Until now, anyway. Brand new in my Status is the Infernal Common language.

Which doesn’t really matter much. I don’t even have to use the words of creation to learn a language, I’m a fucking god. I can just will those lesser things to happen, and they just happen.

…Although now that I’m aware that it exists as a resource, doing it does indeed consume some divinity. Only some though.

And yeah, it’s just generic assorted profanity about family origins and parents and sexual preferences and livestock, the usual fare. None too exciting.

I notice this time Dolos seems to be keeping his distance… I wonder why. He does wave though, which I simply answer with a glare.

I’m still sure he had a hand in why Hades stayed missing for so long.

And then something occurs to me. I never told her… or, not yet anyway. Artemis was there and also in my mind as per usual, so she heard the whole conversation…

But Hades? She was still enslaved at the time. She was nowhere near me, let alone listening.

“You know, dear… while you were missing I learned a few things… one of which is kind of big.”

“Hmm?” she hums curiously against my neck.

“I’m Nyx, apparently. Or was, at least.”

And her head shoots up. While she stares into my eyes in shock I continue.

“This was her body, I guess. Erebus… big sister maybe, pulled out my Ego and turned it into some kind of spirit, and then forced it back into me as a System Assistant. She apparently wanted me to be haunted by who I used to be? But I still can’t bring myself to care, centuries later. She probably also never expected that I’d make it this far, or that my old Ego would be able to split off as a separate person. For what it’s worth, even if she’s not really Nyx in that sense, she’s Nyx enough for me.”

I feel frustration from the former System Assistant in question, a thing I’ve come to expect and for good reason. If anyone is haunted by Erebus’ actions, it’s her and not me.

But that’s neither here nor there.

“And, uh. I’m apparently a small piece of some kind of really big and really powerful monster… thing from outside the Record. Something bigger than what we thought I was. I… guess this body is some kind of dream whatever, while my main body is just asleep… and before I absorbed her the rest of the way, Astraea hollowed out the moon and shoved my real body in there. I’m not really sure why I’m here, to be fair, but I’m not upset about it. I exist because of it, and when I was my… bigger self, I guess, I didn’t have a lot of control or understanding of anything… I almost ate both you and Livvie, something I would’ve regretted.”

“That was you,” she says quietly.

“Yeah, that was the big me. So you were conscious then?”

“Barely.”

“Maybe barely is for the best.”

We sit in silence for a few moments as I let my wife digest the information. I know I just dropped a lot of it so I don’t expect her to simply move on, at least not quickly.

I hadn’t told her sooner because at the time she’d seemed so fragile… I’d thought that too much weight now might have broken her the rest of the way, past those last few threads of sanity.

But she’s still here, even if she doesn’t remember herself.

I’ll take what I can get.

Meanwhile the gala continues around us, complete with an ongoing sense of dread permeating the crowd.

And so it should. I am absolutely terrifying… and so is grandmother.

I’m finally being accepted for who I am, and what I am. Even if they don’t know my true nature.

Their fear will keep this from happening again.

***

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

With a wife on each arm, I find myself once again lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling. Sure, I could choose to sleep…

But why would I when I know that damned succubus is just going to invade my dreams again?

No, I’m much better off treating this like I used to.

Boredom it is. And so I flex my old dimensional storage muscles again…

…

Huh.

Didn’t Nyx have a whole bunch of stuff in her dimensional storage?

And I’m supposedly her… that stuff is all tied to the soul, right?

But when I woke up what feels like forever ago, mine was empty…

I wonder. My dimensional storage is absolutely huge now… as though the number on the Skill doesn’t even matter anymore.

I wonder if that’s another god thing, but that’s neither here nor there.

There’s another thing I need to try, after all.

And so I weave together a handful of words, something that’s coming much more easily and fluidly with all the practice I’ve had.

“{recover DimensionalStorage Nyx},” I intone.

A sudden weight hits my mind… but when I peek into the extradimensional pocket tied to my soul…

Sure enough.

Hey Nyx, I think I have some presents for you.

***

“It’s… it’s all here.”

“Yep. Well, not that I’d know.”

My former Assistant appears to be absolutely dumbfounded that I could just show up and regurgitate all the tools, half-finished projects, and detritus of a life that she’d once lugged around with her all day, every day.

I’m sure she’d already long-since accepted it was all gone forever.

“And now it’s not,” she answers out loud. “It’s back.”

As the shock slowly wears off, I can feel her elation begin to build.

“You’re not going to kiss me or something, right?”

“Oh hells no!” she snaps.

“Why not?” a sultry voice chirps as its owner appears behind Nyx in a puff of pink smoke. “You’re such a narcissist that the only one you could possibly love is yourself, and that thing in front of you is the closest you’re ever going to find to another you~”

The daemon gives Eros the sharpest glare I’ve ever seen.

“I was joking anyway,” I interrupt. “You’re happy about this and I can tell, that’s all. Sorry I don’t know what happened to your storage devices though…”

Ah, good. From the thoughtful look on her face, I’ve successfully distracted her from trying to kill the pink demon.

“Most of them were in my dimensional storage to begin with.”

“Wait, you can do that? I’d have thought putting an interstitial inside an interstitial would break something or… something.”

“Nah,” Nyx dismisses. “They don’t open onto a matching place in between, they’re more like pointer to a random location that gets fixed on creation. Besides, if they caused some kind of cataclysm, you couldn’t bring a storage device or, well. Yourself, probably, into an interstitial. That’d be about the same thing.”

“Hmm. I never really thought about it that way.”

Or, at all. Ever.

“Of course you didn’t.”

And there’s the old Nyx.

“Shut up. I still don’t trust you, nor should I. Nor should anyone. So tell me, was that all the Domain of Malevolence, or are you just absolutely insane?”

I ponder for a moment before answering. “Maybe both. I’m not sure. I know something went wrong when I lost Hades…”

At my words, the black-skinned woman presses harder into my side. She’d insisted on coming along, like she always does when I go anywhere. It’s only been on very rare occasions that I can convince her to let me go somewhere alone.

But that’s fine.

“She still won’t let you restore her memory, huh?” Nyx asks out of nowhere.

I shake my head lightly.

I’m pretty sure she’s afraid of all those things she seems to have blocked out… at least Eros said she blocked them out. Something about a defense mechanism or somesuch.

“Probably. Also I’m right here, you can talk out loud.”

“I guess,” I reply.

Markus has been completely ignoring my presence, which is well enough. On the bright side, he has been one of the few of my bonded retainers that hasn’t immediately reacted to my return in a hostile manner. More specifically, he hasn’t reacted at all.

Maybe that’s what three hundred years of obsessing over your hobbies will do to you.

…

Huh. That makes me think. Wasn’t Sodaca like that?

What ever happened to Hades’ parents?

“Dead, probably. Indra only live so long, and those two were already old.”

My wife tilts her head curiously. She always did have a relatively strong intuition, which is probably why the topic piqued her interest. I gently unwrap her arms from me and give her a meaningful look.

“I’m going to check something, but I’ll be right back. Alright?”

She hesitates for a moment before nodding very lightly and wrapping her arms tightly around herself, looking around nervously before locking her eyes on me again.

It feels strange to have someone so wholly dependent on me, but I don’t know. Maybe it’ll be good for me or something… apparently I exist because I’m supposed to learn, so I may as well learn this too.

But there’s something else I want to know right now. And so I tear a quick rift and drop into the space in between, and scan the emptiness for familiar souls.

…

…

Well, I found one of them. Or at least one like them…

But it’s not them. They’re gone.

Nyx was right.

…

I drift back through another rift before quietly telling her so, knitting up the torn space behind me.

“Yeah, I figured. I’m only still alive because I’m immortal, after all.”

…

I have no idea how I’m going to tell her, assuming she even remembers having had parents at all.