by D. R. Rosier
We’d gotten maybe another thousand. So far we’d lost five of the soldiers, and Carl seemed to be damaged. I was starting to wonder when Linden would call the retreat, and then he did.
As we raced down the walls I had a little over half my magic left. I immediately pumped a quarter of it into the wards, both to kill more of the attackers before they breached the wall, and for the more obvious reason of covering our retreat.
All of us sent one more attack over the walls, using our magical senses to target them.
Alethea said brightly, “I’ll take us, hold on everyone.”
I couldn’t help but return her smile, you’d think we’d just been playing games or something the way her eyes twinkled.
I felt relief as the elemental fire surrounded us and the town of Cliff’s Edge disappeared. We were all safe, and Carl was being attended by Amy and looked like he’d be fine. I couldn’t help but wonder how many more the wards would kill, and how pissed they’d be when they found a deserted town…
Chapter 10
It was late when we arrived, so we said our goodbyes knowing we’d be debriefing the queen in the morning, even though I was almost positive she had seen it all through scrying. I figured I’d check on the horde tomorrow, see what shape Cliff’s Edge was in and if any other towns were in danger. I kind of expected them to go into the mountains at this point, but I wasn’t positive.
Apparently Serina had missed me because we were barely back in the rooms when I was tackled. It took me a minute to get my bearings and return her hungry kiss. A tenseness I hadn’t been aware of left my shoulders when I took in her scent. I tried not to be overbearing about it, all my mates were more than capable, but my instincts didn’t like when I was too far away to protect them.
She broke the kiss and started to pull off my clothes as she said sharply, “You pushed that farther than I expected, it’s good to have you home. You’re filthy.”
She continued to strip me off while pulling me toward the tub, apparently I wasn’t the only one who’d been worried. I caught sight of Tina’s amused expression as she filled the tub with water before leaving the room. I’d guess it was because the queen was undressing me and clearly planned to wash me. It was clear to me though, she’d just been worried and wouldn’t take her hands off me because it reassured her.
“We’re all fine Serina, and it’s good to be back home,” I said in a soft tone.
She nodded but continued to undress me before pulling off her own nightgown and getting in the large tub. Ari, Alethea, and Sienna all stripped and joined us with smiles on their faces; it was probably the only tub in the castle that was big enough for all of us, just another benefit of marrying a queen.
I could see the worried look fall from her face as we washed each other and I stole kisses every chance I got, not necessarily on her lips. I gave her neck, throat, and shoulders equal attention. She hadn’t needed to get clean like the rest of us, but I knew it would help calm her, not to mention the fact I just wanted to have my hands on her. The atmosphere in the tub slowly changed from worry to reassurance, and then finally to lust.
Not just for the two of us either, my sharp hearing picked up the increase in breathing and heartbeats for all of us.
I pulled her toward me and kissed her, this time with a little heat and desire thrown in. Her breathing picked up further and she matched my kiss as it grew more demanding. Her soft supple body felt so good against mine, our flesh rubbed together with the light wet friction of the sudsy water. I gasped into her mouth as she reached under the water and started stroking me. I could feel the eyes of my other mates on us as I pulled her into my lap.
I broke the kiss and gazed into her eyes, whispered, “I love you Serina,” as I lowered her slowly onto my hard length, joining us together.
She breathed out a sigh of ecstatic pleasure and leaned in to kiss my neck and shoulders as she swiveled her hips when our flesh met together.
She whispered breathily in my ear, “I love you too Marcus.”
I held her by her ass cheeks as she started to slowly ride me, barely raising up off of me as she grinded and swirled her hips. I felt other hands on us and turned my head, only to be kissed by Ari as she stroked both my and Serina’s body. I could also see Alethea and Sienna very close together; they were both watching us and seemed to be touching each other.
I slipped one of my hands off of Serina and found Ari’s swollen sensitive lips. I slid two fingers inside her wet heat and drew a gasp from her lips as I thumbed her clit.
It was hard not to notice the lines blurring between them over the last couple of months, as they grew less shy about sharing pleasure between them while with me. I wasn’t sure if they ever did so alone, but that wouldn’t faze me either.
I broke the kiss with Ari and turned back to lock eyes with Serina as I felt her core tighten around me. I pulled her in for a kiss and pushed up into her hard. She whimpered into my mouth and started to tremble as the wet hot friction of her tight core milked my entire length. Her walls undulated and fluttered along my pleasure.
I felt Ari’s hand down where Serina’s and my body met, I could tell she was manipulating Serina’s hardened nub. Serina seemed to roll from one orgasm into another. It was all too much, the lust and the five of us together, which while becoming more common still didn’t happen often, and it was the first round. Serina’s grasping milking heat pushed me off the ledge and my body was filled with bliss as my balls tightened and pumped my essence into her body.
I heard Alethea and Sienna make sounds of pleasure that told me they were about to blow. Serina started to come down finally and claimed my mouth with a passionate kiss at the same time Ari’s tight passage started to grasp at and tremble around my fingers. We all stayed there a few moments as we came down from our blissful pleasure, then as if it occurred to all of us at once we left the tub, dried off, and continued our night on the bed. I had three more mates to please with my length, my hands and my mouth, and I was sure Serina wasn’t done with me yet.
It was going to be a late night…
I took in a deep breath, my nose assaulted by hundreds of scents. But one was more powerful than the others. Chocolate chip cookies.
I opened my eyes and sat up. Once again I found myself in the crazy kitchen. Absently I picked up a cookie and started to eat it.
The goddess was a young girl this time of maybe ten years old. She had the same red hair, and those startling eyes that seemed to hold the stars in them. I felt the presence of a goddess though, something vast that I’d never be able to understand or even simply see.
“Goddess, to what do I owe this pleasure?”
I wasn’t being sarcastic. Surely she had more important things to do than to speak with me. I wondered if she’d tell me how I was supposed to beat this newest enemy, which quite frankly scared the piss out of me. I’d had my water and air elemental in my mind and their thoughts and motives were so alien I didn’t understand them. How much more strange would a being of un-life be?
She shook her head as if in answer to my silent question. I couldn’t help the smile that broke out on my face as her pigtails cutely waved back and forth. She scowled at me, which just ended up making her look even more cute. Hopefully she wasn’t in a smiting mood.
She sighed, “I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know. You already have it within you to win, but you’re so dull minded I fear you won’t figure it out.”
I was a tad insulted by that, but compared to a goddess I supposed dull minded was just the truth of it.
“So no hints?”
She snorted, “You mean more hints? I haven’t given enough? No, merely this dream already tells you things and I’ve given you all the help I can. Free will is important; I can’t fix this for you. After all it was mortals that created the problem in the first place. You need to fix your own mess. I already helped as much as I could when I sent you there.”
“So how does that mean I have free will then? If you ploppe
d me here to take care of a problem?”
She frowned, “I judged you and sent you where you deserved. It’s not any devotion to me or because of me that you will deal with this. Let’s say you had an ant infestation on your land, so you go out and pick up an anteater and drop it in your back yard. Did you take away the anteater’s free will, or is it merely doing what is in its nature when it has dinner?”
That was more than she’d ever said to me before and I kind of understood it. Still, I wasn’t sure where to go from here. How was I supposed to fix it? I had no idea what I supposedly knew already.
I ate the second cookie. I really didn’t have a choice. If I tried to take my mates and run for it, eventually we would all be caught and killed. The idea was disgusting to me anyway, even if I could escape, I’d be leaving behind a world of people to die and that was… distasteful.
I think I understood what she meant about having the dream itself telling me something, it told me I was right about the demon, the story was more than just a legend. Unfortunately I had no idea which parts of it were true or not. I’d do what I would have to keep Serina, Ari, Alethea, and Sienna safe. Anyone else I saved would just be gravy.
It was a lot easier to classify a threat that way. Saving the world against a demon was just too big, too much pressure. The idea of keeping my part of it safe was much more manageable.
She’d been silent for a while as I thought things through, I didn’t think she’d anything else to share.
I smiled and said, “Thanks for letting me finish.”
I took a big chug of milk to wash down the cookie as the dream kitchen faded.
The next morning after the sword dance and practice, we sat down for breakfast after getting cleaned up. I’d also spent some time scrying and had something to report, although I only knew where, not why or where they were going to end up.
Serina said in a pleasant voice, “The others should be here soon, I asked them to join us for debrief and planning session.”
It wasn’t long before Carl, Steven, Sally, Linden, and Maggie joined us. We ate in a companionable silence before we started.
I went over everything from my point of view. I felt weird about it, but I also told them of my dream last night, and that it was my third one since I’d arrived. No one seemed to actively disbelieve me, which was a relief. From there the rest filled in the blanks from their point of view. When Linden’s turn came and he finished up he added a few things.
Linden said, “I’ve checked things out with scrying, the town is pretty well gutted but they’ve already moved on. I’d like to be dropped off with soldiers and builders to help rebuild the town. I also plan to repair the wall and make it a defensible town. I mean no disrespect to Elven magic, their wards worked better than I expected, but it wasn’t as powerful as a spell would be feeding it magic over months and then years.”
I nodded, “I’m not offended, I originally made those wards to be personal, not to defend a wall. I’m sure the spells are much more complex and able.”
Serina sighed, “You’ll get that aid, as well as planting seed when you discover the extent of the damage on the farms in that area. Just let me know when you’re ready to go and we’ll get a fast travel mage to take you. What about the horde, do we know where they are?”
I spoke up, “When I tried to scry them this morning I couldn’t find them at all. I tried focusing on the individual goblins I’d taken note of, luckily a few of them survived. They are underneath the mountains, traveling through tunnels going east. As for when or where they’ll come up and be a threat I couldn’t say. I plan to scry them daily to keep track. If they’re going all the way across it may take them almost two months.”
Maggie asked, “Do you think they will?”
I shrugged, “It’s just a feeling. I think they’re going to the same place our goblins went, which means nowhere in Cirenthia, otherwise we’d have seen them again by now.”
Serina nodded and pursed her lips before she asked, “Should we tell the Empire what we know and believe? If it truly is a demon from our lost past...”
Sally asked, “Why would we want to do that?”
Serina sighed, “I wouldn’t mind their mages and the imperial family to end up in a troll’s stomach, but the truth is their citizens are much like our commoners. They have no say in their rule. Even with that said, I wouldn’t risk any of Cirenthia’s people to save them. But a warning of some kind may be in order. If we’re lucky their huge armies will gut each other. At the very least it will slow down whatever preparations they’re making to invade us.”
I nodded. “I agree, although how do we make contact? I could probably send a message to the mage officers I let go in Valley Pass. Unless there’s another way? From what I understand it’s a couple of days through the pass, then a month’s journey to the northeast to their capitol for a normal message.”
Sally nodded soberly.
Alethea added, “I’ll also tell my father and uncle. I hope…”
She kind of trailed off. I knew what she was thinking, there was an agreement for volunteers against the Rhimera Empire, not the demon. It was absurd to think they wouldn’t help, but then life was full of little absurdities.
I could see it in her eyes when Serina decided on a course of action.
Serina turned to me and said, “Send those mages a message, let them know our goblins disappeared assumingly into their lands, and another group from the Southern Mountains appears to be going their way. Let them know our theory that it may have something to do with the demon legend.
“But that’s all. Tell them nothing about our preparations or security. Not even if we are willing to help, let them decide on the next step.”
After that meeting life went on. Until the group we were following made it to their destination there was no knowing where the demon was, or when it would attack. As best we knew that would take months. As a kingdom, we continued to prepare for war in as balanced a way as possible to prevent major hardships to the commoners.
There was never a response to the message I’d sent to the mages, which was more than okay with me. I had no desire to cozy up with a governing system that was so morally bankrupt. The mage system might not be the best either, but at least the commoners were free to do as they wished within reason. There was potential for abuse, but it was on the personal mage level, not on the societal level.
I continued in much the same way as before. I studied, practiced, built my businesses, and most important to me, spend time to nurture our family connections. We also made weekend trips to the Elves, many of whom despite my pessimism indicated they would help their neighbor be it against the Empire or the goblin horde.
Over the six weeks I managed to learn that triage healing spell, along with spell wards. The differences being of course, it was more than one element, didn’t depend on any one person, and there was one shared pool of magic to power them all. I was also getting better at reading the language in general and picking up the subtleties of a spell as my vocabulary grew.
At the end of the six weeks the tunnels turned north where the east-west direction of the Northern Mountains met the north-south direction of the Eastern Mountains. The continent itself curved north at that point, the mountains not all that far from shore, it was a confirmation their destination was indeed in the Empire somewhere.
The goblin horde quickly left Cirenthia behind, but that didn’t make me feel all that much better, I was sure they’d be back, and with a demon leading them. I still didn’t have a clue what I was supposed to already know that would defeat the demon. It hardly made me feel any better that no one else seemed to have a guess as to what it could be either.
My businesses truly started to prosper at that point. Indoor plumbing for more than bathing seemed to be catching on along with a variety of other businesses.
On the personal side, Sienna was starting to show as she entered the second trimester. From what I understood, Ari wouldn’t start showing for another few
months. Just to make my life more interesting I’d managed to knock up Serina and Alethea as well. Not that it was much of a surprise with the amount of times we’d been together.
It would have been a miracle if they hadn’t been with child yet.
Even worse, whenever I so much as appeared to want to coddle and protect Sienna they all took up against me. I was usually good about not being overbearing, just protective and letting them do what they needed to do. But that was getting harder and harder as time went on and my protective feelings grew toward my mates and the babies they were carrying.
I’d even had a nightmare or two of us in battle, all of them waddling with huge stomachs while wielding swords against countless enemies. Completely ridiculous of course, but that’s fatherhood for you.
The fact that they were pregnant didn’t seem to cut down on our night games either, which was a pleasant surprise. If anything they seemed even more… enthusiastic and insatiable about it. I wasn’t entirely sure why that would be, but I wasn’t stupid enough to question it either.
Chapter 11
I was an ancient being. My enemies feared me and I didn’t hesitate to deal out death to an enemy that was deserving of such. Right now however I was slowly rubbing Sienna’s growing belly with what was probably a foolish smile on my face, whispering soothing words to what would be my first born child while he, or she, kicked and moved inside his mother.
I couldn’t wait to meet him, or her. It didn’t really matter to me which sex it would be, this society was amazingly balanced that way, there would be nothing barring her way if I had a daughter. And considering how fierce all her mother’s are, I was sure she would grow up strong.