This takes place during Chapter VI.

Interlude II: Is It Possible For a Goddess To Contemplate?

While Anubis had resolved to put in effort like her Child had into changing herself, she wished Bastet had given her at least a six year recharge period before dragging her to another widespread event like this. Alas, having a mother hen as a best friend was equal parts amazing and horrific, especially when she decided everyone around her had to share in her suffering.

Still, the Guide of the Dead didn't have much to complain about here. As a Goddess herself, she was afforded various lavish luxuries, including the best seats in the entire Colosseum. Along with the fact Bast was working along with security for the event, they were given luxury seating at the farthest spot from the crowd itself in small rooms surrounded by enchanted glass to magnify anything they wanted to see if they so wished.

Leaning back into the decadently soft cushions of her chair, and feeling the attempts of the room to accommodate her need for excess heat, Anubis could almost relax. Save for the fact Bast was just about having a nervous breakdown right next to her, knee bouncing rhythmically in an echo of how Selah sits when he's trying to feign composure or thinking about magic.

Even her tail was sticking straight out, every hair standing on end as her pupils sharpened more than usual. A well-placed hand on her wrist brought her attention away from what was on her mind, and onto something in the now.

"Bastettie," She spoke calmly, immediately drawing her frustrations onto Anubis. "What's the event again?"

"... Are you serious?" A flat look was sent her way, but the Guide merely tilted her head to the side and gave her a curious look that usually caused her Child to begin rubbing her ears. "Monsterphilia, the most well-known event in all of Orario?"

"No clue." She said bluntly, causing the Warrior Goddess to huff out of her nose and shake her head at Anubis' ignorance. "I'd like to assume it's not a mere gladiator event." Cat ears twitched as a chill went down the goddess' back despite the mild words. Bast knew exactly how her best friend felt about death being rendered as entertainment…

"Relax Anpu, I may be stressed to hell and back, but I'm not so far gone as to bring you to the single most offensive thing you can think of." Anubis wondered why both Bast and Selah have separate nicknames for her- then remembered that they're both very competitive, and probably made a bet about which one is better.

Still… "It's kind of boring though."

"Hmm?" Bastet hummed curiously at her words, before nodding to herself. "Ah, part of the appeal of this is proclaiming the Adventurer's superiority over monsters and the reassurance that those things can be killed. As well as serving as a sort of recruitment drive for new Adventurers."

"Ah." Anubis nodded, and was glad Bast had returned to monitoring the Colosseum as the Guide's features sharpened. Anubis was not unaware of the dangers her only Child goes through almost every day- it was only just recently when he had to kill another human in the Dungeon- but the reminder that the day he first left could have been the last she'd seen of him sent truly awful feelings through her.

Anubis has always understood the dead more than the living, for the dead are disconnected to the petty wants those that live and breathe are filled with. She had also lived countless centuries among the Divine- Immortals who are mostly those petty wants save for a select few.

The day Selah left for the Dungeon was the first time she ever feared death, because it was the first time she realized someone she loved could slip through her fingers. When he came back, bloodied and wide-eyed, only to leave that very same day once more…

Despite her position as a Guide of the Dead, she hadn't respected it until that moment, when he left again. She realized that if he passes, she would miss the petty lies that fill him- even if he's far more unabashed than the average person. She became aware of what it meant to risk your life for something, what it meant for someone to risk their life for you, and she hated that she loved how that made her feel.

"Anpu, your tail's wagging." Anubis immediately looked to her backside, wide-eyed, only to feel nothing but disappointment.

"Don't have a tail, shut up." She did, but the grin on her face made her wish she had just been annoying instead.

"Yoohoo!" An unfamiliar voice spoke up from behind the two, and seeing as Bast hadn't killed them yet Anubis decided to turn around.

The stranger was a lanky redhead with squinted eyes and a slender blonde girl in armor standing to their side. The Divine Presence of the redhead, combined with the way Bast was eyeing the girl at the side like a threat, made it clear this goddess would definitely be offended by Anubis not knowing who she was.

"Loki, what the hell do you want?" Ah, Loki.

"I'm happy for you, but we don't sell horse condoms." The sight of the Trickster Goddess' face twisting in shock… she was definitely letting Selah rub her ears when she got home.

"Anpu, don't be mean." Ah, Bast was joining in. "As professionals, Blessed Balms will give you everything you need to pleasure entire stables to your heart's content, even if you take them raw." A hand was left hanging in the air, and Anubis obliged, slapping the hand without hesitation.

For a second Loki's bodyguard's face twitched while the future Goddess of Centaurs doubled over at the strength of the insult, but that expression left as she came back up.

"Ah, I knew one of you was that idiot's Goddess. Which one of you made up that horseshit?!"

"You'd know all about horseshit, wouldn't you?"

"Oh will you just shut the fuck up already-!" Loki's incensed yell was cut off as the ground shook, and all four of them immediately refocused everything.

"Ais."

"I heard a bunch of screaming and buildings collapse outside of the Colosseum." Loki's Child answered quickly.

"Shit!" Bast swore passionately. "Anubis stay here, I need to-"

Bast words were cut off, not by any outside source, but by the sight of the worst possible sight.

A large orange reptile with wings it shouldn't have, leaping over the opposite side of the Colosseum without taking a second to look back. An Infant Dragon had just appeared, and on the tail end of that horrifying realization, the connection between Anubis and her only Child burst open.

"-stop fucking me already…" The words carried softly to her ear, but considering she's never been able to actually hear the words instead of interpreting them…

"Selah is in danger." Her words cut off whatever Bast was thinking as she stood up. "I'm coming too."

Without any more discussion, they all rushed out of the room- Loki having Ais carry her away and out of sight while they went farther up when they realized Ganesha had already begun to take control of the rest of Bast's Familia.

Monsters had broken out from wherever they had been kept, parallel to the chaos going around outside of Monsterphilia, but neither of the goddess cared about that at that moment.

Instead they were searching for signs of their idiot, hoping against all logic and reason that he was okay-

And suddenly their senses screamed in terror as an unmistakable something came into existence along the path the Infant Dragon had taken. It was an awful, evil thing that seemed to carve out a piece of the world, of reality itself to dye in its color.

An absolute authority of vile hatred and animosity- a sensation a God could only feel when they stray too far into the Dungeon.

A sense of pure, utter horror washed over every Divinity in Orario as they all compared it to the closest thing they could imagine.

An Arcanum of pure and utter hate being unleashed for the sole purpose of making everything in range suffer the most horrific, abominable fate imaginable.

It was like watching the sun go out in front of you.

It was like feeling raindrops be pulled off of your skin and into the cloudy sky.

It was wrong in every sense of the word, a premonition of the end of days.

You could almost believe another Great Quest was about to be issued in the face of such terror.

And while everyone endured the horror of another Beast that took the forces of Zeus and Hera to slay, it just… cut off.

The feeling of the sun's warmth on her skin suddenly returned to Anubis, and she realized that she had fallen onto the floor, lost in the sensations of the event. She went to pick herself up, only to pause and find Bast laying on the ground, tears in her eyes.

Anubis knew exactly what she was thinking. "He's not dead."

Bast looked up at her, incapable of believing her beneath the heartbreak of losing everything again.

"He's not dead." She said again, firmly, as she reached out and pulled her best friend closer as she reassured her that the one person who broke through all their walls still lived. "He's not dead."

She repeated this, over and over again, doing everything in her power to ensure Bast didn't realize her words were a prayer as well. Because while everything else told her that her only Child was dead and gone, and she wouldn't see him ever again… there was a single thing deep in her that refused to believe anything other than in his survival.

She couldn't handle the thought of anything else. Of everything being taken in an instant, of her child dying to that.

So, in an unbearable twist of irony, the Goddess prayed.

Bast didn't know what she was doing anymore. Sometime between the attack on Monsterphilia and now, she must have taken Anubis home and called all of her Children to Blessed Balms. She could hear the words she was saying, and the things the rest responded with, but her mind was miles away.

It happened again. She loved something and it was killed. She loved someone and he was killed.

Bast was a warrior and protector, one who fought to slay and fought to save all at the same time. She fought for life and death all at once, and she had believed herself hardened by their trials before she had ever set foot on Genkai.

She was a fool.

Merely by meeting with the mortals of this world, she immediately understood the novelty that had drawn numerous Divinities to descend here when she looked in their eyes. They burned oh so bright- brighter than any God or Goddess she had ever met in the centuries of life she had lived.

To be mortal was to have an end, that was something Anubis had taught her throughout their long-standing friendship, even if by proxy. But seeing these people, who knew that everything would eventually grind to a halt by the weakness of their flesh, were so dazzling.

Despite all her skill, Bast was ashamed to call herself a warrior when she had no life to risk. Because these people, these Adventurers, were like stars that burned in the night sky until they eventually extinguished.

She wanted to see those stars grow and burn as bright as they possibly could, before her own eyes. That was why she started her Familia.

… But despite knowing their lives would end eventually, she was not prepared to one day find her oldest Children all dead at once. And she… cut herself off in her anguish, the realization that the connection they all shared would get caught in her soul and tear it to shreds when they passed horrifying her.

She understood why, even after her sister descended, she was never given her position as Ra's Eye back. Her soul was weak, and she couldn't handle another blow.

She called Anubis anti-social, but she withdrew all connection to others out of fear of another death hurting her as it had that single time.

And then Selah came into her life, forced a bond between them that felt like nothing before, and died right in front of her.

And now the pain had returned- no, there was now a fresh wound across her very soul at the knowledge that she had lost him. It was like strings were tightening around her flesh, stabbing through straight to the bone.

But she didn't cry. She couldn't. She would do everything she could to make sure that his death was not in-

"Yo," a voice with a gruffness only heard early in the morning or late at night entered her ear, and she turned as he said her name.

He was covered in blood, both his own and another's. Deep brown eyes looked straight at her with a bone-deep exhaustion- rest, not death or illness. His posture was in an uncharacteristic slouch, aside from when he leaned forwards to tease or joke with her. A muscled arm already raised- he hadn't quite noticed how much his body had shifted since he'd become an Adventurer.

She let the next to words slip past her after she took in his living, breathing form, before crashing into him and knocking his back into a counter or wall. The feel of his heart beating in his chest, and the warmth she knew from the depths of her soul was him…

She babbled disgracefully as she partook in the simple joy of realizing what you had thought lost had already returned to you. Her everything wanted to simply discard any grace or pride she had and just embrace him then and there to make it all so clear that she didn't give a fuck about half-joking debts he took far more seriously than his other goddess and just wanted to be as close as man and god could be…

And then a familiar scent came to life on his body, and she immediately grew frustrated with him.

Because for what reason was the first thing she found beneath all the blood was the scent of an Amazon?! Especially when he had claimed he wouldn't be anywhere near the Colosseum!

In the end, despite her territorial nature flaring up, there were no words to describe the blessing that was having the one she loves returned to her.

Because losing it a second time would surely break her.

A/N: Here's the character description.

Also; you thought it was laziness that kept me from responding, but it was me, Barry!