[Edited] Ch. 46 & 47 (Patreon)

Chapter 46 - Art Appreciation
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Mostly just added a bit more regarding Jax and Arx's attitudes adjusting to Lynnria's presence and the realization that the goddesses might actually be for real interested in their man.

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As one might reasonably expect, these events sparked quite a lot of conversation. By which, I mean confused shouting. None of my corporeal companions had ever heard the true voice of a goddess, even if it was just a simple little chuckle. So they had not been prepared for the uncomfortable weight of Her attention.

Of course, I was hardly immune, but I was at least getting somewhat used to it. Some of that could have stemmed from my advancing Wisdom stat, though. Ahnbe had told me it was critical for anyone who wanted to look upon Her. I assumed standing in Her presence and listening to Her speak would fall under the same requirement.

Maybe that’s why Clerics need so much Wisdom in D&D. Gotta survive your deity cramming all those spells into your head every night somehow.

While the others ‘talked,’ I snatched up the Key and ensconced it within my Coin pouch. Then I gave the remains of my former outfit a mournful second look. Attempting to make anything out of it would be a fruitless waste, but I simply could not shake the idea that there might be people out there!

I remembered some of the stares I had collected the last time I had been seen in public, and my Charisma had not exactly halted its advance in the days since. If I were to march out into the corridor with my dingus flopping around, there was a distinct possibility one of the Dolilim might kill someone.

That was my justification, anyway. So I set to tying.

“You’re certainly taking this calmly,” Lynnria said eventually. “That was a goddess just now. A goddess!”

It was an effort to school my face. We all had our own traumas to deal with, I was sure, and I did not want to appear too condescending. However, having experienced mental oblivion via divine congress, I was finding it difficult to sympathize.

“I try to keep busy. It helps to keep me from thinking about it,” I explained just as I was putting the finishing touches on my new garment. To be honest, the thing was more knot than belt, but I at least had a bit of a flap covering my package.

“I can still see the tip of yer banger, ye know.”

“Yes, Jax. Thank you,” I intoned flatly.

“At least he’s trying,” Lynnria said in my defense, doing her utmost to look at anything else. And obviously failing. “Which is more than either of you can say. How can you two can be so totally relaxed without a scrap of cloth on?”

Arx shook her head tiredly then turned to open the door. “Come on, Lesser. We’ve got Dungeon to explore.”

“You say that name as if it means something,” Lynnria said, trying to be dismissive. However, I noticed her wince from unconsciously balling her hands into fists—and poking herself with her own claws. “Why should I be insulted by something Mia just made up?”

Jax just chuckled and threw a companionable arm around the young woman’s shoulder. “We’ll let ye know when ye can feed from more than knob.”

“More than—? Agh!” Lynnria quickly shied away from the redhead and bolted for the door. Pausing outside just long enough to shudder—and cast a significant glance at Jax’s crotch—she yelled back into the room, “I’m quite certain I have no idea what you are insinuating, madam. And can you please not press your nakedness against me? Proper young ladies do not—”

Mid-tirade, Jax casually reached down to flip my flap, giving Lynnria a very brief flash of what was underneath. Despite it having been in full view—and conspicuously not—for the better part of the day, she still gasped on seeing it and took an unconscious step forward.

I felt for her. In that moment, we were kindred spirits. However, the cloth quickly resettled, and she seemed to realize what she had just done. Blushing scarlet, she turned and chased after Arx.

“You know,” I commented, turning to Jax as we slowly made to follow, “she used to be so self-confident. She was determined to make me her lover from practically the moment we met… which you would have hated, I’m sure. But now that I am, she can barely look at me.”

Jax chuckled. “Can’t say what it were before. Weren’t there, or I might o’ stopped some o’ this mess from kickin’ off. Too late now, more’s the pity.”

Too late indeed.

“So you don’t approve of her?” That was surprising. She had been awfully encouraging when it came time for Lynnria and I to actually couple.

“Ah, she’s a little uptight. An’ I nay like the flavor of them secrets she’s keeping,” she admitted. “But she’s loyal. If it comes to it, her claws will take whate’er throat needs the slashing. Mark me. But it ain’t ye she be afeared of. Were it just the two of ye again, she’d be on ye like fleas on an arse.”

“Maybe if you’d quit teasing her, she’d stop being so intimidated.”

“Ah, but that be her place, ye see? She knows it, too. Deep down. Instinct-like. But it ain’t one she be used to. That’s what’s got her flapped. Not just me having a bit of harmless. She be Dolilim, lesser or not. Want’s ye fierce. Fierce enough to fight and kill for what be hers… but then their’s me and Arx between ye and she. And here’s her gut telling her such only be proper? How can she be but flapped?”

The door slammed shut behind us, as if to punctuate her words, followed by the sound of a deadbolt heavily sliding into place. I had to hope we would not need the room again. We would not be returning.

The safe room door had deposited us upon a now-familiar mezzanine. Across the way was the broken clock and its adjacent doors which had led me to Lynnria’s island and the adventure of the dark maze. Meanwhile, directly to our left was the exit to the other maze Jax had recently escaped from. Everything we had thus far experienced had been from this one, central hub—very similar to the tutorial Jax and I had experienced, now that I thought on it.

And to the second Dungeon, too. In a way. Central hubs, huh? Maybe that’s a pattern?

I turned back to my first companion. “Instincts aside, I really wish you wouldn’t put things like that, Jax. When you talk about people and their ‘places,’ you make it sound like there’s some sort of caste system at work.”

“I dunno nothing about that. There’s just me, what’s yer First. Then them what’s bound. Then the lesser servant types—they’s new, but their place be clear. After, be those what’s unbound yet follow, like Arx and Lynnria was before. Below them types be the lowest of the low, everyone else.” Pausing to favor me with a sultry little grin, she sidled close and pressed her softness to my skin. “And above all, there be ye. My master.”

My aching manhood throbbed for a brief moment at those words despite my better intentions. It was times like these that I wished Jax did not find my baser instincts so enticing. Maybe then, she would not keep teasing them out.

“Jax, that’s exactly what a caste system is,” I said, forcibly pushing those thoughts away. “And I doubt anyone outside our little group would agree with your assessment of the situation. There’s plenty of people out there who could grind me into paste.”

The corners of her eyes crinkled. “Says the man what’s got a pair of goddesses fighting over him. Maybe e’en three, if’n ye count the one what spawned Mia.”

“That’s speculation.”

“Maybe.”

“And what about Mia? You haven’t accounted for how she fits into this paradigm you’ve imagined,” I countered. “For that matter, what about the actual goddesses? If they really are after me, how would they fit in?”

Jax pushed away and turned. For a few seconds, she was silent, pondering the question. “We don’t know,” she admitted finally. “Arx be unsettled, though. I know ye seen it. She don’t want to be below them, but she can’t think how she might not be.”

Arx’s behavior had been a little odd lately, but I had been assuming it was to do with her newfound flavor preferences, not some ridiculous insecurity. Still… Funny. I’d have thought a deity would rank even above me in the hierarchy, but she didn’t even consider that possibility.

“You’re sure it’s only Arx that’s worried?” I asked instead.

She spun around, growling. Daring me to contradict her. “I be First!”

Uh huh… In other words, yes. More than worried. But she did not intend to go down without a fight. Ah, my Jax. So fierce. So confident. But she had good reason to be. I strode forward, heedless of her bared teeth or splayed claws, and cupped her chin.

“Yes, you are,” I whispered softly.

The kiss I planted on her lips was a soft one. Tender. Reassuring. And as the tension drained from her body, I knew that was all it needed to be.

When I straightened, I glanced over at the other two. Lynnria was busy checking the stairs down for traps, but I caught Arx watching us from the corner of her eye, despite her act of studying the displays along the wall.

“Personally, I’m not a fan of caste systems,” I said, outwardly offhand yet loud enough for Arx to hear. “But I can’t see how anyone could rate above my Dolilim.”

A smile tugged at the corner of Arx’s lip, and she glanced away.

“I agree with your assessment completely, my lord,” Mia said privately. “There is no need to be so formal about these things. But since you brought it up, my own place could not be more clear. We are one, after all.”

I resisted the urge to snort my derision. We were about as ‘one’ as a wart and a genital. But perhaps that was for the best.

I still vividly recalled those few disorienting moments of oneness I had experienced with Arx. They had been… interesting. In a lot of ways. But ultimately unsustainable. Without perfect coordination, our every action had been met with debate and hesitation. There had to be a dominant personality in the mix, or else we would never get anything done.

And thinking further, it was a bit of a cruel comparison. However much she might have been uninvited, my mental daemon was hardly a wart. She could even be helpful.

When she behaved herself.

“Come look at this, Master Dearest,” Arx called, saving me from having to comment. “There’s something strange about this painting.”

“How so?” I asked, then quickly strode forward, glad for the change in subject. All this talk about the complicated web of relationships spreading out from me was starting to make my head pound.

Then I felt someone grab hold of my backside and give it a fierce squeeze. But when I whirled around, I found Jax studiously examining her claws. Fresh! What am I? A barmaid? You think you can just goose me and get away with it, you little minx?

“Look. See?” Arx said, pulling my attention back. “I probably would have walked right past it if it hadn’t been for that note.”

Ah, whatever. What’s a little sexual harassment between friends? She had done far worse, after all. Besides, Jax trying to look innocent was about the cutest thing I had ever seen. She had tucked her lower lip beneath one of her fangs and kept twitching her hips about, as if she were imagining me turning her over and giving her the swat she deserved.

With a slight grin still on my face, I came to stand beside Arx and focused on the painting she had pointed out. There were actually quite a few of them around, liberally decorating the walls. Thus far, I had not detected much of a unifying theme beyond simple decoration. They were the sort of artworks one might hang to fill the space.

Mostly, they depicted various scenes in a naturalistic style. Battles. Mountains. Forests. Exotic animals.

A tasteful nude sprinkled here and there.

This particular specimen was a depiction of a dinner party. All sorts of people from various of the races were gathered together in a stately manor, all dressed to the nines. Most of them were simply mingling with one another over drinks.

What jumped out at me, however, was their location. I had seen this place before. Several times, in fact. From the UFO-like chandelier overhead to the furniture below, it was just the same. The only difference were the throngs of people milling about.

“It’s the stairs,” I said, gesturing below us. “It’s like the painter is standing at the front door to the mansion. And look here! You can even see your statues.”

That got Jax’s attention.

“Statues of us? Where?” she asked, crowding closer. Then, realizing the real things must exist somewhere, she twirled and looked over the landing into the foyer. “Hochmagandy, would you look at them!” she hooted with approval and pointed. “Think we could cut ‘em loose? I never had a statue before.”

Like a kid at a candy store, Jax placed a hand on the railing and kicked her feet over, dropping to the floor below. “They’s gold, too!”

Lynnria shook her head and leaned down. “They’re clearly bronze.”

“Aww, really? How can ye tell?” Out of sight, I heard a sound that brought to mind a claw scratching at metal. “Hmm… I think they made yer chebs too small, Arxie-love. No tail on ye, neither.”

Arx scowled but refrained from comment. She must have felt a little like someone who had been going to the gym for months only to be confronted by a bunch of images from when she was fat. Only cast in bronze. And nude. And on display in a complete stranger’s house.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I assured her. “Who cares about some hack sculpture?”

She shrugged as though trying to pretend indifference. “My likeness has never lent itself to art, anyway.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve always considered your backside something of a work of art,” I said, then playfully grabbed a handful—perhaps having been inspired by Jax.

At my touch, she sucked in breath and, before I had even realized what had happened, her fingers had encircled my wrist, capturing my hand where it was. Almost uncontrollably, she rolled her hips back, as though my touch had ignited a fire within her.

“It’s yours for the taking,” she whispered fervently. “Any time you want it.”

My manhood pulsed—and much more strongly this time—to my chagrin. I was in no shape to continue with these shenanigans, which was the main reason we had decided to abandon the safe room in the first place.

“Don’t hold yourself back,” she pleaded quietly. “Touch me. Feel me. Use me! Tell me to cum! Please?”

I swallowed. Is this what Jax was talking about? Arx has to know she doesn’t need to overcompensate like this. Still… what she was suggesting… “Can you really do that? Just from me asking?”

“I don’t know… maybe,” she breathed. Her tail had begun to flick back and forth, brushing against my fingers. “If you ask me the right way.”

I felt measurably torn at this.

On the one hand, I was still uncertain as to whether I wanted to encourage this sort of behavior. But more than that, allowing myself to succumb to the Dolilim’s constant provocations would only set a bad precedent. We needed to actually progress through this Dungeon at some point, but now that I had three kind-of-sort-of women to please, the cycle of building needs and satisfying them had the potential to spiral into an infinite regress of debauchery.

On the other, what she was suggesting was intriguing me in all the worst ways.

“How close are you to full?” I asked, mostly to stall.

All of us had been completely emptied out by our recent ordeal and, while I had gained the ability to absorb some of their Life Energy through various acts, it did not compare to the flood that came once they had completely fed. But it could take quite a while for them to achieve that without outside sources. No matter how industrious we were.

Once things got serious, I would need all the Energy I could get. So it was not a totally impractical question.

“I’m not sure,” she replied coyly. “Taste me if you want to know.”

For a handful of seconds, we simply stared at one another. I still was not altogether certain it worked that way but, with how dry my mouth had suddenly gotten, finding out had become a high priority.

“Tempting,” I admitted. Then, with some difficulty, I forced out, “But why don’t you tell me about this painting first?”

She started to pout, but then her eyes widened slightly. “First, huh?”

I resisted the urge to smile, choosing instead to favor the painting with my full attention. “I can see it’s the hallway, but what’s significant about that?”

She licked her lips and turned, though her hand did not move from her captured prize, and her hips began to gyrate in slow, sensuous cycles. I did not fight her. It was a comfortable hand-rest.

“All of the paintings here have very muted color schemes,” she began. “Browns and greens and oranges. They all blend together if you don’t focus on them.”

I nodded. “I think that’s the point?”

“It would be if this was something like a Clan house, but in this place, the more mundane the appearance, the more suspicious you should be. Particularly, if there is ever a change in the pattern,” she explained. With her free hand, she gestured back to the painting. “This one has three, bright spots of color. And all yellow.”

“Yellow like the Key?” Lynnria asked, coming around to my opposite side—probably to distance herself from whatever Arx was doing. However, when she looked closer, she exclaimed, “Hey, wait a minute! I know some of these people. They’re all from Raialie.”

“Really?”

I only had a passing familiarity with a few of the townsfolk, so I had not noticed. The only person I could have picked out of a lineup might have been Tips, the barkeep. Or possibly that Tailor we had fruitlessly—and expensively—hired, but I was pretty sure we had never gotten his name. Neither of them were featured in the painting.

“Yes,” Lynnria confirmed with an absent nod before pointing. “All except this woman here. The one in the yellow dress?”

Arx and I crowded closer to look. All of the people had been depicted with rather detailed features, save this one faceless woman. Other than the dress, her only distinguishing feature was a shock of messy, red hair. It was almost like her visage had been deliberately blurred. Like a censored newscast.

I might have thought it was meant to be Jax, save for the lack of horns. That, and Jax would sooner die than dress like a Disney princess.

As for the other spots of yellow, one was a simple flower whose pot had been precariously situated on the balcony railing opposite from us. The second—placed on a table just to one side of the hallway below us—was an unfamiliar type of bird with long tail feathers resting in its cage. Whatever it was, the thing was almost completely uniform in its color and an identical shade to both the dress and the flower.

“That is suspicious,” I agreed finally.

However, what we were supposed to make of it was eluding me. I was not even totally sure this was the display the note had been referring to. All it had said was to be observant… more or less. ‘One never knows what one might discover,’ as I recalled. So there were no real hints. We had scarcely begun exploring the hallway below, and it seemed a little too convenient for it to be placed so immediately next to the safe room.

Unless… I turned to give the clock across the way a bit of a side-eye. It had been a puzzle. A puzzle by Arx’s door… where we needed a Blue Key to get blue crystals. And now a puzzle by Jax’s door. With yellow clues. My hand encircled my Coin pouch thoughtfully. And we have a Yellow Key… hmm.

We had not found the actual keyhole we needed yet nor any sign of the crystals that might have been at the end of this little enigma, but the parallels were obvious now that I knew to look for them. And there was a certain poetry to such juxtapositions. It was possible I might have even discovered this earlier had I thought to look—as I had apparently been meant to—but hindsight makes fools of us all.

Hang on… shouldn’t there be one of those three-by-threes riddles around here, then? Besides the parallels I had already observed, I saw no hints of esoteric poetry hidden anywhere, and if this was meant to be a part of the larger puzzle-chain, I would have expected something like here.

Hmm… maybe because I broke it? My attempt at improvised magic after discovering Arx’s prison—and the subsequent mayhem that had caused—had bypassed a fairly significant portion of the construct, so I was doing this completely out of order. Plus, Jax had ended up escaping through her own efforts—with a dash of help from our resident mind-virus. So it was possible the puzzle had been altered to compensate.

Now that I think about it, that whole thing never made sense, anyway. I was supposed to have found three sets of crystals and, I assumed, used certain subsets of them to unlock my Dolilim’s prisons. However, I had also needed to find Keys to unlock the containers the crystals were hidden within.

How that was supposed to be accomplished had thus far escaped me. The only Keys we had found had been handed to us either via Faen having a laugh or divine fiat. And after the point where we would have even needed them. That was no way to construct a proper puzzle.

Maybe I’ve been missing something? That was a distinct possibility. And it would be just the sort of thing to happen to me, too. I normally did pretty well with puzzles and generally enjoyed them—when it was not a matter of life and death—but I had a tendency to overlook critical and obvious details until hours and sometimes days had passed. I had never been particularly lucky with my perception checks.

Briefly, I allowed my eyes to wander the painting, hoping to find any other identifying markers. Three spots of identical yellow were interesting but not much to go on. And besides, a person could not be unlucky all the time.

“Look,” I said finally, pointing to the bottom of the frame. “The title, I’m guessing.”

“It’s the same as the alphabet the card used. Oh, I like this puzzle!” Lynnria said with growing enthusiasm. Bouncing on her toes, she clutched at my arm and looked to Arx. “Quick. Translate it for us?”

“I don’t know if I can,” Arx replied primly. “I’m getting awfully dry.”

“No, ye ain’t, whore,” Jax said from behind us.

When I looked, I found her casually hanging on the rail by a single arm. She had apparently decided avoiding the stairs entirely—by somehow jumping up an entire story—was the safest course of action.

“Now, quit trying to make the master give ye commands,” she growled as she performed an effortless muscle up—quite an eye-catching feat considering her lack of a shirt. “He’ll do it when he pleases and naught else!”

Arx flashed her fangs briefly… but then her eyes seemed to glaze over and a delighted shiver rolled up her spine. “Yes, my First.”

That’s new. For her to react that way even to Jax…

Maybe Jax was right. Maybe Dolilim really did have some kind of instinctual pecking order they sorted themselves into, and it was only now the instinct was beginning to settle in. Arx had tipped over from simple Loyalty and into Devotion recently—presumably during that speech I had been forced to interrupt. So it could have been that the switch had reinforced or otherwise strengthened those instincts.

On the other hand, being my First came with an ability which made people under my influence drawn to her and, whether she obeyed or not, with her proclivities, Arx would have certainly enjoyed Jax bossing her around. Wait… is that why Lynnria reacted so strongly to Jax touching her?

I glanced to my left, but at that moment, the youngest of our quartet was staring wide-eyed at Arx.

“Are you really a… a prostitute?” she asked eagerly. “I’ve never met a man who would actually pay for that.”

“Then you are extremely naive. There are plenty of female prostitutes even in laoi territory,” Arx replied with a soft hiss. “And no. I feel disgusted just thinking about letting some man ever touch me again. Unless…”

She paused and gave me a significant look.

“Absolutely not,” I said into the silence—provoking a deep gasp of enraptured delight from my gray-skinned companion. “And frankly, I’m a little insulted that you would ever think I might ask you to do something like that.”

“Oh, Master!” she gushed, leaning heavily against me. “It’s so good! Don’t stop!”

Jax rolled her eyes. “Yer too easy, Donum. Ye know that.”

“Oh, shut up,” I muttered, then poked Arx in the ribs. “Now are you going to translate this or not?”

“She certainly isn’t dry anymore,” Lynnria quipped. “Even I can smell it.”

“Oh~?” Arx panted, grinning. “Want a taste, pet?”

“Eww, no!” Lynnria said with an almost immediate scowl—there might have been a fleeting hint of hesitation, but I was not ready to read too much into it just yet.

“Are you sure? It’s almost as good as his,” she persisted.

Stiff as a board, Lynnria twirled and marched to the end of the landing.

I sighed heavily and fastened my second with a glare. “Arx, quit screwing around.”

“Oh, alright,” she said, favoring me with a sly, little smirk. Leaning forward, she wiggled her bottom like a cat that had just gotten the cream. “Let’s see what you say, shall we?”

Her free hand extended and traced a freshly glistening digit over the inscription along the bottom of the frame. She frowned at it for a moment before straightening again, idly sucking the excess from her finger.

“It just says, ‘Where am I?’”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it,” she confirmed.

My eyes squinched in confusion. “Well, what the hell are we supposed to do with—?”

However, before I could finish the thought, Lynnria let out a sudden shout of jubilation. “Grandfather!”

In the instant it took the three of us to turn, Lynnria had already vaulted over the railing… and crashed to the floor below a bare second later. Nor did it sound like a particularly easy landing—what with the cracking wood and light tinkling of broken pottery.

The three of us still above quickly ran to the edge just in time to see the backside of a man striding down the corridor. He was lightly armed and armored and carried himself with the easy, practiced grace of a man long used to the sword.

Not that I had known what that looked like prior to seeing him. There was just something… dangerous about him. Something that sent the hackles to stirring in back of my neck.

But if he was anyone’s grandfather, I was a moose! The guy looked all of thirty years old if he was a day… though he had given zero indication of having heard any of the chaos going on behind him.

Deaf as a stump…

“Ah, fffffuck that hurts!” Lynnria wheezed, painfully rising to her feet.

“Language,” I muttered absently.

“Course it hurts, ye howling bampot!” Jax yelled down at her. “Ye can’t go jumping off anywhere ye please just because ye seen me do it. I got a 14 fer Toughness and a skill what makes me lighter’n a shadow’s fart, besides!”

Lynnria ignored her in favor hobbling after her heedless kin. “Grandfather!” she yelled again.

The man continued on his way, totally oblivious, but he was moving with a slow, cautious gait, as though expecting danger. Which made sense given our location, but he had also failed to clock the 1812 Overture going on just behind him. So either he was a doddering fool just going through the motions of long habit… or there was something else going on.

Despite her obvious limp, Lynnria managed to close the distance between them fairly quickly. However, at about the same instant he rounded the corner, hiding him from our view, she froze. Hesitant at first, her eyes began to dance around, baffled.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Where did he go?”

I frowned. “What do you mean? Can you not see him from there?”

“No, the second he passed the entryway, he just… vanished,” she said, then hobbled forward with a determined look.

“Wait a second,” I called.

She took another step before hesitantly glancing up at me, clearly still anxious but willing to obey for the sake of caution. I sent Jax a look, then jerked my head forward. She nodded and, summoning her ax, she leapt back to the floor below. Quick and silent as a cat, she glided past Lynnria and rounded the corner.

A moment later, I heard her voice. “Nothing here but hallway and furniture… Can ye still see me, lass?”

“Yes?” she replied with mounting confusion. “How could he be there one second and gone the next?”

“A domain line?” I hazarded.

“I doubt it,” Arx replied. “If he was in the stadium, like Lynnria said, he shouldn’t be in our section of the Dungeon at all. More likely, it was some sort of projection. Or even an illusion.”

“It was no illusion,” Lynnria returned. “Besides, I was in the stadium. And here I am.”

“Only because I pulled you here,” I reminded her, deliberately not mentioning where I had pulled her from. Given how recently I had made her a woman, her residency on the kiddie island was hardly something I wanted to reminisce about. “And how can you be sure it wasn’t? Did you smell him? Touch him?”

“Aye,” Jax agreed, coming into view, barehanded once more. “Don’t be a twally. Did he turn nor so much as flinch when ye called his name? Nay! Like he weren’t here, were he?”

Lynnria seemed to deflate a bit. “Then I don’t understand. Why show him to me at all? You would think… if it was an illusion, it would be to lead me into a trap. But nothing happened.”

Jax shrugged, sauntering past and back toward the stairs. “Who knows? Would nay be the first time such as the Faen took to footering with us.”

For a few moments, Lynnria stared at the floor, rubbing at her bicep with an anxious little frown. “I hope he’s okay. He’s been stuck at his Boundary Cap so long, he doesn’t have a lot of time left before—”

Abruptly, there came a faint yet quite noticeable vibration in the floor. It did not last long. Nor did it seem to have any apparent effect.

“Donum, did you feel—” Lynnria began, glancing up.

And froze.

For a few, bewildered moments, she scanned the room, to my eyes like a lost and abandoned puppy.

“Donum?” she called with growing anxiety. “Where did you go?”

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Chapter 47 - A Scene in Clouds
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Jax, Arx, and I exchanged uncertain glances before turning once more to the panicking young woman. No one had gone anywhere that I could see.

“Uh… still right here,” I replied.

Her head jerked at the sound, tilting upward as though blindly searching me out. “Where? All I can see is some kind of… fog.”

“Fog? What fog? Did that rumble shake yer wits loose?” Jax asked with a purposeful stride forward. “We’s right—”

Abruptly, Lynnria gave a shout and jumped back. The instant Jax had gotten to within an arm’s length of her, you would have thought a firecracker had gone off at her feet.

“Mercy’s ass!” She placed a calming hand over her chest and let out a slow breath before glancing ruefully at Jax. “You scared the… the poots out of me.”

“Oh, that’s cute,” Arx murmured. “Is that how she normally swears?”

“I think it depends on her audience,” I replied honestly.

Jax snapped in the young woman’s face a couple of times experimentally before turning to me. “Might need to heal this one. Cracked her nut on that table, I think. Gone funny in the eyes.”

“My eyes are fine, thank you. You all just appeared out of nowhere,” Lynnria explained defensively, swatting the hand away—then gave a considering rub at her back. “I… wouldn’t mind a heal, though.”

Arx sniffed. “Who wouldn’t?”

I grunted in agreement. My heal was pretty much a shot of pure dopamine to everyone besides myself. That aside, I had developed a certain feel for how much Life was required to patch up a person, and my gut was telling me Lynnria’s needs were practically nil. She was just a little bruised.

“What about the fog?” I asked.

Lynnria shrugged. “It vanished when you three showed up.”

Arx hummed thoughtfully. “Back up, Jax. I want to see if we can make it come back.”

The redhead, never exactly thrilled to be getting even sensible orders from anyone but me, dragged her arm guards up her hips to rest her hands at the narrow of her waist before casting a glare up at her sister. Maybe it was because that was quite literally the only scrap of clothing she was wearing, but there was such an unconscious sensuality to the move—as if she could not help but stimulate her own flesh with whatever was available at every turn—that it sent a thrill up my spine.

Jax’s glare snapped to me, transforming in that instant into a keen interest. She had sensed my gaze immediately, and a noticeable and perhaps sympathetic thrill rolled down her own spine, beautifully displaying her forward assets to fullest effect. Without really even trying, she had managed to snag my attention. And for Jax, there could be no greater victory.

I could not help but smile in helpless defeat, and with a sigh, inclined my head in acknowledgment.

The tip of her tongue moistened her lips thoughtfully before she finally acquiesced, and she took a few gloating steps backward.

The moment Jax’s body crossed the plane of the entryway rug, Lynnria let out a soft gasp. “How did you…?! The three of you just… just puffed into clouds!”

Reflexively, the three of us looked down at ourselves, then exchanged glances yet again. Arx and I were still up on the balcony, Jax was in the center of the foyer, and Lynnria was on the entry rug. No fog in evidence. Nothing had changed from our point of view.

Jax slowly tore her attention from me to favor the youngest of us with a pitying look. “Yer napper’s what’s in the clouds, lass.”

Lynnria folded her arms in front of her chest. “I’m not crazy! You are clouds. Maybe that was why my grandfather didn’t see us. Did you think of that?”

“I’m not saying I don’t believe you, Lynnria. But I think things might be more complicated than that,” I mused. The ‘old’ man had not heard us either, after all. “Still. One person stands alone on the rug, and poof? Everyone else is smoke? Why? What could be the point of that?”

I had been on that rug before. And with Lynnria. She had not been turning to vapor every time she walked away. Either we had unknowingly met some hidden condition, or something had changed since the last time we were here.

“You know what? I’m coming down. I want to see this.”

Turning, I began to walk toward the stairs, then hesitated on coming to the first set. I had yet to check its trap patterns, and I really did not want to find out what they were. With a firm nod, I bypassed it and headed for the other side.

“Whoa! A bunch of mist up above just started… stirring around or something,” Lynnria reported. “But it looks super weird.”

“It’s moving when I move?” I confirmed, slowing. “How so? Do you see any significant changes? Hidden symbols? Clouds highlighting areas of the room?”

She shook her head uncertainly. “Uh… I don’t think—wait! Stop!”

I froze mid-step, having just rounded to the right-hand side of the mezzanine. However, before I could speak, Jax hissed. “Don’t ye be ordering the master about!”

I tutted. “We’re solving a puzzle, Jax. Don’t be unreasonable. The last thing we need is another one of you getting uptight about phrasing.”

If Mia had heard that, she gave no comment.

Jax grumbled inaudibly for a moment, but she did not apologize. “Well, then? What about it, lesser? What was ye seeing to be yelling so?”

“Well, I thought…” Lynnria grimaced and straightened slightly. “It almost seemed like the fog was going to form into something, but then it fell apart.”

Slowly, I began retracing my steps backward. “This better?”

“Yes… yes, whatever you’re doing, keep doing it. Keep going… wait. Too far. Go back. There! Stop.”

I paused awkwardly on my back foot. “Okay? What do you see?”

She ran a claw uncertainly along the back of one of her pointed ears while she considered her answer. “Um… not really anything? The clouds drew together a whole lot, but I can’t see any shapes or patterns in it. And that’s the best it gets as far as I can tell. Anywhere else, and the fog starts to spread out again.”

“Yer noggin’s spread out,” Jax grumbled. “Tell us sommat we can use.”

Lynnria spread her hands. “I don’t know what else you want me to say. I guess the clouds might look like… stuff. If you squint.”

Jax sighed and scrubbed her face tiredly with her hands. “Oh, aye. ‘Stuff.’ Lass, yer as helpful as a dried cum-sock in a nursery.”

I decided it was probably best not to think about that one too hard.

Shifting gears, I began with a few leading questions. “Okay, what else can you tell us about how the fog behaves? Does it move constantly, or only when we do?”

She squinted in concentration. “Right now, everything is pretty still along the edges, but the center part keeps swirling around. It’s weird though. Almost like it’s breathing.”

She held her clawed digits in front of her and began tracing a swirling path through the air. It was slow, but there was a definite back-and-forth periodicity to it. And notably in sync with a certain Dolilim’s impatient pacing.

“Jax, hold still.”

“Master,” she cooed, obeying happily and without argument. And purely by coincidence, just happening to freeze in a pose closely mirroring the nearby statues… with both arms raised overhead and contorted into something resembling the flame of a candle.

Looks like Arx isn’t the only one trying just a little too hard. That might explain why she was being so snippy with Lynnria, too. She was establishing the pecking order.

“Huh. It stopped.” Lynnria edged closer to the lip of the rug and began blowing and waving her arms about. “Doesn’t move with the air at all.”

Jax’s arms flopped down in annoyance. “Why would it? There ain’t no fog save what’s in yer eyes.”

I rolled my eyes. “Come on, Jax. Being antagonistic isn’t going to help us solve this.”

“I ain’t said nothing but what ain’t so,” she shot back, defensive. “The fog be in her eyes. Moves with us. Be what she said her ownself.”

Uh huh. As if I don’t know a double entendre when I hear one. Or a triple negative. “Okay, then. What should we do about that?”

“Aye, Master. The way I see’s it, ye’ve already found the one good spot. Maybe they’s others, and we gots to move about to find ‘em.”

“That’s more like it,” I said with a bob of my head.

She favored me with a seductive smile, but I chose to ignore it. I had more important things on my mind than spending the day soothing her ego. Even if I she did enjoy my constant failures to pry my eyes from her… utterly fantastic… body…

I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head. “Lynnria, did you see any signs of the fog condensing while Jax was pacing?”

She shook her head. “Not really.”

“Drat.”

I felt sure we were on the right track with this, but if Jax was right, this was shaping up to be a three-way game of hot-and-cold. In a multistory area the size of a barn. A hint would have been nice.

A hint…

“Do you guys think that painting might have anything to do with this?” I hazarded.

“Weren’t no fog in it,” Jax reminded me.

“No, but…” Arx scurried over to the artwork once more and leaned in close to examine it.

Without really meaning to—and in a complete betrayal to my earlier resolve—my eyes were naturally drawn to the swell of her presented backside. Dammit. I’m getting to be as bad as they are.

Her most recent Layer had not changed a great deal for her beyond the few spans of growth in her tail, though I knew her Charisma had to be sitting at something like a 12. It was hard to put into words exactly what the difference was between that and Jax’s 10. It was something on the order of comparing ‘Damn… she’s hot as hell’ to ‘Whoa… What is that?!’

Honestly, it was a miracle I managed to get anything done at all. Though, given the fact that my own Charisma was sitting at a 15, it was no wonder the two and Lynnria tended to stare at me like I was a bowl of spreadable sex on a charcuterie board.

But now that I was looking, I could not help but notice the pair of empty scabbards crisscrossing her waist. It was regrettable her scimitars had only lasted as long as they had. The first had been lost when she had been washed overboard and drowned, while the second had shattered against the arm of the wood golem—a worthy death for a blade which did nothing to blunt the sting of its loss. But they had been… comparatively cheap. To the magically enhanced stuff, anyway.

Her only surviving weaponry was the Life-fueled, auto-sharpening knife tucked into an upside-down sheath wrapped just above her left bicep. The thing had been secured by a loop attached to the crossguard, which was probably the only reason it had survived the flood. I had never seen her use it for anything but mundane tasks, though. She seemed to prefer her own claws in combat, even against that barrel golem.

The most sensible thing would have been to ask her to give it to me. My own knife—the one I had gifted Lynnria—had been left quivering in the golem’s armpit. I might have even considered giving that one over to Lynnria as well, but she had her ‘Earthen bow’ now. And her own set of claws. Of the four of us, I was the only one without any means of defending myself.

Then again… technically, they were my means of defending myself. So maybe not.

Tapping the painting thoughtfully, Arx turned. “Master, you’re standing very close to where this flower pot should be.”

“Hmm… and the painting was called ‘Where am I?’” I smiled. The pieces were beginning to click together. “Arx, go over to where the bird cage is sitting in the picture.”

She bounced on her toes once—jostling her assorted femininity sufficiently to make me almost forget something rather important as she headed for the stairs.

“Mind the traps!” I shouted quickly.

She froze. “Traps on the stairs? What kind?”

“Dart launchers,” I replied, relaxing.

“Yes, but were any poisoned?” she persisted.

Good thought. However, I was quick to shake my head. “Not that I noticed.”

“‘Snails…”

Crestfallen, Arx nevertheless hopped over the railing and began to descend via the outside balusters along the staircase with the confident ease of a gibbon. Watching her, I could not help but recall my earlier battle up the handrail. It was hard not to be jealous, but I could at least console myself with my literal ability to fly.

“What is it with you guys and poison, anyway?” Lynnria asked, distracting me from my musings. “You never got around to explaining what that was all about back in the labyrinth.”

“Donum can convert any negative Status Effect into the Lust Ailment,” Arx explained with a final bound to the floor. “Which we can convert into Life Energy. And when we’ve had our fill, the rest goes back to him.”

“Were a combo the Master dreamed up when he were trapped in a web-beetle cocoon,” Jax added.

“Web-beetle…? No, never mind that. How is it possible to convert an Ailment into Life Energy? I’ve never heard of a skill like that.”

“As I was explaining before—cock breath—it’s a type of form-specific ability,” Mia interjected, broadcasting to the group. “However, before you ask, no. You may not purchase it yet. It requires an Empathic Absorption Matrix, and as you have yet to grow one, you may neither feed upon the emotions of those around you nor manipulate Emotional Ailments.”

Beyond the occasional whisper in my ear, she had been keeping rather quiet up to then—to the point where it had been easy to forget she was there. She seemed to prefer maintaining radio silence while we fumbled our way through ‘mundane’ problems like these but, given our tendency to pepper her with questions, that was understandable.

Lynnria frowned pensively. “Is that why you keep calling me a Lesser Dolilim?”

“That be some of it, aye,” Jax answered in Mia’s stead, striding forward and blithely ignoring Lynnria’s jump of surprise once she stepped upon the rug. She stared at the younger woman for some seconds consideringly before heaving a sigh. Then, with a decisive nod, she continued, “But ye will be Dolilim-entire one day, lassie. Mark me. Now enough with yer worries. Tastes foul.”

Lynnria glanced from her to me uncertainly, not yet knowing quite what to make of Jax’s emotional palette. “Well… if I can’t contribute that way, maybe I can take some sort of poisoning skill. If you really can turn it into Life, then I could at least help feed you all.”

“I’m certain you qualify for a wide array of Ailment-inducing skills,” Mia replied. “However, you cannot create an effect with the potential to harm our lord.”

Jax turned to look up at me—as the host of the otherwise disembodied voice. “What are ye on about? No one said nothing about harming nobody. It were a grand idea!”

“Certainly, it was—ass chewer! Colon gargling, shit-tongued—blahlahlah!” She took a sharp breath. “To be clear, I can give her a skill involving poison, but it would be harmless to any of you, negating your potential to benefit from it. As an example, recall our lord’s skill, Detonating Sap Varnish?”

“Okay… I can see how that might apply to Jax and Arx,” I said slowly, “but Lynnria isn’t bound.”

Mia favored me with an indulgent little chuckle. “She isn’t? How odd. I wonder then, how it is that she can hear my voice even now.”

“You know why,” I returned, frowning.

“Yes… the ritual. One amongst many. Each tying her ever closer. Granted, the process is far from complete, but for the purposes of her proposed spell, there is hardly a difference.”

An incremental binding? I had to suppose that made a degree of sense, and it would certainly explain a few things. However, despite each of these rituals having been Mia’s idea, I doubted she had been aware of what their eventual outcome might be. Not unless she was a far better actor than I thought she was.

It was something to think about.

“Well, if she can’t poison us directly, what about the other way around? Didn’t you—sorry. I think Bline once offered me a skill whose purpose was to store Life Energy but, as a side-effect, it was poisonous to other people. Uh… Life Berries or something.”

“Hmm~?” she replied thoughtfully—with a hint of a moan. “That would have been a workaround for your Class’s inability to target hostiles. However… yes. There is a potential to this. The construct would have to be quite different, though.”

Her voice began to drift in and out of audibility for a few moments. Like she was talking to herself while pacing in front of a microphone. However, soon enough, she returned.

“If you will excuse me, Lord, I still need to perform some maintenance within the young lady’s realm. I’ll put together some options for you while I’m there.”

“Of course,” I said with a wave.

We waited for a minute to see if she would offer anything else, but it seemed Mia had gone.

“What do you suppose she meant by ‘maintenance?’” Lynnria asked nervously.

I expelled a flummoxed raspberry through my lips. “Search me. Probably some ‘forbidden’ nonsense having to do with your Core.”

“Bunch of keech, ye ask me,” Jax said. “Can’t ne’er tell if that one’s coming nor going. Nor the difference ‘tween lies and true. She could be rummaging in our heads for who knows what as easy as sitting on her duff while we lot toil away.” Then, taking a few deliberate strides backward, she grumbled, “Lets be on with it. We got our own mess to sort.”

“Right.” Arx kicked aside the remains of the table Lynnria had broken. “The bird was about here, I think.”

“Aye, and that bint in the dress were over by yer statue, Arxy-love,” Jax agreed as she sidestepped that direction. “Here abouts, I’d say. Now what do ye see, lass?”

Lynnria shook her head, bewildered. “Well, the fog pulled together a lot over by you, Arx. But it’s still pretty spread out in the middle.”

“That don’t make a lick of sense.” Frustrated, Jax again put hands to hips then turned to look up at me. “I be standing in the right place, ain’t I?”

“Let me check.”

Quickly, I trotted over to the painting for a second look. The woman was indeed by the right-hand statue. So then why isn’t Jax’s fog coming together?

The woman in the painting had not been depicted with any sort of features, which could have been a reference to the haze of a puzzle we were facing. However, from her posture, she seemed… unsettled? Perhaps uncomfortable to be there? Like she did not know anyone at the party. Alone and lost in the crowd.

And it’s called ‘Where am I?’

“Jax, I don’t think this woman is even where she’s supposed to be,” I called over my shoulder.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, the painting doesn’t tell us where you need to stand,” I explained, back-stepping toward my spot by the landing. “We’re going to have to figure that out on our own.”

She sighed. “And what be the point of making us do that? I ask ye?”

I had to agree. While this puzzle’s eventual goal was more than abstruse, solving it was not so much difficult as it was tedious. There was a reason hardly anyone over the age of twelve engaged in rollicking games of Marco Polo, after all.

*****

“Yeah… I think you’re getting closer,” Lynnria reported some dozens of minutes later.

“Way back here?” Jax asked, out of sight. From the sound, she was somewhere to my right and beneath the lip of the mezzanine.

“I think so.” Lynnria frowned and starting gesturing with her hands. “Can you go back even more?”

“Not without… aye, hold on.” There followed a series of thumping noises, followed by a metallic clang, and what sounded like an entire porcelain tea set smashing into oblivion. “That better?”

From her face, you would have thought Lynnria was in physical pain. “Yes, but… couldn’t you have just moved the table to one side?”

“Nay, the whole of it were stuck fast. Had to chop it through,” Jax replied reasonably. “Alright, lass. Me back’s to the wall. No going further lessen ye want me to go through that, too.”

“Okay… try moving a little to the right? No, that’s worse. The other way? Okay… okay…” Abruptly, she gasped. “Oh! I can almost see something!”

“Yeah?” I prompted.

“It… kind of looks like that woman with the yellow dress. Only made of clouds,” she reported. “It’s still a bit lumpy, though.”

“Huh.”

For a few moments, those of us that could see one another traded uncertain glances. Nothing had physically changed that I had seen. There had been no sudden chimes to let us know we had solved anything, and if a treasure chest had dropped from the ceiling, I had missed it.

But then I heard Jax murmur from below, “Hel-lo. What have we here?”

“Got something?”

“Aye, Master. Be a Keyhole in the floorboards, sure as I’m standing. Blighter were hidden under the table.”

I thumped the handrail. “Finally! I swear, how hard would it have been to just tell us to look under the furniture? Hold on, I’m coming down.”

I turned and headed for the stair but, before I had taken more than a single step, I heard, “Whoa, there! The knapdarloch be running to ground!”

My weight settled onto my left foot while the right of my face scrunched up in confusion. I could normally translate a solid ninety to ninety-five percent of Jax’s brogue with nothing more than context clues, but whatever the hell that had been had completely jumped the rails. I might have even thought she had slipped into some unfamiliar language had I not known that to be impossible.

“I’m sorry, what is trying to run?”

“The Keyhole, mate. Jumped near a full span, but it’s stopped now.”

“Well, that’s…” I blinked a few times. “There’s a slang term for a Keyhole?”

“What are ye on about?” she called upward. “Ain’t ye never heared of a knapdarloch?”

“…Should I have?”

She snorted in disgust. “Be the tangle what happens when a critter gets a mess of shite stuck to the fur in back of its arse.”

My mouth slowly worked as my brain ground its way through her explanation. “You called the Keyhole a dingle-berry?”

“Well, it weren’t supposed to move, now were it?”

Lynnria looked approximately in Arx’s direction. “Is this what passes for normal conversation around here?”

“When we aren’t trying to get into the master’s pants,” Arx agreed affably before turning. “Go back to where you were, Dearest.”

Wordlessly, I retraced my steps.

“Knock me… that be a strange thing to see,” Jax reported. “Blighter be pulling through solid wood like a bug on water. Back to where it were, or I’s a tube.”

“What about when I move?” Arx asked, putting actions to words.

Jax sucked in a sharp breath. “Aye, love. Shot straight up the wall when ye did that.”

“So… if the Keyhole moves when we move, doesn’t that mean there’s the possibility we might open the thing in the wrong place?” I said.

“What happens if we do that?” Lynnria asked.

“Consequences,” Jax pronounced with an air of stolid wisdom.

Ah, yes. The ever present possibility of failure. The weight of which was unknown, but I could imagine a host of scenarios ranging from wasting the Key to getting the lot of us sucked into a black hole. It was the kind of situation that just begged for some sort of randomized, behind-the-scenes table.

“Lynnria,” I said slowly. “You said that Jax was the only one whose clouds looked like anything recognizable, right?”

“They did, yes. But she must have moved again.”

“You’re thinking we have to get this perfect,” Arx surmised. “But how? Both of our positions are as clear as we’ve been able to find.”

I tapped on the handrail for a moment. How indeed? One person above… and two below. Hmm… maybe double-check the painting? Couldn’t hurt.

Nodding, I trotted back over. Jax, of course, was no where near where the woman had been standing. That just left the flower—and its precarious perch on the railing—and the birdcage…

Which was sitting on a table. The real-life equivalent of which Lynnria had accidentally reduced to kindling when she had hopped from the second floor.

“Arx?” I called down, hoping this was not what I was thinking. “Could you try lying down? I want to see if that affects anything.”

“Like this?” she called, out of sight.

“That made it worse,” Lynnria reported.

I closed my eyes and ran my fingers down the center in my forehead. Of course, it did. We were in a three-dimensional space!

“Chebs…”

*****

“Master, this has got to be the weirdest flight spell I have ever heard of,” Arx said as she clutched nervously at one of the posts holding up the landing. “Why does my gut feel like its turning over every time I move my head? And how do I stop?”

“Look, it was Mia’s first spell, okay?” I grunted. “It works by shifting ‘down’ to wherever it is you’re looking. So if you want it to stop, you need to close your eyes.”

“Fantastic. Why couldn’t you have just gotten something that works like a Bird’s Flight pill? Those work great and don’t make your stomach flop all over the place.”

“It’s only a levitation spell,” I muttered defensively. In a way, it had been my first spell too. Besides, I had never heard of a pill like that, and if Mia had, she had not been forthcoming.

“He just told ye it wouldn’t if ye’d quit gawking,” Jax said, impatient as ever.

“You try finding an exact spot to hover in with nothing to steer with but your eyes!”

Jax sighed. “Quit yer yapping. The way ye carry on, ye’d think ye did nay like the Master’s spell. Maybe the next time the Faen needs to get her rocks off, I’ll make her use the Lesser’s body instead!”

Arx gasped in shock. “You wouldn’t!”

“Just ye watch!”

“Oh, please don’t,” Lynnria groaned. “I feel sick just thinking about the last time he cast that on me.”

“All the more reason,” Jax shot back. “What kind of Dolilim be ye? Bunch of poofs, says I!”

“Why don’t you do it then, if you’re so tough?”

“I be First!” Jax returned haughtily. “Ye think I’d let some boot of a Faen pretend it’s her gash what’s plowed?”

“Ladies, please,” I groaned. “Can we argue about this when I don’t have a giant spell-weight on my chest?”

“See? Now yer making the Master upset,” Jax agreed—as if she had nothing to do with it. With a mournful sigh, she turned to me. “There be times I miss that command business ye gave up, Master. If it could make such as me take pleasure from pain, ye could settle this shite in a wink.”

Arx nodded eagerly. “Right? But don’t you have some kind of persuasion ability now? Can’t you… convince me to like this?”

“Oh, for the…” I groaned.

Setting aside whether I even could, why it should even be necessary was beyond me. All of my spells were supposed to provide my Dolilim with a degree of comfort, happiness, or pleasure—if not anywhere near so intensely as did the Hammer. Arx should not have been having trouble with this.

Did Mia screw up the spell somehow? I was going to need to ask her about that when she got back. Why can’t anything ever be easy?

“Arx, I thought you liked being used now,” I said, straining.

“No, I like it when you feel possessive,” she clarified. “Using me for sex is just a… related kink.”

“I think it might be a little more than that. You literally just told me your ass was mine for the taking. You could barely restrain yourself when I was holding you before.”

There was a beat of silence. “Yeah? What does that have to do with this spell?”

“Aren’t I holding you now?” I prodded. “But over your whole body?”

Arx began to squirm and fidget mid-air. “Mmm~ I hadn’t thought of that…”

“Aye,” Jax agreed—whom I noticed was also beginning to fidget a little. “Ye know, come to think on it… I ain’t never tried this spell of yer’n afore, Master.”

Huh. I guess it was easy. Of course, it helped that I had linked it back to sex. Their minds were pretty much the definition of the gutter.

“Are you seriously not nauseated anymore?” Lynnria asked, flabbergasted. “Just from that?”

“The feeling is still there,” Arx replied absently. “But now I can’t stop imagining his hands… his enormous hands… holding me in mid-air… caressing every inch of me… and it’s all turned to wings fluttering down below.”

She let out a dreamy sort of sigh and began tracing her claws over her soft, gray skin, as though carried off by a fantasy of her own devising. I might have been carried off myself—especially once she began teasing her notably weightless breasts—were it not for the huge weight still on my shoulders.

“That’s great, Arx. And I would absolutely love to explore that idea with you… later. Now can we please get on with it?”

“Of course, Master…” she purred, though she still seemed reluctant to let go of the post.

Fortunately, with Lynnria’s continued guidance—and Jax holding her feet to keep her from drifting too far out of alignment—she managed to get into position in fairly short order. We had already known approximately where she was supposed to be on the x and y axes. Finding the z was just a matter of trial and error.

And before long, Lynnria reported a cloudy representation of the bird and its cage coming into focus.

The next part I was seriously dreading, because it required my climbing up and balancing on the railing… while maintaining the gorilla-weight of the spell. But I had at least decided to remove my boots first. They might help in muffling my footsteps, but their stiff bottoms would be of no use on a narrow strip of wood.

Watcher’s eye… why did Lynnria have to destroy that table? Why did all the other furniture have to be bolted to the floor? This would be so much easier if we could slide something under Arx. And me. Especially me!

Slowly, getting a knee under myself, I began lifting my bulk off the floor with a white-knuckled grip on the rail.

“How’s this?” I called hopefully.

“Um? Not yet. It’s better than it was, though,” Lynnria reported.

“Oh, Master…” Jax called from right below me—apparently having darted over while I was distracted. If anything, she looked more terrified than I was. “Be careful!”

“It’s only one story, Jax,” I reasoned, very much in a big-boy-trying-to-put-on-a-brave-face sort of tone. “You’ve got the Key already. Don’t you need to get in position?”

“But I nay can catch ye from there!” she protested. Being completely irrational… and wholly endearing.

“And you can’t open the lock from here,” I countered. “Now get your bahooty over there and ready so I can come down off this thing!”

She scowled at me with arms held stiffly to her sides. “If yer referring to me backside, the word be bahoochie, ye howling melt!” she growled before taking a few cautious steps to the side. “Now don’t ye dare fall! I love you…”

A howling melt? I had not been called that for quite some time, certainly not since we had become lovers anyway. Not that I knew what it meant beyond some sort of nebulous insult. She must have been genuinely afraid for me, especially considering that last bit. She did not say those words very often.

There was no need.

“I know,” I returned, trying to smile. “Go on, now. I can only hold this spell another minute or so.”

She nodded, then took a few cautious steps backward before finally turning and scurrying out of view. I waited for a few moments while Lynnria guided her back into position then, closing my eyes, I took a long, steadying breath. Here goes…

“Five-eighths says he falls,” I heard from somewhere off to my left, freezing me in my tracks. But when I looked, there was no one there. Because of course there would not be.

“Six,” another voice countered.

“You’re on!”

You have got to be kidding me. Not that I was overly surprised to discover the ever-watchful Faen of this realm taking bets as to my successes or failures. Still, that begged the question:

“Five-eighths of what?”

My curiosity was only met by a flurry of giggling whispers. None of the others said anything, so as usual, it seemed the taunting had been meant for my ears alone.

I narrowed my eyes. Fine then.

I was just going to have to set aside the question of whatever passed for Faen currency and make certain my supporter received their payout. I turned my attention back… then swallowed as I glanced to the floor below.

Hopefully…

Flexing my leg muscles, I slowly rose higher on the narrow balance beam until I could just slip a second knee underneath my weight.

“Here?” I called, wobbling.

“Not yet, sexy-butt…” the first voice lilted tauntingly.

“No,” Lynnria confirmed at almost the same moment. “Can you go higher?”

“Damn it…” I muttered, gradually working my shin forward.

It was a struggle—my palms were beginning to sweat profusely both from nerves and the constant drain of my spell—but I did just manage to get my foot under me. Slowly, I pushed myself upward to the point where I could begin to stand, though my shaking hands were hovering millimeters above the railing.

“Here?!” I called again, hopefully.

“Oh, come on. You know it’s not,” the second voice jeered. “What are you so afraid of? That bar is a half-span wide, easy. Straighten up, man!”

“It’s rounded! And slippery!” I shot back in a hoarse whisper.

“I’m starting to see something,” Lynnria confirmed again. “Can you stretch any more?”

A nervous chuckle rumbled its way out of my lips. “Yeah…”

Breathless and trembling for all I was worth, I slowly began to straighten. Just a knuckle’s length at a time.

In that instant, my fear-addled mind had a sudden moment of clarity. This was insane! I was being a complete idiot! Why in the unholy nutsack of the Watcher was I the one up here trying to balance on this motherfucker? Arx had an Agility in the upper teens, for crying out loud! She could have done backflips on this railing.

Mine was 5. 5! And I had to hold a 27-Word spell?

“Come on, fall. Fall!” my detractor chanted, shattering my train of thought. “Fall, or I’ll come over there and slap your behind!”

“Don’t you dare! That’s cheating!”

“But it’s right there…” the first pouted. “Don’t you want to just give it a squeeze?”

“You should have thought of that beforehand,” the second replied haughtily.

“Will you shut up?!” I growled.

Bunching the muscles in my back, I surged upward—by a finger’s length, if that—then froze again, trembling. My instincts were screaming at me not to leave the easy grasp of the handrail behind, but I did not seem to need it quite yet. And so another finger’s length followed. Then a third.

Slowly, bit by bit, I began to straighten from my crouch. Even the bottoms of my feet were beginning to sweat now, ruining my traction and making me regret my decision to remove my boots. I was having to clamp together with my thighs just to keep them from sliding out into a split. And with the spell still going, I might as well have had a squat bar on my back.

Maybe adding a touch of Strength to the build wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. It was a ludicrous notion, of course. There was no way that Strength would be of any use in holding up a too-large spell but, in the moment, it certainly felt like a good idea.

“Almost there,” Lynnria called.

“Fall! Fall!”

“Come on, you prick! Stand up!”

My head rose another span.

“Oh… I’m starting to see something!”

“Just fall backwards! It won’t hurt that much. I’ll even give you a blow job!”

“No bribery, you slag!”

“You never said that was a rule!”

“Oh, you absolute—you always do this.”

“Do not!”

“Do so! Every time we make a bet, you always reinterpret the rules—”

“Who’s reinterpreting rules?! You never said a word against bribery.”

“Fine! Fine! You wanna play it that way? Then, I’ll suck him off if he doesn’t fall. And I’m better at it, too!”

“Ha! You wish. Maybe in another thousand years…”

“Will you two fucking—“ My foot slipped ever so slightly, sending a dangerous wobble through my body.

“Oh! Oh, he’s going!”

“No way! He can still recover…”

Abruptly, my weight seemed to stabilize, but my hips were now dangerously out of alignment. I had to hold both arms over my head and at an angle just to keep from toppling over, but I instinctively knew I had to reposition—and soon—or I was finished. So I jerked myself upright.

“There! It’s there! I can see it! The whole painting in fog,” Lynnria cried breathlessly. “I’ve never seen something so amazing…”

“Jax! Now!” I shouted. My balance was going fast.

“Got it!” Jax yelled back.

There was a soft, yet audible click. And then the floor gave a dangerous rumble.

“Oh, fuck!”

“There he goes!”

Like a Hollywood stuntman, I went over head first. Perhaps it was some instinct borne out of repeated falls down stairs and hills, through projectiles and trees, but I kicked my feet out and over me, sending them overhead in a nice and graceful front flip. At least until my back slammed into the armrest of a chaise lounge, folding me nearly in half.

As I laid there, once more wheezing with pain, I overheard my unseen audience arguing from somewhere overhead.

“Told you he would fall. Pay up.”

“That doesn’t count! Outside interference!”