Is It Wrong To Crave Love (In A Dungeon?) Chapter 23 - Fear

I was not afraid of water.

That I had once been stranded adrift and died by drowning did not mean I was scared of water. That I had awoken in this world in a pool of water did not mean I was afraid of water. Rather, the fact that I frantically, madly tried to grab anything, anything I could, had been the only reason I survived my initial awakening. I’d grabbed, fortunately, onto a monster that had come to that watering hole for a drink, and simply refused to let go of it. Eventually, when I regained consciousness, I found that it lost all blood flow to its head. I quickly clambered out shortly after.

I was not afraid of water.

Admittedly, I had a mild aversion to being alone in water ever since I had been rescued. Admittedly, I needed something to hold when in water. If I had something, I was fine. If I did not— 

I would black out.

My adoptive mother had been aware of this and tried, in the days before she gave up on me as a lost cause, to attempt to rid me of what she called a ‘trauma response.’ The reason she cared was because of the stir I had caused at her church when she had gone through the whole process of having me baptized for a second time. I blacked out the moment my head went underwater. Afterwards, I was told I’d latched on to the priest’s throat and refused to let go.

She’d gone on a full three-hour rant about how it was the most embarrassing moment of her life, of how people had gathered trying to stop me from suffocating the man, how others began to chant and pray and scream and speak in tongues and recite Latin, for they believed I’d been possessed by a demon with a vendetta against Father John.

I’d argued back, telling her that it was her fault, because I’d already been baptized. The Matron made sure all of us were baptized as children. However, the records were lost as both my orphanage and the church were destroyed during the hurricane, thus my adoptive mother had no proof other than my word.

My word was never good enough.

Regardless, I was not afraid of water.

Drowning had been unpleasant, but that wasn’t enough reason to be terrified of water. Though I could remember every second of that sordid experience, it was because the agony of my bones crunching against the water’s surface prevented me from blacking out. The burning in my lungs had ached worse than any physical pain I had ever felt, but it was not something I thought about often.

Truly, I was not afraid of water.

I took showers without issue. I could drink water without issue. I never took long baths, however, because the Church where my goddess and I resided did not have a tub that could be used. If there were a tub large enough, I’d do so. I would just need something to hold on to, but if I had that, then I would be fine.

No, really, I was not afraid of water.

Fear would mean I tried to avoid situations where I was in water, but I did not do such a thing. I had never done a thing. Water could be splashed on me, and I wouldn’t flinch, recoil, or find myself in a mode where my body had to choose between fight-or-flight-or-freeze. Water was necessary for life, and it wasn’t as if I had rabies, which would make me violently heave it up or flee from it as a vampire fled from dawn.

I just really, really did not want to be in water without holding on to something. I could not be in water without holding something. I would really, really prefer if I had something to hold on to in any body of water. It would be very nice if I had something to hold on to while in water.

Yet there was a problem, a problem in the nature of what I had unwittingly chosen to hold on to.

A Goddess.

…Is this perhaps how I perish?

A bathing Goddess.

I’d almost wished to laugh, but even then, the situation was so dire I dared not provide even the tiniest inkling of merriment. It was a thing I had read, and seen, and a thing I had always recalled, how intent did not matter to the hapless fools who would gaze upon the naked form of a divine without permission, how reason did not make a difference, how mere sight in of itself was an infraction against the divine.

Wretchedly did Actaeon plead with Artemis, when he committed his transgression of seeing her bathing, only to be transformed into a stag and torn asunder by the very hounds he raised and fed and petted and loved.

Miserably did Siproites implore, when he committed the same transgression, viewing Artemis’ naked body, only to be turned then by the goddess into the fairer sex, making it so once again, any man who made that foul error, even in mistake, would not leave unscathed.

Dismally did Tiresias cry, when he went to sate his thirst at a spring and made the folly of gazing upon Athena’s unclad body, only for the Goddess of Wisdom to quench his eyes in darkness. Depriving him of sight, she claimed it was law that the penalty of blindness was to be inflicted upon any who beheld a Deity without their permission.

She was kind enough to bestow him the power of prophecy as recompense, but that was only because it was Athena.

Time and time again, as writ and narrated by Euripides, Callimachus, and Ovid, I’d come to the overwhelming consensus that gazing on the naked form of a deity accidentally was tantamount to seeking to engage in a Kafkaesque Metamorphoses. It was no different from rolling dice to decide in which way one wanted to suffer; no different from playing a gacha game where what one would pull would be their one-time, irreversible Magical Girl transformation into corpse, beast, cripple, or woman.

But this is not the world I came from, I tried to remind myself. I sought to convince myself. The gods are different here. Different. Different. Remember? And there is also the fact that…

Their Arcanum, the means by which they could mold mortal flesh like silly putty and transmute bone into pizza dough, was deprived from them. I tried to convince myself that few goddesses would, for a transgression of this level, unleash their Arcanum and thus forever return to the Heavens Above.

More so, this was Freya. I did not, to my dismay, know any more about Norse Mythology than the average man who learnt of Thor and Odin and Tyr, butchering their way through them as a bald dual-blade-wielding slayer of gods with a penchant for screaming "BOY!"

Even so, that information, what little of it I had, would hold no water here, because, time and again, I’d been reminded that Orario’s theological and mythological frameworks were entirely different from anything I thought I believed to be true.

In that regard, I could not say if the Norse Gods were more forgiving than the Greek Gods in regards to gazing upon their naked flesh, or if they were worse. Try as I might, I could not recall a single mythos of any entity being smote by a goddess in Norse Mythology for such an offense. 

Alas, that I was ignorant of their existence was not proof of their nonexistence, for the absence of evidence was seldom the evidence of absence.

“You are holding me a little bit… tighter.”

“I apologize, Lady Freya,” I said. “I’m somewhat… tense.”

I could feel every bit of her naked flesh press against me in a way that left nothing to the imagination. My hands clung below her waist, her bare, slender, naked waist, her skin softer in my hands than cotton-candy and memory-foam. Pressed against me as she did, I could feel every curve and every crevice, feel every nook and every cranny.  A sheet of A4 paper could have been put between us and asphyxiated, and superglue would have thought our pressed bodies a result of its influence. 

I forced my gaze to remain at the top of her head, to never stray below the top of her head, to never go even an inch below the top of her head, because to do so was to invite damnation. It would be to disobey the warning of the angels and turn back to see the destruction of Gomorrah and find myself converted into a pillar of salt. It would be to refuse that call to Nineveh like Jonah, and find myself engulfed in the belly of the beast for three days and three nights. 

It was ironic. Ironic. Moments prior, I’d thought nothing more of disobeying the Divine, of thinking of means and methods to which I could subvert Lady Hephaestus’ command, and now? Now, I dared not even disobey my own personal edict to avoid my gaze straying down to look upon the naked flesh of a goddess.

“Forgive me for asking, Lady Freya… but… if you could lead us to the edge of the bath…”

“There’s no hurry. Do you have somewhere you need to be?”

“A member of my Familia, Lilly, should be waiting for me—”

“I can have someone fetch her for you.”

“I would not wish to trouble you.”

“It is hardly a trouble at all.”

I could not understand what was happening. A part of me, a part of me whispered with a voice that painted an astoundingly clear picture, but the acceptance of that painting would be both foolishness, stupidity, and outright hubris. 

Was I truly supposed to believe that, for some reason, Lady Freya wanted me to keep holding on to her? She wanted me, a stranger, to cling madly to her naked flesh for longer?

Even I had limits to my delirium.

No matter how much those voices in my head whispered this to be the truth, accepting it was tantamount to accepting delusions of grandeur. I had done nothing, nothing, to deserve such a treatment, nor was I asinine enough to believe my charm was so intoxicating that it bewitched a goddess at first sight.

“Tell me, Moses, how ever did you get in here?”

“I was searching for the exit, Lady Freya.”

“The… exit?”

“The lift, below, was barred. So I ascended through the shafts, hoping I would reach the top, and politely… politely ask to use the stairs to get back down.”

“The lift was barred?”

“There was a minor incident, Lady Freya.”

“I see,” she mused. “And you managed to find yourself in my ceiling through the elevator shaft?”

I blinked. Elevator?

“Is something wrong?”

I still did not grasp how I could understand the language spoken in Orario, but I was fairly certain Lady Freya called it an elevator. Not a lift, an elevator. The specific term sounded clearly and cleanly in my ears. The difference was minor, small, but it reminded me of things my goddess did, phrases she occasionally made that sounded as though she were aware of modern conveniences and technology.

“I may have gotten lost while crawling through the vents. They really aren’t as big or easy to navigate as Die Hard led me to believe.”

“Die Hard?”

“A Christmas… Story.”

“Christ…mas?” She tested the word. “What is that?”

“It…. was a day that marked the birth of a God…” I paused. “Well, technically not him, but his son, who is also him. Also, it wasn’t really the day of his birth, though we did celebrate it as if it was…” I stopped, realizing I was rambling. “It was a local… custom. Holiday.”

It occurred to me, then, that I would never see a Christmas Tree again for as long as I lived. Nor mistletoes, nor colored stockings hung on fireplaces, nor bright, flickering lights of red and green hung on doorplaces. No oversized men in red and white, standing on street corners or in mall complexes and inviting children to sit and tell them their deepest wishes. 

Orario had its own customs and holidays. I had no connection to Orario’s holidays, no memories of them, no associations with them. It would all be… different. 

Should I tell the kids at the Orphanage the story of Detective McClane…? Rye really loves action stories… he enjoyed playing as Jack. Fina might not… for Roux, though… probably either Princess Bride or Princess Momonosuke… or maybe both?

“You’re lost in thought.”

Lady Freya’s hands wrapped around my neck.

“Might I know what you’re thinking, Moses?”

“There is an Orphanage in Orario I often visit. I was pondering what sort of stories I would tell them when I next visit them.”

There was a moment where she paused, as though I’d spoken a different language. As I was not looking at her face, as I could not see her expression, for a moment I feared that I had spoken a different language. Had I? I hoped not. Yet, before I could question it, there was soft, light, airy laughter filling the air and bursting forth from her lips.

“Did I say something wrong, Lady Freya?”

“In a situation like this… here, with me… that… that is what you’re thinking?”

“I… yes?”

“Where ever did someone like you come from, Moses Vanderzee?”

I strained my neck to go even higher. Up to the hole in the ceiling.

“The ceiling, Lady Freya. I came from the ceiling.”

It was a truth that side-stepped that conversation I did not want to have. My goddess, my beloved goddess, had her suspicions already, but I would not go about advertising that I was a traveller from an antique land.

I highly doubted there was anyone like me in Orario, thrust out of their time and place for reasons they could not understand.

In gazing up at the ceiling, however, that voice came back. A soft, nagging, whispering voice I heard that told me of hammered steel and forge and heat and flesh. That voice whispered to me—

Sabotage.

The ceiling’s structure was damaged in a controlled way which was not congruent with an accident. Skinny as I was, my weight was absolutely not enough to have caused the structural failure. Rather, something had weakened that point on the ceiling, which caused it to give way.

There was also the secondary, inexplicable nature of how I crashed into the water. Even if it was a million-to-one miracle on the level of cosmic rays flipping bits to aid a Super Mario speedrun that caused the ceiling to give way on its own, it did not explain my reaction to it, or rather, my lack of reaction to it.

I had a Falna.

My goddess’ blessing bestowed me with superhuman reaction speed. I should have reacted swiftly enough to avoid crashing into the water, and swiftly enough to avoid falling.

However, something stunned me.

I did not know if it was magic, or if it was physical force, or a skill, but as I fell, my body had seized up, contracted as if electricity was running through my veins, all for a fraction of a second, without me being able to detect who did it or even detect how they did it. 

There was no way they would have known about my aversion to water, so I could not decipher what goal they had in mind by stunning me. The best I could conceive was that they wished to give Lady Freya the freedom to choose how to react to my arrival, but why they would do that instead of simply apprehending me outright was something I could not fathom.

Someone wanted me to meet Lady Freya, but also wanted to give Lady Freya the chance to control the flow of the meeting.

Someone who could take actions that I could not sense, because the gap in power between us was impossibly vast.

That someone was probably, no doubt, at this moment watching me, watching us.

“Your gaze has remained above my head for so long, Moses. Isn’t it tiring?”

“I seldom get tired, Lady Freya.”

“Oh?” There was something in her voice. “You mean to say your stamina is… Endless?”

I bit my lip and closed my eyes.

Goddess… Grant me strength!

“Tell me, Moses, your… issue with water, is it any body of water?”

“If the water goes up to my knees…” I said, “...I’m terribly sorry to inconvenience you like this, Lady Freya. If you could call someone to fetch you a towel… or if I could reach my staff, which fell in—”

“That is the second time you’ve made a suggestion to that effect,” Lady Freya mused. “Is it so loathsome, holding on to me?”

“On the contrary, Lady Freya. I worry, however, that this is improper… or impious… and would like to avoid the consequences.”

“Is that why you have yet to so much as gaze upon my face?”

“Yes.”

“My body is not a temple so sacred that it cannot be gazed upon.”

“Be that as it may, I fear what I would see.”

“I am not a patron of cowards. Open your eyes and look.”

“Lady Freya—”

“That was not a request.” Her tone brooked no room for argument. “Open your eyes and look at me.”

Filling my lungs with air, taking a full, deep breath, I did as the Divine commanded.

I set my eyes upon the face and upon the form of the goddess in my arms.

She was…

She was…

It was harsh of me to say, perhaps, cruel of me to say—

But—

She was the third most beautiful woman in the world.

The first was my goddess.

The second… was Lady Hephaestus.

Lady Hephaestus was flawed in a way that made her beauty more intimate to me than Lady Freya's.

Because Lady Freya…

She was… too beautiful.

Lady Freya’s beauty was perfection incarnate, and for all that reason, in my eyes, in my soul, some part of me felt… repulsed. For in true perfection was unsightly imperfection. It did not go so far as to cross an uncanny valley, but rather her beauty was so much that it…

It insisted upon itself.

A beauty that bore within it an odd wretchedness, an inexplicable repugnance. It carried within itself a sensation of perverseness, as though it were the blade itself tempting a hand to slaughter. Every second I stared, there was a feeling of… wrongness from the depths of my soul that I could not put into words. 

Yes, she was beautiful, that was never in doubt, but even then—

I had feared, truly, feared, that I would lose my senses and become a savage beast who pounced on her if I gazed upon her for so long, but…

Her beauty did not stir my appetites or toss coal burning into the engine of bottomless desire.

“Have you any words to say? Any praises to offer?”

Was she fishing for compliments? Praise? A thought came to me to be honest. To provide my answer as bluntly, truly, and honestly as possible. Perhaps only in honesty, she would find me contemptible enough to finally agree to let us move out of the water.

“If I may speak freely, Lady Freya?”

“You may.”

“Your beauty is a thing that will bring you more sorrow than joy.” 

Lady Freya stiffened in my arms. Stiffened. Then, she laughed. Laughed.

“I thought you were going to sing praise my beauty, but instead you condemn it?” 

“I apologize. Should I have praised—”

“No. I would have loathed you if you did, because you would have been no different from every man I have ever known.”

…Ah?

“You continue to amaze me. Every second… every minute… Moses Vanderzee. You continue to amaze me.”

Task failed… successfully?

“But condemning my beauty… that is quite cruel.”

“I apologize, Lady Freya,” I exhaled. “I am aware you have already been… incredibly gracious. I doubt you would normally let any man take these liberties with you.”

“You would be mistaken,” Freya laughed. “As I’ve said before, my body is not a sacred temple.”

“Ah.”

“Does that disappoint you?”

“Yes.”

Freya paused. “I see.”

“Not for my sake, Lady Freya. For yours.”

She blinked. “For mine?”

“A body does not have to be a temple, but any who enters it should love it as though it were one.”

“Are…” She laughed. “Are you the type that believes sex is meaningless without love?”

“I am no expert on the topic, but men wiser and smarter than me termed it making love, so it stands to reason that it does make a difference.”

She laughed again. Laughed so airily and breezily that my head spun.

“You have never been with a woman, have you?”

For a moment, the mocking jeers of my teenage years and the whispers of Indomitable Virgin flitted between my ears. I grasped she did not mean it as though it were an insult. I grasped it was a genuine inquiry. Even so, a part of me almost felt an ache at the question. A part of me nearly winced at the question.

“...No.” 

“Then, would you like to lie with me?”

“Yes.”

“Oh?”

“But only if, Lady Freya, there is love in your heart for me.”

“Hardly an issue—”

“For only me.”

Freya paused. “...You jest.”

“I wish.”

“And will you have love in your heart for only me?”

“I would if I could,” I admitted. “I swear, I would if I could. But my heart already belongs to my goddess, and I would sooner tear it out and eat it than I would let it be the sole possession of any other.”

Her lips curled into a smile. “Is that not hypocrisy?”

“It is.”

“You do not deny it?”

“I am aware of how hypocritical I am, Lady Freya,”

I was aware. Painfully, vividly, overtly aware of my own hypocrisy. How could I not be aware of it? 

How could I not?

“It is all the more reason that despite how much I wish to be loved by others, despite how much I want to know what love feels like…”

I paused.

“I fear the suffering I'd inflict upon anyone who truly comes to love me.”

Freya shivered. Whether it was caused by my words or by our prolonged stay in the water, I could not say.

A silence lasted between us that could have been minutes, but felt far, far longer.

“The water is getting cold,” she said, at last. “Come, I think it’s time we left it.”

=====)+(=====

On the outside of the ornate bathroom on the fiftieth floor of the Babel Tower, two men were leaning on opposite ends of a wall. Both men were polar opposites in appearance, in that one appeared lithe, thin, and dainty, and the other was a mountain of muscle, flesh, and beef. The stronger appearing man stared at the lither man, with narrowed eyebrows, who had his eyes closed, and did not bear any outwardly discernible features that gave away his thoughts.

“This is unlike you, Hedin.”

“I could say the same to you, Ottar.”

Both men fell, again, into silence. Yet, that silence was, oddly enough, broken by the larger man.

“Why are you aiding Moses Vanderzee?”

“I could ask the same of you.”

“We all stand to gain from trials.”

“And in your eyes, their meeting, is it a trial for him or a trial for her?”

“You did not answer. Why are you aiding Moses Vanderzee?”

“You know why.”

“I do not.”

Hedin’s gaze snapped up. “Do you doubt my devotion, Ottar?”

“Your devotion has always been true.”

“But it has never been enough,” Hedin said. “We have never been enough.”

Ottar did not reply.

“...Mistress will want to know why I did not stop him.”

“Tell her the truth. I stood in your way.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“She is wise enough to know that if I truly wanted to stop him, you standing in my way would not make a difference.”

Both men fell quiet once again.

“Inform the others. I will be calling a meeting. We need to gather and discuss the issue of how we are going to help our Lady in the matter regarding Moses Vanderzee.”

“Help?”

“Yes. Help.”

“Your ears are better than mine, Ottar. You know what helping means. Do you not fear losing her?”

“I do not.”

“...The others may.”

“Then it will be a test. A test of who, for the sake of their love…”

Ottar turned his head to the door.

“Can conquer their fear.”