For the Record

Well, the walls are definitely familiar.

I find myself in a place made of water. She’s dreaming of Ceto’s palace, or lodge, or whatever you’d call this place, but it’s definitely a part of it I haven’t seen until now.

Before me stands a row of angled tables covered in straps and steel fetters, the purpose obvious. Tools and blades of various types line the walls, some shimmering with discomforting auras while others are plain, simple steel.

The confused screams and whimpers of what are probably mortals on the tables echo through the space as they are slowly disassembled in a mechanical fashion, starting from the extremities and moving slowly toward the head. Maximized pain is clearly the objective here… torment, suffering. They appear to be kept alive and awake via magical means, most likely through the tables themselves considering the emphasis on efficiency.

And the source of their torment is no surprise either, complete with a look of helpless exhaustion on her face.

***

It’s happening again. Unending. Unrelenting.

No matter what I do, it’s always the same. Mortals arrive, and I dismantle them.

Ceto wills it, and my body obeys.

I watch, and my body obeys like a simple puppet.

Like the simple puppet that I am, that I’ve been reduced to.

Who was I before? I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything.

I’ve lost myself.

And yet, it happens again, as it always happens.

Until it suddenly doesn’t.

NO, a distorted voice intones behind me as dozens of inky black tendrils lash around me, dragging me back, devouring the tools of my trade both from my grip and the walls themselves. I WON’T LET YOU DO THIS. YOU DON’T WANT TO ANYWAY, I CAN FEEL IT. SO I’M GOING TO STOP YOU AS MANY TIMES AS IT TAKES.

My body struggles against the sheer force applied until it feels like I might rend myself apart, and then I’m suddenly hurtling through space.

A space I don’t recognize.

Then without warning I land face down in a field of grass.

Ceto’s will still pulls… why am I here? I’m not supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be…

I’m… supposed to be…

And then his will fades. Just a little at first, and then little by little I feel its grasp slip until it’s gone entirely.

YOU ARE FREE, the burning static flares across my mind. I WILL NOT ALLOW OTHERWISE. THOUGH BY ACCIDENT I CHOSE YOU, AND BY ACCEPTANCE YOU CHOSE ME. THAT COVENANT WILL NOT CHANGE. AS I AM YOURS YOU ARE ALSO MINE, AND I WILL NOT ALLOW OTHERS TO STEAL YOU AWAY FROM ME.

I turn to find flaming red eyes with a tinge of blue flickering from the edges, from the smoldering sparks they emit.

NEVER AGAIN, EVEN SHOULD I NEED TO DEVOUR THE ENTIRETY OF THE REAL AND THE RECORD ITSELF.

A strangely comforting warmth wraps itself around me… a vaguely familiar warmth.

I REJECT THE CLAIMS OF OUTSIDERS, FOR MY POSSESSIONS ARE MINE ALONE, AND I AM A JEALOUS GOD. IT IS MY NATURE, AND SO THERE SHALL BE NO OTHER CLAIMS BEFORE MINE.

***

Those last words echo in my mind as I blink myself awake…

Or I would, if I could move. I’m currently immobilized in a sea of blackness, pinning me down while a steady stream of essence drains from my body.

“You are awake, then?” a gentle voice murmurs. “And not screaming, for once. It would seem it worked.”

The tendrils entrapping me slowly recede, revealing my horror of a wife delicately holding me against her as if afraid I would break.

My horror of a wife.

Mine.

“I could restore your memory, you know,” she continues in a quiet tone. “But there are probably a lot of things in there that you want to forget. That bastard hurt you for about as long as you’d been alive before.”

I… was alive before that?

Was I?

“I don’t even know who I am,” I mumble.

She holds me a little tighter. “That’s fine. That’s completely fine. I know who you are, and so do you, even if it’s buried deep in your mind. We can find you together.”

Somehow, those words are more comforting than anything I’ve heard in a very, very long time.

***

Izahne has finally been making progress, however slow.

Or, Hades now I suppose. That is her true name, after all, although why Hades I couldn’t guess.

Anyway, all it took was me nearly continuously invading her mind to drag her bodily away from her torment.

Self-inflicted, as I understand it. At least to some extent. The tomes I’ve managed to find all discuss the subconscious as an expression of self, below the surface of self.

A strange concept to me, or it would be if it weren’t for having had my past self steering me from within before we merged.

Her memories have been quite a boon as well. For all the time I’ve spent learning to mimic human emotions, she spent more than an order of magnitude longer.

I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that a member of another predatory race with no parental instincts would simply mimic her prey’s behavior in order to meet her needs and mimic it she did.

To great effect, even.

Even Livvie was convinced her emotions were real, as much as Astraea wished they had been. And yet she felt nothing.

No matter.

She long since decided that convincingly mimicking emotions she longed to feel to the extent that she herself believed she was feeling them was no different from genuinely feeling them in practice, and so have I.

She was wise like that, a wisdom borne of time and experience. A wisdom I am already benefitting from.

I still don’t know where the line between us is, if there is one at all. I’m fairly sure there isn’t.

Memory is strange.

Identity is strange.

But in the end, I am still myself. I don’t know who else I’d be.

I feel another bout of panic begin to well up in my wife, so I promptly stamp it down in the same way I have, a way that’s come to be routine for us. Relief replaces her fear as she again presses herself against me.

Callien and his party look on us strangely, no doubt from the sudden events between I and my wife, but it ends there.

We’ve been delving with them for a few months now, each time challenging them in the final room of the dungeon and each time removing their memories of our true identities.

That’s getting easier as well, though I haven’t gained any levels in Bewilder for it. Maybe it’s because I’d already leveled it so far during the madness before my long hibernation.

The list of dungeons on my plane has long since run out, and so the party has been revisiting ones we’ve already cleared. So far the list of trials they’ve faced include Eleonor, Vivi, Markus, Omorth, and even my primary maids. Even Pearl has adjudicated a few times, and despite her protests and insults she willingly performed.

I wouldn’t have forced her. Long ago I made a promise and I intend to keep it.

Anyway, all of them made short work of Callien, his mage, and his frontliner.

I haven’t called for Livvie. She’s remained distant since I lost myself to rage and nihilism, and I haven’t disputed it.

She can have her space. Part of me hopes she’ll come back around… we’ve had very few fights over our many centuries, after all, so I know this is still a learning experience for her.

Actually… I’m fairly certain she’ll come back. Her pack instinct is incredibly strong, despite being a divine beast. Most of them are generally distant from their own kind by nature, and yet she’s fiercely loyal.

She always has been.

Other than her, the only one of my many retainers who haven’t served as a trial for challengers is probably one of the most obvious.

Someone whose presence I’ve been acutely missing.

Another piece of myself, stolen from me.

My guardian angel, the mother of my rebirth who I myself chased away in my foolishness.

Nyx.

And her lack of response to these thoughts further serves to prove that I may never see or hear from her again.

How unfortunate.

***

I’ve continued my search for past acquaintances, although the results haven’t been particularly positive as of yet – from Mimir’s endless screaming to my old master’s promptly smashing me into the ground with sheer will once again.

Nobody is happy to see me, and I understand why.

Reclining on my fully restored throne in my fully restored throne room, I ponder my next steps in my old favorite position. No, it never really gets less comfortable, does it? Centuries upon centuries have proven it.

And then the main doors fly open, an intruder striding confidently through with my actively protesting centipede knight in tow.

Rather, an intruder and four other intruders who follow much more meekly after the first.

“Astie darling, you should have come much sooner. And not particularly easy to find, what with where you shot me off to!” she purrs with a performative flutter of her leathery wings.

I sigh.

What else could I do?

“Hello, Taran.”

“Ah yes, ever the eloquent one, yes? ‘Hello’, she says, as if that’s all she owes me. And it’s Eros now, thank you very much.”

I grit my teeth. “I don’t owe you anything and you know it. What do you want? Why are you even here?”

“Why,” she answers with a bat of her eyelashes, “to thank my rescuer! Just how long do you think I was a concubine to that awful fishman? You know, the one whose soul you ate – yes, I watched it happen. Fascinating, that!”

Oh.

I get it.

“So this is Ceto’s harem, isn’t it? Or was I guess.”

“Absolutely correct!” the devil chirps. “And I didn’t even have to explain it! Oh, you’ve gotten more clever, haven’t you pussycat?”

A glare is my response, but she doesn’t so much as wince under it before continuing.

“And it’s yours now. Surprise!”

…

Eh?