Chapter 25: The party
The first light of dawn barely touched the silken sheets when I felt the heat of eager bodies pressing against me. My eyes fluttered open to the sight of Shandon, her snow-white hair spilling over my chest as she nuzzled my neck.
"Good morning, my lord," she purred, her fingers already trailing down my stomach.
Before I could respond, Ruby—her crimson curls bouncing with excitement—slid between my thighs. "We practiced so much yesterday, my lord. Let us serve you." Her grin was wicked as her lips hovered inches from my cock.
Opal, ever the poised one, knelt beside Ruby with a graceful arch of her spine. Her ivory locks cascaded down her back like a river of moonlight. "Our… teacher was quite thorough," she admitted, a rare flush creeping up her cheeks.
Aquamarine, the quietest of my mate sisters, lingered near the foot of the bed, her blue eyes wide but burning with hunger. When Ruby licked her lips and took the tip of my cock into her mouth, Aquamarine’s breath hitched—before she suddenly dove forward, fingers gripping my thighs as she devoured me alongside Ruby, her tongue swirling in ways that made my back arch.
"Fuck—Aqua!" I groaned, shocked at her sudden boldness.
She pulled back just enough to murmur, "The woman said… deep throating was the key," before she swallowed me down to the root, her throat fluttering around my shaft.
Shandon laughed low, crawling up to kiss me as Cecilia—still groggy from last night's mana steak—blinked drowsily from the edge of the bed.
"Mmm… fuck, what a way to wake up," Cecilia muttered before Ruby hooked a finger into her panties, tugging them aside. "Oh—oh, you greedy little—!"
Opal, ever the perfectionist, leaned in, her lips brushing my ear. "Would my lord prefer my mouth next… or perhaps my fingers?" Her hand slid down my abs, her touch featherlight yet demanding.
Shandon’s fingers tangled in my hair, holding me still as she deepened the kiss, her other hand pinching Cecilia’s nipple through the thin fabric of her nightdress. *"Let us all show you what we’ve learned, my lord."
And gods, did they. Several times.
As I was laying on the bed, I could not contain my curiosity.
“Cecilia, what did you guys mean by ‘teacher’? What did you do?”
Shandon lowered her gaze.
“It was actually my fault, my lord.”
“Ok, please elaborate.”
“We were walking on Orora, when my lord was talking to that human, and we passed by a place full of red on their buildings. I was told that that was a place where humans would go to have pleasure. We saw a woman leaving the place, she worked there. I asked her, and she said she could teach me how to make a human happy. I thought of my lord, and Cecilia and I had a lesson. It must be said that Cecilia haggled the price down. Later, we all had some lessons.”
I know that I may be hypocrite for asking. Specially now, having all of them naked on top of me.
“Any men?”
“No, my lord. Some little wood contraption imitating a… Aham, but no other male humans.”
Cecilia pinched me.
“What did you think?”
“This was awesome…”
“I wasn’t going to join Shandon initially, but when she said she wouldn’t mind becoming your favorite…”
I laughed. And then I kissed both of them. And then I had to kiss the others as well.
“I don’t have a favorite, because you are all my favorites. On my side, I would keep this forever.”
Cecilia mumbled something.
“Yeah… js wt … dmn…”
The way this was going, I decided not to ask.
We go downstairs, and have some breakfast. The bullgoose is gone. I collect the guts that are left, it is a lot of guts, and I take to the forest, to feed the rest of the crows. I put it on the ground. Muninn perches up on a tree, and does some loud cawing. The crows appear, and start eating. They don’t even mind my presence anymore, apparently.
One of them comes closer to me, but then Muninn lands on my shoulder, and the little guy flies back to the food. I giggle, thinking that now I am probably Muninn’s property. Then I think about how the demons would react, if I appeared with a crow on each shoulder… I giggle some more.
We sit around the table in the guild. As always, we are drinking through the morning, while Cecilia is serving breakfast. Opal looks at me.
“My lord, is there any kind of protocol that you want us following today at the party?”
“Nothing in particular. I myself don’t know this land’s protocols, specially something like meeting the guild’s upper echelon. That’s why I am not trying to become a noble or something. I don’t want to be in anyone’s leash. Leopold told me that this was more on the level of friendship, of equals.”
“My lord, they are not your equals. Not by a long shot.”
The other girls nodded, as if this was as evident as a blue sky. I giggled.
I decide to prepare supper, since I can see us arriving late here.
“Wait here, I will be right back.”
I transport to my meat safe, cut the upper thigh of the dragon that already had the lower removed, portal it to the subterranean dismantling room, hang it up on the ceiling where the bullgoose was, and then do a two step portal to get back to my room.
When I am getting downstairs, the breakfast is kind of done, the last patrons are already on their way.
We all have baths, and prepare ourselves for the party. It is going to start early, everyone on this land is an early bird. Cecilia told me that the preparation might take long, with it being five women, and four of them not used to getting ready for human parties. Or any parties, for that matter.
I just waited downstairs, not much to do. I gave a look at Cecilia’s books. They were mostly some sugary romances. ‘The princess and the stable boy’, ‘The son of the duke and the peasant’, ‘The emperess’s harem’. I am not judging, but this is funny. And I wonder how much these cost, books are expensive, they don’t really have a way to mass produce them. They don’t have a concept of press. She probably spent a lot of her wages on these.
At some point, they start coming downstairs.
Cecilia is wearing this dress that was the typical female noble one that I had seen in Orora’s noble district. It was ornated, and it had a square cleavage. She had her hair up, and she was wearing her dragon hairpin. Shandon and Opal were actually wearing very similar dresses. A longer cut one, with a side cut on the skirt, displaying some leg. Shandon had her hair up, with her hair pin. Opal had her hair back. Both of them stunning, but Opal could pull a more dignified manner. Ruby had a dress with a short skirt. Her red hair curls kicking as she came down the stairs. It was a little more on the informal side. Aquamarine had her black hair done in an elaborate way, making for her blue eyes to pop. She had a more conservative dress.
I am stunned.
“I don’t know if I want to go to the party anymore… You are all so beautiful that I could just stay here admiring you.”
Cecilia makes this fake shy thing, and continues going downstairs. Shandon holds her shoulder. She looks up. Shandon shakes her head.
“Our lord said he wants to admire us… What are you doing?”
Cecilia and I giggled. She explained them that it is a compliment, but we can’t afford to not go now.
“I am going to go there. Once I get there, I will open a portal for you, and then another one for Leopold.”
I open a portal to the city, way high in the sky, with my stealth on, just in case, and I locate the place. I fly to the roof, Muninn by my side as always. When I touch the roof, my stealth is gone. I look around with my mana senses, and I can see some lines around the mansion , and I sense how far the hall is. From where I am, it is some 40 feet. It is too far for me to sidestep into it. I don’t have enough mana. Even it being a lot more efficient in the past, out of training and usage, 40 feet still is just a little outside my amount of mana. I noticed something funny about this spell. Because it consumes mana in this exponential manner, the amount of mana I have in surplus doesn’t make all that difference in the distance. If a good adventurer were to learn it, they would be able to move some 30 feet. I can move around 38. 8 feet is not that much, really.
I jump out the building, to the front door. Since I am in the open already, might as well ring the doorbell. A butler answers, looks at me, at Muninn, and invites me in.
I see a couple of very well dressed people around. Probably nobles. One of them approaches, the other ones following.
“Good afternoon. Sir Marcelo, I presume?”
“Yes, it is I.”
“We expected somewhat of a flashier entrance, to tell you the truth.”
“I like to have been on the place that I am going to create a portal to. This is to have a fine tunning on the location.”
“Sure. Where is everyone else?”
“Are there any eyes or ears around?”
“Only ours.”
“Ok, then. Here comes the flashy.”
I open the portal to Frolk’s guild. The girls come out, one by one. The people are amazed, some of them run to take a look at the portal. They go around it, seeing the room though the portal. Once they are done, then they come around me and the girls.
“What was that?” “Who taught you that magic?” “Is it in grimoire?” “Do you have any intention on teaching in the academy?”
“Just a second, I have to portal Leopold.”
I open a small portal, to make sure that Leopold is alone.
“Leopold? Can I open a portal for you?”
“Sure.”
I open a normal portal, and he comes through.
“Oh!” “Ah!” “It can be used as a spying device as well?” “Does the silence spell work on it?” “Again, how do you do it?”
“Hi, dear Leopold. This is… Terrifying? Amazing? Out of this world?”
“Yes, sir. Now you know what I have to deal with. And he mentions stuff like that like it was a flame magic. You have seen the reports.”
“Absolutely. But I thought some of it was embellished.”
“No, sir. That was the opposite.”
“This is fascinating. I want to hear it all! More than what was in the reports! But first, let me put the food out.”
He gestures to a butler that is in the corner of the room. He goes back inside, and some time later maids and waiters start bringing out all sorts of snacks and sweets. And a lot of them. I can see that Cecilia is looking at the food, while the other girls chose to close their eyes and smell it. But, apparently, everyone interested. I could not hold the joke in.
“Hey, it’s looking like you didn’t have breakfast.”
“But my lord, not *that* in our breakfast.”
“So, you don’t want dragon or bullgoose meat anymore?”
“Nononono… But we don’t have sweets, my lord…”
Shandon actually managed to fix it. Cecilia is cracking up. I kiss Shandon on the forehead, and gesture them to go ahead. They all hit the food. The maids and waiters have left the room.
I get close to them, and everyone follows. Leopold starts, while the girls are eating.
“Ahan… Let me introduce you. Everyone here already knows sir Marcelo from my reports, and now personally. Among his entourage, we have our dear Cecilia, Shandon, Opal, Ruby and Aquamarine. The crow is Muninn.”
Cecilia bows. Muninn caws when he hears his name. The other girls are somewhat indifferent, just eating sweets and salty snacks. Shandon even gives a piece of snack to Muninn. Cecilia goes back to eating some sweets.
“Now, one the guild side, this is Sir Edward”
He hands his hand, and we shake it. It is firm, but not even close to what Sir Edward did. The difference seems small to me, though. It might be because of the difference in levels, since now a level 30 and a level 50 would not mean much difference to me.
“There are others in the group, but they didn’t come, because of distances.”
“Sure. I could have portaled them, though.”
Sir Edward was the one to answer.
“At first, that hadn’t occurred to us. And when it did, we didn’t want you to feel exploited.”
“No problem at all. But you would have to point me to the place, I have to go there to get the feel of the place, so that I can fine tune the portal to the location.”
“How far can you create these portals?”
“Inside this world, anywhere. I can’t create portals too close, though. Actually, the farther they are, the smaller the amount of mana I spend.”
“What other special magic do you know?”
“I am sorry, that is kind of personal… Besides, I go with what I need at the moment.”
At this point, Cecilia is back, still munching a sweet. Leopold holds the bridge of his nose.
“Cecilia, you do know that these gentlemen are the bosses to my boss’s boss, right?”
At that point, it downed on her. She was also a guild employee, and was just ignoring what could be identified as the owners of the guild.
“I am sorry. I am usually not this distracted. But I have never seen these kinds of sweets.”
Edward giggles, Thalor smiles, and Lady Guina saves Cecilia.
“Yes, they are looking so good, I think I am going to taste some myself.”
But, at that point, Shandon, Opal, Ruby and Aquamarine were coming from the table. That now was empty of food. Lady Guina gave two steps in that direction, saw the table, and came back. Leopold shook his head. Edward and Thalor giggled.
The four dragonesses stayed behind me. Edward looked at them with curiosity.
“The reports mentioned that they are dragonesses, and that they are in the form of beautiful women, but indeed, the report doesn’t do them justice, Leopold.”
He smiled at me.
“You know, Sir Marcelo, I am an amateur natural historian. I was able to contribute a little bit to our guild’s bestiary. But no one ever seen dragons. How is their dragon form like?”
“They are females. Shandon and Opal are white, Aquamarine is blue and Ruby is red.”
“Are their powers different?”
“I don’t know…?”
I looked at them, and Shandon was the one to answer.
“Our powers are the same, actually. Every dragon from Drakonia is actually a fire breathing kind. The males are more alike between themselves, females have different colors.”
“What is it that you call Drakonia? Is it the Land of Dragons, in the mountains?”
“No, that is the Nursery. It is another continent.”
Humans had not traveled to other continents because sea monsters were a thing here. In the deep sea, there were some big things around.
“Nursery?”
“Yes, that is the place where adults take the hatchlings so that they grow away from elders.”
“So you have a whole society organized.”
“Why wouldn’t we? Don’t you have one? And you have frail and short lives.”
Edward was getting pretty excited, I could see his eyes shining.
“How is your society organized? Do you have a king?”
“No, but we have levels. At the lowest, you have hatchlings. Their only occupation is being legacy. Then you have females, we are there to support our males and provide them with legacy. Then you have elders, they are larger and stronger than adults, they generally command a clan. Then you have council leaders, like my lord.”
And then she points at me. Edward looks at me, kind of impressed. I hadn’t heard anything about that up to now. I hadn’t asked either, to be fair.
“How many council leaders are there?”
“Currently, two. My lord and Skylar.”
“And what do you do if they disagree on something?”
“If it is a council decision, it would be decided by vote. Skylar is entitled to 3 votes, my lord has 4 votes, so that means that his opinion would be supreme.”
I look at the dragonesses, and they are all nodding approvingly.
“What do you mean?”
“The original council was created by the seven strongest leaders of clans. Those votes can be obtained by challenge only, they cannot be passed to someone else. It ended up that they were accumulated in the hands of Skylar, Hoggar and Malagar. And now my lord accumulated these votes.”
I was curious.
“Did I meet Skylar?”
“Yes, my lord. The dragon that declared the challenge accepted when you killed Malagar. That was Skylar.”
“Ooohh.”
Cecilia and Leopold had their jaws on the ground. The other girls where just nodding, proud. It was funny seeing Opal switching between dignified and proud. She ended up just proud. Edward turned to me.
“Was the dragon that you sold to the demons this Hoggar?”
“Nooooo… I sold them an adult. I thought that that would be enough to keep the balance. Besides, I don’t know if they would even have the tools to cut in the leather.”
Edward does this boom laughing.
“Now I can understand your headaches, Leopold! HAHAHAHA”
When he finally reign in his laughter, he continues.
“Aren’t you afraid of telling me secrets?”
“What do you mean?”
“That information is kind of confidential, no?”
“Are you worried about keeping information confidential from ants? My lord told us that he has some… benevolence towards you, so we are here. It’s not like it makes any difference, really. Unless you have more people strong like my lord around.
“I don’t know about this city, but the one we have been visiting doesn’t seem to have anyone worth fighting. And I am the female. Probably an average hatchling would be able to erase it. I know I would.”
“Do you mean…”
“Just pouring enough fire to turn it to ashes and lava.”
She looked at me like she was saying something obvious.
“But don’t worry, if he cares, we care. Whatever makes our lord happy.”
She came close to me, and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I am so lucky, I am so happy. Apparently it bothered the guild guys a little. Edward looked at me.
“What are your next plans?”
“Right now, to get the recipe of those sweets, they enjoyed a lot.”
“I mean, seriously.”
“I think I couldn’t be happier right now. I have a couple of friends that are nice people. Leopold, Rajesh, and a couple more. I have these beautiful, interesting, intelligent and wonderful females around me. I have a hunting ground that people around here just won’t go, around the Nursery, or I can go to Drakonia if I so whish. What is else there to want? I just want to not be bothered. And I have to thank you guys for that. I even have a pet.”
I looked at Muninn, that cawed. At this point, Leopold placed his hand on my shoulder.
“Just please don’t sneeze.”
Edward didn’t understand the internal joke.
“What?”
“I told him that I was worried that he might sneezed and destroy a nation.”
Edward scratched his nose.
“I have to say, though, that that’s not really impossible…”
And we laughed. Leopold couldn’t resist it.
“Is there a mithril shield around? Marcelo, can you get Muninn to do his thing?”
Edward gestured to the butler, for him to get close, and whispered something to him. He disappeared, and we continued chatting.
“… And then I see the same guard, in the cafeteria, I give a hand hello, and he blacks out again…”
Everyone laughs.
The butler comes in with a shield, I put it on the table.
I look at Muninn again, and whistle. He looks at me. I point at the shield.
“Destroy it,” I say with a low tone. He comes in like a lightning, and starts tearing the shield to pieces. For his claws and beaks enhanced with neutron crystals and sharp to a molecular edge, it is not that hard.
Then I tap on my shoulder, and he lets it go and lands on it. I keep patting his chest, “Good boy. Good boy. Isn’t he cute?”
Edward holds the shield, now with a hole in the middle.
“I don’t know if cute is the word, but he is something.”
“Oh, I can think of something I want… We kind of need a larger bed.”
Edward slapped the top of Leopold’s head.
“Why didn’t you provide that?”
“That’s the first time I hear… Gods…”
We laughed a comfort laugh. Cecilia was eyeing Leopold, she finally realized.
“How come you’re not talking fruity?”
“Well, that is a persona. I don’t want people to know how strong I am, actually, how strong I was. Acting the way I act just make people a little uncomfortable, they don’t try to look any deeper. A little bit like your… like Marcelo here.”
“Isn’t it tiring?”
“Of course, but the good illusion is the long term one. The one that everyone is sure it is that way.”
…
“Changing the subject, Cecilia, can you shop for the bed? I think it would make it easier… You’re branch master, after all…”
“Ok. What’s the budget?”
Leopold pinches the bridge of his nose. Edward is the one that answers.
“Don’t worry about budget. That branch can be considered special.”
The butler brings in some drinks, and we sit down on the sofas.
“Tell me, you mentioned that you’re friends with Rajesh. What is your opinion on him?”
“Actually, quite good. He treats people below him with respect, and we had some long talks. Did you know that he refused to spend water on his personal garden because his people was thirsty? I don’t know if he did that to lead people on or not, but the matter of fact is, Arthuria Kingdom doesn’t do it; the Holy Kingdom doesn’t do it. I don’t know if the Empire, the human Empire would do it or not.”
“Were you the one…?”
Edward dropped his jaw, Leopold did not understand. Guina and Thalor were raising their eyebrows.
“The one that what?”
“I should have connected the dots! You’re the benevolent Wrax! The one that designed a way to clean water from the sea!”
“I helped a little, they did most of the work. I just gave an idea, and they went from there. The demons actually are pretty smart.”
We all stayed silent for a little while. I was sipping on the drink, it was kind of good. Not as good as the demons, but very good.
Edward started laughing, first a little, then a lot. We all looked at him.
“Do you have any idea what you did? You are actually dictating exactly how the war should be.”
“What do you mean?”
“First, the whole dragon parts incident. Have you heard about the two special forces meeting, with the dragon parts?”
“Yes, I heard about that. But hey, the humans got three dragons, the demons only got one. If there is stupidity or corruption among nobles, it is not on me, right?”
And I shrugged.
“No, you were perfect. But besides that, there is something else that happened. The demon army has been showing up with more mages. Specially with water spells…”
“Oh…” Those were probably the water mages that got released from the service of creating water to sustain the cities. That makes sense. And again, it cannot be pinned on the demons or myself either. The way the war was, it should have been won by the humans a long time ago. It was just too much corruption, apparently.
We chatted a little more, but I was getting tired. So much for my social battery. After sometime, we said our farewells. I portaled Leopold to his office, and us to Frolk’s guild.
We just went to bed.
