Mnemosyne's gaze flowed with a meaningful, indulgent smile. "That… happens to be a very crucial part of the 'surprise' I prepared for your Father."
"Whoever destroys that flower, I will be very angry with."
This simple sentence of their revered Mother, and the word "Father" within it, calmed the nine Muses' restless hearts.
Though Calliope did not fully understand, she immediately accepted the order with respect and departed.
The command fit her wishes perfectly!
She had already wanted an excuse to go down to the mortal world.
Now she could take care of everything along the way.
The other Muses all volunteered to go along and share their Mother's burden.
But Mnemosyne waved a hand and stopped them.
The great goddess of civilization's lips quirked, half-smile, half-not.
She understood her beloved daughters' thoughts perfectly.
But this time, they truly could not all go.
Too big a display would be tasteless.
So small a matter was not worth the whole group descending.
Those sisters who could not go at once drooped in disappointment.
Yet they could not disobey their Mother.
So they could only flood their nine-sister "divine chat group" with frantic messages to their big sister:
"Sis! Make sure you give those two beasts a good beating!"
"Smash their ugly heads!"
"Forget it, half-dead is enough!"
They at least knew they had to heed their Father's Holy Just Order and could see that openly protecting humankind was indeed improper.
All they wanted was to punish those two blind idiots.
For had this not been such a politically sensitive time…
at their level, they would not even have needed an excuse.
They could have simply erased those two Abyssal Whelps on the spot, and no god would dare utter half a protest.
Even if they did it right in front of Phorcys, he could only paste on a smile and say:
"Well done!"
Meanwhile, in the mortal world, the two newly "brain-blessed" Abyssal Whelps crouched amid the flooded tribe, pondering the future of "monster life."
Their freshly sharpened spirits, as they savored the sweetness of wisdom, also felt for the first time a feeling called fear-after-the-fact.
Wisdom had risen in them like a sudden tide—delicious, intoxicating, yet bringing clarity.
After all, humankind did not lack backing.
From history alone, humans clearly had the favor of many Olympian great gods.
Right now no gods were managing humankind, but… who knew about later?
Their newly sly minds had learned to weigh pros and cons.
If they went on devouring tribe after tribe…
something about the risk felt just a bit high.
Yet to abandon that primal greed, that delicious, nourishing, and evolution-fueling top-tier delicacy…
they were ten thousand times unwilling.
After much discussion, their newborn wisdom pointed them down a broad, sunlit avenue:
Find a patron!
Eating alone was pleasant enough, but if something went wrong, without a greater god above to take the blow, the consequences would be more than these two frail, minor god-spawn could bear.
If, however, they offered this enormous boon to their own patron…
that would be a very different story.
So, with great haste, they dove back into the deep sea,
to seek out their direct superior and blood-source—their Mother, Absu Naya.
Such was the first benefit wisdom brought:
knowing how to seek benefit and avoid harm,
understanding the importance of shelter.
They could have used the God-Net, true.
But in that system's hierarchy, their rank was about on par with ornamental lizards in the Olympian palace gardens.
Any message they sent their noble Mother would certainly be ignored.
At best it would be "read, no reply," if read at all.
And if they foolishly spammed her with messages…
their drowsy Mother, who had a brutal temper when roused, would not hesitate to let them personally experience what "eternal abyssal peace" meant.
At that moment, Absu Naya still slept in her dark undersea temple.
More precisely, it was no palace at all, but a realm of utter stillness and warped chaos.
There was no light, no sound, and apart from life generated from Absu Naya herself, only black sea remained.
Even the water, as it neared her domain, twisted into indescribable dark currents, reeking of corrosive stillness.
At the heart of that stillness…
the goddess whose upper body could still barely be described and whose lower body could not was sleeping sweetly.
At home, she did not bother with a divine form, but lay revealed in her primal body.
Her true body sprawled along the abyssal floor like an endless black mountain range.
To non-divine eyes, it was a mass of terror beyond mortal measure,
a blend of dark-violet scales, countless writhing tentacles, and viscous, starlit shadow.
This was the goddess of the deep trench, embodying the deep sea's darkness, strangeness, mutability, twisting, wildness, chaos, and primal nature.
If not for the fact that these two Whelps were direct derivatives of her polluted power, of the same origin as she…
at their level of being, a glimpse of her unrestrained true body would have transformed them utterly.
It would have been an irreversible "dissolution into the Way," warping them from divinity to flesh at the deepest level.
Even as it was, the natural emanations of abyssal will from her—devouring, wearing down, killing, and twisting—
made them tremble in the very waters that should have been "home," their divinity wracked with pain and discomfort.
That instinctive fear and reverence, born of bloodline and of level, flooded their being at the first sight of Absu Naya.
Their bodies, hill-sized behemoths to humans,
were like chicks beside tigers.
Yet before Absu Naya, they were drops of water facing a vast lake.
As she slept, her half-transparent bone-wings, veined with glowing vessel-like lines, lightly twitched with each breath.
When a black-red drop of abyssal ichor fell from the membranes and mixed with the sea,
it soon, carried by undercurrents, formed new Abyssal Whelps.
Any newborn Whelp that gained even a flicker of wit immediately fled with all its might from its Mother.
For if it lingered near her even a little, she would, without conscious thought, reabsorb it in a single breath, folding it back into her body as nourishment.
The two now-clever Whelps had no interest in their panicked, stupid little siblings.
They hovered at the very edge of her domain, shoving each other back and forth, offering each other the "honor" of waking their terrifying, short-tempered Mother.
"You go."
"No, you go."
"Brother, you—you're wiser. You go first."
"No, little brother, you—you speak better. You go first."
"No, no, Brother, as the elder you really should—"
"Shut up! As the younger, you should worry for your elder!"
Just as their courteous brotherly argument was about to turn into a brawl—
"Vmmm—"
the entire sea-trench temple's pulsing rhythm of "absolute peace" cut off.
Absu Naya awoke.
Her pupil-less black eyes slowly opened.
Within them, only the eternally turning reflection of dark tides.
From her eyes—
well, nothing could be seen.
But from her expression—
or rather, from the half of her face that remained beautiful—
it was clear her mood at being awakened was very bad.
A terrible divine presence and bizarre aura, powerful enough to twist divinity, surged soundlessly at the instant she awoke.
The two Whelps shuddered as if doused in ice; even their divinity almost froze.
They turned to Absu Naya without a second's pause and, with all their might, shouted in unison, in the most filial cries of their lives:
"Honored Mother! Your children Mokela (And Oryth) greet Your noble self!"
"We have matters of utmost importance to report to Your kindness!"
The Abyssal Chanter paused the slick tentacle she had raised high to slap down.
But she did not draw it back.
The tentacle, a hundred times larger than the two brothers put together, hovered right above their heads.
Had they been but a hundredth of a heartbeat slower, they would already have returned to the deep sea as part of her again.
They still dared not delay for a breath, and in the fastest words they had, poured out the tale of humankind to Absu Naya.
The daughter of Phorcys and Ceto showed no interest at first.
Her face, normally blank, already held a trace of impatience.
Until…
she heard her two idiot children explain that eating humans increased their wisdom.
Then she was truly intrigued.
As a true god of law, she did not need to devour intelligent life to grow in mind.
She did not believe devouring mortals would increase her power.
But…
as a Mother, she was thoroughly tired of the children born of her divinity.
Most of the Whelps she spawned were dim, muddled, noisy fools who lived by instinct alone.
They annoyed her just to look at.
Noise is the opposite of peace.
And she was the symbol of abyssal peace.
Now, with such good supplements on hand, they deserved attention.
To grant her children wisdom, quiet, and clarity simply by feeding them mortals—
that was almost too easy.
She did not doubt their words.
First, two clear examples stood before her; these two idiots were plainly far sharper than their siblings now.
Second, she did not think they had the guts to lie to her.
Most importantly, as a god, she knew well how extraordinary the materials for making humans had been.
Yet though she was a shut-in (which she truly was), she had mastered the deepest lesson of the inner-sea pantheon:
caution (or, one could say, timidity, cringing, and the instinct of fence-sitters).
She had no desire to be dragged unawares into the business of the great Olympian gods.
So when her children finished, she did nothing at once.
She first deftly opened the God-Net and checked the pinned announcements on the Olympus homepage.
"On His Eternity the God-King's 'Reward' to Prometheus — Posted by the Office of Holy Just Order and Temporal Affairs"
"On the Latest Legal Definitions of the Covenant of Gods and Mortals — Posted by the Department of Fate and Law of the Holy Just Order"
After confirming the notices, she checked her "Inner Sea Pantheon Family Group."
It was already 999+.
The elders were all frantically discussing the matter.
Only then did she nod lightly, satisfied.
Humankind truly had no gods shielding them now.
And that Titan Prometheus really had utterly offended His Majesty.
Even someone as cold, thin-blooded, and prone to snapping as she was found herself shocked by the Iapetus males' behavior.
There really wasn't a single normal god in that house.
That was… the God-King!
The one who had personally ended the old order and founded the new!
The truly invincible Lord!
How did Prometheus dare?!
Even if his Mother, Clymene, really had climbed onto the God-King's bed (the family group certainly gossiped as if it were true, but cautious Absu Naya believed only what she saw),
that was no license to act this wildly!
Was he not courting death?
No amount of pillow talk could sway this sort of matter.
She did not need to have seen or lived it; simply thinking of the God-King's wrath, even in her absolute domain, made her whole body shudder, her scales stand on end, and her many tentacles curl tightly.
Back in the God-Kings' war, and later when He forged the pattern of the three realms and three domains, His Majesty's supreme might had already been burned immovably into the deepest divinity of every god.
______
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