Side Story: Foast and Abel

Author’s note

Sometimes patreon still makes it so hard to see who won a vote because it shows percentage of votes rather than numbers but I was able to confirm this side story won by a single point

Sitting in his office, sorting through some paperwork while he still had the time, Nether only perked up as the knock he was waiting for came to his door, his patient having arrived a few minutes late as he so often was.

As the high priest of Raen’ock, a god with sympathy as one of her domains, he had long had experience as acting as an ear for those who needed to unburden themselves, even before he’d ascended to his current status, with that experience, along with a willingness to help from both himself and the one he worshiped, keeping him busy. There were people all over the world who would need to share their troubles from time to time after all, and as one who was both equipped to help on top of having the trust of the gods, it was the divine who typically sent their most valuable believers his way, with a frequent visitor taking a seat before him.

Foast, a third tier more deeply troubled than so many others the priest would speak to, sat before him for yet another meeting after having refused any sort of help for so long, citing his duty as a coming god of the world. He hadn’t thought he could let any sort of weakness slip out, but after what he’d been through, the other gods had forced the matter, sending him to the most trustworthy therapist they could find and starting their frequent exchange.

“Hello again, Foast,” Nether greeted lightly, looking and sounding calm while the other nodded.

“Nether, have you been well in the past week?”

“I have, thank you. And yourself?”

He could see Foast sink back into his chair, looking exhausted with the question but waited patiently for the answer. He knew the man was troubled, Nether had had more than enough explained to him when he’d first been given the role, but his job wasn’t to force the matter. He didn’t need Foast to confront his feelings about what had happened and what he’d been used for, not unless he wanted to talk about it himself, so instead they would discuss whatever was on the front of his mind, with one person taking more and more of that attention with each meeting they held.

“The mistakes you make in moments of weakness never stop haunting you, it seems,” the shifter grumbled. “I can’t believe I allowed that maniac to stay with me.”

“Ha, and what’s the young lady doing to upset you this week then?”

“Where do I begin?”

---

“Damn it, Abel! Your food’s been here for hours!” Foast yelled the moment the girl came back from her outing, skipping along without a care in the world and brightening all of the more when she saw the mountain of meat that had been left on his lawn, all of it beginning to stink under the heat of the midday sun, with the rot ignored by the girl it was for.

Instead, she ran to it, her body unravelling to cover the mass of corpses, digesting it in one go as she slowly shrunk down back to her regular size, remaking her more normal body as she did.

“Delicious,” she burped out, looking mildly uncomfortable for just a moment before reaching a hand down her throat to pull out a metal arrowhead that had been carelessly left in a carcass before throwing it to the side.

“No, not delicious! You can’t just leave your food out to rot when you’re having it delivered here. The smell of it is going to disturb the neighbours and, more importantly, me!”

“Relax, Perv, I forgot. It happens.”

“How can it happen when you get this sent to you every single day?”

“What can I say? I’ve got a busy life.”

“You really don’t.”

“Alright, I got distracted while I was hunting. If it was such a problem then you could have just eaten it yourself.”

“I’m not eating a giant pile of garbage!”

---

“The fact that she offered to let you eat it shows a nice willingness to share though, don’t you think?”

“Nether, we are not trying to put a positive spin on this. You would not believe how bad it stunk. Even when I switched to a form with a weaker sense of smell, the memory of it still lingered for days after. I get queasy every time I see more of what’s being sent for her.”

“But she’s been eating it on time since?”

“Mmh, she had, but that’s far from the only thing I’ve dealt with.”

---

“Damn it, Abel!”

“What are you complaining about this time?” she yelled back, poking her head out of the room she was staying in down the hall, getting to see Foast gesture wildly at the trail leading from the mansion’s entryway to her room.

“The puddles of blood you’ve brought with you on your way back here!”

“Oh, that. You can relax, it’s not mine.”

“Obviously not!” Foast yelled back, not even sure if the girl had anything in her that would qualify as blood but didn’t let that small question get in the way of the real problem. “You can’t just be leaving messes everywhere you go and expecting others to clean up after you!”

“Sure I can, you’ve literally got staff on hand for this sorta crap.”

“First of all, don’t make the employees’ jobs harder than they need to be, and second of all, if that’s the attitude you’re going to take, actually use them instead of just waiting for someone else to find it! All of this is going to soak into the floors and walls if it sits for too long, it’s never going to come out!”

“Fine, fine, if you’re going to be such a grouch about it then you find someone to clean up and I’ll go out and earn some cash if you really need your stupid floors replaced so badly,” she said, walking fully out of her room to reveal that everything below her neck was still drenched in blood, bringing a small twitch to Foast’s eye before he took a deep breath, suppressing any questions he had about just what state her room was going to be in to instead calmly walk over and grab her by the scruff of her neck, carrying her with him.

“Hey, what’s the big idea?” she complained. “I said I’d pay you back if I really damaged anything, relax!”

“The big idea currently is finding the nearest maid to get them to give you a bath,” he sighed. “You’re disgusting right now.”

“Hey, I can bathe myself!” she yelled, struggling in his grip despite her far greater strength by that point, solely because of the hold he had on her.

“Then next time, you can do it yourself. This time, however, we need someone who can actually make sure the job gets done without you getting distracted and running off somewhere else.”

---

“The floors and walls were both totally ruined in the end,” Foast finished. “I currently have people in to replace them, but honestly, not sure why I’m bothering when this is sure to happen again. The girl’s a mess. Whenever she leaves, I might as well just tear down her room and have it rebuilt rather than fix anything she’s doing in there.”

“She does keep your hands full,” Nether smiled. “What an energetic girl.”

“Ugh, that’s one word for her, I suppose, though I have a few other choice ones in mind. The girl’s chaos. Really, I should have tried to leave her with a different third tier since now there’s one who seems like he can actually handle her.”

“Foast, you shouldn’t say things like that. She’s there specifically to try and be there for you after all.”

The shifter took a breath. “She is, I understand the intent and I appreciate it, but I’m still no good with kids. Besides, that’s not the end of it.”

“Ha, what more could she have done?”

“Ugh, I told you last time, since my nightmares have eased up a bit, I was going to try to do some dating again. Met up with a lovely woman just yesterday, in fact, and it was going more than well. She knew what I’m about, I suppose not many don’t, but as we were walking back to my place to retire for the night…” 

---

“HEY FOAST WANNA SEE A DEAD BODY?”

---

“... Where exactly did she get a dead body from?”

“Ugh, it was a demon she hunted in the woods, biggest one I’ve personally seen and I guess she wanted to show it off before she ate it, which caused all sorts of other problems down the line because the city sent a complaint about her causing a panic dragging it through the gate when it was bigger than some of the houses around and my date vanished as soon as she saw it too and… the girl is exhausting.”

Foast continued to grumble, giving other, more minor complaints about her that had come up in the weeks since their cohabitation resumed, but for all he had to say, there were things he couldn’t hide. When their conversations had first started, almost right after the shifter had had his soul conquered, the man had been in nothing but despair over what had happened and what he’d been made to do, but the longer Abel was with him, the more the despair he’d felt was switched to his exasperation over her. The girl simply didn’t give him time to dwell on his guilt and misery, and while Foast would never admit it, through those endless complaints, Nether could still see the occasional smile slip through.

Author’s note

A bit later than I intended to put this out, I ended up scrapping my original idea for it when it wasn’t working for me but I hope you enjoyed it. Tried doing something a bit different for it by using a therapist as a framing device which was fun to try, even if I feel like it could have a little tweaking still.