Chapter 12

Ignorance was bliss.

Yvain took an unconscious Roesia to bed, wishing he was the one currently comatose. He carefully maneuvered her body sideways so that her massive stomach wouldn’t crush her as she slept. Putting on the covers, it looked as if a whole human being was hiding next to the sorceress.

What went through their heads when they saw such a scene? he asked himself. Bad enough to find them having sex, Roesia’s body looked as if she was about to blow up.

There was no use thinking about it.

Yvain washed his body with the now lukewarm water and put his clothes back on before exiting the bedroom. No one was waiting for him, but several voices were coming from downstairs. Some which he didn’t recognize.

Trying to not make a sound, he made his way down the hallway.

“How did that thing even get in here?” one rough voice said.

“This whole dungeon is a mess,” said a sensual, melodious voice. The horned woman. Who was she talking to? “Leave it to fate to fuck us over at the least opportune moment.”

“This has nothing to do with her,” a deep, but eloquent sounding man said. “Regardless, he’s already on his way to deal with it.”

There was a whole party in the house and the horned woman seemed to know the other two. What if they were another group of people set on winning this dungeon’s prize? Whatever it was. Though how did they get in here in the first place?

Yvain made his way down slowly, intent on gathering as much information as possible and asserting Nora’s and Elly’s whereabouts.

“Feel better?” the horned woman popped her head out from the wall next to the stairs with a wide smile.

Yvain’s body seized as he jumped in fright. Then, giving a defeated sigh, said, “I guess.”

“Stars, you’re all weakness, aren’t you?” she said with a sigh of her own. “Come, Nora and Elly are here.”

The horned woman disappeared, and with no other alternative Yvain followed a familiar path toward the dining room.

A long shinny-brown table apt for hosting dozens of people, chairs with comfortable backrests and seat cushions, tall windows showing a luscious garden. The group was sitting around the place where Yvain had had many-a-meals growing up.

Nora beamed a smile at him and rushed off her chair, but Yvain’s attention was occupied by the two men he hadn’t seen before. One of Nora’s people and ... he couldn’t name the other, but both were of the beast races and equipped for war.

Seated close to the head of the table, they looked back at him with impassive faces while the horned woman sat next to them.

The goddess jumped into his arms.

“I’m so glad you’re both okay!” she said, rubbing cheeks with him.

“Relatively so,” Yvain said dazedly.

“Nelimir isn’t here yet, but I’m told he’ll arrive soon,” she said.

“By these people?” Yvain used his chin to point toward the unusual trio.

“We’re right here you know,” the horned woman interjected.

Nora eyed her but only got an amicable smile.

“Yes,” the goddess said, looking back at him, “How’s Roesia?”

She showed no hidden hostility, only worry for her friend.

“She’s ... fine. Well, no.”

Nora took a step back, still holding onto his shoulders and Yvain explained the overall situation with the sorceress, skipping over what she and Elly saw and the carnal details that led up to it.

“Did she try to at least absorb it?” the goddess asked.

“I’m not sure, but she was badly torn up about the whole thing. Barely cared about her ... leg.”

“I need to see her,” Nora said and sped off past him.

“Wait!” Yvain said. Was she just going to run in there? After what transpired?

He looked back at his master, but Elly was rooted on her seat, simply staring into space. Did she even hear that Roesia couldn’t use starlight anymore?

The thud of Nora’s shoes on wood running up the stairs cut his rumination short, urging him go after her with a small grunt of complaint.

Hand on doorknob, the goddess was already turning the lock when he reached her, every turn of the contraption tightening his chest.

“About what happened,” he began, but Nora rushed into the bedroom, ignoring his words.

Roesia was mercifully still asleep, yet her stomach remained the same size as before.

The goddess stood next to her before putting her hand on a sweaty forehead and closed her eyes.

It took not even a second.

“No...” she said quietly, pulling back. “I’ve ruined her.”

“We still don’t know if she can’t be healed,” Yvain said.

The goddess helplessly looked at him.

“There is no healing this. Her Galaxia has been destroyed.” Nora put a tender hand over Roesia’s head. “She shouldn’t even be alive right now.”

His first reaction was to deny her words. But who was he, to contradict someone with more experience and knowledge than him?

“Please,” Yvain began, “don’t tell her any of this when she wakes up.”

“What am I supposed to say?”

“Anything. Just don’t rid her of the little hope I managed to kindle. You should have seen her Nora. The thought of being unable to use starlight anymore nearly broke her.”

The goddess kept her eyes on the unconscious sorceress; slitted pupils shifting erratically.

“Okay,” she finally said, allowing him to release a breath of relief.

Nora wasn’t happy withholding information, that much was obvious. But she hadn’t seen the despair in Roesia’s eyes. It had scared him.

“Do you love her?” the goddess abruptly changed the topic, knocking the wind out of his lungs.

Yvain stayed upright by sheer force of will. And not knowing what to do with himself, played with his hands while eyeing the goddess.

“I can explain,” he said and prepared for an attack or insult.

None came.

“Well?” Nora asked.

“ ... It was for her own good, I mean, she needed my help.”

How in the brightest stars does fucking her like that equal she needing help!? Yvain screamed in his head. How did he begin to explain?

An amicable hand landed on his shoulder and Yvain’s head snapped toward the goddess like a startled deer.

“Calm down my love, I’m not angry,” Nora said.

“You’re ... not?”

She shook her head, smiling.

Did she trust him enough to think there was a good reason? No, she asked him if he loved Roesia. What was her aim then? Why would that even be a question?

Yvain was completely off-balance; the absurdity of Nora’s question and reaction sweeping his legs from under him.

Now struggling for steadiness, he could only clear his throat and launch into a step-by-step recounting of what happened between them. Filling in the blanks left behind on the first explanation.

Nora never brought up his initial omission.

“I wonder why she did it,” she said at the end.

“Who?”

“The succubus, I wonder why she would play such a trick on you and Roesia.”

“Succubus?” Yvain asked, attempting to bring up the word from his mental vocabulary and failing.

“Oh,” Nora said, “the woman downstairs. It’s one of the many different type of demons in the mainland. Succubi specialize in anything regarding sex.”

“What does that have to do with poison though?” Yvain asked.

“Most likely poison was never involved. She simply used her abilities on Roesia and made her extremely horny.”

Not the craziest thing he had heard or seen at this point, but...

“How did Roesia,” Yvain tried to find the right words but only managed to wave his hand toward the sorceress’s belly, “How did she become like this?”

Looking at the inflated stomach, Nora spoke, “I’m not an expert on demons, but if I had to guess, it’s also related to her.”

Yvain harshly rubbed his face, “Fuck me.”

“She doesn’t seem to have had malicious intentions though,” the goddess said and then in a quieter voice, “Maybe she had a much clearer view of what I glimpsed and decided to act.”

Yvain peeked from between his hands with a questioning gaze.

The goddess raised an eyebrow, “You haven’t answered my question. The second time wasn’t for her benefit, was it?”

‘Do you love her?’ The words revibrated through the soft ball of tissue in his head. It had an answer following behind it right from its conception.

“No, it wasn’t,” he said. “And not in the way that I love you, at least.” As Yvain spoke, an urge to touch Roesia, which he didn’t act on, suffused his hands. “It feels more like the time you and I met. Hearing her tell it, I think she is going through the same thing we did. Not only with me, but with you.”

“Me?” Nora asked, genuinely taken aback for the first time since they began this line of conversation.

“That’s what she said,” Yvain shrugged his shoulders.

“Has it always been like this?”

He shook his head. “It began after she changed. She—”

“You’re just going to tell her everything I said in confidence, aren’t you?” Roesia said.

Both Yvain and Nora froze.

“How much did you hear?” he asked in as normal a voice as possible. Did she listen in on them talking about her condition?

“I woke up around ‘I can explain’,” she said groggily, her back still facing them and her bloated stomach resting on its side. “I was prepared to come to your defense, but you did pretty well for yourself.”

“I ... I’m sorry.”

It hadn’t been his intention to expose the sorceress. He just didn’t even conceive holding back the information from Nora.

Roesia waved him off from her awkward position.

“I broke her trust first. I don’t have the right to complain.”

The goddess audibly sighed.

“Both of you, calm down. No trust has been broken between us.”

Roesia tried to look at Nora, but it was difficult from her position, and turning around on her own was out of the question.

“Do you need help?” the goddess asked, to which the sorceress shyly nodded.

There was the problem of her nakedness, but Nora didn’t seem to care. She brazenly went underneath the covers and, with great care, set a hand on the round stomach and shoulders before pulling the enlarged woman toward them.

Roesia gave small grunts of discomfort but was soon again resting on her other side, red as a tomato on the cheeks.

Nora waited for the sorceress to compose herself.

“I don’t understand,” she finally said, pushing through the embarrassment and echoing Yvain’s mind.

Nora studied the sorceress, eyeing Yvain sporadically at the same time. Then, seemingly making up her mind, spoke.

“Who Yvain beds is for him and that person to decide, not me.”

Yvain was about to open his mouth along a stunned Roesia.

“Let me finish,” Nora interrupted, raising a hand. “The outside world is much more different than you all might already think. Regarding relationships, each race has their own beliefs. Some religiously practice monogamy, others discard it completely, and for most its negotiable. In the case of humans, monogamy is king.” The goddess looked to Yvain. “That’s what I believed your mentality to be. I think I was right, but it seems a change has occurred in your perspective.”

Roesia was completely silent, looking down into her pillow as she contemplated everything she just heard.

“But ... your ring,” Yvain said.

“It’s true that my ex-husband and I followed the rituals used here, but it was only a fun convention used to demonstrate our love for each other. Certainly, no promises or vows were made. With his position and power, he could have had however many females.” Nora’s lips parted into a small feral smile directed at no one. “But would he dare to challenge his goddess?”

“Then your reaction when you threw it away was an act?” he asked. She had reacted like it practically burned.

Nora closed the distance between them, holding his head in her hands.

“That was all genuine,” she said. “You’re human, after all. I knew what your thoughts on the matter were and would not risk your favor over a meaningless trinket.”

A meaningless trinket, Yvain repeated in his mind with dry amusement. Why was he even saddened? He should have known that Nora would be vastly different from other human women the moment she took her true form.

He should start getting used to the clashes in perception, especially since they were close to going out into a world so different from his. Or so he told himself. A diminutive gash in his chest grew with no way of closing. Something that could widen with the passage of time.

“Regardless of the ring’s definition, you are still Nora Genesis, are you not?” Roesia asked, giving Yvain a meaningful look.

“Of course I am,” Nora said immediately, amorously staring at him.

The impact of the goddess’s words had made Yvain forget his implied offer of marriage back at the Cosmos branch. Something she had wholeheartedly accepted.

Was Roesia comforting him?

“And you didn’t allow your ex-husband to be with other women,” the sorceress said. “What’s so different about me?”

“The question isn’t what’s so different about you, but Yvain,” the goddess said and turned to him. “We should show her.”

“Show her what?” Yvain asked.

“Command me,” she said with a bit too much excitement.

Yvain’s hand went up to her mouth on its own, stopping any more words from coming out.

The goddess looked at him with no reservations.

“Seriously?” he asked with exasperation.

Nora nodded several times.

Roesia was, understandably, looking at them with confusion while patiently waiting for an answer to what the goddess meant.

Does it even matter at this point? Yvain thought. Even Elly knew of it. And with so many revelations just now, what was one more?

“Sit,” he commanded without enthusiasm, pointing at a small space available next to Roesia.

Nora did as told, draping her long tail over the sorceress’s stomach before plopping herself down happily.

“See?” she asked the sorceress with pride. “It might not be apparent to most, but Yvain is amazing.”

“It’s not that great,” he quickly said, embarrassed at his girlfriend’s unfiltered praise over such a ‘skill’.

Roesia still looked confused.

“ ... So you followed his order?” she asked.

“I didn’t follow it as much as he made me do this,” Nora said like it was perfectly normal and acceptable.

The sorceress didn’t seem convinced, but she pressed on, “What does this have to do with you accepting me?”

Yvain couldn’t help himself and nodded.

“It’s a visual display of just what it is that exists between he and I. You feel it too, don’t you? A pull you can scarcely deny. He controls all of me, and I’m happy he does. Who am I to deny his wants?”

“That makes absolutely no sense,” the sorceress said, unconvinced.

“But it’s true,” Nora said.

The bedded woman scoffed, “I don’t have experience when it comes to romantic relationships, but I’m not an idiot. Neither will I be lied to, regardless of what I might feel for both of you. And I certainly won’t be used for simple bodily gratification.”

“That’s...” Not what she meant. The words rang hollow even before Yvain said them and fell quiet. However outrageous Nora’s words were, neither of them did what they did for simple physical gratification. Yet outrageous they were, so how could they help the sorceress understand?

“Why would we lie to you?” the goddess asked.

Instead of addressing her, Roesia looked at Yvain.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Even if we pretend for a moment that what you said is true, and you’ll allow this to be something between me and him, then we have nothing else to discuss. What we did was a mistake that won’t be repeated.”

The sorceress’s eyes asked him for confirmation.

“That’s ... right,” Yvain said, unsure of himself. Was that what he wanted? Was that what she wanted?

Nora showed genuine confusion to his concerned one.

“You already admitted to having an attraction toward us,” she said. “Why would you call it a mistake? Why hold yourself back?”

“Maybe I’m not the most ignorant in this room,” Roesia said with an honest laugh. “There’s a physical attraction, but what else? What do you like about me besides my body, Yvain?”

She might as well have asked him to explain one of her theorems because he drew a blank. With that blank, Roesia’s expression darkened.

“For that matter, what does he even like about you? And what do you like about him? You’re an empress. A goddess. A ruler of powerful beings we didn’t even know existed a week ago. What could you possibly see in him?”

“I ... well...” the goddess was suddenly at a loss for words. For a moment her eyes shifted while she scratched her arm, but soon her shoulders deflated. “You’re absolutely right,” she said and raised her head toward him, “It’s something I’ve wondered about since meeting you, Yvain. There are no easily explainable circumstances under which we would have what we have. Even if you were a thousand times stronger, intermixing races is something frowned upon everywhere; something I frowned upon in the past. So why is it that I can’t get enough of you?”

Nora moved her attention to the sorceress.

“It’s irresponsible of me, I’ll admit. But I can no less give up on him than I can give up on my daughter.”

The goddess set a hand on the sorceress’s brow, gently caressing her to visible effect.

“I’m sure we can agree though, that a deeper understanding of each other can come with time. At that point we’ll be able to answer your questions.”

“Maybe,” Roesia mumbled, pushing into Nora’s hand without realizing it.

“I can’t claim to know Yvain’s thoughts,” Nora said. “But, besides him, you’re the person who has been the kindest to me. You’re also disgustingly smart and have been more than patient while I learn about your culture. Though you’d do better to keep your space organized.”

“I ... I’m just being myself,” Roesia stuttered, reddening once more.

A weirdly loving air formed around both women. It obliterated Roesia’s slight aggression in mere moments, as if her complaints hadn’t ever been voiced.

Yvain couldn’t bring himself to interrupt.

“That’s the point, isn’t it? You’re a dragoness now, but there is a sharp distinction between those I rule over and you. A distinction between Yvain and my ex-husband.”

Nora’s voice had turned sickly sweet.

Underneath the blankets, Roesia’s legs pressed against each other and twisted the bedsheets.

“All in all,” the goddess said as she drew closer to the sorceress. “I can confidently say that I’m not just attracted to your body.”

Time almost froze for Yvain as the women locked lips.

Roesia made no attempt to fight back.

It was a slow thing. A test of the waters that lasted only a few seconds.

When Nora pulled back, Roesia didn’t know where to look—her eyes moving either toward the goddess’s breasts or the pillow.

“I...” the sorceress began when a knock on the door interrupted her.

Yvain practically jumped out of his skin. His whole being had been locked on Nora and Roesia, on their lips meshing and squishing each other along sounds of suctioned breath. It was inevitable, he had a massive hard-on.

Another knock, lazy but heavy.

He went to answer, hiding half his body behind the intricate wooden board.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Nelimir is here,” Elly said.

Many strange things happen when on the verge of death. Maybe one recounts their past life—every decision made scrutinized to the smallest of details. Every triumph and regret laid bare in a moment. Maybe one clutches on desperately to their consciousness, denying the idea of an eternal oblivion. Maybe one just accepts the inevitable and let’s go for a quick release from torment.

Nelimir wasn’t dying, not yet. But the being had once more appeared behind them. One moment the surroundings were devoid of life, the next it was taking a leisure walk their way. Whatever the Star elf had done, it had only served to stop it temporarily.

Their rush to escape rekindled, they ran. But eventually he had to face the truth. He was tired. He was thirsty, he was hungry. Had it been days? It didn’t matter, they were still too far from their destination and too weak to have any hope of reaching it before that thing reached them.

‘I am sorry’ the Star elf would say whenever he would take a particularly hard pant, faltered, or sweated droplets onto her. He would just smile and say some empty words of reassurance, but they both understood the hopelessness of the situation.

“What can it even do? It doesn’t seem that threatening,” Nelimir said.

“Do you know what is chasing us?” the Star elf asked.

Nelimir shook his head.

“It is a starchild that has lost his mind,” she said. “Just like my ears, their weakness is emotions. Only, lose control of them and they lose control of their inherent and acquired powers, becoming mindless beasts that attack anything that gets near.”

“How is that a weakness?” Nelimir asked with a particularly harsh huff as his sides begged for oxygen.

The Star elf looked at him like he was the most clueless man she had ever met. Truthfully, he was just sick and tired of that thing, and whatever had happened to this person, it was clearly working against them.

“Starchildren are like any other one of us, they have wants, needs, and loved ones. Yet they are also more sensitive. Slight anger can flip into rage, slight sadness can flip into sorrow, slight happiness can flip into joy. What do you think happens when they lose control?”

Nelimir didn’t have to give an answer. Instead, he thought of Nora, and the moment she put a knife to his neck. The hostility had seemingly come out of nowhere.

The Star elf continued, “A chaotic storm of emotions with no rhyme or reason. And that thing is controlling space, allowing it to keep up with us at a slow pace. I cannot begin to explain what type of knowledge and how much starlight one needs to achieve such a feat with ease. Our one saving grace is that it is an old entity. Enough time has passed for it to reach tumultuous tranquility. But as soon as it reaches us...”

Nelimir didn’t bother to ask what she meant by ‘controlling space’. At this point he was too out of his depth to even care. Only their impending death mattered.

“Is there a way to turn him back?” he asked.

The Star elf nodded, “It is possible, but someone vastly more powerful, and willing to help, would be needed.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know someone,” Nelimir said with a tired laugh.

“I do, for all the good it does us at the moment,” the Star elf said sadly when her head abruptly swung up, “watch out!”

A hammer slapped against Nelimir’s chest, blasting his body away several feet. It was all he could do to brace for impact, every muscle protesting as they were pushed past their limits. When he came to a stop and rose on his hands, the being was again standing right on top of the Star elf, only this time her arm was breaking apart in rectangular strips at the touch of its darkened tentacles.

There was no blood, and she didn’t scream out in pain, only looked up at it.

What could he do? Nelimir roughly panted as his mind tripped over itself trying to find a way to help her, but the Star elf was being gradually ripped apart with every tick of a second. There was no time to form a plan. He stood, grabbed a handful of dirt, and ran toward the all-powerful being.

Throwing his makeshift weapon at it, Nelimir didn’t bother to ascertain its uselessness. He rode the adrenaline coming out from empty reserves and grabbed the Star elf, lifting her with a shout and running away.

“Are you okay!?” he asked.

The Star elf coughed, spitting blood out onto his damp shirt with more pouring into his chest from the hole in her shoulder.

“I was slightly off in my description of that thing,” she said with barely audible pants. “He is cruel. His mind was lost long before losing control. No wonder it is so calm in such a state. It plays with us for its amusement.”

Is that why they managed to escape, then? For all the good it did. Nelimir’s legs were slowly seizing up. From a run he went into a jog and then a walk until finally he stopped.

“Sorry,” he said, breathing heavily, and buckled under the weight of the Star elf, falling knees first. “I ... I can’t go on anymore.” It shamed him to say it, but he was spent.

Arms quivering, he put the Star elf’s lower body down while holding her up from the back.

“You have done more than could be asked of you, Nelimir,” she said, paler than before. Her eyes visibly gaining a milky-white shade.

The being was again walking, taking its sweet time reaching them.

“Did it not hurt? What he did to your arm.” It had been stripped up to her shoulder.

Nelimir took off his shirt and tried to stagnate the flow.

The Star elf shook her head. “I would have preferred for it to hurt though. It was somehow more unnerving to see myself disappear with nigh a feeling.”

“I’m not sure, I think I’d be grateful to go out without pain,” he said.

“You are about to get your wish,” she said, looking past him.

Nelimir couldn’t help himself and released a small, hopeless laugh while the Star elf remained looking all death-business. He wanted to tell her a million things now that they were about to die, maybe that short instance before the being reached them would last forever.

“Zilyana Ent,” the Star elf said, almost like a spell, then rose at a speed too fast for Nelimir to follow before pushing him aside. There was almost no strength in the move, but it was enough.

Her arm still on his shoulder, an obsidian tentacle came out of her back, having punctured her stomach all the way through. She immediately began to break away in rectangular strips from the inside out.

“That is my name,” she said with a smile before her eyes darkened, body too broken to function anymore. Then she was gone, her pieces floating away like leaves.

“Now you tell me,” Nelimir said in a mildly annoyed tone.

The being ignored him at first, instead focusing on the strips that made up Zilyana, but once said parts were gone it shifted toward him.

“Sorry,” Nelimir said, crawling back, “but I can’t let you kill me.”

The shadowy silhouette didn’t respond, slowly making its way to him with round, glowing holes staring. Its tentacles painting an unreadable path of destruction.

Nelimir kept going regardless, it was almost funny. That thing could have probably killed him in the blink of an eye, but apparently it was content to just watch him try his best to squirm away.

“Are you really going to let her sacrifice be in vain?” he said, filling the dead silence. “She said you were cruel, but you aren’t that heartless, right?”

One of Nelimir’s hand pulled his body back, and then the other, his legs doing their best to help along.

The being quietly drew closer.

Nelimir grit his teeth, “Get ... Get away from me!” Either the exhaustion, or a particularly deep hole on the ground made him slip and fall on his back.

“Fuck ... Fuck!” He couldn’t move anymore. She died. He let Zilyana die.

The tentacled shadow reached him and from the other side, the part his head pointed toward, a boy walked into view with the same leisure.

“I’m sorry, Nelimir. None of this should have happened.”

It was...

“Selt?”

The kid extended an arm toward the shadow.

“That’s enough out of you,” he said. The tentacles wrapped around him, but nothing happened. At least, nothing happened to the kid. Every dark inch began to burst into particles of light, first slowly and then all at once. The being that had terrorized Nelimir and Zilyana for so long exploded into nothingness.

Without paying it any more mind, Selt spoke, “Come on, everyone is waiting.”

Nelimir wanted to ask if they were okay; wanted to ask what in the stars was the kid doing there and how he survived that thing’s touch. Yet only one thing mattered.

“Why didn’t you come sooner?”

Before he could get an answer, with the danger past, every muscle in his body relaxed along with his consciousness, falling into a deep sleep.

Roesia, in her current state, couldn’t go downstairs. Not like she would want to, either. And so, Nora decided she’d keep the sorceress company while Elly and Yvain went to greet their leader.

“Did you hear about Roesia?” Yvain asked as they made their way, but his master only gave a dismissal grunt that could mean anything.

The image of him having sex with Roesia, especially the manner in which it took place, most likely shocked her. But it couldn’t have been enough to stop her from worrying about the sorceress. Or was it?

Could it be jealousy?

Yvain mentally kicked himself. What in the stars was he even thinking? Still, Elly’s state of mind weighed on him. The last thing he wanted was to hurt her. But if one thing was true, it’s that the best way to handle that situation was to just give her space, so that’s what he did.