A Jaded Life

Amusingly, there were no dreams that night. I had expected a visitation from Hecate but unless I had managed to forget my experiences in Her strange dreamscape, there hadn’t been one. Instead, I was greeted with a notification that I had completed the quest to build Her shrine, with an added modification that the Goddess was highly pleased with my efforts and thus increased my rewards.

Those rewards were given to me in the next few notifications and they were a doozy. The first reward was an almost insane amount of EXP, though given that we were talking about the rewards for over a month of concentrated efforts it might not be that insane, letting me level up twice and reach level eighty-four. The next reward was just as good, maybe even better, though it sadly came with a time limit. It was called a temporary boon called Blessing of the Apprentice and it increased the speed with which my Arcane skills gained levels by thirty per cent, though only for a year and a day. So, a massive benefit was balanced out by only lasting for a year. Sure, having some boon that would last for the rest of my life would be nice, but a permanent boon would be far less powerful. Hopefully, this meant I’d be able to use this boon to resurrect Sigmir but even if I didn’t manage to get there in a year, it would accelerate my progress.

Additionally, just as I was reading the notification, a message appeared before me, not a system notification but a message, written into the air with silvery letters. It only took a moment to recognise the power doing the writing, by now I was fairly familiar with Lady Hecate’s magic, and that the message told me that ‘she’ had added something to the Shrine’s library only confirmed my recognition. There might be deities out there who could fake the message and my recognition of it, but to alter something within another deity’s Shrine without a mortal agent in play sounded like something impossible. It might not be, I had little knowledge of the capabilities and limits of the Gods but it felt like it.

Ginning to myself, I moved out of our underground shelter, briefly checking in on the others on my way, asking about their own rewards. What Lia, Silva and Alex received was fairly simple, to be expected given that they had only made sure to protect the area and gather additional supplies, and the reward was fairly amusing in its own right. It was a necklace, or maybe calling it a neck adornment would be more suitable, holding a moon-sickle pendant made of a gleaming silver material. I doubted it was ordinary silver but I didn’t know. The amusing part came with the form the adornment took for Silva and Alex, their necks didn’t support necklaces, so the magic of the items turned them into chokers. Or collars, depending on how you looked at things, which made it amusingly fitting on Silva. It didn’t look as good on Alex, but it worked surprisingly well with their long and slender body.

To make things even funnier, Lia looked at the necklace with faint disdain, pulling at the chain with an expression that made me wonder what she had in mind. I doubted she’d discard the pendant, I could feel some protective magic emanating from it, but I had a feeling she was trying to find a better way to wear it.

After watching her move it around her neck for a bit, as if considering to loop it twice and make the chain shorter, the necklace suddenly changed from the fairly long chain of fine silver loops into a black band of an unknown cloth, embroidered with beautiful silver motives of the moon’s phases. The pendant remained unchanged if one ignored the change in position, and suddenly, Lia looked a great deal happier.

When I asked them about the pendants’ abilities, I was informed that it granted them an increase of +1 Endurance, tripled while in direct Moonlight. Wonderfully useful but, as I had expected, nothing overwhelming.

Luna, on the other hand, had received something more interesting. Sadly, it was nothing I could make use of, as it was a crystal similar to the one she had installed in the shrine’s altar, only that this one only worked for her and it apparently functioned as an instruction manual of sorts for the abilities she had gained after crossing the first divide. I wasn’t sure why she needed it, given that she had successfully blessed the Shrine and invoked all sorts of protections and benedictions over it, but I wasn’t about to second-guess how a Deity interacted with Her followers on the topic of their worship of Her.

That sounded like a good way to get cursed with something unpleasant, an act made even easier if one was near these followers. Not that I thought Luna would curse me, at least not until she entered her teenage years, but I also didn’t want to get between her and Lady Hecate. Bad place to be and I didn’t want my daughter to resent me.

It was strange, I had never wanted children, had considered every part of that experience to be something to be avoided at all costs, and yet, now that I had my two daughters, I wasn’t willing to give them up. They had, despite all my old convictions, created a space within my heart and moved in, both in their own, unique ways. Lia was a lot more independent in general behaviour, and yet, she remained unwilling to seek out alternative sources of sustenance for herself or Alex. They both preferred to get their Astral Power and vitality from the blood I donated and especially Lia made a bit of a ritual of it, approaching me, and telling me about her day before taking a knee and drinking that bit of blood she needed. A little strange, or maybe a lot given the clear demonstration of submission she included in a family ritual, but there was something domestic about it, no matter where we were or what we were doing.

Alex was less ritualistic about it but they, too, preferred my blood compared to anything else. They occasionally used other sources but seldomly, mostly when they were deep in a project and trying to save as much time as possible.

Luna, on the other hand, was a lot more physically dependent on me, relying on me to provide everything from food to hugs and comfort. On the other hand, she was working closely with Lady Hecate, spending a lot of time in Her realm for lessons. By now, I was noticing the strides she made in the lessons I was giving her during the time we had to hide from the Sun and could guess that she wasn’t some prodigy but that Lady Hecate was visiting her every other night.

Whether I should worry about her mental stability or the odd effects the distorted flow of personal time would have on her maturation, I wasn’t sure but I could only hope that the Goddess wasn’t mucking things up even further than the increased attributes from the system already did. She already looked almost twice her age, making me wonder how far she would continue to mature at an accelerated pace and if there was anything I could do to help. Sadly, neither the system nor my munchkin came with an instruction manual, so I had to make things up as I went along.

When I reached the shrine, I spoke a brief prayer to Hecate, activating the library crystal and checking the index. For a moment, I felt as if there was something, or maybe someone, watching me but looking around, I couldn’t see anyone. When I tried to search for souls in the vicinity, or sources of magic, I could only detect the Shrine, causing me to shrug and focus on the index I was working with. My own observations regarding the Charland were there, as were Luna’s findings and even some portions written by Alex, Lia and Silva. Their parts focused on different aspects of the area and made for interesting reading, at least from what I had seen. What I hadn’t seen just yet was an entry called Map of the Charland and its surroundings, so I opened it, curious what I would find.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised but what I found was what it said on the tin, a map of the Charland. Only, the map was incredibly detailed, with coordinates in a format I hadn’t seen before and readings I recognised from Luna’s articles to describe the effects the Charland’s integration had on the environment.

By the looks of it, Lady Hecate was actively monitoring things in this area and sharing Her observations with the mortals who would visit this shrine. It was at times like this that I had to ask myself if Lady Hecate was an outlier among the gods or if they’d all share things as She did. Somehow, I had a feeling that it was the former, as she was treating us not like lesser beings that should worship at Her feet but as, well, not equals but as promising students. Maybe it was due to that treatment that I was happily building Her shrines and spreading Her teachings.