The list of items Tess picked up was extensive. Cups, cutlery, enchanted ceremonial weapons, neckces, gemstones that either could or did hold a magical charge, pictures, and on and on like that. All of it disappeared underneath her mantle.
She preferred somewhat practical things, Rykard soon realized. “Ignoring all of the coins?” he asked.
“What use are coins when I have the backing of the tax man?” Tess answered, while turning a dagger of silver and gold in her hand. It disappeared into thin air.
“How does that work?” Rykard hummed, rubbing his chin. “A connection to the Bond Crow’s hoard as a pocket space? One within your mantle for vast storage and a quick connection to your hands as an armoury?”
“Your analysis of magic continues to astound,” Tess answered. “We can continue now.”
“As you say.” Rykard took the heading of the group and walked through the next gate. It did not lead into another absurdly long corridor. Instead, they entered a stretch of empty rooms and praying halls. Each was dedicated to another god, or simply to resting. They spend the better part of several hours there, exploring the ornate chambers for anything interesting.
“Is that incense?” Lyvia asked.
“It is indeed,” Rykard hummed, having noted the scent a few minutes earlier. Confidently, he strutted in its direction. “Incense, sulfur, meat and desire,” he listed. “A peculiar combination, isn’t it?”
The king left his haremettes guessing and continued on. The environment gradually changed. Marble turned bck, gold to a crimson metal, and the air warmed up until clothing became a bothersome yer. Rykard did not stop to take it off just yet. After all, he was about to meet a married woman.
One more flight of stairs, one more doorway, and then they stood in an oval chamber. Basins of crimson fire burned scented wood, creating no smoke but only steam that raised the humidity in the room to an even more cloth-discarding degree. Towards the end of the room, where the clit would be located were the room a woman’s most private, stood a throne. In the throne sat a deity.
Rykard had known her to have six horns and in the broadest sense that was true. Two rge, curved horns protruded from the edges of her forehead and four, much smaller ones, joined with a tiara to form a crown. A faint halo of purple fire hovered above her bck, lustrous head of hair. Her bangs were cut straight, short locks framed her face and the red eyes.
She wore nothing, except for a decorative cape attached to her colr. Her huge breasts were on clear and proud dispy, as was her shapely midriff, thick thighs, and the sinful hole between them. Above was, a gently pink on red skin, an intricate womb mark. Her arms and legs faded gradually to bck, ending in cwed hands and feet. A simirly bck and red tail curved behind the great throne of impossibly shaped wood.
There sat the First Seductress, the Mother of Succubi and one of the first seven demon gods. There sat the Wife to Pride, the Dreameater, and the Temptress. There sat Lucia, Lady Lust herself, and her bck lips spread into a light smile.
“There you are, son-in-w,” she mused and gestured at a tea table that had suddenly manifested in front of her. “Please, do sit.”
Rykard put two fingers on his forehead. The gesture piqued Lucia’s interest and her smile grew wider when he drew an arch over his left side to his naval and then back up his right side to his forehead. Once back at the origin point, he tapped twice, then bowed.
“Did dear little Hey tell you about that?” Lucia asked.
Rykard undid the buttons of his uniform as he answered. “Your daughter helped me distinguish fact from fiction regarding what I knew about you. The eros bow I was aware of before.”
“Mhm… still, her efforts should be uded… consider it arranged that I give her a little more of the power slumbering in her blood.” Lucia smiled. “She is of the noblest descent among your harem, after all.”
A fact somewhat undisputable. Most succubi were daughters of Lucia in the sense that they could all trace their lineage back to her. Hey was a daughter of Lady Lust directly, which made her the child of two gods. While this did not elevate her to divinity herself, it was a more distinguished parenthood than anyone else could boast, even the aristocrats in his harem.
“Hey did request that I seek you out for your blessing on New Eden… but I suspect this is not the time?” Rykard presented the question while stepping out of his pants.
“It is not,” Lucia answered. “My presence here is tied to conditions and codes of conduct, as per usual. If you are looking for my intervention, you will have to invest your own resources to justify the exchange, not try to exploit me extending my hand.”
‘The usual divine things,’ Rykard thought and gestured for his clothes to fold themselves up next to one of the three chairs opposite of Lucia’s throne.
“Comfortable?” the demon goddess asked, while he approached.
“Quite so,” he answered, not minding the red eyes that roamed his curves. There was desire there for him and his toned physique. Lady Lust was, predictably, a lustful creature and she did enjoy seducing new men. However, much like Hey, Lucia had little respect for men she could seduce and, more importantly, she was loyal to her husband. Anyone who touched his wife would incur the wrath of Lord Pride. Something she knew and enjoyed causing on occasion.
Lucia was not as terrible as the worst preachers said, but she was not a good person either.
Rykard didn’t care. He wasn’t about to be tempted by her. Boundaries of marriage were among the few that he unequivocally respected. They could acknowledge that the other was attractive without wanting more.
Once the king was seated, his haremettes followed suit. Equally naked, after his example, they looked at the Mother of Succubi. A wave of her hand and the table was fully decked with tea and cake. “Do enjoy yourself,” she encouraged.
Rykard picked up one of the little tarts and bit into it. That it made his blood run hot through his veins, tingling with rising arousal, was so expected it almost didn’t affect him. Since Lucia was approving of his nudity, and preferred honesty from those she’d call her sons-in-w anyway, there was no need not to act on his rising erection though.
The king chewed on fruit and sweet bakeware, leaned back, realized Tess was not eating, and simply grabbed the gothic woman by the hair. A tug was all that was needed to get her to move under the table instead. Not five seconds ter, the wet sounds of tightly closed lips gliding up and down joined the soft crackling of the fire.
“Anything in particur you wanted to talk about?” Rykard asked.
“Not really, I just wanted to meet the breeder of my daughter personally.” Lucia let out a sigh, between motherly worry and contentment. “It feels like yesterday that I first raised her to my bosom. Motherhood is so rewarding.”
“I am surprised you aren’t pregnant right now,” Rykard joked.
“Ah, but I am!” Lucia answered. “Hubby always keeps me nice and bred. I think the longest stretch I went without a child growing inside me since our ascension was…. Three days?” She struggled to think back, then shrugged. “Too long. I have made my evaluation by now. You exceed my expectations. Keep doing so and maybe I’ll be nice enough to put one of my daughters in your path.”
“Didn’t you already do that?” Rykard asked.
Lucia waved off. “I do not have Subana’s predictive powers. Hey was there because Helenn was there. I can’t let that saccharine shortstack get away with contending my title. I am Lady Lust, no matter how submissive and breedable that little thing is.” That did lineup with Rykard’s expectations. “While you still have me, anything you want to talk about?”
“No, I’m good.”
The answer was of great amusement to the goddess. She began to chuckle, then to whole-heartedly ugh, as if the sheer depth of that answer only became more apparent on closer inspection.
It was not lost on Rykard that he sat across one of the original demon gods and refused to ask any of the big questions. There was no greater reason for this then him not needing to hear any of her answers. He was no lost sheep or devout follower, he was Rykard of New Eden and his path was his own.
They had their tea, Tess had a drink of another kind, and they talked about this and that without any real direction. Ultimately, Rykard had his fill of sweet pastries and Lucia had the knowledge she sought about the state of her daughter’s chosen man.
“Actually, one question,” Rykard spoke up, clothed and ready to leave through the door behind Lucia’s throne.
“What is that?” the goddess asked, without looking past the backrest.
“What is the velocity of an unden Swallow?”
“A gulp,” Lucia answered without missing a beat.
Rykard snorted, then resumed walking. He knew she wouldn’t be there anymore if he had checked.
They went on deeper and deeper, stumbling over more interesting sights but none quite interesting enough to be of mention in a recollection of Rykard’s deeds. Just for the hell of it, they took a break in one of the many side rooms to be able to boast that he had fucked them both over a table in an angelic ruin.
“Think this pce could be of use?” he asked Lyvia when they were back walking.
“In a limited capacity, Sir. As a military outpost or otherwise permanent residence, I doubt it. I feel that there is a deliberate hostility to this temple.”
That was an adequate enough analysis. Rykard himself had doubts about the permanence of the yout. The marble walls were steeped in divine magic so thick that rearranging them would have been as simple as curling a finger to any deity that took an interest in it. Considering the amount of deities out there and the current interest many of them had in this world in its creation, it was only a question of time.
At least they could be certain that they continued forward. The esoteric value of a pce like this was such that their advancing counted for something as long as they did it.
The endless hallways and backrooms eventually lead to an intersection. The centre of the intersection was dominated by a massive pilr. The pilr was a grand work of marble, gold, and silver, with a few bck inys to give the weird shapes carved into its surface a little bit of structure.
Rykard tried to recognize them. Here and there, he believed he spotted the hint of an arm, a leg, or a muscur torso, but it all felt disjointed. The trio circled around the pilr, thinking it just a fragment of the ndscape, only to find a bck gate at the other side.
“Alright, so this is some sort of riddle?” the king thought out loud and stepped backwards. He looked around for any clues. The ceiling was painted in three different colours, yellow, grey, and pink, each present as a line that went away from the pilr and towards the gate and the two side arms of the intersection.
Continuing to look around, he found two mechanisms at each end of the intersection. When touched, they caused the surface of the pilr to swirl. It would have been too easy, however, if it had just been individual segments moving or turning. Whoever had conceived this riddle had decided to take full advantage of the divine magic they had access to. The entirety of the surface was in motion in a manner that was simply chaotic at first gnce.
Rykard saw three ways forward here, at least by intuition. One was to just logic it out until he arrived at the correct conclusion. Second was to use his rather immense artistic talent to intuit the shape he needed to find and go from there. Third was to just be patient and brute force the issue by pressing buttons until something made sense.
What was he an artist for if not to occasionally flex his artistic muscle?
‘Now, I can make out some arms and legs there… by the ws of aesthetics, that pair of arms would belong to…’ he did a semi-circle around the pilr. ‘...those arms. Mhm, the torsos seem all tangled up too… that one chest has star-shaped nipple pasties though, so that makes it pretty obvious.’
Bit by bit, Rykard stitched together the design in his head, until he ughed out loud at what was created at the end. “What is so funny?” Tess asked.
“You shall see in but a moment,” Rykard answered and went over to one of the terminals.
It was finicky to control the pilr with a console several metres removed. Since he knew what he was working towards everything between the finished product and now was just a bothersome set of motions he had to go through. Unlike like carving a block of wood to create a wanted image, there was nothing really interesting in pressing buttons and pushing levers.
In the end, the swirling surface of the pilr became sorted into the figures of three incredibly buff men. One final click had the st set of lines slot into pce. A moment ter, the shapes rose sharply from the rock in their individual colours.
A tribalistic cry echoed from nowhere. Distorted, rhythmic sounds underlined it. The three shapes smmed down on the ground, each of them striking a heroic pose for Rykard and the two women with him.
“Stardude!” added the pink conehead.
“Spongeman!” decred the yellow one.
“Squidbro!” squeaked the grey man.
The three of them changed their pose, to the appuse of Rykard. “This is beyond stupid,” Tess drawled. “What are they?”
“”We are the Death Lifters!”” they answered in unison.
“They would make for decent shock troops,” Lyvia analysed.
“I don’t think either of you are appreciating the true hirity of the situation,” Rykard stated.
“So stupid,” Tess insisted, then turned around and marched through the now open door. Solving the pilr riddle had been all that was required of them. The presence of the freakishly buff deep sea men was simply an amusing cherry on top.
“We would never be hired as shock troops,” Spongeman said, striking another pose in the process. “We are here to flex and dance with jellyfish.”
“Yeah!” Stardude decred.
“You two have no culture,” Squidbro added in a nasally voice. “I am also here for the high arts! The crinet! The bold and brash!”
Rykard’s amusement was put to the test under the unimpressed gaze of Lyvia. “This is what you find funny, Sir?” she asked. The question alone was criticism enough that he accepted that not everything he liked would be accepted by his women.
‘Helenn would ugh her brains out,’ he considered, then shrugged. “We are allowed our lowly amusements.”
“GET MOVING!” Tess shouted from down the corridor.
“Yes, yes,” Rykard decided to follow the orders of the goth. The pilr men did not care in the slightest. Their attention shifted from posing for the onlookers to posing with each other.
Just one of those random things that happened in life.
The gods had a wonderful sense of humour.
