by Andur
Carne looks at me like I just hammered the last nail into his coffin.
Then I turn to Seria. “And where is your brother?” I look around with a concerned expression.
“He went for that girl. He said he likes the older ones!” Seria points towards the ambassador for the Path. The ambassador is looking with a troubled expression at Aengus who is talking to her unconcernedly. Maybe she will think over her appearance in the future?
“Maybe you should join him and the girl. She is a strange one and a little lonely at this party. It would be a big help Seria.” I pat my daughter's head.
“Really? No problem daddy! We will show her how to have fun! And I will introduce you to the quintuplets some other time Mr. Mawu. The last time I tried to, you just disappeared for no apparent reason.” Seria runs off into the ambassador's direction.
“You... are an evil man.” Mawu smiles at me while the left half of his face twitches a little. Seems like he still remembers his long and through discussion with Seria about gods and the world and where the children come from.
He didn't realize that Seria was just playing with him and perfectly knows the answers to those questions. Mawu fell into the assumption that Seria and Aengus are like normal children of mortals.
Then I avert my gaze from Aengus and Seria, who are pestering the ambassador for the Path.
“Huh? Where did Carne go?” The ruler of the Carne Empire is gone!
“While you looked away his four confidants carried him off like a cow on its way to the slaughterhouse.” Mawu shrugs his shoulders and takes another sip.
“Hah! We won't see him before tomorrow then.” I grin while I see one of Carne's girls skipping towards the exit. She has a very familiar small box in her hand and is humming something.
“You are an evil man. I am repeating myself... . Do you think he will start to curse his harem?” -Mawu
“That's for sure. That's for sure.” I grin while I think about it. “Maybe one or two of them will have twins or triplets?”
“You are drawing a very dark picture of his future.” -Mawu
We continue to drink wine and talk about everything of interest throughout the multiverse....
75 - Party, Ambassadors, Children and Wine?
“No! I tell you two, I am an adult!” Miruliru tries to explain her age to the kids for the third time. “And I am the ambassador for the Path!”
“You don't look like an adult.” -Sister
“Is this a game? We can pretend to be very adult too!” -Brother
“I don't pretend to be an adult!” Miruliru turns red and waves with her hands.
“Hah? I don't get it.” -Brother
“I think she means that she is pretending to be a child.” -Sister
“Why would anybody pretend to be a child?” -Brother
“Because you are an adult?” -Sister
“Why should an adult pretend to be a child.” The boy looks disturbed at Miruliru.
“Urgh. That's.... You will understand once you are old enough!” Miruliru smiles and nods at her wonderful solution to the situation.
“She took the easy way out...”
“It's true... only an adult would say that! And there go my dreams of making a cute childhood friend for my first experiences with the other gender.”
The girl pats her brother's shoulder.
“It's okay. Little sister will find someone for you. Maybe the quintuplets are willing to help out.”
“By the Path! If I had known this I would have refused the job.” Miruliru stares at the ceiling with dead eyes.
“What's the Path?” The little girl in front of her asks with big eyes. Her brother, who tried to pick up Miruliru nods too with a questioning expression.
“We are trying to bring the rightful order between gods and mortals back to the multiverse. We firmly believe that the gods should be measured by the numbers of their believers. After all that's how religion should work.” Miruliru gives a proud explanation.
“But what if a god with many believers gets trashed in a fight with someone who has just a few?” The boy raises his voice.
“Wha? Of course that wouldn't happen. If a god with much power would invest it in gathering believers, he should have always more than a god with less power.” -Miruliru
“But dad trashed the evil overlords and nobody believed in him. Everyone believed in the evil guys and now everyone is happy that they are gone.” -Sister
“The people fear daddy. Does that count too?” -Brother
“Of course it doesn't count if the people fear someone!” -Miruliru
“Yeah. This is complicated brother! Does that mean that mom is stronger than dad? Everyone says that she is a beautiful and gentle flower. Everyone loves her.” -Sister
“Mom is surely stronger than dad! But I don't understand why she is called gentle by the people.” -Brother
“Yes. Her whipping isn't gentle at all.....” The little girl looks down to the floor and massages her butt.
“Whip....” Miruliru almost chokes on her drink.
“But that's nothing against grandmother!” -Brother
“Yes. Grandma is the strongest. Even mom and dad bow down to her. She nailed me heels over head naked on a wall and threw itching powder at me. It went on and on and on.... and then....” The cute little girl starts to tremble. “Bro. I will never again run around naked. Not even to defeat you in tower jumping.”
The brother presses a tear out of his left eye. “Next time I will give you two seconds head start. If dad doesn't smack me into the floor first. My cheek still hurts from that time when I played with the mortals.” The boy rubs his cheek.
“Who are your parents?” Miruliru arches an eyebrow at the two annoying kids.
“Daddy is the king of all gods! He is right there with Mr. Mawu! He told me to entertain you because you seemed lonely.” The sister points at the king of Chimera and the guy waves back at them with a broad smile.
Bastard! Miruliru strangles him in her mind.
“And mom is the horned S&M Que... ” *MUFU*
The little girl jumped at her brother and silenced him. “Pssst! What will you do if she hears you?”
Miruliru just stares at the horned woman behind the children. She was introduced as the Queen of Chimera earlier. Does that mean those two are the prince and the princess?
The Queen sneaked up on them a little while ago and started to listen from behind to the weird conversation.
“Aengus and Seria?” The woman smiles down at the kids.
Both of them turn around like clockworks. “Yes?”“Yes?”
“I think you two should go bed. We will have to talk tomorrow.” -Queen
“Hiiiii. It was brother! HE tried to pick her up!” -Princess
“Sis! Is that all your brother is worth to you?” -Prince
“Bed. Now.” -Queen
Miruliru feels a dangerous aura emanate from the woman and the two kids disappear with tears in their eyes. Miruliru can perfectly imagine this woman with a whip in her hand while tormenting some innocent victims.
“I am sorry. Children and their strange fantasies. Sometimes their imagination is running wild.” The Queen smiles at Miruliru and she forces a smile onto her face.
“Ahahaha... . Children sure like it to create stories and the like. Everything gets blown out of proportion.” Miruliru doesn't want to cause a conflict by offending the Queen.
“Don't you want to join our discussion group. We are talking about the possible strategies in attempting to duplicate Chimera.” -Queen
Miruliru nods with a forced smile and follows the S&M Queen to the group of ambassadors.
76 - Party, Ambassadors and Wine?
I smile at the four ambassadors before me. There is Gwalonna from the Gaian Pact. She has the appearance of an old woman.
Then there is Chiffre. He is from the Arcane community. The strange guy looks like he attempted to fuse with a machine. While he isn't very talkative and just seems
to kill time with us, he already made some very smart suggestions in our discussion.
Zanders from the Unity is a sickly looking fellow, who went a little too far with his body modifications. He is very interested in my suggestions on how to create a second version of Chimera.
Miruliru from the Path has a forced expression on her face after I rescued her from my children. I became aware that they caught her alone a little too late.
“I can only apologize for the behaviour of my kids. They shouldn't have disturbed you like that.” -Me
“It's okay Queen. I have relearned an important lesson on the naivety of kids. While I chose this appearance, it looks like I am not cut out to interact with them.” Miruliru answers with a distorted face. Obviously she was very troubled by the situation.
“It's not your fault. Those two like it to use their size against other people. But they are perfectly fine with understanding everything. After all they have some of the memories of their previous lifes. Plus a throughout foundation in common knowledge.” I bow a little to Miruliru.
Miruliru's expression becomes deadpan. “They played with me?”
“That's why I said that I need to apologize. It's not easy to keep them in check.” I smile wryly at her.
Miruliru starts to whisper something incomprehensible to herself but catches her thoughts again. “It's okay. I guess they have enough problems of their own by trying to cope with such a flood of memories. I find it strange that they are composed enough to use their knowledge against others instead of going insane.”
“That's right. I haven't thought about it yet. How does your society cope with this? Aren't there any children who get overwhelmed by their previous life?” Gwalonna arches her eyebrows at me.
I start to fiddle with my thumbs. “Well. For better or worse. When the whole population regained their memories at once, we were a little swamped. To avoid the issue we decided to seal the memories of our kids. They just have the common knowledge of an adult and maybe a few other fragments of their previous lifes. We plan to release the seal once we believe that they have a strong enough personality of their own.”
“Don't you think you are stealing something important from them by doing that?” Chiffre gives me an accusing expression.
Zanders jumps in and helps me unexpectedly. “It's the right decision. From what I heard those memories aren't a complete personality, but more like an image of it. The Chimeran's found a new way to revive yourself. If a god dies and revives in a new body you just wake up with a new body. Everything else is the same.”
He takes a deep breath. “But reviving inside the void without the special help of soul magic seems to separate your memories from your personality. In our attempt to recreate Chimera, we already conducted serious research in this field. The memories remain but the old personality is lost. You are able to rediscover the world anew because your memories don't feel like your own. It's a good precaution to stop a little kid from accessing too much of this knowledge.”
“I see... So it's more like a reset than being reincarnated?” Chiffre arches an eyebrow and looks at the floor while thinking about it.
“There are many moral questions on how to deal with the souls of someone who died against his will. What did you do with the people who died in the battle against the Council?” -Miruliru
“We created an agency, which is dedicated just to that question. They sort the souls into those who prefer a real reincarnation and those who would like to start anew. We have no shortage of souls on Chimera. Seria was quite excessive in her ….. collection habit. There is no need to force someone into a personality reset. Unfortunately we can only do this for those who died while they were gods.” I explain our circumstances.
Miruliru nods and takes another sip of her wine.
Zanders smiles at us. “There is still much to do. But it looks manageable. The biggest problems are about the society. We decided against a dictatorship. There will be many very free-minded individuals among us. Currently we are thinking up something like a voting system which includes every member of the society into the decision.”
“History already proved that something like that doesn't work. Democracy is just a tool for the fools to drown the few smart people in their combined voices.” Chiffre looks like he bit into something sour.
“That may be true for mortals. But we are gods. Everyone in our society has tons of knowledge and life experience. With the use of magic there should also be no problem in informing everyone of the situation and asking for their vote. We will try it first. We can always decide on another system later on.” -Zanders
“It sounds nice. Maybe we will try to adopt it if it works.” I smile at him.
“And that out of the mouth of a Queen who governs a whole planet of gods! Why would you ever think of giving away all that power?” -Gwalonna
I shrug my shoulders. “Because it's a pain in the ass to solve other people's problems? My husband and I are constantly stressed with solving small issues which could be handled by any sane person. Dictatorship isn't that much fun either.” I shake my fist at the heavens.
“But there are surely some interesting rumours about you and your husband.” Miruliru takes a look into Angrod's direction. “And I am not entirely sure if those rumours are really just rumours.”
I scratch my cheek with cold sweat forming on my forehead. “What rumours did you hear?”
“Oooh. Just something like an infernal demon opening a portal to hell itself, which consumed El Shaddai. Then laughing crazy while having his blood all over him and making a horrible prophecy for the future.” Zanders smirks at me.
“Oh I heard something strange too! Is it true that you throw offenders naked from the highest tower in Asheim? That's really disturbing if you ask me.” -Chiffre
“I heard that some minor god had really big troubles with his mortals after they ventured out into space and met a being which had great similarity with your husband. His mortals abandoned all the technology and open mindedness he had put so much effort in creating inside them.” -Gwalonna
“I heard rumours that El Shaddai got reincarnated into a female sex slave and your husband was seen a few times at the red light district where he/she is working now.” -Miruliru
*SNAP*
Ah damn! I broke my glass.
“Fufu... mwahaha...” Rumours are surely scary. Even more so if you are a famous person. “Kukuku...” I wonder whom I will have to shut up in order to stop them. ”Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Um... nothing.” -Miruliru
“Let's drink and have fun.” Gwalonna starts to fill a new glass for me.
“Let's talk about duplicating Chimera.” -Zanders
“Your expression just looked like we would be able to witness some executions tomorrow.” Everyone looks at Chiffre with a fearsome expression, but the ambassador for the Arcane Community just continues to sip on his glass of wine.
77 - Party and Wine?
The party has quieted down and the big officials are sitting together at a circular table. Well.... everyone except for Carne.
Celes is unusually clingy and was glued to me since she came back to me and Mawu with the other ambassadors.
She has linked arms with me now and her expression is …. scary.