A Perverted Path to Victory

Tinvel

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The airfield was a dismal, utilitarian construction. Built within the largest of the southern logging camps, its placement had caused no amount of consternation among the workers, whose simple cabins were displaced from the high ground they’d enjoyed before. The rainy season was in full swing once more. The long strip of carefully-leveled dirt which had taken the loggers’ place left no room for tents and primitive cottages, forcing them to suffer the morning rains which ran in torrents down the hill. Most had constructed small dams on the high side of their dwellings to part the rivers which formed each morning, but only so much could be done. Water seeping through was unavoidable.

Tinvel had some sympathy for them, but not much. He and the others had arrived to use their spells to aid the loggers, and now they had been officially (if surreptitiously) tasked with the location and destruction of enemies who sought to destroy their entire operation. Even if their living arrangements had suffered for it, he and the other mages were now protectors of the loggers, not fellow workers. Flat ground was too precious in the hills of Tulian to spend it on more comfortable homes.

Tinvel was sitting beside the Sunrise, listening to heavy drops of rain patter against the thick canvas shelter they had erected the night before. A light wooden table had been set out before him, a cheap thing with terribly uneven legs that would have left it rocking at every touch if they weren’t sunk so deeply into the mud. Across the carefully toweled-off tabletop was a mess of notes, books, reports, and half-finished scribbles. The sum total of aeronautical knowledge he had brought on the trip south, all clumped up in one disorganized pile.

“I’m going to have to get this crap in order,” he grumbled.

“We need a damn roof is what we need,” Chona said, emerging from the misty morning rains to press her way through the tent flap. Despite the tumultuous weather, she still wore nothing more than her usual pair of sashes. Today she had a red one wrapped tightly over her breasts and a green one covering as little of her waist as could still be considered modest, the tail at the base of her spine poking through the triple-wrapped layers. Both articles of clothing and her fur were soaked, and he caught a distinct whiff of her as she approached– not as bad as wet dog, but certainly not pleasant, either.

She strode over to the table and, stretching her arms out, made ready to shake the water off herself like an animal.

“Don’t.”

Chona paused, looking down at the papers and books she’d nearly ruined. She silently stepped away to grab a large rag from the Sunrise’s box of maintenance gear and began toweling herself off instead, eventually joining Tinvel at the other seat. It made a wet squelch as her weight forced it into the sodden ground.

“They’ll finish the proper hangar eventually,” Tinvel said, gesturing across the runway to a set of roofless wooden walls rising out of the mist. “But it’ll take a while. They don’t have all the stuff we had in the capital, remember. No engineers, no riveters, nothing. Just the Artificer Union’s new chainsaws, which they barely know how to use.”

“Still wish they’d hurry up.” Chona put her hands under the table and shook them hard, sparing the papers from the spray of water, but not Tinvel’s legs. He ignored it. “How hard is it to build a big wooden box with one set of doors? I’m shocked this tarp is holding up as well as it is.”

“If you go over there and complain to them, I’m sure it’ll only make them take longer.”

Chona huffed, but didn’t say anything further. Instead she leaned forward, inspecting everything Tinvel had spread across the table.

“So? What do you think?”

“About what?”

“Is it stupid for us to go after the griffons?”

Tinvel sighed, wiping a hand down his face. “I don’t know,” he said. “Professor Brown didn’t skimp on giving us advice on how to fight other planes. There’s as much advice in here as you could ever want. Stories, too. Specific aerial battles he remembered, and what made one side win or lose.”

“Sounds helpful.”

“Is it?” Tinvel flicked a charcoal writing stick at the bundle of griffon feathers Affe had gathered up from his fallen opponent. “We’re not fighting other planes. Who knows if any of this is worth listening to?”

Tinvel tapped one of the pages, one where Professor Brown had done his best to draw out the exact path of an aerial maneuver. It was called the ‘rolling scissors,’ and it involved two planes trapped in a long-winded barrel roll, each pilot forced to crane their heads upward to see the other as they spiraled through the sky. So long as each plane had roughly the same speed and maneuverability, their efforts to point their noses towards the other would keep them spinning round and round, bleeding speed the entire time. Tinvel thought it looked like two snakes intertwining, each trying to latch onto the back of the other’s neck.

In that other world, the fangs were guns. Here, it was Chona.

“See this?” He pointed hard, crumpling the paper and smearing the charcoal. “If we were fighting another plane, this is basically what would have happened once we got jumped for the first time. The griffon would have overshot and tried to pull up for another go, but we would have dove after them. Of course they wouldn’t want that, so they would have to turn their speed into altitude and climb back up, only to be forced to roll back over when their momentum died out. If I did my job right, we’d still be on their tail, still losing momentum, and if we kept pursuing them, it’d repeat all over again.”

Despite the early hour, Chona alertly followed Tinvel’s finger across the page, nodding along. He continued the thought up into the air, drawing invisible lines over the table.

“That didn’t happen though because the griffon didn’t want to turn its speed back into altitude. I don’t know why, but it flared its wings to maintain a lower flight level, like it was trying to bait us into coming after it. Maybe it was too used to getting in midair melee fights, not fighting mages. Wasn’t ready for us to try and attack at range.”

He stopped, dropping his hands, looking expectantly at Chona.

She shrugged. “Sounds right enough. But that idea, the rolling scissors thing? It’s shit from the start, right? At least for us.” She indicated the twin-seat plane sharing the tent with them, looking at her seat, which was just behind the dual set of wings. “It’s easiest for me to shoot my spells upward or, when we open the hatch, downward. Not forward. That means any loop like what you’re talking about would just be putting us in the worst possible position, if we were fighting someone that flew with mages, too. We’d both be able to fling spells at each other through the whole thing.”

“Yeah. Getting into a rolling scissors won’t work, not with the planes we have now.” Tinvel rubbed the knuckles of one hand into the palm of his other, trying to work out an ache. “And that other point is even worse. The griffons didn’t have mages, did they?”

A figure opened the canvas flap, followed close behind by another. “If they did have a mage,” Affe loudly declared, “they weren’t doing anything useful.”

Unlike Chona, he’d had the good sense to wear a raincoat before coming over, which he quickly shucked off and folded over an arm. Cebrav entered behind him, looking decidedly displeased to be up so early in the morning. They both pulled up chairs, joining the conference of Tulian’s precious few aviators.

“The Governess says that the Imperials don’t consider griffons ‘worth’ putting mages on,” Tinvel explained, indicating yet another sheet in the pile of haphazardly-assembled notes. “I don’t like her saying that very much, because that makes it sound like there’s something out there that they will put mages on, and that thing’s probably a lot worse than griffons.”

“Worse? What, you think they’ve got a whole flock of wyverns?”

Cebrav waved a hand. “How the hell would they get wyverns to fight for them? Just because we got a report of one wyvern doesn’t mean there’s more. Maybe they have a few Riders somewhere, somehow, but no way have they got anything major. Not enough for a proper military force. And why would a wyvern even need a mage, anyway? Not like it would need the help.”

Affe grunted in acknowledgement. A brief pause ensued as all present sat back, gathering their thoughts. Some of them leaned forward, scanning the papers.

They’d all read every word of the collected aeronautical documents on their own time, of course. They’d written half of them, in fact. They were mostly the hasty notes they’d taken while listening to Professor Brown and the Governess, including the latter’s theories on what the Imperials had for air power. Tinvel had brought them out not to read something new, but in the hopes of looking at them in a new light. He’d thought being in his first dogfight might reveal some hidden trick, now that he had a perspective he’d lacked before.

Instead he couldn’t stop thinking about the broken corpses it had left behind.

“You remember the way that one griffon dodged your spellflames?” Cebrav asked, resting his elbows on the table. “Just dropped out of the sky like a stone. You had them dead to rights.”

She scowled. “Clearly, I didn’t. He dodged us like it was nothing.”

“Cost them a lot of altitude though, didn’t it?” Affe pointed out. “So much so that they never even managed to rejoin the fight. Compared to the Halfeyes, they’re terrible climbers. That’s why that one went after…” He trailed off, glancing apprehensively at Tinvel.

“Hunes, yeah.” Tinvel stared him in the eye. “And Docks. Took their wing, flipped the plane. Only killed Docks, but that’s just because Hunes died when she hit the ground. What about it?”

“Just… pointing it out.”

“Thanks. I hadn’t forgotten.”

An awkward silence filled the tent, broken only by the wet smacks of rain above their heads.

“Why do you think they took the plane’s wing, of all things?” Cebrav asked.

“Probably thought that whatever lets us fly is purely enchantment-based, and I guess it stands to reason that if it was, they’d be in the wing.”

“Mm.”

Another silence. Tinvel reached forward, flicking off the lantern at the center of the table. It was growing lighter outside, the rain thinning out.

“We have in front of us, right now, the sum total knowledge of fifty years spent fighting in the cockpit of an airplane. An entire world went to war in the air, twice, and Professor Brown studied it. That’s what we have to learn from. Ten total years of war in the air. Against us,” he pointed to the south, “is an Empire with two and a half centuries of experience fighting on the backs of griffons. Two hundred and fifty years of civil war. Someday soon, our planes will be better than any of their birds. But we’re not there yet.”

“You’re saying they’re better than us?”

“We traded,” Chona said. “One griffon for one plane.”

“And that’s a loss they can afford ten times over,” Tinvel snapped. “Every plane, every mage, they’re precious for Tulian. I don’t know how many griffons the Empire has— whichever side of their stupid civil war it was that attacked us— but I know it’s a hell of a lot more than we’ve got.”

“Why are you so worried our allies might have attacked us?” Affe gestured to the collection of looted supplies he’d stolen from the dead griffon, none of which indicated any kind of political allegiance. “I get why their enemies would, but why our allies?”

“The Governess said that the Adjutant doesn’t have full control of his people,” Chona said, answering for Tinvel. He could hear the derision dripping from her words. She’d taken to Tulian’s revolutionary ideology harder than most, and the idea of two different bands of royalists duking it out under the same ruler plainly disgusted her. “We know the jungle’s explosive growth is unnatural, and that means someone’s responsible for it. The way the Governess told it, there’s a lot of players in this game. Some groups didn’t support the idea of letting their armies travel outside the jungle, much less let their politicians make foreign diplomatic contact. What do you think those sorts would think of hiring Tulian mercenaries? Arming their soldiers with Tulian’s foreign weapons?”

“They’d probably be pretty pissed,” Affe said frankly. “But would they be pissed enough to try and kill us? Contact’s been made. The secret is out. Guns are in their hands. It’s not like they’d get anything out of having us abandon our end of the deal. They’d just lose their Adjutant the money that’s already been paid.”

“So?” Tinvel asked. “Why would they care? Have you guys forgotten what it’s like to live under Lords and Ladies?” He looked around the table. Cebrav was the oldest of them, at twenty-five, but none of them were all that much younger. Old Tulian had fallen when Tinvel was barely eight, but he could still remember being shuffled into the city square each week, forced to witness the public hangings. “They barely gave a damn about the Kingdom. It was all about their House, their prestige, their efforts to try and climb the ranks. They’d kill peasants for poaching, damnit. If some Visya or whatever was all about keeping the war hidden from the outside world, they’d be furious at our involvement. Can you imagine how pissed off they’d be if they’re also part of the faction that’s been causing the forest to grow, now that we’re burning it back?”

“Enough to try and get us killed, I’d guess,” Chona drawled. She leant over the table and began to shuffle the papers and books back together, collecting them into a single denser, but no more organized, pile. “But what does it matter? We got the Stewardess’s go-ahead to hunt them down. Whatever side they’re on, they’re our enemies.”

“It’ll matter to the Governess,” Cebrav said.

“Who doesn’t even know we’re doing this,” Tinvel replied.

“Which will last how long, exactly?”

“No idea. That’s why we’ve got to find them fast.”

Affe raised his eyebrows. “How? We have no idea where the griffons are. They don’t need a runway, don’t need support crews, don’t even need maintenance equipment. They could be living under the shade of trees, hunting for their food, only starting cooking fires at night. Hells, we don’t even know if we could beat them if we ran into them again. We barely survived the first dogfight.”

“They got the jump on us. That won’t happen again.”

“How can you be sure?”

Tinvel stood, rolling his shoulders. It was an odd thing, to see the three other mages looking at him so closely. He’d technically been in charge of them all for months, but none of them had really felt it. Why would they? He hadn’t bothered to pretend like he was in charge of them, either. It was an academic project, a team effort. Making machines of war was a whole other thing to fighting in them.

He sighed, stretching his neck as sunlight began to join the raindrops falling on the tarp above.

“The Sunrise is heavier than the Type N’s,” he said, walking over to his plane. “It’s faster in the dive, slower in the climb, and thanks to its pontoons, can’t roll worth a shit. Aside from the last point, that’s pretty similar to the advantages and disadvantages between us and the griffons. We’ve all done a lot of flight practice on our own, but we haven’t done much together besides formation flying.”

“Pretty thin comparison.”

Tinvel began to haul himself into the cockpit, glancing over his shoulder at the other aviators.

“You got a better idea?”

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The Sunrise’s struts creaked in agony. A dangerous, warbling flutter filled his ears. It was the sound of a plane pushed to its limits, teetering on the very edge of controllable flight. The muscles in Tinvel’s neck were taut with the effort required to keep his head upright, darkness chewing at the corners of his vision. His wrists twitched forward and back, each foot pressing the lightest taps to the rudder pedals.

The Sunrise was not an advanced plane. It had no automatic controls, no hydraulic actuators, no true mechanical complexity beyond the engine which drove it. The flight stick was attached directly to steel cables which pushed and pulled at the wing’s ailerons, not an ounce of abstraction present to separate pilot from plane. At its core, the Sunrise was a tool no more complex than a soldier’s sword. It moved as he commanded, and it would offer no mercy for his errors.

If he pulled too hard, the plane would do exactly as he ordered. It would turn so sharply that it showed its belly to the wind, flipping end over end, the airflow over its wings disrupted. In a plane like the Sunrise, a fatal stall was always one wrong decision away. There was no margin for error, no illusion of mercy.

But that also meant that the plane was his. It did as commanded without fail, limited only by the power of his arms and the strength of its wooden frame. There was nothing stopping him from taking the plane to the very precipice of its abilities, teetering on the edge of a ten-thousand-foot fall.

If he’d had the breath to do it, Tinvel would have let out an exhilarated laugh. The wind roared as he guided the Sunrise through a procession of rolls and twists, riding the razor edge of the stall all the while. Even while his heart struggled to pump blood into his head against the force of gravity, he had never felt more alert.

He could hear Affe’s plane rattling a hundred feet behind him, his Halfeye matching the Sunrise move for move.

Matching wasn’t enough.

For Cebrav to land a killing blow, he would have to get above, below, or to the side of the Sunrise, and he hadn’t managed it yet. Tinvel had taken them to the greatest height he dared fly, where the air was thin and icy cold, and Affe had followed him all the while.

Evie was right, Tinvel realized. It IS a dance.

The endless procession of maneuvers carried them through the sky, their contrails stopping and starting fitfully, their wing’s disturbance to the humid air barely enough to trace an artful tapestry beneath the rolling clouds. Their two planes had been chasing one another for nearly ten minutes, Affe always the hunter, Tinvel the hunted.

Even now, with Chona turned around in her seat and her hand raised threateningly, Affe was flying carefully. He kept his plane just behind and below the Sunrise’s tail, jinking left and right to ensure they never got a clear shot. The fact that he had stayed on Tinvel’s tail for ten straight minutes was almost as impressive as the fact that Tinvel, in the considerably less agile plane, hadn’t managed to get themselves caught in a lethal trap.

After ten minutes of nonstop combat, Tinvel was beginning to worry. The stress he was putting the Sunrise through couldn’t be good. The creaks and groans were growing louder with every harsh roll, and he was beginning to worry they’d start turning into pops and snaps. If he didn’t end the mock-dogfight soon, the Sunrise might end up disintegrating in midair.

“Gonna try something!” He yelled.

“What?!”

“Get ready to cast!”

As yet another roll reached the point of wings-level flight, Tinvel suddenly jerked back hard on the controls, a loud pop sounding as the Sunrise’s wings bit hard into the air. He kicked the engine into emergency speed as he dragged the nose toward the noonday sun, closing his eyes against the glare.

In the notes Professor Brown had provided, this was a last-ditch maneuver. A Hammerhead. It was something you did when you couldn’t shake an enemy no matter what tricks you tried, electing to abandon subtlety in favor of one last desperate gamble. You flung yourself straight upward, trading every bit of speed for altitude, hoping that, as your enemy chased you into the sky, they wouldn’t be able to get a clean shot on you. In this case, he was also lucky enough to be able to point himself into the sun, leaving Affe staring into the blinding light, hardly able to track him. Even then, it was still a risk.

By Professor Brown’s lessons, Affe had two choices: dive away, using the opportunity to hopefully gain enough distance that Tinvel’s rocketing descent wouldn’t give the Sunrise an overwhelming advantage, or, if he wanted to be more aggressive, follow him up into the sky, seizing the moment when Tinvel would be hanging weightlessly at the apex of the climb, a perfectly stationary target.

Affe, Tinvel knew, was anything but cautious.

Even as its engine’s emergency speed clanked and clattered within the cowling, the Sunrise bled speed like a stuck pig. He felt the wind dying out, the absence of its roar as deafening as its presence had been.

“Now!”

“What?”

A few seconds before they reached the height of their climb, Tinvel kicked the rudder hard right, then left, tossing the plane onto its side. He kept the rudder pressed as hard left as he could, and, using the last dregs of their speed, managed to hang the plane on a knife’s edge for a few precious seconds.

Earning Chona a perfect shot out of the plane’s left side, the blinded Affe only just realizing what had happened.

Chona laughed maniacally as a dazzling light burst out of her palm, signaling the casting of her spell.

Tinvel lost control an instant later. Lift abandoned the wings as his over-ruddering sent the plane too far sideways, spinning them into a nauseating cartwheel. The world blurred as he was slammed against his harness, every muscle straining to keep himself facing forward.

He pushed the right rudder down with both feet, shoving so hard he could feel every bump of his spine grinding against the wooden backing of his cushioned seat. His limbs twisted and pulled at the controls without any conscious input, the ailerons, elevators, and rudder changing position in a feverish effort to correct the wild spin.

He chewed through altitude with every second, tumbling like a kite with its string cut. Every time the plane’s nose pointed towards the ground he would lock his body in place, trying to pin the Sunrise onto that axis before it inevitably spun around once more.

C’mon, c’mon, come ON!

Slowly, steadily, like the last ticks of a dying pendulum, the Sunrise’s oscillations began to straighten out. The blurry terrain gained definition, no longer sweeping past too fast to track. When he heard the whistle of wind return to his ears he carefully, gently, with the care and grace of a newborn’s mother, began to pull out of the dive.

After a few more seconds of curling back into level flight, he was once more completely in control, puttering along like nothing had ever happened.

Tinvel swallowed hard, looking down. At a rough guess, they’d plummeted nearly three thousand feet. Trembling slightly, he reached for the speed controls, returning them to cruise mode.

“Gods damn!” Chona yelled behind him. “Shit! Shit, Tinvel! What were you thinking?!”

After the stunt she had pulled the day before, that was the last thing Tinvel wanted to hear from his backseater. He twisted around in his seat with a furious scowl, ready to scream his head off.

Only to see her grinning as wide as she could, trembling with excitement.

“We need a way to talk better in flight!” She yelled. “I thought you fucked it up for a second! I almost didn’t cast the spell!”

The righteous anger that had swelled up within Tinvel popped like a soap bubble. It almost would have been easier, he reflected, for her to actually be angry. At least he could accuse her of being a hypocrite for pulling dangerous stunts.

“Yeah!” he said instead. “We’ll have to figure something out. Come on, let’s head back. Who knows how much energy we’ve used up already.”

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Chona

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Their landing back at the airfield was without fanfare. The loggers were mostly out working, trying to stem the tide of corrupting growth. They had to hop out of their planes and roll them back into the tents themselves, huffing and puffing as the fat wheels dug hard into the mud. The airstrip was supposed to be made of tightly packed dirt, enough so that the rain would run right off, but there was only so much you could do with shovels and manpower. By the time they’d gotten the plane safely out of the weather, Chona was panting harder than she had been during any of the day’s aerobatics.

Tinvel, meanwhile, seemed almost exhilarated. He hadn’t even wanted to put the plane up; he wanted to get back in the air as soon as they’d given the engine’s crystals enough time to rest. He’d had to be convinced that, even if they did fly again that day, it was still best to put the plane under shelter. No one but the gods knew when rain would come during Tulian’s rainy season, and even a seaplane like the Sunrise wasn’t meant to get soaked from above.

She watched him closely as he began his post-flight inspection, running his artificer’s eye over every strut and spar. He pulled and tugged at certain parts, his ear pressed to the wood as he listened for the telltale crackle of hidden stress fractures. Other parts, the few pieces of metal screws and bolts, he paid even more attention to. Chona watched him pull out a magnifying glass, looking for signs of rust, loosening, or dangerous wear and tear.

Tinvel should have looked stupid, she knew. He was still wearing his crappy, cheap flight jacket, a patchwork of piss-poor leathers held together by atrocious needlework. His homemade goggles were perched on his head, protruding from wet, mussy hair, giving his skull the appearance of some fuzzy, bug-eyed insect. Time spent flying under the sun may have gotten rid of his pale, subterranean pallor, but it hadn’t done much for his reedy arms, nor the rest of his skinny frame. Speaking objectively, Tinvel didn’t even live up to the negative stereotypes of a mage. The type of soldiers who mocked spellcasters at least had the decency to assume they’d be wearing finely enchanted robes, not the half-useless ensemble Tinvel cobbled together.

Chona watched him bend forward, resting a hand on one of the Sunrise’s large, camouflaged pontoons. Even from behind, she could see the ticking cogs of his mind spring to life. She’d known him long enough by now to recognize it. His right heel rhythmically tapped the mud as he worked his way through the warrens of thought, encountering, considering, and then discarding each presented idea. He wasn’t paranoid about damage; he was cautious. He’d taken Professor Brown’s warnings to heart.

When he glanced up at the Sunrise’s cockpit, running a hand along the handles which let them climb into their seats, she caught a glimpse of his jaw. It was firmly clenched, still damp from the rain, with a bit of a fuzz left from a morning without shaving.

Chona hadn’t even known he needed to shave until that moment. She knew he was as old as her, plenty old enough to need a shave, but until recently, she’d thought of him like she had the rest of the University’s mages: as a child. Someone who had no idea what the spells they practiced were actually capable of.

Yesterday had changed that.

Huffing in frustration, Tinvel removed his goggles and tossed them up into the cockpit, tugging at the sleeves of his jacket. Between the morning rains, the exertion of the faux dogfight, and shoving the Sunrise through the mud, he was soaked from head-to-toe. His cotton undershirt, as thin and cheap as every other piece of clothing he owned, clung tightly to his rail-thin frame. He opened a hatch on the side of the engine cowling and reached in, gritting his teeth as he turned his head aside and felt blindly about, grunting with effort. The pose pulled his shirt even tighter against his body, forcing Chona to realize that the rain and sweat had turned it quite nearly sheer. No one in their right mind would call Tinvel muscular, but contorted as he was, it almost didn’t matter. He was so skinny that she could see the muscles of his shoulders tensing with effort, rolling across his back every time he shifted his position. Working on planes hadn’t made him strong, but it had made him… toned.

Chona folded her arms, watching him work. He had an uncompromising, singular focus, his face a mask of concentration. He knew what he was doing, and he knew he could do it well. She could see that in him. Even as he worried over the Sunrise, he was confident in himself. He knew that if he couldn’t fix something, no one could.

Huh.

Chona peeled her eyes away, trying to drag her thoughts back to practicing the new spell she’d been developing.

She didn’t do a very good job. Tinvel almost immediately distracted her, calling her attention back over.

“We need better ways to talk mid-flight,” he said, indicating the copper voicetube. “There’s no way we’re going to be leaning down in the middle of a dogfight to listen to each other.”

“I can barely keep my head straight,” Chona said by way of agreement. “I really don’t want to imagine how bad it would hurt if I had my ear up against that metal tube when you did a roll. We can kind of hear each other, but it’s not good enough for anything more than basic directions, but our best glass is still nowhere near the clarity we’d need for cockpits.” She drummed her fingers on the table, thinking. “What about a spell to create a bubble of static air around us? Could the engine’s geode take the additional strain of another connection and power draw?”

“I,” Tinvel said, hopping out of the Sunrise to rummage in the spare parts box, “was thinking about using one of these.”

Chona looked over to see Tinvel holding up what looked like a long, black rope. It was something Professor Brown had sent with them, suggesting that if they wanted more control over the dispensing of pre-ignition boiling thermite, they could use one of the more recently-perfected inventions of Tulian: the rubber hose. Chona didn’t pay as much attention as Tinvel did to things like that, but she had a vague memory that they were a side project of the team that had been making tires for the army’s bicycles.

“Really? You think that’ll work?”

“Why not?” He climbed back into the cockpit with the tube and a wrench, the latter of which he took to the mouthpiece of the speaking tube, pulling it off with a determined grunt. He held the thin copper cone up to the rubber hose, showing that they were an approximate fit. “Toss me some wrap?”

Grumbling, Chona went over to the box of parts and started rummaging around with her tail until she had tossed enough of the myriad crap out of the way to find a tangled bundle of flat, fibrous rope, and then— anticipating his next request— found the jar of wood glue, too. She passed them from tail to hand to Tinvel, who happily wound them together, though he only tied it off for now, rather than gluing it in place.

“Here, try it out.” He dropped the hose over the side, giving her the end with the cone, putting its opposite to his mouth. She lifted it to her ear, glancing up just in time to see him take a deep breath.

“HEY!”

“Ow!” She jerked the tube away, rubbing her ringing ear. “Fuck you, Tin.”

“Worked though, didn’t it?” He grinned.

“Yeah, I guess it did. Here, have it back.” Chona whipped the cone at his head.

Tinvel yelped as he dodged to one side, the copper bouncing off the wing above him, then cursed as he threw himself forward, trying to catch it before it fell out of the plane.

“We’ve only got one set of those, you know!”

“It would have worked even with a dent in it.” Chona dropped back into her seat, wiping away the gathered humidity before pulling her own personal notes from the larger pile of papers. “You can cut the hose shorter, by the way. And we’ll want a way to split it, so we can hear and talk at the same time.”

“We could put it in our aviator’s caps,” he suggested.

Chona frowned. She’d avoided wearing those so far, hating the way her sweat ended up caked into the fur covering her cheeks and neck. But he was right. Being able to hear each other was probably worth it. So she stayed silent, not complaining.

For the umpteenth time, Chona bent over the table, doing her best to focus on her work. Cebrav’s solution to aerial spellcraft, that of casting high-power, exhausting spells, had proved its worth yesterday. Taking down the single griffon had wiped him out, however, and Chona knew that the fights to come weren’t going to be decided with one measly spell.

Reaching for a small bottle she kept hidden in her sash, she tapped out a small pile of blackpowder on the wooden tabletop. It was something she’d done a hundred times before, every time she had a chance, and every time, she’d failed.

That didn’t mean she could stop trying, however.

She took a deep, steadying breath, closing her eyes against the distractions of the outer world, and extended one finger over the powder. Her mind groped outward, probing the world with inscrutable, intangible senses.

The corpse of a tree lay beneath her finger, a faint echo of its former self reflexively rejoicing at the scent of rain in the air. Further beneath it was the cloying mud, a seeping, oozing presence, one that was content in its ways to grab and pull at all it touched.

Her eyebrows furrowed. She searched for the lesser presences. The plucked feathers of a dead griffon tugged at her mind, trying to draw her away, but she ignored them, grateful for the way the great strands of woven plants encased her, hiding the wider world from her mind. She dove even further inward, teasing at the very edges of her perception.

Above the tree, below the cotton, right beneath the tip of her finger, was something peculiar. In a world of running watercolors, faint shades overlapping a hundred times over, there was something fainter still. A young presence, a new fork on an ancient path.

Chona stilled her heart. She had not gotten this far before. She would not let her excitement crush this formless chrysalis.

The dead tree was the table. It was known. Its kind had been known for untold years. A wooden table was as familiar with mages as mages were familiar to it. The wooden crystal knew how to behave, knew what shape the universe expected of it.

The thing on its surface did not. It did not know if it was one self, a singular lump, or if it was very many things, every granule its own being. It did not know if it was meant to be forever as it was now, or if it was born to change. It suspected the latter, Chona could tell. But it was confused. In what way was it meant to change? It was not a fuel, it knew, not as wood was for a fire. Nor was it food for the living. It was something meant to be changed, to change others, but it was not born to alter the world in the ways anything else ever had before. It was too young, too strange, and had no elder to learn from. It did not understand itself.

Let me show you, Chona whispered to it. Let me teach you what you are.

Following instincts that arose from beyond her body, Chona’s fingers spread. She slowly lowered her hand, the tip of the pile just barely brushing the center of her palm.

You know what you should be, don’t you? What you want to become. Is it not time to declare yourself to the world? To take your place among time.

No spell was cast. No energy left her body.

The blackpowder ignited.

Chona leapt back with a shout as fire burned her skin, a flare of light and smoke rolling up to spill across the tent’s roof.

“Fuck!” She shouted, shaking her hand. “Fuck! Fuck, that hurt.”

“The hells did you do?” Tinvel asked, his bewildered head emerging from the Sunrise’s engine cowling.

“I think I just fingerfucked this blackpowder or something.”

“You what?”

“I don’t know!” Chona stepped back from the table, waving away the smoke. “I was… it was like I was talking to it or something, asking it what it wanted to be, and then it got all excited, and bam, it caught on fire!”

“You didn’t cast a spell?”

“No! It just did that all on its own.”

“Well, are you alright?” Tinvel hopped out of the Sunrise, snagging a water canteen as he hurried over to her. “Give me your hand.” Chona let him grab her wrist. He turned it over, pouring water across the burn. “Did you at least learn anything useful?”

She sighed at the cool water splashing across the burn. It was probably bad enough that she’d need a potion for it, but for now, the water was a relief.

“Maybe?” She hedged. “I’m not sure. I think I understand a little bit more. We’ll have to see if I can actually cast a useful spell.”

“Here’s hoping,” Tinvel said, eying the table. The powder had burned up too quickly to ignite the table, but it had singed a few edges of the nearby papers.

Chona took her hand back from Tinvel, shaking the water off. She gave it an experimental flex, testing if she could still close her fist.

“How does it feel?”

“Hurts like hell,” she hissed.

“You’ll need a potion, then,” Tinvel said, reaching into his jacket pocket.

“No.” Chona sat back at the table, reaching for the vial of blackpowder again. “Not yet. I’ve still got some ideas. No point taking the potion if I’m just gonna get burned again.”

Tinvel’s expression was dubious, but he didn’t argue. He simply gathered up the rest of the books and papers and brought them over to his personal chest, which was enchanted for fire-proofing. Only after he’d shut and locked the lid did he turn around, hands on his hips.

“Go ahead,” he said, waving her on. “If this is gonna be the spell you use in the air, I want to watch this time.”

Chona took a deep breath, pouring out another pile of blackpowder.

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

Mui Thom

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

He sat alone in his tent, sergeant’s sword laid across his lap, a rag in one hand, oil in the other. He carefully swept the rag up the length of the blade, making sure to cover the steel in its entirety. He had not yet used the weapon in honest combat. It likely did not need the amount of attention he paid it. But it was still a symbol of his promotion, an acknowledgement of the skill he had earned across his career.

However much that matters now, Mui thought somewhat glumly. Can you really call yourself an officer? You haven’t fought a single battle in a position of command.

Knowing this line of thinking would take him nowhere productive, Mui forced it from his head. It was easy enough, thankfully. The process of maintaining his sword was a simple, repetitive process. Almost meditative. He could easily lose himself in the task, his hands moving independently, allowing his mind to wander. In lieu of falling prey to self-recrimination, he listened to the sounds filtering through the canvas of his small tent.

It was the day after the battle which had seen him shot, and he had made his tent up not with the Imperial army, but with the Powdered Lead. The mercenary company had continued to develop the clearing in the woods that they had begun work on shortly after the battle’s conclusion. It was greatly changed already, less than twenty-four hours later. What had begun as a prison for the rebellious civilians had become something more akin to a refugee camp. The Powdered Lead soldiery, mostly drawn from the so-called “combat engineers” of the Tulian military, worked with impressive rapidity. Already there was a rudimentary wooden fortification around the premises, thick anti-cavalry spikes created from the trees that had been cut to create the clearing. Even after this, there had been precious little in the way of shelter available for the civilians, who had lived in the wooden buildings which now sheltered General Borek’s army.

As always, Sara’s commitment to the care of her charges astounded him. She had sent her largest, most visibly intimidating soldiers back to the mine, where they had gathered up every scrap of cloth, tarps, and spare clothing that had not already been looted by the Imperial forces. These supplies had been brought back to the camp and, through the work of captured civilians and mercenary alike, stitched into large sheets. Long poles had been erected, the improvised canvas stretched between them. Though the end result did nothing for privacy or physical protection, they had at least succeeded in keeping most of the civilians dry throughout the morning rain.

Mui turned his blade over in his lap, inspecting the sheen as figures walked back and forth beyond his tent, occasionally pausing. It was spotless, of course. Not a flake of rust anywhere on it, with even its leather grip polished bright enough to shine. Thinking back to his earlier days in the army, Mui had remembered privately distrusting the sergeants whose blades were spotless. It said poor things about their willingness to engage in battle alongside their squad.

He sighed, setting the blade aside. He was reaching for its scabbard when there was a rapping knock on his tentpole. The tall shadow that had been darkening the flap was knocking.

“Yes?” He asked, straightening.

Rather than say anything further, the figure crouched and stepped through.

The Provisional Governess of Tulian, despite a title which rivaled some Imperial nobility in terms of syllable length, dressed nothing like the wealthy and powerful of Mui’s home. She entered his tent in a state of exhausted dishevelment, the last day of tending to the needs of the camp taking a far greater toll on her than any battle he’d seen her participate in. She wore men’s breeches laced tightly up her legs, though in a strange choice of fashion he had not seen anywhere other than on her, those breeches were made of a stiff workman’s leather, with the peculiar addition heavy lacing stitching up the outer thighs, providing a modicum of flexibility. Her shirt was of a sort common to human men in the Empire and Tulian alike, made of cotton kept baggy over the chest, so loose it stayed so even when the string of buttons running up the front were done up, an excellent garment for the heat. Somewhat uncommonly for Sara, her hair was held up in a tight ponytail, bound by twine.

There was nothing stopping such an outfit from being modest, of course.

Save Sara herself.

Her leather breeches had to have been made for a woman with legs half the size of hers, which meant the stitching had been loosened by necessity to show nearly two inches of soft, sun-tanned skin, a scandalous exposure that ran unobstructed from her hips to her calves. Her men’s shirt, which would have been loose on anyone but an orc, was pulled tightly against her breasts, a choice that seemed to have been accentuated with a small pin behind her back which kept the material held deliberately taut. Sweaty as she was, a sculptor who wished to carve a nude relief would not have needed to ask for her shirt to come off before she posed for reference. That is, assuming they could ever bring their eyes away from her body to do their work.

When Mui managed the task, lifting his attentions from the enticing sway of her chest as she bent forward into his tent, he was surprised to see that she was a tired woman. Her eyes were red with exhaustion, slightly sunken into the dark marks over her cheeks. He wondered if she had slept at all since collecting the camp’s civilians into the care of the Powdered Lead and, almost in the same instant the question occurred to him, decided she hadn’t. He hadn’t seen hide nor hair of her since the battle’s end.

“Hey,” she greeted, a bright yet apologetic smile on her face. “Sorry for taking so long to come see you. I had a lot of shit to do.”

“Please, come in,” Mui said sarcastically, moving his armor and weapons aside, giving her room to sit. “Yes, I am decent. There is no need to concern yourself.”

Sara laughed, sitting in the space he’d cleared. “Sorry for barging in, too, then. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“I don’t, but I must admit, I am used to people asking before they enter.”

“I’ll try and remember that. No promises, though.”

“I will not hold my breath.” Suddenly conscious of the scent of oil that was spreading through the air, Mui corked the bottle he’d been using to maintain his equipment, returning it to the small trunk which carried all his most valuable possessions. He glanced at Sara, who was sitting cross-legged across from him. “Well? What brings you here?”

“That,” Sara said, nodding to his shoulder.

Mui unconsciously touched the wound with a hand, covering it. Until that moment, he hadn’t even realized that Sara had entered his tent while he was shirtless. For as much as he disliked the feeling of the rough garments over his fur, he’d never been one to go half-dressed around others. She was proving to be a bad influence on him.

“Oh, don’t cover it up,” Sara said, scooting forward. “Here, let me see it.”

“It was tended by both potion and healer. I assure you, there is no reason for concern—”

Sara ignored him, grabbing his wrist and peeling his hand off his shoulder with all the ease Mui could have handled a child.

She frowned, and Mui winced.

It had healed well enough in the physical sense, of course. That wasn’t his concern. The healer had been skilled, and arrived mere minutes after he’d suffered the wound. He’d had full functionality of the limb a mere hour after being shot. No, what bothered him were older, more… vain concerns.

Mui’s fur was black. That meant that the skin beneath it, usually hidden from sight, was an ashy, ugly gray, a shade that only appeared on humans when they were deathly ill. To make matters worse, the recent magical regrowth of the skin had left it pockmarked with half-colored flesh, even paler stretches appearing in ugly blotches. It would take quite a long time for his fur to grow back over the six-inch stretch of skin, and until then, he’d been determined to never be seen without a shirt. A vow he’d failed within a day, it would seem. Sara’s frown only served to reinforce that determination.

Knowing that trying to fight her absurd strength was an exercise in futility, he dropped his hands, allowing her to inspect the wound. She ran a thumb over the bald patch, the grazing touch of her finger making him shiver.

“How deep was it?” She asked quietly, without lifting her hand away. “Evie told me about it, but you know her. She just gave the basic details. ‘Mui got shot, it was bad, but he’s fine now.’ I want to hear about it.”

“It was very deep,” he said, averting his eyes. She was looking at his injury with such… tenderness. It was unbecoming of a god’s Chosen to be looking at him in such a way. “I couldn’t see it myself, but I was told I lost a significant portion of my collarbone. If the bullet had entered a pinky’s width lower, it likely would have been shattered entirely.”

Sara muttered something under her breath that sounded like a curse, then grabbed his wrist again, lifting his arm.

“You got shot three times though, right? All on the same side?”

“Yes.” Mui pointed to the two far-smaller wounds on his right arm. “They were mere grazing shots. A simple bandage would have sufficed, rather than the healing I ultimately received.”

“Still, though. You got shot three times. That’s more than the rest of the army combined, you know.”

Mui laughed. “I suppose that’s true, isn’t it? So long as we are only counting gunshots, at least. I imagine that fact will soon change, however.”

Sara’s expression darkened. “Yeah. Hurlish has been looking over the guns Evie captured. They’re not great, got some weird design choices, but they were clearly an attempt at mass-manufacturing. That’s not the last we’ve seen of them.”

“You knew this was coming, did you not? Even planned for it? Hoped for it? That the peasantry would gain access to the power of blackpowder?”

“Yeah. I guess I did.” She sighed, dropping Mui’s arm. For a moment he thought she would return to a more proper sitting position, but instead her hand went back to his shoulder wound, rubbing it lightly. “But I didn’t want the guns to be shooting at the people I actually cared about. That pisses me off.”

Mui chose to ignore some of the larger potential implications of that statement.

“Even you can’t control who the enemy points their weapons at, Sara,” Mui told her. “Don’t blame yourself for this wound. If anything, I was almost glad to have the opportunity to be in a fight for the first time in so long. Acting as your…” He searched for an appropriate word for his role regarding Sara and, unsurprisingly, found nothing. “...aid, I suppose, hasn’t been particularly fulfilling. I joined the army with the hope of helping this war end sooner. While working with you is certainly doing more than anything I could do on my own, it is sometimes pleasant to work with my own hands.”

Sara raised a doubtful eyebrow, meeting his eyes. “Pretty tame to call getting shot three times ‘working with your hands.’ Most people use that to talk about getting out of office work or something. And you’re still thinking like that even when the fight started with you getting shot, and ended with you still bleeding on the ground?”

“Even so,” Mui said without hesitation. “At least three bullets were aimed for me, Sara. Perhaps more. Those three bullets could have struck down any one of your mercenaries, and without the years of experience in war I have, they may not have survived. So yes, I am glad I was there.”

Sara blinked owlishly at him. He did not know how to interpret her expression, and found himself worrying that he’d said something awfully insensitive. Two of the Powdered Lead had died in that firefight, after all. He should not have reminded her of-

“You know,” Sara said, leaning further forward, her voice dropping low, “my old world had a lot of stories about Knights and Warriors. About how they were supposed to behave, about the values they were supposed to hold dear. Now that I’ve met the real thing, I haven’t found a single one that lived up to the hype.”

“...Yes?”

Sara didn’t answer with words. She brought her other hand up to Mui’s opposite shoulder and, slowly but firmly, rested her weight on him, bringing her mouth to his shoulder.

Mui hissed in surprise as her tongue ran over the sensitive skin of his wound. He had been with her often enough to understand that her body shifted to fit the needs of her partner, but he had never experienced it like this. He could feel the rough barbs of a catfolk raise themselves up off her tongue as it ran along his skin, starting as silky smooth over his chest, ending rough and satisfying as it flicked off his skin. Her scent, at first that of a sweaty, tired human— still attractive, mind you, but not in the manner of a catfolk’s— began to change, filling the tent with new aromas.

She rested even more of her weight on him, pushing him back. He fell back in slow motion, landing on his still-wrapped bedroll. Sara twisted her head to lick at his neck, pressing her nose deeply into his fur as she took a long breath, one hand reaching out to slip the bedroll aside. He was laid flat on the roughspun rug that hid the mud from his tent floor, Sara overtop him on all fours, her face buried in his neck, one knee between his thighs.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been able to see you like this lately,” she murmured, nuzzling him.

Mui chuckled quietly. “Lately? It hasn’t been but three days.”

He felt her smile against his neck. “I forget what it’s like, sometimes, to have partners that have a normal libido.”

“You’re a busy woman,” Mui said, wrapping his arms around her back, pulling her down onto him. “And a… popular one. I wouldn’t expect you to spend all your time with me.”

“Bet you wouldn’t mind if I did, though.”

He laughed. “I don’t think I’d survive that trial.”

“Are you sure?” Her knee slid higher, pressing into his groin, pulling a muffled gasp from his muzzle. She turned his head aside, leaning in to scent the other half of his neck. “I think I’d like to try, sometime. I bet you’ve got it in you.”

Mui opened his mouth to say something in response, but was cut off by her tongue pressing itself to his neck yet again, this time on his fur.

He arched involuntarily into her, his head lolling to one side in order to give her greater access. The tug of his fur felt so wonderful under her tongue. He wondered if it was every catfolk woman who could pull this reaction from him, or just Sara. He suspected he already knew the answer.

The tent began to warm, their mingling breaths adding to the jungle’s humidity. His lungs rose and fell heavily, panting, and he couldn’t help but let out little groans of satisfaction as she ran her hands up and down his sides.

Unwilling to simply let her have her way with him, Mui began returning the favor. He let his hands slip off her shoulders, down her back, and to her ass, kneading the flesh through her leather breeches. She made a small sound of agreement, encouraging him to grow bolder, pressing at her skin.

“And here I thought you were more of a tits man,” Sara teased.

“What I would give for four hands,” he replied breathily, trying to turn his head away long enough to look at her. He failed. Her tongue felt too good to abandon, lapping at his neck as it was.

“I don’t think I can give you that,” Sara murmured, lifting her cheek to rub against his, marking him even further with her scent, “but I can give you plenty of other things.”

Mui swallowed. She’d teased him about it before, of course. Of her taking him as she did her wives. He had even seen what the experience had been like for Evie. A dizzying memory to recall, one made even worse by his current predicament.

“...We are in a camp,” he muttered. “There are tents not five feet to either side of mine.”

“Not right now, then?” She asked. Her voice was maddeningly coy, and her assertiveness— the absolute confidence that he would, eventually, accept taking her in such a way— was even more distracting. She pecked at his bare skin suddenly, kissing him in the human fashion. “I can wait. But I don’t think you need to worry about being too loud.”

“You have a Skill for that, too, then?”

“No.” Her hand reached down to her pants and, without giving him the barest instant to savor the moment, peeled them off her legs. Even while she kept herself kissing, licking, and teasing at his neck, her free hand wadded up the leather. She lifted her head for a moment, a devilish glint in her eyes. “I’ve just got lots of practice in keeping people quiet.”

Mui’s disordered mind couldn’t figure out what she meant. He was too lost in the feeling of her bare skin against his still-clothed legs, at the sight of her beautiful face, and, of course, the terribly wonderful heat that was resting heavily over his hips, straddling an ache that he fought to keep under control.

“What do you-”

An answer came in the form of wrapped leather shoved into his muzzle, gagging him.

He recoiled instinctively, his tongue rasping against her breeches as he tried to clear his mouth, but she didn’t let him, of course.

Oh, he realized. She doesn’t intend to do anything to me that I can keep quiet about, does she?

When he stopped struggling, an even fuller realization of what, exactly, was in his mouth overcame him. When she’d pulled her pants off, they had turned inside-out, and now they had been wrapped in such a way that- that- well.

Mui could taste her arousal.

She laughed with delight at the kitten’s mewl that just barely managed to squeeze through his new gag, dropping down atop him once more so her elbows were to either side of his head, her nose brushing his.

“Think that’ll be good enough?” She wiggled her hips against his, wetting the front of his trousers with her slick heat. “I usually have to choke Evie to keep her quiet, too. Not that she’s ever minded.” He felt a thumb brush his throat, drawing a little circle over his fur. “Would you need that, too?”

I think I would love anything you do to me, was his first thought, but he swallowed it. She… well. Mui had heard of what she did with her other wives. Had heard it quite literally, on rare occasions. There were… things they did to one another that made Mui’s fur stand on end, and not always in a good way. She had seen Sara leave a room without Evie, her hair and shirt a mess and a wet, sloppy smile on her face, only to return a few minutes later with implements fresh off a torturer’s tool rack, the same smile still on her face.

He shook his head. He could remain silent with just this small aid. It wasn’t a shame to admit when one had limits. She’d told him a lot about that. Insisting that he tell her what he wanted and why he wanted it, and that if he was ever surprised by her in an unpleasant way, to speak up then and there. She constantly stressed how important that was. Having her hand around his throat? That was…

…maybe something to try another time, he decided, reluctant to write the idea off entirely.

Sara kept rocking her hips forward and back overtop him, grinding the joint of her legs along the bulge in his trousers. His pleased whimpers were swallowed by the leather, though she doubtlessly felt the way he trembled against her chest, his fingers digging tighter into her ass he fought the urge to throw his hips upward.

“Y’know, the funny thing is,” Sara whispered into his ear, “I didn’t gag myself, did I? I wonder if that was smart.” She reached down, pulling at his trousers.

He gasped as he felt the briefest touch of open air on his cock before it was promptly replaced by her slick heat. It felt as if her entire weight was perched on the base of his cock, and he very nearly lost himself to her touch then and there. White, slick fluid began to pool against his stomach, dripping from his tip to join the slick arousal Sara’s grinding had already spread there.

“Because,” she purred, rolling her hips forward yet again, at a far, far slower pace than she had before, “it’s not like you don’t feel good in me. Not like I don’t love having your cock shoved inside me.”

Mui lost his battle of wills. He shoved up against her, seeking the friction she refused to give him.

It was Sara’s turn to gasp. She clenched her teeth together, hiding a satisfied hiss.

“Gods, you’re fucking thick,” she muttered. Her eyes turned down as she bent over slightly, watching the way her lower lips were spread by the very base of Mui’s pulsing cock. She sighed in contentment, beginning another slide forward. Her grinding hips paused briefly as she looked down on him with a new, impish expression. “Honestly, it’s probably fine, right? Why would I need to worry about being quiet? It’s you we need to worry about.”

If she had said something like that a few weeks earlier, Mui might have been so discouraged that he shrunk within himself. But he knew Sara better, now. In a different way. He growled slightly, moving his hands up, starting to slide beneath the shirt she still hadn’t removed.

“I’d be just fine,” she continued on in a breathy, sing-song voice, sliding her hips faster. “Nothing to worry about at all. I bet you couldn’t even get me to make me gasp, much less-”

Mui’s hands found her breasts, rolling her nipples between his fingers.

She stuttered, taking a sharp breath, but nothing more.

“-much less get me moaning. I’m here to please you, after all. Take care of you after your vicious, awful, wound, all because I’m just that kind.”

Every further word was dripping with more teasing condescension. Her hips stopped at the furthest point they could roll forward without sliding off his cock entirely, holding her dripping sex right over the tip of his cock.

“There’s no way,” she said, breathing heavily, looking him in the eye, “that I actually came over here because I wanted to get fucked by you. That I was wet before I’d even walked into this tent, that I was thinking about you the whole way over here because it had been days since I had your thick, hot, throbbing-”

Mui bucked upward, sliding into a heavenly heat. It was so, so tight that it should have fought him every inch of the way, pressing in on his cock from every direction, but Sara was too delectably, achingly wet for her body to do anything but take him eagerly within herself.

Sara’s hands clenched hard on his shoulders, almost painfully, her body shuddering as Mui slid into her. He growled into the leather as he watched her face, eyes unfocused, eyelids fluttering, twitching at every bump and ridge that passed into her body.

When he hilted himself inside her, spreading her wider than any human cock ever could, Sara sagged against him, pressing her chest to his once more. Her lips fell against one of his ears, her breath tickling the fur within as she spoke.

“Still didn’t make me moan loud enough to get us caught, did I?” She teased.

Mui’s claws popped free from his fingertips as he released her breasts, turning them to her shirt, shredding it open in seconds. She let out a barely muffled gasp as she was exposed to him, her breasts dropping low to dangle over him. With a half-foot advantage of height over him, when he curled his stomach up, forcing her forward, her chest was suddenly in his face, his muzzle pressed between.

In the past, Sara had kept him from licking her. His tongue was too rough, she said, and wouldn’t play well with human skin. He’d never questioned her.

But if her scent changed to fit his desires, why not her skin?

He let the wrapped leather fall from his mouth as he flicked his tongue out, tasting her sweat as he ran his wide, barbed tongue up her breast, moving quick as he could, darting for her hardened nipples before her first instinctive protest could fall far from her lips.

“What are you- eep!”

Mui couldn’t help but laugh outright at the girlish squeak that he pulled from her. His head fell back as his throaty laughter filled the tent.

“Shut up,” she hissed, grabbing her pants and trying to force them back between his jaws.

“I’m sorry,” he laughed, “I’m sorry, I really am, but it’s just-”

“Shut up!”

“-I never expected you, of all people, to make that kind of noise-”

“Fucking hell,” Sara swore, struggling to force his jaw open wide enough to accept her bundled breeches once more. It was a fruitless effort, because her every twist had his cock stirring this way and that inside her liquid heat, turning her once-flawless grace into an uncoordinated, shivering mess.

“Just… fucking…” she snagged the back of his head and pulled him into her breasts. “If you’re gonna just go and do that to my tits, don’t just do it once.”

Mui obliged her.

His tongue ran up and down her breasts in long, savoring licks, barbs running against the goosebumps that rose across her flesh. It should have hurt her, but to Sara’s evident surprise, it did anything but. He felt her fingers suddenly curl as he reached her nipple, slowing down to taste every inch of the rock-hard bud.

“Sh-sh-sh-shiiiiit,” Sara breathed, barely controlled. “Fucking hell, you’re lucky that this worked out so… nicely,” she said, growling angrily, an affect that was very nearly ruined by the way her whisper leapt up an octave as he jerked his tongue off her skin. He dove onto her other breast next, running side to side now, luxuriating in the reward given by each full-body tremor, which caused her inner walls to clench tightly around his cock.

Eventually, however, Sara began to regain her composure, beginning a slow bounce in his lap that began to pull the same pitiful, involuntary whines from his throat that they had before.

“Oh, fucking… good boy,” Sara groaned, running her fingers through his fur as she bounced. “Good, good boy. Just there…”

If that was what she wanted, he had no interest in doing anything of the sort. He began to throw his hips up into her, trying even harder to use her breasts to muffle his own noises. His maw was opened wide, outermost fangs pricking at her skin in ways that should have drawn blood, would have drawn blood on any other human, but instead just had her shivering even harder, gasping at each little pinprick.

But Sara was still Sara. This was a losing battle for him. As she began to roll her stomach, grinding forward and back, up and down, his self-control began to steadily falter. His licks became less coherent, starting and stopping, and he began to thrust up into her almost against his will, chasing after her intoxicating body every time it had the gall to leave him by the barest margins. His hungry growls fell back to delighted whines as she stirred his cock inside her, very walls of rippling and rolling to please his cock.

Before long, it was not Sara’s arms wrapped around his shoulders, enjoying his attentions on her chest. It was him being held up into a sitting position by her flexing biceps, keeping his twitching body from collapsing to the mat once more.

“There we go,” Sara whispered, kneading her fingers into the tense muscles of his back, working them loose. “Theeeere we go. You did so good, so good. Go ahead now. Go ahead.” Before he even realized what was happening, the leather gag was slipped back into his mouth, which his jaws clenched reflexively down on. “I can feel you throbbing,” she groaned, pressing her nose into his neck, “and I want it. I want you to cum in me, Mui.” He could feel the way her own words affected her, causing her to tighten around his cock. “I was lying, lying, lyyyying. Three days was too long, and I just want your fucking cock in me…”

Mui’s vision swam. He tried to convince himself that it was just something she was saying to throw him off, to help her win their little unstated bet, but he couldn’t. She’d never once lied to him in bed, had told him as much, that she never would, and he’d believed her then, which meant he believed her now.

His mind was screaming at him to give in to her demands. That there was no reason to hold back, that it would feel so, so good to cum in her while wrapped up in the embrace of her muscled body. That there was no reason not to, that she could— and would— stir his cock back to life the instant he finished spasming, that he would lose nothing by giving in to that mindless, blinding bliss.

He didn’t know what let him hold back. Maybe a flicker of pride, maybe a helping of stubbornness, or maybe, if he allowed himself a moment of vulnerability, a sense of dedication. Dedication to Sara, to her pleasure, to caring for her needs for once, to take this aching, tired woman in front of him and leaving her sprawled out and satisfied, unable to leave his tent even if she wanted to, forcing her to take the rest she so desperately needed.

He thought of what Hurlish had told him once, when he was guarding her at the forge. A casual conversation, as casual as she always was about her wives. When she’d told him that Sara, for all the confidence that shone from her every pore, was a woman who sometimes needed to be wrung out. To be given, no, forced to take time for herself, because she never would otherwise.

With a near-silent growl, Mui suddenly lunged forward, sweeping them around. Sara’s lidded eyes shot open in surprise, but, as close to the edge as she was, she couldn’t react in time.

Sara yelped as she was thrown off of him, shoved face-first onto the mat Mui had been sitting on when she’d come in. His cock throbbed in the open air, jumping with his pounding heart, aching at the absence of her heat. He could see her watching it, surprised and impressed that someone had actually managed to pull themselves from her body.

Biting down hard on the leather in his mouth, Mui, claws and all, grabbed her ass, dragged it up into the air, and shoved himself into her.

Sara’s entire body curled in on itself even as her eyes rolled back. He bent over her, pressing their bodies against one another as much as he could. “Knew you had it in you, big boy,” she whispered hoarsely.

Mui ignored her, groaning in frustration. He could not bring them perfectly together. Sara was laying on her chest, not supporting herself, and he couldn’t reach his head to hers, not with his cock still buried to the hilt.

She wants this, Mui hastily reassured himself, she wants this she wants this she wants this-

Before he could think better of it, Mui grabbed her ponytail and, with one swift jerk, pulled her head into the air.

Sara’s moan was guttural. He couldn’t see her face anymore, and that was a horrible shame, because he’d never heard her quite like this.

“THERE you fucking go,” she hissed, her hands scrabbling for purchase on the mat, raising herself up, giving him the access he wanted. “Fucking there you go, Mui, come on! Come on! You know what to do, just fuck me-”

Mui drew his hips back and, with one great, authoritative pause, drew himself out of her. He slammed into the boiling lava of her cunt, spreading her wide around him.

“Ohhhhh my fucking god,” Sara groaned, trying to drop to her elbows. Mui’s grip on her ponytail didn’t let her, keeping her pinned just where he could slide into her best. He was as deep as he could get in her, as deep as he could reach, the tip of his cock just barely brushing against something that other positions had never let him feel before. She shook and trembled around him, and if it weren’t for her silence, he would have thought she’d come apart then and there.

Some distant part of his mind, one of the few islands of his consciousness not drowned in a tidal wave of animalistic need, had the thought that he’d never seen her in a ponytail before. And that the figure had paused at his tent for a moment, just long enough to do up their hair.

He ignored that as he began to thrust into her. She did her best to keep on hands and knees, grinding herself back into him, but she didn’t seem to understand what he wanted. She kept arching her back low, giving him a beautiful, stupefying view of her body, but that wasn’t what he cared about.

Because if her body was going to act like a catfolk’s in one way, why not every way?

Mui bent his head over her and turned aside, rubbing his cheek from the small of her back all the way up. He could feel his scent smear along the entire trail, taking her, declaring her, claiming her, and as he reached her shoulder, he felt it hit her too.

“Wh-a-a-a-t the fuck is tha-a-a-at,” she stuttered out, her entire body trembling, jerking as if she had been struck by lightning.

Mui could not answer. If he dropped the gag from his mouth, the whole camp would hear his grunts, his growls, his moans of utter, ecstatic delight.

So instead he moved to her other shoulder and dragged his way back down, using his other cheek to drag himself along her body. Covering her, smothering her with his scent.

Sara reacted properly. Like she should. She abandoned that stupid curve of her back in favor of shoving more of herself up into him, trying to rub every spare bit of skin she could against his fur. He was panting so hard as he fucked her, glad beyond belief that his fur muffled what would have been the loud slaps of flesh as their hips collided. She tried to wrap her legs around him, one hand blindly raising up to blindly flail backward, trying to snag his head.

He knocked it away with his muzzle, his mind only for his thrusts, the friction, the way his scent began to drown hers, filling the air with him and him alone, bathing her in the musk of a woman claimed. Every catfolk, every half-catfolk, hells, every quarter-catfolk in the camp, they would know when she walked past. They would smell nothing of her scent, replaced as it was by his own, marking her as a woman claimed, taken, bred.

“Oh. Oh, oh fuck,” Sara swore, the same realization running through her. “Mui. Mui, fucking Mui, I knew you had it in you.” She shook violently, her hips jerking in the air as she was consumed by a desire unlike any other she’d known before. “Fucking… fucking… fill me up, cum in me like I know you want to!”

Mui spat out his gag. Any pretense of secrecy to this trist had been abandoned, and through an incredible sense of luck, it wasn’t because of him.

“Not yet,” he said, growling into her ear, “I haven’t finished with you yet.”

“Fu-u-cking finally,” she moaned, throwing her hips back against him. “There you are. There you go. Fuck me, Mui, fucking take me, just like that, I fucking knew it, I knew you could, I told her you fucking would—”

He ignored her half-mindless babbling, shoving himself deep into her tight, squeezing cunt. Her entire body rolled with the tremors of climax, driving her higher and higher, but he knew she hadn’t well and truly cum yet because he hadn’t, and that’s what she needed.

Mui’s claws pressed even further out of his fingers as he abandoned her ponytail, grabbing her by the scalp instead, dragging her neck to one side.

If she wanted to get fucked like a catfolk?

She’d get bred like one.

Mui’s mouth spread wide as it descended onto her, latching hard onto her neck. He felt his fangs pierce her skin as he drove himself one final time into her cunt, spearing himself deep, pressing as far as there was to be reached, the iron taste of blood rolling over his tongue as he bucked once, twice, then slammed himself against her—

Sara’s scream turned soundless as his cock jumped within her, spraying her cunt with his seed. His breath rolled across her, filling her face, her mouth, her nose, all of it with the smell of the man that had taken her, and it was that, the pain in her shoulder that flared to brilliant joy, that spray of cum deep in her body, the feeling of his claws in her hair, they all took her over the edge.

Mui’s world went awry as she came around him. She gripped him so tight it hurt, pulling his orgasm up with hers, taking everything he had and demanding more, more, more, and he gave it to her, his cock leaping as he saw nothing but white, the two of them intertwined, her bent beneath him, him locked onto her shoulder, marking her. He was so lost that he wondered what their kids would look like, if they would have his black fur or her ebony hair, fantasizing about how she would look swollen with child. He kept trying to drive himself further into her as his cock pulsed, painting her quivering womb white with his cum, his essence, filling her until it reached the bottom of his cock, which refused to let a single drop roll free, keeping it all inside her.

He didn’t know how long it lasted. Only that his mind wished it had never ended, and his body was deeply, profoundly relieved when his climax left him. They both dropped to the mat, him on top of her, still locked together in the most intimate of ways. They panted, their breaths filling the tent.

Mui shuddered. A tent that smelled like him. No one else. Him. Everything in it was his.

With a laborious, groaning effort, Sara turned herself over, so they were lying chest-to-chest. She did so carefully, ensuring his cock never slipped from her.

“Fucking hell,” she swore, still breathing hard. “That’s… that’s gonna be a hard one to… to follow up.”

Mui chuckled. “What do you… mean… follow up?”

A wave of fresh, foreign arousal surged through him. Before his cock had even begin to soften, he felt it pulse once, earning a moan from both of them.

“I said…” Sara panted, groaning lightly, “what I said.”

As the Divine Chosen began to roll her hips once more, a faint, very strange sort of thought passed through Mui Thom’s head.

I think this may kill me,

But if it does,

It will have been worth it.

He began to thrust once more.

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He awoke when it was dark out. There was a second rustling at his tent flap, the sound of someone entering, which caused him to reflexively reach out, searching for Sara.

He found himself in her arms, wrapped tightly from behind, her head resting on his shoulder. He sighed in relief.

Then realized he should have felt anything but.

His eyes shot open with a strangled cry of alarm, trying to cover himself, Sara, and go for his sword, all in the same moment that he tried to order the intruder out.

Evie looked down at him with hands on her hips, thoroughly unimpressed with his reaction.

“Oh well,” she sighed, stepping aside, “I suppose I can’t blame you. I doubt I’ve been any more alert in a similar situation to yourself.”

She pad across the tent, stepping over Mui and Sara’s naked body, reaching into his box of belongings for a lantern. She clicked it to life, set it on the ground, then settled primly onto his stool, legs crossed.

“I apologize for the intrusion, but I couldn’t keep the others away from their tents any longer.”

“I… you… what?”

“Thanks,” Sara murmured drowsily, eyes still closed.

“You are welcome, Master.”

Mui tried to cover himself once more, which only prompted Evie’s gaze to flick down to the very place he was trying to cover.

“Don’t bother,” she said. “If you think I am scandalized by nudity after all I have—”

“You may not be, but I am!” Mui snapped. He held out his free hand. “A blanket, my shirt, whatever you have, now!”

Evie raised one sculpted eyebrow at the relative positions implied by his demand, but acquiesced, tossing him the thin bedroll that had long since been thrown aside.

“Anyone got near enough to hear?” Sara murmured curiously.

“Not initially, no,” Evie said. “But… after a while, perhaps. You did get rather loud.”

Sara laughed hoarsely. “Yeah.”

“What in the name of the gods is going on?” Mui asked.

“Oh? You didn’t hear, Mui?” Evie bent forward, resting an elbow on her knee and her head in her palm. “There was a meeting of the Powdered Lead leadership and our Imperial Envoy in this area. It lasted quite a while, from what I heard, and contained rather sensitive information. No one was allowed near.”

Mui blinked, trying to get what was left of his shattered body and mind to comprehend Evie’s still-thick Continental accent.

“That’s… you…” He turned to look at Sara as best he could, when she had all four limbs wrapped around him from behind. “You planned this?”

“This is like the third time I’ve tried,” she sleepily responded.

“That’s… what?”

“To get you to assert yourself physically during sex,” Evie explained, accentuating the sentence with a less-than-helpful wave to their coupled hips. “I see she finally managed it. What was the trick in the end, Master?”

“Taunting,” Sara said. She stretched, freeing Mui for a moment, only for her thick arms to quickly return to their capture of his neck, pulling him closer into her. “He wouldn’t do it if I asked him to be rough, but taunting him? Oh, it worked wonders.”

“So I heard.”

“You heard?”

Evie eyed him. “How else do you think I ensured no one else was close enough?”

“But… you listened to…”

“I assure you, Mui, my Master has no secrets from me.” She held up a finger, inspecting it in the lantern light. There was a light sheen to it, which she licked clean. “I also masturbated to it.”

Mui’s reaction was an explosive coughing fit, one not quite loud enough to drown out Sara’s laughter.

“You- you shouldn’t have-”

“Are you displeased by the notion?” Evie asked matter-of-factly. “Master didn’t think you would be, and she is very rarely wrong. In fact, in matters of sexuality, I do not think she has once, ever, been in error regarding another’s preferences.”

Mui thought about it. He well and truly thought of Evie, the exotic, beautiful Warrior that she was, kneeling in the nearest tent, pleasuring herself to the sounds of his and Sara’s sex.

He swallowed hard, falling silent.

“As expected.” Evie turned her attention to Sara. “I let you sleep for six hours, Master. Will you be leaving now?”

Sara snuggled harder into Mui’s furry shoulder. “Do I haaaave to?” She whined childishly.

“If you wish to not be so far behind on work tomorrow that we have to delay the march by another day, yes. Otherwise…” Evie licked her lips. “I will always follow your orders.”

Mui’s heart was thundering in his chest so hard that he felt certain it would tear itself from his ribcage at any moment.

“No, no,” Sara groaned, reluctantly untangling himself from Mui. “I think that’d kill him. Besides, we really do have some shit to do.”

“Hurlish is waiting for you first, and I was told to take care of Tahn for ‘at least an hour’ after you arrived.”

“Ah, shit,” Sara said, sitting up. She was as naked as she had been when they finished, her breasts visibly covered in Mui’s dried saliva. She pulled her shirt over that display without concern. “You people never give me a fucking break.”

“No. But I did factor it into your schedule.”

“Thanks.”

Mui was left under the blanket, watching the two women converse. He could have contributed, he knew, but he found that forming a coherent thought in that moment was among the most difficult tasks he’d ever attempted. It was only when Sara began to pull her pants up her legs that he raised his head, staring in disbelief.

The marks of his fangs were pressed cleanly into the leather, piercing holes. Somehow, in a coincidence that he was too-slowly beginning to accept was no coincidence at all, he had been biting directly over the portion which covered her crotch. There were now needle-point piercings from his teeth, ones which began at the top of her pubic hair, traveling all the way down to just barely be visible from her backside.

“You do realize that those still have-”

“Yep.”

“Please don’t wear those-”

“Nope.”

Mui sighed, dropping his head. He glanced at Evie. “Is she at least going to bathe before she goes among the general public? Clean my… scent away?”

“I think you’d have better luck having her swear fealty to your Emperor than wash you off her.”

Sara pointed her fingers at Evie, grinning. “Yep on that one, too.”

Mui groaned, rolling onto his back. The rumors had already been spreading like wildfire, but after this…

“See ya later, Mui,” Sara said, pausing at the tent’s flap to look him over with a small smile. “I promise it won’t be another three days before we do that again. Maybe not quite that intense next time, though.”

He gave her a limp wave goodbye as she exited the tent. Evie went to follow after her but, just before leaving, tossed her head over her shoulders, meeting his eyes.

“When she offers my body to you, Mui Thom? I hope you understand that I will be expecting something much rougher than what you managed tonight.”

Evie disappeared into the darkness without another word.

Mui’s head dropped back onto the mat with a dull thump. The sounds of the larger camp began to filter in from outside, entering his awareness for the first time in many hours.

What in the name of the gods have I got myself into?

He shuddered slightly, yet another aftershock rolling through him.

Not that I think I mind anymore.

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