Needless to say, this was a bit of a surprise. As soon as the man called Tabbris his daughter, my eyes looked that way, mouth falling open. My expression matched hers, as the other girl gaped while making a sound of confusion in the back of her throat. She tried to say something, but the only thing that came out was a weak croaking sound, like a very sick frog.
The man, Jegudiel apparently, gave a broad laugh and stepped forward before anyone could find their voice. “That’s right, my filia, my daughter!” He stooped, going down to one knee. Yet even like that, he still towered over her. “How’re you doing, kid? You know who I am? They told you, right?”
Glancing around, I saw everyone watching this interaction. The whole cafeteria had stopped every conversation to focus over here. Probably because his arrival hadn’t exactly been subtle, to say the least. But then again, despite only knowing this guy for a few seconds, I was already pretty sure that nothing he did could ever be called subtle. He was the type of person who drew attention no matter where he went, and not only because of his height and muscle. Though that was certainly a factor too. Yeah, this guy was basically a hurricane given flesh and blood. I just hoped he wouldn’t end up causing as much destruction around here as one of those could.
No, I had to shove that out of my mind. This guy hadn’t done anything wrong to us yet. It wasn’t his fault that Kushiel had used his donated material to impregnate Sariel, any more than it was Tabbris’s fault. I had to give him a chance, not be jealous of him on my father’s behalf. This whole situation was already complicated enough as it was, there was no reason for me to make that worse.
For her part, Tabbris only hesitated briefly before giving a slight nod. Her voice was quiet, yet she didn’t look away from him, meeting his intense gaze while answering. “You’re Jegudiel, one of the Dyeusai, the archangels.”
That smile of his only broadened at that, the man showing his teeth in what was clearly delight. “Yes. Yes, I am. And I’ve heard many things about you too. You gave some people a pretty hard time, from the sound of it.” Yet he didn’t sound annoyed or upset about that, even though he was talking about Tabbris having caused problems for his own people. If anything, the man sounded incredibly proud, his smile growing even more. “Made one hell of a nuisance of yourself, didn’t you?”
“Uh.” Tabbris squirmed a bit on her feet, glancing to me, then to her other siblings, then to Athena before finally focusing on the man once more. “I had to protect… my sister.” Her voice rose a bit at the end there, hand reaching out to grab mine.
For the first time, the man focused on me, his eyes looking me up and down curiously. “Oh, of course. You’re the Chambers girl, Felicity. I’ve heard of you too. But you prefer Flick, don’t you?”
His words made me blink. “You know that already?” Somehow, the fact that he had so much information about me that he knew my name preferences kind of freaked me out a little bit.
Jegudiel laughed broadly. “Well of course I do. You didn’t think I’d come all the way here without taking the time to do some research about who my daughter’s spending so much time with, did you? I know all about you. Well, the stuff my people know about, anyway. Even the classified material. But I’m gonna–what was that Earth phrase I looked up before? Go out on a rock?”
“Limb,” Athena corrected him from behind. “As in the limb of a tree.”
“Ahh! That makes a lot more sense!” The man laughed again before nodding. “Yes, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that my people don’t know everything you’ve gotten up to. But the stuff I did read about, well, that’s pretty impressive. You’re a good influence on my–” He stopped, seeming to consider his words before amending, “On Tabbris.” Looking that way, he added a bit slyly, “Or is that more of you being an influence on her?”
“We… help each other.” That was her hesitant response, as she squeezed my hand. “Um, so you’re really not angry about all that? I mean, about everything that happened?”
“Angry? Hah!” That loud laugh came again, and the man shook his head. “Far as I’m concerned, as long as you don’t go signing up with the Fomorian monsters that want to raze this whole universe to the ground and kill everything in it, you can be on whatever side you like.” He paused as though considering before a grimace found its way to his face. “Okay, I guess there are some others besides the Fomorians that I’d be disappointed to see you with, but something tells me I don’t have to worry about that. From everything I’ve heard about you, kid, you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. I just hope you keep it there.” He reached out as though to squeeze that very head, before pausing with his hand in mid-air. “Ahh, sorry, you sensitive about being touched? I’ve had a bit of trouble with that before, took time to get it through my thick skull.” That was said with a soft, self-deprecating chuckle as he rapped his knuckles against his own head through the luxurious black mane. “But I got it eventually. Mostly.”
Tabbris bit her lip, a very slight smile forming though she was clearly still nervous and uncertain about the whole thing. “Um, it’s okay, you can… touch me.”
With that approval, Jegudiel finished reaching out. His hand dwarfed her head as he basically palmed it. “Yeah,” the man murmured after testingly rubbing it, “definitely a good head here. If you gave the other Seosten a hard time, they probably had it coming. Our people often do.” He added that with a wink. “Even me now and then. But I do try to learn from my past, even if I don’t always get it right.”
“Speaking of learning,” Athena took the chance to put in, “perhaps we should take a walk somewhere a little more private for this?” She made a point of glancing toward all the onlookers, most of whom quickly glanced back to their meals or to one another.
“You know, a walk sounds pretty good, sure.” Jegudiel rose to his feet, utterly towering over the rest of us once more. “If you’re up for that, kid?” Once again, he sounded like he was doing his level best to not dominate the entire interaction or demand things. Which seemed a bit at odds with what I’d heard about the man in battle, where he was… intense, from what others had said.
“Can Flick come with?” Tabbris immediately asked, before quickly leaning over to whisper something to Jehoel and Spark. I heard something about waiting for their mother. Both of them whispered something back, and she gave a quick, decisive nod back to the man. “Can she?”
“Well of course she can!” Jegudiel answered without any hesitation, giving me a broad grin. “After all the time she spent with you, it’d be pretty dumb for me to try to shut her out if I want to learn anything about you, wouldn’t it?” His hand moved as though to clap me on the back, but again he stopped himself and squinted. “Ah, are you–”
“It’s okay,” I informed him with a slight shrug as I shifted my shoulder that way, “I’m fine with being touched.”
Immediately, his hand slapped my back so hard I almost fell over even with my not-inconsequential strength boosts. “Now that’s good to know!” Pivoting with a cheerful laugh, he gave a nod toward Athena. “Lead the way, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” she agreed, giving Tabbris and me a brief glance before turning to walk to the nearby door. She paused just long enough to say something to a guy standing there, sending him off to do something. Probably to let Sariel know where we were going when she got the message about the man being here and came running.
Tabbris, Jegudiel, and I followed, leaving the cafeteria and all those clearly incredibly curious people behind. I was almost certain there would be a lot of speculation and conversation as soon as we were out the door. Not that Tabbris being related to one of the archangels had exactly been a huge secret, after the way her wings had manifested during Dad’s bonding ritual. But still, this was the first time her birth-father had been confirmed outside our little circle. That was bound to cause some rumors to start flying around.
Speaking of Dad, he was suddenly right there. Practically manifesting in front of the doors as we passed through, he looked a bit out of breath. “Hey, what–” His gaze found the enormous Seosten man immediately.
“Aha!” Jegudiel grinned. “It’s my daughter’s–ahh, other father. Her papa.” He reached out, offering a hand that way. “A genuine pleasure to meet you, Lincoln Chambers. I am Jegudiel. I want to thank you for being the kind of man you are and accepting Tabbris here as soon as you found out about her.”
Dad hesitated slightly, glancing to Tabbris herself, then to me before his gaze found the larger man’s hand. Then he accepted, shaking it firmly. “Yeah, well, there wasn’t really any question about that. She’s my daughter.”
“Yes, she is,” the Seosten Archangel confirmed before releasing Dad’s hand. “She’s been your daughter this long, no one’s gonna change that.” To Athena, he added, “We’ve still got an audience behind us, maybe we should keep going.”
Once we were walking through the corridor, Jegudiel stepped aside a bit so he could look over and down at the two of us. Well, mostly Tabbris. He was smiling the whole time, practically radiating cheer. “They said you were still young, but damn. You really were running circles around our people almost from the time you were an infant, weren’t you?”
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“I, umm…” Tabbris flushed a little, hand squeezing mine even more tightly. “I had to help protect Flick.”
“Of course you did,” the man agreed, giving a nod toward me. “She was–sorry, she is your family. And your mater sent you to help. Just wish I could’ve seen you last year when you were beating old Manakel and the others. Including your nephew.”
Tabbris started to respond to that, before giving an almost identical double-take to the one I was giving. But it was Dad, trailing slightly behind, who spoke. “Wait, nephew? What?”
“You didn’t tell ‘em?” Jegudiel squinted over to Athena before focusing on us, stopping there in the hall. “I mean, more of what you’d call a great-great-great… great nephew, but yeah, I heard you had a run-in or two with one of my descendants.”
My mouth opened and shut before I blurted, “Abaddon? You mean Abaddon is–”
“That’s right,” he confirmed, grinning once more. “You can see the family resemblance now, can’t you?”
Okay, well that was a thing. While Tabbris made another uncertain noise deep in her throat, I looked back and forth between her and Jegudiel. “You mean Tabbris is really–she’s Abaddon’s aunt? I mean, great-whatever aunt, but–but…” It was my turn to make that noise before finally managing to push out a weak, “Wow.”
“Wow is certainly the correct word,” Athena agreed. “And I did not say something because I wasn’t aware of it. Nor, to the best of my knowledge, was anyone else on the Olympus.”
“Hah, guess he kept his word,” Jegudiel mused. Then he explained, “I take all my descendants through some training excursions of my own. Try to get ‘em hooked up with some good assignments where they can learn a lot too. Did the same with Abaddon. He liked the training part, but told me no when I offered to get him assigned to a nice ship. Said he was gonna make a name for himself without my help. When he got assigned to the Summus Proelium project, I had to swear to him up and down on magical oath that I didn’t make it happen. I ahh, guess that went as far as not telling his crew who his ancestor was.” He frowned just a little at that, but shook it off.
There was an awful lot to unpack there, but one thing stood out that we could actually get into at the moment. Giving a glance toward Tabbris, who was still just standing there staring at her biological father, I hesitated before turning back to the man. “Did you say you take your descendants on training excursions?”
The man’s grin was dazzling, and a little intimidating. “That’s right! I’ve got a whole moon set up for camping, exercise, wrestling, target practice, some academics so their brains don’t wither away, the works. You’re ahh-you’re both welcome to come check it out anytime you want. You know, assuming I’m not in the middle of a battle. But then again…” His smile turned somewhat feral as he narrowed his eyes pointedly. “No fight tends to last very long when I’m around.”
“Wa-wait, Flick too?” Tabbris abruptly piped up, finding her voice again for that. She sounded a bit uncertain. “You mean you’d let Flick go to your umm, family training camp place?”
Dad stepped up then, moving directly behind us. “Yeah, you would?”
“Well, yeah!” The man bellowed those words, making all three of us flinch just a little. He clapped me on the shoulder, once more nearly knocking me over in the process. My knees buckled a little bit. “She’s basically a sister to you, isn’t she? Hell, ain’t no basically about it. She’s your sister, blood be damned. So I’m not about to go and try to separate you. Far as I’m concerned, if she’s a sister to you, she ahh…” He paused before lifting his gaze to meet Dad’s. “She and you both, your whole family are welcome at any of our family gatherings. Which we do have now and then, you know. You should come to one of those. You all should. The look on Abbi’s face would be amazing.”
Abbi. He called Abaddon Abbi. I just… wow. That was basically the only thing I could think right then. Wow. This was a lot.
“Wait, but… you do all that for all your descendants?” Tabbris was squirming uncertainly. “The whole training camp and still having reunions and stuff? I thought–I mean, they don’t… have the same wings as you, right?” Even as she said those words, the girl was blanching a little, as though the thought of what she was implying made her sick. Her hand slipped backward to find Dad’s, squeezing it tightly.
If he was offended, the man didn’t show it. “What, you think I’d only give a Doufel’s patare about my own family if they had my wings? Now don’t get me wrong, whole reason I wanted to have as many kids as possible was to try to spread out that chance. But just because it didn’t pan out in any of my other descendants doesn’t mean I’m just gonna toss them out the airlock. You’ve seen Abaddon, right? He was a glorious terror in a fight even before the project. My family’s got some genuine tough ones in it. Some real… ahh, I think the word you use is badbuttocks.”
“Badasses,” Athena calmly interjected. She seemed content for the moment to just let us talk while she stood out of the way to make sure no one interrupted or eavesdropped.
“Right, that.” Jegudiel pounded his fist into the other palm. “Real badasses. But the most important thing is, I want to create a legacy. One that lives on forever. Not just me or my battles, I want my family to be remembered. Hard to do that if you just toss out every single relative that doesn’t fit one incredibly narrow specification, you understand? If I ignored every single descendant I have just because they didn’t have the Dyeus connection, that’d be…” He gave a low whistle, shaking his head. “It’d be a lot of people. My family isn’t small. Well, probably small by Earth standards over all that time, but big for our people. That’s not the sort of legacy I want to have. They might not be the absolute biggest achievement I was looking for, but they’re not failures, and I’m not the sort of piece of gekna that’d throw them out for that.”
Dad spoke up then. “I ahh, I’m pretty sure the Earth analogy you’re looking for is that while a homerun would’ve been nice, you aren’t going to quit the game over a base hit.”
With a broad smile, Jegudiel replied, “I have no idea what you just said, but if it makes sense to all of you, then sure.” He focused on Tabbris once more. “Here’s the main point, kid. Being a–what was–a badass isn’t about abandoning the people who need you just because they might not have everything you want exactly when you want it. It’s about protecting them, teaching them, being there. It’s about guiding them into being the, ahh, homerun. Even if that means they’re a homerun in their own way, not the way you were thinking. And being a legendary badass, that’s where you really have to step up. Me, I plan on being the sort of legend that could leave this universe and go find another one for a hundred millennia, then come back and people would still know my name.” That feral smile had returned. “And sure, you could do that by being a…” He looked toward Athena for assistance.
“Evil bastard,” she supplied.
“You could do that by being an evil bastard,” he finished. “Do enough horrific things and people will remember you for a pretty long time. But that’s not the sort of legacy I want. Me, my family? We’re going to do amazing things. Things that people won’t just remember forever, but cheer forever.”
“So…” Tabbris squirmed from one foot to the other, fidgeting with one hand while holding tightly to Dad’s with the other. “You’re really not here just because you heard about the wings?”
There was a brief pause as the man considered before meeting her gaze. “I won’t lie to you, Tabbris, I probably would not have come as quickly. I would have come, and probably wouldn’t delay too long. But the strings I pulled, the work I rescheduled, the effort I went to just so I could get here this fast was definitely influenced because I heard about the wings. The absolute truth is that if I had only just barely heard of you and no one knew much, it probably would have taken me at least another year to get here personally. But I would have sent someone. Now, just going off the things I heard you did or helped do? Even without the wings, that would have gotten me here at least within the next half-year or so. Dyeus or not, everything else I’ve heard is impressive as hell. You’re a real badass kid, even without anything extra. But no matter how little I heard about you, no matter how little you managed, I would have come here when I could. I don’t know how they do oaths here, but you have mine on that.”
“And now that you are here,” Sariel abruptly spoke up while stepping into range of my item sense, “what do you plan to do?”
“Mama!” Tabbris took a few quick steps that way, her hand finding her mother’s as she stood partially in front of the woman. It was almost like she was protecting her, just in case Jegudiel got any ideas. “I thought you were busy.”
“Not too busy for this,” Sariel assured the girl. Her eyes were on Jegudiel himself. Not quite threatening, but certainly mixed between curious and wary. Bordering on the latter.
“There she is.” If he was worried about the look Sariel was giving him, the man didn’t show it. He simply offered her the same smile he’d given all of us. “I have to say, I thought a lot about what to say to you when we met. Everything that came to mind felt a bit too… wrong. For what it’s worth, and that may not be much, I am truly sorry for what happened to you. Not for who came of it.” He added that with a glance toward Tabbris. “But sorry for the circumstances. I mean that, as genuinely as I can mean anything. You have the vow of my name, on the cusp of the Void, I did not know what my… donation was being used for.”
Sariel was quiet, seeming to consider his words while running her free hand through Tabbris’s hair. “I believe you,” she finally replied. “And I thank you for the sympathy. But if you have come here believing that you are going to take Tabbris–”
“No,” he interrupted easily. “I only wanted to meet her, not take her. To be quite honest, impressive as she is, I’m afraid my full-intensity training course would be a bit too much. And I don’t have the free time to be away from the war for that long. Keeping her on the frontlines with me, that’s a horrific tragedy waiting to happen. And it wouldn’t be waiting very long.” He glanced toward the girl in question then. “No offense.”
“I’m not offended,” Tabbris quietly informed him. “I’d die really fast out there.”
“Which would really just blow up the whole reason I want her around in the first place,” Jegudiel finished. “So no, I’m not here to take her. Just see her and talk to her for now. And invite her and her sister there to… a short trip sometime, so we can get to know each other even better. You’re welcome to come too.” His gaze turned to my dad as he added, “You too, Lincoln Chambers. And any of your friends. I’d like to spend a little time here on the station with all of you, where you’re most comfortable. Another time, maybe we can make it somewhere else.”
Sariel looked like she was considering all of that, running it through her head several times. Finally, she exhaled and looked to Tabbris. The two of them exchanged what seemed to be a moment of silent communication, before the woman looked back at Jegudiel. “She is your daughter too. If you want to… get to know her, that is up to her. If she says no more, you respect that.”
“I will,” he confirmed, before focusing on the girl in question. “And now that that’s all out of the way… would you mind?” The man almost sounded embarrassed from his own eagerness. Like a gigantic little kid. “I’ve waited a very long time.”
Sariel, Dad, and I stepped out of the way when Tabbris glanced to us, before focusing. A moment later, her bright golden wings extended.
Seeing that, Jegudiel actually looked almost stunned for a moment. His gaze swept over the wings, and he swallowed visibly. He was clearly taken aback by the sight, even though he had not only expected, but actually asked for it. “It’s true,” he whispered faintly, the persistent doubts he had obviously held vanquished by the glow of the wings in front of him. After a few seconds, his gaze moved from the wings to her face once more. “Kid, I’ll tell you one thing for sure.
“You and me, we’re gonna be legends.”