Dear Diary,

"Children are the keys of paradise."

- Eric Hoffer

Y'know, that may be one of the biggest changes in me since I got to the here and now. I still remember meeting Isnomi. As much as being introduced to a stinky little blob of drool and hunger and shit could be considered 'meeting' someone. Yeah, totally cute, and I can't say I ever really disliked her, but at that point I really had no particular, y'know, desire to have a kid. Yeah, she grew on me, and by the Autumn Equinox I totally hit the 'kill or die' point for her, as Artemis can attest to, but I definitely didn't go into that relationship with the idea of 'oh, hell yes'.

A year down the road, and I'm not only ever more fascinated by our kids and satisfied when I manage to get the parenting thing right, whether that's the Mom thing I vaguely expected or the Dad thing a certain Horse Girl seems to want to foist on me, but I'm actually wanting more. Not just the biological imperative to spawn, or the Jolie-esque desire to catch-'em-all the orphans like Pokemon, or even that weird but real need to look at somebody with genes obviously mix and matched between me and one of my wives, either. Like, that last one really freaks me out; not just the idea of putting a baby in someone, or them putting one in me, but the fact that some little part of me lights up and screams 'yes' when I think about it, even as I'm freaking out.

By any logical standard I shouldn't feel this way. Parenting is hard work. Cleaning up shitty diapers and puke and skinned knees and all the crap kids can find to get into when you unleash them on the world. Not that we've had a whole lot of that, what with most of ours being potty trained, healthy, and playing indoors, but even still we gotta wash each of them every day, settle minor bickering, engage with them on their level, all that good shit. And I am temperamentally suited to none of that. Okay, maybe the 'meet them on their level', since my inner moppet seems to be alive and well despite everything life has done to smother that bitch to death. But somehow, even when right in the middle of the worst of it some part of me wants to tear her hair out, I still feel like it's not only the most important thing I'll ever do, it's also the most rewarding thing I've ever done.

The absolute tsunami of Happy Brain Chemicals that hits when I get that shit right and one of them does some cute affectionate thing probably doesn't hurt, either.

So yesterday after visiting Loki a day early for my weekly Soul Realignment, because I'd definitely put more miles on the chassis than normal, he stood me up and turned me back and forth, examining me with a critical eye. Unlike normally, I still ached pretty bad, and not in a post-workout, post-rubdown kind of way either. He frowned, then Shaped a Spell I'd become intimately familiar with. After getting bonked with a Deific Smite, my entire torso still ached, but I couldn't bring myself to give too many fucks about it. Then mint washed through my torso and I shuddered away the remaining pain.

"You haven't receive any Healing since that fight, have you?"

I thought about it for a minute. "Uh, I think Saffron hit me with a little one. Wait, two. But, like, real little. Scraped knee little."

"Why?"

I shrugged. "She pinched my nipple and it hurt and made me twitch and that hurt too."

He flopped his face forward, eyes closing, obviously wanting to facepalm but lacking the energy to lift his hand. "No, I meant why didn't you get Healing?"

"Uh... doesn't work on Soul damage, does it?"

"Well, no, no it does not, but was one of your Co-Located selves hurt badly when you collapsed into yourself?"

I thought about Darth Dipshit stepping on me. At the time the sound of crackling ribs hadn't seemed very loud, but my eardrums might have been a little crisp from dollar store Dresden's Miasma lightning. "Uh... little bit?"

"A little bit."

"I mean, definitely some cracked ribs. Maybe some broken ones. I hadn't started spitting up blood yet, but I think it was on the table as an option. Little bit of electrocution. Wait, would Miasma lightning do electrocution? Would it be actual electricity, or anti-electricity? Isn't electricity, like, just a flow of electrons, so direction doesn't matter? Sure as shit wouldn't be a flow of protons, or I'd have been more 'oh, shit, tiny nuclear explosions' rather than 'oh, shit, spontaneous muscle convulsions'. Flow of positrons is right out, or Calverton would be a glowing hole in the ground."

I sort of petered out as Loki raised eyebrow. When I went fully silent, he asked, "are you done?" I nodded. "So normally minor injuries become less minor, and even major ones become minor, but if you've taken mortal wounds and simply not died yet? While collapsing into yourself with those kinds of injuries causes far less Soul damage than simply dying, the trauma can still carry over."

"Well. Shit. Would have been good to know."

He shook his head, sighing. "Forgive me, Daughter. Given the number of injuries and deaths you've accrued, I thought perhaps you had figured it out from experience."

I hopped up and down a bit, stretched, and said, "nah. you're good. I probably should have. Hell, maybe I did, but collapsed back into myself with some brain damage and forgot or some shit like that." I stepped up, gave him a big old hug, maybe sorta deliberately squishing back and forth to troll him a little, then hopped off the table. "Thanks, Dad!"

He nodded as Sigyn lifted the table away to the side of the cave where it lived when they didn't need it near Loki's bed. As I stepped away, I heard the distinctive sound of cracking knuckles.

As I helped the kids with the potty, able to play around with them while doing so for the first time in a week, Loki's voice trickled into my head. I find myself needing to thank you, Daughter.

Wha? Didn't I tell Mom, AKA your own personal jailer and torturer, to punch you in the nuts?

Ah, but my loving wife is the Goddess of Marital Devotion, and you failed to specify that she not kiss it better afterward.

Argh! Argh! Brain bleach! I did not need to know this!

I consider it completely fair play after you ordered Sigyn to punch me even as I healed you.

I sighed. Yeah. Yeah, I kinda deserve that. Sorry. I wasn't feeling well.

I'm aware. Still, all's well that... ends well, yes?

Thanks. Boss. You're. The. Best.

I know.

I definitely felt better, and the kids could tell. We all bundled into bed in the bedroom, the kids' smiling faces warming someplace in my chest. Okay, 'the bed' being the mattress and piles of pillows we'd spread around the floor. I recognized a few of the bolsters and heavier pillows as copies of things from the new and improved bed in the Love Shack, and raised an eyebrow as I gently bonked Marie with one as we snuggled in. She shrugged and mlemmed at me. I just laughed and murmured, "they are good pillows, aren't they?"

As we lay there, Saffron thought, my Goddess?

Yeah?

May your Clergy Worship you tonight?

After a moment of frantic fevered imaginings of going at it all night long without massive internal injuries, I realized they were talking about Her Dark Fatassness when Saffron and Marie both snickered at me. Yeah, sure. Just... be spontaneous? Silly? Anything random and chaotic and not regimented, please.

As our Goddess commands.

Mimic dreamt of being cream pied. Like, the literal old school clown gag. Little cream tarts from the chibi beans. Regular ones from chibi chef Saffron. Fuckin' huge ones bigger than Marie yeeted overhand by my favorite tiger lady. Despite the utter mess they made of the maw, I couldn't bring myself to complain. I'd asked for random, chaotic, and spontaneous, and I sure as fuck didn't expect that.

In the morning I had an extra strong dose of the day after realignment stiffness, but the deep aches and pains had vanished entirely. Well, okay, my scars still ached, but I'd dealt with that so long it just wasn't worth mentioning most of the time. The kids had to do the 'rub themselves against the towel' thing, because my arms weren't up to moving much at all, but I think they could definitely tell the difference between my stiffness today and my pain on previous days. Silly smiles and goofy comments were the order of the day, and once Maze patted herself dry against the towel I held, Marie picked me up and slid me into the tub for Saffron to scrub down. I think she particularly enjoyed how she could just dunk me under the water without worrying about dumb stuff like 'drowning'.

Oh, absolutely, and I intend to fully explore those possibilities when the baths in our new house are finished.

You would say something like that when I'm completely incapable of responding, wouldn't you?

She just laughed and dunked me again. I discovered that even when you're immune to drowning, bath water still stings the eyes and tastes kinda nasty, especially after the entire horde hoard had gone through it.

Breakfast was waffles, and I delegated my Saffron feeding to Daya and David while Maze and Menace politely took turns stuffing sausages in my mouth.

With breakfast over, Marie picked me up and carried me to my duty stations for the day. One of me she placed gently on our Academy bed, delivering Maze a few moments later. Horse Girl pranced off to collect I Shall Wear Midnight and returned to my lap to read. Another of me she propped against the mast, handed me my binoculars, banished my uniform, and proceeded to dress me in The Dress and her boots in the slowest, gentlest, carefullest way possible. I'm sure she had no intent to put on a show for the sailors cheering below, and the Worship trickling up might have had a certain flavor to it, but fuck it did a good job of eroding the stiffness in me; maybe it just dispersed it in penny packets to all of them or something. Finally, she stood me in front of the bed, crinkled her nose at me, and poked me right between the tits with one finger, banishing my uniform as she did so. I toppled backward and landed in an absolutely undignified heap, my back arched with my toes on the ground.

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Saffron arrived right about then, and Marie banished her clothes in passing as she prowled over to the divan and settled in with some knitting she pulled out. Weirdest parallel play I'd ever heard of, but with 'do as you will' in full effect I wasn't gonna bitch. Saffron stretched, doing that 'one arm behind her head, hand on her bicep, the other arm straight up in the air' thing as she summoned up Glowing Midnight's garters and stockings. Then she switched arms and summoned up her boots. Then she stretched backward, then forward, asking, "like this?" then adding in Glowing Midnight's corsetry and asking, "or like this?"

A few seconds later my poor overloaded goof brain managed to parse the question. "Dealer's choice?"

She laughed, then tapped at her teeth. "I know you like to watch them, and I like to watch you watch them, but," she shifted them around a little. "I really do appreciate the support." She looked down at me where I lay more or less helplessly arched before her. "I don't suppose you're up to supporting them today?"

I pouted a little. "No."

"Pity. I like your hands." She stepped to the end of the bed, then leaned forward until the rough outer material of her corset brushed against my nips, drawing a hiss out of me. "So. I think I'll be working on Skills today, since I have such an appreciative audience and subject."

My eyes tried to flutter shut as she slid up me, but I forced them to stay open so I could watch the magnificent view in the mirror of everything below her corset. "So. Uh. Boy me or girl me? Which Skill are you working on?"

A throaty chuckle vibrated the fabric of her corset against me, and she breathed into my ear, "Seventeen."

Yeah, I really, really, really tried to keep my focus on scanning for flags and listening to Maze, but holy shit a Skill of sixteen was a hell of a distraction. Some time early in the morning a yellow flag rose over Swanson's Command building, so I looked up at sweaty smug Saffron and said, "quick breather? I gotta see what's up with Swanson."

She went mostly still, leaned forward until she lay atop me with her breath warming my neck and said, "Of course... not. Deal."

I kinda toppled from the mast to lean against the map table, and if I maybe looked a little spaced out, I think the command staff in the room preferred that to me looking ready to tear some of them extraneous orifices. "Saw the flag. What's up?"

Weyson looked up from where he'd been adjusting the little figures on the map. Ours looked like he'd gotten them more or less into the right places, and if the Undead were mostly piled back at the far end of the table, a line of them on the far side of the 'front' showed where we'd spotted the next ones we'd face. At a glance, it looked to be about a day into the city proper, which meant we ought to hit it maybe tomorrow. "Majesty. Something came up in discussion this morning, and none of us could think of a solution, so..."

I shrugged. Well, sorta. Twitched in a shruggerly direction. "No worries. Always good to ask when you hit a dead end."

He nodded. "Our signaling. We chose it based on simplicity, but we also chose it with the sure and certain yet now seemingly incorrect idea that the Undead were simply monstrous beasts, or at worst capable of..."

He petered off, and I twitched my head in something like a nod, then took a moment in what I really hoped he thought was thought, because it was absolutely a rapturous moment of non-thought. When my memory cleared, words from back in ROTC at Eastside filtered through my sudden clarity. "Okay, yeah. Opsec. We need opsec."

"Pardon, Majesty?"

I took a deep breath. "Yeah, it's... complicated. Tell you what, For right now see if anybody in the command staff knows anything about ciphers. Maybe talk with Admiral Pesce or some of the Navy guys about semaphore." At his blank look, I said, "flag signals."

"But... we have those?"

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, and I'm sure the navy guys only ever need to stay 'stop', 'wait', and 'go', right?" Right about then I realized that along with massive constant endorphin injections, Kitten and Murder Mittens had been surreptitiously slipping me some Worship along with everything else. I wasn't in any pain, but I definitely wanted to delegate this very much not in my wheelhouse shit and get back to being Saffron's smash test dummy.

Fortunately, Weyson apparently hadn't gotten too much brain damage from frequent communion with 'four equals eight' One-Eye. "I see. I'll send for..."

I shook my head, realizing that I could, in fact, shake it with little more than a bit of stiffness. Worship rocks. "Go there. Anybody who needs to meet about how we communicate does it inside the hull of the Black Dragon." I saw the question in his eyes, and answered, "if her hull isn't Scry proof, blessed little is. Operational security. Information security. Big brain stuff." I shot him a self-deprecating smile and said, "so totally not my thing, but I'll talk with the Imperator and have her come around and explain..."

At that point the me on the mast caught sight of not one, but two red flares, one red flag, a yellow flag and flare, and a green flag ripped in half and being waved upside down by a dude standing on a steep, high roof hanging from what looked almost like a steeple. All of me whispered, "oh, shit."

I stepped straight to mister fucked up green flag, adrenaline banishing the last of my stiffness as it chilled me and filled my mouth with the taste of old pennies and piss. "What's up, troop?" I asked as my feet hit the tiles of the roof and I grabbed his flag arm for a little extra stability.

He stared at me, eyes panicked, face green. After his mouth worked twice without anything but croaks coming out, he pulled my arm around so he could point at the ground, losing his grip on his flag as he did. It fluttered to the ground as I looked to see another big drydock. No Undead in the area around it, although every trooper I saw had completely lost their shit. Some knelt, either in prayer or weeping with their faces covered. I blinked as I realized I felt something coming from a lot of the praying ones. Others ran back and forth, screaming at each other, screaming at the kneeling troops, screaming at the formations that stood, stock still, staring. A few of them stood, legs apart, hands on knees, vomiting.

Then I noticed a single small figure, her red jacket making her distinct even at this distance. I blinked, wondering if I'd misidentified her, then patted the Soldier on the shoulder, pulled his forehead to my lips, and said, "good job," before stepping down next to Potami. She stared, titanium blades of her Soul silent and still, into the drydock. It stank, maybe worse than the Hole Spawn, but definitely different. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed something squirming, but focused for the moment on the petite Hero. "Hero. Report. What are you doing out this far?"

Her titanium Soul ground into motion as she turned haunted eyes toward me. "Imperator's orders. One combat capable Command Officer to remain with the central Undead Killer Unit to coordinate rapid tactical response."

I nodded. Made sense, kinda. I'm a hammer, not a commander. "Okay. Cool. What the fuck has everyone losing their shit?"

She opened her mouth and, for one terrifying second, froze. Then she shuddered, pointed at the deep, wide pit of the drydock and said, "those."

I stepped to the edge of the pit and looked in. For a moment I couldn't quite parse what I saw. Squirming, stinking, gray bodies, distorted somehow...

"No."

A lightless, timeless moment later Domnu stood next to me. "Daught..."

I glared into her eyes from an inch away. "Can you remove Undeath from a Soul?"

I allowed her jaw to move. "I cannot."

"Then leave or be still and silent, or you will not see Time again."

I turned back to the pit, observing the frozen flickers of corrupted Souls. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Tiny souls. Barely big enough to animate their tiny bodies.

I stared, impotent rage building inside me, until that rage crystallized, hardened. I yanked her back. "Can you remove a Soul from a body without harming either?"

"I am not a Psychopomp, Daughter."

The sheer... disinterest in her voice enraged me further, plunged me into a place of frozen flame and deep, implacable hatred. "Begone." I threw her, not caring where she landed. I'd drag her back by the coring tentacles if I needed her.

I stepped out over the pit, descending gently into stench and abomination until my feet hovered inches above them. Above the top. Fucking. Layer. I reached down, lifted a tiny body from the mass, my hands burning where they touched her, the flame of her Undead Soul flickering brighter as it ate at me. I reached in, hand burning, seized her Soul, and pulled her free. Setting her body aside to hover in the lack of time, I cupped my hands around that tiny Soul, shielding her, supporting her, protecting her.

"Smite."

The shriek of that tiny Soul echoed through the timeless hell I stood in. She tried to burn, and I smothered the flames. She tried to shatter, and I held her together. She tried to starve, and I nursed her back to health. When she glowed with the clean, pure light of a Mortal Soul, I pulled her body back and slipped her inside.

"Live."

Her skin glowed with the pink of health, her Soul grabbing at her body with all the strength a child could muster. I pulled her to my breast, cradling her against me.

My eyes scanned the pit, and part of me balked at the sheer magnitude of what I had to do. Another part, redolent with the taste of my Kitten, showed me more problems, and for another timeless moment I despaired. Rage ignited once more, burning despair as it ever ought.

I stood, taking hold of Saffron's upper arms. "Go. Sister Siobhan and every Healer and Doctor you can find. Lancaster House. Now."

She disappeared, a whispered, "Goddess," in her wake.

I turned to Marie. "Maenads. All of them. Lancaster House Courtyard."

She tilted her head. "Maids?"

I met her inquisitive gaze with a glare. "All. Of. Them. NOW!"

She disappeared, and all of me collapsed to the one of me standing in the air above abomination. "Stop."

In silent darkness, I reached into Calverton from three directions. My tentacles burned as each lifted another child free of the pit, free of the stench, free of the frozen mass of bodies. One at a time I gently pulled their Souls free. Coiling around them to keep them from failing, from falling, from fading, I Smited them, pushed them back into their bodies, and bade them to Live. Over and over and over. Ten. A hundred. A thousand and more.

Through it all I burned. I burned, and screamed my pain into the darkness far from Calverton, far from the Alliance, far from the Mortal Realm. I burned, and I did not care. My tiny charges screamed as I Smited them, and I held them until their Souls glowed quietly again.

Exhausted, furious, in agony, I looked into the pit and saw nothing but damp filth lining the bottom. I looked out over the City of Calverton, at the tiny forms of Undead in the distance. Rage roared through me, and I brought a single tentacle down across the City, smashing a line hundreds of feet wide flat from one side of the City to the other. Pinpricks of Undeath burned at me, and I ground them into dust.

I took firm hold of every single one of my tiny charges, stepped to the courtyard outside of Lancaster House, and set them gently on the ground, a few feet separating each of them from the others. They spilled out from the Courtyard into the open field beyond, but I found a safe spot for each of them to rest. I had to shove a few dozen people into the entryway of Lancaster House to do it, but they could fucking deal.

"Go."

I collapsed to the ground, a puppet with my strings cut. I curled around the tiny figure in my arms, taking the fall on my back, on my head, protecting her with my body and limbs. For a moment, silence reigned. Then the air stirred with the sound of a thousand tiny indrawn breaths.

The entire courtyard erupted into the wails of a thousand babies screaming for their mothers.

Groaning, I pushed myself to my knees, Mimicked the Saffron from a year ago, and held the angry squalling infant in my arms to my breast. I looked around the field in despair; I'd taken an eternity to save them all, and now...

The Maenads arrived. They flickered into being, each one escorted by a Marie. First the Maids. Ten, fifty, a hundred, two hundred, I felt Marie pulling Mana from me and collapsed, exhausted, catching myself with one hand, the other holding the little one to my breast. Then she delivered the others. They arrived in pairs, in trios, in dozens. Not one of them, Maid or otherwise, hesitated before snatching up a babe in each arm. Some of them even lay down and pulled more than two to them.

It still wasn't enough. Dozens, maybe hundreds of kids still lay screaming on the pavers, on the lawn.

Then Marie returned. All of her.

My vision wavered as one of her knelt in front of me holding an infant to one breast. She wrapped her other claw around the back of my head and bunted her forehead against mine. "Vlickies."

"Hey, Mittens." I lifted the little one away from my breast, holding her out to Marie. "Can you take her? I think I'm gonna..."

Then everything went black.