Dear Diary,

"Bloodlust: rage, fury unbound, But bound to visceral thirst, Hunger for life feasts on death." - Tabitha Diaz, Doctrine of Tabitha, Book of Bloodlust

There are many who think they understand Bloodlust without experiencing it first hand. Some may even be correct. But many who believe so understand Lust, Rage, or Madness, but not the Divine mating of all three. Deciding whether that merger is considered Holy or Unholy is best left to those who have experienced the state themselves. As Tabitha describes, Bloodlust binds together the primal urge to procreate, the raging need to destroy, and all consuming incoherent belief that those things are one and the same. When those three overwhelming impulses bind to one another, they create a singular, uncontrollable desire to visit violence upon villain and victim alike. - Priestess Most High Above All Others, Archmage Imperator Saffron Aetos-Diaz, Commentary on the Doctrine of Tabitha

Now that she says it, now that I really think about it instead of assuming and emoting, I'm not really sure if Saffron has ever felt Bloodlust the way I have. Yeah, she's a lusty wench just like yours truly. Yeah, she's dark as ninety five percent cacao chocolate bars. I can't remember off the top of my head if she's ever engaged in deliberate blood play with me in the room, but if she suggested it I would not be surprised in the slightest. Yeah, she's got twenty tons of rage over the loss of her family and the state of the world all in an adorably squish eighty pound meat sack.

What I'm not sure about is whether that burning rage ever really combines with her need to get her ashes hauled. I know I have, and I can't even say it was a slippery slope. There were plenty of actual spots where I could have said 'no, this a bridge too far'. Whether it was going through with my declaration to Anundr that I would fap thinking about how hard I made him die, or getting off granulating Ericson's head between my thighs, both of those were big warning signs that I was maybe getting a little bit on the Bloodlusty side. By the time I hit Persia with my madness meter pegged by D, I'd hit the point of full on Bloodlust Deity, and if maybe I could have stopped at that point, I sure as shit was in no mood to after those violent rapist fucks cut Anna's arm off.

I'm not sure if what I did to the Mother of Water Panthers counted or not. On the one hand, I was not thinking about my lady bits in the slightest at that time. On the other hand, as Saffron so eloquently explained on my birthday, my Maw is a place of intense sexual gratification for my Worshippers. So I might want to start thinking of it as a sex organ. Sure as shit what with the rest of Mimic being a mass of tentacles, the rest of me is.

Marie obviously gets it. She's Queen of the Murder Fuck Cult, and there's little more Bloodlusty than murderfuck. I mean, it's right there in the name. I guess in a very technical sense I could get off choking somebody to death with tentacles, but at least for me that seems way too controlled for proper bloodlustiness.

Siobhan... This is neither a complaint nor a diss. In fact, it's the closest I can come to a maybe lack-of-degeneracy compliment. Yeah, I've seen her get angry, and I've seen her stand up and declare that she's full of righteous rage about something, but she's too sweet and good and kind to combine 'need to injure' and 'need to fuck'.

And now I've got the very awful impulse to teach her exactly how good that feels. Which I'm not gonna do, both because she's not into masochism or sadism, and I think that might be a key component of the whole thing, and I'm not gonna force someone to get into something they're not into. Also, because she is sweet and pure and good and kind and I think I need someone like that loving me to make me feel like I deserve to be loved.

Which is not something I thought I'd be thinking about when I started talking about Bloodlust, but here we are.

So after staying up all night, D spent a big chunk of the day in bed. A rotating group of Maenads kept him company, but then I think in the absence of the Academy's 'always stuff for Maids to do', that's their natural state. They're big cats, they laze around a lot. Not judging, just observing.

My ladies and I mostly went back to work. A couple of the Yards Maenads helped me with the kittens and Siobhan, in the former case by playing with them, in the latter case by lying down next to her and providing a purring fuzzy body pillow. Near the end of the day, she woke up and waved me over.

"Why haven't you tried this?"

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I shrugged. "Not fuzzy... which is a stupid reason now that I think about it, but more importantly don't know how to purr on command."

"May I ask that you try tomorrow?"

I nuzzled her, my arms around her and the Maenad supporting her. "Darling, you can ask for anything, and I'll try to get it for you. Now, you feeling up to dinner downstairs?"

Turned out she was not, so she had hard tack, jerky, and water for dinner. I tore it up into bite sized pieces for her. For everybody else, we stuck with food we could mass produce, what with the visiting kids and Maenads.

Turns out big public baths are a thing in parts of here and now Greece, which is why for D the weirdest thing wasn't everybody nude in a tub the size of a swimming pool, but him having little kids calling him 'grampa'. Really kind of adorable watching him. Funniest thing was watching the smaller girls using him... not exactly like a diving board, and not like a pool floaty, but sort of like a floating island they could clamber onto, then jump off into the deeper part of the Bath.

As I watched them, I pulled Saffron in to snuggle as we floated in the 'adults' section of the Bath. "Kinda half expected some of the kids to, y'know, ask about body parts, what with him floating face up half the time."

Saffron rolled her eyes and shook her head. "I keep forgetting you come from a place that makes Dan prudishness look positively bohemian. Likely the only one of ours young enough to never have seen that bit of a man or boy child at some point is Daya."

I opened my mouth to say something about David being pretty much Daya's age, then realized exactly how stupid I was being and shut it again. After a bit I said, "why hasn't Daya asked?"

She hugged me. "Sorry, love. I know you've done your best to be all things to all our girls, but she in particular is less comfortable talking to you than myself, or more frequently Siobhan."

I really did feel some kinda way about that, but told myself to take a fuckin' seat. "Yeah, don't be sorry. Not your fault. Dunno if it's my fault. But the important thing is that she has someone to talk to."

"Careful."

"What's wrong?"

Saffron let the hug melt into something the tiniest bit less innocent, if completely passive and as safe for family viewing as the rest of the whole 'we were all in one big mixed Bath together'. "Domestic Mature Goof puts me in the mood to do things we ought not be doing in front of the children."

"Wanna visit the Bedroom?"

She shook her head, slowly and lazily. "Shall we let this simmer a bit?"

I hugged her. "Sure, Kitten."

Marie and D starred at the Maw drive-in, with the ladies making commentary like some kind of weird pornographic Mystery Science Theater. Funniest part, for my money, was how seriously Madeline took everything. It wasn't Tallulah's 'not knowing how to let go', or Karen's 'driven to excel', which just makes sense given she was Kitten's rival, but a weird kind of reticence. Not like she didn't want to be there, or didn't want to cut loose and have fun, but like she'd forgotten how.

Or maybe she just liked others pulling her in rather than diving in on her own. Might want to talk with her about that on Friday, just to make sure she's okay and enjoying herself, not forcing herself to do something she doesn't want to.

Couple highlights today. The funnier one was when Insomi got her sisters to herd D down to the stables to help them care for their pets. For a dude who literally rebuilt somebody into a humanoid tigress for the express purpose of adult fun time activities, he certainly did not seem copacetic with Nightmares. Gotta hand it to him, he didn't run away or back down, but he definitely had some tense shoulders by the time they finished up. Even worse when Baby kinda snapped at him. Not in any kind of 'tryna eat him' way, just in that 'scared feral animal with a strange person' way.

The less funny, but maybe nicer one, was when I lay down with my Blend down for Siobhan to use me as a body pillow. The Maenads took turns bringing her bite sized noshes, while she just lay there stroking my back. Didn't realize I was purring, and had been for a while, until it was time to start gathering folks for dinner.

Of course, the most surprising one was when Karen showed up. Not because of Karen, but because when she showed up on the Courtyard as I followed D and the girls back to East House, she had a familiar face hovering behind her.

"Marshal!" I stepped over, arms outstretched.

"Champion." He nodded.

I kinda half lowered my arms. "Aw, c'mon, Marshall. Call me Diaz."

He grimaced. "I'd worry about being too familiar with someone in my chain of command, or with a student I'm teaching, but..." He shook his head again, his hands twitching almost like he wanted to respond to my ongoing half-raised arms.

Of course Kitten came to my rescue. "Probably best you get used to it. She intends to seduce you at some point in the future, after all."

duBois gave her a kind of half bow. "Imperator! I thought you'd be... in..." He facepalmed. "Apologies. I think seeing Diaz here threw me off a bit." Then his brain caught up with what she'd said, "wait..."

Saffron gave him no chance. "Please, William. This is meant to be a social visit. To introduce you to our daughters, many of whom are likely to attend the Academy at some point in the future." Before he could really process that, she said, "Call me Saffron, or Aetos-Diaz if you absolutely must." She paused again, tapping her teeth. "I suppose for Tabitha's dear mentor I could even tolerate Aetos. Since I intend to assist her."

He sat there gawping until Karen slipped an arm around his, escorting him toward North House. "Welcome to the Aetos-Diaz Homestead, Marshall. Where everything is more terrifying than it ought to be, and you're safer than you would be anywhere else in the world."

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