Barbarian Alchemist (Princesses of the Ironbound Book 3)

by Aaron Crash

  The Princept still felt such dizzying electricity inside her. And she smelled something, something sweet, like candy vaporized into a cloud. Then she heard the giggle. There, on the table, stood a fairy, and not just any fairy, but Professor Lolazny Lyla. Her black eyes twinkled under her adorable short black hair. The fairy was slipping off her gown to show her breasts, which were surprisingly big, a little saggy, and with thicker nipples than Della would’ve assumed. The tiny little woman dropped her clothes and stood naked. One hand tugged on a thick nipple while the other touched her ohi, lost in dark pubic hair. The fairy professor wasn’t giggling anymore, but she had a dazed smile. Her eyes were shining with lust.

  Her wings fluttered, and more sweet perfume filled the air, along with a golden dust that glowed softly.

  Della froze, unsure of what was happening. What was Professor Lyla doing there? And why had Della’s warding cantrips failed?

  Beryl kissed Della’s face. “I feel dizzy, do you?”

  The Princept nodded, smiling. “I do feel dizzy, but I’m finding myself not caring.”

  The mermaid gave her lips a little nip. “Looks like we have a little visitor. I don’t mind if you don’t. I was worried you might find my other form disgusting. I don’t think that was the case.”

  The Princept’s mind seemed broken. Were the professor and the mermaid together? Was this some kind of plot against her?

  No, Beryl loved her, and Professor Lyla was a silly fairy. This was fine. And if it wasn’t? Well, she’d kill them all.

  More than that, Della wanted to throw caution to the wind. If Sarina Sia could take chances with her sexuality and her career, then Della could too. She opened her legs wide. “Fuck me again, Beryl. Fuck all of me. And let this little horny bitch watch.”

  “Oh, Princept!” Lolazny Lyla gasped. “I will watch. I’m so glad I buzzed my little butt up here. Now I can watch your lover do all sorts of nasty things with all those rubbery things. My little honeypot is dripping so much honey down my leg.”

  Her wings fluttered again. More glowing gold dust swept around the alcove. Della smelled her own sex, and the sweetness of the fairy, and the fresh perfume of the mermaid. Then she was coming again, coming on the tentacles filling both of her yearning holes.

  She woke up in her bed the next morning, relieved to find she was alone. If she hadn’t been falling in love with Beryl before their sex the night before, she was now. She could trust the mermaid—she was sure of it. Which made her all the more suspicious.

  A sweet fragrance caught the Princept’s attention. She raised her fingers to her nose, and yes, they smelled like candy.

  Why was that? She remembered going out to her sixth-floor office alcove. She remembered drinking wine, reading, and then Beryl had arrived. They’d had sex for hours, doing any number of horny things with all of those lovely tentacles. And then everything became a blur. She’d woken to the morning light.

  Had Della drunk too much wine? No, she’d gotten sex drunk on the mermaid and her wonderful new body.

  Della stretched and closed her eyes. It was Saturday. She’d go back to sleep, and she’d worry about merfolk and assassins later. For now, she could enjoy her morning and her slightly sore sex. She couldn’t have been cozier, in her warm bed, listening to the rain.

  If only Beryl had been there to enjoy it with her.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  THE DAYS WERE MARCHING onward toward the Third Exam week.

  Toriah Welldeep stood outside the Moons tower. The early evening sky, clear and sunny, didn’t match her insides, not a bit. It was a nice Thursday, near the end of March, a few days before the trouble would supposedly start. The Lover Moons would rise on that Saturday night and would be in the sky for a week. The merfolk attack would happen within seven days if it happened at all.

  The wide little woman wasn’t feeling too good. Actually, she’d felt bad for weeks now, ever since she first put on the Veil Tear Ring—not that the ring itself was bad. What it had shown her? That was the problem. Yes, Ymir was worried, but the dwab was good at avoiding him, Lillee, Jenny—all those people. School was busy, their business was busy, and the dwab could duck away when she saw them coming. Even as Ymir’s lab partner in their alchemy class, she could direct the subject well enough to keep him at arm’s length. The clansman was smart enough to let her be.

  She knew Ymir would be fine, and so would the other princesses. Those three were as thick as jewel thieves, and they should be since they were a family.

  Tori didn’t worry too much about them. Now, that girl Gatha? Tori worried over her. Tori had her other friends, not only her roommates in the Zoo, but she had friends in the kitchen, like Francy Ballspferd, who had to be a half-orc since she was so big and rough-talking.

  The dwab also had her classmates in Moons, her sophist class, and the other Morbuskor, who got together every Thursday night in the Imperial Palace’s Reception Room.

  The Ironcoats were funny, Brodor was Brodor, but Tori didn’t like that Buck Minefinder, not a bit. He wanted the Morbuskor to open up about their biology and their sexuality, which was shocking. You didn’t talk about certain things, most things, actually, with outsiders. Tori had let herself get too close to Ymir and the gang. She couldn’t let that happen because they might be friends, but they weren’t family.

  The dwab slipped the ring out of her pocket because it was high time she got back to work, trying to find out who was coming after the barbarian. Just a few months before, she would’ve called him her barbarian, but not anymore. That all had been fantasy, and she saw the truth. It was better this way.

  Ymir had been practicing with both the Yellow Scorch Ring and the Winter Flame Ring. He could wear them both at the same time and bring fire or ice easily. Tori had also been practicing with her ring, testing the limits, and figuring out the logistics of the hellhound. She was ready to use the Veil Tear Ring for real now.

  First, Tori was going to see about Linnylynn Albatross, who was coming out of the Moons Tower now on her way back home to her room in the Imperial Palace. And then? She’d see about the Ironcoats that night. She’d done most of the other faculty and had even snuck a peak into the life of Charibda’s ahmer.

  The merfolk were hard to scry—they just were. When she tried, Tori got snippets of their lives under the sea. And then she’d see a bunch of the fish folk, holding hands in a circle, and that would be it. Tori knew it was some kind of group spell, but she didn’t know how that worked. It was like they were sharing their duszas.

  So, the ring didn’t work so well on the merfolk, nor did it work on the Fayee at all. She got nothing when she tried to use the ring on Ziziva, who had been strangely quiet. Tori had also failed to get any information on Lolazny Lyla. All the dwab got was a sweet smell, which was kind of nice but didn’t help Ymir or his princesses any.

  Tori leaned up against the tower, gazed at the ground, and then put on the ring. Anyone passing by would see her simply standing there. They would think she was just resting. In actuality, her dusza would be taking a little walk.

  Around her, the world was a mixture of shadow and light, voices, people calling out, battles, all the long history of the cape. And the hellhound was there, coming for her. She’d done a little math on the beastie that dogged her steps. With the Akkir Akkor’s help, it took the hellhound ten seconds of vision time to move two feet toward her. For every day she didn’t put on the ring, it backed off a foot. So, she could use the ring for ten seconds every three days and it wouldn’t get any closer to her. The thing was, she could get lost in visions and lose track of time. However, she’d gotten fairly adept at maximizing the time she had. It was a tricky trade-off, and eventually she needed a better solution. She’d been reading up on some alchemy that might help. She was very close to coming up with some kind of spiritual doggy bone for the hellhound.

  For now, she just had to make sure her math was accurate. She hadn’t used the ring for some time, and she’d built up fourteen feet of room for he
rself—that was seventy seconds of vision time.

  Tori walked in her spectral form toward Linny. The Professor turned around, and her dark brown eyes found the dwab. That shouldn’t be possible.

  Tori was going too fast to stop. She feinted right, using tricks she’d learned in her Personal Combat Techniques class. Linny fell for it. The dwab stepped left and touched the professor’s dusza with her glowing hand.

  The dwab was taken into Linnylynn’s past, into a rich mansion in Williminaville. High gates covered in ivy kept outsiders at bay. Trees, heavy with moss, grew on the grounds surrounding more manicured gardens, gazebos, and the mansion itself. Inside, Linny had grown up knowing luxurious rooms, attentive servants, and kind parents.

  Then, one dark night, everything had changed. Linny had been up at midnight, over twenty years prior, when the Reveler Moon was bright in the sky. She’d gone outside to walk the grounds, drawn there by a presence, a darkness that she felt but couldn’t see. Had it been a demon? Or perhaps a ghost? She never knew, but she’d been young, new to her womanhood, still knocking her newly grown hips on furniture and doorways.

  The thing in the garden, that smelly thing with teeth and horror to it, had awakened something dark in Linnylynn. There were white roses blooming in the garden that night. Ever since, every time Linny found white roses, she’d buy them because they reminded her of the orisha she’d met.

  Linny wasn’t that sexual of a human, and human she was, but when she did feel the itch, when she was on her own or with a lover, she’d think of that thing in the garden and it would make her orgasm every time.

  Tori wasn’t going to waste the few precious seconds she had with that sex stuff. She skipped forward to Linny’s research in the Swamp Coast. Hayleesia Heenn had been a friend. That was all. The two had been close, though, because of their interest in the darker aspects of orisha magic. While Haylee had been a friend, Linny did meet her first lover on the Swamp Coast. He’d been a man from the Cujan family who was cheating on the Cujantown queen. The two never got caught, thank goodness. He was the love of Linnylynn’s life, and he belonged to someone else. It was sad, but it happened.

  Linny returned to teach Moons magic at the Verra Nassa University, though she enjoyed Flow magic more. She had some brief affairs with some friends and with some fellow professors, but that dark thing never left her imagination. Linny preferred men, but she could make women do in a pinch.

  A flash later, another second, and Tori saw Linny at Old Ironbound, but she hadn’t wanted to kill Ymir. No, she wanted to make sure he was successful there. As for her awkward manners and obsessions? Linny was like Gatha—more comfortable with books than people.

  The dwab heard the hellhound snarl. She saw it coming, six feet from her. Damn the sky and love the bedrock, but that putrid puppy had come eight feet in those forty seconds. A trunk-like thing pushed out from the side of its neck, a snake-like nose like the elephants had in Reytah. The new appendage withered before her eyes.

  Tori pulled off the ring, blinking.

  Linnylynn came around the corner a second later. “Well, now, that was astral projection, wasn’t it? Where did you learn to do that, Tori?” The woman’s round face was open, cherubic, and expressive.

  Tori laughed. “Professor, you must excuse me, but I have no idea what you mean. I have to get on going, but you have a good evening, okay?”

  Linny smiled. “I will, Tori. I won’t press you. However, if you ever want to talk about what you can do, we can chat over tea. I’m sure your friends have told you that I have an open mind when it comes to exotic magic. You can pierce the veil. Have you seen the Stair?”

  Tori felt a bit of sweat on her brow. She couldn’t show that she was nervous. “I live in the Zoo, Professor. I know about stairs.” She then laughed and moved off, hurrying back to her rambling apartment. It wasn’t where she needed to be, but it was a nice place to hide for a few minutes. She needed to get to the Imperial Palace to set up the food for her normal night with the other dwarves.

  She stood in the kitchen and let out a long sigh. That Linny wasn’t the assassin, but she wasn’t right in the head, either. Which left Tori the Ironcoats to investigate. But really, that nice couple couldn’t possibly want Ymir dead. They had no motive.

  The dwab had already tried Nellybelle and Darisbeau, and they were innocent. Ha, that was a laugh. They were guilty as hell, but not for trying to kill Ymir. The pair had murder in their hearts, and those two were rubbing noses every chance they got. They didn’t much care who joined them either. The humans were sexual deviants, as bad as the Gruul, but not as bad as a cuff-less elf. The Ohlyrra were positively the most perverted and deranged race on Thera, which is probably why they’d come up with the idea of the essess in the first place.

  When the coast was clear, Tori hurried to the feasting hall kitchens, where Francy and some other workers helped her get their dinner up to the Reception Room on the third floor of the Imperial Palace. The windows were open, letting the breezes in. Spring had come early, and thank goodness for that. Why bother being above ground if the weather was poopy?

  Tori got the catering tables ready and the Sunfire warmers going, and everything was nice and warm when the first Morbuskor showed. They were having game hens in a rich sauce, to cover the dry meat. Francy did a lot of things well, but the big woman failed completely when she tried to cook poultry. Also on the menu was a spicy rice dish, some vegetables, and a fruit compote. Beer and wine would flow like most nights, and yes, Brodor would once again talk about his terrible divorce. Buck Minefinder would say something inappropriate. Brandmunli would laugh. Ibeliah would be the only one with any sense, other than Tori of course. Those weren’t the only Morbuskor at Old Ironbound. There were a dozen others, dwarves from all over the two mountain ranges on Thera. Most were from the Ruby Stonehold, and so Tori recognized them because that was her home. One of them might have been from the Undergem Stonehold, but he’d never admit it. That place was secret, even for dwarves. He’d probably say he was from the Iron Stonehold in the Sunrise Mountains, or from the Diamond Stonehold in the Sunset Mountains. From imprudens to post-dominists, the Morbuskor were there to make sure the overtoppers didn’t destroy the world, and to take back any interesting ideas to their Stoneholds.

  Ibeliah and Tori were the only dwabs, and Tori didn’t count, not really. They were all nice enough to her, even if they couldn’t look at her.

  It was fine. She mostly enjoyed the setup and the cleanup, which kept her busy and her mind off Ymir. Also, it was fun to make sure everyone had enough food to eat. Gosh, even hearing the Morbuskorian language made her happy. These were her people, and there might come a time in her life when she found herself forced into marrying some human. Then finding her own people might be difficult.

  Her ahmer had a saying: Be grateful for the jewels you have today, not for the diamonds of tomorrow or the quartz of yesterday.

  Tonight, though, she was going to take a break outside in the hall, and then delve into the past of Brandmunli Ironcoat. Ibeliah was too nice and sensible to be up to no good. Tori would try the husband, and then, next week, if the college was still standing after the merfolk attack, she’d try Ibeliah.

  True to form, Brodor started in on the divorce early. Then Buck told him that he was lucky to get away from his ex-wife because marriage was an outdated institution and monogamy was a mistake. That was when Tori ducked out into the hall. Like before, she got herself settled against the wall.

  She had six feet of time before the hellhound ripped into her soul. That meant she had less than thirty seconds. She’d have to go quick.

  She had sewn a special pocket into her dress. She slid the clammy black-and-silver ring on, wanting to wipe the wet off her hand, though she knew her fingers would be dry.

  Her timer started. She started counting. One Ruby Stonehold. Two Ruby Stoneholds. Three Ruby Stoneholds.

  She sped through the wall, which wasn’t wall, at one point in the history of the fortress. In
some epochs, she was walking through air. She saw important people, human vempors and all that, but she didn’t pause. She rushed across the room, flung out her hand, and touched the spinning sphere inside Brandmunli Ironcoat.

  She had just under thirteen seconds. Linny was in her thirties, and even then, Tori had taken too long. With Brandmunli, she tried to only get him during his time at Old Ironbound. She slipped though, into his past, hurtled back toward his time with his wife in Four Roads. Brandmunli hadn’t had his Inconvenience in years, but poor Ibeliah, she was a different story.

  However, Four Roads had many dwarves there, enough for them to have a tavern they frequented when their unfortunate desires hit them. Ibeliah had hers every few days or so, and most of the time, she took care of herself, but on some nights the need was too keen. This tavern was run by fairies, and sometimes Ibeliah came home not remembering large portions of her evening, though that might have been because of the whiskey. Most of the time, she did come home relieved of her burden, and thankful for her Inconvenience Partners.

  Both Ibeliah and her husband Brand were thankful for those men that helped her with her problem. Brand felt sorry for his wife and her tragic desires. Tori felt herself drawn into the marriage of the couple, so she was delving into the lives of both.

  Most of Ibeliah’s partners were Morbuskor, but she did have one human help her. She became friends with this man, as did Brand. The three were inseparable. This mystery man had a vast amount of sexual desire, but both his soul and his face were hidden to Tori. Part of her was glad. His presence didn’t sit right with Tori. The mystery man was friends with the fairies who ran the tavern, and he knew their secrets. He might be the only human who did. Even though this was fifty years ago, Ibeliah still thought about this man, and how the fairies loved him.

  And then Tori was with the Ironcoats in their room at Vempor’s Cape.