Chapter 66: Omake: The Three Goddesses Receive a Letter

Omake: The Three Goddesses Receive a Letter

Aida lounged back in her lounge chair, enjoying the softness of cushions filled with the down plumage of swans and wrapped in the finest silk. She had a drink by her side, the crystal cup covered in a layer of condensation and clinking merrily whenever the ice within shifted. That ice required that they keep a Terror mage working in their kitchens, but it was entirely worth it to beat back the oppressive Iarian warmth.

This, she concluded as she peered across a room lavishly decorated in silks and finery, was decadence itself, and it was worth every bead of sweat and lost tear over her long, long life.

Unfortunately, it was decadence shared.

“And then she has the gall, the gall, to ask me what I know of childbirth. Me!” Allegra whined.

The goddess of Matrons was laying upon a heap of cushions next to a knee-high table in the centre of the room, her free arm--the other holding her own cooled beverage--waving and gesturing for emphasis.

“So?” Alisa asked. The goddess of Maidens was always quick to poke at her oldest counterpart.

Aida sighed. As the Goddess of Mothers herself, she was something of the middle ground between her two sister goddesses. Though truly, they shared little to no blood. Their domains overlapped, more so than nearly any god or goddess in the pantheon. That would, under ordinary circumstances, mean that they were weaker, but they had found their own way around that.

If sharing one's domain meant losing a third of one’s potential power, then so be it. Three gods with two-thirds of their power working together was still far stronger than one god on their own.

More or less. Math and the esoteric nature of power and divinity did not mix all that well.

“Do we need to have this argument again?” Aida asked.

Alisa groaned. “But Aida, I’m bored. The least the old one can do is provide some entertainment.” Alisa leaned back, her loose robes riding up to expose a dangerous amount of leg.

Aida and Allegra both gave her a flat look. Their youngest member was always the one who was looking for trouble, and she often found it. Aida shook her head. “Don’t start,” she said.

Alisa huffed, but she didn’t push things. “Fine. Can we at least get some of those pretty looking templars to move the furniture again?”

“For the goddess of Maidens, you sure do like looking.” Allegra snapped.

Alisa’s cheeks reddened, but she soon smiled a very conspiratorial sort of smile. “I wouldn’t mind being the goddess of young men with firm buttocks.”

A cushion was flung across the room, and Alisa laughed as a burst of wind spun out of the air and into her waiting arms. “Pervert,” Allegra accused.

“I saw you looking too, old hag!”

“Hmph, I was merely making sure that today’s youth are well fed and exercise properly,” Allegra said.

Aida was about to add her own opinion to the mix when she sensed the air moving by the entrance to their lounging room. She turned her head towards the door and focused just a little more. The air beyond the entrance swirled, giving her a mental image of the person standing there. One of their more nervous attendants, a young lady with a swollen belly who served Aida in return for an easy entrance into the glories of motherhood. “Come in,” the wind whispered.

The attendant opened the door, waddled in, then bowed. She had a letter pinched between her fingers. “A, ah, letter for the Three Goddesses,” she said.

Aida shifted in her seat. Letters weren’t uncommon, but they had priestesses to take care of the more bureaucratic side of things. Donations and congratulations and the occasional written plea for assistance. She enjoyed helping with the latter, but that had always meant that she reached out to her priestesses and asked them to give her whatever seemed pertinent. Letters didn’t make it through on their own, not so easily.

“That’s weird,” Alisa said, summing up Aida’s own thoughts.

“It, ah, it was delivered by a monster,” the attendant said. “A large raven monster, it placed it in the courtyard, then left.”

“Give it here,” Allegra asked.

She took the letter from the attendant and inspected it.

“Thank you child, go on your way now.”

Allegra waited until the attendant was gone before she said or did anything. “Suspicious?” Aida asked.

“Very,” Allegra agreed. “This letter... it’s oozing with malice and darkness. Were I a betting woman, and you both know that I am, I would say that its provenance traces back to the Land of Monsters.”

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“The Dark Goddess wouldn’t send a mere letter,” Aida said.

“She wouldn’t?” Alisa asked.

It was easy to forget that while Alisa had been with them for some centuries, she was still relatively young. She had never seen the Dark Goddess herself. “No,” was her simple reply.

The gods of the pantheon had methods of communicating, far more secure than mere letters. It was nearly unheard of for the Dark Goddess to use these, but it was also unheard of for her to reach out to anyone.

“This handwriting is... poor,” Allegra said as she inspected the still-closed letter. “A child’s hand.”

“Really weird,” Alisa said. “Open it up!”

Allegra cast a few spells upon the letter, but they seemed to come back without any results as far as Aida could tell. No magical traps then. The Matron flipped the letter over and popped the seal off the front. She scanned it, then blinked. “What.”

“What what?” Alisa asked.

The matron frowned, staring at the letter more intently. Then she shifted and sat up properly. Aida felt herself tensing too.

“Luciana had a child?!”

It took a moment for the words to register, and longer for them to make sense.

The Dark Goddess. That most terrifying of monsters. The one Goddess that refused to be part of the wider pantheon, and who met any foray into her lands or domain with incredible violence, the three headed dragon... had a child?

“What?” Aida asked.

“I mean, it’s not impossible, right?” Alisa asked. “She’s, uh, a woman, right? She’s got all the bits and bobs for that. Don’t know who she, uh, found to do that kind of thing with though.”

“Nevermind that,” Aida said as she climbed to her feet. She walked over to Allegra and sat on one of the cushions next to the older goddess, then she carefully took the letter and scanned through it. “...Is this a joke?”

“I sense that it’s genuine,” Allegra said. “Though it wouldn’t be beyond the Dark Goddess to make someone believe that they’re her loving daughter.” There was some clearly audible disgust at the idea.

“I can’t imagine an actual child of the Dark Goddess being... this optimistic. Or nice. This Valeria girl sounds downright sickeningly sweet.”

“That fits, doesn’t it?” Alisa said. It earned her a look from the other two. “I mean, children either grow very similar to their parents, or they try to be very different. Maybe this Valeria girl is just very different?”

Aida considered it, but the idea was hard to wrap her head around. It was too far fetched. “How do we respond to this? She’s asking for the kind of advice that we’d be best positioned to give.”

“Can I see?” Alisa asked. She took the letter and read through it. “Aww, she’s sweet. Well, we don’t have a choice but to answer, I think.”

“Really?” Allegra asked. “Not answering is an answer in and of itself.”

“Oh yeah, let’s leave this girl, who’s worried that her evil mother isn’t a good mother, to fend for herself,” Alisa said with dripping sarcasm.

Aida nodded. “I see where you’re coming from. Both of you. In this case, I think it would be best to reply. The question remains, how should we reply?”

“Honestly,” Alisa said. “She asked some honest questions, so let’s answer them the same way.” Then the Goddess of Maidens grinned. “Though there’s nothing stopping us from flinging a few barbs.”

That had Aida and Allegra paying attention. There was nothing the three of them enjoyed more than a bit of bickering and gossip.

“This might be fun,” Alisa said.

***

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