V2Ch52-The King’s Revenge
“Darling, I’m so glad you came,” Vidalia said as Tybalt entered her space.
With the necromancer’s hut already more or less complete, Mariella was sleeping there. So Vidalia had her own little room back, and she and Tybalt were all alone.
The foxgirl was dressed strategically in the same clothing she’d worn when Tybalt woke up, underwear plus a bit of black ribbon tied around her neck in a bow.
He raised one eyebrow.
“You know I wanted to ask you to use your powers, right?”
But she was pleased to note his eyes still looked her up and down with obvious interest.
“You know you can make use of any of my assets that you want,” Vidalia said, pouting at him and turning slightly so that he could get a better view of her tail wagging. “But it’s always just that one.”
“This isn’t fair at all,” Tybalt said. But he was grinning, and was that a hint of red in his cheeks?
“I agree. It’s not fair at all. Mariella gets you every night, from the sounds of it- ” She ignored Tybalt’s raised eyebrow. He was surely wondering what sounds she was talking about, but it wasn’t as if they were particularly discreet. “Meanwhile, you only spend time with me when you need something from me- ”
“How quiet can you be?” Tybalt asked in a low voice, staring her in the eyes.
She dropped her efforts to sound sultry in an instant.
“If you’re actually talking about, um, taking me, probably not quiet enough for right here, right now. But we could go outside and- ”
“No, no. Not talking about that.” She deflated slightly. “Just a little fun.” She perked up again. “If you have an orgasm, can you keep it quiet enough not to wake anyone?”
She nodded eagerly, not sure if she was telling the truth or not but also not really caring. He could shove her head into a pillow or silence her some other way if she was too loud.
“A-All right! So you’ll give me an orgasm, um, after I help you?” She realized how needy, desperate, even wanton she sounded. She didn’t care. “Wanton” was a word Mariella used for self-rebuke. Vidalia wanted Tybalt to know how wild he made her. She felt no shame about it.
He nodded and slipped his body around behind hers, spooning her. He wrapped an arm around her waist, and she felt his hardness press against her lower back.
“I’ll do something for you, too,” she said. She reached a hand back to gently caress him.
Just doing something for you would be enough for me, if I’m being honest.
“You don’t have to,” he said. “Consider it a thank you for the other day in the canyon.”
“I want to, though.” She swallowed down the words she wanted to say next, about how hot and wet it made her to think about what she had done to him, how much she loved to feel his arousal, how it pleased her to satisfy his needs. It wasn’t because she was worried about sounding like a slut. It was because he had come to her for something he needed done, and if she didn’t calm down, she wouldn’t actually accomplish whatever he had come here to ask of her.
“Business first, right?” she said, her voice quivering slightly.
“Right.”
She closed her eyes, reached out with her power, and put them both to sleep in an instant. Her abilities had been growing stronger ever since she met Tybalt- a dream seer seemed to become more powerful in part by fulfilling her destiny- so this was an easy task.
They opened their eyes inside a dreamscape.
“Am I… in your dream? Or are you in mine?” Tybalt asked. “When did we fall asleep?”
What do you think? Vidalia thought teasingly. I guess he hasn’t noticed that he’s naked yet…
“Mine,” she said aloud. “Easier for me to control it this way. Now… what exactly are we doing?”
“When I got the Unholy Consecration skill, Lord Mudo directly communicated with me. He dropped a bunch of knowledge into my brain about religious rituals and sacred lore. But I think he also showed me some important enemies we’re likely to face. I was hoping we could get inside a couple of their heads, maybe get them to rethink coming to fight us or otherwise fuck with them.”
Vidalia nodded. “Visualize them for me, and try to identify them.”
Tybalt closed his eyes, she placed her palms on his temples, and the images of a familiar group of people materialized in front of her.
“The Party of Heroes…” Vidalia frowned.
“You recognize them?”
He opened his eyes, and she nodded.
“They’ve appeared in my visions before. They’re one of the possible opponents you might have to face here.”
“I remember the communication also hinted at the High Priestess of Astara and some people from the Divine Trust, but no one specific.”
Vidalia nodded again. “The members of that organization are pretty interchangeable as far as the future is concerned. They are wheels on a cart, one easily replaced by another. It’s the High Priestess and the Party of Heroes we have to think harder about. Dreams aren’t usually powerful enough to persuade someone to do something, especially not when they have commanding officers or gods or whatever telling them the opposite. But we might be able to press on some points of vulnerability.”
“What do you think, we go and fuck with the High Priestess first?” Tybalt said.
The foxgirl grinned but shook her head.
“As much fun as that sounds, and I do want to give her some payback at some point if we can… I don’t think we can afford to fuck with her dreams. That’s too close to just poking a goddess in the eye, and… honestly, that scares me a lot. I know I feel all powerful here, but…”
“That’s all right,” he said, waving a hand. “So, where do you think we should start?”
“She’s beautiful,” Vidalia said, pointing at one of the female members of the Party, dressed in scale armor. “And she happens to look a lot like the High Priestess. That will… keep your interest, right?”
“Keeping my interest is not something that needs to be worried about,” the necromancer replied. “My mind is on the mission. Maybe we should start with the Hero himself. Plus…”
“If it’s with the woman, the dream might go in funny directions,” the foxgirl finished, cocking an eyebrow.
Tybalt shrugged. “I don’t know, dream seer. I am just a leaf tossed on the winds that you control in this place.”
She giggled. “For the record, when I suggested you should only take one wife for every day of the week, and not go off with random women, I didn’t mean to say that you couldn’t have playthings. I mostly meant… no patronizing whores, please. Remember that I also said you would have ‘many’ lovers. If doing some funny stuff might help us in the future, then… let’s have a few laughs!”
***
Samara stirred awake, wrapped in sweaty sheets.
What in Astara’s name was that? she thought uneasily. It was by turns frightening and…
She didn’t voice the other thread in the dream, not even in her mind. But as she moved, she felt the heat between her thighs flare up, the gap sticky with guilty pleasure.
I am… I am not supposed to have dreams of that kind. My Lady has purged those feelings from me.
She had never been prone to nightmares, but last night’s experience wasn’t quite a bad dream as much as it was the sort of dream that blurred the line between bad, good, and… wrong.
Once a paladin had taken a vow of chastity or poverty or any of the other oaths that could bind them, and had lived by it for a few years, their patron usually did something to assist them. When a paladin had taken a vow of complete celibacy, as Samara had, Goddess Astara sometimes helped to remove much of their sexual desire. The theory was that it was then transferred to others and ultimately helped to spread love and fecundity throughout the land.
Samara had not experienced a wet dream since she took her vow, and the sensation was all the more vivid for its complete absence until now.
She shook her head, trying to clear images from her head of the man and beastgirl who had been core to the narrative, their presence by turns threatening, domineering… and tender.
Her hand automatically reached up and clutched her symbol of the Goddess Astara, the entwined hearts. As she stroked it, her mind slowly calmed. The comforting ritual worked every time. Those feelings didn’t go away completely, but they buried themselves beneath a layer of control and composure.
She would be able to dress and go outside.
We have far too much to do for me to be distracted by dreams.
She rang a bell, and a temple servant girl answered her summons immediately.
“Draw me a hot bath,” Samara said in the calm, clear voice of one who was accustomed to being obeyed.
I feel unclean, went unspoken.
“Yes, ma’am,” said the girl.
After soaking and scrubbing at her skin until parts of it were slightly red, the paladin felt she could face the day.
She went down from the room where she was staying and found Mischa the swamp mage and Black Hailgrim in their respective rooms. Both were already awake, just waiting for her.
“How goes the morning, Lady Samara?” asked Black Hailgrim when he opened his door to the two ladies. “Slept well?”
She forced a slender smile onto her plump lips.
The most awkward question he could have asked, but he has no way of knowing it.
“I have had better dreams, to be honest, but I prefer not to dwell on them,” Samara said. She tried not to lie whenever possible. That was not a vow paladins needed to take- to be able to lie was essential to sniffing out evil wherever it hid- but more a thread of her own character.
Hailgrim nodded, but his eyes seemed to Samara to see through her, looking past her reserve and observing her secret shame.
“We should go,” he said quietly, putting a fatherly arm around her shoulder.
“Right,” Mischa said. “Today, we’re getting a ship.”
They were in the closest port to where they had set out from the Discontented Lands, Hafengart. Now that it was clear the Hero was not coming with them, they had no reason to worry about his seasickness. Unless you had a rare spatial mage helping you, ships were the fastest way to travel without wings.
Hafengart was technically a part of the Dwarven Lands, though the city was aboveground and extremely cosmopolitan. It had drifted to be plurality human over time, as the dwarves mostly preferred to live in their kingdoms under the mountains.
“Hopefully a companion as well,” Hailgrim said.
Samara raised an eyebrow but said nothing. She knew most of the men Hailgrim had fought alongside in his youth were dead. A part of her was skeptical that anyone who remained alive would be useful.
We need warriors, not those who were not brave enough to fight beside you when the time came, she thought. She kept those words to herself. Hailgrim was an important mentor, worldly, experienced, and well connected, and it would be impertinent to doubt his judgment in these matters.
But fifteen minutes later, she found her concerns were somewhat validated.
“Sorry, Grim,” said the dwarven engineer. He raised a leg and placed it on the desktop, then slowly pulled the pantleg up to reveal iron and steel parts.
Oh. Not a coward, then. A cripple.
“Lost it a few years back, out sailing with the crew,” the dwarf explained ruefully. “There was a small… explosion.”
“What sort of experiments have you been getting up to, old man?” Hailgrim asked, shaking his head. “‘Sailing with the crew’ sounds like a euphemism for tampering with things beyond your ken. I used to warn you about that bad habit of yours… and I told you last time I saw you, you owed me some in-person help next time. You owed it to me to be more careful with yourself.” He shook his head again. Then he turned to Samara and Mischa, sitting to his right, and added, “Ludwig used to make all our weapons. Weapons for the last Hero, weapons for me, all of us. We wouldn’t wield anything crafted by any lesser man. He’s what you call an artificer. But his more complex weapons would only ever work for him. That’s the level of genius we have here. A man whose weapons are far beyond his time.”
Ludwig blushed and opened his mouth to speak, but Hailgrim kept talking, cutting him off.
“Knowing that, I asked him, in exchange for risking my life to help him out of a personal jam, to go on an expedition with me one day, so we could use his weapons properly. I thought that I could count on him.” The older man pretended to wipe away a tear. “But now he’s chopped off his leg just to get out of his obligation to me. It makes a man sad. Seeing honor cheaped so.” He covered his mouth with one hand as if trying not to show his sadness, but from where she sat, Samara could see a small smile tugging at his lips.
The dwarf scowled. “Now, listen here, Hailgrim- ”
“What, you’re going to go with us after all?!” Hailgrim asked in an excited, boyish tone.
Ludwig groaned and looked at the two women. “Do you see what I had to deal with these three decades?” He turned back to Hailgrim. “You haven’t grown any more reasonable over your gray years, you know that? This childish demeanor is ill suited to a man of your years.”
“Says the two hundred year old dwarf who’s trying to dodge his promises!”
“I’m not- if you would have let me finish, I would have made clear, I am willing to help you by supplying a ship and a crew, but yes, my prosthetic limb has slowed me down a bit- ”
“From you, that sounds preposterous. You’re entirely capable of making prosthetics faster than your real limbs.”
“Well, my years are finally catching up to me, so my organic limbs are also not that good. Even dwarves can get arthritis, and no one has yet made the potion to fix it.” He gestured to Samara as he continued, “Your companion there mentioned that you’re going into a desert, though. That was why I mentioned my metal leg. It is superior to my remaining real leg, most of the time, but it frequently jams up when I take it onto sandy terrain.”
“Oh, well- ”
“Additionally, I am planning to go with you. Ass. I will help you with the ship. I don’t think you would find much value in dragging me through sand, but I have a crew of apprentices I have trained to be ready for just such eventualities. Energetic, brilliant, capable - better at the combat side of this than I ever was, and more imaginative in the inventions they contrive.”
“Well, I for one will look forward to meeting them and seeing the ship,” Hailgrim said at last, slightly red.
“They are a little eccentric, but a great team! And the ship is a fast one. I call her ‘The King’s Revenge.’”
“An interesting name…”
“Oh, she was commissioned for the Breckinderh Royal Navy. But as it happens, thanks to my young geniuses, she’s ready a year ahead of schedule. We could ask them permission to take her. Or you could stay here waiting for another ship to be ready to take you wherever you want to go. Shouldn’t take more than a few months.”
Samara groaned aloud.
“But you were thinking we don’t ask the Breckins for permission?” Hailgrim said, raising an eyebrow knowingly.
“Well, your paladin said this was an important task. Plus, every new ship design deserves a test voyage… and what King Yorick doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
Black Hailgrim turned to look at Samara, and the paladin realized he was deferring to her judgment.
Well, this could cause some trouble later, but nothing more than Asha can handle, Samara assessed. Even the dwarves respect Goddess Astara.
“We’ll take her,” the paladin said aloud.
“Then our adventure begins!” exclaimed Ludwig.