After the battle, I pointedly waited a few more hours, so I returned at just the same time as usual. There wasn’t any real reaction to my return, everyone was far too focused on the joy of having survived battle or they had already crashed and gone to sleep and thus unable to react either. Granted, they also hadn’t posted guards but after the fight, they might simply have been unable to. Without reserves, things could get quite hairy.

Something to discuss with them at a later time, for now, I just checked in on Luna, making sure that she was alright and her sleep wasn’t disturbed before I went to bed myself. Playing overwatch for their battle had been fairly exhausting in its own right, especially when combining it with the need to conceal myself from even Silva’s senses. I wasn’t sure if that had worked, she had given me a strange look when I checked on Luna, but she had yet to comment on my behaviour.

Moments after falling asleep, I found myself in a very different place, one I recognised. It was the endless grey expanse Lady Hecate used to communicate with me and the sudden, quite forceful, shift made my gut clench with anxiety. It wasn’t every day that a deity insisted on talking to you and somehow, I had a feeling it wasn’t to offer me kudos for my actions.

Nothing happened the moment I arrived, nor soon after. Instead, I was left there, unattended and uninformed of my circumstances, stewing in uncertainty. I had no idea why I was here, nor any information about what I was supposed to do, see or feel. Nothing but my own thoughts and considerations to go by and in this case, I decided to consider my recent actions once again.

For once, I decided to try looking at my actions and intentions from an outside perspective. What had I done recently and for what reasons? The big one, the obvious one, was that I had caused an attack on the place I was staying at.

The moment those words went through my mind, another conversation bubbled up from deep within my memories, a conversation with Adra about Guest rights and their importance. If you had eaten somebody’s food, if they had given you shelter under their roof, you did not harm them. On Mundus, that had been an almost culturally universal tradition, rooted deeply into the natives of the place, to the point that groups usually completely hostile to one another would ignore those grudges and get on with it. Or rather, they would ignore the presence of those they had a grudge with and stay peaceful.

If you broke the peace of the hearth, you could see yourself banished from all accommodations and while my intentions had been beneficial for the locals, wasn’t that what I had done here? Breaking the peace of their home, even if it was done in an effort to keep them from losing that home to the winter?

“I see you have realised the problem?” a hoarse voice asked from behind me, not the usually tritonal voice of Hecate but a different one, unknown to me. Turning around, I found myself confronted by a slightly unusual sight. It was an elderly woman, radiating age and gravitas, but the unusual part was that I recognised Her. She had the same face as Hecate’s aspect of the Crone, at least if that aspect wasn’t shaped into the image of the Grandmother. Normally, there’d be two more faces on Her, the aspect of the Mother and the aspect of the Maiden but both were missing.

“I believe so,” I nodded, not quite sure what to do. Depending on how deeply the idea of the Guest right was woven into the Astral River, or if it was carried by the deities I had experienced on Mundus, I could be in fairly deep trouble. it was difficult enough to interact with people thanks to me being, well, me, and all the problematic social traits that came with being me and Morgana’s Legacy but if another was added onto that, especially one that sounded fairly powerful? I might be back to the point where I couldn’t enter civilisation at all without serious aural concealment going on. Even now, I likely would have to start concealing myself around people sensitive to divine disapproval thanks to the divine Curse I was under and the Titanic Ambition Trait. Maybe even the Dragon-Touched one, I wasn’t sure how that would register. Likely similar to the Titanic one, dragons were generally not seen as allies of the divine unless they were subjugated.

“And what is to be done about it?” the voice asked and I had no idea how to answer. From a certain point of view, I had acted horribly. On the other hand, my intentions had been good and my plans were made in such a manner as to reduce suffering as much as possible.

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“I do not know,” I admitted, “It depends on who judges my actions and my intentions, especially whether the ultimate outcome can be determined. It is my belief that the community housing us would not have survived the winter. It is on that belief that I have acted and while there are different ways one could have used to achieve the result I hope to have achieved, those ways are closed to me, simply because I lack the ability to walk those paths,” I explained, almost certain that the figure before me already knew all that but needed me to state my thoughts, maybe only to myself.

“Judgement can be a difficult thing,” another voice, this one just as familiarly unfamiliar as the first, interceded and when I looked into the direction the voice was coming from, I could see the face of Hecate’s Mother aspect there, looking at me with a mixture of compassion and pride. “Your intentions were honourable and sometimes, the ends justify the means. But was this one of those cases?”

“Especially given that there were other options for her. She could have taken over the community, even with her social troubles. She could have planned to hang around, to help them cultivate fields and easily bring them through the winter while making sure that they were safe and sound. But she chose a different path, one that minimised the time she’d have to invest,” the Crone’s voice judged, making me wince just a little.

“But why would she? They are not her responsibility, they are not her people. Not even her race, at this point. And yet, she decided to help them, only the means she chose were a little… problematic?” a third voice, this one almost an expected one, piped up as the Maiden gave her own opinion, though, from the way her voice rose at the end, she wasn’t quite sure what to think about this situation. Granted, neither was I, but I wasn’t about to question the deity in her three aspects standing around me.

“Maybe a small act of penance would be appropriate,” a fourth, and at least to me completely unexpected, voice called out, making me turn yet again as it had come from behind me. Now, I was right in the middle of four figures and from the sensation I got, all four were some sort of divine figures or aspects. The fourth one, the unknown one, was most similar to the Aspect of the Mother, only very voluptuous, giving the impression of fertility, home but also a burning passion to defend that home.

“It would be appropriate. She is only spared the status of a homewrecker by your grace, so if you want her to perform some task, I don’t think she would reject your suggestion,” the Crone suggested, sounding almost amused by it all. I wasn’t sure I liked the idea but I had a feeling I had little choice here.

“It’s not some huge task anyway and knowing You, you’d have given her daughter a similar task anyway. So why not combine the two, have her serve a penance while helping her daughter before they can carry on with their journey?” the fourth figure who I still didn’t know the name of suggested and somehow, I had the feeling that it wasn’t really a suggestion. I would do whatever she told me, or else, and I had no desire to find out what ‘or else’ meant in this context.

“And what is that task you have in mind?” I asked, bending to the knowledge that these figures around me were beyond me. And, maybe, accepting that my actions, while well-intentioned, hadn’t been the best for the people involved. Maybe I should have tried finding another way, or even just shown them that such a way existed. Or, alternatively, I might have been better of to let them choose their own path, without forcing my conclusions on them, humans were nothing if not inventive under pressure.

“Your daughter will be tasked with setting up a shrine to us, a library just as she did in the Tree’s burrow,” now, all three aspects of Hecate spoke in one voice, the strange tritonal quality coming from all three aspects at the same time.

“And you will help her, while also helping my clerics set up a shrine to me,” the fourth figure added and now, I knew who she was. Hestia, Goddess of the Hearthfire and a few more things, most likely the one overseeing guest rights. Also, the patron of the clerics in the small community I had been visiting.

There was nothing I could do but nod and accept the task assigned to me. Well, there were, but the things I might be able to do would come at a high price. Luckily, there were worse things to do than help my daughter.