Maven quickly came to realize why the road repair was such an unpopular request; it was boring. Even with Tess being able to near-instantly detect any potholes or irregularities with her tremorsense, the job ended up being mostly just walking along the roads and occasionally fixing an issue.

  Watching the tool they had been given work was interesting the first couple of times, but the novelty quickly wore off. The tool just scanned whatever portion of road it was pointed at, conjured some concrete to fill any holes or other irregularities that it detected, then aged the new concrete to be roughly on par with the surroundings while reinforcing the rest of the road within a hundred or so meters.

  As they had been warned, the process was noisy and did occasionally draw the attention of monsters, but that had only happened once or twice in the few hours they had been out. So, much to Maven’s displeasure, she had a lot of time to think. It wasn’t that she was being purposefully ignored by the other two or anything, but that she had withdrawn from them.

  She felt guilty about it, but being around them was making her feel weird at the moment, and she didn’t want to ruin their moods. It perplexed her, really; it was fine when they were actively working on something, but when they started to unwind and relax more, she got…uncomfortable feelings.

  It was probably indirectly Alice’s fault; she had put the idea into Maven’s head that what she was feeling might be some sort of romantic affection, but that was simply impossible. The thought was driving her up the wall, but no matter how she tried she couldn’t seem to fully put it away.

  Perhaps her father was right and she should have worked harder at controlling herself instead of doing the bare minimum her tutors required, but if he was right, it was only by accident. If he had actually foreseen those lessons coming in handy in a situation like this, then he would have had to foresee her escaping from her role as heir to the throne, and Maven knew he had harbored no intentions of letting her do so.

  Still, until this very moment, she had always been perfectly capable of staying calm, no matter the situation. Even becoming an Appointed hadn’t shaken her up as much as this, and –

  Maven paused for a moment. In a weird way, talking with Life about this did seem a little better than talking to the other gods, even Dungeons. He seemed like the type of person who wouldn’t be blinded by thoughts of love, and Maven knew that he would keep their talk strictly confidential unless she wished otherwise.

  There was a long pause, Life clearly thinking about what to say next.

  Maven thought over that for a while before responding.

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  After that distraction, the road repair continued. And, oddly enough, having a concrete situation lined up where she was going to think about the situation helped her focus. She was better able to put her thoughts away, and within a couple of hours was back to interacting with Tess and Ellie almost as normal.

  Unfortunately, it only barely helped with the monotony of the job. By the time they had finished up the roads on one half of the city, it was well past three in the afternoon, and they were well overdue for lunch. So, they took out the hoverer, set the autopilot to take them back to town, and grabbed some food from their bags to eat on the way.

  And, after that short break, they were right back to fixing roads. Fortunately for them, there was only one road in and out of the city, so they would be done after they finished this side, but it was still a task Maven wasn’t looking forward to.

  And, as it turned out, she was right to not look forward to it. It was every bit as boring as their other work had been, right up until they were about two thirds of the way done. They were fixing a hole, just like all of the other times, but this time, Tess sent the other two a window around halfway through the process.

  Ellie and Maven turned their attention to their right, and sure enough Maven could make out a faint rustling coming from beyond the tree line. She prepared a spell, and a few moments later the monsters burst from the trees, and Ellie and Maven attacked.

  It…did not go well for “those stupid goat things”. The first one out of the tree line was immediately skewered by all five Swords of Death, killing it nearly-instantly, and the second caught the full force of Maven’s spell, sending it flying back into the tree line but not killing it outright.

  By the time Maven had finished casting her second spell, two more of the creatures had fallen to the Swords of Death, and the remainder had turned to flee. She let her spell fly, killing the creature she had injured before, and Ellie killed the last of the things, leaving them in silence once again.

  “Well, that wasn’t too bad.” Ellie said, moving over to the corpses and beginning to put them in her bag. “But…how are we marking this place?”

  “I’m going to melt a bunch of snow off to the side once I’m done with this.” Tess said. “It’s not supposed to snow today, so that should be enough for us to recognize this.”

  “And your tracking magic won’t lose its potency after a couple of hours?” Maven asked.

  “Shouldn’t, not so long as we have the bodies.” Tess said.

  “Perfect.” Ellie said. “Let’s knock the rest of this out and get back to it, then.”

  So, they did. They weren’t really able to speed up the process of fixing the road, not when they were limited by the speed of the device, but they only had a little bit left anyway, so they found themselves back at the scene of their fight relatively soon.

  “Ellie, may I see one of the corpses?” Tess asked. “I only need it to cast the spell, and then we can put it back in your bag.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Ellie said, reaching into her bag and withdrawing one of the corpses. She grunted in exertion before tossing it on the ground, and Tess gave her a grateful nod before walking over to it.

  Tess took about ten seconds to chant the spell, then turned her eyes up towards the forest. “I’ve got the trail.” She said. “I’m gonna start moving forward, Ellie, you stow that body, cast a silencing spell on you and Maven, then follow me from a distance, okay?”

  Ellie and Maven did as instructed, and they were soon moving through the snowy trees, following a trail of footprints so faint as to be nearly-imperceptible. Despite the snow, the faintness of the trail wasn’t surprising; many monsters who lived in snowy areas had abilities that allowed them to mask their passing.

  Fortunately, these monsters didn’t have any of the abilities that warded against magical detection, so Tess was able to track them without any difficulty. They weren’t led directly back to the nest, it seemed the monsters had been patrolling the area for potential sources of food, but they were able to take the path quickly, using Tess’s enhanced senses to scout the area far better than even the animals and monsters who lived there.

  And, after only half an hour or so, Tess signaled for them to stop.

  They retreated from the lair’s entrance, moving about a kilometer away before dissecting one of the goats and removing its core. Tess absorbed it, and after a minute or so of silence she suddenly hissed, bringing a hand to her head.

  “Tess, are you okay?!” Ellie asked, rushing over to her side.

  “F-fine.” Tess groaned. “I put on the Mana vision and it’s really messing with my head. It’s going to take some time to get used to it, but the range is about half that of my Tremorsense, so we should be good for now. Now, let’s get back to the cave.”

  The way back to the cave was slightly slower, as Tess wasn’t moving as fast as she was before, but they made relatively good time anyway. Once they reached the cave again, Tess confidently strode up to it, then informed the others via window that there were another four monsters within the cave, young ones, by the look of it.

  Their ambush was swift and brutal. With Ellie’s initial attack taking out one of the monsters entirely, each member of the party was free to focus on one monster, and the things didn’t stand a ghost of a chance. Once they were finished, they explored the rest of the cave to confirm they weren’t missing any monsters, took some pictures of the den before and after they destroyed it for purpose of evidence, then did one last sweep around the entrance to make sure there were no tracks that would indicate another hunting party had been sent out.

  When they were satisfied that the monsters were well and truly eliminated, they packed up and made their way back to the road. By the time they reached it was beginning to grow dark, so Maven was more than happy to be able to get back in the hoverer and be on their way back to town, where they could report their work and then rest for the rest of the evening.

  right. Normally it should be Dungeons, but the dynamic these seven have going on is rather unique for Appointed. In many ways when writing, it kind of feels like they are all collectively one Appointed/god pairing, just with like this weird multiple gods and multiple "mortals" (inasmuch as Appointed are mortals anymore) thing going on. Gramps and his party are the closest thing the rest of the Appointed have to this situation, and they're nowhere near as interconnected.