Godsforsaken

Chapter 17: A Nightly Visit

After spending almost the entire night taking turns exhausting Yume we finished up the negotiations with the Atalanta cult and then traveled back to the capital. Just like the last time Anna then had to spend hours briefing her mother on the results of her mission, which meant we had to sit there and wait for hours. The queen wasn't quite as impressed as she had been at her daughter's work with the Wood Elves, whose assistance we'd essentially managed to secure for free, but she still seemed happy enough with what we'd managed to negotiate the cult down to, especially since, as Anna had admitted, making their territory more fertile would not only benefit the cult but the entire east of the kingdom and therefore the crown as well.

Once Anna was finished giving her report the queen informed her that she was free to pursue her own goals until she was needed and she made it known that that wasn't likely to happen in the near future.

And she ended up being right about that. For the next six weeks we were left entirely to our own devices. We kept training our Qi and took any quest that even whiffed of Outsider involvement. We tracked down any lead we could find about the cultists. We tried to use Syr's fragmented memories to find out where they might be, we tried to track down Wilhelm – nobody in the kingdom was allowed to refer to him as 'Prince Wilhelm' any longer – but we didn't have much luck. We did find a few cells of cultists of the Black Goat and cut them down but they were only cut-outs, expendable servants who didn't know anything of value, least of all the whereabouts of the Holy Maiden.

We even fought another two Dark Lords along the way, one of them finally netting me my twelfth kill, putting me at the same number of kills as Atalanta and Albrecht. As I had expected, no god came down from on high to bestow the title of Great Hero on me. Not even Athena showed up to annoy me, which really left me wondering. It had been months and months since I'd last seen the bitch goddess and I had at least expected her to come whine at me when I had technically met all the qualifications for becoming a Great Hero. What better opportunity to tell me how worthless I was?

But even still, objectively speaking we had been making great headway.

We'd been back in Aphrodite's Orchard and set up trades between us, Martin, and Linda and Charlie's family. Our cut of those profits meant that if we weren't driven to stop the cult Syr's body snatcher had founded we could have settled down and had a pleasant life as mystic fruit farmers. Of course visiting Aphrodite's Orchard also meant introducing Anna to my mom, who had looked about ready to cry when she'd learned that one of my lovers was a princess and all of us were now technically part of the royal family.

Our Qi had grown by leaps and bounds and even Alisha, by far our physically weakest member, could now shrug off getting hacked at by orcs with rusty cleavers thanks to our newfound mastery of Qi Hardening. Not that she ever really needed that, considering her greater pool of Qi had also made her offensive magic drastically stronger.

I had a long and heartfelt talk with Selene about the gods in general and Freya in particular and in the end she decided to contact Freya for the very first time since becoming a Hero. She then demanded more than begged to be taught how to use Intercession, that skill Paladins had that allowed them to ask their deity for aid in healing their comrades. I'd been present during the conversation and it made me revisit my opinion of Freya quite a bit.

The first time I'd met Freya she'd claimed to be doing what was necessary and that if she could take on her worshipers' burdens she would have. I'd thought it was so much bullshit back then but when we met her again and she seemed just as subdued and mournful about what had happened to Selene as she had back then I began to wonder if she might not have been speaking the truth back then after all.

We also went back to the Silvermoon tribe and found out that, despite Alisha's worries, Sheila had actually been hard at work making up for the way she'd been treating her children all these years. We also had occasion to visit the barracks the royal guard had set up in their territory and were amused, though not surprised, to find that every single member of the royal guard stationed there had managed to land at least one elf each.

During our stays in the capital we'd had dinner with Richard and the twins a few more times and even Yume had begun to warm up to them, even going so far as to spar with the prince and teach him a few tricks.

Except for our continued failure to track down this godsforsaken cult everything was coming up roses.

**

So of course when destiny struck it caught us on the back foot. And by that I mean it caught us right as I was balls-deep inside a moon-drunk Alisha.

Anna's Our villa had an enchantment woven into the front door that made knocks at the door audible from anywhere inside the house, which meant that no matter where in the house you were a knock at the door would always be noticed. The one and only exception to this enchantment was Anna's alchemy studio, the reasoning being that a knock at the wrong moment might startle her and cause something unfortunate to happen.

So of course the knock at the door came in the middle of the night, while I was currently fucking Alisha into the mattress with Selene kneeling behind us and alternating between licking my balls and Alisha's pussy and while next to us Anna was plowing Yume with her fake cock. To say the knock came as a bit of a surprise would be putting it mildly.

At first I thought it was some idiot teenager doing it on a dare but when the knocking came again just seconds later I realized this was quite deliberate. As much as it pained me to do so I pulled out of Alisha's well-fucked asshole and made myself even the littlest bit presentable. Alisha all but growled at me for it but I didn't reconsider. There were only two options here. Either it really was some idiot teenager, in which case I would bite their head off, or it was something serious. When the girls realized that I wasn't going to ignore it they, too, gave up and made themselves presentable.

So I admit to not having been in the best mood of my life at that moment. There were few things I delighted in more than plowing a moon-drunk Alisha so hard she forgot her own name and having to stop in the middle of that was aggravating to say the least. When I opened the door and found a person in a hooded cloak standing in the doorway my first instinct was to slam the door back in their face. I could have been balls-deep inside Alisha right then and so I had zero patience for that kind of cloak-and-dagger shit. I could hear more than feel the wood of the door creaking under my hand but before I could slam the door the hooded figure said:

“Oh thank the gods, I'm in the right place after all.”

And it was at that moment that I felt the clammy breath of the Fates down my neck. I knew that voice.

“Miss... Receptionist?" I asked carefully.

The woman drew back the hood on her cloak and, indeed, it was the head receptionist of the Adventurer's Guild. She was a gorgeous woman in her mid-twenties with a honey-blond side ponytail and a sunny smile. And I had never even heard of her making house calls. For any reason whatsoever.

“Mister Mercenary," she said, the familiar greeting utterly incongruous with the situation. “I saw that you registered a new address with us but I didn't expect it to be in this part of the city. It is a really nice neighborhood.”

“I'm sorry if this comes off as rude," I said, making a conscious effort to keep my voice level and my tone polite, “but what are you doing here?”

“Oh right," she said. She was trying to peer inside the villa and I both heard and felt my women coming up behind me. The receptionist's eyes widened as she saw us all, flushed and sweaty and panting. “Oh my," she muttered as she realized what she'd interrupted but then she cleared her throat and said: “I have a quest for you.”

“It's the middle of the night," I said, not quite managing to hide my annoyance.

“R-right," she said, a little unsure of herself, which terrified me. I'd never seen this woman not in control of the situation. This was a woman who could stare down a herd of angry minotaurs without blinking after their quest giver had bailed on them. “We have a client at the Guild who specifically asked for you. They also specifically asked for this to happen at night.” She added, a little quieter: “They paid quite a lot.”

“Who is this client?" I asked. The amount of mun they would need to get this kind of premium service from the guild would be unfathomable.

“They insisted on absolute confidentiality," she told us. “I was asked to get you and bring you straight to the Guild.”

“So I'm guessing it can't wait until morning?" I asked.

She shook her head.

“What if we tell the client to go fuck themselves?”

She bit her lip. “I think they would be rather cross. They're offering you a Mythic Quest.”

I felt shivers run down my spine.

Normally quests were classified with letter ratings depending on their projected difficulty but that classification had not always been in place. Once upon a time quests had been classified in the same way as magic items: lower tier, mid tier, high tier, legendary tier and mythic tier.

The current classification incorporated the old, for the most part. A lower tier quest was equivalent to an E-ranked quest and a legendary quest would be the equivalent of an S-ranked quest, with a few more gradients in between than in the old system. But Mythic Quests had no equivalent. Mythic Quests weren't just set up. They were the sort of thing that kings, gods and demigods would offer to the most powerful of adventurers and the rewards for them were suitably staggering.

Albrecht saving Hammer's Forge from being overrun by the servants of the King in Yellow had been a Mythic Quest.

Atalanta hunting down the walking cataclysm known as the Calydonian Boar had been a Mythic Quest.

And now someone was offering us a Mythic Quest.

Of course, most people who underwent Mythic Quests didn't live to tell the tale. At best those people would end up in heroic stories sung by the bards. Those who lived to enjoy the benefits of such quests were few and far between.

On the other hand, Mythic Quests weren't started lightly. If someone believed that offering a group of adventurers the kinds of rewards that came along with a Mythic Quest was necessary, chances were that the stakes were high and ignoring it wouldn't be good for anybody.

And so I took a long, deep breath, swallowed once, and said: “Lead the way, then.”

**

The Adventurer's Guild building looked eerie at night.

Normally it was a place of bustling life, brightly lit and full of people. At night, though, the place was dark and dreary. It looked abandoned even though it had been packed full of people just hours ago and would be again a few hours hence. Even the receptionist didn't look entirely comfortable with the building as dark as it was. All the same, she didn't turn on any lights other than a single glowstone, a small stone a mage could channel mana into so that it glowed. It was essentially a torch that emitted no heat nor smoke and that could be held in one's palm.

And the fact that she could use it at all told me that this woman was a mage. It didn't shock me too much, though it did make me wonder why she was working for the guild rather than going on adventures herself.

“The client is in the conference room on the first floor," she told us quietly as she led the way upstairs.

Once there she traced a finger over the doorknob and a faint blue glow told me she'd just lifted some sort of enchantment effect off it. This woman was just full of surprises, wasn't she?

Only once the enchantment had been turned off did she turn the doorknob. She opened the door and then stepped through it.

“I have brought the adventurers you requested, my lady," she said, quiet reverence in her voice.

This whole cloak-and-dagger shit just didn't sit right with me. For a moment I had a horrible thought. Was our client the queen? Had something happened that had forced her to contact us covertly? Had there been a coup? An attack by the cultists? Using Wilhelm's knowledge they might have had a really easy time trying to get into the palace undiscovered. Had they tried to assassinate the queen? Was that what had happened?

My worries didn't lessen when I finally saw our client, who wore a hooded cloak not unlike the one the guild receptionist was wearing right now, only of much higher quality. In fact, I'd never seen a cloak quite that high quality in my life. It certainly looked like the kind of garment I'd expect a queen to wear if she was trying to blend in.

“You have my gratitude, Miss Receptionist,” the cloaked figure said.

“Was there anything else you needed, my lady?" the receptionist asked in the meekest voice I'd ever heard from her.

“No," the hooded figure said. “You may stay or leave as you will. You are already involved in this, after all.”

“Thank you, my lady," the receptionist said and placed the glowstone on the table the figure was sitting at before scooting over to the wall and trying to be unobtrusive.

Alisha, Selene, Yume and Anna began to approach the table but I stayed where I was and crossed my arms instead. I had recognized that voice.

“Why don't you cut the crap, Athena?”

Every eye in the room was on me until the hooded figure chuckled.

“Nothing gets past you, does it, Felix Tailor?” She drew back the hood and, sure enough, it was Athena, Olympian goddess of wisdom.

If I didn't know her I'd think she was very beautiful. Her skin was pale and smooth and perfect, her hair was dark blond, lightly curled and styled in an immaculate up-do, her features sharp but rounded just enough to be pretty rather than intimidating, and her blue eyes always looked wary and calculating.

But I did know who she was. The goddess who had spurned me when I had begged for her help on hands and knees. The goddess who had sent an untrained fool to do the job I'd trained myself to do for a year. The goddess who had showed up to insult me after every major quest I'd undertaken. The goddess who had given me cryptic warnings that had panned out twice. The goddess who had been curiously absent for months.

And a part of me, a small part I didn't like to think about much, felt a bit of relief at the fact that she seemed to be fine after all.

Shut up, I thought as I heard Syr tittering in my mind.

Although, 'fine' seemed to be a bit of an overstatement. Athena didn't look fine. She looked tired and harried, as if she'd been on the run. She had bags under her eyes, her normally perfect skin had a sheen of dried sweat on it, and her hair had lost a bit of its usual luster. I was starting to wonder if the reason she hadn't come to bitch at me lately had been because she'd been unable to.

“Gods above, what happened to you?" I breathed. I hadn't meant to. It's just that she'd never looked anything less than absolutely glamorous whenever I'd seen her.

Athena gave a very wry smile. “What happened to me is precisely why I'm here, asking for your help.”

“So the Mythic Quest thing is actually true and not just some bullshit to draw us out here?" I asked.

“Why would I want to drag you anywhere?" she asked. “No, it's real. What I wish to ask of you is more than enough to qualify as a Mythic Quest.” Then her gaze went from me over to my women behind me. And then she did a double-take. “Princess Annabella? What are you doing here?”

Anna cringed a bit at the title and the guild receptionist turned around to her and her eyes all but bugged out. I hadn't been surprised to learn that Anna was registered with the Adventurer's Guild and now I was even less surprised to find out that she'd apparently failed to disclose her real identity when she'd registered.

“I am here because you called for Felix and his lovers, Goddess Athena," Anna replied.

Athena stared. Not at Anna, but at me. “Even a princess? Is there no end to your avarice?”

I crossed my arms again. “I'm not going to apologize for loving all of them, least of all to you.”

Athena and I had a short staring contest before she huffed and said: “Well, no matter. It is likely best if the royal family knows what's going on.”

“What is going on?" Alisha asked. “You still haven't told us.”

Athena took a deep breath, steeling herself for what she was about to say. Finally she spoke up:

“Olympus has fallen.”