Note: For the unaware, I rewrote chapter 79 after its initial release. If you didn't get a scene from Abigail, then you read the original version. I'd highly recommend checking out the changes!

“...Goddess?” I whispered, my voice barely audible to even my ears.

“That’s right!” she answered. “In the… well, not flesh, I guess, what with the whole ‘being kept prisoner’ thing.” 

“Prisoner?” I parroted. I couldn’t help but notice that despite her words she seemed rather upbeat.

“The Goddess is speaking to you? What is she saying?” Doll asked.

“You can’t hear her?” I asked with a frown. Her voice was coming through perfectly clear to me.

Doll shook her head. “I can sense the presence of divine magic, but I can’t hear anything.”

“That’s because I’m speaking in your head!” the Goddess informed me, still sounding strangely…bubbly.

“It doesn’t sound like you’re talking in my head,” I remarked. It sounded like she was speaking from nearby.

“Well, that’s because my… I mean, your… Uh…” She trailed off, briefly sounding a bit lost before picking up steam again. “...Well, the lovely person I’ve practiced speaking to the most found it kinda creepy when I did the usual telepathy thing, so I changed it around a little. Think of it like an auditory hallucination!”

“Right…” I murmured. “So it’s all in my head, in other words?”

“Exactly!” the Goddess confirmed. “Mostly because that’s the only place I can be right now. I mean, I totally would have descended in person if I could have! Or, well, not in person person. Can’t exactly do that - the mortal realm is a bit too fragile for a direct divine descent. Avatars only! One of which I’d usually send, because your prayers are very important to me! It’s just that I’m just… uh…”

“Imprisoned?” I asked, arching an eyebrow. I had to admit, she was a far cry from how I imagined a goddess to be. If not for Doll calling her magic out as divine, I would wonder if she were really a goddess to begin with. Hopefully she couldn’t see my expression, because it most certainly displayed my doubts.

“Hey! Just because I’m dating your Mom doesn’t mean I won’t give you divine punishment for the sass! Not that I really do divine wrath, even when I’m actually able to do so, but… I’ll pout at you, okay? I can see your face and read your mind, too! Which, I mean, usually I wouldn’t, but we’re sort of in emergency mode right now and you might not always be able to talk out loud…”

“Wait. Wait wait wait. Roll it back some - you’re dating my mother?! Not only is she still alive, but you’re dating her?! Why didn’t you lead with that?!”

“Uh… we were sorta planning on waiting to tell you until you saw us in person? But she’s told me so much about you! She’s still conscious, unlike the other demon queens, so she was able to watch you grow up and she’s really proud of the wonderful woman you’ve become! Luci kinda forced her to sit and watch as her people got exterminated under you - or at least that was what was supposed to happen? But our prisons happened to be right next to each other and we started talking and one thing led to another and…! Wait, we’re getting totally side tracked here. Um…what were we talking about?” 

I didn’t - couldn’t - reply at first. It felt as if my brain were physically rebooting. After a few seconds, however, words tumbled from my lips once more.

“I…we… Ok, one thing at a time. So - my mother is alive, but held captive? And you are also imprisoned, but in the room next to hers, and are dating her? And the other demon queens are… alive but unconscious? And…wait - what do you mean always?!” I demanded. “You can’t mean to say that you’ll be in my head forever?!”

“Nooooooooo? Not really… Just until you free me! Or until the energy I shoved into this spell runs out, I guess, but I sorta panicked and threw a lot in there, and it seems sort of a waste to just let it all go when I’ve got so little of it to spare, so…”

“Right… Your issues with sunk cost fallacy aside, could you perhaps tell me what you meant by prisoner?”

“Yup, prisoner,” the goddess continued, “and held that way by my own magic, no less! Specifically the stuff I gave to Luci. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you, don’t you think?”

“Luci’s holding you prisoner?” I parroted back to her, my mind blanking once more. “With your own magic? How does that even work?”

“Well, the spell’s pretty basic, actually - mostly she just coated the entire room with divine magic and loaded it full of intent - specifically the intent to keep me here. I probably could have just brute forced my way through it, eventually, if she wasn’t also limiting my diet. She basically built a dam to hold back the worship I’d normally be getting, starved me until I was on the brink of death, and then automated the whole thing to give me just enough sustenance to remain stable… I guess I gave her too much control over the divine systems considering how much she mucked around with them.”

“What’s she saying?” Doll asked. I hadn’t been paying too much attention to her, what with being focused on this goddess that was apparently going to be stuck in my head for the foreseeable future, but I could see Doll’s expression had grown more and more strained. What was she thinking after hearing only half of the conversation?

“She’s saying she’s being kept prisoner,” I replied. “That Luci used her own divine magic against her to make some sort of trap for her.”

“That… makes no sense,” Doll replied. “Luci’s divine magic comes from the Goddess. Not only that, but the holy magic that sustains her should be coming from the Goddess as well. Surely she could simply cut Luci off at the source?”

“Correct!” the Goddess confirmed. “Kinda. Let’s go with half-marks, I guess? She’s missing a few details. Like the fact that I’m technically just pumping magic into the divine system itself, and letting it handle the distribution and all that. She’s also missing a heart. And a sense of gratitude. You know, if we’re in the realm of listing things she’s missing… I mean, seriously? Letting Abby risk herself like that without telling you two the whole story? Not cool.”

“While I may have conflicted feelings over the matter,” I interrupted, “I’d rather focus on the fact that you’re powering the very person who is holding you captive. Why don’t you just cut her off?”

“Because I can’t. Not without access to a divine terminal. I mean, I guess I could disconnect from the system as a whole, but… then the world would probably stop turning. Or maybe start turning at a different speed? Solla’s a lot smaller than Earth, so it probably shouldn’t be rotating at the same rate… not to mention the speed at which it orbits the sun, the level of gravity it exerts, and all that other stuff I just copied over from Earth. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure what would happen if I stopped the magic and let normal physics take effect. Probably nothing good, though.”

“...Right. So I take it that’s not an option?”

“Nope! Not unless we want Luci to win. I mean, the whole reason she trapped me here was because of my ‘unhealthy obsession,’ as she calls it, with keeping the mortals alive… But uh… To tell you the truth? I kinda messed up in making this world. Bad. I mean, it wasn’t even meant to be a fantasy world to begin with! But I just had to go and make that stupid English spell and next thing you know the thing’s getting overloaded and there’s divine magic spilling out all over the place and it’s just… ugh. Luci thought I should just scrap the whole thing and start over, but I didn’t want to kill all the humans, you know? Not to mention all the cute monster girls that started popping into existence… That’s why I begged my parents to stabilize things for me instead. Which they did! At the cost of me spending the next hundred years at coding boot camp… Luci was not pleased, let me tell you. We got into a real screaming match about me ‘picking lowly mortals over her.’ I thought she’d calmed down enough by the time I actually left, but… instead she fast-forwarded the time stream all the way, making it so that I was gone two thousand years instead of, like, five, like it would have been on the slowed down settings I left it at… I can’t believe I missed so much development! And there’s the whole holding me hostage and keeping me prisoner thing, I guess, but honestly, now that the timestream is going one-to-one again… I mean, what’s twenty-ish years, really?”

“...I’m sorry, can you repeat… all that? Preferably with more explanations?” Now I was certain that my face was strained, let alone Doll’s! “Such as what the hell an ‘English spell’ has to do with the creation of monster girls? Not to mention the whole fact that two thousand years of war is… what? The result of some lover’s spat on your end?”

“I mean, I’d say it’s more that on Luci’s end than mine. To me, it’s more like what I thought was my best friend locked me in a room and demanded I kill an entire world full of people if I ever wanted my freedom again… but if you wanna classify all that as just a ‘lover’s spat’ like your ancestor does, feel free.”

“...No, I suppose you’re right… It’s just odd to imagine the literal Goddess as a victim in all this, when all my life I thought you were a spurious cad who’d abandoned us all…”

“Well, if it helps, you can think of me less like a goddess, and more like your… uh… actually, nevermind. Let’s just stick to goddess for now. Less complicated…”

I frowned, wondering for a moment whether I should push… and whether I even wanted to. Only my angelic nature was keeping me from developing a migraine as things stood, to be honest - did I really want more of my worldview twisted and shattered at this point?

Yet I couldn’t bring myself to entirely let everything go… “You still haven’t explained the English spell.”

“Right… So. You know how everyone here speaks English? It’s because of a custom spell that makes it really easy to learn the language. Whenever someone figures out a new food or device or anything that has an English counterpart, they’re sorta struck with inspiration for the right word - and that word always sounds right and is ‘somehow’ super easy to learn and remember, so of course it sticks and spreads, and… Look, I just didn’t want to have to learn a new language every time I checked in on the planet, okay?! So I made a spell that would keep things nice and consistent! Except I botched the coding and the damn thing broke - irradiated the whole world with divine magic… Literally. Arcane magic is basically just a radioactive byproduct your bodies have adapted to harness.”

I didn’t say anything.

I couldn’t.

Honestly, my brain was struggling to process even a portion of what she’d shared with me… mostly because I was still stuck on a singular, early detail.

“Are you telling me… that Sollian is actually just English?!”

I felt fine. Perfectly fine. More fine than I’d ever felt in my entire life. Not just more fine, in fact - more everything. As in, I could literally feel every fiber of my being, all at once, and I just knew that every inch of my existence was fairing better than ever before. My skin felt smoother, my hair somehow ‘felt’ glossier, and my body was thrumming with energy.

Literally thrumming with energy. Warm, yet somehow dark energy. Energy like nothing I’d ever felt before. It made my pitiful arcane energy reserves feel actually nonexistent by comparison, like an ember next to the sun.

It didn’t feel like my arcane magic capacity had gotten any bigger, either…. at least at first. Then I noticed that it was growing slowly. It didn’t take long to figure out the truth from there - while the actual amount of arcane energy in my body hadn’t changed, my capacity had. It seemed almost endless… though, from what Devilla had told me, it actually wasn’t.

 Either way, it was going to take quite a while for my reserves to fill up. Maybe days, judging by how long Devilla had been out of action. That was weird to think about… 

“Yes, I know you warned me to close my eyes, but after a minute or so of them just glowing I thought nothing was going to happen!”

My eyes snapped open at the sound of Devilla’s voice, only to find her rubbing the palms of her hands over her eyes. 

“I didn’t say it was your fault,” Devilla continued. “I’m just saying it caught me off guard…”

Right. So Devilla was talking to herself… or to Doll? Who was also here - which… I mean, of course she was here. I could literally remember talking to her just a couple minutes ago. 

I shook my head and let out a soft groan - not because I was in pain, but because I couldn’t come up with a more articulate way of letting Devilla know I was awake. At the same time, I pushed myself up off the ground… A little too hard… way too hard, in fact, as I immediately went flying towards the ceiling, slamming into it and then crashing back to the ground.

Devilla winced, but I… didn’t really feel any pain. I mean, sure, there’d been a bit of discomfort at the moment of impact, but it had gone away pretty damn quick, and now I just felt… fine.

“This is going to take some getting used to,” I muttered, running a hand through my hair. It did feel somehow smoother and softer!

“I imagine it will,” Devilla replied, a relieved smile on her face. “I would advise against exerting force on anything until you learn how to control your body, though.”

“Easier said than done,” I grumbled. “What am I supposed to do? Just lay here? I mean, just trying to push myself off the floor catapulted me into the ceiling!”

“If I may,” Doll interrupted, “I would say that it’s not your strength you need to learn how to control, but your mindset.”

“My mindset?” I asked, blinking. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“An angel, or true demon in your case, is only ever as strong as they need to be. Devilla does not control her strength directly - she doesn’t need to. Her strength is whatever she needs to output at that moment. By contrast, mortals tend to think in terms of limitations. They use a portion of their strength at any given time. A percentage of it, even. Yet when one has nigh infinite strength, trying to unleash a specific percentage of it is… ill advised.”

“...Riiiiiight…” I said, doing my best to parse through what she said. Thankfully, I could remember every word perfectly, so it wasn’t actually as hard as it could have been. With, like, crystal clarity. As if someone had just frozen the moment in time and put it up in a hallway for me to go look at whenever I wanted. 

Was that what all of Devilla’s memories felt like? 

“So you’re saying I’m more like Devilla, right? As strong as I need to be? And I just need to… what? Just… change how I think about exerting strength entirely?”

“Roughly,” Doll agreed. “Though I’d say the fact that you still think of it as exerting strength is part of the problem. If you’re already as strong as you need to be, then trying to draw on more power will only cause you problems.”

“Don’t worry!” came a new voice - and I couldn’t help but notice that Devilla’s posture sagged in relief the moment she heard it. Then again, I guess I was pretty relieved, as well… “We can train together! I’m pretty used to only using part of my strength, though - I wonder if that’ll actually make me weaker for a bit?”

“Maybe,” I hedged, crossing my arms and trying not to let too much of my own relief show. “Though I’m guessing neither of us can exactly qualify as weak anymore.”

“Not if you’re as strong as me,” Devilla confirmed with a grim nod. “But, unfortunately, I don’t believe we have much time for you to get used to your strength… I need to head back to the holy city immediately.”

“I’m coming too!” I said even before Lucy could reply. “I mean… assuming I can figure out how to make my wings disappear…”

“I don’t think you need to worry about that,” Devilla replied, shaking her head. “I fear subtlety and concealment are no longer an option. According to the Goddess there was a price to pay for rescuing you - just as she intervened for us, Luci will have interfered for them. We should assume, if nothing else, that the Grand Patriarch knows everything about us now…”

“So why did you want to get back to the holy city, then?” I asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” she asked, arching an eyebrow. “I’m going to eliminate the Grand Patriarch.”

 

~~~

Author's Notes

 

Many thanks to FallingLeaf for the editing! The main change from the rough draft is the Grimmilla reveal coming a chapter early. Something else will replace the reveal next chapter... (Not spoiling what, of course~!)

I know some people have been afraid a goddess showing up would just solve all problems... Trust me when I say that this particular disaster lesbian causes just as many issues as she solves. :P

Also, have you ever wondered how Devilla could possibly know the Sollian word for "potatoes" despite never having seen one in this life? Because I did. I thought about it a lot. To the point where it became a massive plot point that - while arguably largely irrelevant to current events - essentially shaped the backstory of this universe.

What can I say? I just really hate plot holes!

As usual, I'd like to point out that you can read up to chapter 85 of Demon Queened right now on Patreon for as little as $1~! I'm hoping to get back to writing more chapters, soon. (I took a break to work on Naughty Magic, but I've got bad writer's block on it and I've taken enough of a break from DQ writing already.)