“Jeez, kid. You’ve been a Countess for ten minutes and you’re already staking cunts out the front of your castle,” Suri laughed, bending to pick up her sword.
“It is justice. I may be a ‘greensick maiden’, but I am the descendant of conquerors. This man wanted to take my home from me—well, let him rot on the walls of it.” Kitti straightened up, looking down at the body of the man who had occupied her home. “Gruna—you are my father’s most loyal and experienced drughi, and you obeyed his final wishes by protecting me. We will work together on setting Solonovka to rights, and once the county is stable, I am appointing you regent of Bas.”
“… Regent?” Gruna blinked. It was the first time I’d ever heard him speak.
“Yes. I am not wise or strong enough to rule, yet.” Kitti turned back to Suri, drawing herself up. “Countess, pending the restoration of my lands, I humbly request to be made a Ward of Racsa and to serve as your squire until I come of age in two years’ time.”
“A squire?” Suri glanced at me and drew a deep breath. “Berserkers don’t, uh, really have squires. And I’d say you’re plenty wise, for your age-”
“For my age.” Kitti took a step forward. “Gruna is well-traveled and experienced in handling the matters of the county, but all my father ever taught me was to be a quiet, obedient wife to some southern lordling. This is the frontier land, Your Grace: the wild men of the southern reach will not respect a girl. But I can make them respect a woman, if I am well trained in combat and statecraft.”
“I’m on board,” I said, shrugging. “Suri?”
Suri’s lips parted, and she looked back to Kitti, struggling with something in herself in silence for a few minutes. “Alright. Guess we were doing that anyway, weren’t we?”
“Thank you!” Kitti pulled her rifle back from Letho’s hands, then genuflected in front of Suri with the stock resting on the ground. “I swear to train as hard as you desire, my lady.”
Suri’s cheeks reddened with a dark cinnamon flush. “Okay, well, first lesson is that Berserkers don’t kneel to anyone, Kit. Anyway, if you’re my squire, you know what that means, right?”
“I expect you will have a list of duties for me.” Kitti nodded, pressing her lips together as she bounced up to her feet.
“Yeah, well, squires take care of their knights’ mount, right?” Suri grinned. “That means you’re gonna have to learn to handle Cutthroat.”
Karalti let out a shuddering snort, shaking her head. “Come on, Suri! That’s just mean!”
“Don’t worry, Kitti.” I wandered over to the suddenly crestfallen girl and gave her a friendly clap on the shoulder. “Cutthroat’s ever only eaten the face off every second person who’s ever tried to saddle her. The rest just end up with scars.”
Chapter 28
The colorful hallucinations from the battle tea were in full swing by the time we finished mopping up and got shown to our rooms. Suri and I fell on each other before the door was even closed. I peeled her out of her armor, shedding it piece by piece on the floor, and half carried, half dragged her to the bathroom. We didn’t actually make it to the water: Suri pressed herself against the vanity counter and hooked her legs up over my hips, moaning as I kissed from the base of her sternum to her neck, tasting salt and the faint scent of jasmine and sandalwood. She lifted her chest, pressing her skin to my mouth, her breasts sliding smooth and heavy against my cheeks.
“Ah! Mmmmnngh-oh!” Suri’s scarlet hair clung to her face as she tipped her head back and to the side, baring the long, dark line of her throat. My heart sped, and my mouth watered as I nuzzled up and bit down on the side of her neck. Her skin was so soft it felt like fur against my lips. She shuddered in my arms, gasping, then moaning as the points of my teeth pressed into her skin.
“Harder!” She clutched the back of my head, pushing it forward.
A flicker of anxiety made me hesitate, but when I pushed in between Suri’s thighs, they were slick with need. Skin-hungry, I pulled her hips forward and thrust into her as I bit. At the first taste of blood, my unnaturally slow heart surged to life, pounding in my ears.
“Mmph!” I clamped my jaws down, holding her like a lion with a gazelle by the throat, and drove into her with sudden urgency. Suri gasped, pressing up against my mouth, and I felt her shudder with need. Her muscles relaxed, leaving her hungry, willing… then ecstatic, as I clutched her close and fucked her down against the counter.
“Yes, yes, yes-” She panted the word, over and over, then let out a staccato cry when I reached up to stroke one of her nipples in time with the sucking pressure of my mouth. My teeth were to either side of her carotid, not penetrating it, but I could feel her racing pulse as she built toward an explosive, eager release. The sensation blended with the wet heat of her body, the rhythmic clench of her body around mine. My eyes rolled, then fluttered closed as brief, hallucinatory images and sensations overlaid the pleasure. I was flying, diving, two hearts pulsing like engines deep in my chest. The muscles of my back and shoulders worked like I had wings, flexing with every thrust, as a distant, alien excitement built with the heat in my own body. It was the dual heartbeat that tipped me off—and briefly shocked me out of my trance.
“…Karalti?”
She did not reply, but I knew was there with me, with us—silent, breathless, watching and feeling through the Bond the way she had watched the gauntlet in Lahati’s Tomb. I jerked in surprise, just as Suri climaxed with a deep, throbbing spasm that pulled me into my own release. And as I came, I heard and felt Karalti’s telepathic gasp of empathic pleasure.
“FUCK!” I snarled, pulling my mouth up from Suri’s neck. She was glassy-eyed and flushed as I dragged her down to the floor and roughly guided her onto her hands and knees. She let out a cry of surprised pleasure as I mounted her from behind, caught up in some instinct that was only partly human. I clutched at her waist with one hand, reaching around to cup her breasts with the other, and took her a second time as the flow between Karalti and I deepened and broadened into a two-way river of sensation. She was curious, nervous, excited as the unfamiliar sensations of my body echoed to her nerves… and when I came again, the orgasm rocketed between us like a sonar pulse, back and forth, as she reached her own private climax somewhere beyond the keep.
“Oh… god… holy…” Gasping, still bucking into Suri’s body, I collapsed over her back and pressed her chest down to the floor as I strained for more purchase, more depth, more… everything.
“Mmmm.” Suri stretched underneath me, resting her cheek against her arms. Her voice was thick and slow with afterglow. “Post-combat sex. The actual fucking best.”
I was tongue tied, my senses anchored somewhere between my own body and Karalti’s. It was all I could do to lie over Suri’s back and catch my breath.
“You ‘kay?” She murmured.
“Yeah.” My voice was hoarse—because god help me, I was still hard. Karalti’s own spasms of pleasure were echoed in places in my body that didn’t rightfully exist. I felt her self-delivered orgasm at the root of my cock, driving me to keep thrusting, keep moving… until finally, she finished. The strength of the Bond began to ebb and narrow, and I was able to breathe without feeling like I was doing it with two pairs of lungs. “Yeah. I’m okay. Something really weird just happened.”
“Was it this?” Suri reached up to gently touch the deep bloody marks on her neck. “Because I’m fine, I swear. I’d have said something if I wasn’t.”
“No, it wasn’t that. It was…” I flushed, suddenly ashamed. “Everything’s okay. Just… uhh… it’s something to do with the Bond. You know, my link to Karalti.”
“I know what the Bond is, you dimwit.” Suri chuckled, and reached back to cup my head. She drew my face to hers and kissed me over her shoulder, long and deep, and the flush of shame faded as I lost myself in the feeling of her lips on mine. When we parted, I slowly eased out of her. She looked back and down, and her eyebrows rose.
“Well well well,” she said. “
Guess we need to make Meewfolk Battle Tea a regular part of the castle diet?”
“If it lasts more than four hours, I’m calling a doctor.” I cleared my throat and kneeled back. “Holy shit.”
“What’s this about Karalti?” Suri scooted over to the vanity, searching for a towel.
“I-I’ll talk about it later. Give me a minute to talk to her.” I scrubbed at my eyes, reaching back out to my dragon—and finding a channel of blissful post-orgasmic fatigue as she lounged in her own afterglow.
“I’m sorry.” Karalti’s telepathic voice was sheepish, but also a little blurry. “I should have asked, huh?”
“It’s okay.” I said—and let her feel—that it really was alright. “Just took me by surprise. You’ve uhh… you’ve always tuned out when Suri and I are together. You’ve never tuned IN before.”
“I know. But this time, I felt you start to feel good and I just…” Karalti trailed off, and I felt a small, sweet wave of afterglow pass over me like warm sunlight. “I guess I just wanted to know what it was like.”
There was a heavy pause between us. Suri threw me the towel and picked herself up with a pleased groan.
“So… was it good?” I gave Suri a smile as she went over to the bathtub, spoke the command words to heat the water, and stepped over the rim to ease down.
“Yeah. It was.” Karalti hummed. “Suri is really awesome, isn’t she?”
For a second, I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly. Then I realized that, yes, she had just said what she’d said. And meant it.
“You… uh… Yes. Yes, she is.” I rubbed myself down, then got to my feet and wobbled over to the tub. It was easily big enough for two people—or three—and in that moment, I felt a deep surge of resentment toward Ryuko’s developers for insisting on a 6-hour grace period between Karalti’s use of the Polymorph spell. “Look, I’m going to have to talk about this later, alright? But rest assured that I am not mad. I’m whatever the opposite of mad is, but also combined with an unstoppable prize-winning erection.”
“Believe me, I know.” Karalti’s voice turned dark and sly. “I can hear your thoughts too, remember?”
I winced as I eased down into the hot water between Suri’s knees, sitting with my back to her front. “After this, I seriously doubt I’m going to ever forget that again.”
***
I may or may not have been preoccupied with thoughts of Suri, Karalti, and myself in various configurations as we led the ships home on the morning of the 28th of Boseg Hava. I flew ahead of the frigates with Karalti, daydreaming for most of the four-hour flight until we came within view of Karhad. For the first time since I’d arrived in Myszno, the city was celebrating.
The marketplace was packed—a festival, by the look of it, with the townspeople feasting as best they could to celebrate the liberation of Bas and the restoration of all ten counties. Beyond the marketplace, I noticed that something had already changed about the city’s skyline. There was scaffolding everywhere.
“Wait a second. Are they... are they rebuilding the cathedral?” I zoomed my vision in, and sure enough, the big building now covered in walkways was the half-destroyed church of Khors. It had been third on my list of big projects to fund, after the university and hospital. “Did Vash come back with money, or did I miss something?”
Karalti flicked a wingtip, gliding easily on the warm currents of air rising from the city. “I dunno. Check the KMS?”
I opened the menus and flipped through to Karhad’s screen. When I saw the stats, my eyebrows shot up. “We have nearly a thousand volunteers mobilizing in Racsa. Like… spontaneously. By themselves. I did not order a thousand volunteers.”
“Well, duh. I’m pretty sure that volunteers who are ordered to work are called ‘slaves’. Wanna go say hi?”
“Let’s do it.” I banged my fist down on top of my helmet, and assumed the position.
Karalti let out a melodious, ringing roar, then pulled her wings into a swift dive. She tilted to the left as we descended toward the marketplace, roaring a second time as we passed the walls of the Merchant Ward. I adjusted position as I sensed her intent, hanging on tight as she rolled in the air over the crowd below. People squealed, cheered and waved to us; children jumped up and down, priests bowed their heads. She pulled out to glide gracefully around the perimeter of the market ward, high enough we didn’t blow anything over, low enough we could hear what everyone was shouting.
“Lord Dragozin!”
“Long live House Dragozin! Long live Myszno!”
“Is that the Volod?”
“BURNA MALADIK!”
I unequipped my helmet to wave back down, returning to the saddles grips as Karalti and I wordlessly synced through the bond. I dropped back down and held on as she barrel-rolled overhead. Cries of wonder were drowned out by the growing roar of the airships as they came in low behind us. I looked back to see the decks lined with Yanik and Meewfolk, all of them waving and whistling to the townsfolk.
“I didn’t know the Renown boost was going to make THAT much of a difference!” I almost shouted to Karalti telepathically, before remembering that she could hear me over the noise. Musicians had struck up in the market, blasting cheerful music on fiddles, flutes and zithers.
“They’re happy that the harvest is gonna come in,” Karalti said. “The Demon ruined their lives, and now they see things turning around. I’d be happy, too.”
As we drew up on the castle, I couldn’t help but notice that it was bustling. I frowned, trying to make sense of the number of people inside. They were all over the scaffolding, reinforcing it and adding more.
“Hang on—I DEFINITELY did not order repairs on the castle. I wanted to rebuild the university first.” I leaned out over Karalti’s shoulder, squinting into the wind. “Holy shitsnacks. Are those the volunteers?”
“I dunno.” Karalti replied. “Let’s go down and ask Istvan. I can see him from here.”
Istvan stood beside a table manned by four guardsmen, talking animatedly with Rudolph as the guards processed lines and lines of people. There wasn’t enough room to land in the courtyard: Karalti had to fly past the Gatehouse and land outside the Orphans Camp, scattering a crowd of curious, bored Meewfolk and awestruck volunteers.
I surveyed the commotion and struggled to understand how and what was happening. Carpenters sawed at logs, while masons shaped blocks of stone to repair the curtain wall. Workers shifted wheelbarrows full of rubble, or walked beside grunting triceratops as they hauled creaking wagons of stone and sand up the road. The cleanup was going at a surreal speed. Like players, NPCs had Inventories and Menus. They crafted by running through kinetic mini-games that distilled crafting into a fun, but challenging act of pantomime. As I watched, a Mercurion [Master Stonemason] and their assistants rapidly stacked and fit drystone into a broken doorway, while others pried broken paving stones out of the courtyard and replaced them with new sheets of slate.
“My lord—we heard the news of your victory!” Istvan seemed genuinely cheerful as I pulled up at the table in a daze. “As you can see, it was not only us here at the castle. Word has spread of the fall of Zoltan Gallo.”
“But who... how...?” I bought up the KMS logs, scanning for activity, but there was no history of anyone with access to the system rustling up all these volunteers. “Was it Bubek?”
“No, I haven’t heard from him. Believe me, Your Grace, we weren’t exactly expecting this ourselves.” Istvan planted his hands on his hips, looking out over the crowd with satisfaction. “They began showing up yesterday.”
Numbly, I checked the KMS. Sure enough, we were in the right Renown tier to command about a thousand volunteers. Emphasis on ‘command’.
“My lord, there are two matters I must bring to your attention,” Rudolph said, as drawn and dignified as always. “There are guests waiting to speak with you in the great hall. Starborn, in fact.”
“Starborn?” The giddiness faded around the edges, replaced by wariness. I’d had very mi
xed interactions with other players in Archemi.
“Yes, Your Grace. You hired them for Kingdom Quests, and now they wish to introduce themselves and possibly pledge service to Myszno specifically and Vlachia in general,” Rudolph said. “Also, I have taken the liberty of contacting an artist to help you design livery and heraldry suitable for your House. We cannot fly the standard of House Bolza. The designer is charging a very reasonable rate within our budget.”
“I... thanks. Man, I don’t know what to say.” I rubbed my eyes, then let out a tense breath. “I guess the first thing I need to do is go and play greeter.”
“Welcome to the life of nobility,” Istvan replied dryly. “Oh, also: Vash has been in contact. He says they have begun extracting the goods from the dragon graveyard, and all is going well. There is, as Vash so eloquently put it, ‘enough gold in that place to make me cough so hard my asshole popped out like a mushroom’.”
I shook my head in amazement. “Vash should have been a bard, not a monk. The man is a poet.”
“The man is something, that’s for sure.” Istvan let out an irritated sigh, but he couldn’t hide the smile at the corners of his mouth.
“Thanks for handling this.” I rolled my shoulders, glancing up as the shadows of the frigates fell over the skyport. “I’m grateful for your work, both of you. Rudolph, I’ll meet with your artist after talking with the Starborn, so that we can sit down with Suri and hash something out. I think you’re right. It’s about time we had a flag to rally behind.”
Suri was with the ships, so I went to meet with the players alone. I entered the great hall to find a knot of five people talking and laughing—four Meewfolk and one human—and a second human sitting apart, wrapped in a feathered grey cloak, her shield resting against the edge of the bench beside her. She had a boxy kind of face, with a hard jawline and very large eyes. Her hair was brown, falling like a mane halfway down her back. When she heard the door open, she looked over—and my eyes widened as recognition dawned.
“Nethres?” I called, picking up my pace. “Holy shit.”
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