Author notes: Sorry for the long wait in the update of this story. I hope you will enjoy this chapter.
- Bric & Broc Factory, Sunnydale, Wednesday 2 November 2011, 10:03 -
"What do you have planned for the rest of the day?" asked Drusilla.
"We need to go to the motel where Skuld's family was… before Halloween. They…"
The former vampire put two fingers on Willow's mouth. She knew all too well what could happen to people staying in a place without a real home threshold to protect them, particularly in Sunnydale.
"I suppose you won't mind if I come with you. We'll be able to go faster, and we may have to convince the motel's people. Which one?"
"The one by the highway… Sunnydale Motor Inn, I think," said Skuld.
Drusilla let her shoulders sag. She had sometimes heard Spike's minions talk about this one. She banished the thought. This was the past and her old self would gladly have done unspeakable things to the kid who had 'inherited' Skuld if she had put her undead hands on her. Maybe even turn her to have a doll to play with… In the present, she knew what she had to do.
"As we don't know the place well enough, we cannot teleport efficiently, and Spike took the car. But I still have something we can use."
She led them out of the loft and into a disused area.
"How big is this place?" asked Skuld.
"Big enough," replied Drusilla. "It was a factory, but it was abandoned during the eighties and all the machinery was removed. From that point it was used as some kind of cheap warehouse for things that didn't need too much care, but after a while Sunnydale struck again."
"What do you mean?"
"Knowing how this town used to work, the owners died, and things were just left standing, forgotten," said Willow with a shrug. "People are not the kind to look too closely at abandoned places around here."
"Not even kids? I mean, exploring places like this…"
Willow looked thoughtful for an instant. While her old self had little interest in 'adventures' it was true that neither Xander nor Jesse had even suggested it.
"Children are smarter than adults when it comes to supernatural things," said Drusilla. "They listen to their instincts when they tell them not to go into the bad place. This place was used by various kinds of monsters before Halloween. The last tenants were a group of vampires known as the Order of Aurelius. I… was a member."
"But now it's yours? I mean, legally yours?" asked Willow.
"Actually, it already was before Halloween," replied Drusilla as she opened a steel door leading to a garage.
Willow stopped walking and frowned heavily, her mind racing. Urd's cynicism worked together with the analytical abilities of her human part, sorting out theories. The various events since Buffy arrived in Sunnydale and her own brutal introduction to the supernatural were remembered and given a new, Sunnydale Syndrome free lighting.
"Who knows at City Hall?" she asked with an icy cold voice that made both of her sisters shudder.
"Urd… can you… not speak like that?" asked Skuld. "You sound like… her."
Willow shuddered in turn. 'Her' meant Hild of course.
"The Mayor is the source," said Drusilla. "I have notes left by Darla on the matter. I'll show them to you later, but for now I want you to put this aside. Just remember that Richard Wilkins has inherited Odin during Halloween, and we will have to think very carefully about this."
Willow closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, thanking the fact she was not fully Urd. The Elder Norn would have charged straight away.
"Eh… I'm not sure I understand," said Skuld. "But do you mean that Father is in the head of a very bad man?"
Drusilla immediately hugged the girl. She knew of course that her own situation was different. It was a little like if she had been a brain damaged person, unable to think straight before Belldandy healed her… and made her able to feel guilt for the terrible things she did as a vampire. She knew that she would never again be the pure girl she had been before Angelus turned her, but she would do her best to be good. The Mayor now… she had serious doubts on the matter and Belldandy knew how ruthless the Allfather could be if he had what he considered just cause. She remembered how Belldandy had prevented him from killing Urd during the issue with Fenris.
"Yes. I am sorry, but I am afraid this man is not our father. Now, let me show you something funnier," she replied as she broke the hug and went to remove a tarp from a motorcycle with a sidecar.
"You have Captain America's bike!" said Skuld excitedly, remembering the movie she had seen with her dad last summer.
"Yes, this is a Harley WLA," said Drusilla with a gentle smile. "I have no idea how it ended stored here. What I am sure of is that it was rusting in a corner and after Halloween… I just thought about how sad Keiichi would be to see it in this sorry state and…"
"You repaired it," finished Willow, patting Drusilla's shoulder.
"The parts?" asked Skuld with a frown.
"Magic I am afraid. I know that you do not like to use magic that way, but I had a reason to restore the original parts rather than replace them."
"Why?"
"Hmm… the experience of contacting the bike's spirit was not the most agreeable thing, but it made evident I had to respect it. Just know that this motorcycle was in Normandy in June 1944 and accompanied the troops into Germany. It has seen a lot of things… terrible things. But enough of this. Skuld, you are riding in the side. Urd, do you remember how to miniaturize yourself?"
"Sure," replied Willow with a grin.
She concentrated a little, finding the memory and felt her magic reacting. An instant later, she was only a few centimeters tall and floated toward the sidecar. Drusilla transformed her clothes slightly, replacing her skirt with pants and her shoes with leather boots. She handed a helmet and glasses just as vintage as the bike to Skuld while she put one herself as well as a leather jacket similar in style to Spike's coat. She started the engine and waved her hand to open the garage door.
- Sunnydale, Wednesday 2 November 2011, 10:37 -
Safely nested behind the sidecar's little windshield, Willow was looking at her newest sister. Intellectually, she had known that some demons had been transformed during Halloween and the aura she could feel coming from the woman was the one of an Eloah. It actually resembled a lot what she could remember of Belldandy. Yet, a former vampire…
I guess I will need to be really convincing when presenting her to Xander… or maybe forget to mention… difficult. Her boyfriend is Spike and Xander already saw him during the Parent-Teacher night. And that's not even considering how Heimdall will react to Loki. Headaches in perspective, though Giles may be able to help…
This led her to think about the other headache Drusilla had told them about. Willow had known that the Mayor had inherited Odin during Halloween, but Urd and she had both issues with their parents, and this had led her to delay meeting him. What Drusilla had just revealed about the Mayor knowing about Sunnydale's dark side before Halloween was making her question a lot of things.
"Oops," said Skuld. "Humans?" she asked as she noticed the people at the oil station next to the motel.
"Looks like it," replied Drusilla. "Urd?"
Willow's minute form quickly left her spot behind the windshield to hide inside the sidecar. Of course, the motorcycle was drawing attention but thankfully the people were just salesmen or otherwise in transit, with little time to chat. That left her with enough time to get out of the sidecar and take back her normal size hidden behind a van.
"Our car is here," said Skuld as she pointed to a station wagon with a small trailer. "But not in the spot where we parked it."
"It seems it was moved to one of the private spots and… yes this is what I was afraid of," replied Drusilla with a sigh.
Looking inside the car made it rather obvious that things had been removed from it, by someone with the key. Willow felt her frown shift into her resolve face. This meant the motel's owners had some questions to answer. She started to walk decidedly toward the reception.
"Uh-oh," said Skuld. "The last time I have seen Urd this angry…"
- Sunnydale, Wednesday 2 November 2011, 10:37 -
Bert had been busy counting his money, thinking unhappily that Halloween had deprived him of a secondary source of income: selling the belongings of 'disappeared' people. Well, he still had a few to… he turned his head to look better at the hot girl that had just entered the motel. Half a second later, the vague memories he had inherited during Halloween started to wail like an air strike siren when he saw those irate, purple eyes.
He didn't have any time to react. Lightning crucified him, sending his twitching body against the wall. Still, he was lucky. A human would have been fried given the amperage, but his Shedu body was only a little singed. He managed to raise his eyes and look at her again. She looked a lot like the boss lady he had been told about by Willy. Well, apart from the goddess marks. That maybe only made things worse. Willy had told him horror stories about some teenage goddess called Lind who seemed to have all the sensitivity of a Terminator.
She took him by the neck and lifted him with one hand, not caring about the fact she was choking him at the same time. Again, her eyes and that part of him he was trying his best to ignore started to feel terror.
"Urd, that's enough," said another voice from the entrance, this time making him think about a concerned mother.
"I can see it all, Bell," said Willow. "I'm the Norn of the Past and I can feel the psychometric imprints in this place. He even had a system to advertise what was on the menu. There is no doublet system, and I am sure Mother will approve..."
"Please, Willow," said Skuld, running to latch on to her. "I know he's bad, but I don't want you to become like him. Just call the police."
Finally, Bert's mind connected the dots. Maybe the electroshocks had somewhat removed the haze from his memory. Urd. The boss lady's half-blood daughter. Even worse, from what Willy had told him, she also was the Slayer's friend.
"Not the police," she said while dropping him and taking a wipe on the counter to clean the hand that touched him. "From what you told us, they must be dirty, covering things like this. There is only one person I can trust with this."
Willow, resolve face still on, took out her smart phone and composed a number.
"Hello, Mother…"
She was cut by a squeal of joy at the other end of the line.
"I need a favor," she continued when the calm had come back.
- Sunnydale, Wednesday 2 November 2011, 12:42 -
"Here, we got everything," said Willow as she put the last of the luggage in the car.
Bert had been taken away for 'debriefing' by Belial's people and they had managed to find back most of Skuld's human family belongings. The cash and a few credit cards were missing but they didn't really matter in these circumstances. The various mementoes had much more importance. Those had allowed her to learn one thing: the girl's human name. She looked at her. She was still hugging Belldandy fiercely, trying not to sob too much.
No, not Belldandy, Drusilla.
True, Belldandy would have held Skuld in a similar way in a moment of grief. She had probably done so several times with customers while working for the Goddess Relief Office. But there was something different, something Belldandy never had: a sense of shared pain that could only come after seeing your world crash and burn and, more than all, understanding what you lost.
In her case, probably being killed and turned by Angelus.
"Here, cry all you need, Alice," said Drusilla softly, caressing the girl's hair.
"I'm…"
"I know… it's so easy, so comfortable, right? To just be Skuld and think about it as if it was just a nightmare. But that's not the truth. You are Alice Samantha Witwicky, a little girl who just lost her parents. So, cry and mourn, then live and remember them."
"You… you don't want me as a sister?"
"Of course, I do want you and Willow to be my sisters, silly. But I am Drusilla, not Belldandy. I owe her a lot for saving me, but I am my own person. Just as you and Willow are your own person and not copies of Skuld and Urd. Hmm… how to show you for sure? Of course!"
Drusilla concentrated a little and wind started to blow around her, clouds forming and merging into a humanoid shape that exited her back. Alice knew what she was doing of course: she was calling on her guardian angel. She was herself quite fond of Belldandy's angel: Holy Bell. Except that the angel that had appeared and was peeking over Drusilla's shoulder wasn't Holy Bell.
"Alice, please meet Miss Edith," said Drusilla with a smile.
The angel waved hello while the little girl took in her appearance. Miss Edith had white, porcelain-looking flesh covered with a frilly black dress that made her look like an expensive doll. Her hands were stained by many patches of dried blood and a single bloody tear was running down her face from her right eye. And yet the angel's features were soft, and her amber eyes the ones of a nun who had love to give to the whole world. Finally, her wings resembled a starry sky in which the constellations were drawn.
The angel is the mirror of the soul, remembered Alice. This is not the angel of someone pure. Creepy but trying to be nice. This is the angel of someone who did bad things but is trying to change.
"U… Willow," she said, turning toward her other big sister. "Did you try to call World of Elegance?"
"No… better to cross that bridge now, I suppose."
Fire swarmed and Willow's guardian angel soared from her back. She was still, like World of Elegance, a contrast of light and darkness, mirroring her hybrid nature. There was, however, a difference that made Willow frown. In Urd's angel, black and white were separate. One black wing and one white. Hair parted equally with a vertical symmetry.
Not so much here. The angel that extended from her back so that she could see her in full was different. Her wings looked as if they were made of lava, black threads shifting softly on their orange-red surface as if moved by a slow current. Her clothing was following a similar trend, barely cooled down lava assembling in a chaotic mess with the rough form of a one-piece swimsuit. This wasn't what was shocking her though. Urd's power over fire was known to her and Amy had told her once that she also had that magical affinity. What shocked her was that the body under the swimsuit looked very much like the human she had been before Halloween.
"How…"
"Because you were human," said Drusilla. "Humans were created to be midway between the Shedim and Elohim. Your humanity did what Urd couldn't. You combine the qualities of both people… this is something we need to think about. It will change the way our races can coexist, and some may take it badly. But for now, let's go back home. We will then christen both Miss Edith and Willow's angel officially."
"Sure!"
"You didn't…" asked Willow.
"The situation is unusual, and I am not sure it is even needed… but better safe than sorry."
- Sunnydale, Wednesday 2 November 2011, 12:51 -
They were driving back, Willow in the Witwickys' car while Drusilla and Alice used the motorcycle. They would store everything at the Factory and decide if Alice continued to live in the Rosenberg home or if…
I will make the offer of course, thought Drusilla. And the same for Willow… her human parents will be another problem. I will need to talk with them and see if we can sway them to our cause. Ah, here we are…
She frowned. Something was wrong with the house. Yes, the steel curtain of the garage. It had been forced.
"Something wrong?" asked Alice.
"Yes. Do you have your hammer?" she asked back as she parked the bike.
Alice nodded and reached behind her back as she left the sidecar. A kind of polearm appeared in her hand, a square hammer head on top of a five-foot shaft. While Skuld had used it as a debugging tool in her work with Yggdrasil, it was actually a gift from her older brother Thor. Because of the doublet system, Skuld never had to use the weapon to its true potential.
But I live in a different world. A darker world… thought the teenage goddess.
She saw Willow arrive with the car and get out while Drusilla opened the small door on the side and signaled them to follow. A van was parked inside the garage. Alice easily noticed that the windows had been painted black. Not just tinted, painted black, only leaving small openings. Before Halloween she wouldn't have made the connection, but this was easy now. This was a vehicle for sun-challenged people. She reached again behind her back, taking out a bomb.
"Alice," whispered Willow. "No napalm in the house."
"Okay. What works?"
"Holy water, crosses, sunlight. Drusilla? You live here so…"
"This place was 'blessed' by the Anointed One for use by the Order. It looks like it will need more cleansing than simply having someone living here. As for this van… it's my fault. My 'vampire self' sent some minions on an errand in Los Angeles just before Halloween."
"So, we find them, get rid of them and secure the house," said Willow, lightning crackling between her fingers.
"Right," said Alice, her face hard as she used a screwdriver to make some adjustments on a bomb.
They moved quickly and silently through the factory, noticing the traces.
"I tell you, something is wrong with the whole town," said a voice coming from the loft's living room.
Drusilla made them a sign to stay hidden and entered the room.
"Hey, Lady, what's…"
"She doesn't smell right, Dalton. And there are other people here."
Alice couldn't stand it anymore and entered the room, trying to look as badass as she could, her hammer resting on her right shoulder. There were four vampires dressed in rather plain clothes. She wondered how she could have been fooled the first time she met one. All she was seeing was corpses.
"I am sorry," said Drusilla. "It is time for you to rest."
"And what do you think you're…" replied the vampire with a grin.
Alice pressed the button of the bomb in her left hand and sent it rolling on the ground in the middle of the vampire group. An intense flash of UV bathed the room. It wasn't as effective as the sun but it sure was uncomfortable for the undead. She wacked one of the distracted undead with her hammer, the holy weapon crashing through his head and dusting it.
Neither Willow nor Drusilla had stayed idle either. A hiss and something like a breeze rose around the middle Norn. The first thing Alice thought about was that her sister was using a monowire, with the way two of the minions were falling apart into slices that soon changed into ashes. Then it hit her. It wasn't something solid, not really. It was compressed air: a blade of wind and it made all the more evident what Drusilla had said about being less innocent than Belldandy. As for the last one…
"Didn't you tell me no napalm?" asked Alice with a raised eyebrow at the torch Willow had made of the fourth vampire.
"Eh… sorry," replied the older girl while scratching the back of her head.
"Indeed, particularly as this could start a bigger fire," added Drusilla while making a gesture with her hand.
The flames immediately went out, leaving only a body glowing like embers as it dusted in silence.
"Wow… you created a vacuum around it! So cool!" said Alice.
"Thank you. Now… I don't think there are more, but I say we search the house, then do a cleansing ritual to prevent this from happening again."
- Bric & Broc Factory, Sunnydale, Thursday 3 November 2011, 18:17 -
Alice leaned back in her chair and her eyes fell on the ceiling of the room she had set up shop in. She had decided to take up Drusilla's offer to come live with her and Spike and they hoped to convince Willow to do the same. Bric & Broc had more than enough space for all of them and it also gave them the space needed when they wanted to tinker a bit. In her case, this meant that she had, with the help of her sisters of course, set up a workshop.
"… oh! I am sure Alice will love to meet you, Dawn," said Drusilla's voice, coming from the common living area in the old 'office' part of the factory. "She is working on a project in her workshop."
"Thank you very much, Miss Carpenter," replied a younger voice.
Alice was only barely paying attention to it. After the incident with the vampires, the logical conclusion for her had been to construct a guardian that could watch over their home. Of course, she remembered Banpei, the robot Skuld had built, initially to protect the Norns' home in Nekomi against Mara. She would construct a robot too, but since her discussion with Drusilla on the question of being her own person… Banpei 2.0 would not do it. So, here she was, doing something Skuld rarely did, drawing blueprints.
"Wow!" said someone in her back. "I feel like I'm in Tony Stark's basement."
Alice had a little smile. It was true that she had based her design table on the interface Tony used in the Iron Man movie. She pivoted her chair to have a better look at the newcomer. She was a red-haired Shedu, one of those Willow had told her about, the ones from the ancient world who kept their horns and tail. She thought that she was rather cute in her Goth dark red dress and her face seemed nice, lacking the hardness or arrogance she had often seen in demons.
"Hello, I'm Dawn. Willow told me about you today at school, so I decided to come see you. Given that you're family."
Family. Just like that. Even worse – or better, she wasn't sure – Alice could feel that sense of finality a Shedu's word could have. She remembered what Drusilla had told her the day before, the reasons why she hadn't gone to see the Allfather and why in the present circumstances, she trusted Hild – or rather Joyce Summers – more than Richard Wilkins.
"Eh… thank you for the comment about my workshop but it's not…"
"Sure, it is. Mom has a lot of respect for your capacities, you know. You're building a robot? Can you show me?"
Alice smiled. She started to explain, only being stopped from time to time by the demon girl. Sure, Dawn didn't seem to have much technical knowledge but… she was trying, and her common sense helped the young goddess to rein in her most ludicrous ideas. Unlike Skuld, she didn't mind being told that she was wrong. Her father, Ron Witwicky, had repeatedly told her that as an engineer, arrogance was a fatal trait.
"Why did you come here?" asked Alice after a while. "The full reason I mean?"
"Yesterday… I realized that the other girl in my head was taking up more and more space. It was deciding everything for me, even making me go after her girlfriend. It was only by chance that I stopped before we kissed… something I think we would have both resented afterwards. So, I decided to take some time to find out who I am. Today… Willow told me about you, and I thought that maybe… maybe we could help each other. I don't want to impose or anything. It's just that because of Halloween I have a few more sisters and I think it's a shame if I don't at least try to get along."
"Well… I could use an assistant. If you don't mind learning a lot of nerdy stuff."
"I don't mind. So… do we build a robot?"
"We do."
In the entrance, Drusilla smiled. She was glad to see them get along so well, and this would also make another thing easier, when Alice would have to go to school next week.
- Dillon Home, Sunnydale, Friday 4 November 2011, 18:51 -
He was looking at the fire, wondering as he sat on an armchair facing the fireplace. In the flames, he could see a woman hugging an old man in a Navy uniform, before walking away in an airport's hall. He knew them of course. Her name was Marlene Dillon née Carrington, and she was his wife. As for the man, he was his father-in-law, the Rear Admiral Timothy Carrington.
Or rather the wife of a part of me… What am I going to do when she comes back tomorrow?
He wondered who she would have merged with, had she not gone to Washington to see her father. Given how things happened for most people in town, they would probably have gotten along.
But she wasn't here and now things are going to get… complicated.
He knew that he wasn't alone in that situation. Many families in Sunnydale had loved ones abroad who were bound to come back, for some in the next hours. In each case, they would need to find a way to sway them to their cause, to make them understand they weren't some pod people using their families' bodies. His own predicament had, however, an added level of complexity, given his father-in-law's work at the Pentagon.
I can just hope I will be able to convince her… well, it is not the first time 'I' have swayed a woman to my wicked ways.
"Daddy?"
"Yes, Aphrodisia?"
"Spying on Mom?"
"In a way," he said, waving his hand towards the fire to dispel the vision. "This is tomorrow's most probable future."
He looked at his daughter, feeling once again conflicted. Before Halloween, he would never have looked at her like this. Before Halloween, Aphrodisia had just been his darling daughter, his little sunshine. Things were different now, as he was also Belial, and she was Byleth. As the Prince of Flames, his gaze had become a lot less fatherly.
His eyes followed her as she went to sit in the opposing armchair. He noted how she moved, how much it had changed from her innocent, pre-Halloween ways. Her steps were now made to reduce men into quivering masses of lust. He wondered if she had already surrendered to the urges of her new flesh, if she had tried to appease the fire between her legs.
He closed his eyes, trying to banish the rage he felt at the thought of some inexperienced teen ruining his daughter's first time. He also tried to banish Belial's voice that told him to give her that first time, that only he had the skills to teach her how to revel properly in carnal pleasures.
"Do you hate Hild?" asked the girl.
He regained his composure and thanked the fact her question snapped him out of his impure thoughts. He studied her face, easily deciphering the gaze of her feline eyes. He could see her own struggle with her instincts, a struggle that was the result of Hild's choices during Halloween.
"All things considered… no. Do you?"
"I don't know… Before we talk about the personal side of things, I have to consider the general. She violated the souls of all Sunnydalers by doing that… and Odin is no better as he allowed it."
"Odin first and foremost thinks about the big picture. He saw in Hild's plan an opportunity to promote the greater good. In his opinion, the free will of the few is far outweighed by the potential salvation of the many."
"But Hild should know better. This is a basic principle of our culture that we are talking about. Even when we tempt mortals, the choice is always theirs…"
"Ah!" he said with a smile. "But we are so adept at obscuring this, my dear, at making them believe they have no choice at all…"
Aphrodisia bit the retort she was about to say as she replayed the events of Halloween in her head. In particular, she thought about which god or demon merged with the people she knew.
"We had no choice but to be converted," she finally said. "But the choice laid elsewhere."
"This is… inexact. I have looked at the program of the spell. Resisting and rejecting the conversion is possible but, as expected from our dear monarch, she just made accepting too alluring to be refused. In the end, only a few among the local demons managed to spurn her offer."
"And we purged the town of those who did not submit to our rule… What about Buffy? She was some kind of magic-enhanced mortal before Halloween. She should have been able to resist."
He got up and went to the bar, pouring himself a generous glass of whisky. He hesitated an instant then poured another, smaller glass for his daughter.
It's not like alcohol can get us drunk anymore…
"It is nice to see that you are still on top of things," he said, giving her the glass and returning to his seat. "I am not sure in her case. Joyce has decided to acknowledge the bond between Hild and Belial and consider me as her brother and you as her niece. The data patches to make that official will be deployed next week, but I didn't have any time yet to talk with Buffy or her sisters. If I were to guess though… I would say that the same force that dragged Hild here against her will was at work."
Aphrodisia took a sip of her whisky. Her tasting buds were not used to it but – thanks to Byleth's memories – it felt like an old friend. It was just a pity that nothing short of white spirit would get her even a little tipsy now.
"How did the temptation work?"
"By playing matchmaker mostly. Our human selves were mated with someone who could give them what they wanted."
"Which means I chose to attract a sadomasochistic slut?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I know this is not easy to believe," he said, making the alcohol in his glass swirl. "If I take my own example, I have been fighting my own urges to ravage you since you came back."
Aphrodisia made a curious face as conflicting emotions ran through her body and her soul. She knew she should have been shocked that her father admitted so bluntly that he lusted after her. Her problem was that the outrage was countered by the heat she felt between her legs, the longing Byleth had for Belial's embrace. It was getting even worse. The more she thought about it and the more her demon memories fed her lust. Incest had never been a taboo for her new species.
She sipped more whisky.
"So, your point is?"
"I remember being afraid: afraid of disappointing people, afraid of not being good enough… I remember messing up so many times because of that fear. If your mother had not pushed me to realize some of my potential, I would probably be a total loser."
"And if there is a quality Belial has in spades, that's confidence… from what I remember, his ego is even worse than the one of Tony Stark in the Iron Man movie."
"Yes. It was just too alluring to resist… But with that confidence came everything else that is Belial."
She sighed as she leaned in the armchair, feeling her father's gaze on her body. She felt again that stir that told her to adopt a pose that would feed his lust for her.
"In my case…"
She bit her lip as she just knew. Since she discovered that corpse in her locker a year ago, the nightmares had come to plague her nights. Some nights, she took pills just to be able to sleep in peace. She knew it had been destroying her, as the pills became less and less effective and she started to seriously think about taking stronger drugs.
"You wanted control over your nightmares," said Max.
She nodded, sipping her whisky. Her father knew her too well and, 'thanks' to Belial, he didn't hesitate to say things anymore. Nightmares were Byleth's domain, and she now slept well, knowing that if a dream disturbed her, it was quite simple for her to take full control over it.
"To get to another… not sure if it will be less disturbing: what do we do about Mom? I don't like the idea of playing the little human to her."
"Neither do I… If I make sure she is exhausted enough to sleep, can you enter her dreams and show her?"
Aphrodisia barely managed not to spit the whisky she was savoring. The problem had not been her father's bluntness, but the stray thought she just had. It had not been the 'Too Much Information' or 'I'm scarred for life' she would have had before Halloween. No, her mind had gone straight to the gutter as she fantasized in participating in the exhaustion of her mother.
I need to get laid before I do something I regret… Aura, prepare yourself to be ravished.
"Everything's all right?"
"Just don't be surprised if I'm not alone in my bed tomorrow night, Dad."
"Who?" he asked with a frown.
Aphrodisia tried not to think, again, about the fact her father's values had now little to do with what American society considered proper. It wasn't that she was any better. Sex and love were now firmly separated in her mind.
"Aura has Artemis in her head."
His frown turned into a smile. He remembered some events during the Bronze Age, with maiden goddesses frolicking in the woods and Belial staying hidden, nudging their games until they became scandalous.
"To come back on Mom, is Nidhogg ready?"
"It already is, but Yggdrasil still needs some work. Conversion to our side…"
"I know: quicker, easier… more seductive," she replied with a grin.