For the Record

A tube trip and some walking – okay, drifting – later, and we’re outside of a familiar building in the industrial district.

This is going to be the hard part… even if she remembers, they’re gone.

They’re all gone.

But the place is still here, regardless of who owns it now. I’m sure I can convince them to let a pair of gods in if nothing else… a fair number of mortals are intensely respectful of our kind, if not outright fearful.

I’ll take fear over indifference.

Without another word, I knock on the door.

…And get no response.

…

Huh.

Although some degree of a spark of recognition crosses Hades’ face… whether she actually remembers or she simply has the habit so deeply ingrained from the three hundred or so years she spent toiling here, making the same thing over, and over, and over.

I won’t tell her, obviously… but I’m glad Sodaca is gone at least. She was a terrible influence, and nothing but cruel to my wife.

In the past, I’d wondered if that was possibly her own way of showing love. A demand for excellence, and insistence that this route was truly the best for her and the family.

But I disagreed, and so did Hades.

While I’m lost in introspection about the past, my wife has already unlocked the front door with her mana signature and walked in the front door.

I can’t help but wonder how exactly customers would enter if the front door is always locked, but maybe there’s a trick to it.

Either way.

Most of the running machinery looks different, although the roles they play seem the same… at least to my uninformed gaze.

“H-hello?” the woman in front of me calls out.

And not even a moment later, I hear the door at the far end of the workshop open.

“Who goes there? I’m an ascendant, don’t try any funny business! Just leave now and we won’t have trouble!” a gruff female voice shouts.

“Calm down, you fool,” I answer. “Are you of the Emari line?”

That seems to give them pause, but after a moment she speaks again.

“Yes… but who the hells are you?”

“Good. Then this will be easier. I don’t know how many generations of you have passed, but I have an ancestor of yours with me. My wife, to be specific, by the name of Hades. Although her name was once Izahne.”

“No way. Great Aunt Izahne died in the war.”

I sigh, careful not to scatter ash into the running equipment. “No she didn’t. Who told you that?”

“Great Grandma Sodaca and Great Grandpa Ourvie.”

“Oh.”

…

“Well they were wrong. She’s right here. Also, her apotheosis succeeded, hence why she’s Hades now.”

Only then does our unwilling host finally make an appearance, stepping from behind a running welding golem.

How do I know what welding is? Why do I know the process by which it works? I’m pretty sure that wasn’t something Astraea knew about…

Well whatever.

“You do look like her pictures…” the muscled indra woman says slowly. “Do you have any proof?”

“Identify,” I say flatly.

Her eyes flash a telltale gray while Hades looks around the place in half-wonder.

“Well, at least I know she’s Hades… but that doesn’t tell me much else, does it? Does she at least know anything only the family would know?”

I shrug. “Doubtful, she’s got an awful case of amnesia. She spent at least a few hundred years the prisoner of another god, and he made her do some horrible things… we’re journeying through her past to try to restore her memory.”

“And who the hells are you, exactly?” she snaps.

Clearly we still haven’t been accepted, but I’m fine with that.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard of me, but I used to have quite the reputation. Either way, I’m Demon Lord Nemesis, wife of Hades and master of the Shadowed Plane – although adventurers seem to call it the Rift now for some reason.”

Oh, and now she’s rapidly backing up.

“S-stay back! Please? I’m not worth killing!”

“Yeah, sounds like my reputation is intact. It’s alright, I don’t kill like that anymore. Well, not indiscriminately, and you haven’t done anything. Plus you’re family, if Izzy here remembered she’d probably cry if I hurt you. Or get really mad at me, she used to do that a lot, but I’m not nor have I ever been human so I’ve never really understood most of your rules and, um. What did she call it? ‘Common sense’? Anyway, Orv and Sodaca didn’t say anything about me either, did they?”

From behind one of the work golems, her voice carries. “They did.”

“I see. Well I meant it, I’m not here to kill anyone. Or hurt anyone, or anything else like that. I… Hmm.”

That’s when I notice my wife has been staring at the elevated door in the back.

Her mother’s old workshop within the larger workshop.

“If I promise to stay right here, by the front door, will you at least let her look through the back area? She’s fairly polite so I doubt she’ll be a problem and will probably listen to you if you ask her not to touch things…”

I assume she’s thinking it over, considering the indra woman doesn’t reply, at least not away.

“What is your name? Who are your grandparents?” my wife finally says.

“Me? I’m Sebelle. I run this joint now, ever since my great grandparents passed away… nobody else wanted to, but I didn’t really have any direction in life, so I thought it was as good as anything else. But, uh. My grandparents are Zander and Ayda.”

“Z-zander…?”

A spark of recognition crosses my wife’s face, before she doubles over holding her head. I snatch her into a hug and gently rub her back… Somehow I can tell this is the right way to comfort someone, from my past life…

And it seems to be working, because she leans into me and sighs heavily.

“…Do you remember them?” I ask quietly.

After a few more breaths to get her bearings, she answers. “Zander is my elder brother.”

“I see.”

I continue holding her for a moment while our host continues hiding…

So I call out again. “Are they still living?”

“Why are you asking that? Of course they are,” Hades says with a hint of indignance. “They all are. They have to be… don’t they?”

I give her a sad smile.

“Oh. Oh gods. They aren’t. They aren’t, are they?”

“Yes they are,” Sebelle answers.

Hades searches my face for anything that could help her understand what exactly I mean.

So I tell her.

“Your parents… are gone. I don’t see their souls anywhere.”

“…Oh. Then, who is going to… going to…”

“Run the workshop?” I finish for her. “Sebelle already is. Your great grandniece.”

“Woah, wait. I’m still not buying this,” the young (probably) indra interjects.

And I sigh. “What do we need to do to convince you? Really, just let her see the rooms in the back.”

“Ugh, fine. You’ll leave after that, right? And I’m holding you to your promise! You’re going to stay right there!”

I hold my hands out in a disarming gesture before forming myself a fine chair of ash and take a seat.

“Well, dear? Go along and look.”

After a moment of hesitation, she does head forward to meet Sebelle, who moves to keep my wife constantly in her line of sight. I subtly create one of my kin and send it through the floor to follow them. Once they reach the back office at the top of the stairs, I watch them stop in the middle of the room… which is very different from how I remember it, at least in furnishings.

But that old, scarred workbench in the back is still there. The same one I always saw Sodaca pouring over.

Hades slowly approaches it and rest her hands on the smooth wood… before slowly running her fingers over a number of scars in its surface.

“I… I did this. I made this… when mother taught me. After she taught me. I… I ran away from this.”

“Prove it,” Sebelle snaps. “Yes, you ran away, but to do what!?”

“To fight for good… or so I thought. I became a paladin of Themis. I attended the New Iden Hero Academy… I g-got married…”

It seems like she’s remembering a lot now. Good. We’re making progress…

And then she sharply inhales as her eyes go wide.

Huh. I know this reaction.

My concerns are confirmed as she drops low to the ground and rapidly scoots to a corner to huddle into herself while whispering, “Nononono please no, no, I can see it, I can see it, I see it, IseeitIseeitIseeit!”

I rapidly tear through space to pull her once again into my arms, much to the horror of our host… and more of the klaxons in the distance.

Wonderful.

…But worth it. I don’t even care anymore.

I don’t care one bit.