The new arrival turned her head slowly and focused her attention on the puppet, unsympathetic eyes narrowing slightly as she once again hummed under her breath in a disbelieving manner. The red hue of her skin extended across her whole body, including the horns that breached her black hair in a gentle curve forward. A shiny black top, loose around her waist and strained at the chest, hung over a smaller form fitting shirt that seemed to accentuate the musculature of her upper body. Casual white pants trailed down her legs and ended at her knees showing shapely calves. Cloven hooves completed the image of the powerful woman as she considered Flynn’s puppet.

“How about you explain, Tamara? I’m not someone you can casually call over, so you better be right about Merriweather. Just because I’m unable to kill you myself doesn’t mean I can’t pull some strings and get you sent off to some desolate place at the edge of space to fight the Void Beasts for a hundred thousand years.” She smiled dangerously at Flynn’s puppet even while threatening Tamara. Her gaze turned to linger on Damascus, studying the way his expression seemed to be getting progressively more dour “...unless… there is some truth to what is being said? Are you… trying to buy my daughter, Damascus?”

“To my knowledge your daughter is deceased, I certainly would have brought it to your attention and collected the rather handsome reward for information,” Damascus said, the sour look on his face making it look like he just bit into something particularly unpleasant.

“That’s not a ‘no’ is it..?” Tamara squeaked from the side, earning a quick blazing look of fury from everyone in the room. She seemed immune to the shade being thrown her way. “Go ahead, tell her that if her daughter is alive you didn’t know, and it’s all Flynn’s fault.”

Damascus hesitated, casting a quick look at Flynn. The puppet turned slightly toward Damascus and stared vacantly at him for a minute. Damascus licked his lips and was clearing his throat when Flynn’s puppet directly cut him off from speaking and turned the Arachne’s head toward the enraged Tiefling with the four meter polearm in the space.

“It seems this is a trap sprung by Tamara. It should be a simple matter to collect her and return her to you, please allow me to go down to the planet and fetch her for you… Assuming she is even really here.”

“Yeah, why don’t you wait here instead of going down yourself, Titania?” Tamara sneered. “Wouldn’t want you to see any unpleasantness. Why, I’ll bet he’ll come back and say that good ol’ Tamara made it all up, and he has no idea where your daughter could be. If I were going to do a follow-up check I’d be looking in the ditches for wherever he hastily dumped her body.”

Flynn’s puppet jerked for a moment, as if surprised. “These outbursts are becoming not only increasingly slanderous, but unentertaining. I was simply suggesting that I go down and navigate my planet to expedite the search. I wouldn’t want the Matriarch to have to go to any extra trouble if her daughter has been here this whole time. I’m embarrassed as it is.”

“Merriweather may be on your planet, after all then?” Suspicion tinged her voice even as her eyes narrowed. Like Merriweather, her eyes almost seemed to burn with blue flame rather than have a set image. “

“I won’t know the circumstances until I look for her,” Flynn replied innocently.

“I don’t wish to complicate events, I shall see you later Flynn, assuming you resume the sale of your planet. Let me know if you need help lodging a complaint against Tamara for making this situation blow up way out of proportion.” Damascus finally seemed to gather his spine, even if it did seem like he was just using the extra rigidity to beat a hasty retreat.

“I am one of the three Matriarchs of the Infernal Scaled Demon Clan, Titania Sharedal, wife to Blue Sharedal, more commonly known as Ghostfire Blue, the Demon,” Titania thundered even as she was staring at the Arachne puppet. The air seemed to shake and the ground trembled with just the fury that was contained in her voice.

“You! Damascus!” Without turning to look at him she lifted her free hand and pointed a finger at him. “You just stay right fucking there until I get this sorted out.”

The green-robed man seemed to shrink under the pointed finger for a moment before he straightened his back, spitting back coldly, “have care with your tongue. While I am more than willing to show respect to the Infernal Scaled Demon Clan that doesn’t mean I will be falsely accused and ordered around like some common weakling!”

“Silence,” Matriarch hissed, spittle actually flying past her lips as she turned and bared her teeth at him. Sharp canines caught the light even as she moved her head in a sort of quick serpentine warning motion. When she saw that he froze she put her lips together and narrowed her eyes at him. When a short time passed and he didn't try to shout back at her, she slowly turned her head and spit onto the ground without breaking eye contact with him.

“You are of course, welcome to come and join me in my search,” Flynn’s avatar uttered dryly as the Matriarch turned her attention back to him.

“How kind, I shall thank you for your cooperation.” Matriarch Titania turned toward Damascus and once again gave him a wide-eyed warning look. She pointed to his feet, indicating that he should just stand in that very spot until she told him otherwise.

“Can I come too?” Tamara asked unashamedly beaming at everyone in the room as if she weren’t the one who had orchestrated this strange and hostile standoff. “I am the one that told you she was here, after all?”

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“If I find my daughter and find you have had no hand in this, you shall earn my gratitude,” Titania seemed to be struggling to rein in the fury she had been displaying to Flynn and Damascus when she talked to Tamara. “...but let me ask you, how long have you been aware of my daughter being on this planet?”

“I saw her for the first time about a month ago,” Tamara said instantly, staring fearlessly back at the red-skinned goddess even as the latter began to tremble with rage. “I wasn’t sure how to bring it up without endangering her.”

“It sounds as though you were also trying to get extra benefits from this situation too?” Titania was struggling to keep her tone disinterested now. Tamara had known about her daughter’s presence for a fucking month and hadn’t sent word?

“That too,” Tamara agreed shamelessly. “I was trying to figure out what you would do when you saw her soul space. I was deciding whether I should leave this place and pretend I’d never been. I kind of figured you would go crazy.”

Titania digested this silently, a solemn look seeming to settle behind her eyes.

“...what?” Flynn’s puppet looked at Tamara at this point, for the first time the puppet looked just the tiniest bit concerned.

********

Ruth stood to the side as Merriweather thrust out with the sword in front of him slowly. She had been slowly demonstrating how it could be swept horizontally, vertically, how it could thrust forward or be rapidly pulled back for defense.

He had been a little bit leery of the idea of having her explain the basic motions of traditional weapons to him, but he couldn’t help but admit that he was immediately enthralled with the discussion.

“The principle is much the same for knives. Different styles will focus on cutting or stabbing. Ranges will vary based on reach, you see?” Merriweather recovered after a demonstration of a lunge and smiled at him.

Swords were fucking awesome, Ruth decided. He was barely able to keep up with the whirling death in the hands of the fit and lithe Merriweather. He had no doubt that without magic she would carve him like a fish in one or two casual strokes.

Moment of silence for bows. Swords were the best.

“I’m going to need you to teach me everything you know about swords,” Ruth said with a very serious expression.

Merriweather started to laugh but it was cut short when they both noticed the difference in the area. The atmospheric pressure seemed off. Like a stormfront was rolling in and they were minutes away from suffering under a serious thunderstorm or deluge.

It was weird because Ruth couldn’t remember any sort of weather like that since his time here. They were underground, after all.

Shouts began as the castle soldiers began pointing toward an area nearby. Very close to where Merriweather and Ruth were casually talking about how freaking amazing swords were, actually.

Several shapes started to step through the ‘dark looking clouds’ that Ruth was beginning to associate with how god’s high-stepped onto worlds.

The lead figure was Tamara, stepping casually in front of two other figures and looking back with a smirk as she said something to them. Ruth immediately let his face fall into a scowl. He lowered his arms toward his waist in a surreptitious movement and turned his palms up and channeled shock through both hands the moment he saw her smug face.

The explosive power of the crackling lightning seemed stronger than ever before but… Tamara just casually materialized her huge sword and deflected it up toward the high ceiling of the subterranean grotto where it disappeared harmlessly into the black. A distant boom was the only evidence that it had eventually struck something.

“We have guests…” Then Tamara was next to him, pressing a hand meaningfully on his shoulder. “...so behave.”

Ruth felt the power drain out of him. He looked at her with exasperation and just sighed, then his attention turned toward Merriweather and another woman who had appeared behind Tamara. The two were facing off uneasily, their expressions containing deep emotion.

Merriweather seemed at a loss, holding her sword idly at her side as she stared dumbly at the woman who was baring her teeth and moving closer. The huge polearm didn’t seem real. The way she effortlessly wielded it made Ruth immediately view this new woman as dangerous.

The pressure from even looking at her was immense. Totally overshadowing the strange presence of the wweird spider man.

You can take her Merriweather. Ruth began to silently root for the somewhat charming but taciturn commander.

They stared at each other for a moment longer and then something must have happened because the woman stopped her approach and tilted her head, staring at Merriweather in confusion. A confusion that slowly turned into a frown. A frown that slowly turned into cold rage as she started to turn toward the third figure.

“Do I need to explain the terrible horrors I can bring upon you all? What have you done to Merriweather? I am Matriarch Titania Sharedal and I will turn this whole rock into a smoldering pebble if I am not met with an explanation to my satisfaction. I swear upon my Infernal Scaled Demon Clan that we will all carry this grudge in our heart!”

The terrible voice seemed to make his body shake from the inside.

Ruth winced as he took a minute to take a deep breath and steady himself. He almost didn’t even mind that Tamara was touching him.

Then Ruth realized what had happened. “Ah!”

Merriweather and Tamara both turned at the unexpected sound, both surprised to see that Ruth was pointing at Merriweather’s mother with a finger, his face filled with disbelief.

Ruth continued pointing even as the furious Matriarch turned her gaze toward him.

“It really happened! They do exist! Look! A moron!”

Ruth couldn’t fucking believe it. There really were people out there that would shout about their families and clans and proclaim grudges. Holy shit, it had only been like an hour or two since he’d heard that story.

********

Lina laid back down and rolled away from Poppy, who had been offering her a flask of water. She laid down on the ground with her back to the gods, the drama, and the rest of the soldiers(many of which began to turn toward her), closed her eyes, and pretended she was still unconscious.

Her cheeks burning.