Dear Diary,

"No man is free who cannot command himself."

- Pythagoras

Well hell, I guess I'm down for a life of incarceration. Shit, command myself, I can barely get me to do shit by bribing myself with Unlimited Saffronworks. Although I suppose that mental image does kinda help calm me to the point where I can argue with myself rationally about shit.

I have no idea why me being so enthralled with squeaky toys annoyed me so much, but I wound up insisting Saffron do Penance for that, too, specifically telling her to kiss it and make it better. At which point I figured she'd balk, until she told me that apparently along with Pumpkin Pie Spice sweat, I'm more sweet than savory. Sometimes the biological details of my here and now body really bothered me. Like, how? Why? What the fuck? Sweat is a mix of 'cooling', 'identification', and 'communication', with a little bit of waste disposal in there for shits and giggles. No living thing alive sees simple carbs as 'waste'. Then again, the 'communication' part is typically communicating, 'virile and ready to mate' or some shit, so maybe I was just Saffron bait or something.

Which left me really trying not to think about those carnivorous flowers that use sticky sweet sap as lures for their prey.

Left me even less copacetic than normal about the enthusiasm with which chibi Chef Saffron auto-yeeted into Mimic's Maw overnight. Not even going to think about exactly how much Mimic wanted that shit to keep going until no more Saffron remained for yeeting and eating.

Woke up to her curled into me, not an inch of us not in contact with each other. So weird that her butt is squish enough that it just kinda squooshes in between us without keeping her back from pressing into my belly, especially when I know there is definitely muscle under there. I was just glad one of us had enough padding to make that kind of cuddling more cuddly than awkward. Of course, nothing in the world would make extricating ourselves from that position less than a slapstick routine, emphasis on the stick, since all the purring wound up acting like vibration in an icemaker. Nothing but a thin layer of sweat between us, no air, total vacuum seal gluing us together.

Yeah, I ain't even going to complain, what with her heartbeat against my chest being what woke me up. We were so still, so pressed together, that I felt each and every beat like a punctuation of her purring. I wasn't even mad that I didn't get to watch her boot up routine; just got some hair in my face as her tongue quested back and forth taste testing the world. "Good Morning, Love. Did you sleep well?"

"Little disturbing when I dream about shouting, 'do a flip', and you wind up doing one."

She made disappointed Saffron noise, then said, "I thought you liked it."

"Mimic did. I... jury's still out. Taste, mouth feel, splatter factor, all eleven out of ten, would do again. Little disturbing swallowing your splattery remains though."

She wriggled back into me, and my libido immediately sided with Mimic. "I've told you, love, I am obedient to your wishes. You receive no more than I can safely give. But that which I can give? I give not only freely and gladly, but I attempt to do so in as pleasant a manner as possible for My Goddess."

I nodded, pulling her to me. Okay, squishing her to me, what with it not possible for her to get any closer to me without literally getting inside my skin. "Yeah," I sighed. "I get the whole Metaphoric Space, and Worship being the true food of the Gods, so Mimic is going to see accepting Worship as eating, but I think I might like a different eating metaphor more."

I discovered just then that as physically connected as I was to her, when she spoke with her diaphragm it sent vibrations through both of us. I focused on her voice rather than her words, because they were definitely far more brain twisting. "Ara, ara. How deliciously hentai."

"The fuck did you learn that?"

She purred at me, saying, "I've been looking to your world for information to restore the Black Dragon to full function, and as you told me so long ago, anime is ubiquitous and entertaining."

I snorted. "So you're watching anime rather than researching?"

Suddenly I had a Saffron squished between me and the Marie behind me, filling in every gap with just the right consistency of girl before both of her chorused. "I can do both."

Of course Murphy is still the ultimate ruler of the universe, because when I tried to wriggle back into her and get the same kind of Saffron laminate I had on the front, not only did the air squeeze out from between us with a sound like Skasn farting, my lower back and ass both seized up painfully. "Ah, shit."

"Love?"

"Think I need Loki to look at realigning me today. No idea why, but shit's not behaving. Can you maybe fill in for me on lookout in Calverton today?"

Saffron collapsed back into the one of her glued to my front and said, "of course, love."

I had an awful thought and said, "don't go charging in like I would."

She chuckled. "So... fill in for you without doing anything you would?"

That got me. "Yeah, I guess. Thanks." At that point I tried to slide back away in preparation for getting up, only to have her slide back with me, what with the whole 'stuck together by vacuum seal' thing. "Uh, Marie? Little help?"

She snickered, grabbed the two of us, and Co-Located the three of us to the Love Shack. "Freeze."

We both did as instructed, figuring she knew what she was doing. She slipped her fingertips between our shoulders, then pulled us apart excruciatingly slowly. Like, I got it near immediately, she's strong enough she could have just ripped us apart, but along with potential actual damage to delicate bits, each bit of us that pulled apart wound up feeling... just feeling. Like every bit of physical sensation possible in each tiny bit of us that slipped apart. I completely lost track of reality mid-torso, and the anticipation combined with her jerking us apart just a little abruptly at the end wound up making my brain go on the fritz.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Okay, which of you two squeaked." Both of them laughed. "No." Both of them nodded, trying to avoid losing it entirely. "Oh, fuck me."

The two of them looked at each other, Saffron collapsed the three of us in the bedroom into the Love Shack, then Co-Located us back a moment later. While those three got up and started dressing for the day, Saffron turned to Marie and said, "I believe our Goddess has commanded us."

"Yes."

"But we'd best hurry, since she needs her mentor's healing soon."

"Yes."

"Y'know, guys, I'm right here." Both of them turned to look at me, and I couldn't help it. I put my hands to my cheeks and squeaked out, "oh, no, I'm in danger!"

Hilarity ensued. Pro tip: if you can't have hilarity in your antics, you're doing it wrong.

By the time we finished breakfast, I was sure some Co-Location shenanigans occurred with syrup-soaked corn cakes. I mean, I couldn't prove it in a court of law, but I blame Saffron for that, since she ate all the evidence.

Saffron carried us all to Loki's cave, where she apologized immediately. "I'd love to stay, but I'll be filling in for Tabitha in Calverton, and I'd best be fully focused on that."

Loki tilted his head. "Not the Council?"

Saffron snorted. "I've had months of practice dealing with them. With the Undead? Not so much." Then she kissed us all good bye and was gone.

That set off a cascade of bad feels it took me a little to even identify. "Oh, shit. I think the last time she Translocated away from me into a war zone was the Battle of the Walls."

As Loki gently lifted me and set me face down on his table he took a deep breath and said, "oh, shit, indeed."

He went to work on my lower back, gently prodding and shifting things I couldn't see. "It's been, what, half a year since then? With everything that's happened, why the fuck am I tensing up about that shit now?"

As he worked up and down my back, moving from my shoulders down to my knees and back, he said, "you aren't a machine, or a tool. You're a person. When something is broken, it is not enough to put it back in place, it needs support until healing has taken hold, then gentle care, proper retraining, and often additional healing. Did you ever talk that through with anyone? What happened? What it felt like?"

"I mean, why would I need to? Pretty fucking clear. I thought they killed my wife, I lost my shit, they all fuckin' died."

"As did so, so many of you."

I snorted. "I'm still here though." My next words leaked out almost like they'd been forced by the pressure of his hands on my back. "Not like so many of the poor fuckin' Levies I executed."

"See? You still carry that guilt, even though by now you have, at least consciously, admitted it is groundless. All any of us can do is the best we know to do at the time."

"I wasn't doing that though. I didn't want justice, or right, or good. I wanted to kill bitches. To hurt them like they'd hurt me."

I saw him nod out of the corner of my eye. "Vengeance is out of vogue in the world of your birth, and I will admit it can lead to endless cycles of violence, but in this case? Your actions on that day and the days after have led to a time of unprecedented peace."

"The fuck? I'm presently commander of a fuckin' Army assaulting a City. Not exactly peaceful."

"It is violent, but it is not war. Not as so many have thought of it so far." He paused, and when he spoke again a touch of wonder colored his voice. "You're actually doing it. A war to end wars." Before I could interrupt he said, "yes, yes, I know, every conqueror thinks that's what they're doing, and at least in part the fact that you don't is why you've a chance of succeeding. You didn't go to war to end wars, you went to war to avenge your lost love. You didn't go to war to silence a threat, you executed criminals and con men. You didn't go to war to conquer a kingdom, you dueled some nobles to steal their Navy. You didn't go to war to conquer Calverton, you went to war to free your people's homes from an Undead infestation. You are, as I said, just doing the next 'best thing you can do'."

"Yeah. Don't know whether it's more unpleasant that 'the best thing I can do' is murdering bitches..."

I ignored how he slapped my ass and said, "no!"

"Or that I enjoy it so much."

Steel in his voice, he took hold of me, one hand wrapped around my torso, the other around my thighs. "Daughter, you will cease that at once. In every case you have done what you felt was the best thing you could do, and in your wake you left tyrants deposed, dead, and outright destroyed."

"Getting off crushing Ericson's skull was really the 'best thing I could do'?"

He lifted me off the table, turning me to look at him as I folded my arms under me. "Contractor. Horse. Sleipnir. No one says we can't enjoy the tasks fate hands us. Besides..." He started laughing.

"What?"

"You look more mulish than your daughter."

That got me. I snorted, then started laughing. He put me down and went back to work. He'd moved on to the 'maul things to get them malleable stage', which left me kinda impressed with myself, since I could still talk. "Okay, yeah, I guess I'm being stubborn. But... where do I draw the fuckin' line? At what point do I say 'oh, shit, I crossed a line, and somebody needs to put me down?"

"If you can still see that? You're not to the point you need to be 'put down'. You simply need to find someone you trust to talk to, to talk things out with."

"How do I know you guys aren't just telling me what I want to hear? Or that I haven't intimidated you into submission?"

He thought about that while he mauled me, and eventually said, "I can't believe I'm saying this, but there is one sworn to you who, should you tell him bald truth is a son's duty, will not lie to you. I doubt he is prone to being intimidated."

I snorted again. "Shit, Menace intimidated him. How hard can it be?"

He went still. "Child?"

"Yeah, dad?"

"My Granddaughter intimidated The Smith?"

I nodded. "I thought I told you about that?"

"I must have missed it. Well. Perhaps then the two of them together. Him to know the truth, her to be brave enough to tell it."

That kinda shut me up for a while. Not just the idea, which sounded stupidly simple, the kind of thing a five year old wouldn't see flaws in, while also just sounding stupid. Moral Compass adjustment by a one year old and a sociopath. I thought about that for a moment, for hours, for all the time that flowed oddly in Loki's cave.

"I loathe fixing the damage done by Undead."

"Whut?"

"It's more harmful than death, frankly. You'll be in sad shape tomorrow. Nothing localized, but you'd best be prepared to be a figurehead. Perhaps literally."

I nodded. "More harmful than death?"

"Yes. I'm sure you've felt the pain when one of your Co-Located selves die?"

"Yeah, that shit stings."

He chuckled. "Stings. Understatement. That is damage directly to your Soul. To the core of it."

"Huh. I'll keep that in mind. So... I'm fixed up?"

He set me on my feet, The Dress flowing around me as he did. "To the best of my ability. Do try to stay out of the Miasma. Deities are particularly susceptible to it."

"Now you tell me!"

He laughed. "Oh, it's not that we die faster than Mortals would, but it is, what's that term? A vulnerability we have. You, I, your daughter, your mothers, we are all of us Souls made manifest."

"The fuck? How's that work?"

He just shook his head. "As clever and knowledgeable as I am, I doubt I could explain the details. Fortunately for your curiosity, I suspect your wife might know more than I by this point. Perhaps you should ask her?"

I rolled my shoulders and held my hands out to Marie and Menace, who came over to me after making their farewells. "Yeah. Think I might do that."

A quick round of hugs, and I hopped us back to the office in our suite, where Saffron sat coding. "Hey honey, we're home!"

My heart kinda melted when I saw the frown she'd been shooting one of her coding screens melt as she turned to look at me. Without a word she was in my arms, snuggled in beneath my chin, Menace between us, Marie slipping her arms around us.

Fuck it. Maybe I'm a monster. Maybe I'm such a big monster I make all the other monsters think it's time to take their balls and go home, or straighten up and fly right or whatever the fuck they're gonna do.

Because that? That right there? To protect the moments like that one?

I will absolutely be the biggest, baddest monster the fuckin' world has ever seen.