Limitless Path

It was a bit ironic, considering they had just bought a house, that the first couple month, objective time, wasn't spent enjoying their new acquisition, but instead trying to gather more resources. The tax bill would be due, however, and there was plenty else that they wanted or needed to buy, and far beyond just stocking the house, so it was only natural that they fought and gathered. It had to be remembered through everything that her gate was always running at a ten times multiplier, meaning that the two months of gathering after they settled in the house was more than twenty months, or about a year and three quarters. That wasn't really enough for Beth to want a break, but they had decided on a few things, and they still weren't on a massive time crunch for anything.

The first thing was the biggest, at least to Beth, as other than fighting and leveling, Sera was the most important thing to her. The real pain was deciding what to do and how to do it; they were going to wed, obviously, but did they want a big ceremony? A little gathering with friends? Something else? Personally, Beth would have been fine with just going to a courthouse, or the CRA, which could register them, and getting officially married. Then again, what officially married in the greater universe meant was something that was a bit hazier, depending on who and where you were. For the CRA, at least, it had a clearly defined meaning, and people who didn't want any ambiguity in the legal definition of their relationship always registered their marriage with the CRA beyond whatever other government or faction they decided to submit their paperwork to. Beth knew that just submitting some forms at the CRA Hall nearby was not going to fly, but she really didn't want to have a massive ceremony, even if Sera was a princess.

Sera was, slightly surprising to Beth, of much the same mind, though she did want some kind of ceremony. It didn't really take much discussion to come to the compromise of having a small ceremony at their new mansion with a short, but not too short, list of invited guests. Their team would be there, and a few people that each member could invite, plus each of their immediate families, though Sera was sure attendance from her side would balloon no matter what she did. Just to throw everyone else off, Beth very specifically invited the Exalted and Manumitted she knew, along with Baelvyr's team, that being Jaq, Navere, Tazeen, John, Elana, and Lyrissa. They spent about two days planning the ceremony, and Beth sent out the invites for her side right away, though she would be going and getting her family personally to make sure they could make it through the teleporters and such. The date was set a month from when they finished the planning, and Sera bought a set of chairs and tables they could use outdoors for everyone to sit in. It was a bit of an expense, or would be for most people, but the set was a hundred chairs and ten tables for two diamond coins, which wasn't even a rounding error to their budget. They spent just as much on the food and twice as much as the alcohol, Beth seeing a difference with event planning now versus how it would have been just on Earth. They were able to get pretty much everything ready in the first week or two and store it in spatial storage, keeping everything at the perfect temperature and freshness until the big day.

The other thing they had to take care of, after furniture and refreshments were handled, was what everyone was going to wear. Beth wasn't normally much of a dress person, but they both decided to wear dresses, and they utilized the services of a very renowned tailor on Zephyr Prime to get the outfits made. Both were white with pearl accents, and Beth's was a knee-length dress with short-sleeves while Sera's was a full-length dress with sleeves down to her wrists, having a space for her tail to emerge from at the back without exposing her butt in any way. They were both wearing heels for the occasion, though Beth thought they would be towering over many of the guests already, apart from Baelvyr and Tazeen, but the shoes matched the dresses, or so the tailor insisted. She wasn't much up on fashion, but she could see how everything went together, so she did not protest too much.

Dresses decided, the last piece that they really had to worry about was who was officiating, but that was something minor to take care of, especially when Baelvyr offered to do it. As a high-ranking member of the CRA, he could officiate such things, though he said it had been a century since he had last done it. Beth just prodded him to make sure he didn't forget the lines, but everyone having a computer embedded in their heads that could display text in their vision made that a bit difficult. With the official decided, they just had to decide on any bridesmaids that would be with them, which also entailed what they would be wearing. Beth picked Blood and Val to be her bridesmaids, while Sera selected Kris and Andrea, which neatly wrapped that all up. Blood and Val insisted on handling the dresses for the four of them and, since those two did have an eye to fashion and dressing well, Beth was only too happy to foist that off-er, rather, graciously let them handle those weighty decisions.

Despite how terrible planning for and setting up a wedding was supposed to be, she found the whole process rather easy. The biggest pain in the ass of all was getting some decorations and figuring out how to set them up; the food, seating, venue, clothes, alcohol, and guests had all been the easy parts. The problem with decorations was that there were so many, and of many different designs and themes, so much so that it all just made Beth's head hurt. Sera cared more about it than she did, not that the dragon was particularly bothered, but Beth just left that part to her, making sure that everything else was ready and the date was one that worked for people. The dragon eventually decided on fairly simple décor that was mainly white and blue, with a few green things, including a couple planters, mixed in with the rest. Setting it all up was going to be the work of a day, and Beth wound up buying a device that could keep rain and weather off a certain area just to make sure they could set up the day before and have everything ready without weather ruining the whole thing. It would also for the day of, keeping any precipitation out while also minimizing the effect of wind on the area, which was just a nice thing to have.

Speaking of the day of, the preparation and their other work, including finishing furnishing the house, took up more than enough time that the day arrived before Beth even realized it. She found that, even though she should be a wreck, she was barely nervous at all, with hardly any butterflies messing up her stomach. She had, both jokingly and then, over time, seriously considered herself and Sera to not just be a couple but married that having everything become official, even in front of their friends and family, just didn't seem like that big of a deal. Some scrap of paper and a little bit of a party was absolutely nothing in the face of her love for her wife, and the ceremony was far more for their families and friends, in her opinion, than it was for the two of them. Family and friends that showed up all on time, other than Beth's family, whom she fetched herself the day before, a convenient excuse to skip out at the end of decorating while the others finished up.

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The rest of the guests arrived the day of, all of them dressed nicely and all of them come bearing gifts, which wasn't necessary, but it was the thought that counted. Of course, many of the people that were attending being either Ascended, Exalted, Manumitted, or ancient and powerful Enlightened that had defied aging, the gifts were nothing to sneeze at, either. Both Zane and Fallon attended, with each of them presenting Sera and Beth a piece of armor worth an entire king's ransom. She wasn't sure if the two had coordinated, but one gave her a set of armored pants miles beyond anything she had ever owned, while the other gave her a chest piece that was truly astonishing. Combined with her crazy powerful gauntlets, she just lacked a set of remarkable boots and an extraordinary helm to have a full set of mind-blowing armor, though she was really working on it. Sera had gotten the same as her, the pieces tailored to the dragon's elements and combat style, something that must have taken a considerable time and effort to craft, though she doubted the Manumitted had done it themselves.

The other gifts were impressive, to be sure, but there was just something about getting a set of gifts from Manumitted that was a little overawing, at least to the other guests. The fine alcohols and foods Sera's family gifted, along with the small presents from her own family, were both great, in their own ways, but they had been a bit outdone. Then again, the pieces of armor were things that were going to see heavy use and eventually get replaced, while some of the small things the other guests had gotten them would likely be in their homes and inspire fond thoughts and memories for centuries to come. Beth didn't know where her sisters had gotten a setup that made almost any version of hunting spice she would want out of ambient mana, and apparently identical to the 'real' thing, but it was both a practical and wonderfully thoughtful gift.

The ceremony itself went through without a hitch, though Beth would be smiling for years when she thought of the sight of the massive ogre officiating the ceremony. Not that he did a bad job, but having the nine-foot-tall mountain of muscle and fat oversee the ceremony in his nice pants and vest, a vest with no shirt beneath, was both touching and, if she was totally honest, very comical. She and Sera both managed to get through the ceremony, including their vows to each other, without any slipups, including laughing at the comedic effect of the sight and sound of Baelvyr officiating, as well as the sheer ridiculousness of who he was, not to mention who the other guests were. Having people like the Adamantine Colossus, the Blue Queen, the Lord of the Singularity, the Lord of Traversal, or the Queen of Whispered Death in attendance would normally be an unheard of honor, even just considering one of them were there, but the group of them was downright precedent setting. Still, at the very same time, to Beth, they were just friends, mentors, and companions, even if they rather overawed everybody else. Even Sera's family wasn't immune, if the not-so-discrete looks that she caught them throwing at many of the guests were any indication. She also was happy that many of the guests, not just Sera's family, took time to talk with her family, including her parents, and attempt to genuinely get to know them.

The after party was something that would be talked about for years, though they did manage to contain most of it to the manor grounds. Beth had some hazy memories from that night that seemed to involve Baelvyr and Bjorn getting into a drinking contest and something about Laselle and Selene wrestling while Zane acted as bookie and took bets, but she was sure that couldn't be right. She did recall the headache from the next morning, all her power and skills and resistances not doing much to dull the pain and help with what she had done to herself. She and Sera had consummated the marriage, of that she was pretty certain, not that those activities were anything new to them, but she couldn't really recall much of it. She did awaken to a still drunk and very cuddly dragon sprawled on top of her with said dragon's arms wrapped around Beth's shoulders and head while she snored away, Beth feeling a tail wrapped thoroughly around her left leg. She didn't bother moving for a while, other than to make a bit of medicine she had the foresight to put in her necklace appear in her hand, which she quickly downed.

Sera eventually roused, taking her own cure for what had bitten her, and Beth picked her up as she got out of bed and moved them both to the bathroom. A hot bath was just what they needed, one they could lay in for hours and let the consequences of the merriment fade away. Fortunately for them, they had nothing else to do, and everyone else was also feeling the effects of the previous night, so they had all the time they could want to recover. Beth looked down at her hand as she sat in Sera's lap in the tub, looking at her new ring, a mana mithril band with a twisting spiral design and three tiny star gems embedded within it. Sera had a matching ring on her finger now, though Beth suspected that Sera was going to be wearing hers slightly more often; it wasn't exactly something they would want to wear during combat.

She eventually left the suite she and Sera had claimed, the largest and best suite in the mansion, and found the devastation waiting for her. Everybody had had a great night, or a terrible night, or both, all depending on what one's idea of a great night were. It was another crazy thing about their wedding that there were random Ascended and Exalted passed out all over the place, a few of them in possibly compromising positions, and a few of them just hamming it up. Zane had a lampshade on his head as he was passed out in the corner of the sitting room, but their mansion had no lamps with shades, or lamps at all, for that matter. Several people were flat-out missing, or at least, not present in the general rooms she looked into, but who was in what bedroom was a matter of some debate, and some secrecy. At the very least, she was pretty sure nobody had left the property last night, though she wasn't a hundred percent on that, just that she had done a pretty good job monitoring who was where.

Her parents were in about the best shape of the lot, as they had refrained from excessive drinking and had clearly gotten up at a reasonable time. They had used some of the large stock of provender to make themselves breakfast, one they were sharing with Alex, likely not realizing she was an Ascended on the cusp of Exalted. Beth sat at the table with Sera, remembering that she had let her pocket Ascended out at some point, though it appeared they had all retreated to the reliquary before the night ended. Not that she did a head count; if a forty-nine rebirth person was going to wander off after the celebration, she was pretty sure they could take care of themselves. Just as long as the guests, or the effects of throwing the big party in the neighborhood, didn't come back to bite them in the ass, which she was sure was fine. They had the sound enchantments on right from the start and they hadn't done anything to create any flashing lights or anything that would bother the surrounding manors. She ate some food that Sera prepared while taking stock of the house and making sure that nothing too serious had been destroyed; considering more than half the guests were many times wealthier than she was, she wasn't really worried that anything had unaccountably grown legs and wandered off.