Dungeon Menagerie 8 (Patreon)

Commissioned by ChaosInfiniteRei

Dungeon Menagerie

Chapter 8

-VB-

A full month passed before the Celestial Menagerie activated on its own again. 

Vanessa jolted in her morning bed, her eyes snapping awake, as she felt the wellspring that had been inside of her bloom and -.

She sat in her bed, dazed, as she felt something so much bigger than her. It … made her feel small. So small. But it wasn’t the kind of small that left her despondent, listless, and weak. No, it was the feeling of being small in a wide world all open for her to meet new people and discover oddities. 

She snapped out of that feeling as something snapped into existence at the center of her room in the inn. She watched as … a card appeared midair and then fell. She quickly caught it before it fell and looked at it. 

A card.

A card? 

She stared at the card. The face she was looking at was familiar, though she couldn’t quite place it. There was a golden star at the center of the image and some kind of pink magical circles with a crescent moon on the left and a radiant sun on the right. There were four smaller stars, one at each corner of the card.

When she flipped it over, she found herself looking at … some kind of mermaid? She looked fluffy with her poofy hair, bubbly background, and -.

She looked at the bottom of the card and read it. 

“The Bubbles,” she muttered. 

She knew that it was … alive? It was kind of alive, and would come and help her if she used the card. Somehow. 

This card was now another friend of hers.

A card.

A friend.

She slowly lowered the card and felt herself shrivel.

“Did my power just give me a rock friend?”

-VB-

The Righteous Justicar “looked” up as his friend and master came out of her room holding a -.

‘Ho…’ he thought to himself as he found himself looking at a flimsy tree slice that beheld a lake of magic within it. It was … powerful. Not as powerful or existential as he, but it was powerful nonetheless. 

It was also sleeping. No, merely dormant. It was powerful, yes, but it was not alive like he and their master was. It existed. It thought. It could react. But it held no … deep thoughts. Shallow thoughts, yes. Deep, personal reflection? No.

He cawed and nearly chortled when his master glared at him because he’d just startled her. 

Oh, how he loved messing with her. The absendminded girl needed to get a grip.

He shook himself and stood up before leisurely walking over to her. 

And cawed.

She understood his question, even if there was no true language for them to communicate with. 

“I guess we’ll go to the dungeon today. We are running out of funds…” she sighed.

This was true. Even if he did not care too much about the transactions of the featherless, he saw that his mather’s goddess spent a lot of the money that his master brought in.

However, he also knew that there was a reason for it. 

He and Athena didn’t talk so much as they saw and observed each other. Athena went around the city with Vanessa’s money to make herself friends with many smaller familias and their deities. To the Righteous Justicar, it was clear what she was doing. 

But her actions irked him. With her beguiling words and experience, she cajoled his master to do more work more and more every day. His master should be looking for boys and living her life, not slaving away in the Dungeon whether or not she was doing it out of free will.

… He regretted suggesting to her that day to enter the Dungeon. Vanessa no longer had a desire to look for other ways. She’s tasted power ever since she got the goddess’s blessing. Even if she didn’t think about it consciously, she was hooked on that power that she could gain. 

Even if she could go back to her human transaction job-thingy that she once explained to him, she wouldn’t. No, she had that gleam that the greedy had. 

It was a sad transformation, but as the Righteous Justicar, he could not state objectively that this was bad for her. Was it bad to grow strong? Was it bad to want more if Vanessa didn’t harm anyone as she did it? 

No. Objectively speaking, she still hadn’t killed anyone with a soul. She was not a murderer. He would not judge her.

No, he would merely lament the loss of her innocence. 

He noticed her doing something stupid. Not eating her vegetables. 

He cawed at her, and everyone in the inn’s restaurant giggled and laughed as his master grumbled as she began to slowly pick and choose her vegetables. Under his gaze, she would finish her vegetables. They were important to children and adults alike.

-VB-

Athena hummed as she stretched her arms up and over her head and then let them flop down.

She looked out of her room’s windows and hummed. She watched the mortals and a rare god or goddess go about their late morning. Carts and animals came and went, often at the service of their humanoid master. 

It was peaceful.

It was … a veil. 

She could see it in the way that civilians and adventurers flowed across the city. There were people out there working their way toward a break out of war. She wasn’t who might cause it but she could sense it. It’s why she’s been amusing herself with puzzling out who might be bold enough to disrupt Ouranos’s project. 

If she made some allies as she figured out the schemes, then that was just a bonus to her. 

In fact, she already had a few friends who she knew wasn’t involved. Hestia was … well, her aunt was too focused on her new child. So focused, in fact, that there was no way she could be involved. Cloak and dagger politics was never her niche, anyways. Hephaestus could play the game if she wanted to, but she was also focused on her children and looking for that inspiration and material to push her divine smithing even further. Her half-brother Apollo was being stupid as always. Ares was apparently not even involved with Orario aside from random attacks upon the city once every blue moon; once she had more children, she would have to show that dunderhead how real war was waged. Last she remembered, she remembered seeing Zeus and Hera in Heaven. 

Hermes… The normally laid back god had something going on. 

Among her “pantheon,” he was the most likely to have some hand in the dark. 

She grinned. 

Yes, coming down to the mortal realm was a great choice. 

Now, if only she got more children so that she didn’t need to burden her first child so much, then that would be great.

Especially since she knew that her first child’s “monster” didn’t like her for pushing Vanessa so much. If things got bad, then that “monster” would kill her just to relieve his master of the burden.

Her child was lucky to have such a loyal companion.

She paused, her divinity twinging, as she felt the thing connected to her child balloon again. But unlike this morning, nothing came of it and it settled back down.

And, well, there was also that. 

She wisely didn’t tell anyone about it. Why would she? If she spilled a word about it, then she might lose her first child to the dumb and greedy deities all around her. They wouldn’t be abl to appreciate her aside from the fact that she was interesting. 

No, Athena saw something more in her child “skill.”

Something much more powerful than the Heaven. Something more profound and monstrous. 

She giggled. 

She supposed that her first child was an even greater puzzle than the intrigue of the city.

Oh well. It was time to get to work again, swaying gods and goddesses alike to join her in arms, because she was a Goddess of War, and that included hidden wars of influence.

-VB-

She spun the orange juice in her cup before taking a sip.

It was alright. 

It certainly wasn’t great and certainly not something her children would expect her to be sipping on, but they would eagerly try to get her new and better orange juice in an effort to please her. 

For small things like this, that’s how she liked it. 

But for other bigger and more important things in life, she liked being more hands-on.

Like with that pure soul under Hestia’s care. 

However, Freya was no dumb bitch like Aphrodite who would go and do whatever she wanted without a care. Oh, Freya didn’t care for consequences either, but she didn’t go out of her to make too big of a trouble. No, she was as precise and attractive as she needed to be.

And this was why despite the broiling need to see with her own eyes the young lady under Athena who had her attention, she didn’t walk up to her like she had done with Dear Bell.

Why?

Because, aside from the fact that the girl in question, Vanessa, had fluffy things surrounding her normal soul, the Judge who accompanied her everywhere would not tolerate her. His soul was like a castle-forged skill. It bent just enough to not break or be tyrannical but held an edge so sharp and concise that the moment she showed up in front of it? 

He’d kill her in an instant. 

So approaching the girl was not going to happen any time soon. 

Even if she now had a card that had something close to a soul. And the demi-soul was bubbly and pink.

Ugh. 

“My Goddess… why are you sipping on warm orange juice?”

She looked over her shoulder a Ottar and then smiled. “Sometimes, to get into a mood you want to be at, you have to eat or drink something that is that mood.” 

Her strongest child looked at her orange juice.

She giggled. 

“If you want to know, then to me, warm orange juice is an extremely dissatisfying experience.”

Indeed, the denial she found herself dealing with deeply dissatisfied her. But even so, she could be patient. 

She had all of the time in the world, after all.