Dinner went … okay. There were questions and answers, but we avoided talking about so of the bigger stuff, like the narrative, and the exact nature of Uther Penndraig. How Reir hadn’t made the connection to Arthur … well, he’d grown up his whole life knowing about Uther Penndraig, the mythical figure who had done so much that a lot of it people were willing to believe was mostly re legend, and this Reir had also grown up knowing his own Arthur Blum, and the idea that his now-passed friend was, in so sense, the reincarnation of Uther Penndraig wouldn’t have been promoted to consideration, not without so details that I had left out of the conversation.
I wasn’t lying, per se.
The main course was duck, stuffed with herbs and seasoning, then crisped to perfection, and the dessert was a chocolate cake. It had none of the usual experintation that Bethel had been showing recently, which I hoped wasn’t the result of Pallida being critical (even though it was a marked improvent over the Full Grebellian Breakfast).
“So,” said Reir. “Are you guys going to do so kind of loyalty pledge?” He moved his fork between Amaryllis and Lisi.
“Those aren’t real,” said Amaryllis.
“Yes, they are,” said Lisi.
Amaryllis stared at her.
“I didn’t an anything by it,” said Reir, holding up a hand.
“They’re propaganda,” said Amaryllis. “Part of the deliberate mythology.”
“They’re grounded in second century practice,” said Lisi. “That doesn’t an that they aren’t real.”
“From a practical standpoint,” Amaryllis began.
“Concede that you were technically incorrect,” said Lisi.
Amaryllis glared at Lisi’s set face. I wondered whether this was just what it was like in the Lost King’s Court sotis. I watched the muscle in Amaryllis’ jaw briefly clench and unclench.
“I don’t want to get into an argunt about semantics,” said Amaryllis. “I concede that I was using imprecise but colloquially correct language.”
“Colloquially incorrect language,” said Lisi.
Bethel said into my head.
“No, the aning of colloquially,” Amaryllis began, before shaking her head a bit. “It doesn’t matter, and I just said that I don’t want to get into a debate about language or semantics.”
“Do you want my loyalty pledge or not?” asked Lisi.
“I,” started Amaryllis, looking flummoxed. “I do.”
“Good,” said Lisi. “Amaryllis Penndraig, tenth of her na, I, Lisianthus Penndraig, fourth of my na, do pledge my everlasting loyalty to you, let my soul be condemned to the hells for eternal torture at the hands of vile devils should I ever betray you.” She gave a curt nod.
“Er,” said Reir. “That’s not how it is in the books.”
“It’s historically accurate,” said Lisi. “The actual punishnt was only used on three occasions.”
“Right,” said Reir. “Just so we’re clear, I’m not pledging loyalty to anyone.”
“No one expected you to,” I replied.
“I’m actually not sure what it is you need from ,” said Reir. He gave a little grin. “Other than help with optimizing your character, naturally.”
“Yes,” said Amaryllis. “That’s what we’d like.”
“That … that was a joke,” said Reir, staring at her.
“Mary is bad at jokes,” said Valencia.
“Mary?” asked Lisi.
“It’s what we all call her,” said Valencia.
“A nickna, given to by a friend,” said Amaryllis.
“Sorry,” said Reir. “You want to manage the magical character sheet?”
“It doesn’t make sense as a nickna,” said Lisi. “A-muh-rill-us, Mary isn’t a diminutive.”
“She was that kind of friend,” replied Amaryllis with a nod.
“Reir, think of yourself as a consultant,” I said. “A very confidential consultant, sworn to secrecy, and hopefully not in any actual danger.”
Reir’s mouth opened and then closed for a bit as he looked at . “Can we talk in private for just a bit?” He held up his thumb and forefinger, half an inch apart.
“Sure,” I said. But not really. “We can go into the next room.”
I pushed back from the table and went ahead of Reir, just to make sure that Bethel wasn’t going to try to pull anything. She seed to have a problem with him, which was her own damned fault, because she’d been the one giving him a dozen different drinks and an assortnt of snacks the first night he’d co over (not to ntion the bar of gold).
“Okay,” I said, once we were alone. The room was, thankfully, normal, just a plain sitting room with so books on the shelves and minimal adornnt, though I was fairly sure that it didn’t fit in with the previously established geotry of the house.
“This is all so fucked,” said Reir. “You know, I didn’t co to the athenaeum for this? I thought it would be years or longer before I saw anyone from Sporsan, least of all you, and you’ve changed so much, and there’s apparently so serious magic floating around, and you’re not you, and …” He shook his head. “You just plopped a quarter million obols in my lap like it was nothing, and I have no idea what role Lisi is playing in all of it, but I’m with a princess, just like we’d always joked about, and it’s all just way, way too much, way too fast.”
“So you’re bowing out?” I asked.
“No,” said Reir. “No, I didn’t say that, I just wanted to talk to you, or whatever of you is left, even if you’re so weird alternate version of yourself.” He shrugged. “Too much cross-talk going on in there, and Lisi … she’s great, nuts, but great, and …” He let out a breath. “Pretend it’s one of our gas,” he said. “Pretend that we all got off-track sohow, talking about Animalia rights or accessibility or gender politics, like we always did, and you’re there trying to pull everyone back into the session, kicking and screaming. That’s all I want.”
“O-kay,” I said. “Not my forte.”
“No shit,” replied Reir. He was fidgeting and looking around.
“It’s hard to think about things that won’t blow your mind,” I said. “Or things that would be far enough off topic that they wouldn’t just loop back to how crazy everything really is.” I paused. “Hang on a second. Okay, how about this: there’s this world made up of islands that float through the sky, gentle places that have no predators, no harmful magics, no exclusions, nothing like that, just people farming.”
“Always with the floating islands,” said Reir. “Fine, so how does it go shitty?”
“It … it doesn’t,” I replied, narrowing my eyes.
“It always goes shitty, that’s just how you think,” said Reir. “They’re, what, facing resource scarcity, their livestock have died and they can’t replace them, the islands have another ten years of fuel left before they crash into the monster-covered lands below?”
Those all did sound like things that I would have used in the past. “It’s not a setting for D&D,” I said. “It’s just a scenario to think about.”
“Then how do they keep everything balanced then?” asked Reir.
“I don’t know,” I said. “They’ve got so kind of biomanipulation going on, and they’re capable of creating their own custom species to make more food than they need, which ans that labor is what’s limiting them more than anything else, in terms of what’s expensive and what’s cheap. Custom plants that they can weave the fibers of, custom homunculi for simple, unskilled labor, biomanipulation on people in order to cure diseases and prevent most aspects of senescence … that kind of thing. So, what’s your character like?” That was a classic DM tactic; people loved to talk about their own characters, and if I needed Reir to get his head on straight, I was hoping this helped.
“What kind of institutions of learning do they have?” asked Reir. He moved over to the couch and sat down, and I took a seat opposite him.
“Groundseers and windseers,” I said. “I’ll grant that it’s not a big community, so there are relatively few people involved, not anything like S&S, or even our old high school. Groundseers are focused on the ground and the islands, the different species, the biomanipulation, that kind of thing, and the windseers are focused on the skies, birds and weather.”
“Okay,” said Reir, taking a breath. “But the groundseers are the more important of the two, right?” he asked. “Like, the bioengineering is how they keep everyone fed, how they grow trees to make wood for houses, how they make whatever flying mounts they have, --”
“No flying mounts,” I replied. “They’ve been trying for decades, but you can’t just scale up a bird --”
“Because of the square-cube law, yeah,” nodded Reir. “Should still be possible to ride a flying creature of so kind though, there are like, four primary species of flying mount, and I don’t think all of them use magic to do it.”
He caught slightly off-guard with that. “Right,” I said. “Doesn’t an that it’s trivial. So if you’d like, you can be between the two institutions, soone hoping to synthesize their disparate fields of knowledge. The windseers train the birds that fly between the islands, and at least a fraction of them are veterinary experts. So maybe that could work for you.”
Reir frowned. “Except this isn’t a ga that we’re ever going to play, is it?” he asked. “Because you’re so kind of warrior mage now, in service to a princess, just like you always wanted.”
“I can’t speak for the other Juniper, but I never wanted to be a warrior mage,” I said.
“Oh, I ant more the ‘service to a princess’ thing, less the warrior mage part,” said Reir with a smile. “Tiff used to call it monarch fetishism.” I winced at that. “Yeah, out of all of this, I keep thinking back to that poster, and how you’re just casually standing next to Amaryllis Penndraig now, and it’s just … let’s say you’re right about everything you’ve said. Well, then it’s like so malevolent genie ca in and granted you your dreams, at this absurd cost.”
You’re more right than you know. “He was obsessed with her?” I asked. “The other Juniper?”
“Eh,” said Reir with a shrug. “We didn’t really talk about that kind of thing much. I an, both Tiff and Maddie, I found out after the fact.” He was watching . “You think you’re from Earth, yeah? Sa thing over there?”
I nodded. “I’m sure there’s so universe where Juniper Smith isn’t a shit.”
“At least you know it,” shrugged Reir. “I’ll give myself a point for that.”
“You really shouldn’t,” I replied with a sigh. “You’re feeling better though? Cald your nerves?”
“Yeah,” said Reir. He rubbed his neck for a mont. “Thanks.”
“Sure,” I said. “You’re … a friend. I guess.”
Reir laughed. “Yeah, I know what you an. That’s what I tell people.” He looked over at the door back to the dining room. “Say, however you cock things up, can you sohow manage to not fuck with what Lisi and I have going on?”
“Which is?” I asked. You telling her everything she wants to know, presumably because she pressed you hard enough?
“I have no idea,” said Reir. “I just don’t want you to fuck it up, alright? You can do that for ?”
“I … sure,” I said. “I can try. Seems really foolish to , from what little I know of you, and if you have so kind of idiot crush on her, --”
“She uh,” Reir swallowed. “She gave a hand job.”
“Fucking what, ” I said.
He grinned at . “Yeah, I don’t know, it was … it was a thing that happened.”
said Bethel.
“I just …” I squeezed the bridge of my nose. “Why?”
“Like I know?” asked Reir. “And co on, it’s not like you’re the handjob police.” He paused. “Wait, is that what this is all about? You went to join the handjob police?”
“Reir,” I said. “Jesus Christ just,” I shook my head, because I had so many questions, and I was picturing it, despite the fact that it really wasn’t sothing that I wanted to picture. “Let’s shove all this shit into so cupboard that we never speak of, okay?”
“Yeah,” said Reir. “Sorry, it’s just … you’re the only person I know at S&S, and this is part of the confusing shit that’s been going on in my life in the last handful of days.”
“Right,” I said. “The realm of things that I’m equipped to deal with has been growing lately, but that --”
“Yeah,” said Reir, sitting up a bit. “Got it.” He paused for a mont. “Are you and Amaryllis … ?”
“Are we what?” I asked.
Reir made a handjob motion.
said Bethel.
“I think I’ve had enough of you,” I said. “Amaryllis will want your opinion on the best possible builds, given what’s been done in the past and what our options are for the future, but I frankly think that tonight has gone on for long enough. We’ve got class tomorrow.”
“Seriously?” asked Reir. “You’re still going to class? And you think I’m going to class?”
“I have to go,” I said. “I’m at S&S for a reason. I need to attend classes in order to have the instructors sign off on the special form. Once all that’s done, I’ll get to level 30 in both Still Magic and Vibrational Magic in short order.”
“Yeah, but why would I go back to class?” asked Reir. “Isn’t this going to be, like, my job now?”
“We’re not hiring,” I said. “I an, I should actually double-check with Amaryllis about it, but … Reir, I don’t want you to freak out --”
“Too late,” he replied.
“I’ve killed a lot of people since I ca to Aerb, probably in the double digits, more if you include all the people my companions have killed. A lot of people have tried to kill . One of my closest friends died a few weeks ago.” I swallowed. “There’s a good chance that this is what your life has been building up to, and I don’t think that I can dissuade you, but if I were you, I would continue on with classes while spending my nights hoping and praying that I never had to deal with the shit that’s plaguing my good friend Juniper.”
“My diocre friend Juniper,” said Reir, but his grin faltered. “How bad is it?”
“It’s escalating,” I said. “What kind of shit did I throw at you when you were level 14?”
“Oh,” said Reir. “But … the world isn’t like that, there aren’t just arbitrarily powerful threats, and there are governnts to deal with that shit, the empire, you were always bending over backward to explain why these were problems that only four or five people were working on instead of dozens or hundreds.”
“I don’t want to tell you more,” I said. “I want you to be able to walk away. I’m hoping … I’m hoping that maybe it will work if I let you know enough, so you can make your own choice.”
Reir stared at . “Shit.” He let out a breath. “Let think on it.” He looked at the door. “Do you think Lisi will want to walk her back to the dorms?”
“I have no idea,” I replied. “Try not to complicate things. We have a lot of moving parts.”
For Pallida Sade, being with the Council of Arches had taken a turn for the worse, in the past few days. Really, if she had to trace it back to one thing, it would be that she didn’t have her hat anymore. The hat allowed her to change her appearance, replacing pink skin with that lovely creamy color humans sotis had, which would allow her to blend in. Pallida liked being renacim, but they were a damnedably conspicuous and staggeringly rare species. Her armor could cover her well enough, but the armor was conspicuous too. The hat would have solved her problems quite handily, but it was, unfortunately, sowhere at the bottom of the Bryllyg Sea. The ship she’d been traveling on had capsized and sank in a hurry, and while she was a strong swimr, it was a stronger storm. Everyone else aboard had died and been whisked away to an eternity of tornt in the hells, but Pallida had been reborn, as she always was.
It had been three hundred years, and she still missed that damned hat.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
This whole life had been just a little bit off. The life before, she’d lived to the age of eighty and taken a controlled death, right next to a woman who’d gotten pregnant specifically for the purpose of bearing Pallida to term. It was a truly, horrifically soft way of both leaving the world and coming back into it. Not that Pallida could rember anything of what she’d been like at eighty one life ago, and not like she could rember the first few years of her life, but she was a strong believer that infancy set you up for everything else, and up until she was able to secure a release from the guardianship of the Renacim League at the age of ten, she’d had a coddled little life.
There had been a few tis when Pallida had considered herself the greatest thief in the world. She was close enough in age to rember a few of them, breaking into the most secure places in the world, stealing from the rich and famous, and dabbling in related arts like forgery or assassination. There’d been two tis she’d been so successful in her criminal enterprises that she’d ended up becoming a de facto governnt, and thankfully both those tis were well in the past, because there was no one around who rembered what a wretched ruler she’d made.
This life? She had no great deeds to her na, as yet. She’d barely done any training either, aning nothing much that would be carried on to the next lives. Sotis there were nothing lives, ones where nothing much happened, nothing was gained for the future, nothing learned or experienced, and Pallida had made peace with that, but this life seed to be at a critical juncture, the stars aligning just so, Uther (or soone like him) erging back into the world, all the old threats rearing their heads. It wasn’t a great ti to be feeling off.
Pallida walked through the streets of Li’o, with her inky black armor engulfing her up to her throat and down to her fingers, but with her weapons left back in Bethel. The armor certainly made a statent, though for those who knew what a renacim was, the pink skin said quite a bit more. She caught a few looks, and a handful of stares, but not as much as she might have in the past. Li’o was a cosmopolitan city in a cosmopolitan area, and there were so many species floating around that people just accepted the fact that not everyone looked alike. There were two hundred mortal species, give or take, and so variations among them, enough that it took actual work to morize them all. Most people didn’t like doing actual work, and for everything that set Pallida apart, she didn’t like doing work either.
The trick for finding the underworld, so far as Pallida thought there was one, was that you had to work your way up from the absolute scum. There were bad neighborhoods, even in a magocratic city-state like Li’o, and even bad neighborhoods had places where people gathered, usually for drink, drugs, or sothing similar. It was one of those places that Pallida slipped into, knowing that it was going to be rough going for soone as clearly upper crust as she was.
Officially speaking, Amaryllis hadn’t given Pallida a task. Instead, what Amaryllis had said was that Bethel was one of their strongest mbers, and one that benefited greatly from entads, including those entads that were normally nearly worthless because of the restrictions on who could use them. Amaryllis hadn’t told Pallida to go out and steal anything, but the subtext was there.
And Amaryllis herself … Dahlia had left her mark on Pallida, that was certain. Pallida was old, not just as old as the hills, but older than them, as old as the world itself, by certain accountings, and Dahlia had been, simply, the best, the perfect complent, the perfect friend, the perfect lover, second to none. Or, at least, that was how it felt to Pallida in her 20s; her 30s were indistinct, and she couldn’t rember any of her 40s yet, from any of those lives, nor anything beyond that, but she also couldn’t rember being young and reading about so great love in those past lives, which she surely would have recorded for posterity.
Amaryllis wasn’t Dahlia. Physically, they were nearly identical, and there was so overlap in their personalities, so of which was, maybe, because they were both Anglecynn princesses. They had that sa drive to them, that sa ferociousness, the sense that if the end of the world was coming, they would be there with sword in hand … but there were also a lot of differences. Amaryllis was cold, sotis in a teasing, mocking way that was really quite fetching, and sotis simply in how she didn’t respond to the things that she should have. Pallida was no stranger to seduction, she had lifetis of experience to draw on, but with Amaryllis it all fell flat, and not in the ways that it typically did. Maybe it was that Pallida was trying to force it, or maybe it was complications with Juniper, but it all felt just a little bit off.
And Raven was around too, which wasn’t what Pallida would have preferred, even though they’d been friends once-upon-a-ti. She could rember the falling out more than the friendship.
Not to ntion that steadfast allies had died in the very recent past, Everett, O’kald, and Gur Dehla, not all close friends, as such, but people that could be depended upon from one life to the next.
There was the whole ‘end of the world’ thing happening again too. That wasn’t great. It was just a whole lot of not great things going on, frankly, and she was in a slightly-off life.
At least no one had called her ‘palisade’, so she had that going for her.
The bar was called the ‘Errant Shaft’, presumably for bawdy reasons, and Pallida Sade was better than anyone in it. She had more skills, more connections, more material wealth, more knowledge, more training, and she was, certainly, older. It was a mixed-species bar, the kind that people had stopped calling mixed-species bars, and now just called bars, because that was the way of the Third Empire. People still segregated themselves though, that was only natural.
Pallida sat down at a table near the back, interrupting a conversation going on between four human n. They looked her up and down, taking in the entad armor, the pink skin, and the cheerful smile on her face.
“A round of drinks, to start us off?” asked Pallida, grinning at them.
“Sure,” said one of the n with a nod.
Pallida whistled for the bartender, a loud, sharp whistle she’d mastered thousands of years ago, and had cause to dredge up more often than might have been expected. She ordered the drinks with a gesture, and hoped that the bartender wasn’t going to serve up the lowest quality, highest priced drinks available.
“I’d like to do so buying and selling,” said Pallida, still holding her slightly predatory smile. She wished that she’d brought her trident, for a prop.
“There’s a market,” said one of the n. Pallida liked to judge books by their covers, and he seed like the most guarded of the lot, not the kind of man she was looking for.
“The kind of market I’m looking for?” she asked.
“Depends on what you’re buying and selling,” he replied.
“Oh, sundry things,” said Pallida. “Hard to find things. I’m new in town, you see, so perhaps soone in the know, soone who can procure things that are hard to co by.”
“Lorentz,” said one of the n. The others looked at him as though they didn’t think highly of him sharing that information.
“An address?” asked Pallida.
The man hesitated, then gave one, which drew more looks from his fellows.
And with that, Pallida popped up from where she’d been sitting, paid the bartender, and was on her way. With luck, she would be in touch with soone of real power in another two or three stops.
After Lisi and Reir had gone, we had a eting about it. I was tired, and not really all that interested in a recap of everything that had just happened, but Amaryllis was a little bit worked up.
“She’s as difficult as I rembered her being,” she said. She turned to Valencia. “Can we trust her?”
“Mostly,” replied Valencia. “She thinks that this is a chance for more power than she would ever have had inside the Lost King’s Court. The biggest risk of defection will be if she starts to view herself as subordinate to you. She took the loyalty pledge seriously, though it was more in the sense that she was making a precommitnt than that she so fully intends to be loyal. It was calculated.”
“Naturally,” said Amaryllis. “And Reir?”
“He’s in over his head,” I said.
Amaryllis cleared her throat and looked over at Valencia.
“Oh, Juniper is definitely right,” said Valencia. “He’s in over his head. Lisianthus manipulated him easily enough, and anyone else he ets with more social skills will probably be able to do the sa, though perhaps with a bit more effort, after tonight.”
“I assu you’re against moving him here?” Amaryllis asked .
“The only reason we’d do that is to keep him safe,” I said. “And while Bethel is likely one of the most secure places in existence right now, that would also an keeping him with us indefinitely.”
“Until the end of our ti at S&S then?” asked Amaryllis.
“Maybe,” I said. I shifted in my seat, then turned to Valencia. “Am I just pushing him away because of stupid reasons?”
She blinked at .
Loyalty Increased: Valencia the Red, lvl 28!
“Oh,” she said. “Yes and no. You’re trying.”
“Not terribly comforting,” I replied with a frown. “I suppose I’ll defer to the Council.”
“I’d prefer him away,” said Grak. “What he offers can be extracted from him.”
“rcenary,” said Amaryllis with a raised eyebrow. “But I suppose I concur.”
“You don’t think the sa of Lisianthus?” I asked.
“With respect,” Amaryllis began. “Aside from the ga he played and potential narrative revelations he might provide, Reir is no more special than any other high schooler. By comparison, Lisianthus, for all her problems, was given the sa intensive education and opportunities that I was. She was grood for power and importance.”
“She’s a diocre blood mage,” said Bethel, tapping her fingers on the table.
“Yes, well, we have so significant problems with hiring people, don’t we?” asked Amaryllis. “Valencia can do screening, but to put soone at the core of our team raises a lot of risks.”
“What would she even do here?” asked Bethel.
“I don’t know,” replied Amaryllis. “But she is, at the least, soone that we can find a use for. Reir, by comparison, becos useless after we’ve had a week or two in the ti chamber to fully debrief him.”
I frowned slightly at that. “Assuming he’d consent to that … I’m not willing to call him valueless, given the impossibility of a full debrief. There would be years upon years of my campaigns in his head, and even if those didn’t directly map to Aerb, then he’d at least be another person who knows how I think as a DM.”
“He’s a security risk,” said Grak, shaking his head. “He’s already proven that.”
“We did what we could about that,” said Amaryllis. “He knows so of what’s presumably going to be public when Uniquities inevitably leaks, or what an outsider might observe from putting the pieces together on their own.”
“Yeah,” I said. “The bigger risk right now isn’t that he says the wrong thing to the wrong people, it’s that soone kidnaps him and tries to use him against sohow.”
“I’m willing to do a weeks long debrief in the ti chamber,” said Amaryllis. “Ideally we would get so form of communication entad that would allow us to remotely bring him in for conversation when needed.”
“Do we have one of those?” I asked. Parson’s Voice was short range, and wouldn’t work outside of (roughly) the sa large city, not that we’d want to outfit him with a tattoo, given how expensive they were, and the fact that he would be privy to conversations we’d want to keep private.
“We don’t have an entad,” said Bethel. “Lisi has one, a quill linked to its duplicate, though there’s a day’s delay on use. I don’t know where the pair is.”
“They’ll probably be together,” I said. “Assuming that we don’t bring her with us when we leave.”
“Why would they be together?” asked Amaryllis.
Valencia narrowed her eyes at . “She seduced him?”
“Is that a question?” I asked.
“I think it’s what you think, but it’s not what I think, so I’m confused,” said Valencia.
“Here,” said Bethel. She held out a hand and replayed the conversation I’d had with Reir about the hand job.
“What,” said Amaryllis. “That’s,” she looked at Valencia. “He’s lying.”
“How accurate is that playback?” asked Valencia.
“Extrely,” replied Bethel.
“Then I don’t think he’s lying,” replied Valencia.
“I don’t think we need to get into this,” I said. “I also think that Reir told that in confidence.”
“More fool him,” said Bethel.
“It’s important to know what their exact relationship is,” said Amaryllis.
“Well,” said Valencia, touching her finger to her chin. “She’s Hermione, and he’s Ron, so --”
“No,” said Amaryllis. “Just, no.”
“I’m interested,” said Bethel with a smile.
Valencia had to have known that Bethel was just humoring her for the sake of exasperating Amaryllis, but she continued on all the sa. “Well, Juniper is Harry, because he’s the protagonist, and Lisi is Hermione, because she’s a girl, she has an overbearing personality, and she focuses on intellectual endeavors. Reir matches Ron’s strategic genius, the way he’s overshadowed by his family, --”
“Sorry,” I said. “Reir’s an only child.”
“His taphorical family,” said Valencia. “Anyway, what Lisi sees in Reir is likely the sa as what Hermione sees in Ron, which is that he’s got this spark of intelligence he applies only to certain things that capture his imagination, like Quidditch or wizard’s chess. Plus his courage, naturally.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But you tried to do this with the houses too, and it’s just --”
“It’s the sa thing that Mary does,” frowned Valencia.
“It is not, ” replied Amaryllis.
“I read the books very quickly, and might have missed sothing,” said Bethel, “Did Hermione give Ron a handjob?”
“This is too vulgar,” said Amaryllis. “And no, she didn’t.”
“It’s implied in the text,” began Valencia.
“Is it?” asked Amaryllis in disbelief.
Valencia huffed. “Well, you have to understand that the books were written for children, but given that sexual curiosity is completely normal in the early and late teens, their close proximity with one another, their history of dating others, then yes,” said Valencia. She folded her hands. “The lack of explicit sexual activity probably has more to do with the marketing of the books and the social mores of both the author and audience.”
“How does any of this help us?” asked Amaryllis.
“You were asking what’s going on between Lisi and Reir, and Valencia was interpreting, like you asked her to,” I said. I looked at Valencia. “You were saying, essentially, that they were attracted to each other?”
“Yes,” nodded Valencia. “Though specifically with regards to manual release, I think it’s also likely that she either had so existing fetish, pattern of behavior, or commitnt to that course of action. Say, for example, she had wanted to get so experience with boys following a relatively cloistered existence at Quills and Blood, as I think is common there, sapphic experiences excepted.”
Amaryllis cleared her throat. “Well, good to know,” she said. “If he’s not lying, then I suppose it’s good that it’s not base seduction.”
“She knows herself well enough to know that seduction isn’t likely to work,” said Valencia.
“Noted,” said Amaryllis, her voice firm.
Valencia looked like she wanted to say more, but she held her tongue.
Bethel thought in my direction.
I replied.
said Bethel, with a ntal ‘tch’.
I replied.
said Bethel.
I replied again, as I used blood magic to slow my heart rate and suppress my blush.
said Bethel. Her tone was teasing, with sothing in the ntal connection beyond just the change to how the voice appeared in my mind.
I said.
asked Bethel.
Slowing down the flow of blood through my body was harder than it sounded, because I had control of my blood, not my heart. My heart was still getting its own hormones and electrical signals and whatever else, and it was kicking into overdrive, half because of the inherent danger at the prospect of turning Bethel down, half because there was a portion of my brain that was devoted to thinking about sex.
I asked. Valencia and Grak were talking about death of the author, and I wasn’t at all listening to them.
There was a flicker of black and I was transported from the dining room, where we’d been sitting there talking, to my bedroom. My position hadn’t changed at all. This ca as a surprise, but it was part of a technique that we’d developed a week ago. Sable could take in any object that it was touching (so long as you were touching it for more than ten seconds), Bethel had enough effects going that she counted as touching everything inside of her, and there was nothing to say that Sable had to spit things out from the sa place as it took them in. Normally that last bit didn’t matter, since Sable was a glove, and it was a difference of a few inches. When Sable was inside Bethel, however, it ant instantly moving objects through the house.
“There,” said Bethel, “Private.” She was standing in front of , still human-sized, as she’d been in the dining room, though in her more traditional gossar dress.
“I don’t know if you’re just needling ,” I said. “And if it’s not just that, not only that, then I don’t know what you would get out of it.”
“Because I can’t feel physical pleasure?” asked Bethel.
“For a start, yes,” I said. “So far as you’ve said, you have nothing like sexual need, sexual pleasure isn’t part of your sensorium, and you can already feel … well, damned near everything else, whether the other party consents or not. So I just don’t,” I squeezed my hands. “I don’t know what’s in it for you, other than to make fun of for things outside of my control.”
“Perhaps I want to make you happy?” asked Bethel. “Or perhaps I’m just curious.” She sat down on the bed beside and used a hand to smooth down the bedsheet, the combination of illusion and physical force immaculate, as though she were really there. It was easy to forget how deliberate she was. “Do you think that was what it was for Lisi? She wanted to see what it was like?”
“No clue,” I said. “I barely know her.”
“And what is it about that doesn’t appeal to you?” asked Bethel, looking over. “I can provide nearly any sensation you would like. I can take any form that you think would please you.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I an, on the surface, that’s a pretty good deal.” I fidgeted. “Leaving aside so of the more complicated feelings on the matter, like the feeling that I would be following in Uther’s footsteps,” I swallowed at that, and avoided looking at her face, because she must have thought of that, “It’s not what I’m into.” I paused. “I wrote this campaign setting, flesh.txt, sort of a … well, pornographic worldbuilding, this fantasy world just made for … not sex, exactly, but for my own lewd interests. I assu you’ve snooped enough to hear about it.”
Bethel nodded.
“Anyway, there were magic items there, not entads, since they weren’t singular, but sothing close, and they could amp up sexual desire. Rings, usually, or chokers, things that could be worn while naked.” I stopped and sighed. “If we found sothing like that, and you consud it, then maybe it would be more appealing to , if that makes sense? If you got sothing from it, rather than just making happy? I don’t know. The idea that you’d be touching , and that it would be no more pleasurable for you than touching a piece of wet cardboard …” I trailed off. “I guess for that would be worse than nothing, even if there was a physical response.”
“You understand that’s what it would be like for her, don’t you?” asked Bethel.
I sat in silence for a mont. “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe. To be determined.”
“And then?” asked Bethel. “If you love her, and she loves you, but there’s still no spark of sexual love between the two of you?”
“Co on,” I said. “What is this? You’re going to go from propositioning to relationship counseling?”
“Just curious,” said Bethel. “It might be my imagination, but part of the reason you’ve turned down is that your moral code dictates that you would, one day, have to explain it to her, if we had sex? And you imagine that she wouldn’t take kindly to that.”
I shrugged. “The thought crossed my mind. It’s not a secret that I would want to keep, and it’s not one that I would want to tell. That’s not the primary thing stopping though.”
“It’s the idea that I would get nothing but an experience I’m curious about?” asked Bethel.
“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t know. There was a ti when I would have jumped at the chance.” I frowned slightly. “Don’t tell him, but sa probably goes for Grak.” Two, three years ago? Maybe less. Maybe a lot less. I’d slept with Maddie, after all, and that was equally ill-advised, the pursuit of sex because hey, it was just sex. Even without the depression and the listlessness, I’d have tried it, with both Bethel and Grak, even if it wasn’t my thing.
“And if I do tell him?” asked Bethel.
“Then we would talk about it, and that would be fine,” I said. “Maybe he would learn about , and I would learn about him, and it would be … whatever. I just thought that it would illuminate things for you to know that. Maybe ‘jumped at the chance’ is the wrong phrasing for Grak, but I would have, maybe, I don’t know, been really careless about it. Even though it’s not,” I shook my head, then looked over at her. “If you want, I can help you pick soone. Man or woman. I wouldn’t think that trust would be a big deal, given your virtual inability to be hurt and massive firepower, but --”
“You’d be mistaken,” said Bethel. “Trust goes beyond what can be physically inflicted upon a person. If you allowed the opportunity to pleasure you, and I was terrible at it, then I trust that you would do your best to be honest with , and to soften the blow, to tell what I was doing wrong, how I could improve, that you would take my feelings on the matter into consideration. You would be nice.”
“I’m not really that nice,” I said.
“You would still be nice to ,” said Bethel. “Careful and considerate, not because you were afraid that I would tear you limb from limb if you said the wrong thing, but because you have a core decency to you.”
“I think you’re really overselling ,” I said. “Like, a lot.”
“Perhaps,” nodded Bethel. “Oh well.” She sniffed slightly, more performance, for my benefit, nothing more. “Rember the offer, if you’re ever in the mood. Would you like to return? Amaryllis would like to speak to you.”
“Sure,” I said. “Thanks for the pep talk.”
“Anyti, kiddo.” Bethel smiled at , and there was a blink of darkness that saw sitting back in the chair I’d been in when I left the dining room.
Everyone else had left and the dishes had been cleared away, leaving just Amaryllis, who was sitting beside , just as she had been. She gave a stifled sigh of relief, and pulled away the paper that had been sitting in front of . I reached for it first though, and she let take it.
Took J for a private talk -- Bethel
Bring him back when you’re finished -- Amaryllis
In one piece
Please
“You shouldn’t have worried,” I said.
“No, I should have,” said Amaryllis. “Verbalizing that worry was probably unwise though, or at least aningless. You’re fine?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Are you going to tell what that was about?” she asked.
“Oh,” I said. “Just … stuff.” I swallowed briefly. “Juniper and Bethel stuff. I can tell you, if you’d like, but it’s kind of personal, and I don’t think anything good would co of us talking about it.”
“How are you feeling?” asked Amaryllis.
“Eh,” I said. “Yesterday was a long day, and today was too, and I have a feeling that it’s just going to be a series of long days until we’re out of here.”
“Ti chamber,” said Amaryllis.
“Yeah,” I said. “I might have to use it to stretch the days out. Get so howork done, get so more sleep in.”
“I did your howork already,” said Amaryllis.
“Oh,” I said.
“I won’t be offended if you throw it out and do it on your own,” said Amaryllis. “I know you had so preconceptions about what this would be. If running through the equations on your own is what will make you happy …”
“It’s a fantasy,” I sighed. “I know it is. Not even one of my top fantasies, to be honest, it’s just, growing up, reading about wizarding schools, going to the College of Winterhold, I thought maybe this was going to be more of a lull. I wish that Valencia was right, that it was, in so way, Hogwarts.”
Amaryllis nodded. “Sorry.”
“S’okay,” I said. “Where are the others?”
“Getting rest,” said Amaryllis.
“Well, we should gather them up,” I replied. “It’s late, but the jail doesn’t have set visiting hours, so … ti to go visit my ethics professor, I guess.”
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