Well.

What now then?

…

It’s clear that our most recent actions have at minimum upset both major pantheons…

And some lesser ones too, considering the emissaries we’ve received as of late… all of which I redirected to Tathra for my own personal enjoyment, and then watched through my bond with the hapless businessman.

He genuinely has no idea what to do, or how to even interpret that my wives and I (okay, and a swarm of lesser fae, and some not-so-lesser fae) just wiped out a great deal more planes than even I had before – every single one a heaven or hell. During my dark times, when Izzy had been taken from me, I only targeted the cities; the large urban centers, where my movements would have the greatest visibility.

I wanted them to feel my displeasure.

The fae, though…

They just wanted to destroy, and to feed. And so they did.

And Artemis as well.

Which leads me back to where I was before… How do I manage this?

Probably not negotiation. I doubt they’ll listen now.

…

Wait, what ever happened to little sister? Didn’t Hyperion insist or swear or whatever that she was going to watch over me to make sure I never did anything that evil again? Wasn’t this worse?

“Nope,” she says, appearing in a flash of light.

“Wait, no? A lot of mortals died, and I mean a lot a lot!”

“Well, yeah,” she answers, “but you didn’t kill them… you just kept opening holes and taking stuff through. Which… why did you keep doing that? That was probably pretty bad, but you still weren’t killing anyone! Or eating their souls… so they can all come back. They can all come back, right?”

I nod. “Yes, sweetie. They can all come back, their souls are intact.”

Probably. I didn’t break them, anyway.

“Okay. Okay, then. But that still doesn’t explain why you kept moving them around… so why then, big sister? You’re supposed to be good now.”

“Simple. Livvie asked me to.”

…

“Oh, huh.”

Ah, and there’s that thinking-too-hard look again. The wheels are turning, the wheels and the gears and the-

“I guess that’s fine then. Aunt Livvie is really nice, like really really nice, and-wait, why did she do all that?”

I shrug again. “Probably her fae nature, plus the whole child-being-taken thing?”

“Wait, do all… are all the warm-blooded races like that? Or just um. Just whatever she is? Is that normal?” she asks, scratching her head.

Blinking, I’m momentarily dumbfounded. “Do… do scalekin not care for their young?”

“Obviously, yes, but usually just after they grow up some… a lot of us get eaten when we’re really little, and so much of us hatch at a time that it doesn’t make a lot of sense to do that stuff with everyone… so humans and uh, the others, they all do that from when their babies are really small?”

I simply nod.

“Huh.”

Now that I think of it though, doesn’t that make a lot of sense!? Why am I investing so much time and effort into raising Hope? Can’t it just learn to fend for itself, and after it gains a number of levels and full sentience I can… ah, nevermind. There’s no way my wives would let me get away with that.

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

And at the same time I can’t help but think I’m supposed to feel something about infant scalekin being left to fend for themselves, or at least that the humans would… but nah, nothing there.

Well, nevermind I guess.

And Izzy is still pregnant at that. I know because I appraised her again, this time while she was sleeping. Definitely because I was curious if divines showed a sleep indicator in their status, and definitely not because I didn’t want her to know I was peeking!

…Really!

I don’t remember who commented on it though… just what exactly would the offspring of death and hunger look like, in a mortal package? From what Sekhmet told me, even children of gods are born fully mortal, not even ascendants. All of that has to come after the fact.

And gods rarely give birth themselves, preferring to have the mortals deal with it.

I guess they have better things to do, something brought into serious question by how hard they work to meddle with the mortals in their boredom.

Hypocrisy. Who would have guessed.

Anyway, Hyperion is still standing in the hallway in front of me looking confused… so I politely wave for her to follow me, and take her by the hand like a small child.

She always liked that.

She always liked our teatimes too, regardless of whether she actually enjoyed the tea itself. Which, she didn’t.

Despite hundreds of years, she never did pick up a taste for it.

No matter. I enjoy it enough for both of us… which is still jarring at times.

I wonder if my past and present selves will ever completely reconcile.

At least I don’t feel like I have random impulses to do specific things or act a specific way anymore… those are just parts of me.

They’re just what I do, and who I am.

Which is fine.

It’s fine.

***

She got kicked out.

Livvie, I mean. From the light pantheon.

Why? It’s obvious. Going on a rampage through the heavens and hells and wiping out entire populations of mortals?

Even during my darkest times, I only targeted the largest cities. I wanted maximum impact to life while leaving the dregs as a gruesome reminder to their masters that I wouldn’t forget how they betrayed me, how they refused to help me.

I still haven’t, nor have I forgiven them. I’m not sure I ever will.

Either way… she’s on her own now, at least as far as her long-time pantheon is concerned.

And that means the Feral Isle will be removed from Elysium as well… don’t ask me how that works, I have no idea…

Although it’s probably something to do with how a god is the master of their own plane and can to some extent shape it… it makes me wonder whose plane it actually is.

With my luck it’d be that bastard Themis.

When she told me, I’ll admit I was concerned… not so much with her plane, or even where she’d go, but with the repercussions with the pantheons.

And wouldn’t you know it, those concerns were proven true not even a few days later in the form of messengers carrying a declaration of war from both major pantheons.

But that’s fine. Let them come. I’m not beholden to their stupid rules about divines not participating in their stupid wargames.

I’ll just Consume everyone they send, problem solved.

I can feel a vague melancholy from my fox wife, no matter how much she tries to hide it or distract herself from it by continuing to roll around and roughhouse with our horror offspring… who is itself the cause of all this unnecessary drama.

Wait, no, that’s not fair. Whoever that idiot god was, they were responsible, and whoever put them up to it. On the bright side, I don’t think anyone will ever see them again, at least the main perpetrator. Between that anti-tracking whatever gizmo and literally freezing them in the space between space, they’re pretty well unreachable.

Problem solved.

Which leads me to the other problem. Livvie’s home is going to disappear.

(…)

I sigh lightly.

What is it, Nyx?

(Don’t be snippy with me, asshole. I’m listening to you piss and moan and overthink everything again, per usual. Even your thoughts are inefficient, how the hells was I ever you? Seriously though.)

Insults? Really? That’s still the only thing you have to say? Nothing useful, productive, anything?

(Oh fuck off. All I was going to say is that you usually have some kind of ‘bright idea’ at this point, and you clearly haven’t. You’re slipping, losing your touch. You haven’t even thought of just, moving the Feral Isle in entirety to your own plane, have you?)

…

Shit.

Shit!

I… I can do that, can’t I? I can probably do that!

(Yep. Now just fucking do it.)

It’s brilliant.

It truly is. Which, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; my former Assistant is in fact a literal genius, definitely beyond my own abilities in that regard independent of whether I’ve inherited her body… sort of.

But if I’ve learned anything… it’s this. I need to ask her about it.

And since I share this plane with Izzy, regardless of whether it’s actually mine and mine alone, I should include her too.

***

That was far less involved or difficult than I’d anticipated. Sure, Izzy was concerned about what would be displaced, but when I’d told her I can simply increase the size of my plane and drop the whole island – okay, so it’s actually a whole chain of islands… what did she call it? An archi-something? It doesn’t matter. It’s a bunch of islands, with an especially large central one.

…Now that I think of it… was it designed to keep her isolated? Some kind of, I don’t know… prison, in a sense? Quarantine?

Anyway, Livvie’s response was far less complicated than my second first wife’s.

She’d barely even paused from her parental antics to simply say, “Okay.”