Chapter 16: Chapter 15

Cass was perched on the edge of a building as Eris walked behind Syr. She had a weapon to the other girl's back, and Cass doubted that she could disarm Eris before the woman stabbed Syr - and by the way she moved, her head occasionally flicking around, she would have stabbed the girl in question. She wondered if those elixirs that they took to the Dungeon would help. None of them had needed to use them, yet, so she didn't know how they worked.

She followed after Eris and Syr, not even thinking about calling for help from her co-wives or Drake. She didn't have time. She had to follow Eris, to make sure that Syr was safe. Even if she was strange and dishonest, she hadn't done anything to deserve to die.

* * *

Horn mentally tried to steady herself. Her goddess had put her in this situation, and she trusted Freya more than anyone else. She loved Freya. Freya didn't treat her familia like trash to be thrown away. She cherished each and every one of them. Horn knew that better than anyone else.

But... Freya had been different ever since she met that girl. Cassandra Cain. She had watched through Freya's eyes, when she had been playing the role of Syr, following after her goddess's every movement with an intense fascination that she knew would never leave her. Freya was changing. She had never been so obsessed with anyone else. She had seen, felt, the way that Freya treated her familia members, the way her love for each was a special, unique thing, a flower all its own. Her love for Cass wasn't like that. With Ottar, she would see the curve of his shoulder, the careful precision of his speech, the robust steadiness of his gait, all the things admirable in him, and admire them, as one might a statue.

If Horn had been asked to say who she thought Freya loved the most, she would have said Ottar; but she felt similarly about all her familia members. Saw in them all different kinds of beauty.

Horn had heard, once, about a menagerie where the king of some distant country kept strange beasts from across the world, captured or raised in captivity. Could one compare the elegant beauty of the swan to the triumphant majesty of the tiger? Was one better than the other? That was how Freya thought of her familia.

That wasn't how Freya thought about Cassandra. She could understand her goddess's love; she had felt it herself, when her goddess had looked at Cassandra. For Allen, who had only seen things from outside, it probably looked not that much different from any other fanciful new beautiful soul she had chosen to cultivate. He had been there to watch Cassandra save her goddess from the would-be mugger, had been the one to guide the Goliath to the Fifteenth Floor in secret, to make it fight Erza and keep her away from the Hostess for long enough to convince Cassandra to spend time with her...

But for Horn, she knew that the love Freya felt was much stronger, and it seemed to grow stronger with each passing day. It was changing her. Horn didn't like that. She liked her goddess the way that she was, that perfect, transcendent being of pure love, who cared for all her children, if not equally, then in roughly the same amount.

"Now we're going to tie you to this chair," Eris said, jarring Horn from her thoughts. She glanced around the room - they were in some type of warehouse. Dozens of men were already here. Some of them, she suspected, wished to do... nasty things to her. "Remember, men. The point of this is to lure the Batgirl in. We can't do that if the girl's dead."

"That bitch killed Gary. Why should we let her friends live?"

Horn knew that Batgirl hadn't killed Gary; that had been the loathsome ebony-skinned one, the one that her goddess despised more than she had ever seen her goddess despise anyone or anything. There was also an ugliness there, too, seeing this new side of the being of love, capable of such hatred. "I'm just a simple maid, do I really look like I'm friends with a vigilante?"

"You said one of your patrons was probably Batgirl," Eris said. There wasn't heat in her voice.

"I'm not friends with my patrons," Horn said, falling into the role of Syr once more. "Well, not normally. They're patrons."

For a moment, Eris's eyes flicked across the warehouse, some suspicion in her gaze. Was Cassandra already here? That would be reassuring. Either Cassandra would die, freeing her goddess from this rotten love, or she would win, and she wouldn't have to worry about these men's intentions. "Do you know which one she is? Which familia?"

Horn had been told to cooperate - but she also knew her goddess wanted the coming confrontation to happen. If she said she was a member of the Loki familia, it was possible they'd give up. "I think she's this quiet one. She doesn't talk too much, she only comes in with her other Level One friends." That was all true.

"What familia?" Eris asked again.

"Ah, some small, weak familia," Horn lied. In fairness, compared to the Freya familia, the Loki familia was weak. "I couldn't tell you the name."

Eris pushed her tongue against her cheek, then nodded. "Any Level Twos?"

"I'm not aware of any." Because she knew the name of the Level Fours, Fives, and Sixes, not the Level Twos.

"Good. We need to get a message to this girl - any idea how?"

"She comes into the Hostess of Fertility every day, after she gets back from the Dungeon," Horn explained.

She had spent so much time with the sharpened senses of her goddess playing alongside her own, that she learned to notice things, despite not being too strong herself. One of the men in the crowd had disappeared. His breathing wasn't present among the general cacophony, having been taken out by some attack quiet enough that Horn couldn't hear it with her own Adventurer's senses - but even Eris hadn't noticed.

"So we'll have to hold you for a full day, then. Sorry, Syr," Eris said, ruffling Horn's hair, a smug look on her face as she did so. "Don't worry, as long as Batgirl behaves herself-"

"Antony?" Came a voice from the crowd.

"What the fuck are you interrupting me for?" Eris snapped.

"I can't find Antony - he was right next to me a second ago."

Eris started to swear. "Shi-" It was then that the heavy, unconscious, body of a thick, muscular man - his weight a combination of gluttony and exercise both - fell directly on Eris from the ceiling of the warehouse, simply sending her toppling, face first, down to the ground. Horn resisted the urge to smile at the scene of the petite pallum crawling her way out from under her unconscious compatriot. "Well? What are you all standing around for?" She was already looking up at the ceiling, eyes squinting. "She's up there." She kicked off Antony's unconscious body, hurling herself up into the rafters after a figure that was obviously Cassandra.

Cassandra's gauntleted hands grabbed the short blade that Eris had held aloft, twisting her arm through the air, moving it in such a way as to force Eris to do without any leverage. The Level Two Pallum kept a fierce grip on the weapon nonetheless, glaring violently up at her current dance partner as the two struggled like that - then Eris took a grip on Cassandra's wrist, smirking up at the other girl as she started to drag herself up.

It didn't work, of course. Cassandra moved to unlatch the gauntlet, and Eris saw as much, reaching for the other hand's wrist - and Cassandra elegantly took advantage of the momentary distraction to escape her clutches, leaving Eris dangling from her sword once more, hanging over her men and snarling up at Cassandra. "Men! What the hell are you lot doing?! Help!"

Horn frowned at the mass of men. Cassandra had come alone, to save her - and she knew that Cassandra didn't particularly like her. Sometimes her goddess could be cruel, to polish the souls of those she cared for, and this was one of those cases, she knew, as men started to clamber up the walls, finding the struts that Cassandra was suspended on.

Should she continue to 'cooperate,' as she had been directed by her goddess? Even with Cassandra's skills, if she was trying both to defeat these men and to save her, the odds were low... but such odds were where heroes were made, too. She wished she knew what her goddess wanted her to do at that very second. One of the men got close to Cassandra, and she briefly worried that it truly was over now - but the girl, already hanging upside down in an odd position, legs clasped around the long beam going across the roof of the warehouse, denying Eris easy reach of the strut to try to get better footing, simply idly flicked her leg out for a fraction of a second, kicking the man's ankle and sending him tumbling down to the ground, collapsing in a heap, before recovering her balance.

"Fuck, you're good, for a Level One," Eris said. "But if you don't surrender, then-"

Cassandra whipped her arm to one side before Eris could finish the sentence, releasing the short blade at exactly the right moment. Eris kept going, all the superhuman strength and speed in the world incapable of helping her as she soared through the air and thumped into the far wall, her feet pressing against it. For a moment, she considered leaping for Cassandra - then, instead, she leapt towards Horn.

Horn hadn't actually been tied up before Cassandra had intervened, so she started moving out of the way, intentionally making her movements sluggish, feigning being a meek mortal civilian, rather than the Adventurer she was. At the speed Eris was flying, she wasn't sure she'd make it, but she was flying through the air rather than rushing along the ground, making it at least vaguely possible - then Cassandra thumped down directly on top of Eris, slamming her into the ground, wrapping her in a gauntleted grip, attempting to manage a carotid restraint on her, hefting her up into the air and denying her leverage at the same time.

It wasn't as effective as her previous strategy - Eris easily grabbed Cassandra's gauntlet and pulled at it, pushing back against her body as she whipped a foot out. Only an extremely quick abandonment of the attempt gave Cassandra the space to avoid the strike, and Eris whipped her sword out towards Horn, who was still seated. "If you don't give yourself up, then I'll kill this girl. She's a friend of yours, right?"

"..." Cass was silent for a long second. Horn looked her in the eyes and desperately shook her head - she knew that Freya would not want her to give up here. How could she get out of this situation without revealing her adventurer status or putting her thumbs on the scales for Cassandra's victory or pushing things back towards the previous stalemate that had bored Freya in the first place? Cassandra's expression darkened, and she lunged forward. The knife came towards Horn; she desperately twisted backwards, managing to slide under the attack, but not at any natural speed, something that both Eris and Cassandra noticed.

"You're a fucking adventurer?" Eris spat out.

Horn had no prepared lie, and Cassandra had an ability not too dissimilar to her goddess's own - she had no idea how to maintain the lie, under these circumstances. "Everybody at the Hostess of Fertility is," she said, stumbling backwards quickly, moving only like a first Level adventurer, hoping that would suffice. "Please, Batgirl," she pleaded.

Cassandra considered the scene before her, then kicked the chair that Horn had been seated in directly at Eris's center of mass. The pallum blocked the item with one arm, sending it ricocheting off into the distance, and Cass had Horn over her shoulder by the time that was done.

She was pretty sure she was supposed to make sure that Eris and Cassandra fought to the death - Eris's. What was she supposed to do, though? She couldn't wriggle free of Cassandra's arms without giving away the ghost. She didn't have any useful skills. She -

A rock slammed into her skull from out of nowhere and sent Cassandra into a spin before her body collapsed like a puppet with the string's cut on the cool floor, only a few meters from the door. She quickly lost consciousness.

* * *

Cassandra moved over Syr's body, her gaze flicking around the warehouse, trying to find whoever it was that had thrown that rock. Some of the men on the upper levels had stayed up there, watching rather than coming down, but none moved like they'd just hit her friend.

Eris grinned, genuinely glad to see Syr's unconscious, seriously wounded body. "Whoever did that, is gonna get a nice bonus from me. Once we've gotten rid of you and Syr, we'll move on to Spectre, next. Then we'll fuck up your whole damn familia, teach you to keep your nose clean."

Cass didn't respond to the threats. They were exaggerated and untrue. She let her eyes flick around the room, taking in the various first level adventurers coming in. She watched their movements closely, including those of the ones still on the strut above. It hadn't been one of them that had attacked Syr - none of them were strong enough for it. Perhaps if they used thrown weapons like Drake did, they might have managed, but that didn't fit either. That meant there was another opponent present, who had attacked Syr. She needed to take them down, and fast - only Eris was a real threat, though. Her enhanced speed and strength could let her fight on a level with Cass, but Cass could easily defeat almost anyone who was just as strong and fast as her.

The angle that the rock had come from - she remembered it by how the force had hit Syr's body, took two steps back, kicked the rock up off the ground, grabbed it, and threw it as best she could in exactly the direction the shot had come from, hopefully dissuading the unknown third party from continuing his involvement. If she was lucky, it would have hit the attacker.

When Eris came at her with the sword, she grabbed it near the hilt again, gauntlets not getting cut at all by the blade. Eris snarled and tried to headbutt her, but Cass used the shift in her weight to turn her into an impromptu bludgeoning weapon, spinning her around, crashing her body full speed into two of her allies.

"Fucking-" Eris hissed as Cass spun her further up into the air before bringing her down, hard, agains the ground. She had a fraction of a second to repeat the process, slamming her into the opposite side, not giving Eris the time to recover. Her men were getting closer as Cass frantically tried to inflict enough damage to knock the Level Two girl unconscious - when it became clear that wasn't happening, she threw her as hard as she could off into the distance before she could get enough of her footing under her to be a physical threat.

There were a dozen Level One adventurers around her - she kicked, punched, moved, and flowed around them, knocking them out and disabling them with punches to critical points, striking throats and sternums and necks, sending them tumbling with kicks to the knees or ankles and following up with kicks. It was quite brutal, but she managed to disable them before Eris came charging back at her, and perfectly predicted the mix of charge and feint that would have seen the knife go right into her throat, but instead let her catch it in hand.

"Do you have some kind of fucking foresight Skill?" Eris asked with a snarl. She wasn't willing to try a headbutt - she had figured out that giving up her footing or shifting her weight would leave her vulnerable, so instead she just put all her strength into the sword, driving it towards Cass's stomach despite the firm grip Cass had on the weapon in question. Cass didn't respond, just silently staring down at Eris as the blade came closer, closer- she directed it carefully and let go, the weapon piercing right through her, missing any vital organs in the process. "Ha," Eris said, loosening her grip on the sword for a moment, a smug look on her face - and Cass flipped backwards, out of melee range, the weapon still in her gut as she grabbed Syr and started to run again, ignoring the lances of pain from her stomach where the weapon moved slightly.

Her dad had taught her not to remove the weapon in a situation like this - instead, she gripped it with her free hand, perfectly timing the movements of her wrist with the movements of her body to minimize the damage. She needed to get to the Twilight Manor, or a healer somewhere else.

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"Goddamn you! Fucking bitch! Give me back my sword and come back here and fight me!" The pallum cried out, chasing after her, but her shorter legs meant that she had a shorter stride, and Cass kept running.

* * *

Loki was a great goddess, that should have been obvious to her (unappreciative) familia, but they seemed to for some reason think she was some sort of degenerate pervert instead. That was completely wrong - she was some sort of degenerate pervert as well as being a great goddess. Cass was one of the least attractive of Drake's little coterie, but that didn't mean that she didn't feel for the girl, who had come to the Twilight Manor wearing a stupid mask, having a sword sticking out of her chest, and carrying the unconscious body of that cute bluish gray-haired maid from the Hostess of Fertility.

Obviously she knew the girl! She'd once drunkenly offered to let her join the Loki familia, but the little twerp had refused! Unbelievable! And now, she had decided that the Loki familia was the best way to come hide out?

It was, sure. And she was unconscious, too. But still! Why couldn't she need something other than immediate medical attention after having been kidnapped by a gang to attract Cass? Then Loki could have felt good about going, "Fool! You shouldn't have rejected me all those years ago! Now fall, fall to your doom!"

She'd have much rather had the maid come here about, oh, gambling debts. The rejection then would be so sweet.

"So, explain to me exactly why this Eris chick decided to kidnap Syr Flova?" Loki said, sitting cross-legged in her office, her stuff having gotten strewn around. Cass was the one here, having been dragged along for an interrogation by her goddess. The little troublemaker may or may not have caused her problems, depending on the specifics.

"To get... to me..." Cass explained.

"Right, right, I got that. I mean, why are you on Eris's shitlist?"

"I saw... a man in Day-da-lus Street... harassing a woman... and I stopped him."

"...and?"

"He was... a member... of Eris's familia..."

"You're not supposed to-" she saw by the look Cass was giving her that she had no hope of convincing her of anything, so she just sighed. This was just like with Xulia. Well, at least Cass hadn't done it too blatantly. She was going around wearing a mask. Who knew what familia she was with?

Other than anybody who happened to be looking at the Twilight Manor when she showed up, bleeding from a gut wound. Lucky that their healers kept some potions in stock.

"Guess that's why you've been gaining excelia the fastest out of your whole group?" Loki asked instead. Cass quietly nodded. "You're gaining it like crazy. Guess I get why Astraea and Ganesha are so happy to take up the peacekeeper role now. Easy excelia."

"Not... easy..." Cass said.

"You know what I mean," Loki said, but it was obvious that Cass didn't. That had never stopped Loki before, though, so she kept on barrelling forward. "Look, you can't cause fights like this. The Guild levels fines on people who fight other familias, you know." Cass stared at her blankly. Right. The girl could barely count, much less care about money. The easiest - well, no, second easiest one to explain how Drake got his hooks in. The easiest was Xulia, who was obviously a lunatic. "That's bad."

"No."

"No? I'm pretty sure losing money is bad."

"Not... to protect people..." Cass said, her eyes narrowing as she stared down Loki. This kid had no fear. Or sense.

Loki moved to bop her head, and she blocked the attack trivially, though at least she didn't do some kind of wrist twist. "You. Are Level One. Some rando off the street given a falna is about as strong as you." Cass shook her head. "No?"

"I took down... a dozen... members of her familia..." True.

"What the hell? Where did Drake pick you up from?"

"Gotham."

"Never heard of it," Loki said, not actually caring. The world was big, and investigating too deep into an adventurer's tragic backstory was just asking for trouble. Well, interrogating them about it definitely was. A little behind the scenes investigation, or maybe a discussion while they were drunk, or anything else to get the info without coming off like the bad guy - that was a good idea. She could do that later. Did Cass drink? "You got stabbed."

"I... won."

"You have a funny definition of winning."

"Eris wanted... to hurt me, and Syr... she didn't succeed."

"Syr got bopped in the head pretty hard, she's still out."

Cass's lips twisted downward at that. Aww. Did little baby have a crushy-wushy? She had a husband, but that hadn't stopped a lot of women in the world. Hm. Wait, if she was crushing on Syr, maybe she could get in with the girl? Sure, the scars weren't attractive, but those abs, those exotic half-Eastern looks... Loki's tongue flicked out across her lips.

"No," Cass said, in response to her thoughts.

"Oh come on!" Loki looked around the room, hoping for some invisible audience to agree with her that she was the most put-upon woman in the world - sadly, her invisible interlocutors didn't seem roused to begin their noises of sympathy. She let out a sigh, leaning forward. "Fuck's sake. If the Guild comes by, I'm throwing you under the carriage wheels, got it? I didn't know. This is your clusterfuck, and your responsibility. Resolve it or give it up."

Cass smiled a little at that, nodding quietly.

Loki was really too nice of a goddess for her own good. She made a dismissive wave at Cass, who quietly ducked out of the office.

Hmm. She wondered if she could recruit Syr to join the Loki familia now? Well, she'd have to wake up first. Still. Oh, you know, it was really terrible... you might have died. You could even say you owe me your life. But I did it all out of love. Join my familia, Syr. You'll be so much happier here. Something like that. She'd have to make sure none of her more ornery children were around to poke a hole in her speech.

* * *

Cass simply rested in my lap, her body leaning quietly against mine. She took in soft, gentle breaths as she sat there, my hands wrapped around her stomach.

This situation reminded me that Cass had, at one point, had a death wish - I didn't know if that was still true in this world or not, for this Cass or not, but she had thrown herself into an incredibly dangerous situation to protect Syr, and gotten stabbed for the trouble. I was pretty sure that she didn't even really like Syr that much.

I really doubted that Freya would have let herself get captured by some random familia, or get clonked in the head with a rock, so it seemed increasingly unlikely that Syr was Freya. From what Julia had said, there was some intimate connection between her and Freya. Maybe that wasn't true in this world? Maybe the relationship was different than she thought? Apparently a lot of people at the Hostess of Fertility were former adventurers, maybe Syr was a former member of the Freya familia, like Anya and Mia? Perhaps with a closer relationship to Freya than the others...

I sighed. I needed more information to figure out anything more than that. Julia was out, prowling for the Nyx familia to make sure they didn't follow Cass's trail back to the Twilight Manor. I'd fucked Noriko into a sweaty, sticky mess before Cass had gotten home. Cass was happily snuggled against me.

My thoughts turned back to that bit of magic that I'd been toying with for the past long while, the technique I knew existed but couldn't quite make manifest. My thoughts, in particular, went to my time with Haruhime, how the threads of destiny had obscured my identity and made her see me as a beautiful woman, despite the physical reality. If I could do something like that, but more sophisticated... then maybe I could finally get a new goddamn Charm. Julia had managed to figure out Many-Stepped Stride from my teaching, and combined with Splinter in the Mind's Eye, she was now a stealth monster. A few more Charms and Levels, and she'd be a combat monster too.

Being married to three training monkeys made me really want to push myself, but I was a Chosen of Venus, not of Mars. Slut caste, not warrior caste.

* * *

"What're you doing here?" The Twilight Manor guard half-spat at Allen. Some random Loki familia member whose name wasn't worth remembering, treating him with disrespect - but he could keep himself under control for the sake of his goddess. A war with the Loki familia wasn't something she wanted right now.

Allen just gave him a cold gaze. "I'm here to pick up Syr Flova."

"She's not here."

"She is," Allen said lazily. His goddess knew where she had gone. He didn't understand everything that Freya did, but he knew she wouldn't make a mistake about this.

"Even if she was, why would we hand her over to the likes of you?"

Allen glowered at him. "Because she's a member of the Freya familia. We appreciate your rendering of aid for one of our members." The words were a perfunctory politeness that Freya had ordered him to say. "Now, return her to her familia."

Some minutes later, he had the unconscious Syr on a pallet, dragging her along behind him.

He didn't think he'd hit her that hard.

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