No Need For A Core?

The next day, while Fuyuko and Amrydor were tormenting Gemeti with staff and hand-to-hand combat drills, Kazue and her spouses were deciding how to respond to an invitation from the queen of Danuana, which had been delivered by a courier early in the morning.

Satsuki had volunteered to keep the courier ‘entertained’, and given how pretty the elven man was, Kazue wasn’t surprised. Also, Kazue was now wondering just how pretty of an elf-boy she could talk Mordecai into being. She didn’t want feminine — after all, if she wanted that, Mordecai could just become a woman for her. But a pretty enough guy to push the boundaries.

Later, however. Business first, and Kazue chose to ignore the amused looks from her husband and wife. It was entirely unfair that they could tell so easily when she got distracted by her wandering thoughts.

“Well,” she said as glanced once more at the ethereal script decorating the fine, delicate-looking paper. “I suppose visiting other royals is something we she expect to be doing occasionally. I hadn’t really thought about that aspect of having our titles. Moriko and I weren’t really queens when we traveled to Ekuilance together, so I don’t think we got the full formal treatment. I can only imagine that the elves have very well established formalities.”

Mordecai nodded. “It’s likely that I am familiar with the ones they are using, as Queen Phaenara Eithriell Luthriel was a princess when I knew her… which brings up something that hadn’t been relevant before. The elven royals have very long life spans, even compared to normal elves, so I expect that Queen Phaenara will still look fairly young, despite being older than Traxalim.”

Kazue felt a suspicion stir, and based on Moriko’s expression, her wife felt the same. She smiled sweetly at her husband and asked, “Mordecai, it occurs to me that you never did explain how you became so familiar with the elven ritual to have multiple fathers for one child.”

“No, I didn’t,” he replied calmly, and let the following silence hang there for a long moment before he grinned. “Don’t worry, I have not sired any children in the royal family. One of my previous avatars was propositioned to become part of Princess Phaenara’s royal counsel, with a modified oath to only bind me as a consort for a limited time, but I turned her down. Of course, I asked a lot of questions and managed to convince her to show me the written documentation of the rituals before I turned her down.”

“Oh?” Moriko said with a purr in her voice. “And just how did you manage to convince an elven princess to give up such secrets? Given how few people seem to know about the details of it, they must keep the information close.”

Mordecai shook his head. “While the documents aren’t exactly on public display, they aren’t considered to be that sort of secret. While they don’t simply hand out the ritual itself, the important details such as all of the queen’s consorts being fathers to each daughter are available to any citizens who care enough to learn. The most dangerous part of the ritual is the possibility that someone might want to mimic the royals without having the knowledge and power to make the ritual work. Even the stripped down version that Satsuki and I created took a lot of work and power.”

A mischievous smile slipped onto his face then. “Of course, she was using the knowledge of the ritual as an additional layer of trying to seduce me into being one of her consorts, while I was happy to seduce her back to get my hands on such an interesting magical construct.”

Kazue rolled her eyes. “Typical, he just wanted to drool over the fancy magical symbols instead of the pretty elf lady.”

“The pretty elf lady that you want to make friends with for your own selfish reasons,” Mordecai said.

“Well, yeah, of course I want to be friends with her, but why do you say it like that?”

“As a princess, she already had a rather impressive stash of erotic literature. I can only imagine how large her collection is now.”

Kazue’s eyes went wide at the thought.

Moriko started laughing. “Your expression says it all. But all of this is besides the point; we still haven’t decided how to respond to the invite.”

“There’s no reason not to accept; the only question is who we bring with us,” Mordecai said. “Fuyuko is already on a schedule for her training, so she won’t be coming. Carmilla might be tricky, but I am sure we can find someone to stand in for her swamp witch role. Satsuki should probably stay to keep an eye on things here. We should consider bringing Deidre — her status as a member of our court remained intact after she connection to Svetlana was severed, so she could use the experience of a proper royal court. Bellona makes for an impressive guard, but I am not sure she would want to go and there is no reason to push her, so that will depend on what she wants. Is there anyone else we should bring?”

Kazue shook her head to clear it and focus on the task at hand. “Well, I was wondering if we should consider bringing some of our zone bosses to broaden their experiences, but we will be away for a while and are already bringing Carmilla, so that might impact people’s delves. Having a guard is a good idea though. So, do we undersell our strength based on the appearance of having an honor guard comprised of laganthros, carakin, and foxkin? Or do we sell on the impressive display of having usagisune, nekosune, and nexus-born kitsune?”

There were a lot of things to work out, including clothing, possible routes, planning for duration based on how large their escort was. And of course, the wording of their reply. Once they had a first draft of their reply down, they set it aside for Satsuki to go over and offer suggestions on. They also intended to have her write the final version, as her handwriting was as overly perfect as the script that had been in the invitation.

The conversation was interrupted by the sudden awareness of something unusual happening. Amrydor had, as a delver, challenged the nexus’s contractor Fuyuko to a duel.

‘Fuyuko?’ Kazue asked. ‘Is everything alright?’

Their daughter’s mental voice was bright, cheerful and eager. ‘Yeah yeah, it’s good. We want to really test ourselves and go all out, so we’re working on the rules right now. Amry set it up as a duel partly to make sure nothing about his status interrupts what we’re doing.’

So a hard spar? That seemed fine, but Fuyuko and Amrydor had taken Gemeti down to the arena and Kazue had the feeling that she’d missed something, so her core focused on their conversation.

“Alright,” Amrydor said with a nod. “Your throwing weapons can have the enchantment to return to you, since that is part of your combat style. We’re both using storage bracers with a shielding enchantment. We’re both using our living armor. I’ve replaced my normal plate armor with an unenchanted version, and all the weapons in our borrowed bracers are otherwise also non-magical. No healing potions or other magical items, but we can use any of our powers or magic. Did I miss anything?”

“No, that covers the stuff we’re using. For the fight rules, we’re going until one of us really can not physically continue, but we’re adding no killing as a constraint; gotta be skilled enough to incapacitate without killing. But killing results in a draw, not a loss.” Fuyuko stuck out her tongue at Amrydor.

Amry rolled his eyes at that, but he was also smiling. “Agreed, a death is a draw for our duel, so that we can feel free to take bigger risks in our attacks, for ourselves or for the other.”

There was that subtle sensation of a deal being made with a faerie, and Fuyuko grinned widely. “This is going to be fun.”

They were in an armory where the nexus had provided a lot of mana-crafted items for people to train with, so the pair had a nearly unlimited selection of options to choose from.

Gemeti was watching them with wide eyes, and Kazue verified her suspicion that the mad pair had loaded their bracers with sharp, lethal weapons. This really wasn’t going to be a spar, this was a fight, or, well, duel, since that was the way Amrydor had phrased it.

“You guys are really going to attack each other like that?” Gemeti asked softly.

“Yes,” Amrydor replied. “I know it seems strange, but there’s no where else we could possibly do this. Well, no where we have access too. Trionea has an arena with wards that are supposed to be good enough to have a similar effect as Kazue’s boon, but those wards have to have mages actively channeling into them during a fight. I think maybe the Allied Nations have one like that as well, but I’m not sure.”

“Amry…” Gemeti paused for a moment, then asked, “Could you actually fight me like that? Would you really be willing to hurt me, to risk killing me?”

Amrydor focused all of his attention on Gemeti and stepped toward her. “My pretty, precious Gem, there is an important difference. This isn’t something you want, and I could never inflict this sort of situation on you, or anyone else. It would truly harm you, here.”

He pressed his fingers over her heart, then continued, “Now, if the idea made your eyes sparkle the way Fuyuko’s did when I mentioned it, that would be different. I can risk either of us temporarily being maimed or even dying only because of this location, and because Fuyuko is just as eager to push herself.”

Fuyuko had reached up to touch just below her eye, and now asked, “They sparkled? You don’t mean like fey magic sparkle, do you?”

Amry laughed and shook his head. “No, I just mean you looked excited. Come one, let’s get this started. I think we’re going to have an audience.”

Kazue felt ill at the idea of the sort of fight her daughter was about to throw herself into. Not that Fuyuko hadn’t gotten herself injured in a dangerous fight before, but this felt different that the combat they’d face in either Dersuta’s nexus or Svetlana’s.

Moriko touched Kazue’s arm lightly, and she jumped with an ‘eep!’

“Sorry,” Moriko said, “I didn’t realize you were that focused on them. Are you alright?”

“I…” Kazue searched for the right words, then shrugged with a sigh. “I don’t know. I get that it will be fine, and they both want to. Fuyuko clearly takes after you two for this sort of thing; my sympathies are with Gemeti.”

Or Gem, as Amrydor had called her, though it changed the sound of the ‘g’ to be like a ‘j’ instead. Kazue thought that ‘My pretty, precious Gem’ was pretty smooth in this situation. Gemeti clearly liked gems and jewelry and dressing up prettily, and had looked rather pleased at Amrydor’s phrasing.

“Fuyuko’s also simply being true to herself,” Mordecai said. “After all, she did manage to kill a peryton in a one-on-one fight, right before she met Gil. Our girl is a natural and she likes fighting almost as much as Moriko does, though she is much more willing to get into bloodshed.”

Moriko tilted her head to the side thoughtfully. “Mordecai, you and I should do a duel like theirs sometime. Not until after the kids leave of course — I don’t want them to feel upstaged or anything.

Mordecai considered the idea and said. “Yes, though I think we should also make sure that only inhabitants know about it, and know not to talk about it to outsiders. I am not sure that rumors of a king and queen having a bloody fight to the near-death are a great look. Fuyuko and Amrydor already have some delvers as part of their audience, but it should be less of an issue for them than it would be for our reputation.”

Kazue sighed. “I can’t… no, I can believe that you two want to have a fight like that too, I just don’t want to believe it. Nevermind. So, should we go down and watch our daughter fight like a mad woman?”

“Will you be alright if we do?” Moriko asked.

“I’m going to bring a couple of books and can use magic to block the sight and sound if I need to.”

“Well then,” Mordecai said. “Let’s go. I think she’d appreciate the support.”

“I wonder who Gemeti is going to cheer for?” Moriko mused as they got ready to head to the arena. “Oh, and Satsuki might want to know too; she’s probably finished ravishing the courier by now.”

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Early chapters, some excerpts and short stories, and more art!