Chapter 372 Don’t Shoot The Messenger
No sooner had the group of four felt that strange and malevolent prescence did they decide to act.
Disappearing from their place above the river, they arrived above the long and dark trenches that made up the entrance to the underworld.
There, they saw the silhouette of a large winged creature flying low over the dark trenches like it was trying to be inconspicuous about it's infiltration.
"Girls."
""We've got it.""
As soon as Valerie and Eris' eyes landed on their target, they immediately started to put their new powers to use.
Eris parted her perfect lips and a beautiful melody escaped her throat.
As a goddess of song, any melody that she sang could be manipulated for a huge number of desired effects from empowerment of others to destruction.
But to her family, it just sounded like a normal song of incredible beauty.
This time, Eris had chosen one of Abaddon and Valerie's favorite songs from earth.
Were things less serious at the moment, they would have definitely asked her to continue to serenade them.
But for now, they had more important matters to handle.
Though Eris' song was beautiful to her family, to the intruder it was anything but.
It's flight was immediately disrupted, and the flying creature let out a horrible screech before it went crashing down into one of the trenches below it.
Once it was down, Valerie snapped her fingers and the black soil underneath it started to shift before it swallowed up the creature until only it's head and wings were sticking out.
"Mothers are very competent with their powers. I am very proud." Gabbrielle said in her usual business-like manner.
"Nope!"
"Compliment us like we told you~!"
"....Mommies are the bestest in all of the wide worlds."
""AWWW!!!""
After the youngest child was assailed with kisses, the four of them floated down into the dark trench where their guest was wailing fiercely in the ground.
Despite the darkness, everyone here could see just fine, and had no problem gazing upon their uninvited guest.
For starters... he wasn't a ghost.
Or an undead of any kind as far as they could tell.
Instead it was a large bat the size of a polar bear, with a ceremonial bone necklace wrapped around it's neck.
It was a rather ugly thing, with large bulbous red eyes and a mouth that was absolutely filled with serrated teeth.
Blood was flowing from it's ears and nose terribly; no doubt the result of Eris' sonic attack that must have been even more effective on a creature with sensitive hearing.
"Don't like..! Camazotz doesn't like..!" It gurgled.
Once Eris saw that it was an animal, she squirmed a bit as if she was starting to feel guilty.
Abaddon took her hand gently and tried his best to calm her.
'Remember love, this is an uninvited guest who could prove a danger to us. I know that you love animals but try to remember that our safety has to come first.'
'You're right... I'm sorry for my weakness.'
'Don't say that, love. Your endless compassion is one of the things I love most about you.'
'...What are the rest?'
'I will tell you all of them later.' He promised.
"I-It's you..! Camazotz has been sent to find you..!"
Abaddon's gold eyes stared down at the large bat creature who seemed to be trying to talk to him.
"Sent to find me? By who? How did you get into this place?!"
"E-Ears... ears hurt...!"
Abaddon wanted answers to his questions more than anything, but this creature called Camazotz seemed to be hurting too much to be coherent.
Without being asked, Eris sang another, much more relaxing song that seemed to be solely focused on providing relief.
Camazotz stopped thrashing about as wildly as before, and even seemed to have been given some sort of mild sleeping agent to really mellow him out.
"Ah... gratitude."
Since his prisoner was no longer in pain, Abaddon asked his questions once again.
"Who sent you to find me, and how did you break in to my world without my permission?"
Now that the creature was no longer delirious, it shrank back a bit underneath the monstrous gaze of Abaddon.
Really... it was starting to regret even accepting this job in the first place.
"C-Camazotz is sometimes used as messenger to the death gods and travels to all of the underworlds without restriction.
Though you have moved the underworld's location and closed it off to the living, Camazotz could still find it and slip in due to the dead inside."
"What do the undead have to do with this?" Valerie asked.
"The dead attract the dead. Just as mortal souls can still drift in here to find rest, Camazotz is death god who can-"
Faster than what Camazotz could see, a large spear with a blood red tip was pointed right between it's eyes.
"Did you say... that you are a god?" Abaddon asked dangerously.
"A-Ah, C-Camazotz is a minor god who is of no threat to you! Promise! Promise!"
"Tell me why that information does not move me in the slightest...?"
Camazotz' fur became dense with it's own sweat as he realized that he had yet to save his skin.
He had to voice the reason for his unannounced visit.
"C-Camazotz only comes to deliver a message a-and requests to be spared!"
"A message?"
The bat god flexed a visible part of one of it's wings, and a hand written note appeared floating in between them.
Abaddon retracted his spear and took the note without the slightest hesitation.
He read over it carefully, and then let out a scoff as if he'd seen something funny.
In short, the letter contained a request for a meeting with promises of submission and the exchange of information.
Clearly, this person was trying to hang on to her own life by making assurances that they had information that he would definitely want to hear.
Though he wanted it and valued preparation, Abaddon did not trust any god for any reason, and this one would not be the deciding factor to change something like that.
Least of all someone who was so obviously shady and was determined to meet in person.
If Abaddon accepted this bargain, he was supposed to inform Camazotz to deliver a message and then temporarily open the gates to the underworld to allow the living inside so that a meeting could take place.
The only problem was, this could have easily led to some sort of ambush or trap that was fated to end poorly.
"This is pretty handwriting..." Valerie said as she red the note over her husband's shoulder.
"Indeed... I suppose that can only mean one thing."
In a remarkable display of sisterhood; Eris and Valerie were able to come to the same conclusion within a second.
""It's a bitch.""
Valerie: "And she will only talk if he meets her in person? She's trying to fuck him."
Eris: "Since she doesn't put us in her eyes, I wager that we should pluck them out to teach her the error of her ways. Agreed?"
"Agreed."
"Eep!" Camazotz shrank back within it's confines as Valerie and Eris suddenly loomed over the bat god menacingly.
"Hey, bat boy. Which of those golden whores is trying to gain a chance to seduce our husband?" Valerie questioned.
"And don't lie to us, we won't like it." Eris added.
"C-Camazotz is not allowed to say! It has been requested in the contract, so I am unable to- AIIEE!!"
Because the girls didn't like what they were hearing, they each grabbed onto one of the bat god's ears and started to pull as hard as they could, earning a scream of pain from the unfortunate creature.
"You must not think very much of us to conceal things in our own domain." (Eris no longer cared that Camazotz was an animal and had no problem hurting him.)
"What do you mean you can't tell us after we asked you nicely? Do you want to die, you ugly bastard?" (Valerie never cared in the first place.)
"I-Ill squeal, I'll squeal!"
""Who is it?!!"
"O-Only she has the position to make Camazotz carry out an order of this magnitude, and I-"
""JUST TELL US WHO IT IS!!!"
"P-Persephone! The Greek goddess of harvest and fertility, wife to Hades!"
As soon as Eris and Valerie heard that name, they turned around to stare at their husband in horror.
This was only because Abaddon had told them a long time ago that the one woman he'd had a crush on when he was human was an actress who played Persephone in a movie adaptation of some books that he used to read.
Though the two women were not even remotely the same, the girls thought that seeing the goddess might have brought up some less than desirable reactions out of their husband.
As a result, they ended up gripping Camazotz' ears even harder and shaking them furiously.
Valerie: "You tell that bitch if she comes down hear we're going to break her fucking neck and hang her head up on our mantle!"
Eris: "Hold on, we're gonna right you our own letter so you can take it back to that whore! And I promise it's going to look better than her chicken scratch!"
"Damn right!"
Abaddon and Gabbrielle watched Valerie and Eris write their own strongly worded letter.
The entire time, Camazotz remained with his head lowered as a sign of submission while his large ears literally pulsed with pain.
"Father... what exactly do you do to my mothers at night to make them act like this?"
"... I give them so much love that they can hardly think." He said drunkenly.
Truth be told, Abaddon didn't remember his childhood crush so he didn't exactly know why the girls were acting like this.
But when they were this possessive, they were so alluring to him that he could not have cared less if he tried.
He just wanted this scene to go on forever.
When the girls finished writing their letter, they stuffed it into the mouth of Camazotz before they freed him from his restraints and hurled him into the sky.
"Get out of here and make sure you take that note to that whore!"
"I-If Camazotz does this successfully, may he be spared?"
""We'll think about it!!""
"Y-Yes..!"
Camazotz flew away as fast as he possibly could before he disappeared into the darkness and left Abaddon's domain of death.
As soon as he was out of eyesight, Valerie and Eris glued their bodies to Abaddon while looking at him with big pitiful eyes.
"H-Hey... I'm the only fertility goddess you'll ever need, right..?"
"Y-You wouldn't happen to have any old feelings for that bitch, would you...?"
Again, Abaddon had absolutely no idea what either of his wives were talking about, but the sight of them like this was yet another painful reminder of the fact that he couldn't have sex for six more days.
"You girls are silly... all of you should know by now that you are all that I could ever need." n.)0vElb1n
The girls melted at his words and practically fought for the right to kiss him first, leading to a rather intense couple of moments where the trio were sharing their lips between each other.
By this point, Gabbrielle certainly knew how to take a hint, and she excused herself from their loving moment and flew around the underworld to go sightseeing.
As she did so, her mind remained focused on the visit they had just been paid by Camazotz, or more specifically the woman who had sent him.
Goddesses are rarely known to give up when they want something, least of all when they are trying to save their own hides.
She was over 90% sure that they were going to be paid another visit by the goddess, and this time using much more desperate measures.
She would not learn just how right she was until the next day.