A Perverted Path to Victory

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Sara Brown

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Twenty minutes into her jungle trek, Sara decided she’d never again haggle with the native guides she hired to take her through this green hell. Maybe it was their knowledge, maybe some special Skill, or maybe it was some special gunk they smeared on themselves before the trip, she didn’t know, but whatever it was, it worked, because this shit sucked.

So far she’d left three additional lizard-wolf corpses on the trail she was carving. It had been long enough since their last attack that she thought they’d finally had enough, but she wasn’t sure. They’d been getting… frustrated with her, she thought. Something so slow and loud wasn’t supposed to fight back like she had, and that offended them. Their impression of her had changed in each exchange. First, she’d been wounded prey, a bird with broken wings. Then she’d proved she wasn’t as wounded as they thought. Now, with five of them filling the bellies of the remaining seven, they considered her a threat to their territory. She didn’t know how important this territory was to them, but hoped it wasn’t worth dying over. Full bellies might be enough to convince them that it was best to retreat. Retreat to where, she had no idea. This entire place was filled with stinging insects and prowling beasts. Maybe they could dig a den or climb up a tree or something, and would only emerge to attack her if she stuck around causing problems.

Even if they all attacked her at once, however, Sara didn’t think they could kill her. Even their last ambush, when they’d approached with their eyes lidded because they had, somehow, figured out that their reflective eyes were giving them away, she had turned them back with comparative ease. One had leapt out of the brush from mere yards away with jaws wide, but it had died before even feeling her skin. Crackling electricity had emerged from her dagger in the shape of deadly tendrils, two of which curled up and into the thing’s eyes, turning its brain to steaming mush. She’d taken the weight of its charge against her shoulder and caught the corpse, using its own momentum to fling the creature back in the faces of its fellows.

She’d kept that dagger wrapped in lightning since, using its flickering beams to brighten her way in lieu of her illusory light. She’d put too much juice into it during her panic, but the spell should still last another twenty or thirty minutes. Having a weapon that could kill anything it so much as tapped was an advantage even the eerily intelligent lizard-wolves couldn’t overcome.

On the other hand, the entire experience was putting things into perspective for Sara. She’d often mocked Sporaton Knights and Imperial Warriors for their over-reliance on expensive enchanted equipment, publicly and in private, but how much different was she? Sure, her armor’s enchantments were child’s play next to the artisanal masterpieces she usually faced, but it was still actual damn steel armor. More of the expensive material than any of her own soldiers were afforded, and, with her most recent set, more technologically advanced, too. Stripped of that, even a half-mile stretch of wilderness had become a deadly threat to her.

Of course, I’ve been cheating since the day I got here, she reflected. Just not in ways that help me with fighting.

With her Level drought finally over, Sara had gained a handful of new abilities, along with a few minor twists to her old ones. As always, very few of them were useful in a fight, and even fewer of them were actually meant to help her in a fight. When Amarat had given her Champion the ability to unconsciously track the eyelines of everyone in her vicinity, Sara felt pretty sure the goddess hadn’t intended for Sara to wade into a crowd of enemies, confident she could keep track of everyone around her. It was a happy accident for Sara, but only an accident.

She simply wasn’t meant to handle this kind of problem. Evie would be doing far better in her place, preternatural grace sending her bouncing over the gnarled roots and hidden snares that Sara had to brutishly crush and snap. Evie could have cut a snake into a dozen pieces in the time it took for Sara to stab it in the head, or simply used her claws to climb into the relative safety of the trees and leap between the tangled branches. Hell, speaking of claws, Mui would probably be doing better, too. He had claws larger than Evie and the fangs to back them up. The dude literally had the head of a panther.

Not Sara. She was dangerous, true, nearly as dangerous in a fight as Evie, but as far as her Levels were concerned, that was a borderline coincidence, a side-effect that she’d ended up leaning into as hard as possible. The fact was, her Class was built for a different environment.

One she could, finally, see peaking through the brush. If it wasn’t for her desire to stay secret, she would have shouted with joy when golden light began to reflect in leafy dew drops. Instead she simply increased her pace, taking careful scans of her surroundings as she went, determined to not have the last few meters of her trek end via a sting, bite, claw, or fall.

She made it to the edge of the road unmolested. Even more than it had been from the outside, it was a shocking contrast. Despite being a single step away from standing in the open, Sara was almost completely concealed, a net of vines, branches, and wide leaves barring her way. A little ways away, an Imperial patrol walked past from left to right, torches shining bright, their eyes locked on the forest, searching for prowling beasts that might be trying to sneak out to snag a sleeping soldier. Sara didn’t move a muscle to hide herself, save for putting her flickering dagger behind her back. She stood there, watching them pass. Their eyes rolled right over her without the slightest glimmer of recognition.

She let her dagger’s lightning fade. Her dad had said she should try to work things at the top of Imperial Society, and he was probably right. She wasn’t trying to collapse the Empire outright, just build the base for it to become a powerful, democratic ally on Tulian’s southern border. A peaceful transition of power was technically possible, however unlikely, and if a god-Blessed Champion was working toward that end, it might even be probable.

The thing was, Sara hated this shit. As she stared at the glowing fires of the Imperial Blackpowder Army, she found her tongue overwhelmed by a bitter, acidic taste. A political army. That’s all this was. The pride and joy of an aristocratic elite, its soldiers trotted out and put on display, cared for as nothing more than mannequins for the gleaming weapons she’d provided their masters. Worse than a Potemkin Village, it was a jewel on the wealth-encrusted fingers of the elites, the privileged social class who had never once suffered from the violence they propagated.

Looking out from the jungle, Sara knew what she wanted to do to this army. She wanted those fires to rise and rise, crawling up the piles of corpses, living oppressors tied to those the growing inferno had already claimed. Her Blessing had heard them talk. She’d been to their parties, their fancy balls and their cold, calculated meetings, and she’d suffered through listening to their blathering.

In the end, all Sara wanted to do was say fuck the French and fuck their Révolution. They’d built the guillotine to ensure their massacres were more humane, but really, why bother? The Royalty had never afforded the peasants more than a coarse rope and, if they were lucky, a hard snap. Sara had learned that from this world: hanging people was difficult. Done without care, it was a slow, choking death, red faces and grotesquely bulging eyes hung over spastically kicking legs. When she’d executed slavers with the rope, she’d had a firing squad on standby, muskets loaded for that eventuality. Not because she cared about a slaver’s suffering. Only because she’d found the crowds who came to watch would dissipate if the deaths they cheered were a touch too gruesome. And she so very much wanted them to keep watching slavers die.

There was a crack to her left. A loud one. She jumped, only to feel bark in her palms. Looking to the direction of the noise, she found the trunk of the tree she’d been leaning against heavily marked, bloody, finger-width streaks having gouged out chunks of its pale flesh.

Sara took a long, slow breath.

She looked upward, away from the camp, into the canopy. She could see drooping vines. Swirling patterns across knotted wood. Broad, fat leaves. A nest of some creature high, high above, woven from curled ropes of thorny brush. And the stars twinkling above them all. And against her palm was the bark she’d carved. Her clothes rustled over her skin, moving against her breasts with her heavy breaths. Far and near, overlapping and carrying in peculiar ways through the dense foliage, there were trilling birds and buzzing insects. She could smell the wet rot of the forest, overpowering even the scent of roadside latrines that the army had dug for the night.

She let her gaze fall back down to the army.

The Imperial Adjutant had placed her with this force for a reason. It was specifically assembled for her, to be led by individuals who were, by the standards of their culture, considered the most honest, respectable individuals available. Not the most talented, necessarily, nor the most successful, but honest and willing to learn. General Borek was one of exceptionally few Imperial leaders who had come up through the ranks fairly, and he tended to surround himself with similar soldiers. The Adjutant had recognized Sara wouldn’t suffer anyone else. The Empire— any empire, for that matter— deserved the pyre that was burning so gleefully in her mind’s eye. But the people which composed it obviously didn’t deserve the chaos and suffering that would come with it, and for this army in particular, neither did the leaders. They were, just barely, by the finest, most razor-thin margin…

Acceptable. That was all. She could, through great effort and incredible restraint, force herself to work with them. A compromise she’d accept, if only because it would help defend the people who looked to her for protection. Family and Tulian both.

It turned out, her dad had been wrong about when to open her parachute. She’d drifted off course, nearly gotten lost in the jungle. But he wasn’t perfect. And he’d given her the compass that had put her back on course. So sure, she’d try it his way. For as long as she could suffer it, she’d play their games, drink their wine, and laugh at their jokes.

A leaf crunched behind her. She turned, slowly.

The lizard-wolves had surrounded her as best they could. Seven of them in a semi-circle, their mouths wet with the blood of their dead. Left, right, and forward, there was nowhere for her to go. Their blotchy scales blended well with the foliage they traipsed through, even as the pieces shifted, the muscles beneath beginning to coil. Tension built, their breath quickening.

Sara simply took a step back, one long leg stretching over a waste-filled ditch. And with that, she was standing not in the jungle, but the open air. The human road. And she stood there, staring back into the woods.

The lizard-wolves jerked upright, blinking and snorting, looking to one another. They skittered forward and stopped, right at the jungle’s perimeter, jaws chattering like cats watching a bird they couldn’t reach.

Sara put her back to them and slid her dagger into its sheath, whistling happily, one finger tapping out a jaunty tune against the barest sliver of exposed blacksteel.

An illusion rippled up around her skin, covering her from head to toe. Her simple clothes, her backpack, her dagger and sword, all disappeared. They were replaced by a shoddy, rusted musket tucked to her shoulder, leather breeches, and an ill-fitting steel cap sitting half askew atop a pile of sleep-tossled hair. She hurried forward, panic in her steps.

“Halt!” A man called from her right. The patrol, a few dozen paces away by then, turned around at their leader’s shout. He was an average-looking man wearing unremarkable Imperial army equipment, distinguished only by the floral mark on his shoulder and officer’s sword at his side. “What are you doing up past curfew?” The officer demanded.

“S-sorry, sir!” Sara rushed his way, helmet bouncing, clattering against the jostling musket butt. She tried to hold both at once with one arm as she jogged, using the other to salute the officer, improperly, the whole time she ran his way. “I was just, er, that was, I was-”

“For the gods’ sake, woman, use your words!” He barked.

“S-sorry, sir!” She came to a stop and straightened like she’d been slapped, still saluting, still improperly. “I had to take a piss, y’see, and so I was just-”

“You were taking a piss, were you?” The man scoffed. He approached, handing his torch off to a fellow so he could keep swaggering with one hand on his officer’s blade, his other stabbing a finger into her shiny-new breastplate. The man' s fingernail made a dull thunk as he scolded her. “After curfew, when you know the beasts are hunting, dressed with your full armor and carrying your musket? What kind of piss is that, girl?”

“A scared one, sir!” She strangled out, swallowing so severely her undersized helmet threatened to tumble off her head.

“Scared? You were scared?” He laughed in her face. His breath smelled like alcohol. Spit flecked Sara’s cheek. Point-oh-seven-eight blood alcohol level. “I can’t think of a worse excuse than that! An Imperial Soldier, scared of taking a midnight piss? Come off it, girl. The sort that put you up to this, where were they having you run to? Some smoker’s tent to pass off a pack?”

“N-no, sir!” Sara squeaked. “Was just taking a piss, honest!”

“Bah!” He spat. “Either you’re a coward or you’re willing to piss with your back to the forest at night! Y’can’t be both! So either think of a better excuse or tell me the truth.”

One of the women in the patrolling squad coughed. “Er, Cap’n Virik…”

“What?” He snapped.

“Don’t think the girl’s lying to you, sir.”

He turned. “What could possibly give you the idea to question my judge-”

He paused as he saw the woman’s pointing finger, aimed low, at Sara’s waist.

She looked down as well, in the same moment as Captain Virik. His eyes went wide.

Her belt was undone. Her pants unbuttoned. She was wearing no underclothes, baring a forest as untamed as that which bordered the road.

“You-!” He began to shout.

Her pants, exhausted by the valiant effort that had gotten them this far, could go no further. They fell to her ankles with a whump.

“Gods damn you, girl!” Captain Virik bellowed, shoving her hard in the shoulder. She barely avoided tripping into the dirt as he spun away, shaking his head. The entire patrol was laughing at her as she scrabbled to pull up her pants. “Next time you have to take a piss, don’t go out with your entire damn kit!”

“B-but my tentmate said they’d not believe me if I was just dressed in my regular sorts-”

“They were playing you for the fool you clearly are, girl!” He barked. “Get back to your tent before someone else takes advantage of your idiocy!”

“Y-yes, sir, s-sorry s-sir, I really a-am-”

“Go!”

Hastily buckling her belt, the squad’s laughter chased Sara into the warren of raised tents and posted torches.

The moment she was out of sight, she straightened. Her skin melted, illusory colors running like ink down her body as they bled into new, darker shades. Half-orc tusks jutted up from her lower jaw, barely protruding into the bottom of her vision. The musket she held lost its rust and gained a bayonet, one polished and sharpened to a wicked edge, save for the spaces of steel dented by many hard impacts.

Heads turned as she stepped into a ring of empty tents, their would-be occupants sitting cross-legged before an oversized fire. Wide eyes blinked up at her, then to her shoulder, then to her waist, looking for the signs of authority. Seeing none, gazes hardened.

“What?” A woman snapped. Her open palm was piled high with a dozen or so wooden dice, several similar sets of which were distributed amongst those who had miniature treasure hordes of copper coins collected between their knees. “You coming to bitch at us?”

“Ain’t bitching,” Sara replied, a deep, nearly incomprehensibly rural accent rolling out of her throat. “I’m tellin’ ya that yer too damn loud.”

The woman spat authoritatively into the fire, creating an audible sizzle. “You ain’t an officer,” she challenged.

“Ain’t yet,” Sara agreed amicably. “But I will be. Funny thing is, that don’t matter much. Y’know what does?” She leaned forward, chin thrust out, the firelight hiding the valley of her eyes within deep shadows. She grinned, tusks twisting sloppily, her face framed by that hard-worn bayonet. “I’m bigger than all of ya.”

The small circle of friends, likely the core members of a twenty-strong Imperial squad, glanced nervously at one another. Gambling past curfew was one thing. Getting in a brawl past curfew was another. Losing that brawl, when it was eight against one, and having the whole army know you lost it? Well, that was something that didn’t interest any of them.

The woman who’d first spoken scowled fiercely, putting on a show of defiance, but she didn’t hold Sara’s eye contact for long.

“Some cunt of an officer you’ll make,” the woman declared. “I’d pay all my winnings tonight and then some if it meant I don’t end up in your squad.”

“Don’t werry yerself,” Sara said, stomping straight through their little crowd, “Yer not good enough for me.”

As she left, she was followed by a ripple of under-the-breath profanity. It was easy enough to overhear, despite being spoken quietly, and that’s what she’d come for. For both her real self and the orcish officer-hopeful she pretended to become, there was no point in chasing after bullshit that didn’t matter.

Insults weren’t it. What mattered was the gossip. The fellows in the tents nearby, who’d been complaining about that one squad’s loud carousing all night long, raised a tired and half-hearted cheer at their silencing. Then others nearby, who hadn’t heard the exchange, asked what in the damn hells they were cheering and making a racket for. The story got passed on, mostly inaccurately, and that made the second group of tents laugh.

That prompted questions from yet more tents. Shouts of “shut the fuck up!” from others. And then those shouts provoked their own questions, their own reactions, and suddenly Sara’s Blessings were rippling outward, every exchange carrying her senses further and further outward as a large chunk of the army was roused, soldiers briefly treating themselves to their favored pastime of insulting one another, and then officers started yapping and the whole thing died out.

Sara hooked down a different makeshift road in the camp, her head swiveling to a certain direction. That wave hadn’t spread everywhere. It had broken against a rock in the pond, an obstinate group who had never risen to the taunts of their fellows. She turned toward them, knowing that, outside the cluster of well-guarded officer’s tents that headed the army’s column, there was only one sort of person that soldiers would be too scared to wake.

Mayaran’s tent rose from amongst the others in short order. Distinct from any other in the entire army, wrought by master elven craftsmen, it was snow-white and faintly glowing. A soft mist rose off its roof, enchanted light burning away the air’s humidity before it could penetrate to the interior.

Sara quieted her footfalls as she stepped into this section of the camp. Though tents were just as common, there were no campfires here, no torches on long poles, and certainly no loudly-clanking patrols of troops. An isolated bubble of dark, perfect silence.

With a tap on her dagger, her illusion shifted again. Though still fueled by the same spell energies that she’d begun to draw on at the forest edge, the spellform had been stretched and altered, keeping the illusion running for much longer than would have otherwise been possible. She and Garen had learned that a Champion’s Spells, though expertly formed by literal divinity, used far more energy than was strictly necessary. And so, much as she’d shift the way her lightning manifested as she used it for welding, Sara could constrain the expenditure, turning what would have been a raging explosion into a steady pulse.

The spell finished its alterations, covering her in armor once more. Not the comforting embrace of her wife’s handiwork, but the gaudy, gold-leafed equipment of an elite Imperial Warrior. More specifically, the gaudy, gold-leafed set of armor that was worn by those Mayaran had selected to guard her tent while she rested through the night.

She stopped just before the ring of light that surrounded Mayaran’s camp-within-a-camp. As was common for politicians of her caliber, she had an orbiting rotation of favored individuals who were afforded special privileges. The first among those were afforded the quiet and comfort of her personal island within the army’s camp, where a gridded collection of high-roofed tents were each shimmering behind purplish haze. Sara could see light from within those, shadowed figures moving within, but no sound escaped.

The entire encampment was ringed by guards. They were placed about a half-dozen paces apart, each occupying a single one of the entry lanes that weren’t made inaccessible by outward-facing wooden spikes. Every single one of them stood absolutely, perfectly still, rendered faceless by helmets that had only a single thin slit to peer through.

Hurlish had inspected Mayaran’s guards from a distance before. Though their enchantments did enhance the armor’s protective abilities, they were primarily designed for the convenience of their charges. They did not clatter or clank, did not tarnish or rust, and could probably be pierced through by a random peasant who knew how to swing a warhammer.

Sara stepped into the ethereal light with a confident, unbroken stride. She walked directly to the nearest guard, her footfalls utterly silent, and stopped before him, raising a salute that, for fear of making noise, did not actually touch any part of her body. The woman opposite mirrored it, then squinted, trying to inspect Sara’s face through the thin slit.

There was nothing to see. The illusory armor, so far as anyone save Sara was concerned, contained nothing more than a black fog. The woman blinked several times, concern flitting across her crinkled eyes. Not that Sara was an imposter. No one could mimic elven craftsmen. No, she was concerned that age was catching up with her, that her night vision was failing. She had to hide that. Being assigned to guard an Honored Elven would be a positive mark on her family’s reputation for generations. Being removed from the posting? She’d sooner commit suicide.

Nodding as if satisfied, the woman stepped smartly aside, allowing Sara entrance. They didn’t glance at one another as they passed.

Sara knew which tent was Mayaran’s. It was obvious. But she didn’t go there first. Instead, seeing no one walking between tents and perfectly confident that not a single guard would dare look inward, she let her illusion melt once more. Armor was replaced by a catfolk’s smooth, tawny fur, brushed to perfection and whiskers twitching. A tight-fitting black shirt smoothed itself to a suddenly masculine torso, her pectoral muscles and abdomen given firm definition. Her pants crawled up her legs, well past her knees, cupping her bulge closely. It was a comical parody of any real, practical clothing, and it was exactly what a rotten-minded noblewoman would imagine a strapping peasant man might wear to bed.

Tucking her cat’s ears down to her skull in nervous trepidation, she spent a moment shifting her feet from side to side before the tent flap, raising her hand as if to knock on the central pole, then lowering it in cowardice, repeating the process several times. Finally, after more than a minute of this, the flap drew slowly open.

A human woman, still dressed in the Imperial finery she’d worn through the day, stared haughtily out at her. The woman said nothing. She basked in Sara’s presence, luxuriating in the way she allowed her eyes roved up Sara’s body, taking in what she believed to be the work-hardened, alluringly masculine body of her catfolk paramour. Sara just barely stood under her gaze, seemingly as petrified as she was eager, quivering in place as if ready to flee at any moment.

“Jan,” the noblewoman finally purred, pronouncing the name as yawn. She had a smug, lecherous grin on her face. “I thought you said I’d never see you again, little toy.”

“I-” Sara nearly stumbled in surprise over the masculine rasp that came whispering out of her throat, but quickly turned it into a nervous stutter, “I-I did say that, My Lady. But…”

“Hush,” the noblewoman said, putting a finger to Sara’s lips. Awash in the woman’s building lust, her body was already changing, molding itself to the woman’s desires. It hardly mattered that the noblewoman was being deceived; caring about consent and honesty was Sara’s prerogative, not Amarat’s. Lust was all her Blessings required.

As if barely in control of herself, Sara’s muzzle opened a touch, her rough tongue giving a catfolk’s kiss to the woman’s finger. Her smile grew, her arousal building.

Sara’s Blessings knew this noblewoman, and they knew the man whose identity her illusions were aping. Jan, a former Imperial messenger boy who had grown into a dashingly handsome young man, was the latest in a long line of men snatched from the army’s baggage train by the famously indiscreet Lady Meang-Sok. The woman, a close ally of Mayaran, enjoyed nothing more than toying with some unfortunate peasant while her husband stayed at their estate. Her renowned skill with a sword and competent tactics on the field of battle had won the quiet of the army’s upper echelons when Jan had his muzzle shattered by her backhand a week and a half before. It had been the talk of the socialite rumor mill, but her military skill and closeness to Mayaran meant most of the upper echelons had only rolled their eyes and clucked their tongues disapprovingly, robbing the lower class officers of an outlet for their indignation.

That finger on “Jan’s” muzzle curled inward, hooking around a fang. Lady Meang-Sok brought Sara in for a kiss, which she tenderly and nervously returned, chaste though it was. It broke a moment later.

Lady Meang-Sok looked at Sara with an appraising stare. Considering her options.

Sara hit her with a Gift of Lust.

The noblewoman’s eyes flared, her breath quickening. She held up a single curling finger, stepping backward into her abode. Sara stumbled forward, as if drawn unwillingly inward, only to be inexorably sucked into her whirling grace. The tent flap folded shut behind her, sealing them in enchanted silence.

In the light of her tent, the Lady was freed to truly take her paramour’s body in. Her lust grew further, and with it, her twisted delight that even such a cruel act as she’d committed couldn’t, apparently, turn a man away from her beauty.

She looked ready to say something. Sara didn’t give a shit, so she hit the woman with another Gift of Lust.

Thought abandoned Lady Meang-Sok as she stepped forward, one hand coming up to possessively cup Sara’s muzzle as she used her Warrior’s strength to draw her paramour in, drowning them both in a deep kiss. Her lust fueled Sara’s Blessings, her body shifting to fit the woman’s desires, fur sprouting and a tail swirling low to befit the Lady’s desires. The woman’s other hand slipped around Sara’s back, fingers running up her spine as their bodies pressed together, fur against skin.

Sara returned the embrace, one hand on the back of Lady Meang-Sok’s neck, her newly-created catfolk claws slightly extended. She traced a small circle there, accustoming the woman to the touch, whimpering as if in delight.

Lady Meang-Sok never noticed when that claw’s touch was replaced by the tip of a dagger. It was quite likely she never noticed the blow that killed her, considering the speed at which Sara plunged the foot-long blade up and through the skin of her neck, dagger piercing the vertebrae of the woman’s spine on its way to be stopped by an audible collision with the top of her skull. The only noise she made was a wet, post-mortem gurgle that bubbled against Sara’s muzzle.

Disgusting.

Sara’s body, Blessings no longer fueled by the woman’s arousal, began returning to its natural state as she took the corpse’s weight in her arms. Careful to keep the dagger embedded in the bitch’s neck to prevent a gush of loose blood going everywhere, she carried the dead noblewoman over to her bed. Setting the woman down carefully, Sara removed the dagger as quickly as possible and covered the wound with a palm in the same motion, letting the lifeblood ooze out for a while, until the pressure had dropped enough to keep the final spray of blood from staining too much.

Sara stepped back. Looked down at her handiwork. Then wiped her dagger on the bedsheets before sheathing it. Hurlish would have killed her if she’d sheathed a bloody blade, after all.

She shrugged her backpack off a shoulder, setting it on the ground, and pulled out a complicated-looking metal box with a loose bit of wax keeping a heavily scrawled-upon piece of paper attached. She carefully read the instructions yet again as she returned the backpack to her shoulders, tapping her dagger to shift her illusion for a final time.

This time, her body was replaced by an image of…

Nothing.

Well, that wasn’t quite true. In precise terms, the light that should have reflected off her body was replaced by an illusory replication of empty air. It turned out that a rectangular column of empty air was, according to her Blessings, a shockingly easy thing to imitate. After all, it was what occupied most of the world. Because it was always between you and whatever you were looking at, everyone with eyes knew what emptiness looked like. Garen, in his lessons, had been baffled by how easy it was for Sara to reproduce such an illusion, but she didn’t see what was so surprising. To her magical senses, it made perfect sense.

And so it was nothing more than a column of empty air that stepped from the dead noblewoman’s tent. Sara walked up to Mayaran’s far-larger, far more elegant affair, stopping before the two guards flanking its entrance. Unlike the show-guards on the perimeter, these were the real deal. Hardened, solid veterans, ones who wore enchanted armor as practical as it was beautiful— a lack of compromise which necessitated ruinously expensive craftsmanship. Eying them up, Sara’s gut told her that she and Evie could have taken one of Mayaran’s guards in a swordfight, but only if it was two-against one, and even then she wasn’t perfectly confident.

Unfortunately for them, this wouldn’t be a swordfight, and they were only Warriors. Not mages. If they couldn’t see her, they were helpless to defend their charge. And since Garen had told Sara it was exceptionally difficult and tiring to recreate wards each and every night that one camped, and even harder to form them in a way that a malleable surface like a tent’s silken walls could support them, she stepped forward, casting a second illusion of an unmoving tent flap around herself.

Sara chuckled silently as she pressed her hand into the tent flap, which peeled back with ease. Of course it would. When you’re an elven nepo baby who bought fancy guards with Mommy and Daddy’s money, why would you ever bother to cast wards each night?

No alarm was set off. There was no magical detection system to summon a sudden gout of fire. With the guards outside still utterly ignorant of her entrance even to the camp, she was already inside the Honored Elven’s tent.

Mayaran was laying on a feather bed, of course. On her side, one hand tucked beneath a pillow, the other against her cheek, her legs curled up a bit beneath the covers. Elves did actually need sleep, Sara had learned. They could do that whole meditation-each-night thing Dad had warned her of, but Garen had said that wasn’t a purely natural feature of their biology. It was a skill that required dedicated practice to acquire. Definitely not something that someone like Mayaran would have bothered to learn.

In her left hand, Sara lifted the metal box she’d brought, and with her right she raised her dagger, through which she began a spell. She cast an illusory blanket over Mayaran’s sleeping body, coating the woman’s figure in light bright enough to be blinding, excluding only the woman’s eyes, which remained in restful shadow. And then Sara held the box to her face, looking through a small square.

With a quiet click, the aperture opened for a fraction of a second. Light washed over a chemical slurry that had been suspended on a thin metal plate, its complex mixture reacting instantly to the inrush of color.

As the first photograph she’d taken in three years began to set, Sara let the light fade.

Using her more auditorily-oriented Blessings to silence her every movement, Sara calmly began pulling small vials of chemicals out of her backpack, sitting on Mayaran’s plush rug while she carefully followed her dad’s instructions. Developing a tintype photograph wasn’t simple, but it wasn’t impossible, either. Most of the work had been done by whoever had prepared the plates. All she needed to do was control the UV lighting as she soaked the plate’s face in, of all things, a hideously dangerous concoction of potassium cyanide. Her dad had written a whole lot about how to handle the chemicals safely, and for once she did her best to follow his instructions. Still, she kept a healing potion close at hand.

It took about five minutes for the photo to finish. It wasn’t perfect. Far from it. The right side of the image was completely blacked out, the left side’s lines far too blurred and uncertain, with only the central subject, Mayaran, depicted well enough to actually be identifiable. Still, it was obviously her. You couldn’t mistake it for anything or anyone else. Her messy hair was sprawled across the pillow where she’d tucked her hands, her rich comforter distorted by her bent knees.

Still using her Blessings to silence her footsteps, Sara walked over to Mayaran’s bedside table and set the photo there, nice and pretty, held vertically against a bowl of half-eaten fruit.

There wasn’t a precedent for a permanent illusion spell of such a small size. Not in the Empire or anywhere else. If such a spell was possible at all, it would have been accomplished only by an exceptionally powerful Archmage, one whose spells would doubtlessly leave such an artifact utterly brimming with power. The thin metal plate, meanwhile, was completely dead to all magical senses. That was no wonder; it wasn’t magical.

What Mayaran would think of the photo was anyone’s guess. It was so bizarre, so completely beyond the elf’s realm of experience, that even Sara had no idea how she’d react.

She exited the tent. Still silent, still invisible, and still casting an illusion of the tent flap remaining perfectly still, she went completely unnoticed. She traipsed back into Lady Meang-Sok’s tent shortly thereafter. Blood had soaked deeply into the bed by then, with the first flies already lapping at the edges of the puddle. In the jungle climate, it was likely the smell would set in before morning, alerting some guard or passerby, but that was still hours away.

Sara flipped the corpse onto its side. Grabbed its hands by the wrists and tugged one under the pillow, the other beneath the head. Jerked the knees up, so they were halfway curled to the chest, then tossed the covers overtop. Then sliced open the corpse’s hair tie, shaking it out so it would spill messily across the bed.

Her work done, Sara put the camera back into her backpack, exiting into Mayaran’s sub-camp once more. Confirming that her Blessings told her no one was looking her way, she took up the illusion of a perimeter guard as she walked to the opposite side of the first woman she’d duped. She held up a letter to the guard there and jerked a thumb to one tent, then outward, raising and lowering her shoulders as if expressing wordless frustration. She got an understanding nod as the guard stepped aside, allowing her to exit.

Up above, the familiar clank of a Tinvel Engine began to sound. The lovebirds had given her even more time than she’d hoped. If Sara had to guess, they’d probably waited until their geode was nearly sputtering out before finally coming back for a landing. How thoughtful.

Sara turned toward the baggage train, shifting to the image of an officer high-born enough that no one would dare stop or question her. She had some last few details to resolve before the night was done. Most immediately concerning was one very unfortunate catfolk man, a fellow who was about to be regrettably blamed for an incredibly high profile murder. She needed to collect him as soon as possible. Thankfully for him, he’d be back on his way to Tulian in the morning, as safe as she could make him. She’d have to teach him a few phrases of Continental to get by, then use coin or her body to pay off whatever key witnesses to his departure there might end up being.

Only once she’d handled that, finally, could Sara visit her family.

She looked back at Mayaran’s miniature camp, a smirk flitting across her face as she envisioned the chaos that the morning would bring.

You want to play intrigue games, Mayaran? Sure. I’ll start.

-------------------------------------

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Hours later, as the morning rains pattered down on well-worn canvas, Sara sat in a rocking chair that was far too large for her, Tahn held to her breast. He was suckling greedily, his massive cat ears fluttering ticklishly across her bare skin as he took long, hungry gulps.

“That’s really damn something,” Hurlish said, watching with a cockeyed smile. “So you just get to change your body up whenever, now? Not just for fu-”

“Ah-hem,” Evie chastised, her claws emerging to prick the arm Hurlish was using to keep the woman in her lap.

“Sorry,” Hurlish said reflexively, giving Evie a bounce on her knee. “But really, can you actually do stuff like this to your body whenever you want?”

“I don’t think it’s for anything,” Sara temporized. “The Blessing still says it’s for that word Evie doesn’t like us using around Tahn.”

“I know perfectly well that you are both fully capable of using non-profane words to refer to sex,” Evie huffed.

“But it seems like I can at least do this,” Sara continued, ignoring her smallest wife’s mild irritation. “Which, honestly, by the letter and law of the Blessing, I don’t really think should actually be possible. Seems like maybe Amarat’s kinda cheating for me a little bit here.”

“I guess if anyone gets to break the rules, it’s a god,” Hurlish grunted.

Outside the tent, the Powdered Lead mercenaries were rustling about, preparing themselves for the day’s march. Within it, Hurlish was sitting on the edge of their family’s extremely heavily reinforced cot, one large arm curled around Evie, keeping the Feline woman on her lap. Evie had her knees brought up and to the side, calves tucked primly against her thighs, as if she were a dainty princess whose favored throne just so happened to be Hurlish’s lap. That Hurlish’s broad, calloused palm was halfway up the duelist’s shirt didn’t seem to register to either of them, so commonplace was it. Evie absolutely would have protested being felt up by Hurlish in the presence of Tahn if she’d given it thought. Sara didn’t bother pointing it out, however, because it wasn’t sexual in the slightest. It was simply the comfortable, easy-going way that they interacted with one another. Sure, Evie’s breasts were treated like sexual objects most of the time, but her tail and ears were equally sensitive, and she never protested her wives stroking them in public.

The entire arrangement was just… nice. Cozy. Something that had become so unremarkable to Sara over the last few years that the only reason she was remarking on it now was the six days she’d spent away from it, and the longing ache that had filled her as a result.

“You said that your eighteenth Level altered many of your Blessings, didn’t you?” Evie asked.

“Yeah, it did,” Sara confirmed. Then she patted Tahn’s head. “But before we talk about that, do you wanna give this a try?”

Evie’s eyes widened to dinner plates. Her ears crushed themselves flat against her skull at the same moment her tail whipped hard around, a loud whump sounding when it smacked Hurlish’s back.

“Do you mean…?”

“If I can do it to myself, I can do it to you, too.” She stood up from the rocking chair that Hurlish used to breastfeed Tahn, walking halfway across the tent and nodding encouragingly to Evie. “Come on. Give it a try. It feels really weird, but kinda nice.”

“Until he gets those dang fangs involved, at least,” Hurlish rumbled.

Sara shot her a warning glare. The orcish woman chuckled, shrugging as if to say, ‘What? It’s true!’

Thankfully, Evie either didn’t hear or didn’t comprehend the comment. She slid out of Hurlish’s lap in a trance, walking up to Sara with astonishment written across her entire body.

“Are you sure it will work?” She asked. “I wouldn’t want to confuse him, and my breasts are so much smaller than yours. Would I even be able to give him any milk?”

“Evie,” Sara said gently. “It’s magic. Don’t think about it that hard.”

Taking the sort of fortifying breath she normally used before the start of a duel, Evie nodded, then took off her shirt before holding her hands up. Sara began to shift Tahn over to her.

“Mmghhuh!”

The world’s most adorable little baby boy made the world’s most adorable gurgling protest, his face screwing up in concentration as he latched harder to Sara’s breast.

Hurlish laughed. “I warned you. If he’s still hungry, he’s not just gonna let go.”

“That’s fine,” Sara said. “I think I’m a bit stronger than a baby—”

She cut herself off with a sudden inhalation, her eyes watering. Hurlish guffawed, slapping her knee.

“There’s the fangs! I know that face! I warned you!”

“It doesn’t hurt that bad,” Sara lied, firmly patting Tahn’s back, trying to distract him into unlatching.

“Bull,” Hurlish grunted. “But look. Just keep patting him on the back like that, and then one of you kinda stroke down the back of his head like you’re pulling him away- yeah, Evie, just like that.”

With Hurlish’s instructions, Sara and Evie’s combined efforts eventually managed to convince the kid’s nipple-seeking knives to release their piercing grip on her breast. Tahn’s pale green face immediately wrenched up as he took a deep lungful of air, preparing to let loose a wailing cry, but Evie took him in her hands and turned him around quickly, putting his face to her chest.

His hesitation was non-existent. Tahn leapt onto her nipple like the growing boy he was, beginning to suckle with a vengeance.

Evie stared down, blinking rapidly. “Sara, I don’t think it’s working, I can’t feel anything coming out, maybe you should take him back—”

“Just give it a second,” Hurlish soothed. “It’s your first time, it’s not like you’re overflowing over there.”

“But it’s still not- oh!”

Sara stepped away, smiling.

Evie stared down at Tahn, her own eyes beginning to water.

“Oh, that feels… that feels very odd.”

“But it’s working?” Sara asked.

“Yes,” she murmured, giving Tahn a pat on his back. “Yes, I’m… Yes, it is.”

Evie stood in the middle of the room, shirt discarded by her feet on a cheap, muddy rug. She was swaying slightly, rocking side to side as she patted Tahn’s back.

“Here, use the rocking chair,” Sara suggested. “It’s pretty comfy. I can see why Dad had it made for us.”

Evie didn’t respond. She was still looking down at Tahn, an uncommon mistiness in her eyes. Her once-slitted pupils were blown entirely out, wide ovals filled with fascinated delight. Her tail, having begun fluffed up and rigid, drooped lower and lower, its fur falling flat. And her ears…

Oh my fucking GOD! Sara screamed in her mind, even as she swallowed the squeal that threatened to pierce the air. That’s the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever goddamn SEEN!

Evie’s feline ears and Tahn’s feline ears were fluttering in absolute, mirror-image, perfect synchronicity. Like the wings of two little baby birds playing on their heads, or maybe a bird with four wings because the synchronicity was that perfect, or shit, Sara didn’t know, there was probably fuckin’ some kind of analogy that worked but she didn’t really know what to call it, not when her brain was drowning in so much oxytocin she was pretty sure it was leaking out of her goddamn ears.

“Hurlish!” Her voice whispered, Blessings sending it across the room to her orcish wife’s ears only. “Hurlish, get the fucking camera!”

Knocked out of her own adoring stupor by the magical whisper, Hurlish lunged across the cot, reaching for Sara’s backpack. She snagged it in one hurried hand, dragging the tintype camera out and beginning to hurriedly read the instructions. Unwilling to possibly break the moment by moving to assist her, Sara instead cast an illusion over the box, replaying the history of her own hands operating the device. Hurlish quickly mimicked the motions and, bringing the viewing lens up to her eye, clicked the button.

Knowing from her dad that any tintype camera required an incredibly bright subject, and terrified that the moment would be ruined by under-exposure, Sara’s illusions dredged up damn near half a sun’s worth of light and compressed it into a single, blinding flash. That light took Evie and Tahn from the side, coinciding exactly with the moment of the camera aperture opening.

Evie blinked several times, her ear-twitching slowing as she looked briefly up and away from Tahn.

“What was that?” She asked curiously.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sara insisted hurriedly. “Just, uh, trying to get your attention. Come on,” she put a hand between Evie’s bare shoulder blades and pushed her forward. “Sit down in the rocking chair so you don’t have to bounce him.”

Evie walked forward as if she was trying to move through an open field without crushing a single blade of grass. With a hand beneath her arm, guiding her like she was some old, infirm woman, Sara helped her into the chair, then set her rocking. After a few repetitions, Evie’s trance finally broke enough to begin pushing for herself.

Sara retreated to steal Evie’s place in Hurlish’s lap, enjoying the feeling of the woman’s breasts smushing up and around the back of her head. She and Hurlish were silent as they watched Evie rock in place, patting Tahn’s back, their ears back to that mind-shatteringly-adorable fluttering.

She’d had no idea Evie would react like this. Hell, Evie clearly hadn’t known, either. Neither of them had ever expressed much maternal regret for being unable to breastfeed Tahn, save for the fact that they felt a bit bad about shoving the whole duty on Hurlish when they did their best to split everything else. Reflecting on it in the moment, however, she found the reaction made a lot of sense.

A part of her immediately wanted to launch into coaching Evie through a whole diatribe of Earthly self-image courses, her mind spinning away to all the public debate that had endlessly surrounded breastfeeding. Those old habits told her to assure Evie that she wasn’t less of a woman for being unable to breastfeed before this, that there was nothing wrong with any alternative that had to be taken, that the equating of natural breastfeeding to true motherhood was a remnant of traditional gender roles that were justly dying away, and plenty of other things that probably would have cropped up if Sara had given the topic more thought.

The thing was, Evie’s entire experience with motherhood was… non-standard, to say the least. Even discounting her horrific personal relationship with her own mother, she was the daughter of a noble house, raised amongst the elite of Sporatos. Noble women exclusively used wet nurses, spurning the matronly ‘duty’ to focus on other more important things, dismissing personal breastfeeding as a waste of their valuable time. In the culture Evie had grown up in, amongst the peers she’d known for most of her life, a woman breastfeeding her own child was the mark of one so dedicated that others would speak poorly of them, wondering if the mother was suffering from what Sara might call post-partum depression. It would quickly become a matter of gossip as other nobles questioned the noblewoman’s sanity, doubtlessly starting rumors that the woman’s estates were suffering from the inattention that resulted from her so-called ‘obsessive’ behavior. When even wealthy merchants could afford wet nurses as a matter of course, breastfeeding was only for the disgusting peasantry.

That kind of fucked up mindset had very little commonality with Sara’s instinctive concerns. Evie’s dazed elation over being able to breastfeed Tahn wasn’t relief that she could conform to some traditional expectation: it was an act of rebellion, a firm personal choice that proved her dedication to her family. Sure, if Evie started to develop a complex about the fact she needed ‘unnatural’ assistance to do it, Sara would involve herself, but until then…

“This is the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever seen,” Sara whispered to Hurlish.

Hurlish nuzzled her chin down into Sara’s hair and whispered. “Yeah. It is.”

They watched Evie nurse Tahn for… gods, she didn’t even know how long. Until Evie had to shift him to her other breast because the first wasn’t producing much anymore, and then even longer, until well after he was full and had fallen asleep, still half-latched to a nipple. It was only when his drooling lips finally fell loose, cheek falling to nestle within the slim valley of Evie’s chests, that Sara’s wife finally looked up and around herself, an odd expression on her face, as if she was confused by where she found herself.

“Oh,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “We were talking about your new Level, weren’t we?”

Sara felt herself get bounced by a chuckle Hurlish was barely concealing. It had been the better part of an hour since that conversation had died out. But Sara nodded all the same.

“Yeah. Nothing all that revolutionary has changed, but it’s the end of the Level drought, so it’s worth talking about. Have you two gotten your own Levels from me, yet?”

“Yeah,” Hurlish said. “Found out last night. And I got a new Class name to go with it.”

“Oh?”

“Used to be a Weaponsmith. Guess I’ve spent enough time working with you that I’ve changed up how I’m thinking of myself, because now my Class is a Champion’s Weaponsmith.”

“Fascinating,” Evie breathed, her eyes glittering. She didn’t get up from the rocking chair for fear of disturbing Tahn, but she did lean forward. “Have you any new Skills associated with it?”

“Probably,” Hurlish shrugged. “Unlike little miss god-spoiled here, I don’t get to have a nice clean explanation on how all my crud works. I know one of my Skills got changed up, the one called Deft Touch, but I dunno how. If I was gonna guess, I think I got a Skill that helps me make stuff that Sara and I work on together.”

“Or maybe you’ll be better at hammering out the designs that I give you,” Sara suggested. “That would make more sense to me, since I barely help you with your work.”

“I can’t weld, so anything we’ve made that’s been welded has needed you,” Hurlish reminded her. “But yeah, I get what you mean. We’ll see.” She nodded at Evie. “What about you, babe?”

“My Class remains unchanged,” Evie said. “I am a Supplicant Duelist. However, unlike you,” Evie straightened proudly, almost smugly, “I have gained an entirely new Skill. You will both be pleased by its title, I imagine.”

Sara leaned forward in Hurlish’s lap, straining against her wife’s large hands. “A pistol Skill, right? C’mon! We’ve been waiting for so long.”

“‘Course it’s a pistol Skill,” Hurlish scoffed. “You know how many bullets I’ve had to cast for her since the last time you got a Level? A couple thousand, at least. What’d you get?”

Evie’s haughty pride was at odds with Tahn’s drool-stained cheek mushed against her chest as she preened under her wives’ interest. “The Skill is titled ‘Leaden Razor’, a name that does not immediately reveal its purpose to me. Given that it is my first firearm-related Skill, however, I believe its effects should be fairly noticeable with a small amount of practice.”

“Leaden Razor, huh?” Hurlish chewed thoughtfully on the words. “Definitely gotta be gun related. A lead razor would suck.”

“Maybe something to do with armor-piercing?” Sara guessed. “That would be absolutely perfect.”

“I am not sure,” Evie shrugged, then pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Archers and crossbowmen have never been documented receiving a Skill which modifies the properties of their projectiles, only their ability to handle heavier or more powerful weapons. I find it highly unlikely, if not outright impossible, for a Skill to allow a bullet to strike with greater force.”

“Pretty sure all of our Classes are way past normal,” Sara said. “But you’re probably right. You usually are. Maybe we’ll bike ahead of the army today so you can have time to feel it out.”

“We might need to anyway,” Hurlish rumbled. “If you can figure out how to help me carry some of the packages Tinvel and Chona brought while riding a bike, anyway. I don’t want to be testing those anywhere near this army.”

“We might have to enlist some help from the Powdered Lead.” Still trapped by Hurlish’s hug, a tight-gripped thing that wasn’t quite achieving its goal of the woman pretending she hadn’t missed Sara terribly, Sara had to awkwardly reach into a pocket to pull out a notebook, which she flipped through. “We’ll want to start training people on them, anyway. Evie and I have got a few candidates that we think might be good. I’ll try to use my Blessings to interview them properly before we set out.”

“Speaking of, dear,” Evie chimed in, “was the whole point of this conversation not the question of your Class and its Skills?”

Sara hid a wince. “Oh, yeah. Almost forgot.”

Evie blinked slowly at her. “You almost sound reluctant to share. Is there anything the matter with it?”

“No, no,” Sara said, waving the idea away. “Just… okay, here. Want me to read it off?”

“That’s some bullshit,” Hurlish grumbled under her breath. “Just getting to read your own Skills.”

“Language,” Evie chided.

“He couldn’t have heard that,” Hurlish countered.

With a raised eyebrow at their wife, Evie moved one hand to Tahn’s massive ears, giving them a gentle stroke.

Hurlish rolled her eyes. “Fine, fine. Sara: it’s some bullcrap that you get to read off your own Skills like that.”

“Dunno about that. You haven’t heard ‘em yet. Amarat has a penchant for being a bit dramatic with how she handles this stuff.”

Evie snorted indelicately. “How shocking it is that you ended up as her Champion.”

Sara took a breath and brought up her Class in her mind’s eye, preparing to read it out.

Sara Brown

Level: 18

Blessings

Amarat’s Eyes: She who will guide others to my path must know their souls like her own. First you studied their face, then you read their body. Now you know their blood and skin and the viscera within. The mind of men is theirs alone— and yours, Champion of Mine. Pluck and pick at their soul, tangle their cords and prune the rest. Make of them what you wish and discard the waste.

Amarat’s Ears: The table where cloaked hoods bend low to whisper. They care little that their sordid plans are heard by the passing maid, who they know will do nothing with her unwanted knowledge. But she shouts to the bartender, who calls to the porters in the back, who grump and groan in earshot of those on the street beyond, where the rippling chain of conversation continues ever outward. Somewhere in the rolling wave is you, Dear Champion. And you heard it.

You will hear it all.

You will understand it all.

Only fools dare dream they might hide from you.

All who hear and all who listen are but links in your chain. Joints in your tendrils. The people do not know it, but they are yours.

Carnal Embrace: For she who walks the realm of emotion, there is no greater ecstasy than that of the joining of bodies. Where once you concerned yourself with wielding your partner’s pleasure to your own ends, now I entrust you with the freedom to alter bodies as you wish. Take the finest wines of other’s pleasure and spread them far, or breathe new life into ideas all your own. So long as it brings pleasure, Sara Brown, do with it what you will. I’ve no doubt it will be entertaining.

Electric Passion: How curious I’ve found it, as you’ve lived your second life, to see the joy you take in a lungful of lightning. You are a Champion, and that means not even I may predict all the steps you take. When you first brought a heavenly Bolt down on your foes, it was not half the shock as your first beaded weld. I will aid you on this path. Discard your explosive might; draw it out as the blacksmith ought, a curling current oscillating to your whims. So very few would have thought to throttle a Divine Bolt, yet here you are, blade wreathed in lightning, furious delight hidden behind a steel helm. If nothing else, it is an exciting visage, is it not?

Illusory Champion: So very few of your kind, you earthly creatures brought forth on our whims, seek subtlety. It is not what they are selected for. It is not what you were for, either. Yet you insist upon it, time and time again. The ability to hide. To elude, to obfuscate, to breathe silent spells that cast wreaths over sight and sense. I will aid you in this, but I think we both ask why? How long can such anger be contained, when it knows the tools you’ve prepared are just out of sight? I know, of course. But you do not. And neither will your enemies. Elude and illuse as you please.

Champion’s Inspiration: Reach out to the souls around you and, whether through dance, speech, or song, show them a truth that fans the embers of fading spirits into roaring bonfires. Bestow upon them a fraction of your Passion beneath the banner of your purpose, then revel in the clarity of unity that arises therefrom. For the Champion who so often refuses the path of gentle words and fluttered lashes, this may be the most useful of your Blessings.

Gift of Lust: Should a soul be willing, consciously or not, you may inflame their desires. This lust can only be satiated by you, something that they are innately aware of. To dawdle with flirtatious evenings and dimly lit dinners is for lesser women; I am not a cruel enough God to delay a soul the joy of your coupling. With but a thought, find those who are willing to enjoy your body and reward them accordingly.

Hurlish whistled low. “Dang. You weren’t kidding.”

“I know, right?” Sara wanted to reach for a canteen to take a drink of water after talking so long, but Hurlish’s arms refused to release her. “Amarat’s kinda full of herself.”

“Dear,” Evie tiredly warned.

“I’m her Champion! I’m allowed to say that.”

Evie sighed, shaking her head, but didn’t press the matter. It was an old argument, one that was likely never to be entirely resolved. Sara just didn’t have it in her to fake any kind of religious faith, much less genuinely feel it.

“So what changed?” Hurlish asked. “It’s been way too long since we went over your fancy crap.”

“Not too much, I think,” Sara said. Then she grinned. “There was the stuff about my spells, but the main thing I noticed was the description of Carnal Embrace getting longer. Seems like Amarat finally took the training wheels off on my powers there.”

“It doesn’t seem to imply there is a limit,” Evie hummed. “Saying ‘now I entrust you with the freedom to alter bodies as you wish’? That is awfully unrestricted.”

“Still has to be for banging, I’m pretty sure,” Hurlish said. “Since there was that whole bit about ‘so long as it feels good’ or whatever.”

“So long as it brings pleasure,” Sara quoted. “And yeah. Honestly, I’m not really sure how it actually let us start lactating,” she said, pointing a finger between herself and Evie. “It’s not like that’s for sex or anything. It’s just for Tahn.”

“When have Amarat’s Blessings ever been self-consistent?” Tahn squirmed on Evie’s chest, so she began patting him lightly on the back. “You’ve said as much yourself. She is willing to let you bend the rules, so to speak, as long as you are aiming towards some worthwhile goal.”

“Maybe shouldn’t say that out loud,” Hurlish chuckled. “She might get stricter with it.”

“We are speaking of an all-powerful divinity,” Evie replied. “I feel certain that she is capable of predicting how her Blessings will be used by her own Champion.”

“You sure?” Sara looked back at her Blessings. “She seemed to be getting kinda snippy with me. Talking about how I’m ‘refusing’ to do peaceful crap, or using my spells weird, that kind of thing. Not sure if she’s happy with how I’ve been handling things.”

“All the more reason to be more respectful when referring to her, no?”

“No.”

“Ugh.”

Hurlish and Sara chuckled at Evie’s distaste, then fell silent. They each spent time processing their thoughts, considering the possibilities. As she’d said, after so long without a new Level, this one wasn’t a particularly game-changing upgrade to her abilities. She was glad to see Amarat embracing the changes she’d made in the use of her spellcrafting, mostly because it implied that the process might get easier as time went on. Back when she’d first started doing magic, Sara had a single-digit number of spells she could cast each day, after which she was out of luck. Garen’s training had helped her pick apart those Blessing-aided spells, teasing at their energies and the way they were cast, until she’d begun to get the proper hang of things, doing magic more like a real wizard should. She’d definitely gotten a big boost from her Blessings, obviously, since it normally would have taken years or decades to get to her current point, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t put the work in. It was good to see Amarat helping her on the way there.

“Hey,” Hurlish said, drawing the word out, as if an idea had just occurred to her. “You didn’t say your Class name, did you? Did it change?”

Sara froze like a deer caught in highbeams. It was a reaction that did not go unnoticed by either of her wives.

“Well?” Hurlish prodded, poking her stomach. “What’s up with the silent act? Something the matter with it?”

“Your Class name hardly matters,” Evie said, her tail wiggling with curiosity. “It is mostly a reflection of how you view the purpose of your Skills and abilities. What could possibly be of concern?”

Sara felt her cheeks flushing. It had been a long time since she’d really been tempted to use her diplomatic Blessings against her wives, but this moment was damn well testing her resolve. As her cheeks continued to brighten, she pulled up her Class and mumbled out the description.

Sara Brown

Level: 18

Mother, Family Guardian, And Champion of Amarat

The tent was dead silent.

Until Hurlish’s chest filled with a great rush of air.

“HA!”

Her explosive laughter nearly flung Sara off her lap. Tahn’s ears flattened angrily, his babbling protest drowned out by the booming laughter that rolled out of Hurlish’s belly.

“Gods!” She swore, both biceps curling to crush Sara in a snuggling embrace. “Oh, that’s good. That’s so, so good.”

Evie, speaking with a voice of quiet astonishment, shook her head in disbelief. “Does it really say ‘and Champion of Amarat’ like that? As an afterthought?”

“Hooooah my gods!” Hurlish’s laughter continued, her face pressing down into the top of Sara’s head. “It does, doesn’t it! You’re a mom! Your whole Class is that you’re a mom!”

“Your self-identity is truly dedicated first towards motherhood?” Evie was almost dazed. “I haven’t once heard of something similar, Sara. I’ve never heard of a motherhood Class. What would that even entail?”

Sara’s face was beet-red by then. It wasn’t like she’d picked the name. It was just… it was just what Amarat gave her, probably. That made more sense. She had other stuff she did. It wasn’t like everything she did was because of her family.

“That’s- I, look, okay-” she tried to say, but Hurlish’s echoing delight plowed right over her words.

“You got a Mom Class!” She shouted. “Your whole Class is about being a good mom now!”

“It’s not like I gained any new Skills—”

“Doesn’t matter!” Hurlish was gasping now, her eyes watering from laughter. She smeared her face against Sara’s hair to wipe the tears. “Still how you think of yourself, isn’t it?”

“It could have been Amarat who-!”

“I sincerely doubt that Amarat would bestow her Champion with a Class predicated on motherhood,” Evie interrupted. Even she was grinning now, an even rarer variety of smile than most were for her, lips curled in a light, teasing expression. “I don’t think you have anyone to blame for your Class’s title save yourself, Sara.”

She threw her head back, closing her eyes. “It’s normal, alright? I’m still a fighter, alright? And I just got skills to make me better at banging, right? That doesn’t mean I’m only—!”

“The mom Class!” Hurlish boomed. “You’ve got the mom Class! I don’t even have that, and I was begging you for a kid! Begging! You had to have a god convince you to have Tahn!”

“And now she has a Class defined by motherhood,” Evie agreed with a laugh.

Blinking his eyes open on Evie’s chest, Tahn lifted his head and looked blearily about the room, obviously confused by all the noise his moms were making.

Goddamn you, you little bastard, Sara thought, even as she grinned at his adorable little chubby cheeks. It’s your fuckin’ fault for being too cute.

Still tired from his meal, he thankfully fell back onto Evie’s chest, eyes drooping closed. Sara closed her own eyes, letting herself shrink into her wife’s lap. Outside, the morning drizzle was beginning to fade, the signal that meant the army was about to prepare for the day’s march.

She doubted they’d be joining the rest any time soon. It would be a long, long while before Hurlish was done with this particular tirade.

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