Godsforsaken

Chapter 4: Moving Day

We were walking back to the Plucked Cockatrice to grab our stuff, intending to move into Anna's home right away. Anna, Richard, and their parents had spent an hour just talking like family and even though they had tried to include us I had still felt like an intruder in someone else's family business. Alisha and I had already meddled in Selene's family business and the girls had already met my mother, her husband and her sister wives, but this somehow felt more awkward. For a moment I was worried that there was still a distance between Anna and us but then I looked to the side to see Anna walking right next to me, keeping me inside her bubble of personal space, and I realized that it had nothing to do with that. Anna had worked her way into our hearts just fine, it was just the circumstances surrounding her that made it weird.

Anna's parents were surprisingly relatable people but that didn't change the fact that they were still the queen and king, the two most powerful people in the kingdom, only outdone by the gods themselves and even that I wasn't sure of. After all, gods were only as strong as the belief in them and as ruler of the kingdom Queen Emilia could outlaw belief in any gods that annoyed her.

And the gods knew that. The gods pretended that the royal family only ruled because they allowed it and the royal family did not publicly claim otherwise but in truth they only kept up the pretense because a civil war would benefit neither side. And since the queen and king held this kind of power over this many people, trying to think of them as simply Anna's parents was practically impossible.

Much less dramatic but similarly awkward was Prince Richard. He had mellowed out considerably after losing to Anna but it was still hard to forget how he'd treated us at first, glaring at us throughout the gala dinner we had organized to find the traitor in the royal palace and then insulting us, both to our faces and while dueling Anna.

Either way, Anna seemed out of sorts after everything, as if she was still trying to wrap her head around everything that had happened.

“How are you feeling?" I asked her quietly.

Despite all the hardships we'd shared the last few weeks I barely knew her and I could only guess at the history Richard and her shared, could only guess how rare it had to be for her mother to openly acknowledge her efforts. She'd said before that she knew her mother loved her but from the way she had reacted to Queen Emilia telling her how proud she was of her I had to assume those were words Anna had never expected to hear from her mother.

“I..." she said, then paused. Her hand was reaching out and I gave her mine to squeeze. I wasn't usually one for holding hands in public but if Anna needed the contact I would give it to her. “I'm glad I finally got through to Richard. And the only reason I finally managed that was because I'm so much stronger now. And that's all thanks to the four of you.”

I opened my mouth to protest but she cut me off.

“Yeah, sure, we all ate those fruits, but it was Yume teaching me about Qi that really made the difference. And the only reason that happened was because you were so curious about my powers. And even without all that, it was because of the four of you that I felt strong enough to confront him in the first place.”

I smiled and said nothing, letting her continue.

“And then mother and father showed up. Mother has always let me know she approved of my choices, not as a ruler but certainly as my mother. It was always simple things, approving looks or offhand remarks, she even wrote me letters sometimes. But she never, ever just came out and said she was proud of me.” She paused. “Did she speak to you during the duel?”

“She did," I said. “Well, she spoke to me afterwards, while you and Richard were hugging. I didn't even notice them until she'd spoken up.”

Anna chuckled. “Yeah, she does that.”

“I can tell how much it means to you," I said. I wasn't going to mention that her mother had intended to walk away until I asked her not to. It would only diminish the moment.

“It must sound insane to someone with a normal family," she said.

“It is a little bizarre," I agreed, “but I do understand it. She is a queen, after all.”

“How is it for you?”

I shrugged. “My mother always wanted me to be a tailor and she wasn't thrilled about me becoming an adventurer. She's mellowed out over the years, seeing how successful I am, but she's still bursting with pride whenever she sees me sewing or working with cloth.”

“Your mother sounds like a great woman," she said wistfully. “I would love to meet her one day.”

“We actually paid her a visit not long before your mother hired us," I said. “And mom made us promise to come visit her more often. So, if you want to come along...”

“Of course," she said.

We kept quiet a while, just walking in comfortable silence, but then she said:

“I'm really not sure how to feel right now. In just one day I managed to land in a relationship with not just one but four spectacular people, made up with Richard after years of arguing, and then my mother told me she was proud of me. And at the same time, I also learned that the youngest of my siblings is an insane Outsider cultist who tried to kill me and then tried to overrun the entire capital with conjured monsters. It's the best day of my life, but at the same time...”

I gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “I'm not going to say something stupid like 'I know how you feel' because I obviously don't," I said. “But I... no, we'll be there for you, all the way.”

She gave my hand a squeeze back. “Thank you.”

**

The innkeeper was a little disappointed when I told him that we were moving out but he was understanding. The room had been sized for a single person but we'd been living in it with four people and it had been distinctly crowded once Yume had joined us.

With such little space there was also little in the way of personal effects scattered around the room and cleaning it out only took us a few minutes. I couldn't help thinking that everything felt a little rushed. Anna had only invited us to live with her the day before and now we were already packing up to do so, but then again we had been wanting to find a bigger place since long before the queen had hired us. Anna had simply offered us her place to stay at the perfect time.

Honestly I still felt a little bad about that. She had tried to convince us to keep her around, listing all the ways she could be useful to us and offering us her home, not realizing that we had wanted her to stay with us regardless.

“Are you sure it's alright?" I asked her as we walked out of the room for the final time.

“You don't have to if you don't want to," she said meekly.

I wrapped my arm around her shoulder and pulled her close to me. “That's not what I mean," I said. “I just don't want to be taking advantage of you. We have all the money we need to get our own place. We don't need to be mooching off you.”

She was quiet for a moment, then she asked: “This is about what Richard said during the duel, isn't it?”

“Yes," I said. “No. Kind of. I was feeling bad about it already but hearing him say it made it worse.”

She placed her hand over mine. “We split the materials from the dungeon evenly so I know very well that you have all the money you'd need to buy your own house. Gods above, with all the stuff we hauled out of the dungeon I'm sure you four could be buying your own villa if you wanted. So if anyone thinks that you are taking advantage of me, fuck them. If anything, I'm taking advantage of your situation.”

I tilted my head in confusion.

“By offering you my home I get to keep you close," she explained. “I'm taking advantage of your need for a bigger place.”

I snorted, then leaned over to give her a kiss on the forehead. “You're amazing, Anna.”

She smirked. “I know.”

“And modest, too," I chuckled.

“You two coming?" Alisha asked and we hurried to catch up.

**

After leaving the Plucked Cockatrice we made our way to the market. We had literal tons of materials to sell, after all.

When we'd first entered the dungeon we'd assumed we would be able to sell our materials at the palace but things hadn't been that convenient after all. We had been able to sell some of it there but it quickly became clear that we had more stuff to sell than they had coin to buy it with and so we needed to get rid of a lot of it elsewhere.

First up was the monster meat. Bags of holding kept meat from going bad for quite a while and we'd been eating a lot of the monster meat we'd gotten during our dungeon dive but we needed to sell the rest before it could spoil. The boss of the fourth floor, Tiphereth, the Radiant Wings, had given us tons of incredibly tasty meat and we made sure to keep some of it for ourselves, but the rest we needed to get rid of while it was still possible. Of course, the enormous monster had dropped accordingly enormous amounts of meat and we ended up visiting almost a dozen butchers to get rid of all of it.

Thankfully the meat had been the only perishable portion of our haul. Technically the dragon berries from the fourth floor were also perishable but fruit simply did not have a chance to go bad with Alisha around. The elf had a slight obsession with fruit and would eat her fill and then some whenever she could. A human with her diet would suffer near-constant indigestion but for her it apparently wasn't an issue.

The rest of our haul consisted of gemstones, magical ores and monster materials like scales, hides, feathers and bones. Especially the one hundred and eight feathered wings of Tiphereth were likely to make us rich but we all agreed not to sell them yet. Large feathers were coveted by the Atalanta cults in the southeast and if we had to go there soon anyway we might as well save them all up and sell them at a premium down there.

The hides we sold to tanners and miscellaneous stuff like scales and bones we sold to alchemists, but the ores and metals we kept to ourselves. Magical metals were powerful stuff and you never knew when you'd find a use for them, although the metal we'd harvested from the giant snakes of the third floor we had sold to the royal guard back in the palace. The stuff had an unnaturally low melting point and so it was practically useless for crafting but it was very useful for a city guard. Instead of boiling tar they could rain molten-hot metal down on anyone stupid enough to attack the walls and after it cooled they could scoop the stuff up and melt it down again, giving them a reusable alternative to tar.

In the end we were left with an obscenely large pile of gems, both cut and raw. Some of them were low quality stuff hewed from the backs of the dungeon's elite variant monsters and some of it was spectacular stuff like the crystallized flames we'd found on the third floor but most of it were the piles we'd found in each of the dungeon's five treasure rooms. Most of them held enchantments ranging from minor to major which made them exponentially more valuable. In fact, we quickly decided to have an enchanter take the enchantments off all the minor gems. The enchanter would pay good coin for that many minor enchantments and the now mundane gems we could sell to jewelers. The more impressive gems we decided to move a few at a time. It would take us quite a while to liquidate the entire pile but it let us avoid the risk of saturating the market and bringing the price down.

Of course, even after selling all that we still had some of the most interesting pieces left. Seeds of mystic fruit trees, the skull of an elite variant giant snake with four crystal horns coming out of its head that made it look like a dragon, the stone face plate of the giant monkey deer tentacle beast on the second floor, a set of weapons used by the monkey monsters on the fourth floor and a pile of alchemical ingredients harvested throughout the dungeon but especially on the fifth floor that Annabella considered far too valuable to sell for mere coin and finally an entire bag of holding full of the wood and marble we had harvested from the fifth floor boss, which Annabella had promised us we would be able to sell to her mother for an enormous profit, but none of us had wanted to start haggling with her after everything that had happened today.

But even ignoring the stuff we hadn't been able to sell yet we had made a breathtaking profit for only a month spent in a dungeon. We could buy a noble title for each of us and spend the rest of our days just living off of what we'd made today, especially now that we no longer had to spend mun on finding ourselves a place to stay.

More and more I was beginning to see how the royal family had managed to become as powerful as they had if they'd had exclusive access to that dungeon for generations. They would have been able to feed their own army without a single acre of farmland and could equip them without requiring a territory that spread to encompass a mine. On top of that, their equipment could all be enchanted just by leaving it in the dungeon for a while and the dungeon provided the troops a great way to train and become stronger.

Seen in that light, the fact that Queen Emilia thought she would need assistance in order to fend off the Holy Maiden's forces was slightly concerning. Then again, I was glad she was taking the Outsiders seriously. In a way I supposed it was a good thing that Wilhelm was a filthy traitor because otherwise the queen might never have realized just how dangerous the threat truly was. But then again, with the anguish his betrayal had caused Anna and her parents I would still not hesitate to end the little twerp if I ever saw him again.

He had been strong. In fact, considering how powerful we'd gotten in our time in the dungeon the fact that Wilhelm had been able to fend us off for as long as he had was terrifying. But he was not invulnerable. If we'd faced him without a giant corrupted boss monster breathing down our necks we could have taken him easily. And even though Queen Emilia had put him at the top of the Most Wanted list both to her royal guard and to the Adventurer's Guild I had a feeling we hadn't seen the last of him. I just hoped that Anna wouldn't hesitate when we had to face him again.

**

Soon enough we reached Anna's little villa. Calling it a house would have been an understatement. The place was big enough for all five of us with room to spare. When we'd arrived here I had barely been able to focus on the place itself but now I finally had the presence of mind to take it in. The front door opened into a short hallway that opened into a large kitchen and dining room. Behind both of those was a small living room with a fireplace and two large bookshelves. Off to the left were two doors, one of which led to a huge bath big enough to fit ten people and the other one of which led down to what Anna had jokingly called her hobby room, a huge alchemist's laboratory.

A large stone workbench held stone slabs that could be heated by magical gemstones as well as cauldrons and beakers to mix and boil potions while a large wooden table held recipe books, notebooks, cutting boards, knives, a large stone mortar and other implements. The wall next to the window held racks of herbs and the wall opposite it had several iceboxes that I assumed were full of perishable ingredients. That was confirmed when Anna bee-lined towards it as we entered and placed the bags full of ingredients in them.

On the other wall from the living room there was both a staircase and a glass door that led out to the terrace. The villa had its own little garden and a furnished terrace that let one enjoy it. It was the definition of pointless decadence. The price of land within the capital was absolutely insane and this home squandered some of it for a little garden. Of course the garden wasn't just there to be pretty. It actually had space enough to plant trees and the moment we'd seen it Yume had asked Anna for permission to plant some of the seeds from the mystic fruits we'd eaten in the dungeon. On top of that there were a few herbs Anna grew in her garden, mostly kitchen herbs instead of the medicinal ones she grew in her laboratory.

The staircase, meanwhile, led both down to the root cellar and up to the bedrooms. Eight of them. Only half were even furnished and Anna seemed a little embarrassed about that, but it was fine. We had plenty of time to furnish another room tomorrow and I had a feeling that we would only very rarely need five rooms to sleep in. Of course, everyone having their own space they could retreat to was a nice touch and I was more and more excited about us moving in with her. But something about the place was weird. It took me a moment to put my finger on it when it clicked. The place was spotless. And given that she'd spent the last month in a dungeon the home should at least be dusty.

“Do you have maids?" I asked her.

Alisha got a sly look on her face, completely misunderstanding me, but Anna blushed a little. “Yeah. Richard insisted that a princess shouldn't have to clean her own home. So I have a maid who cleans the place up once a week. When I'm here I make a point of leaving the place spotless but she shows up even when I'm not home.” So at least not a live-in maid, then.

“I see," I said. “I'm sure the five of us will be able to keep the place clean without needing a servant around.”

Anna shrugged. “I pay her well and she needs the money so I'd rather not fire her if that's alright.”

“Sure," I said. I wasn't thrilled of a stranger having access to our home but, then again, we were the intruders here. The maid had been here long before we came along.

“Don't worry," she said. “You'll like Mary. She doesn't take shit from anyone, not even my brother.”

I snorted.

**

Alisha had practically taken over the kitchen the moment we had made it back. We'd bought some food in the market and she'd wasted no time starting to work on it while I helped her. Yume had busied herself in the garden and seemed to preen in the warm afternoon sunlight while Anna showed Selene around. The princess had taken a special liking to the blond paladin and the feeling seemed to be mutual. For Anna it was likely because Selene was a very down-to-earth person, the daughter of livestock herders who had been chosen to fight a Dark Lord and had then decided that the best way to help her family was to become an adventurer and send part of her earnings back home. Of course, the fact that Selene had the kinds of curves Anna had been shamed all her life for not having likely also played a part in it. As for Selene, I wasn't sure. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Anna, unlike the nobles the paladin had been dealing with all her life, wasn't arrogant or stuck-up.

I busied myself with cutting up some onions while I admired my lovely priestess.

Alisha had wavy light-brown hair cascading down to her navel and in it she wore a diadem with the symbol of a stylized flame in it, the sign of her goddess Brigid. She had a lovely heart-shaped face and shining green eyes you could lose yourself in and right now they were watering by proxy as she watched me chop the onions. Normally she wore her priestess robes consisting of a white top that was held together by a knot under her chest and a green skirt but for meeting the queen today she had gone with a long white and green dress. The neckline plunged deep, giving a view of her modest cleavage and the piece of fairy quartz she wore on a necklace, and my hand reached up to my own throat, where I wore the mirror to that charm.

She'd once saved my life with it, using the sympathetic link between the two identical charms to cast a defensive bubble around me as I was falling down a cliff, trying to shield Yume from the impact with my body. She had been devastated back then, terrified she would never get to see me again, and I would never forget the way her face had lit up when I'd come back to her, alive and well thanks to her efforts.

“What are you smiling about?" she asked.

“Just reminiscing," I said and leaned over to place a gentle kiss on her forehead, then told her quietly: “If you want to talk I'm all ears.”

Her eyes widened, knowing full well what I had meant, but then she shook it off. “What about?”

“You don't seem thrilled about going back to your tribe," I said.

She kept quiet for so long I thought she wasn't going to say anything, but then she let out a sigh. “I'm not. I meant what I said, you know? It's been ages since the Homeward miracle would have sent me back there. My home is here, with you.”

“Don't worry," I said. “We're just visiting them. You belong with us, for as long as you want to.”

She smiled. It was still a little sad, but it was a smile. “When the queen briefed Anna she told us that my people are upset. She didn't quite say why and I don't think she knows the full picture but reading between the lines I fear the reason for their unrest might have to do with us.”

“Which 'us' are we talking about here?" I asked.

“You and me," she said. “I fear there was some miscommunication.”

“Oh great," I said.

“I'm sorry," she said quietly.

“You have no reason to be sorry," I said.

“But I do. I could have cleared it up months ago but I kept putting it off.”

“You didn't know there was a problem," I said. “Look, I can only guess at the kind of life you led before we met, but from what you have told me I totally get why you wanted to stay far away from them. If you don't want to come...” I trailed off as I saw her shaking her head.

“No. I should have cleared this up long ago and I'm going to do just that.”

I nodded. “Well, at least I'm sure nothing bad will happen. We are traveling as a princess' official escort, after all.”

**

Dinner had been a rather excellent dish of slow-cooked Tiphereth meat with fresh vegetables and bread fresh from the market and we'd eaten it on the terrace, the weather good enough and the temperatures warm enough to sit outside late into the night.

After dinner Alisha, Selene and Yume had started decorating their new rooms and exploring the house while I was sitting outside. For today I was going to share Anna's bedroom as she had the largest bed in the house and I had found that the window in her room led out onto the small roof over the terrace. The roof was angled quite gently and made a wonderful place to watch the stars from. I was sitting on top of a thin blanket to make the shingles of the roof more comfortable, gazing up at the carpet of stars and the two moons sitting side by side.

Next to me sat Syr, the girl who had taken refuge in my mind after the vile being calling herself the Holy Maiden had taken over her body. Of course Syr didn't really sit next to me but her apparition was realistically sitting on the roof as if she was truly here.

“I've missed this," I told her quietly. I'd spent a lot of time training to talk to Syr without speaking out loud and I had gotten pretty good at it but talking out loud still felt more natural.

“Seeing the stars?" she asked. “Yeah. As fantastical as the landscapes were in that dungeon, not being able to see the real sky was stifling.”

I chuckled. “Not just that. I'm also glad we get to just sit and talk again. I've been neglecting you.”

“If I recall you agreed to stop beating yourself up for that," she teased.

“Doesn't mean I didn't miss just talking to you. I like spending time with you.”

She blushed and I idly wondered if that came naturally to her. The form I was seeing of her was just an apparition, after all, so wouldn't she need to deliberately make herself blush for me to be able to see it?

“I... like spending time with you, too," she finally admitted, very quietly.

I felt my own cheeks warm and we stayed quiet for a while.

Eventually I broke the silence and asked: “So, did she learn about what we did already?”

She chuckled. “Oh yes. Apparently when that Randolph guy died it sent a painful feedback to her. It weakened her so badly I was able to listen in on her for a whole hour without disturbance. She was really not happy about it. Apparently that beast had been a rather integral part of her plan.”

“So we ruined her plan?”

“Not entirely, but we did put a big dent in it. Well, you did. I was just along for the ride.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “If I recall, me not beating myself up was dependent on you not doing it, either.”

She sighed. “It's just frustrating. You guys do all the work and all I can do is sometimes spy on the bad guy. Oh, speaking of, today I saw her talking to Wilhelm.”

I perked up at that. “Oh?”

“Yeah. It was weird though. Really weird.” She trailed off and shuddered.

“Do I dare to ask?”

“I don't think I have enough context to understand what I was looking at,” she said. “He seemed weirdly exhausted when he came to her, looking almost deflated. She held him close, stroked his cheek, made soothing noises, like a mother would to a child... and then she... breast-fed him. And I could feel every second of it.”

“Yuck,” I said.

“Yes,” she said emphatically. “Afterwards he seemed fine, almost hyper. He was suddenly eager to do whatever he could. That's when she told him to go and help 'with the other project'.”

“Yeah," I said. “That prank Wilhelm told us about. I'm worried about that.”

“Me too," she said.

“But honestly,” I said, “I'm a little relieved to hear it. I was wondering if Wilhelm might actually be behind it.”

“But the queen said...”

“Think about it,” I said, interrupting her. “The crystal weapons the royal family can produce dissipate within moments unless the user chooses to make them last, right?”

“Right,” Syr said. “That's why that hail of swords Richard summoned disappeared so quickly.” She paused. “Wait a moment.”

I nodded sagely, waiting for her to think it through.

“Wilhelm had access to a weapon that could disappear after striking a blow,” she said, clearly thinking out loud. “It's the perfect weapon for an assassin if you think about it. You either kill your target or you don't. Either way, there won't be any evidence of who committed the crime. Except there was.”

“Except there was,” I agreed. “I had wondered if someone might have been trying to frame Wilhelm but if he's actually meeting up with the Holy Maiden then he has to be involved after all.”

“But then why would he be so stupid as to make the blade last?”

“That is the question, isn't it?” I said. “I think this situation is a bit more complicated than we assumed.”

She chewed her lip and again I wondered if it was subconscious or if she was doing it deliberately. “I'll try to find out as much as I can.”

“Thank you.”

“Something else is bothering you, though," she said quietly.

“You sure you can't read my mind?" I asked with a chuckle.

“Positive. But I've gotten to know you pretty well.”

“Alright, alright," I said. “There's too much that bothers me. I'm worried for Alisha. She seems upset about having to go back to her tribe. I'm worried about Anna. Wilhelm might be an evil cultist who needs to be put down but he is still her brother. I got a feeling that even with the entire kingdom hunting him we'll be the ones who have to face him. Can I really expect her to fight her own brother to the death? It's a lot to deal with.”

Syr nodded sagely. “Alisha has made her decision. She wants to go there with us so the best we can do is be there for her to lean on. Anna, though... She will need to steel herself. Even if she won't be the one to fight him, she would have to live with one of her lovers killing one of her siblings. All we can do is support her. Be prepared to do the tough job for her if she can't. Her being furious with you for killing him is better than her dying because she tried to spare him.”

I gave a grim nod.

“But there's still something that's bothering you.”

I sighed. I had been thinking about it on and off since the fifth floor, when that cryptic warning had come back to haunt me. “Alright, fine, I admit it. Where the fuck is Athena? I've gotten used to her bitching at me after every major quest I undertake. And now? No sign of her.”

“You miss her," Syr teased.

I ground my teeth. “I do not. It's just weird. The sun rises in the morning, water is wet and Athena bitches at me after long adventures. Good riddance if she did decide not to bother me anymore but gods are too set in their ways for that. I could be dying of old age and Athena would still be telling me that I never had the right to be anything but a tailor.”

Syr smirked. “You're worried about her.”

“She's a goddess," I countered. “If anything happens to her she just shows up back on Mount Olympus, hale and healthy.”

“And yet you're worried about her.”

I ground my teeth, not wanting to admit it.

“Oh, there you are," Anna said from behind me, surprising both of us.

“Saved by the bell," I muttered.

“This isn't over yet," Syr said with a chuckle and then vanished.