I watched my itty bittiest of Wives shoot a full on Jotnar a Mom Look.

"Can you?" He nodded.

"Of course. I saw the difference between my Granddaughter Ria's Blessing and the Boons and Titles I have granted my Daughter." She just stared at him more.

"I am not an Archmage, Archmage Aetos."

"Aetos-Diaz. And while you have not yet emplaced a Global Spell, I am of the firm opinion that you have both the Mathematical and Artificing Skills to design one, not to mention the Mana Shaping Skill to emplace one."

"You flatter me." Now it was her turn to snort.

"Oh, please. We both know your wife would spank me if I did that, for flirting with you if nothing else." From the far side of the cave, where she'd been playing with half our girls for most of the day, Sigyn called out, "no, him."

"Why me?" he called back, putting on a perfect fake betrayed face.

"Because you'd probably like it, old man." Before he could do more than turn to face me, I chuckled and added, "when she kissed it better if nothing else." We all laughed a bit at that, even if I had to force mine out after a bit. Dad shifted when he realized, pulling Saffron and I into a hug. It felt good. Felt almost like I wasn't leaking out through a hole. When he let go, the kids were ready to head home. I moved to step away, but he held me back, turning to Marie and Tallulah.

"I'll need to keep Tabitha here for a bit." He nodded to Sigyn.

"Can you go back with them and help them in Tabitha's stead?" Yeah, Sigyn can take a hint and run with it.

"Certainly, Husband." She brought the kids around for hugs and kisses, because they sorta assumed I'd be here for a while. I mean, they weren't wrong. When they'd gone, I slumped. Then hopped up to plant my butt on Dad's table, because standing seemed like too much effort.

"Okay. Hit me with the Bad News." He shook his head.

"I wish I could properly do so."

"Huh?"

"I can tell you that your Soul is presently beyond my ability to Heal." That simple statement chilled me to my core. I wasn't sure whether to be thrilled or horrified as that fear and tension leaked out as fast as everything else beyond a certain point seemed to.

"What can you tell me?"

"Us." Saffron's statement brooked no argument. I pulled her to me, slipping my legs around her, hooking my ankles under her breasts, leaning forward to rest my chest against the back of her head, my face half covered by her hair.

"Us." He nodded.

"I asked Archmage Aetos-Diaz to remain for just that reason." When both of us nodded at his acknowledgement of her expertise, he continued.

"There are several layers of damage to your Soul, some of them partially healed, then reinjured." He paused, then shook his head.

"No, not 'layers'. Several injuries of varying types and intensity. Not only that, but one of those injuries is so intense, so massive, that it has revealed underlying... I'm not even sure whether to call it 'damage' or... Please do not take this as a condemnation, Daughter, but 'inherent flaws'." A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. I sighed, but even my self-loathing seemed to drain out of me.

"Fuck. So what you're saying is that there was something wrong with me from the start?" He shrugged.

"None of us are perfect. Few of us come into this world perfect, and none of us remain so." He sighed.

"Few of us, at least. Baldur..." Desperate to not think about how fucked I was, I jumped on his inadvertent confession.

"What about him?"

"I suspect his, let's call it 'fatal flaw' was in fact his lack of flaws."

"How is a lack of flaws a flaw?" He pursed his lips, and I felt his Blend wrap around us all.

"We treat perilously close to matters I am sworn not to speak of, nor confirm nor deny, but..." He trailed off with a huge sigh.

"Burdens weigh heavier the longer and more lonely the burden. Suffice to say that an Heir can be too perfect."

"You mean fuckin' One-Eye..." Saffron's hands slipped up over my mouth. I couldn't see her face, but didn't need to. The 'shut the fuck up, dear' energy flooded the room.

"You were saying, regarding Tabitha?" He nodded.

"Let's focus on that. So you came into this world with flaws. They may have made you easier to injure, or they may have simply directed those injuries along certain channels. I cannot say without divinations better used to determine the nature of your current injuries and how to right them."

"Okay. So I've got handy dandy Soul perforations, and they've got themselves perforated." I paused, suddenly reminded of a memory overlain with the haze I associated with my amnesiac time.

"Wait, maybe those are from when Conrad sliced my Soul up and stretched it out?" Dad shook his head, then shrugged.

"Believe it or not, given what I am seeing, it appears he utilized them. Much as he used your physical scars as spots for his physical knives to flay you without adding to your scarring, he did the same with those Soul 'perforations'. There is evidence that they've been reinforced at some point, at least, and many of your physical scars bear similar marks." I had an additional thought, then berated myself for thinking it, even as I let it slip out of my mouth.

"So maybe he could help sew me back together again?" Both of them turned to stare at me, Saffron twisting around until she looked up at me from between my tits.

"I cannot believe you can say that aloud," Saffron whispered. Before I could reply, she wrapped her arms around me.

"So very brave."

"Yeah, I think blind screaming terror is leaking out of me as fast as everything else."

"Small favors?"

"Yeah." I turned back to Loki.

"So... Underlying fault lines. What else?"

"There is a... I would describe it as 'superficial', but that might make you think it unimportant. You have something similar to what unprotected exposure to noonday summer sun might bring, if you were foolish enough to venture out after you'd already burned to the point where it pained you." Saffron's head thumped into my chest. I looked down at the top of her head.

"Kitten?"

"The children. The boy and girl."

"What about 'em?"

"They've slept near you every night since they arrived. Ofttimes curled up against you." I nodded.

"Yeah. They're kids, they need some kind of somebody to protect them. What about it?" She chuckled, a sound full of rue and self-recrimination.

"You saw what contact with them did to Maze?" It took me a second. Weird, I'd never realized there was an emotion connected to thinking I'm an idiot.

"I cuddled up to a UV light." Dad looked a little confused, but I'd told Saffron about UV when we were sunbathing.

"Something like, yes." She turned to Loki.

"What your Daughter has not yet told you is that your newest adopted Grandchildren were forcibly fed Cold Iron dust by Spartans." I hadn't seen Dad mad very often. Good thing I wasn't really able to be scared enough to piss myself right now. Instead I guess I just pissed fear out that metaphoric hole in me.

"Where. Are. They." I felt Saffron's lips twist.

"Tabitha killed most of that batch. Our Heroes and Marie did for the rest. As for the Expedition's commander, who I suspect planned that atrocity?" At Loki's growl, she said, "He led four dozen Spartans to attack the New Year's Revel. Their heads adorn the Temple of Storms. Their intermingled arms, legs, and torsos are being rendered for soap."

"Soap?" She shrugged.

"The Clergy of Taranis requested it, as you left quite a mess. The Alliance claimed any remaining usable steel, the Temple of Love has claimed any precious metals. It seemed fair to give Taranis his due as host to the execution."

"Taranis?"

"Dan Storm God. Thor has been out of contact with his Worshippers since shortly after your altercation with Diana when she was Artemis, and despite his recent return has left the Clergy of Taranis in charge." She paused, confusion clear on her features.

"Funny. Most of the Big Seven have at least three Deities with Clergy there. One Dan, one Norse, one Greek." I grabbed at her hair with my tiniest tentacle, turning her to face me.

"There is no war in Ba Sing Se." Smart woman that she is, my Kitten picked up what I was putting down immediately. Okay, she stopped trying to figure out what was bothering her, but my feet, down near her fun bits, got a wash of humid heat.

"When you are well enough to appreciate it..." She Grinned at me.

"Or no. You did request anything of that nature and magnitude to be added to your Ledger, did you not?" As Dad tried to act like he hadn't heard or understood and I experienced a draining flood of ultimate scarousal, she murmured.

"I'm going to be so sore. Yet I remember the wise words of my Goddess when she said, 'Fuck it. Worth'."

"If the two of you are quite done? Unless you were about to fornicate on my table?" One choked off cuss word later, his broad finger atop her head to stop her from climbing up and straddling me right there, then his thumb slipping under her butt where she almost dropped to her knees, he half laughed, "please, Archmage, I will let you take the table home if you must, but for right now I need to discuss the worst injury to your Wife's Soul."

Instantly sober, Saffron closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then let it out.

"Forgive me, Lord. Your daughter intoxicates me." Loki chuckled as he said, "as my wife would say is right and good and proper, but there is a time and a place for everything. May I continue?" At Saffron's nod, he went quiet, then looked at me.

"Daughter?"

"Yeah, Dad?"

"Have you attempted to... Harm yourself?"

"Uh..."

"Specifically... I know we discussed the potential use of Archmage Aetos-Diaz' new Status Spell as a weapon." I remembered. I remembered, and slumped, and sighed out, "Oh, fuck."

"Whe..." Saffron cut herself off.

"Your time in seclusion."

"Yeah. My pissy fit where I hid at the bottom of the ocean." Weird, that self-recrimination sloshing out as fast as anything else.

"Yeah. Yeah, I tried. I couldn't though. Couldn't fuckin' do it. I wasn't strong enough." Loki sighed.

"Even if you cannot heft a hammer large enough to smash your head open, it might very well be enough to shatter a finger, or even to crack your skull."

"Motherfucker." I'd screamed the word so often, it hit different as an almost sigh. My lips quirked up when Saffron said, "later, dear. You'll have your choice of four."

"Siobhan decanted?!?" She shook her head.

"No, but I suspect by the time you're fully healed she will have." I buried my face in Saffron's hair. I can't believe you're taking this so calmly.

"It happened months ago. I suspect any panic and grief I might have had passed by then. Oh, they may hit me again, but right now we need to fix what's wrong." She turned to Loki.

"So, underlying faults, Cold Iron burns, and self-negation?" He shook his head.

"One other thing, and I suspect it lies at the feet of the Spartans as well. Tabitha's back, from here," he touched me in the middle of my back, "down to her ankles is... It seems almost like it was cooked."

"I think I'd have felt that." He shook his head.

"Not with those burns we described. This is different. Almost... Almost as if someone had managed to force Cold Iron dust into your skin."

"Pfft. That would go away when I... Translocated. Shit, that would burn like fuck." He shrugged.

"If it was in small enough doses, which it might have been, you'd have..." He trailed off as Saffron started thumping her head into my chest.

"What's wrong, Kitten?"

"When you cleaned the Bath?" I realized what she was gonna say before she said it, and wound up once again glad that my self-deprecation drained out of me as fast as it came in.

"Did you use a tentacle to hold the magnet in the water, or did you stand in the water and," her voice lowered to a frustrated, yet somehow amused hiss, "let it pull the Cold Iron behind you through you?"

"Uh..." She shook her head.

"I think we have our answer." Loki nodded, and I appreciated Dad's effort in keeping his amusement internal. I could still feel it though. I think they needed the amusement about me accidentally giving myself repeated Cold Iron tattoos then subsequently detonating them to erase the secondhand horror they felt at me trying to off myself. Which, thinking about it now, felt like the fuckin' stupidest thing I'd ever done, even if it seemed to make sense at the time.

"So what do we do now?" Saffron turned to Dad, who tilted his head.

"I don't think she's in any condition for realignment to help. But the Smite Spell might." She frowned the tiniest bit.

"You know how to make that Shape, Lord."

"Yet despite your claims to my Shaping Skill being high enough to become an Archmage, I am not one. I am nowhere near a Legendary Archmage."

"But as an Elder God you've the Mana to make up for that." He nodded.

"Yes, and neither of us working alone will do more than superficially reduce Tabitha's discomfort."

"You'd trust me with access to your Mana?" He smiled down at her, then reached down and rustled her hair.

"I trust you with my beloved Daughter. Why wouldn't I?" She frowned, her mind already racing.

"One large, intricate Smite, or repeated smaller ones, do you think?"

"Shall we begin with the latter and try the former if they fail?" I realized then that Dad had been playing devil's advocate.

"No. No, I think we make the largest we can, then do so repeatedly. Each will be successively smaller, as we'll be fatigued, but we'll continue until we can't perceive improvement after our delivery." He nodded.

"Let it be so." Time flows oddly in Loki's cave. Their first Smite still hit me after hours of them preparing. An eternity of my Kitten weaving Dad's Mana into something so intricate I couldn't make out the patterns, and powerful enough I could try to do so. It didn't wash over me, or surge through me, it enveloped me and sank into me, a burning sensation of relief not unlike those herbal lidocaine rubs from back in the day. I wound up a bit of a puddle on dad's table after that first one.

By the time the second one hit, there were kids around again, this time with Siobhan in the room, and I might have felt a little noodly. Nobody commented, and the kids and ladies still came up to hug me and kiss me as I lay there and tried unsuccessfully not to drool. The kids got a whole day of play that, like so much else here at Grandad's place, wound up over in an instant after lasting forever. I got hit with successively smaller Smites. I'm not sure how many. Lost the ability to count.

Didn't lose the ability to make happy Tabitha rumbles when Saffron, tired after a day of Smiting me, snuggled up next to me and went to sleep.