Chapter 1

Kal threw his covers off and sat up, hanging his legs over the side of the bed so his feet came to rest on the lush green carpet covering the floor.

“That was rude,” said the woman on the other side of the bed as she tossed the linens back in his direction. Reaching for the ceiling of the large tent in a morning stretch, he didn’t even flinch as they struck him in the back.

Looking over his shoulder, he gave his companion a questioning look. “Did you stay like that all night?”

The body of the woman glowed white with wisps of light rising from her like ghostly fire. She laid on her stomach with her head resting on her arms because of the four gossamer wings sticking straight up from her back

“No,” she said, sounding exasperated, “I didn’t want you to get mad at me again.”

“I’m not mad at you, Ria, I just worry about you,” he said, falling backward so his head came to rest on the backs of her thighs. “You’ve gotten a few fingers shorter since we left Prentas’s tower and aside from killing another will-o-wisp, we don’t know how to make you big again.”

“Really, Kal? You weren’t worried about me getting shorter last night,” she said, shaking her bottom back and forth and taking him along for the ride.

Turning his head, he saw her looking back at him with a playful smile.

“I’m gonna bite you,” he stated, opening his mouth and moving toward her rear. Ria squealed in laughter, her body shrinking in an instant and turning into a line of tiny glowing motes. Kal’s teeth clicked together as the specks of light flew over to his clothing and dove into a small leather satchel on his belt.

“Aww,” said Ria, looking down with disappointment at her body’s original form of a small aqua-colored sprite. She raised a hand in the direction of the bag but hesitated before summoning one of the specks of light back. Her arm slowly fell, “I guess I’ll stay like this for today.”

Kal gently put his finger on her back and drew her in, kissing her on the cheek. “I appreciate it, maybe we will get lucky and run across a haunted swamp on the other side of the Great Desert,” he said before letting her go.

“That would be nice,” she said, fluttering up and landing on Kal’s shoulder as he made his way out of his bedroom and into the bathroom over by the entrance to the magical tent. “But at the same time, I hate the idea of absorbing something that was created by stealing people’s lives. It makes me feel like a horrible person.”

“Think of it this way,” said Kal as he touched a rune on the wall and made it light up, “if you come across a will-o-wisp and don’t absorb it, then all that lifeforce will slowly be consumed, sustaining the monster between meals. Consider the people who died for it to get that energy; how do you think they would rather it be used? Keeping the will-o-wisp alive to kill again? Or would they prefer to save any future victims, give you emotions, and allow you to get bigger for some fun with your favorite mortals?” As he spoke, water began flowing from a spout above the bath.

“When you put it like that...”

He smiled at the tiny flying woman, “It’s not like we need to worry about it this second. I’m just asking that you be a little more cautious about using that energy, but in the end, it’s your choice.” Stepping under the stream of water, he held out a hand toward her, “Care to join me?”

Ria contemplated his offer for a moment before shaking her head, “I’ll pass, but I will get your breakfast started so you can get moving as soon as the sun comes up.” Flitting out of the bathroom, she looked up at the ceiling of the tent. The canvas was a rich purple, indicating it was still nighttime outside, but near the eastern wall, the colors were beginning to lighten.

With a command from Kal, the canvas on the outside could also change color and create patterns to match its surroundings. The camouflage was extremely effective and if someone did take notice they would only see a small two-man tent.

The magical shelter was enormous on the inside compared to the exterior. The triangular flap for the doorway indicated the shelter’s outer shape and adjusted to the tent’s outer size. If Kal made the tent larger, the exterior became round with a conical top it and the doorway turned into a man-sized rectangle. At its largest size, the outer tent’s dimensions grew to match the interior and the entrance became two large flaps that took up most of the wall. A couple of steps lead from the entrance to a large foyer with the door to the bathroom located to one side. The foyer opened up into a larger circular area with multiple spaces for more rooms around the inside. On the left just beyond the bathroom lay the largest of the four canvas-walled rooms which Kal claimed as his bedroom. Directly across from Kal’s room was his library while the one next to it held Ikuno’s alchemy station. Standing alone on the back wall was a second, unused bedroom that Kal kept around just in case he had visitors.

Soft green carpets covered the floors, except for the bathroom and the very middle of the magical shelter. A round marble slab took up the center of the common area and had a large dimple in the middle which held the tent’s magical fire. The never-ending flames provided light and a place to cook but felt cool to the touch of living creatures. As the shelter detected Ria’s intent to prepare some food, three angled metal poles rose from the decorative white rock. About halfway through their extension, chains snaked out from the bottom of the fire and attached to eyelets on the metal rods. The poles then lifted a cooking grate from the flames, bringing it into position above the fire as the ends of the rods clicked together above the pit.

Kal had to do some digging in the tent’s instruction manual to make the shelter obey the sprite. Since she was an avatar of a bag of holding, she wasn’t alive in the same sense as humans and monster girls. Because of this, the tent didn’t recognize her existence. After a few frustrating hours with the tent’s instruction manual and a book for translating Elvish, the language of its original creators, he effectively made Ria his seneschal. At first, he thought it had been a huge waste of time just to allow her to cook up their meals. The sprite quickly reminded him that because she needed to be able to communicate with her owner regardless of language, all he had to do was learn the appropriate words in elvish and she would have access to them from then on. With the magical tent recognizing her and a little bit of studying on Kal’s part, she could easily make whatever changes to the shelter Kal wanted.

Finishing his shower, Kal returned to his room. His stomach growled from the pleasant odors coming from the fire pit as he passed through the large communal area. Spurred on by the smell of breakfast and his complaining stomach, he dried off and threw his clothes on as quickly as possible. Slipping his vambraces over his forearms, he took a moment to run his fingers over the intricately detailed runes embedded in them. The different spells inked into the leather along with the three tattooed across his upper back had helped him deal with almost every situation he had come across since learning to use magic. Unfortunately, he needed to make a new set tonight when they camped. The large city he and Ria were coming upon wasn’t someplace he wanted to advertise his abilities. He didn’t want to become a target of the city’s more unsavory factions. The new vambraces would only show a single rune; the spell that created a magical shield had to remain on the outside or he chanced removing his own arm. The rest of the spells would be pressed up against his skin on the underside of the arm guard.

Reaching down, he picked up another piece of leather with a far larger and more complex spell on it. This was his pride and joy when it came to magic, the flight rune. Buried within the maze of markings were glyphs and runic symbols that did everything from protecting him from the air’s chill at higher altitudes to forcing him to land safely if his magic ran too low. The original could be found rolled up and lying on one of the bookshelves in the library while another was stored inside Ria for safekeeping. The last time he passed through his hometown he gave a third copy to one of his lovers, a rock golem named Gerda, to hide away deep underground.

He smiled at the memory of his most recent visit home and meeting all of his new daughters for the first time. After rescuing a wolf-girl and her pack of dog-girls from slave kennels, he spent the next three days helping them with their heats, which had been suppressed by the slavers. Over that time, he ended up impregnating many of them and six new little girls were the result. Half of the pack split off and stayed in the forest south of Carriston while the rest took up residence in the woods near his farmhouse.

Once he met all the new additions to the pack, the wolf-girl, Daxas, had been quick to shoo him away. She assured him that while they loved him and were happy he wanted to be a part of their lives, in monster-girl societies the males were greatly appreciated but unnecessary. The rest of his time at home was taken up spending time with his loved ones, especially Perra and their son, Talin.

This included introducing them to the newest member of his core group of lovers, the raven harpy, Veir. While not bonded to him like the others, on their trip back to Telsin she decided to declare him as her mate. She wasn’t the first harpy to do so, the swallow patterned Kuto held that distinction, but Veir was unique in that she was one of the original monster girls and wasn’t born, but created.

Designed to be tower defenses by the ancient mage who made them, Veir and others like her didn’t age and were effectively immortal. The raven harpy was over a thousand years old. Amazingly, she wasn’t his only millennium-old lover. Ikuno, whom he was on his way to meet, was only a few decades younger than the raven. For such impressive ages, they both paled compared to Ria who believed herself to be tens of thousands of years old, and the Fae, Kithana, who was as old as the world itself as far as anyone knew. Kal wasn’t sure if he could consider Kit a lover. There was a promise of something happening in the future, but they hadn’t actually gotten that far.

When Kal continued on his journey east, Veir stayed behind. The original monster-girls were all sterile, their immortality rendering them unable to have children. This made all of the original monster girls get overly excited about children, especially babies. It brought tears to a few eyes seeing the happiness on her face as she held Talin or one of the new pups in Dax’s pack. As he was getting ready to leave again, she told him she wanted to spend some more time with the babies before heading back to Prentas’s tower. What she and Kal were doing at the time made it very difficult to come up with any objection.

“What’s that goofy look for?” asked Ria, hovering in the air with a piece of meat in her hands that was still sizzling from the fire. As a magical construct, she was immune to most kinds of harm. Taking too much damage would just send her back to her bag where she could be re-summoned seconds later.

“Just thinking about Veir,” he said, fixing his expression.

Ria giggled. As was often the case, she had been in the room watching as he made love to the harpy. “Hard to blame you there,” she said before flitting down to the wooden bowl sitting on the marble. Dropping the piece of meat inside, she went back for some of the vegetables before they burned.

He thanked her after she retrieved the last item then picked the dish up and moved out to the green carpet before sitting. Taking a small knife out of a sheath on his belt, he stabbed a lightly charred piece of meat and popped it into his mouth, humming in pleasure at the pleasant flavors. Ria was a surprisingly good cook for someone who had never done it until a few weeks ago. Her first few attempts had been disasters, her sense of “taste” worked in a strange way and appeared to be tied more to her mood than anything else. This seemed to explain why the sprite’s delight with sexual fluids was nearly on par with a monster girl’s. It took a few tries, but he eventually got her to recognize which flavors he enjoyed in his food.

“What’s the plan for today?” she asked, hovering in front of him.

“This should be our last day of travel before reaching Fazal,” he said between bites of food. “Other than hours of walking, I don’t have anything specific.” He would have preferred to have flown right up to the city’s gates, but after creating the flight rune he accidentally scared the daylights out of a couple of villages when he landed on the road near the edge of town. Not willing to be escorted out of another hamlet at spearpoint again, he now made sure he touched down a good distance from populated areas and walked the rest of the way. When he visited Falma and Kedder in Carriston he pushed that distance even further back after being spotted landing by one of the guards on the city ramparts. Thankfully, he had sent a messenger parchment ahead to let them know he would be passing through and Falma was at the western gate waiting for him. She had made enough of a name for herself already that she was able to smooth things over with the city guards. Being the guy that killed Kogen, the leader of the slavers who imprisoned Daxas and her pack, also helped the situation.

Slavers ... he wasn’t looking forward to dealing with them once inside Fazal. Jerran, the leader of the Thieves’ Guild in Carriston, and his second-in-command, Vadha, spoke with him at length about what to expect from the desert city. The longer they talked, the more he wanted to spend as little time in the desert city as possible.

They explained that slavery was not just common in Fazal, but a part of their everyday life. Vadha was adamant that he not attempt the same stunt he pulled in Carriston. Slavery was too ingrained in Fazal’s populace to be abolished and there was no support for any kind of reform from the King’s court. Despite his skills and magic, if he attempted to change things he would end up lying face down in a midden heap. What really surprised Kal was that the people of the city saw using a monster girl to sate your base pleasures was no different than sticking your dick into a dog or cow. Owners of monster girl slaves would often hire beggars off the street or those desperate for money to take care of the women when they came into season instead of sullying themselves with such a degrading act.

Not that Kal needed money, he and Gerda had stocked up on gems he could sell during his visit home, but at least he knew where to make more if necessary.

They also explained that slaves in Fazal would fight change just as much as their owners. Purchasing a slave was a large investment and owners got the best return on their money by making sure their slaves were well kept. If you were poor, being a slave was preferable to being free and spending your days begging for food or coin.

Now that he was about to enter the city Kal appreciated the information, but he was just passing through, not trying to turn a whole city’s way of life on its head. With luck, he would be there less than a week before one of the larger caravans set out for the other side of the Great Desert. There were smaller groups he could join leaving daily but those came with a higher chance of ending up a pile of bones slowly sinking beneath the dunes. The mage opted for the safer route.

“Since I was out all night with you, I think I’m going to get some rest,” said the little avatar.

“Understandable,” said Kal as he skewered the last of the bowl’s contents. “Before you go, I want to say that despite my earlier complaints, I appreciated waking up with you next to me.”

“You’re welcome,” she replied. Flying over, she kissed him on the cheek before fading away and returning to the leather satchel hanging from his belt.

Immediately, the tent felt colder even though he knew nothing had changed but his perception. Kal had to admit this journey had spoiled him. Since rescuing Daxas two months from when he first set out, he hadn’t spent significant time alone. The times when Ria remained out of her bag to keep him company at night were more appreciated than his words could convey. His eyes flicked over to the guest bedroom which had gone unused since he arrived at Prentas’s Tower. Now that he was able to fly, there was little chance it would be occupied again. Any companions he took on would need to be able to fly at a decent speed for hours at a time. If they happened to be monster girls then chances were good they wouldn’t be sleeping in the guest room unless he forced them to.

Looking down, he said the command that cleaned the bowl in his hands. It was a creation of the tent’s magic, but he couldn’t remember how to un-summon it. Shrugging, he left it sitting next to the marble slab, he could use it again later or have Ria get rid of it when he stopped for the night.

With a little luck, when night fell he would be on Fazal’s doorstep and enter the large city at sunrise tomorrow.

Exiting the tent, he looked back at it and said, “Tolu, “ the Elvish word that made the magical shelter collapse and fold in upon itself until it was just a small canvas square about a hand and a half wide. Picking it up, he rolled the fabric into a tube and dropped it into Ria’s bag where it vanished as though there was no bottom to the leather sack.

Far ahead in the distance, he saw a horse-drawn wagon pulling out onto the road and wondered if they would be interested in some company. The speed rune on his vambrace glowed slightly as he started down the road at a jogging pace.

“This hardly feels like we are on the edge of a desert,” said Kal, looking at the enormous mountain peaks ahead of them. He sat on the frontmost of the six barrels chained down in the back of the horse-drawn cart. One foot rested on the barrel across from him while the other was on the rail running behind the wagon’s bench seat.

The older man holding the reins chuckled as his son, a boy just a few years younger than the mage, sitting in the seat directly in front of him gripped the bow in his lap tighter and grunted with annoyance, turning his head just enough to glare at their passenger.

“The clouds can’t get up over the mountains,” said the driver. “All the rain falls on this side, on the other side is a little scrubland then nothing but sand.”

“Why did they build the city on the other side?” Kal asked.

“The city was built on an oasis before the pass was cut. A few centuries ago, Fazal’s king hired some dwarves to come in and fix the road in hopes of improving trade with the lands on this side of the mountains. Once we get to the foothills on the other side we should see the aqueduct they built as well.”

“Aqueduct? What’s that?”

“A fake river,” said the driver. His son grinned at Kal’s ignorance.

“What?”

“The dwarves redirected a mountain river from this side and ran it to a valley south of here, turning it into a huge lake. They then built a fake river that runs from the lake to the city.”

“I’m still lost about the ‘fake river,’” Kal admitted.

“It looks like a bridge running across the land but there’s water flowing over it instead of under.”

“That sounds interesting,” said the mage, despite having a hard time picturing this aqueduct in his head.

“It is, but don’t get too close. Guards patrol the aqueduct and commoners need special permission to touch it under penalty of death. That water belongs to the King and it runs into a large pool on palace grounds before going out to the rest of the city.”

Kal turned to look behind them at the sound of hooves and saw five riders in garish, brightly colored garb galloping towards them.

“One of the city’s patrols,” groaned the cart driver after glancing back.

“You don’t sound happy to see them.”

“Not enough supervision out here on the other side of the pass has made them corrupt. If they stop us, keep your head down and don’t piss them off.” Kal heard the man sigh in frustration as the patrol slowed their horses.

“Halt, merchant!” commanded the captain as they pulled up beside the cart.

“Whoa, Whoa,” the driver called out to the horses as he pulled on the reins and brought the cart to a stop. “Well met, captain,” said the driver in a cheerful and cordial manner completely opposite from a moment ago.

“State your name and purpose,” said the man in the lead, his rank denoted by the decorative gold inlay on his armor’s breastplate.

“I am Tetas and this is my son Reez. I am a winemaker and cooper delivering six barrels of aged brandy to the palace while my son is here for extra protection. My passenger back there will have to introduce himself as we have yet to exchange names.”