Chapter 190
The seeds of gluttony inside the flesh abomination called to him, but they might as well have been whispers on the wind - the last thing on Riven’s mind.
Because standing there next to the large eviscerated corpse… was Athela. Staring back at him with a vulnerable, almost sheepish glance before her eyes hit the ground.
It was really her. How had he not known she’d come back?
He'd choked back his emotions upon first seeing her to maintain a clear head, masked them with anger during the fight, but now that things were calmer…
Riven began to step forward, slowly at first but with increasing speed. He threw Jackal to the side as it warped into its canine form, and his helmet was peeled back and flung off his face to hang from the bloodsilk bindings along the back of his neck.
Riftwalking through a portal and coming within ten yards of her, he stopped dead on to stare at Athela with wide, wet eyes.
“Uhm… Hey, Riven.” Athela meekly said, hands nervously clasped in front of her, eyes searching his face for clues on what he was feeling. “I…”
He broke into a run - crashing into Athela with a muffled sob as he gripped her tightly, eyes shut in a futile attempt to block out tears, his entire body shaking with both arms wrapped around her lithe smaller frame. His voice only came out as a whisper. “Back in the City of Canyons, I thought I’d lost you forever. Athela, I missed you so, so much… I’m… I’m glad to have you back.”
Athela didn’t reply, but she pursed her lips into a tight line, eyes squinting with unbidden tears coming to her as well. Burying her face in his chest and clinging to him with her arms around his torso - she let out a long, high pitched, drawn out whimper that lasted for a couple seconds before beginning to quietly sob.
Allie watched silently from atop her large skeletal drake, standing guard over them with a warm half-smile across her lips - though she didn’t know how Fay was going to feel about how intense and raw the emotion during this reunion really was. Where was Fay anyways? Allie felt like she needed to leave to give them some space, but with three or more shards of Gluttony within the corpse underneath her draconic mount - as well as the enormous pile of Elysium coins and the glowing dao treasure that’d appeared as event prizes for Athela’s victory, Allie just couldn’t bring herself to leave. She knew that given their reunion, it was very unlikely that either of them would realize it if someone came up and started stealing under their very noses. They’d simply be too invested in each other to care, so it was now up to her to make sure these treasures remained guarded until Riven and Athela got their heads on straight.
“Riven…” Athela said with a quivering voice, sniffling and keeping her head against his chest as they embraced. “I need to talk to you. I have an admission to make, and I also did something bad… but I don’t regret it. And I need you to know why I did it, which may have something to do with the original admission. You might be mad at me.”
Riven shook his head, holding onto her for dear life - arms tightly wrapped around her. “There’s nothing you could have done that I wouldn’t forgive you for. I’m just happy to have you here with me.”
Athela paused, letting the words sink in as the feelings of happy butterflies and wavering dread intermixed. She didn’t want this moment to end, but she peeled out of his grasp to stand a foot away - still holding him by the hands. “Promise me?”
Riven raised an eyebrow, then chuckled. “Of course, silly. I promise.”
Another pause was taken before Athela gained the courage to go through with what she was about to do, with a deep inhale and slow exhale. “Alright. Close your eyes.”
Riven wiped away a tear with a happy but confused smile, cocking his head to the side with red eyes staring into her own. “Close my eyes? That’s an odd request. Weren’t you going to tell me something?”
“Just do it, idiot!” Athela meekly replied in a soft, wavering voice. She crossed her long, slender, pitch-black legs; avoiding his gaze for a moment before giving him a pleading look. “I have to tell you with your eyes closed. Please trust me.”
The sound of explosions echoed in the distant city, but neither of them turned to look.
Riven blinked just once, sighed with a gentle smile, and did as she asked. He felt Athela’s hands let go of his own, and then felt her arms gracefully glide around his neck before the warm press of her lips met his.
Up on her tiptoes, pulling him in, she held the kiss for a long, long time before letting go. “I love you, Riven.”
***
“THAT WRETCHED BITCH!” Fay flung a vase to shatter across the wall in the Sojavi Clan’s nether realm, then screamed at one of the lower class members of their large family to get out before slumping down into a huddling position to sob against a stone wall - head in her hands.
Fay’s sister, Nitidi, sat down next to her with a comforting arm laid across her shoulders.
“There is a saying from his homeworld…” Saemi, Fay’s mother stated while sprawled out on a couch with a frown - watching the events on Panu unfold. “All is fair in love and war, I believe it was. She played her cards well.”
“You’re not helping, mother!” Nitidi scolded the older succubus before turning to hug Fay more tightly while the blue skinned succubi continued to occupy the inner library sanctum. “This is not over Fay. You’ll be back and can set things right. She’s just taking advantage of you not being there-”
“Like I did to her!?” Fay spat back, self loathing and venom in her words while still clutching her face - digging her nails into her skin. “DAMN IT! This could NOT have gone worse!”
Saemi frowned at her youngest daughter, giving Fay a once over before loudly sighing. “What exactly did you expect for her to do after she came back? Just roll over and let you take him? You have to fight for what you want, Fay. It is the law of the multiverse, and in the arena of lust and love - you of all people have an advantage. You are a succubus, stop acting like such a spoiled child.”
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Fay looked up to glare at her mother, but Saemi didn’t back down. “This isn’t about competition, mother. This is about how Riven sees me for ME, and not as a SEX OBJECT like all of your previous masters. You wouldn’t understand.”
Fay winced when the clan elder, her mother, snapped forward with her tail to whip Fay across the face. It left a long red mark on one cheek, and the younger succubus immediately went silent.
“You will not talk of my previous masters, little girl.” Saemi stated with gritted teeth, but settled back down on the cushioned couch a moment later with a calming breath. “There were a couple of them that I liked very much. Just because you are hurting, child, doesn’t mean you need to inflict that same emotional pain on others.”
The anger towards her mother immediately simmered down, and Fay glanced up to see there was genuine hurt behind Saemi’s eyes. Fay had struck a nerve, probably a half truth or even a full truth, and she immediately felt guilty. “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you. As you said, I am just… I am not ok.”
Fay’s quivering voice hiccupped, and she tried to let out another calming breath while warm tears streamed down her cheeks. Looking up at the ceiling and wrapping one of her own arms around her silent sister sitting next to her - returning the embrace - Fay let out a wry chuckle. “I suppose I deserve this.”
There was a long pause, and Saemi gave her daughter a sad smile. “Child… you have a long, long ways to go on this road if you ever wish to find success. A minor setback like this is nothing in the grand scale of the true game.”
Fay sniffled. “And what would the true game be, exactly?”
Saemi smiled, but did not answer that question. Instead, she waved her hand to summon the image of The Blood Moon Requiem’s capital city. Gesturing to it, she began to speak. “Did you know that both Riven and Allie are being sold by the high queen as breeding horses?”
Fay sniffled yet again, wiped her eyes, then frowned with furrowed eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that, just like all the ones who have the active gift of Malignant Prophecy, their marriages are being auctioned off to other pureblooded royal houses at a young age. To be wed to the most prominent supporter and highest bidder.” Saemi’s gaze remained fixed on Fay.
When her daughter didn’t reply, only staring back at her in silence, Saemi continued. “To have a better chance at creating more just like them. Simply put, he is property of their high queen. The Blood Moon Requiem has destroyed entire empires and has committed genocides against trillions of people over even a slim chance of letting that gift of prophecy fall into the wrong hands, and in equal measure it seeks to create more users to solidify their station of power in the multiverse. If you really wish to pursue this man and don’t wish to simply find another, perhaps you should consider whether or not you’re able to recognize that you may never have a choice in the matter of being the only woman with him. Even if that’s what he wants, the high queen could and would simply force him into arranged marriages or worse. Bidding for his hand in an official marriage has already reached absurd heights, going as far as offering up three planets and a treasure trove of supreme dao treasures to the crown for the chance at acquiring his genes and house name. The same can be said about Allie, but for her it is even more an unfortunate circumstance. She can only bear one pregnancy at a time, while Riven can have many children at once. This in turn means that the high queen will be less intrusive into your own relationship with the man, while Allie… Allie will likely be prohibited from seeing anyone else at all - aside from the person the high queen picks for her. Be happy that Riven is a man, Fay, because if it’d been Allie you’d fallen in love with and if you were an incubus - there’d be no hope for you whatsoever.”
***
[You have abnormally high amounts of stat points to spend. Be advised that it is in your best interest to invest them soon.]
Riven watched, mind elsewhere, as his shard of Gluttony violently consumed the three other shards one by one out of the monstrous corpse remnants ahead of him. Athela had told him how Fay had betrayed her trust, how Athela had just been hesitant to ruin their friendship by making a move, and how she’d recently killed Fay (temporarily) in order to get some time alone to tell Riven all about what’d happened. To tell Riven how she felt about him.
Fay had originally made it seem like she wasn’t certain of Athela's intentions, yet she’d lied to Riven about that too. Which bothered and angered him. He was also bothered and angered by Athela’s admission about eating and killing Fay, because Fay had already been recently traumatized and was in a fragile state as it was.
To boot he didn’t know what to even think at this point. He was currently dating Fay, but when Athela had admitted how she’d felt about him on the world stage…
He sighed, eyes distant amidst the violent ripping and tearing his own original shard of Gluttony as enduring while feasting on other shards. Funnily enough, the changes mostly didn’t portray itself on his own body - but rather had a true link through the armor and weapon he wore. It was inside his soul, sure - he could even see it there as it connected to the other shards and grew in size; but the stats of his armor and his weapon both increased by leaps and bounds for every other shard consumed - rather than his own body being changed like the harbingers or Athela.
Well, there was one odd change he noted on his body - but it wasn’t anything out of place. Instead of a new arm, a mouth growing out of his chest, or some weird tail extension - he got a tattoo.
It was a sleeve tattoo, covering his entire right shoulder and traveling all the way to his fingertips. There were a couple of stationary Sin-affiliated glyphs along with various Unholy affiliated runes - but most of the pitch black tattoo was actually fluid in motion. Patterns crossed, weaved about one another and shifted randomly all along the inner part of his tattoos borders - and a cold, chilling sensation continued to seep into his bloodstream from the ominous black ink over time.
[You have absorbed 5 Pieces of Gluttony. Mark of the Sinner is under construction.]
Five?
His vision turned inward. He only saw four, all rotating about his Sin Core… until he noticed the faint connection between Athela’s shard in her own soul aperture and his own.
Five it was then.
And if that’s how it was going to work… perhaps he should distribute his pieces across all the minions he had.
Which brought him back to needing to fill his last demonic contract slot, which he still hadn’t done. He’d been waiting this entire time for Athela to get back, wanting her opinion above all others before choosing, but now…
Ugh. He loved Athela, and he was attracted to her, but did he love her the same way she loved him? He’d never thought about it romantically before. Not only that, but what about Fay? He was dating Fay, wasn’t he? How would she react to all this? Did he even want to date her after she’d kept such sensitive information to herself before making a move - knowing it’d hurt Athela?
“That was… somewhat expected.” Allie said softly, standing beside him as helicopter squadrons patrolled the skies overhead. She looked back over her shoulder the way Athela had left, giving Riven the time he needed to compute what had just happened.
‘Take all the time you need, I’ll be waiting. I don’t need an answer now, I just… I just need to know soon.’
That’s what Athela had told him before going, and she’d given him another hopeful kiss before disappearing into the desolated city to find vampires to kill. What did that even mean?
Riven shook his head and let himself fall back onto his ass with a thud, not bothering to catch himself when he sprawled out. Closing his eyes and spreading out his arms, he couldn’t even be bothered to snort. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, Allie. What should I do?”
It was Allie’s turn to sigh, and she plopped down onto the ground beside him - poking at the shifting tattoo on his right arm with mild amounts of curiosity. “Do what feels right. Don’t feel obligated to either of them. Don’t act out of a sense of right or wrong. Just… pick whoever you feel would be best for you. Pick the one who you think will love you the most, the one who you could love the most, and hope that it doesn’t go wrong. And give it your all, because if it fails - you want to make sure that you have no regrets. Other than that, it’s up in the air. I’m no good at this relationship stuff. I had a man harem up until recently, remember? You might be asking the wrong girl.”