MouseDestruction

Content warning - Vague mention of self harm

Chapter eight

Evelynn lay in bed awake staring at the wall. It hurt, everything was in pain, and she had been awake for a while now. ‘Damn these ears, better hearing is totally overrated’ she thought, a pillow wrapped around her head trying to block the noise out.

She had been hearing an argument since waking up, wanting to block it out and sleep, she tried to ignore it. It didn’t work.

Hearing things she didn’t want to know.

“If you weren’t like this, I wouldn’t have that bastard half-brother! Mother would still be here! And I might have a friend!” she heard repeatedly yelled that morning by Francesca.

That on top of her hangover was making her depressed, she could only blame herself. She drunk the mead, she walked off with her friend’s father, she didn’t tell Francesca, she was a screw up in her past life and nothing would change that now.

Francesca burst into the room, “get dressed, you are coming with me” she demanded.

“Francesca, I…” Evelynn began.

“Don’t start, you get dressed, now” She demanded again. Looking at Eve for a second, she blasted a bit of healing magic at her.

It left her feeling better, not amazing, but she could function now. Looking at the sunshine in the window didn’t hurt at least.

Evelynn forced herself out of bed and dressed herself using inventory. She was putting her shoes on when…

Master connection establishing…. Approved.

She looked up. Francesca had Evelynn’s leash in her hand with a smile she said, “that’s right, father gave me permission.”

“Please, Francesca I….”

“No talking, now come with me. You are going to pray at the temple all day and ask for repentance from Gaia” snapped Francesca.

Evelynn was marched out of the building, past a guilty looking Guild master who said, “don’t you hurt her Francesca” with a glare.

Francesca ignored him and walked by.

- - - - -

At the temple Evelynn was placed kneeling in front of the magical fire roughly. She was to stay there for hours, praying on the hard wooden floor, until Francesca returned.

She had a long time to think for herself, knowing she had done something wrong, but she didn’t think it would have this much of a reaction. ‘If only I had told her yesterday’ she thought.

Eventually the priestess, Rhea, come out from the back room and walked over to Eve and said, “you know Saintess, I feel a little sorry for you.”

“Why? I deserve this, I was a fool.” Eve said with downcast eyes, red from crying earlier but she had run out of tears.

“Hmmm? A little naïve maybe, a fool? No… you see, Francesca doesn’t know the entire truth, a tragic tale indeed,” said the priestess.

 “W…What do you mean?” asked Evelynn, raising her head to ask.

“A few years ago, Francesca had a friend, a fellow priestess of Gaia training with her in the temple here. And everything was fine, that is until her friend had an affair with her father. Pregnant, her friend was sent to train elsewhere” explained Rhea.

“Eventually her mother she…” looking away Rhea paused for a second “succumbed to her grief.”

Evelynn didn’t know what to say, it was devastating. And she had done the same thing, she hadn’t known her for long but still. She had acted like a friend.

“Of course, it’s not always that simple, I’m sure you will find. So, I have an offer for you. You see this ring?” She asked, showing her a fancy-looking silver ring with a large blue stone. “This is the ring of the Saintess. Probably something you would like, yes?”

Evelynn raised her eye at that, ‘ring of the Saintess? I’m the Saintess!’ she thought.

The priestess chuckled continuing with “and I will give it to you, but first I want to see if you can earn it. And if you can, Gaia might have a piece of information you don’t know you want.”

“Fix the damage to Francesca and her father, and I can give you that information” she offered Evelynn, then closed her hand and pocketed the ring.

- - - - -

It was dark when Francesca came to pick her up. It had been a long time, half a day, to be on her knees praying. They were sore, she had pins and needles, she had to limp slowly behind Francesca.

She had had a long time to think and remembered Gaia from her home world. First, she thought it was odd, wasn’t Gaia to do with the Earth? Unable to come up with an answer to that, she remembered that Gaia had a mixed record.

On the one hand she was nurturing, on the other she was cool and indifferent. This Gaia didn’t seem far off the mark. And Francesca probably knew all their teachings. Still, there were worse gods to live under.

Thankfully Francesca had seemed to calm down some, a quiet anger radiated off her, but at least she was less forceful now. Apparently, she would be staying at Francesca’s house tonight.

She was pushed onto a small mattress, in Francesca’s room. She tried to apologize again, Francesca told her to sleep, they would talk in the morning.

Evelynn disappeared her shoes using inventory and slept, it didn’t take long. She was exhausted. But first, she activated a skill she would use.

- - - - -

Waking up in her dream realm Evelynn checked her status, [Dream Shaping] was active, slowly ticking her mana down.

Looking around to take in her situation all was black, just one nearby blobby mass of light, and a few further away she could barely make out. Nothing else was around, not even the ground beneath her or the stars in the sky.

Floating over she touched in on Francesca’s dream, it was sad. She was sorry for treating Evelynn so poorly, but rage simmered there. She could see herself being whipped by magical vines in the temple as she prayed, as Francesca cried watching.

Evelynn didn’t know how to fix this, ‘what can I do?’ she wondered.

She backed out of the dream, thinking of what to do. She decided to see if she could find the guild master.

It didn’t take long, the town was small, the temple, Francesca’s house and the guild were all near the center. She entered his dream.

He was mourning in front of a coffin; it was a lady she didn’t recognize. She looked quite a lot like Francesca though, even in Gaian priestess robes. ‘His wife? Francesca’s mother.’

Not knowing what it all meant, she checked her status for anything that could help. She looked at two skills, [Holy Blood Magic] and [Guidance].

She figured it would be easy to change his mood using blood magic, how long it would last though was the issue. However, she had no idea what [Guidance] did.

The explanation was… not very useful.

The Saintess provides guidance to those who are in need.

Activating [Guidance] the dream changed, now she could see the same lady, this time it was her death. Evelynn vomited and fled the dream.

It took her a while to calm down, but she had to do this. She gathered her wits and tried again.

This time she used her [Holy Blood Magic] to change his mood, flicking through a few and checking into his dream to see the changes.

On changing his mood to regret, she found it, a dream worth her [Guidance] skill.

It was Francesca’s friend sleeping with him. Evelynn saw that she was young, a few years older than Francesca, but this was four or five years ago. ‘She must have been like an older sister to Francesca,’ she thought.

Using her skill the scene changed, the same girl was brewing a potion. She snuck it into the guild kitchen and prepared a drink, taking it to the guild master. What happened after that made it obvious, it was a short duration lust potion, he wouldn’t remember this though or what it made him do.

Any succubus could recognize that much lust in a bottle.

‘She tricked him and ruined his family’ she thought. ‘And neither He nor Francesca know this, but how can I tell them? Why would they believe me? I need to try though.’

Exiting the dream, she didn’t know what to do. There wasn’t much else she could do tonight.

She decided to at least change their mood to be a bit happier, it wouldn’t last long. If you are sad, you are sad, changing the mood in their blood wouldn’t last long. But it would help.

Turning off her skills, she fell asleep again.

- - - - -

Evelynn woke up to Francesca kicking her mattress, “Get up lazy bones” she said, “I already let you sleep in.”

She turned to her friend and said “Francesca, I’m sorry for what I have done… But you need to know something.”

“What? That my father is a lecherous bastard, ha. I don’t need to be reminded” snapped Francesca.

“No Francesca, your father is a fine man. You have been tricked. I know what happened to your mother Francesca” Evelynn informed her friend. “You need to know the truth.”

Francesca was shocked, few people knew what happened to her mother, “What truth! My mother died, and it was because of him!” she shouted, a tear coming to her eye, “You don’t know my mother, you can’t know anything!”

“I’m sorry Francesca, I didn’t know your mother. But I know the truth, and it wasn’t your father. Your friend… she practiced alchemy, she gave your father a lust potion, probably after giving herself something for fertility.”

“No! She can’t of, she was my friend! I trained with her for a decade. I would have known if she was doing something like that” explained Francesca.

“We can check though can’t we Francesca? You know this” said Evelynn, trying to get her friend to be logical. “Her mother, its Rhea the priestess you work with, isn’t it?”

Evelynn was just guessing this, but they looked very similar, and the fact that she was a priestess of Gaia like her daughter, same with Francesca and her mother, went a long way to confirming it.

“I…” said Francesca, she looked up and let out a sigh “I guess we should try.”

“Good!” said Evelynn with a clap rising out of her bed, getting up for the day. “Shall we go now? Or did you want to do something first, talk to your father maybe?”

- - - - -

They went to see her father first. Francesca wanted him to come, he deserved to know the truth, and he might know something useful.

Arriving at the guild, they were brief, Francesca was still cold to her father, but she wasn’t yelling at him now. Quickly Francesca explained the situation, her father sighing.

‘Hehe same sigh Francesca had’ thought Evelynn.

He agreed to come along, he wanted to know even more than she did. It had cost him a lot, and he was still confused about it. He had a hole in his memory, he thought from grief or regret, but now he was being offered an explanation.

And it made sense.

He also insisted on bringing Peter along saying that “he is good at investigating, it’s not his specialty, but these adventurers are always trying to pull one over on him.”

Together the four of them left the guild hall, in slightly better moods. They still had a hill to climb though, soon they would either be relieved, or would be going through another round of guilt and blame.

Arriving at the temple Rhea the priestess welcomed them with open arms and a deep smile “oh my, imagine this, all these important people coming to visit me! How can I help you today? Here to pray?”

“I think you know why we are here Rhea” said the guild master, “we want to know the truth, what happened that day?”

MouseDestruction

Bit of a mood change. Not going to lie, hardest chapter to write so far, took me a good couple hours longer than the other chapters.

Spoiler

We should be back to happy days soon though. I don't intend to drag on sad or gory parts.

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