Chapter 413: The Story IV
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They had also answered much more than the words themselves. Couple without saying couple. Bond without naming bond.
Sekhmet heard it clearly enough the first time, and under ordinary circumstances he would have left it there. But ordinary circumstances had died somewhere behind him with the old myths, the blood-god accusation, and the offer of service. Before he could turn away fully, Bat Bat leaned forward with the dangerous bright look of someone who had just smelled gossip strong enough to overpower basic survival instinct.
"Wait," she said. "No. That was not a proper answer."
Sofia’s expression dulled by half a degree. "It was sufficient."
Bat Bat pointed between them. "It was vague. Vague things are suspicious. Suspicious things become interesting. Interesting things become my business."
"They do not," Natasha said.
"They absolutely do."
Sekhmet said nothing.
That was a mistake enough.
Bat Bat took his silence as permission from fate itself.
She stepped closer to the two women, narrowed her eyes theatrically, and tilted her head first toward Sofia, then toward Natasha, then back again as if studying livestock for breeding quality.
"You two are obviously more than friends."
Sofia’s patience frayed visibly.
Natasha remained calmer, but even she looked as though she had begun regretting every decision that had led to this exact bat-shaped interrogation.
Bat Bat pressed forward anyway.
"You fight together. Speak together. Lie together. Stand too close. Answer too carefully. That is not ordinary friendship." She lifted one finger and added with the solemnity of a scholar delivering a final theorem, "Also, both of you became strange at the exact same moment. That is always telling."
Sofia folded her arms. "You are unbearable."
Bat Bat looked delighted. "That means I am right."
Sekhmet finally spoke, not because he cared personally, but because the fastest way through something annoying was often straight through it.
"Explain properly."
Both women looked at him.
That cut through Bat Bat’s circling better than anything else could have.
The silence that followed was shorter than before, but not lighter. Natasha glanced toward Sofia once. Sofia exhaled through her nose and answered first, because apparently pride preferred direct discomfort over slow humiliation.
"We have been together for a long time," she said.
Bat Bat’s eyes widened immediately.
Sofia’s expression tightened further, but she kept going.
"We have relied on one another for thousands of years. We fought together. We hid together. We traveled together. Endured together." Her gaze sharpened. "And when we needed comfort, physical satisfaction, or relief from the uglier parts of survival, we helped one another."
Natasha added, quieter but cleaner, "There was no point pretending otherwise."
Bat Bat stared.
Then, with the unstoppable honesty of a creature no god had properly punished early enough, she asked, "Are you both gay?"
Natasha blinked once.
Sofia looked genuinely offended.
"We are not gay," Sofia snapped.
Bat Bat recoiled half a step, scandalized. "Then why did you just describe—"
"We are lesbian," Sofia said sharply, as if correcting a profound insult to taxonomy itself.
Bat Bat looked at Natasha. "Is that not basically—"
Natasha cut in with far more patience than the moment deserved. "It is a matter of wording."
Bat Bat considered that for one breath and then nodded as though updating a private academic record. "All right. Very well. Continue."
Sofia rubbed once at her brow as if all upper-domain wars had been easier than this conversation.
Sekhmet watched in silence. Not because the details amused him. Because details like this mattered. Attachments mattered. Physical loyalties mattered. Anyone could swear loyalty with a kneeling mouth. Bonds shown in shared survival and repeated choice were heavier.
Natasha seemed to realize he was not going to interrupt, and so she carried the point more carefully than Sofia had.
"We stayed together because it was easier to survive that way," she said. "Then it became more than ease. Then it became a habit. Then trust. Then need." Her dark eyes remained on Sekhmet. "It did not weaken us."
Bat Bat muttered, "No, apparently it made you coordinated and dramatic."
Neither woman acknowledged her.
Sofia straightened again. Some of the anger had passed now that the thing had been spoken openly.
"If we join someone," she said, "we do not do it halfway."
That line changed the air again.
Sekhmet’s attention sharpened.
Sofia kept going.
"If serving you means joining your bed, then we will do that too."
Bat Bat made a choking sound.
Natasha did not flinch. Sofia did not look away.
"We will join your harem if that is what proves our willingness," Sofia said. "Our bodies, our minds, our power. All of it."
Natasha finished it more quietly, and that somehow made it land harder.
"We are not offering convenience," she said. "We are offering submission."
Bat Bat’s face had gone absolutely radiant with secondhand scandal. She pressed both hands over her mouth, failed to contain herself, lowered them again, then whispered with painful sincerity, "This is the wildest prison recruitment effort I have ever seen."
Sekhmet did not answer the offer.
Not because he had not heard it.
Because answering it now would grant it weight before he had chosen its use.
And he had not. Not yet...
He looked at both women in complete silence until the heat of their own words had nowhere else to go except back into them. Good. Let them feel what they had actually said.
Then he gave the only answer that mattered for now.
"I need to go."
That landed more cleanly than any moral speech or crude refusal would have.
Sofia’s jaw tightened by half a degree. Natasha’s expression remained steadier, but not unchanged. Neither woman looked ashamed. Good. Shame on people like them was usually useless. Better to have clarity.
Sekhmet continued.
"When the time comes, I will seek you."
That was enough. It was not an agreement. It was not a promise. It was not a dismissal either. It was a line left deliberately unfinished.
Sofia nodded once, slow and controlled. Natasha lowered her head the slightest amount, accepting the answer for what it was instead of demanding more from it.
Bat Bat, however, was nowhere near done emotionally.
She looked from Sekhmet to the two women and back again with the face of someone who wanted to explode into twelve more questions at once.
"You are just leaving after that."
"Yes," Sekhmet said.
"That feels irresponsible."
"It is efficient."
Bat Bat opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, then chose survival over curiosity for once in her life.
"Fine," she muttered. "But I want it known that I could have continued this conversation brilliantly."
No one believed that.
Sekhmet turned first.
That ended the audience.
Behind him, the bats on the rock ledges relaxed all at once, tiny bodies loosening as though they had feared one more sentence might turn the prison side of the Void Land into some catastrophic mixture of prophecy, seduction, and administrative complication.
He walked out alone.
Bat Bat remained where she was for two extra breaths, still staring at Sofia and Natasha with naked fascination, then finally shook herself and changed direction.
"Apparently," she said to no one and everyone, "I am returning to the forest monarchy with a deeply damaged sense of normal."
Then she left too.
The darker prison ground gave way again to the wrong quiet of the wider Void Land. Farther back, beyond the prison zone, life had already begun pressing into the emptiness. Grass. Red flowers. Little trees. Flesh Fairies. Dryads. The giant Treant. The first nest.
Bat Bat moved toward it quickly, she chose her smaller bat form for speed before returning to human shape near the Bloodlands patch. By the time she reached Auri’s little house, the place looked different enough that she stopped walking entirely.
Reddish moss had begun spreading over the outer walls.
It was not a few harmless patches. It was not simple damp growth.
The house was being covered.
The moss clung to the roof edges, thickened along the old wall lines, and crawled in soft red-green mats over the darker surfaces until the whole little home looked older than it had any right to look. Not ruined. Not yet. But touched by age in some unnatural way, as if the Bloodlands had reached out and dressed it in the memory of a thousand years.
Bat Bat stared at it.
"Oh."
That was all she said at first. Because the little house did not look dead. It looked changed.
Auri stood near the doorway when Bat Bat finally noticed her, dark wing half-folded, expression unreadable as ever.
Bat Bat pointed at the house. "It has become ancient."
Auri looked at the reddish moss, then at Bat Bat. "It has become overgrown."
"No," Bat Bat said with complete seriousness. "This is a haunted-aunt aesthetic. It is different."
Auri chose not to answer that.
Bat Bat came closer anyway, still staring at the moss-covered walls and roof lines with total fascination. Under the black sky of the Void Land and beside the growing Bloodlands nest, even the little house had begun to look like it belonged to something older, stranger, and more rooted than before.
It was interesting. And yet troublesome. Also beautiful in a way that would probably become dangerous in future.