A Jaded Life

Chapter 1320

Lia and I continued chatting for the rest of the night, while I worked on the building that would become the local hospital. A part of me was deeply amused that the hospital would probably end up the largest building this community had seen in quite some time, the sturdiest and most convenient. It made me wonder what people unaware of the circumstances would make of that, especially given that the maternity ward, or what counted as one, took up a rather large percentage of the available space. Maybe they’d think that the locals had something in common with rabbits, at least on the reproductive front, or that somebody was overprepared, I wasn’t sure. Or maybe the maternity ward would be repurposed later, reassigned to normal usage. I wasn’t sure and had no real plan to stick around.

And that was a big issue I realised. I had no plans to stick around for long; I wanted to return to the Nexus Tower as soon as running certain experiments up there was practical again. Hel, I needed to return to the Giants, too. I hadn’t been around in a few weeks, and they might need some assistance. Especially the pregnant Giants, their numbers were far too low to leave things to chance with them. If even one of them died, it was a loss of almost ten per cent, while it would take quite a catastrophe to wipe out ten per cent of Maggie’s community. Even the mess in the Blessed City during the longest night had only taken about ten per cent of that population, and I was fairly confident that the locals would class it as a major catastrophe. No, if I wanted the Giants to thrive and continue on the path to becoming civilised, I would have to keep an eye on them. Probably by heading there tomorrow night.

But all that drove home one issue. The locals were starting down a dangerous path, one that would lead to them being dependent on me, something I wanted to avoid at all costs. Dependence on the Gods was, in my opinion, a bad thing, but not as bad as dependence on another person would be. Hel, I had no interest in being responsible for them or their well-being, though given what I suspected about my involvement with the numerous pregnancies, I couldn’t help but feel some responsibility. And I had a feeling that simply abandoning that responsibility wouldn’t come without a cost, as the instincts that pushed me to help the locals and support the numerous pregnant women made clear.

Just that thought was the reason for my plans for the day. Namely, to find a nice, quiet place, somewhere the sun would never reach, maybe the Nexus in the north, and delve into my own being. I wanted to know how the two divine domains I was connected to were shaping me, as it was becoming increasingly clear that the Mother’s domain had a strong influence. Actually, the influence was stronger than I was comfortable with, especially as I had little control over the domain itself. It worked through me, but I didn’t control how it worked, or even if it asserted its influence over the world. That just wasn’t okay with me, so I wanted to figure out what was going on there.

Maybe I could offload the connection in some way, or limit its influence on the world without my control; I had no idea. Something had to be done, especially if my hypothesis that my presence and actions had caused the mass-pregnancy amongst the women of the Blessed City. If that were to be the case, my mere presence, alongside some relatively innocuous actions, had proven to be enough to warp biology on a massive scale.

And that was the result of my supposedly benevolent divine domain. The Mother was, at the end of the day, a positive presence, grounded in nurture and life. Not that life was always a positive thing. Life could be utterly ruthless and deadly, but it was always about survival, adaptation, and change. The Pale Lady, on the other hand, was grounded in far less benevolent concepts, supposedly born from the cataclysm I had unleashed on Mundus. So, Death, decay, maybe some stagnation, it was a fairly bleak presence. The kind of deity that you asked to spare you and yours, maybe focus on your enemies instead of you. Not a pleasant thought.

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“Mom? What happened in the night?” Luna asked me, looking a little bit out of sorts as she approached me while I worked.

“Your sister came by,” I replied, pulling my attention from the part of the hospital I was currently working on. “We’ve talked for some time. Did you sleep well?”

“For a time,” she shrugged, “Then Jess started to fidget and eventually woke up,” she paused for a moment, looking a bit sheepish. “I wasn’t sure what I could do to help her; she wasn’t in a good place when you weren’t there. So I suggested we could pray.”

For a moment, I was flabbergasted and uncertain what to say about that. Depending on whom Jess had prayed to, this might be seriously bad, though I was somewhat confident that she wouldn’t pray to Sunna.

“What happened?” I asked, seeking to dispel the worst possibilities, even as I already considered plans to deal with just those.

“You know that thing that lets you conjure a statue dedicated to your deity?” Luna asked, the grin on her face edging into smug-territory. “I’ve explained that one to her. I think she’s performing the ritual right now.”

“You mean the person who has lived in a community dedicated to a hostile deity is performing a ritual to connect with their deity right now?” I asked in return, uncertain how that would play out. I had no doubt that a few people here would gleefully lynch anyone who retained a connection to Sunna, just to avenge the wrongs they felt had been perpetrated on their minds.

“Do you really think she’d pray to Sunna or accept anything from that one?” Luna asked, now frowning, an eyebrow raised.

“No idea how the ritual works,” I admitted, “But we know that she has prayed to Sunna in the past, even if that was partially fueled by deception. If the ritual simply checks which deity had the most influence on you…” I paused because Luna spoke up, interrupting me.

“If it checked for the biggest influence, it would be you, Mom. Or maybe the Mother, you know, the domain you are connected to. Certainly not the lightbulb!” she growled at the end there, sounding quite annoyed.

“Doesn’t make things better,” now, it was my turn to get a little annoyed, “These people need to learn how to be self-sufficient. Not how to trade one shackle for another. Even the housing and the hospital here could become something that limits them, that holds them back. They need to learn,” I started to rant, even if Luna shouldn’t be the target of my ire. This wasn’t on her; it was, largely, on me, alongside the people of the Blessed City and Maggie.

“And how will they learn to swim if they drown? You took me in, back when I was nothing but a burden, but thanks to the help you provided, the guidance and support you gave me, I’m now able to stand on my own and help other people,” she ranted back, now showing annoyance similar to mine. “That’s what drove them to seek shelter under Sunna in the first place, an inability to keep themselves afloat and the obvious desire to survive. You know, the same drive pretty much every living thing has, to survive, reproduce and give your offspring the best chance to do the same? We have a chance here to help, to keep them from desperation, and, by the looks of it, you aren’t even that opposed. You just feel like you should be, or something like that.”

For a moment, I was taken aback, looking at the various things I had done recently and measuring them against the motivations Luna proposed here. Some of the things, yeah, those fit with what she suggested. And I couldn’t even claim that the changes in my behaviour had been recent.

Had I changed that much, without even noticing? What I thought motivated me, what I said and claimed spoke of one thing, but my actions were what truly mattered. Those told an entirely different story, and had been doing so for a while.

“I honestly don’t know,” I admitted, my earlier annoyance fading rapidly, leaving me a bit confused and, quite frankly, discombobulated. “I’ll have to think on that, meditate, try to figure out where this disconnect comes from. Maybe that’ll help me understand.”

With those words, I stepped back into the shadows, letting myself drop away from the world as I rapidly travelled across the land, towards a secure location.