Danmachi: Westward Cloud [Complete]

[Vol.4] Quest 330.5- A Love Goddess’s Treasure

Four years ago, Two days after the double wedding of Syr and Bell, Ryuu and Cirrus.

Clack!

Clack!

Clack!

Arriving at the secret underground laboratory, the doors open to find Miach, Dionysus, Filvis, and Cirrus.

"I’m back!" Freya was in a good mood, with Ottar following behind her.

"Did you bring the material?" Dionysus said, looking unpleased from asking.

"I brought it; don’t worry." She took out a black-colored bottle and handed it to him.

"Hmm." He grabs it with gloves.

"So how was your wedding night, Cirrus?" Freya looks at him with a grin.

"About as good as yours. Let’s get this done quickly." Cirrus gets up and walks to the other side of the lab, where two Tesla coils with magic stones in them are.

Freya herself walks towards the device, and a pod opens for her. The pod was created to help Freya take a piece of her soul and implant it into the artificial womb.

Filvis comes in, helps her in, and hooks everything up.

"Lady Freya, I shall wait outside. I won’t let anyone intervene."

"Thank you, Ottar." She nods her head as he walks out and closes the door.

The door seals tightly behind him.

"Alright, I’ll begin. (Sing)!"

Cirrus begins to power up the device in the center, and more lights fill the laboratory. With it staring up, the device opens up to reveal a clump of pluripotent cells.

"Initializing construction of the womb," Dionysus said as he injected one of Freya’s eggs into the clump of cells.

As they met, they began to assimilate and change to match the new cell.

"I’m ready on my part." Said Filvis, having finished hooking Freya up to several things.

"Then begin the second stage!" shouted Miach.

Filvis presses a button, and the pod Freya is in closes.

The device in the center then injects a silver color into the tube. Dionysus then puts in the contents of the bottle Freya brought.

As the silver was absorbed into the womb, it made the sperm cells unable to fertilize the eggs.

"Come on, let's make this work!!" Cirrus shouted.

Cirrus then put in more magic power and electricity to cover the sperm cells enough for them to do their job, but only one could succeed.

Half of Elpis once again did another miracle.

"Grrr!?" Cirrus felt his soul get tugged. It was a disorienting feeling but he pressed forward.

When that happened, the womb glowed with a bright light. In the pod, Freya had gone into a meditative state.

When she opened her eyes, she found herself back in heaven.

"This place…" Freya looked around. "It’s home."

She stood in a field of countless flowers with a gentle fall of snow. She looked behind her to see her home, a massive and beautiful log cabin.

"It’s wonderful, isn’t it?"

Freya turns to see Syr.

But with her Discerning Eyes, she could see who they were.

"Ah… I see, so this is my mind. Yet you look very much like Horn? Ah. You are."

"..." Horn does not answer her. "Are you really going this far to have a child? To be honest, I am surprised you are going this far for a child."

"Of course. I have the help of two skilled gods and a mortal."

"Ah yes…them. Why not ask Cirrus to give you a child? You know he is capable of that."

"I do not wish for his child. I want one of my Odr," Freya said sternly.

"Do you even think you deserve a child after what you did with your other child, Horn?"

"…" Freya’s eyes turn to a lethal edge. "I have given Horn all the chances to leave the Familia's jail, yet she never relents on her beliefs."

"Maybe she was doing it for your own sake?"

"I know what I want. For the first time in my enteral life, I know with all of my heart what I truly want, and it is within the grasp of my fingers and a few months away. Tell me, Horn."

"!?" Horn shudders. "Guess even your Discerning Eyes work here, huh?" Syr's appearance vanished in a quick flicker of static, and what remained was a woman with long gray hair.

"I am sorry, my child." Freya bows her head toward her. "Even if I did it to protect my Odr, keeping you caged was..." She clenched her fists tightly. "Unforgivable."

"Then make it up to me."

Freya looked up to her eye; her long hair covered the other.

"You only need to give."

"Give? Give what exactly?"

"One of your authorities."

Freya was surprised.

"Only one? How do you know this?"

"A dream." Horn closes her eyes. The field of flowers turned to green, cloud-shaped flowers. "I dreamt of a paradise so wonderful that I wish to see it again. Knowledge dripped into me like droplets dripping down a faucet down the drain."

Freya looked around, and she could even smell the flowers. Petrichor.

"I trust you," Freya said softly.

"Then which one are you—"

"Take whatever you want." She said it without hesitation.

"…" Horn was wide-eyed but smiled. "Heh, I guess you are desperate."

           She walked up to Freya.

"A mother will always protect her child," Freya said with a noble smile.

"That you will."

She then thrust her fists into her chest.

"!?" Freya could feel her lungs grow heavy.

She could feel her soul slowly getting ripped apart.

"Oh, and I am not taking your authority. Your child cannot support such strength, but they can get scrapes from it."

Freya, with gritted teeth and a big smile, shouted.

"Then give our child our authority of Gold, Magic, and War!! Our child will be given the tools to fight the world and live her life! Neither man nor god shall dare touch the daughter of Freya!" Freya shouted with a warrior's pride. "This will be what we wanted, right!? You, Horn, wished to be, and I wished for a child!"

Horn shudders at her words, yet something is still holding her back.

Freya gently touched Horn's face.

"This pain, this suffering, is little of what I should feel for ensuring the safety of my Odr, Bell."

Sweat dripped down Freya’s skin—a first for Horn to see their goddess sweat so much.

"Even now." Horn still couldn't let go. This has been her problem since the day Freya found her Odr. "Tsk! Why did you change!? Why!! You were perfect! I don’t understand!"

"You really are a thickheaded daughter. Even after all this talk, you still can't let go. Very well, I tell you once more. I was never perfect, nor was I a woman, a mere object to pray and hope they would sleep with those who prayed. I, who was only loved for my beauty and body, never grew as an individual. That is why I will live my life as a human, as the town girl, Syr Flova. Freya is not something I wish to let anyone be. To be Freya is to seek satisfaction from a greedy heart that exhausts endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction."

"Is that so wrong!? You are immortal! The planet would turn to dust before there was even the conception of a wrinkle on you!"

"Then let me ask you a question. Why must love always fade?"

"... What?"

The question confounded her. For many, it was a simple answer, but for Horn, she couldn't understand it.

Horn's own love for the image of Freya was unshakable even if evidence appeared before her eyes disproving her.

"The answer I found is this. A love that fades was never true love. True love is something that endures and stands like an old stone building that has stood for centuries."

"I do not understand."

"Of course, you don't. I have failed you in this life, but I will not fail you in the next. So I welcome you as my daughter, blood and all! For my treatment of you and your imprisonment within my Familia home, I will make sure you, my daughter Gersemi, will shine! That is a promise—No, a contract!"

"And what if I am a failure? What if I am not enough?" Horn shouted. "What if I am not even a girl in the next life?"

Tears came down her cheeks—tears that Freya wiped.

"No matter what, you and I are connected. Our fates entwined. But do not fear; Cirrus will make sure you and his children are not locked into those pesky strings. I will be the best mother the world has ever seen; I will shower you with love. Ottar and the Familia would wish they were breastfed by me. Do not be Freya; do not limit yourself to a foolish goddess. Be greater than her. That is the blessing and curse of a parent."

Horn could feel her feelings flood into her—so much love and affection, it was nauseating. Yet it proved she was dead serious.

"Fine!! I’ll be your child! But I better not fall short of her! That Daughter of the Moon, Callisto!"

"I assure you, your past words are not for show!"

"Then grit those teeth!"

Horn then scrapped Freya’s soul, taking the authorities she offered. The pain was like the scratching of one’s heart and cornea—not so much as to kill you but enough to bring you down to your knees and beg for relief.

"GRRR!!!" Freya gritted her teeth, her face washed in ecstasy.

This pain was nothing to her for what she was getting.

Outside, the pod began to glow, and a visage of Horn appeared in a white dress.

"D-divinity…" Filvis said.

Miach and Dionysus could tell this was another separate soul, another person who was connected to Freya. That was the only plausible reason they appeared here and now.

Syr walks into the tube and is melded into the womb. The tube then emitted a brilliant silver.

"Dionysus! Miach! Check everything! Do we have a life signature?" shouted Cirrus.

"R-right!" they both shouted.

They all checked everything while Filvis went to look at Freya. She could tell that whatever happened took a lot out of her.

"My lords! Lady Freya seems to be exhausted!"

"Take her out!" shouted Miach. "Everything is good! We have a stable life signature!" He had a big smile on his face.

Filvis opens up the pod, and the scent of blood and sweat hits her.

"!!" She quickly grabbed her. "Quick! Get the potions!"

As the process was highly complicated and dangerous for Freya. Miach, Dionysus, and Cirrus worked incredibly hard to make it as safe as possible, working closely with one another and Freya to lay down the magical foundations of the unholy hybrid of alchemic science and magic to not let anything slip out of that laboratory.

Freya had done something unthinkable. Her drive for a child had led her to pioneer this process, which they called Novellus Vita, or Young Life. They would keep this process secret for a long, long time from the public's eye.

"Hm… Hmmm…" Freya opens her eyes to see everyone around her. "Did… it go well?"

"Of course," Dionysus said. "It’s a success."

"Let us pray we are not discovered," Miach said.

"Help me… up." She said, tired.

Filvis and Cirrus help her up, and she looks at her child growing in that tube.

"You will have to come in and get back in the pod to help keep it 'warm'," Dionysus said in quotations. "The child still needs the fuel of their mother's soul."

"Of… course. Cirrus." She looked at him. "Did you… make the tools?"

"I did," Cirrus said, having made tools to help Freya fake her pregnancy.

Nine months later, the child was born, and the first to hold her was Freya herself.

The whole ordeal had caused her to seal several of her children, including Falna, as it drastically drained her of her arcanum. But as she held her child in her arms, a feeling only Artemis knew filled her heart.

"I give you the name Gersemi, my precious little treasure."

And a treasure she was; everyone involved was sworn to secrecy, and the Freya Familia would treat her on equal terms with Freya herself.

There was, however, one other person who found this pleasant or would have.

"So...she was the soul used, huh?" Cirrus said, looking at Freya with Vesta floating next to him and Horn’s empty body in bed.

"Yes. It seems we were far more connected than I had imagined, and her desires were far more intense than I had realized," Freya said, looking at Horn’s body with her silver eyes, trying to find out if her soul truly left. "In a way, I went and fulfilled my deal with her."

"The deal that allowed you two to take on the role of the city girl named Syr." Said Vesta. "I must admit this human’s desire to be you truly is remarkable. I didn’t think one would give up on their life to be reborn as half a god."

"So, how is her soul? Is it the same as before?" asked Cirrus.

"No. Having been exposed to my arcanum for nine months was like putting metal in a forge, not to mention having been mixed with some of my attributes. What came out was entirely different."

"Hm… So what do you want to do with this body? Just keep it here or something?"

"I plan on having it persevered. Who knows, maybe this body will be of use one day." She looked at Cirrus and Vesta, who had disgruntled looks on their faces. "I know... but she still has my Falna, so she is still my child, so I will keep her safe."

"That’s fine." Cirrus stands up. "I will be in contact if anything occurs involving this matter." Cirrus walks to the door.

"You know Cirrus." Freya’s words stop him. "Now that I have a child of my blood, I hope she and Callisto will get along well."

"I can’t make her friends with your child."

"I know, but she can have some play dates with your youngest child? Ryuu told me she's pregnant."

"I am sure when they are born our kids will get along as much as you and Ryuu."

Cirrus opens the door and as he takes a step Freya speaks up.

"Thank you." She said sincerely. "Thank you so much, my friend."

"No problem." Cirrus walks out the door.