Poisoned Rationality

Absence of Danger Detected: Retrieving Memory Group 3

The years after meeting Estelle were great.

One might think that, as a God, life would get boring after the first few decades. But if you were spending that time not only caring for the life and health of a major part of the world, but you were also with your soulmate, then it was amazing.

Even as the days grew similar as I got the hang of my duties and responsibilities and everything calmed down, it was still so nice just to simply be.

We spent pretty much all of our free time together, whether we were doing any activities or simply sitting around, cuddling.

I discovered that I adored watching over the cute animals of the forest, watching over them and fawning over them all. Sometimes I would spend years at a time simply observing.

After the first few centuries, though, life became more complicated. As it turned out, more and more new Gods were appearing. I had been one of the first ones to appear, but more of us were coming into existence as time passed.

Some of them were very nice to be around, like the Goddess of the Ocean and the God of Fertility.

Thalissa, the Goddess of the Ocean, was what she called a Jellid, and she appeared to be a jellyfish in the shape of a person. She also had the Authority over the Sky and the Sun.

The God of Fertility was named Chad and was a surprisingly nice person. He was a large man with a lean but muscular build, with a strange accent.

There were many others, like Celyria, Goddess of Sleep and Sewing, Haestophus, God of the Forge and Smithing, and Yrasyln, Goddess of Nature and Kindness.

However, there was one who was not nice to pretty much everyone.

Aglies, the God of Pride, was quite mean. He seemed to believe that those of us amongst the gods who didn’t identify as men were lesser, for some reason or another. Which was strange, seeing as the one in charge, whom I still didn’t remember fully, identified as either a woman or a nonbinary person.

I would have expected somebody to do something about him, but according to the rules, he hadn’t done anything wrong, or whatever.

I really didn’t like him. He also seemed to have some kind of interest in me, despite me having very clearly told him I wasn’t interested in anyone except Estelle.

Even thinking about him now was getting me worked up.

“Babe, what’s wrong?” Estelle asked, putting a hand on my shoulder as she walked up to me. I sighed and sat up from the magical window I was using to peer down onto the forest below.

“I was thinking about all the gods, and that made me think of him,” I grumped, frowning. My tail lashed, and Estelle pulled me into a hug.

“Focus on me, then,” She murmured, patting my head. I leaned against her, softly sighing.

We sat there for a while, basking in the presence of one another. It wasn’t long before I was falling asleep in her arms.

…

After slipping out of the memories and into the strange dreamspace Ria and I shared, I stretched out my body. How come I needed to do that, even in a non-physical place?

“We’re getting closer,” Ria murmured, smiling as she leaned against my shoulder. I nodded and shook out my tail.

“How many chunks of memories do we have left, do you think?” I asked, looking up at the strange crystalline heart. A decently big section of it was pieced back together. It looked like more than fifty percent.

“Not a lot, I would hope,” Ria replied. “I want to get back to Stella soon.”

“I know,” I said. “We’re only level 23, though.” Ria sighed softly in response, and I patted her head.

“We’ll work hard,” She mumbled, yawning. I nodded in agreement, putting a hand over my mouth as I caught the yawn.

The two of us soon fell asleep and drifted out of our dreamspace.

…

I was lying awake in the bed I was sharing with Ariana, on my side. My girlfriend had curled up into half a ball, and was resting against me.

I smiled happily and put an arm over her. She made a soft sound and nuzzled the back of her head against my body, and I giggled softly in my head.

She was so cute.

…

-Natalya-

I was lying in bed, thinking.

From where I was, I could see Nyx and Ariana cuddling together on their bed. Each time I glanced over, I felt a pang of jealousy.

Not about them dating, but about the fact that they had someone to love. I wished I did too.

It was during resting times like this when I thought about these things. I wondered how amazing it would be to have someone to love.

I knew that I liked guys and girls, at least. But so far, nobody really stood out to me as somebody that I would date.

Tyler was fairly attractive, at least. I didn’t know very much about him or his views on romance, and having relationships with party members was generally not that great an idea. Mostly because if things went poorly, it could affect how well the party did and endanger everyone.

That wasn’t a problem for Nyx and Ariana, because they were Fated Ones.

Sarya, being a Seafolk, didn’t really get our ideas of romance. I remember asking her about it recently, earlier during the day.

“We don’t have romance,” She had told me. “Most of us, anyway. For those of us who live under the water, attraction is unusual.”

I sighed and turned over onto my other side, trying to get comfortable. I needed to sleep; we had a big day tomorrow.

…

-Tyler-

I was dreaming.

That was fairly obvious, because I was floating in the middle of space. Unless something ridiculously crazy had happened and I had been taken from the inn and put into space.

Turning around in circles, I gazed at the stars.

It was pretty. Watching them sparkle, contrasting against the swirls of space dust, ignited warm fuzzy feelings within me.

Then a set of pure white glowing eyes appeared in the darkness. I blinked at them, surprised. The eyes seemed to narrow at me before a second pair opened behind them, followed by a third and fourth.

“Hello,” I murmured at the eyes. I waved at them.

The eyes moved closer, and I realized that whatever this was was huge. It stopped only a short distance away from me. I tilted my head and reached out an arm. The eyes backed away, and I pulled my hand back.

A soft rumbling sound came from it, and I smiled. The sound was nice. As the sound continued, audible words floated into my mind.

Child… They murmured. You are not in your truest form. Do not worry. Soon, you will shed your shell and become pure.

Then each pair of eyes closed one by one, until I was left alone in space again.

What was that about? Truest form? Shell?

I shook my head and looked around me another time. Nothing, now. I sighed and closed my eyes.

Soon enough, the dream faded away and I slipped into deep sleep.

…

-Nyxandria-

When the morning came, we all spent a while getting ready for our descent into the dungeon.

After waking up, we first made sure we had all of our supplies ready, before collecting our gear. We went down to the inn’s front room for some breakfast, before setting out toward the dungeon.

Tyler put on his armor before we left, but once that was done it was time to go.

We chatted lightly as we walked, about how challenging the dungeon would be and plans on how long we would spend in the dungeon.

There were special fountain rooms within the dungeon where monsters wouldn’t spawn that also contained special portals that let you leave the dungeon and then return to whichever room you’d been to before. So, as long as you made it to one of those rooms, you’d be able to leave and come back when you were rested.

Our plan was to not go longer than a week before returning, at the most. We would likely return after around five days.

The Adventure’s Guild had a building around the dungeon’s entrance, to regulate people entering and exiting. Our group joined the relatively short line to enter.

After a few minutes of waiting, we checked in with one of the Guild members before going toward the entrance.

It was a large marble entrance, which had a stairway that seemed to go down infinitely.

“Ready?” I asked our group. They all nodded, and I grinned. “Dungeon, here we come.”

End Part One