After a few moments of shocked silence, the figure briefly observed Isaac before continuing to move again. It was clear that she was trying to ignore and walk past him. From her somewhat hurried steps, one could easily gather that she was a little bit nervous, though. But all her hopes of simply slipping away were dashed when Isaac unhurriedly stepped in her way.
“You can see me?!”
Even though she had already suspected as much, to get the final confirmation still made the figure falter and actually exclaim her disbelief aloud.
“I can indeed. Now, with whom do I have the pleasure?”
Never being one to miss such a good opportunity, Isaac asked the question that had been on his mind for quite some time. However, when the figure didn’t answer even after a few moments of awkward silence, he released a resigned sigh.
“Look, you’ve been following me for an entire week now. So we can’t really be considered strangers anymore, can we? I’m sure you’re fully aware of who I am. Can you fault me for wanting to know that same information about you, Little Miss Stalker?”
Only after she had taken a few more moments to think about his words did the figure nod, which was quite hard to make out because of the cloak.
“You’ve got a point.”
As she had just made the decision to not hide any longer, the figure pulled down her hood. What was revealed was a face unlike any Isaac had seen before. It was the face of a girl, or rather young woman, who looked to be about 17 years of age. While it was indeed beautiful, it had an almost supernaturally pure and innocent air to it. Still, there were many things seemingly marring that perfect picture. Her skin was as close to a deathly white as possible but also had an almost imperceptible, somewhat sickly blue tint to it. The heavy dark circles under her eyes more than rivalled the ones Isaac had sported in his old world, while her pupils were just as deathly white as her skin. Still, at least it was easy to make out where they ended and the white of her eyes began, as the pupils had a clear black outline. One of her eyes was partially covered by her smooth but messy, shoulder-length grey hair, which she didn’t make any attempt at trying to rein in to appear more proper. As for why Isaac had referred to her as ‘little’ before, that was because she was only one or two centimeters taller than Ais, so she didn’t really seem that tall in his eyes.
Because her grey hair was the first thing Isaac’s eyes fell upon, for a fraction of a second, he almost expected to see Freya or Syr, two grey-haired characters from the DanMachi novels. Of those two, seeing how she had also been hiding herself with a cloak before, Freya had been the more likely one. Still, Isaac almost immediately realized that his momentary expectations had been wrong. He couldn’t even help but mentally chuckle to himself. After all, what were the chances of actually running across either of them in this large city? If he didn’t proactively search them out, they were close to nil.
A somewhat awkward, downcast and forced smile played across the strange girl’s lips. Even though she wasn’t particularly good at it, it was clear to see that she was trying to make a friendly impression.
“I’m Hel. Hey there, Isaac…”
‘Hel? I see...’
Back in his old world, Hel was the name of the Norse goddess presiding over a realm of the dead with the same name - Hel. It wasn’t the sole afterlife destination in Norse mythology, however, and mostly just contained souls that fit none of the other netherworlds’ criteria. It was a realm for those left behind or those who didn’t excel at their particular roles. The old world’s Hel was said to impartially judge those souls with the authority that had been bestowed upon her by Odin. In later religions, the concept had been - mostly deliberately - distorted into ‘hell’ and similar afterlives, which were solely regarded as realms of suffering for any and all that fell out of line. Interestingly enough, the Hel Isaac knew about was considered to be the daughter of Loki. Because of his rather close connection to this world’s trickster goddess, he would be lying if he said he wasn’t interested in how exactly they were related here as well. Still, as had often been the case, the DanMachi world varied drastically from his old world’s mythology. Maybe over here, there wasn’t even a connection between the two goddesses at all.
Taking Isaac’s momentary distraction as a chance to snap out of her awkwardness, Hel immediately focused on more important things again. From one moment to the next, her gaze had turned somewhat fervent and knowledge-hungry.
“How were you able to see me?! I was wearing my ‘Shroud of Hel’, even most gods can’t notice me in that state!”
Isaac didn’t even get a chance to answer, as Hel simply continued to bombard him with one question after another.
“And why can I not see your soul? Do you not have one or something? And in case you do, what is preventing me from seeing it?!”
It felt like a dam of silence had been broken and the repressed questions just flooded out without the goddess even taking a moment to catch her breath. As he felt like he shouldn’t let Hel get even more out of control, Isaac raised his arms in both surrender and defense to try to get a chance to actually say something.
“Whoa there. Hold your horses. Ask your questions one by one. I still have time, so I’m not in too much of a hurry. What say you we’ll take a seat and talk this over step by step?”
With these words, Isaac pulled two chairs out of his inventory. Their comfortable, green cushions were made out of the same material as the various pieces of furniture Loki had outfitted the whole Twilight Manor with. Yeah, it wasn’t much of a secret where these chairs came from. Earlier today, Isaac had ‘borrowed’ them from his subordinates’ base for this express purpose. After all, it felt a lot better to have a talk when sitting down and relaxing.
Even though Hel was more than a little baffled by the fact that two chairs had just appeared out of nowhere, this wasn’t even close to the weirdest thing about the enigma in front of her.
“How…?”
All she could do was tilt her head and whisper quietly to herself. Before she could figure anything out, however, a realization suddenly struck her and she looked at Isaac with an even more confused expression on her face.
“Wait. If we talk out here, won’t pretty much anyone be able to eavesdrop on us?”
In her opinion, this really wasn’t the right place to have a potentially secret-heavy chat.
Still, Isaac simply shrugged and pointed at the space around them, making Hel take a closer look at it. It only took her a second or two to notice that everything around them seemed kind of… blurred. If she had to wager a guess at what other people would perceive from outside of their location… it was nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary. Their entire existence would be unable to be noticed, even by any gods particularly good at discerning such things. Hel couldn’t help but realize that even her prized shroud… was quite shabby compared to this.
After a sigh of regret escaped her lips, she quickly recovered and eyed the young man in front of her suspiciously.
“Why would you tell me anything about you anyway? I’m just a strange goddess. We haven’t known each other prior to this. You could easily get rid of me now, without anyone being the wiser.”
Hel’s eyes were full of distrust and resignation. She felt quite sure about what was going to happen, so she had already mentally prepared herself for the death of her mortal body and to be ejected from the Lower World.
In response to her words, Isaac showed an awkward smile and shook his head. Over the past week, he had been paying close attention to this stalker goddess whenever he was out and about and had determined that she didn’t have any negative intentions. She had never attempted to harm him or sent anyone after him to get the job done in her stead, as far as he knew. Rather, when he was faced with seemingly insurmountable odds earlier today, she had even tried to rush to his rescue. Sure, she had been too far away to make it and in any case would have been more of a hindrance rather than a capable helper, but the sentiment was what truly counted.
The cause for Hel not being able to see his flame of life, his soul, was because it was far beyond anything she could possibly perceive. This wasn’t a case of the self-preservation instincts of the observer kicking in, however. Rather, it was because their senses and minds simply were not able to process the information they were receiving. Without being able to make heads or tails of it, it simply got disregarded. If an observer truly was able to interpret the information, however, they would probably have their mind literally blown. They would simply stop existing thanks to the insurmountable difference between their souls. Like a vessel trying to hold far, far more than it could, the observer’s soul would just pop. However, rather than transcending existence by making use of the process of stopping to exist and a self-taught special method, like Isaac did, they would just be… gone.
Because of this, Isaac had known that it would only be a matter of time until one of the entities capable of perceiving souls would take notice of him. An option to prevent this would have been to create a fake soul to distract them with, to put up a facade of normalcy - otherwise, he would just be seen as a soulless husk. Still, he didn’t have time for this yet and honestly, it would just be more trouble that it would be worth. In any case, Isaac had expected the first one to notice the abnormality about him to be Freya, as she was the only deity he knew to be capable of such a thing from the DanMachi novels. As it turned out, however, the information he got from these books was so far from being sufficient to actually be prepared for what this world had to offer that it was almost laughable.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
While Isaac was thinking about his reasons for wanting to talk to Hel, rather than attempting to get rid of her, he couldn’t help but think of a certain blonde, easily embarrassed Mesopotamian underworld goddess who always adorably tried her best. Yes, because of Ereshkigal, Isaac had somewhat of a soft spot for goddesses related to the underworld and death. As he knew about what alarmingly tragic pasts most of them had been forced to endure, it was hard for him to completely ignore them when he stumbled across them.
With thoughts like these, Isaac sized up Hel once more, this time taking note of her gloomy, downcast and resigned aura. There was a hint of mourning in there as well. It really couldn’t be helped - in his mind, she had already been added to his ‘must protect’ category.
“You remind me of someone I know, so I won’t harm you. Come, let’s talk.”
Without standing on ceremony any longer, Isaac sat down on one of the chairs and patted the other one with an amicable smile, patiently waiting for Hel to join him.
Although the glum goddess was very much aware that the young man could simply be misleading her, she also knew that she had no way to escape if he truly wanted to keep her here. Because of this, she didn’t feel like it would be a good idea to refuse his request. Better safe than sorry. Additionally, if it was at all possible, she wanted to know more about what she had asked him about previously. So without further ado, she took a seat and wanted to repeat her first question.
Before she could do so, however, Isaac raised his hand to stop her in her tracks while a slightly mischievous smile crept on his face.
“Why did you decide to stalk me instead of simply talking to me?”
Just as he had intended, this put Hel into a somewhat uncomfortable position, so she pouted unhappily while thinking of an answer. After deliberating over whether or not to tell him, she finally decided on the former and replied with a flustered and defeated look on her face.
“Because you’re from the Loki Familia.”
This time, it was Isaac’s turn to look at Hel with a confused expression on his face paired with a slight head tilt. A small amount of information like this didn’t tell him anything. Sure, he already had certain suspicions but they were just that: suspicions. Without more intel, he couldn’t confirm any of them.
“Is there a problem with that?”
“Yeah, Loki might get a clue as to where I’ve been and come to find me.”
Mentally, Hel defeatedly remarked that this was most likely going to happen now anyway.
Seeing how the gloomy goddess was playing right into his hands, Isaac saw no reason to ease up on his one-sided questioning. So far, she seemingly hadn’t noticed anything amiss, so there was no problem, right?
“And why would she do that?”
A plethora of emotions flashed across Hel’s face for a moment: happiness, awkwardness, disgust, loneliness and trust. It was plain to see that she was very conflicted about her fellow goddess.
“Loki is… a friend. I’ve been living with her before.”
When Isaac heard this, most of the gears clicked into place and he had narrowed in on one of the many possibilities he had thought of before. Thanks to this, he felt a whole lot more relaxed as he continued his impromptu interrogation. Did he feel bad for using the dejected goddess’ honesty to gather intel? No, not at all.
“So… I assume you ran away?”
Even though Hel only blushed very slightly, thanks to her stark white skin, it stood out a lot more than it should have. Somewhat demurely, she nodded her head and whispered her response.
“I did.”
Thinking about how much she could have potentially struggled in the meantime, a hint of worry appeared on Isaac’s face, as his next few questions were asked in a gentler tone.
“Then have you been eating properly? Did you start a familia of your own to help with your expenses?”
Nonchalantly, Hel shook her head.
“No, but the dead I’m in charge of often leave behind valis and other valuables. Rightfully, they should be donated to me. It’s my pay for taking care of them.”
A wry smile played across Isaac’s lips and all of his worry was basically nipped in the bud.
‘So she’s a thief. Well, it’s not like I’m any better…’
As Isaac eased up in his questioning a little, Hel finally noticed that it had only been him who had been asking her questions all this time. None of hers had been addressed! She felt both embarrassed and slightly angry for falling for this, which caused her blush to deepen a shade. Then, after taking a deep breath, she finally got the conversation back on track.
“Let’s stop talking about this. How did you notice me before?”
Of course, ever since Isaac had showcased his apparent expertise in concealment, Hel had already suspected that there might be some correlation between those. Still, that was just a theory and she couldn’t be sure of anything.
“Illusions of any kind simply don’t work on me. Also, you can’t hide from a stealth-expert like me.”
While Isaac wasn’t lying when he said this, he also wasn’t telling the full truth. Yes, he was an expert at stealth but he didn’t even need to use that expertise - his existence-blurring was more of a cheat than a trained skill. At the same time, it wasn’t incorrect to say that no illusions would work on Isaac. If he wanted to put some effort into escaping them, he could easily do so. Still, he would most likely be at least momentarily affected by them. What truly gave Hel away was her Shroud of Hel, the very thing supposed to keep her hidden.
At this point, Isaac could only venture a very well educated guess about why this was the case. Due to death being able to claim lives unseen, many death-related deities had been granted with items or powers manifesting that very concept, Hel wasn’t an exception to this. But because Isaac was a being beyond life and death - those two being just rather insignificant parts of existence as a whole - a power or item based on a concept that couldn’t possibly affect him at all was simply useless in front of him. He didn’t need to spend any effort at all, the Shroud of Hel just didn’t work against him. So while Hel had thought she had been invisible, he had seen her stumbling around in the background all the while.
“Alright, I suppose that makes sense. Now, let me ask you again. Why can’t I see your soul? Do you not have one?”
During the course of their conversation, Isaac had been trying to discern whether he should answer this question at all. While he could simply kill Hel’s mortal form or even entirely erase her existence, both of these would have far-reaching consequences he would rather not face. Killing her would send her back to Heaven, where she could plot her revenge and get others to join her cause - yeah, quite the bother. On the other hand, while erasing her from existence might sound like an end-all solution at first, gods weren’t simple beings. They were intricately connected with a part of the world and simply removing them would lead to a horrifying backlash - yeah, even more of a bother.
By now, Isaac was reasonably sure that Hel was on amicable terms with the Loki Familia, so they could be considered to be part of the same camp. At the same time, the current Hel seemed like a lone wolf - and those were the easiest to deal with. Even if she knew the full truth, she wouldn’t be a danger to him or easily get over herself and tell others about it. Unless he completely fell out with her and made her his mortal enemy, pretty much anything he told a person like her would be as safely locked away as it could be. Still, he didn’t plan to tell her the full truth. Partially, that was because he simply didn’t trust her enough. After all, why should he? Compared to Ais, Lefiya and others, whose moral characters he had already become familiar with in the DanMachi novels, he knew next to nothing about Hel. Another reason was that even if he did, she wouldn’t be capable of comprehending it. So because of that, he decided to only tell her the basics. This would forge a closer connection between the two, which might come in handy one day.
“As you already noticed because I made no effort to hide it, I have a few peculiar powers. The reason for this is because I’m not from this world. In fact, I’ve come here from a different one altogether. By the way, I don’t mean Heaven or Tartarus, as those and the Lower World can only be considered a single ‘world’ in the first place. Oh well, that’s not important right now. What I’m trying to say is this: My soul doesn’t take the same form as the ones from this world, so you can’t perceive it. I’m outside of your jurisdiction. It’s as simple as that.”
Being able to see Hel’s expression of disbelief for the first time, as he had missed the previous ones due to her concealment, filled Isaac with a feeling of accomplishment. For some reason, expanding someone’s limited world view made him happy. Admittedly, however, that was to a lesser extent due to the feeling of self-gratification he got from validating his superiority in knowledge.
While Hel was mulling over Isaac’s revelations and finally got to the conclusion that his words, if true, were indeed logical, the man in question was entirely devoid of the feeling of guilt for having misled her yet again. Isaac’s soul didn’t take the same form as the ones from this world, yes. But Hel should still be able to perceive any other soul in existence, even if it originated from another world. Unless it was hidden from her by using some peculiar techniques, that is.
It took quite a while, but Hel finally seemed to come to terms with what she had just heard. Although she surely wouldn’t accept everything Isaac told her as the truth just like that, she would at least take it into consideration. So with a more upbeat smile than usual, she approvingly nodded at Isaac.
“I accept your answer.”
This caused Isaac to smile in turn as well. Seeing how the heavier topics seemed to be dealt with for now, he decided that now would be a good time to inform Hel about his future plans. It was very likely that she would like to talk again in the future, so he didn’t want to just up and disappear without saying anything.
“Just so you know, the day after tomorrow, I’ll be taking part in the Loki Familia’s latest expedition. I don’t know how long that will take, but I’ll probably be gone for a few weeks, if I had to guess.”
Yet again, Hel displayed a visibly shocked expression. Previously, she had been too preoccupied with stalking Isaac to pay attention to the bigger, Loki Familia related news. Had she done so, she wouldn’t have been caught off guard.
“Are you telling me this because you plan to leave soon?”
Why else would Isaac mention such a thing? It sounded just like something a person who was about to bid his temporary farewell would say. Honestly speaking, Hel didn’t want this conversation to end yet. After all, Isaac’s explanations had been anything but satisfactory. They raised far more new questions than they actually answered.
“Kind of. It’s almost 9:30 p.m. and I have to be home in 30 minutes.”
After all, Isaac had already made plans with Ais tonight. They still had to discuss the Tiona-situation, which was a more pressing issue than this harmless stalker goddess.
A resigned but also somewhat resolute sigh escaped Hel’s lips, before she clenched her fists and stared at him with a decisive glint in her eyes.
“Alright, then I guess it’s time for me to return home as well.”
Once these words had left her lips, Hel seemed to be recalling something unpleasant, which caused her to frown deeply. A moment later, she smiled sheepishly before nervously looking at the ground.
“Please protect me when you’ve got the time.”