Vol 2. Chapter 6: The Proof of Her Love (2)
And so, after remaining as such for what seemed to be both hours and a few moments, our soul bonding gently ended with one becoming two once again, our metaphysical embrace reverting to the physical one we started with. Translation: we’re back to hugging each other tightly in Nerinne’s room.
As I slowly opened my eyes, I confirmed the change that was already taking place back when she asked me to close them. The ‘room’ was no longer a room at all. Its walls had not only opened up, but they had also vanished completely, just like the floor below and the ceiling above, leaving in their place a completely different scenery all around us.
Yes, different, but not unwelcome, for her divine realm was now an expansive garden—no, a valley filled with all manner of plants and colorful flowers which glowed serenely under the night sky, plants and flowers that were all around us as well, here on the slope of this large hill. And just as I finished taking in this scenery, my beloved Nerinne stirred. Silently, she looked at me and I looked at her. We smiled. Then, without her needing to say a single word, I knew that she was ok enough to finally let go of me. So she did. She let go and I did the same, bringing our hug to an end only for her to quickly grab one of my hands and take me atop the hill with her, her giggles, now light as a feather, being carried by the wind. What awaited us there were more flowers and an incredible view of both the valley and the sky, but also… blankets. Enough for us to rest on one and use the others to cover ourselves if we want to.
“Come, let’s lie down!” Said Nerinne cheerfully after extending one of said blankets over the hill’s grass, her spirits clearly lifted.
“Alright,” I answered, relieved to see her like that again. Then I lay down beside her, but not before grabbing the incredibly soft black and red blanket she handed off to me. Hers is white and pink if you’re curious. Finally, with both of us comfortably covered in blankets, we snuggled up to each other and just… watched at the starry sky of this realm of hers in silence. Just that. Nothing more. Nothing less. Just two lovers enjoying each other’s company and warmth.
“Auros.” She whispered impishly, as if we were in a library and she was breaking some rule by speaking, which I found adorable.
“What?” I whispered back, unable to hold back my smile. Not that I wanted to.
“Do you know that I love you lots and lots?”
“Yes, I believe you told me as much in the previous chapter, heh.” I said, trying to keep my heart from melting with some 4th wall breaking because holy shit… how can my goddess girlfriend be this cute?!
“Fufu~, well, I love you lots and lots.” So she whispers, injecting more sugar into my bloodstream when I’m clearly about to have an overdose already. Still…
“I love you just as much.”
“Lots and lots?” She asked in a whisper before playfully booping my nose, which I do in kind before answering.
“Lots and lots.”
Said answer made Nerinne squee with happiness as she somehow snuggled up with me even more and I just… melted, sharing in her happiness by chuckling, hugging her lots, and just having a big smile on my face. Moments pass like this, with us laughing, me tickling her, she tickles me, mundane but fun simple stuff like that. Stuff I never saw myself doing with anyone before I met her. Stuff I have come to realize that I love having in my life. I tried to thank Nerinne for it but she, having seen it coming, has devilishly sealed my lips with one of her fingers. Why? I do not know. She’s probably about to tell me though.
“Because I wanted to thank you, fufu.” She said, right on cue, heh. But…
“…for what?” I asked, my lips having been freed. “You’ve already thanked me enough.”
She shakes her head. “No, Auros. I will always be thankful to you for so many things, like your love, your trust, and in this case, for letting me soul bond with you even when there’s plenty of things you still wanted to talk and ask about. Things you have the right to know.”
Hearing that, I flicked her on the forehead lightly, bringing her back from the serious mood she was about fall into and making her go ‘wah?!’ before I said, “you lovable dummy. Your wellbeing comes first. Didn’t I say as much?”
“I know that, but I still wanted to say it…” She pouted, but that was short-lived as I started patting her head almost immediately, which pleased her to the point that she seemed like a cat. “Fufu~, it indeed does~. By the way, you can ask me about all the stuff you wanted to before~.”
“Heh, I’ll take you up on that then,” I said as I wondered what to ask first. As if, I already know what. “Darling.”
“Yes, dear?” She perked up, eager to hear my question.
“You see, when I entered your divine realm I wanted to find you right away since Isharnnat was still on my tail, but I couldn’t. That is until someone told me where you were.” Hearing that, Nerinne twitched. But of course, I wasn’t done. No. Instead, I immediately continued with something that not only made her twitch but even sweat nervously. “Someone who, surprisingly, looked a lot like Ere and was dressed like a maid. She even sounded like a peppier version of her. You wouldn’t know if she was her mom, right?”
To that she let out… a sigh of relief? Huh? Ok, now I’m confused. “Fufufu~, well, dear, it’s because I’m glad that she just gave you directions and didn’t fight you the very next instant.”
“Wait what?! Fight me?! Why?!” Seriously! I’m even more confused now!
“Let’s just say that while she may look and act like the protagonist of an otome game, my Saintess is kind of a… battle fanatic, teehee~.”
“Ah… I see… so she’s the prime example of a walking punch-saint isekai check… ahaha….”
“Oh my~, never mind about reacting to my dummy laugh, you’re completely befuddled! Was it really that shocking, dear?”
“Wah?! I-I mean, of course! How could it not be shocking?! Her daughter is a sweetheart!”
“Yet, despite sharing so much with her mother, she instead looks like an otome villainess~.”
“And that’s a gap of hers that I find incredibly lovable and hot, BUT THAT’S NOT THE POINT! You just called her mom your Saintess! The Saintess of Love! Yet she’s so much of a battle fanatic that you were relieved because she didn’t fight me right after meeting me! Even for an isekai check, how does that make sense?!” I said after having been pulled out from my befuddlement by Nerinne, who revenge-forehead-flicked me to do it and then teased me even more while I was trying to process everything...
“Fufufu~, that’s the point. It doesn’t~. That’s just how she is~.” So says my… darling while puffing up her chest with pride…?
“I-I see… I guess you’re right… isekai gotta isekai…”
“Besides, dear, Ere also has a battle fanatic streak to her. It’s just that hers is tamer~.”
“That… I cannot deny.” I conceded since, well, I’ve seen Ere spar with Gabrielle and Kris enough times to notice that it’s not just for training’s sake. Not that there’s something wrong with that.
“Exactly! And with that out of the way, let’s move on to the next question!” Said my darling trying to change the subject BUT NO! There’s still things I need to know! “Tsk…”
“Oi, don’t ‘tsk’ me! You know that I’d be curious as to why she’s here and why she’s wearing a maid dress!”
“I know. I just love seeing you get all worked up about these things, dear. Fufufu~.” This goddess!! I mean, said Nerinne smugly as she pinched one of my cheeks… grrr… “As for the reasons for her presence and the dress, they’re quite simple really. She’s wearing a maid dress because she wanted to match Ere after seeing her post-maidification pictures, which she loved by the way—”
“Hell yeah! Glad that she’s a mother-in law of culture!” Err… sorry for interrupting, please continue.
“Fufufu~, it’s fine, dear. Now, she’s here because, as my Saintess, I gave her the choice to either go into the cycle of reincarnation or remain here with me for a certain reason. But that’s as far as I can tell you. If you want to know more about her as a person and her reasons for being how she is, there’s someone much better suited for that than me.”
“You’re right, heh. I’ll be sure to ask Ere about her mom when we have the time.” I said, satisfied with the answers I got.
“Then, time for the next question, dear! Come on! Shoot!” Bubbled my darling, her eagerness reaching even greater heights now than in the beginning, and she was already quite eager then!
“Alright, alright,” I grinned before looking at the many stars dressing the sky and… hmmm… speaking of many stars. “Why were you as cautious about me meeting your siblings as you were about me meeting Isharnnat?”
“Because…” Nerinne looked away, not in shame nor in fear, but in the way she usually does when she has done something ‘bad’ and she’s trying to pretend she didn’t while avoiding eye contact.
“Nerine…” I squinted at her. “What did you do?”
“Mou… it’s nothing bad. It’s just that…”
“Thaat…?” I repeated while gesturing at her to go on.
“Thaaat… I spoiled them a lot by being too loving with them… but how could I not? They’re all my lovely baby siblings! I couldn’t help but love them to bits! Because of that, well…” She shrugs guiltily… “They became a bit too attached to me, so there was a chance they’d do something outrageous the moment they became aware of you. Maybe even…”
“…Isharnnat level of outrageous?” I asked while raising an eyebrow. She nodded. I sighed. I sighed so hard…
“That’s why I planned to introduce my family to you and the girls very slowly. That way I could at least control the flow of things and ensure nothing bad happened out of nowhere… but it did, thanks to a certain someone, a very, VERY, dummy someone.”
“Yeah… just her… hahaha…” Crapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrap…
“Dear, why are you freaking out? Don’t tell me…” She said, falling silent as she answered her own question by figuring out the answer in her head, probably.
Still, I must confess that—“I may have done something that would totally accelerate that family meeting even more…”
“What did you do, dear…?”
“I may have given your mom pictures of our daughters, and she was VERY surprised…”
“What?” Shocked Nerinne is shocked… I mean…
“Yeah… but not just that…” I said, now being my turn to try and avoid eye contact and her to squint at me but… err… she was too shocked for that… instead she was making a face that screamed ‘there’s more?!’ and yeah… there’s more… since, well… “I also gave your mom videos of them…”
“Oh no…” Nerinne went pale. No, not just that. She lost all rendering, all shading, she was just a sketch of Nerinne right now. Gotta love the commitment to the bit with her godly powers but still… is it really that bad?! “You don’t understand, dear… My parents’ love is so strong, so beyond any comprehensible level that I was born from the sheer magnitude of it…”
“O-ok…?” I barely—and awkwardly—replied to what sketch ghost Nerinne just said with a strange intensity after she suddenly grabbed me by the shoulders.
“Not ok, dear… Not ok… Now that they know of their grandkids’ existence they will stop at nothing to…”
“To…?” Come on! Don’t leave me hanging like that, darling! It’s making this scarier than it should be!
“They will stop at nothing to take them!”
“God slaying time it is.” I declared immediately with a much lower voice after using my weird, not so new, and still-not-very-understood power to instantly change into a more appropriate attire.
“Waitwaitwait, I was kidding, dear! Put down the flaming blades and the bald god-slayer cosplay.”
“Fine…” I said listlessly as both the blades and the cosplay vanished in a poof…
“Hey, don’t look so disappointed.” She squinted at me as her color returned and I mischievously giggled. “Anyways, now that they know, they’ll stop at nothing to see their grandkids. But that would be a problem since we’ll be plenty busy with the dungeon expedition, your country building, the relocation of the sealing chamber of the emissary, and whatever else pops up in between.”
“Darling, that’s a flag…” I remarked because now something else is bound to happen…
“Dear, I don’t need to be a goddess to know you’re going to get involved in more isekai shenanigans one way or another~. You’ll even dive right into them if given the chance~.”
“Touché.” What else can I say? My darling knows me too well.
“Fufufu~, that I do. And that’s why we can’t just have them barge into the castle when we’re not there. It’d cause trouble for any of our dear maid knights who stay behind. Especially if they misunderstand and think the castle was just invaded, which would lead to even more trouble. And even if we were to warn them, they’d still be dealing with a couple of very excited primordial gods and that would be a bit too much for them to handle out of nowhere.”
“Yeah… I can see that…” I said, imagining a poor, teary Sophie trembling and walking on eggshells as she tries dealing with them. Thoughts and prayers for you, imaginary Sophie. Thoughts and prayers. Nevertheless—"can your parents really do that? Wasn’t invading another god’s world not cool under the Divine Law?”
“It is. But, for one, since our home is in your personal space, the same loophole that lets me be there also applies to them, and, for two, they are my parents. I love them just as much as they love me, so they have my permission to drop by. As long as they don’t overstep my boundaries, of course.” She said as she sat up and side-eyed at… the starry sky? Huh? Wait…
“Did… did two of the biggest stars in the sky just disappear?!” I said as I too sat up. Though, it was out of surprise in my case. Because seriously, what was that?!
“Same goes for my siblings.”
“Eh?! Even more disappeared?!” What the hell?! There’s still enough stars for the sky to qualify as ‘starry’, but that was a whole frigging lot of stars just going poof!!
“Sorry, dear. I was hoping that they wouldn’t, but I had a feeling that they’d be watching us, and I was right. Ha…” She sighed before shaking her head and looking at the sky with a familiar smile. “Still, I suppose I can’t blame them for being curious now that they know everything. And it’s so like them to help my siblings hide from my eyes just so they can join in their peeping. They used to do that a lot with my siblings when they were little, and I was in school, fufu~.”
Man… that endearing smile while talking about her family, and that chuckling just mere moments after being annoyed by family shenanigans because, in the end, you know it was done out of genuine love. It all reminds me of home. It warms my heart that Nerinne has that too with her parents and siblings. So much so that I cannot help but smile.
“Family is family, dear.” She said, smiling back at me. “Be it gods or mortals, we love our families and would do anything for them. No matter how annoying they can be, fufufu~.”
“Hehe, indeed.”
“And hey, in a way, my family doing this solved our little problem of them visiting while we’re out. Now they know that we’ll be busy, so they will hopefully hold off from making any surprise appearances until we’re free. Or… I will be mad.” She said just as sharply as she turned her gaze at the sky once again. And would you look at that, one of the large stars that were supposed to have vanished was actually hiding behind some clouds. Not anymore though, because it just went poof. Again. “Dummy dad!”
“Hm?” I swear I just heard a ‘GAH!’ coming from somewhere despite him being gone, but I might just be hearing things….
A-Anyways, I’m relieved that the whole ‘me revealing the existence of our kids to my in-laws’ wasn’t a horrible mistake. Can you imagine if me having children with Nerinne was taboo and I just exposed that? Or that Nerinne’s relationship with her parents was godly levels of bad? I’m so, so relieved that none of that was the case. Then again, that first example doesn’t make any sense since neither Yawue nor Nerinne ever said something like that now that I think about it. Heck, not even Isharnnat did. Hmm, I guess I let tropes color my reality a bit. Good thing that it’s not something that happens regularly. Not at all.
“Right, dear. Whatever you say, fufu~.” Said my darling not believing what I know to be true… I’m hurt… Heh. “Having said that, you’d be surprised to know that there was a time when having kids with a mortal was taboo. There was even a law and all.”
“Seriously?” I let out in disbelief.
“Mhm~. But many Gods ignored that law on the daily. And then it was discovered that the very same God who wrote it had quite the big family with a mortal. His children were enough to fill not one, not two, but three pantheons.”
“Wha… that sounds like a certain someone from my world’s myths or an MC with a very serious Harem Rank EX disease…” Seriously… what’s up with god papas having so many kids?! Then again, Nerinne also wanted something along those lines…
“T-That’s n-not the subject at hand right now, Auros. D-don’t get sidetracked… ahem! As I was saying, it was quite the scandal in the Urbs Deorum. Of course, after such a discovery, the law was erased from the Divine Law in record time.”
“Why do I have the feeling that Yawue based a certain side of the Greek Pantheon on that whole debacle…?” I wondered, suspicious of a certain someone who abandoned me when Nerinne was going dark.
“Now, now. Yawue was just being polite. And yes, he probably did~. Yawue loves to use his surroundings as inspiration for his many masks.” Said Nerinne, covering for her friend, grrrr… Next you’re gonna tell me that you cannot say anything about his dark, possibly chuuni past that Isharnnat mentioned… “That’s… haa… that idiot…”
Ok, that sigh was a heavy one… could it be that it has nothing to do embarrassing chuuni stuff but stuff that she really shouldn’t have mentioned? My darling nods. “Yes… exactly that, dear. Yawue… he… they… have gone through their fair share of problems. It has to do with the reason behind his appearance, his... masks. I cannot tell you more than that, dear. Please understand, it is a bit sensitive for him.”
“No, no. It’s alright,” I shook my head. “For what it’s worth, Isharnnat didn’t say anything else beyond that mention of it being a dark past. We instead talked about weirdness and other stuff.”
“Good,” she said, relieved. “Anyhow, getting back on the subject of us having kids, you can be sure that I would’ve told you immediately if it was taboo, dear.”
“Yeah, I know.” I nodded, my relaxed smile soon disappearing as the subject reminded me of a certain thing. “Speaking of kids… there’s something that’s been on my mind since Isharnnat put it there, something more serious. I didn’t bring it up before because—”
“Shhh, there’s no need to explain yourself, dear. Not to me.” Said Nerinne, not even letting me finish my sentence to reassure me and blow away any guilt I was feeling. I… thank you, darling. “It is nothing, Auros. Tell me. What is it?”
“You see, when Isharnnat was teaching me about demigods, how they can be both a source of joy and… a source of grief, she… put Ilya in the place of the demigod, as if she was hinting at something. Nerinne… is our girl a demigoddess?” I ask not because it’d be bad if she were one or anything like that. Not at all. She’s our little girl. And nothing will change that. “It’s just that… such an image combined with everything else she did and didn’t say about tragedy… her tragedy… stuck with me…”
“I see…” Said Nerinne, understanding what I meant without me needing to say it as the images of it were still crystal clear in my mind. “Sometimes, when gods and mortals have a child, the child’s body is unable to bear their lineage and they… fall sick. Sometimes they prevail over it, becoming stronger, but other times they… do not… cannot…”
There it is again. The knot in my throat. The trembling lips. The pang in my heart. That fear. That sorrow. No… now it’s not just me. It’s also you, my love… “I’m sorry for making you see such images… for making you tell me that…”
“No, Auros… It’s fine… It’s something that I was always planning to tell you…” She said, as she reached out and held my hands… both for me and for her. “And to answer your question, I… don’t know. The circumstances that brought Ilya into our lives are… unique to say the least, which makes it difficult to know. At least right now. Maybe she is but that side of her is yet to awaken. Maybe she just needs a little push. But maybe she isn’t one at all. What we can be certain of is that she is undoubtedly of us. That I have known since I first saw her in that ring of ashes and embers inside the castle.
“She has your eyes, my glimmering hair, and beyond that, she is very loving, caring, thoughtful, and is just as obsessed about smithing as you are about anything isekai and your figure making. As you said, she is our little Ilya. And whatever happens in the future, we’ll face it together. Isn’t that right, Auros?”
She smiles. Confident that she knows the answer to that needless question. And she’s right. Because—“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
There was no doubt, no hesitation in my words, just absolute certainty. Yet, the fear… the worry still lingers. Then again, what parent wouldn’t worry about their kids’ safety? But I… we won’t let those worries get in the way of us making our daughters grow up as happy as possible.
“Fufu~, yes. We’ll make them grow happy, dear. I just know it.” Said Nerinne as she leaned on my shoulder and I put my arm over her, all as we looked at the in-law free sky above and the glowing valley below us.
“I am still taking my collection back with me though.”
“Fuh!”
“Divine Bonds Tested in Gold and Fire” Arc End. New Arc begins… next chapter!! (Cue Nerinne's Papa reeling from being called dummy by his little princess) (Cue Sophie getting chills while asleep for some reason… only to be hugged by a sleeping, fluffy Lyra who snuck inside her room earlier in the night)