For the Record

After a moment of arguing, I convince my father-in-law to at least come inside and sit down. I take my usual place in our sitting area, Artemis to my side and the others wherever they feel like as always. Izzy sits next to her father on one of the sofas and leans her head against him, radiating feelings of comfort…

And safety.

…

I’m still not used to being around mortals my own height. He’s one of the first I’ve seen, I think, although Omorth was pretty tall as well.

“Anyway, I’m Izzy’s best friend Pearl, that’s Omorth, Nyx, and Artemis. The big idiot is Nemesis –”

“Hey, I know I’m human-dumb, but you need to stop calling me that.”

“Or what? You’re a big idiot, I’m just saying it like it is,” she shrugs dismissively.

My wife’s father chuckles. “It’s been some time since I’ve had kids around, you all are so lively!”

I tilt my head at him, but he just continues. “My name’s Ourvie, but just call me Orv, everyone else does. It’s nice to meet you all. Now, if you… if you don’t mind, would you –”

“Yes, yes,” I interrupt, “you want to see the house key. Fine. Don’t activate it in here, I don’t know what would happen if we did that.”

Orv takes the item from my hand as I pass it to him over the low table, but then he gives me a curious look. “That shouldn’t be possible anyway, interstitials are all made with safeguards to prevent… wait, did you…?”

“She made that,” my wife says, still leaning against him.

Oh, now he’s really staring at me.

“I’d thought maybe you’d made some new discovery… so this is a product of divine will, then?”

I shrug. “In a sense. I have this weird ability called Spellspeech. I don’t use it a lot now because it hurts for some reason even though it didn’t used to, not really sure why. Anyway, I made it with that. Or, the interstitial anyway, the house already existed on my plane. Now that I think of it, it’s the only thing left of how my plane was before…”

“You have your own plane? Oh gosh, Izzy, you went and moved into the proverbial castle, didn’t you?”

My wife giggles and says, “It’s a literal castle.”

And now they’re both laughing together. When they finally stop, Orv wipes a tear from his eye and glances around, his eyes stopping on my other wife. “Artemis, was it? Are you the actual Artemis then, or are they your namesake?”

“Actual,” she answers with a small smile.

“Really? That’s fascinating! Amazing, I’m meeting two actual goddesses in one day!” he says excitedly. “How exactly do you know my daughter and her wife?”

Arty returns a sheepish grin for a moment and then says, “This one is another wife to an other. Share? Share.”

My father-in-law blinks, and then glances at me, and then Izzy. “I… I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand. What did she mean by that? Ah, I mean no disrespect, Lady Artemis. It’s just that… Oh! You’re a fox spirit, or were, yes? I see!”

“Well, that’s… close enough, sure,” I say. “She said she’s my wife, along with Izzy.”

“Oh. She is?” he says quietly, turning his gaze to his daughter. “You’re alright with that then?”

“Not… not really, but, well,” she replies, “there’s… it’s complicated.”

Orv nods. “I see. Well, your mother definitely won’t be alright with it regardless. You know her. If… if you don’t mind talking about it, what kind of complicated?”

“I took Izahne as my wife –”

(Don’t you dare tell him you were tricked into it,) Nyx suddenly interrupts in the back of my mind.

Hey, fine. Whatever.

(Really, don’t.)

I said it was fine!

I sigh, and then realize that Orv is waiting for me to continue. “Sorry. System Assistant stuff. Anyway, I took Izahne as my wife before I remembered I was already married to Arty, but I don’t want to sacrifice either of them? They’re both important to me.”

My father-in-law rubs his chin thoughtfully for a moment. “If you didn’t remember… Ah, I see. You’re an incomplete reincarnation, aren’t you?”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“It means you were a god before, or possibly a Vessel, and when you reincarnated you retained your memories – or should have, anyway. Did something interfere?”

I chuckle. “My own soul did. Or, our souls? My souls? Izzy, he’s safe to tell, right?”

My wife gives me a serious look and nods. “He’d never hurt us, my father’s harmless.”

“Oh dear, give your old man some credit!” he laughs back.

Huh. That even got Pearl and Omorth chuckling.

Arty just smiles. I absentmindedly take her hand and let them hang between our chairs, She lets out a small purr and offers me a sideways glance, her smile a little bigger now.

“Well, the whole story then, I guess.

“So I was apparently a wraith god that people named the Queen of Hunger? From the title I think I was actually the first wraith… but before that I was also Astraea and evolved from a gorgon… Arty here was my wife back then. She’s a wonderful maid! And a wonderful partner. So anyway, I apparently… ate myself? I mean, I as the Queen of Hunger ate me as Astraea… Sorry, it’s still kind of confusing to me. My soul got merged with their… everything, I think, and when I died and reincarnated it broke something in the Record, so their Egos are still in me, and they’re merging into mine… Oh, and Erebus butchered my soul somehow, and smashed her sister Nyx here into my head as a System Assistant… I don’t really know how that all happened.”

…

…

“What?”

“You’re…”

Orv just stares at me blankly for a moment.

“Really, what?”

“You’re two people. Or, three in a way. How? That shouldn’t be possible,” he says in bafflement.

I just shrug. “Don’t know. Anyway I inherited my old plane from myself, and then spent a bunch of time rebuilding it and bringing in mortals, but then some of the other gods destroyed it. But Arty and I brought the moon back! And the stars. Oh, and now the moon kills vampires, I did that. I met Izzy and we got married before I went to the academy with her, and a bunch of things happened and I got forced into a servant pact with the headmaster there.”

He blinks again. “That is… a lot of information. I’m just… going to ask a few things, if that’s alright?”

I shrug again. “Sure, go ahead, ‘daddy’.”

Izzy blushes while her father chuckles.

“Well, what do you mean by a servant pact? You’re a goddess, servitude pacts shouldn’t work on you. At least, not by mortal science, limited though it is…”

I furrow my brow. “Huh… Wait, is that why I can say whatever I want now? For a while I couldn’t even call him a damn rabbit!”

“You’ll come to regret calling me that,” a voice says somewhere next to me, and in the corner of my eye I see a person appear in a flash of red mist.

“Fucking hells, what? I didn’t kill anyone, I didn’t mind control anyone, What? What do you want?” I ask with a little more hostility than I mean to, and he glares back.

“Mind your manners,” he snaps, and then turns to Orv. “My apologies for the display, my pupil has a lot to learn – far too much for me alone to teach. I am Owyn, surrogate god of the harvest and former familiar to the Hero Feldspar, as well as headmaster of New Iden Charter Hero Academy at which I consider a number of those present to still be students.”

Taking the rabbit-in-humanoid-form’s hand for a firm shake my father-in-law lets out a stunned, “Charmed, of course. Three then? Three gods in one day? I might faint.”

Owyn chuckles and sits in an open seat that I’m pretty sure wasn’t there before. “There’s no need for that. I simply wanted to set you straight on one thing – that being that while most pacts don’t affect gods, spirit pacts specifically do. They bind the soul directly, and so can’t be bypassed so easily. As to why I’ve allowed my fool of a pupil a longer leash…”

I give him a dead look, but I know I’m failing to hide my curiosity.

“If I never allowed them any movement at all, would they be learning, or would I simply be steering them? I needed to know if this incarnation was different.”

I blink. “What?”

“Did you think you were the first?” he deadpans. “You have reincarnated more than one hundred times. What do you think I’d expect with you wandering into my office, each of your previous incarnations awakening into a true calamity and trying to destroy all mortal life? I needed to see if you were different, considering you even bothered so much as to try to fit with mortals.”

“Well, am I?”

I feel Artemis bristle next to me as though ready for a fight, but I give her hand a gentle squeeze.

“In short? Yes. How much do you think I’ve seen?”

…

“Everything,” he continues. “Since I established our spirit pact, I have seen everything you’ve done, heard everything you’ve said, filtered through your very thoughts. Don’t underestimate a god, Nemesis – another lesson you desperately need to learn, considering how often you’ve done it. Even your own grandmother.”

“Wait, you know Grandmother?” I blurt to the sound of Nyx’s hand hitting her face.

Owyn nods sagely. “We all know Lamashtu, or at least of her.”

I can feel Orv’s stare burning into me anew now, though he doesn’t seem to be willing to interrupt a conversation between gods.

“I don’t have much more to say for now, so I’ll leave you with this,” my rabbit teacher says, “You’ve done well restoring the husk, and especially so for not giving up when it was again destroyed. But do not forget, you too were once a familiar to Hero Feldspar, and a great many lessons he tried to teach you rattle around in that rabid Ego of yours. If you ever remember them, try to take them seriously for once. And don’t you dare stop protecting your ‘family’, they’re your best chance of learning any humanity at all.”

And without another word, he offers an unexpectedly kind smile before disappearing again in a puff of red mist.

My father-in-law sighs across from me. “That was intense.”

“He usually is,” I say flatly. “I’m surprised he didn’t smash me flat into the ground again this time.”

“Does he usually do that?”

I nod wordlessly.

“Anyway… hoo, boy. Where do I even start? I had questions before, but… Familiar to Feldspar? Lamashtu?”

“Aha, yeah… So um. About that…”