A Perverted Path to Victory

Tinvel

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“We… we need to get g-going, Chona,” Tinvel groaned, words muffled by the furry shoulder his face was shoved into.

“I knooooow,” she whined back. “Just… just finish quicker, okay?”

I don’t think that’s up to me! Tinvel thought, though he didn’t dare voice his frustration. Not when Chona’s hips were grinding forward and back on his lap, her unsteady breath tickling his ear with every shaky moan. The vibrator buzzed away between them, her tail wrapped around to keep it pressed against her clit. He could feel its buzzing through her. Every time her weight settled itself in his lap, burying his cock as far as it could reach in her boiling, silken heat, it was all he could focus on. The vibrating buzz that sent his toes curling and his eyes watering.

“Come on, come on,” she breathed, nails digging into his shoulders as she switched from a slow grind into a faster, more vertical bouncing motion. “I can feel you throbbing, Tin. I need it. I need it so bad right now.”

He believed her. Judging by the crack of gray light spilling under their cabin’s door, the sun had just risen. This was the second time she’d woken him since their first time the previous afternoon. The first had been in the middle of the night, when he’d been woken up by a sudden, sopping wetness against his crotch, followed shortly after by her mouth pressing itself to his. Then, just a few short minutes ago, it had been the morning bells that had woken them both up. He’d started to get dressed for the day, recovering his clothes from across the room, but that hadn’t lasted long. He’d been dragged into bed shortly after, Chona panting heavily as she rubbed against him over and over again, shoving him into her the moment he was hard enough to be possible.

“Gods, I feel hot,” she whined. He could feel her slick walls clamping down on his cock every time she landed in his lap, a wet smack filling the stuffy air. “So fucking hot. Like a fever. I think I have a fever, Tin.”

“Y-you don’t, I promise.” With how shaky his voice was, that probably wasn't as reassuring as he’d intended. “Vanara h-heat is called heat for a reason, a-after all.”

“Gods,” she swore, still bouncing on his cock. She was so wet. He could hear himself sliding out of her, stirring her insides with every twitch of his dick and desperate plunge of her hips. “H-how do you know that? How do you know… all of this…”

A shudder overtook her. In the dim cabin light, Tinvel was treated to the sight of her body reveling in climax, back arched, chest thrust forward, her eyelids fluttering as her limbs twitched and curled. Her inner walls clamped down on him, rhythmic pulses rippling along every inch of his cock, almost stroking him, trying to squeeze him for everything he was worth. She was frozen in that twitching pose for a few seconds, then fell forward, head dropping to rest on his shoulder.

After a few panting seconds of recovery, her hips began to grind again.

“Whhhhyyyyy didn’t that heeeellllp,” she whined, high and plaintive. “Shouldn’t that… be enough? Fucking hells, I came!” Her tail shoved the vibrator against her clit even harder, her heat apparently making her immune to any kind of post-climax sensitivity. “Why is it still so hot?”

“At least you’re not h-hurting anymore,” he gasped out. He was thrusting up against her, trying, unbelievably, to reach his climax as fast as possible. Something he’d never imagined a woman would demand of him.

“Mmnh!” She moaned, wrapping him in a tight hug, her bouncing shifting solely to her hips, making sure her breasts stayed smushed against his chest. “It didn’t really hurt,” she explained between gasps. “J-just… empty. I felt so empty. Was hungry in the wrong spot. Different kind of hungry. Like I needed to be filled.”

“That’s wh-what I heard it’s like,” he agreed. “It gets better. I-I just need to… cum already…!”

“Then hurry uuuuuuppp!” One hand abandoned their hug, taking over her tail’s grip on the vibrator. Her third limb instead pressed down behind her, between Tinvel’s legs, shoving hard against the cot, helping her bounce even faster. “It feels so… so good when you cum in me, Tin.”

He swore viciously, his cock seizing. Chona’s eyes flared open like a tiger sniffing prey. She peeled her sweat-soaked fur off his chest, looking him in the eye with a needy, dazed expression.

“Tiiiiinveeeellll,” she moaned out. “I want you to cum in meeeee. I want you to… to paint me white.”

“Oh, shit,” he breathed, trying to thrust up into her. He couldn’t match her pace.

“H-how much cum can you g-give me?” Chona asked, borderline delirious. “I should have let you keep the light on that night in the plane. Who cares if you see my tits? I should’ve… should’ve seen for myself how much you’re gonna put in me. I felt it on my hand, my face, but I didn’t know how good it was.”

Even more than the ridges of her body squeezing against him, it was her words that were dragging him into delirium. The imagery of what he’d missed that night, of getting to see white cum spattered across the elegant sheen of her midnight fur, was intoxicating to imagine. He was so captivated by her words that his response, whatever it might have been, turned into nothing more than a garbled moan.

“G-gonna cum in me?” He felt her clench, as aroused by her own words as he was. “You’re gonna… paint me white…?” She dove into his neck, teeth nipping and kissing at him in a way that sent tendrils of pleasure dancing along his skin. “I can feel it when you do, you know. I couldn’t really before.” She moved to the other side of his neck, down to his collarbone, sucking a bold hickey there. “That first time? I felt when you came, felt your cock get thicker in me as it pumped, but I couldn’t really feel the splash. Your cum. Now I can, though.”

Her weight settled more and more heavily onto him, her tail pushing them both forward. His every sense drowning under the ecstasy she pulled from him, Tinvel was helpless to resist. His back hit the cot with a groan, Chona’s hot breath rolling over his bare chest as she rode him, the wet noises of her desperate gyrations filling his ears.

“I could feel it when you came in me, Tin,” she breathed. “Every drop. Splashing in me. Filling me up. It was the best thing I’ve ever felt. It was so hot, your cum felt so fucking hot, but it was so good. Soothing me. Getting rid of that burning. I want to feel it again, Tin. I need to feel it again.”

He was sore. He was tired. He didn’t know if vanara men were capable of keeping up with their partner’s heat, but he definitely knew it wasn’t something he could deal with. Not easily. Every time her ass hit his lap, he felt her squeeze his cock. From the base to the head, a tight, clenching delight, and then the torturously beautiful friction of her rising, sliding his cock out of her, only to grind down again. It sent spine-tingling crackles through his brain, dazing him, leaving him weak and trembling with pleasure.

“Come on,” she whispered, nearly chanting. “Come on, Tin. Almost there. You’re almost there. You can do it. Cum in me. Cum in me, please.”

Punctuating that last, eager request, her fingers curled into his shoulders to give her the leverage to shove herself down on him, impaling his cock as far as it could go within her. Her lips seized his in a brutal, mashing kiss, tongue running through his mouth as a needy whine spilled from them both.

The kiss, it seemed, did the trick.

With a moan that was nearly a scream, his hips shoved up into her, lifting them both off the bed. The edges of the world went white as he seized up, his cock throbbing, jumping, head flaring as he felt something deep within him begin to pulse in rhythmic contractions.

With a brutal, grinding shove, Chona’s hips slammed him back to the cot.

“Yyyyyesssss!”

His chest heaved as he climaxed. He grabbed Chona’s thighs with all his might, dragging her down onto him, both of them working hard to ensure he spilled himself as deep within her as possible. She panted and whined out insensible words, her pitch breaking every time a new jet of white leapt from his cock, as if the very presence of it was setting off a new spree of rippling orgasms. He could see her stomach rolling, contracting, her tits bouncing as she shook with climactic delight, pure, animalistic instinct causing them both to cling and grab at one another through their peak, skin against fur, fur against skin.

He felt himself spill in her one last time, a final spray that was hungrily absorbed by her rippling climax, and then he had no more. He sagged, collapsing into the puddle of sweat that had built up on the cot. Chona held herself rigid for a few seconds longer, eyes squeezed shut to savor the moment, and then she fell atop him.

They lay like that for a few wordless minutes. The smell of sex and their heavy panting was all that filled the air, the latter fading with time. He could feel himself growing soft within her, allowing his cum to leak from her. Her only response was to adjust herself to press down more firmly, keeping them locked together.

“Fucking hells,” she raggedly whispered. “I hate this shit.”

“Your heat?”

His hands were on her back, slowly stroking down her spine, brushing the sweat-foamed fur back into place. Every now and then he would touch a place that made her shiver and would linger there for a moment, scratching it until she stopped reacting, and then move on.

“Yeah.” She licked her lips. “Gods, it’s never been like this.”

“I figured.”

“Hate how it makes me feel.” She tucked her chin into the hollow of his neck. “It just makes me so fucking…”

“Aroused?”

“No shit.” She nipped at his ear in punishment for the remark, making him shiver. “Not just that. Hot. Feverish. Like I’m boiling up inside.”

“It sounds awful.”

“Maybe.” Her pelvis shifted a little bit. Just enough to barely grind her clit against the front of his hips. Her eyelashes fluttered, tickling his cheek. “It’s almost worth it, though. You have no idea how good that felt, Tin.”

He chuckled. “I think I do. It didn’t exactly feel bad for me.”

She shook her head. “No. The end, there? When you came in me?” She bit back a throaty whimper at the mere memory. “Like liquid fucking gold pouring into me, Tin. Amazing. It was so fucking amazing. I can still feel it now, y’know?”

“My…?”

“Your cum,” she said, the crude word rolling far more easily off her tongue than his. “Your semen. Seed. Whatever. I can feel it in me, Tin. Coating me all up inside. I’m still so hot I could die, but it’s cooling me down. It’s the…” Nearly inaudibly, she sighed. “It’s just the best. I love it.”

Despite himself, he tensed slightly. Chona didn’t sound like herself. Her exhaustion was warring with an unnatural eagerness, as if she were drunk on arousal. Like his climax had been a shot of alcohol poured into her, wiping away her better reason.

“That’s kinda what I heard it would be like,” he cautiously said, still scratching her back.

“You keep saying that.” She lifted her head, looking him in the eyes. “Where did you hear about vanara heat? How do you know anything about it? I can count the number of vanara in Tulian on one hand.”

“Oh.” Panic! “Uh, I learned about it while we were in the Empire.”

“From who?” She began brushing her nails through his hair, correcting his sweat-slicked dishevelment. “How did you even have the time?”

“Um.”

She pulled back a little bit further. Her eyes narrowed.

“...it was from the Governess, wasn’t it?”

He winced. “Y-yeah. It was. And it was the most awkward conversation I’ve ever been a part of, trust me.”

Chona giggled. Drunkenly. It was a noise as pleasing to his ears as it was ominously unnerving.

“What did she say, then? She spend the whole time teasing you about me?”

“Not really,” he vacillated. “Just kinda gave me advice about how to… deal with… things… once they came up.”

“Like?”

He grimaced. She was still playing with his hair. First and foremost among Sara’s warnings had been the fact that Chona might become… sensitive. Physically sensitive, sure, but that was something she’d told him to look forward to, not warned him about. No, he meant emotionally sensitive. On edge, irritable, with wild and unpredictable mood swings. All vanara varied in how hard-hit they were, but Chona, struck unexpectedly by the throes of her first heat, wasn’t going to have much experience to draw on. Sara had flatly told him that Chona’s was going to be a bad one.

“Like working with you through your first heat,” he cautiously ventured. “She wanted to make sure I understood what you were dealing with, I guess.”

“So?” She pressed another kiss to his neck. Then she rubbed her cheek against the spot, nuzzling him. “I feel like I’m doing fine right now. What’s there to worry about?”

It’s only been half a day!

He didn’t say that. Instead he tried to work towards a less sensitive topic.

“Well. For example, most vanara have one place that they like to stay during their heat. One home, or even one room. Which, uh, we can’t really do.”

“No, we can’t.” She rubbed her chest against his languidly, tail curling in a long stretch. “Don’t worry. I don’t think I’m going to be one of those.”

He was again tempted to point out how little of the half-month heat they’d yet been through, but bit his tongue. Before he could think of something else to distract Chona with, she shifted against him, hips pressing down.

“I can still feel it in me, y’know,” she hummed. Her eyes unfocused as she focused on an interior sensation he couldn’t imagine. “There’s a lot of it. It feels so fucking good, Tin. Good enough I don’t even mind the heat, really.”

“W-well that’s good-”

“Do you think it would feel better if I didn’t take the tea?” Her gaze sharpened, staring hungrily down at him. “I took it before our second time, remember? But you took it too, and that should be good enough, right? I could just not. I bet it would feel even better if I-”

“No!” He blurted out. Seeing her expression twist, he hurriedly softened his tone. “No, no, sorry, Chona, but Sara told me that you might, um, say that. And she didn’t think it was a good idea. Because your heat is trying really hard to get you pregnant, which is probably why you’re thinking that in the first place. L-let’s just keep it doubled up, alright? It’s not like Lover’s Tea is expensive, right?”

She scowled. Shoved her hips even harder against him with a wet squelch. Gods, she felt burning hot to the touch.

“I don’t see what the Governess would know about that. She’s not a vanara. She didn’t even know vanara existed a few months ago, did she?”

“Years, Chona. She’s been here for years. You know that.”

Chona scoffed. He’d never been around her when she was thoroughly drunk, but was increasingly confident that she was the type to gain far too much confidence from inebriation.

“Whatever. She told you a bunch of stuff about me, but she’s not a scholar or anything. I’ll bet it’s fine. If it was really important, my mom would have told me about it. What else did the governess tell you, huh?”

It was a very strange sensation to have yourself half-buried into the molten heat of your girlfriend, distractingly pleasurable, yet still feel as though you were walking along a very narrow beam. Licking his lips, he groped for an answer that would satisfy Chona.

“I m-mean, she told me about your heat. And how it messes with your hormones and stuff, and might make you want to fill up a room with your scent, or make sure I smell like you.”

Chona, still rubbing her cheek against his neck like a purring cat, froze.

“That sounds dumb,” she muttered. “Why would I… that’s not why I was doing that.” She straightened, treating him to the sight of her tall, lithe body rising over him, breasts casting shadows across her dark fur. Her tail whumped onto the bed impatiently. “Sara can’t know all that. Don’t worry about it, Tin.”

“She’s the Champion of Amarat!” He protested weakly.

“Still not a vanara. She can’t have that many good ideas.”

“She gave me the idea for that vibrator.”

Chona made a face. Looked at the rubber-headed toy laying on the bed beside them, still wet from its thorough use. Her tongue slowly circled the tip of her long canines.

“...Okay, maybe she knows some stuff.”

Having won at least a single small concession, he felt the tension fall out of him. “She does, Chona.” He gave her hip a squeeze. Her fur was so soft. “So you’ll still drink the tea?”

She sniffed. Looked away. “Yes,” she said. Then her hips began to roll. “But if we’re going to be flying today, and you think I’m going to be all angry at you, I want one last go.”

“Chona, we’ve got to get ready and-!”

Her hands slammed down onto either side of his head, rattling the whole cot. He swore he could see sparks popping in her wide, black pupils as she leaned down over him.

“You…” She began, only to break off by pressing the final few inches home, their lips coming together in a leisurely, indulgent kiss. He rose up into her instinctively, his eyes fluttering shut. After a minute or so of chaste, intimate kissing, Chona pulled away with a soft smack. Her tail began to stroke his leg as she grinned at him.

“You,” she repeated, “have a weakness for getting kissed. It’s adorable.” Her hips began to roll, sending a white flash through Tinvel’s vision. “And you like it enough that you’re getting hard again.” She reached down with one hand to grab a hold of his chin, the other running over his bare chest. “Come on, Tin,” she breathed, grinding faster. “Come on. Just one more. Just one more in me before we go, alright?”

He wanted to protest, but knew better than to make the effort. All he could muster were moans and gasps.

Amarat, he prayed, please. I think your Champion likes me, so maybe help me out here. Please, please just help me get through this.

If there was any answer to his prayer, it was lost by his own sordid cursing as Chona clenched down on him, the muscles beneath her furred stomach twisting as she breathlessly gasped. His cock, back at attention, was clamped down and trapped once more in that addictive heat.

He supposed, in a strange way, that could have been Amarat’s answer to his prayer. If so, it wasn’t a very merciful one.

Chona took his lips in another kiss.

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Over the heavy clatter of twin engines, Tinvel spoke firmly into a leather-wrapped crystal.

“TCA report ready, req two.”

He pressed the crystal to his ear, awaiting the response. After ten seconds or so of silence, the current lead operator of the Tulian Communication Nexus replied tersely.

“TCA approved for two.”

Fixing the information in his mind, he took a breath.

“High-altitude recon confirms that Port Agrith defenses have been heavily bolstered. Previous raid damage largely reversed. Heavy civilian shipping present. Numerous emplacements visible along eastern island presumed to be defensive, but presence of weaponry and structure’s purpose is undeterminable due to present restriction to high altitude. Appear as geometric shapes clustered near harbor entrance, unroofed, stone construction assumed. Due to abrupt city road traffic increase shortly after our arrival, we believe our flight has been spotted by ground observers. Anticipate higher alert level as result. Report over, confirm receipt.” He quickly switched the crystal to his ear.

“Nexus receipt confirmed.”

“Naval command receipt confirmed.”

He put the crystal to his lips. “TCA next report will occur in approximately a half hour. TCA gives launch authorization for flight two.”

Affe’s voice joined the network. Though his tone was formal, Tinvel could still hear the sloppy confidence he never quite managed to hide.

“Flight two lead confirms launch authorization. See you soon, Tin.”

Nexus Command’s rebuttal was immediate and harsh. “Network is in military restricted status. Non-essential communication is to be forbidden.” A pause, one which Affe wisely didn’t fill. “TCA messages concluded. Network cleared for further comm requests.”

As another speaker took the chance to discuss something, Tinvel slipped the communication crystal away into his flight jacket’s shoulder pocket, close enough that he could barely make out the words if he focused. Tilting the wings left to begin a slow, high-altitude orbit, he peered down on the city below.

As the southernmost major port under Sporaton control, Port Agrith was becoming something of a punching bag for the new Tulian Republic. Brutally smashed by Admiral Nora in a lightning raid the year before, its naturally sheltered harbor had suffered from weeks of unavailability after the Admiral’s retreat had been bookended with the sinking of captured ships in its only inlet, turning the long sandy island which protected its docks into the walls of a prison. Their mages having been conscripted into the southern war, trade had been interrupted for weeks while the debris was laboriously cleared by hand.

Clearly, someone had wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again. The little gray squares on the exterior island didn’t seem like much from three kilometers above, but they’d been built for a reason. It hadn’t been his place to say such in the report, considering his lack of evidence, but he suspected that they were slant-faced bunkers that sheltered enchanted ballistae. The previous war’s reports had told him of those, their explosive bolts designed to shatter into deadly shrapnel on impact with a ship. While they were nowhere near the deadliness of Tulian cannons firing explosive shells, they were still dangerous. Most of the Tulian Navy’s ships were captured civilian vessels that had been retrofitted to carry cannon, and their thinly planked hulls were exactly what those ballistae had been designed to pierce. Only Tulian’s freshly constructed pair of brigs, built from seasoned timber ten inches thick, could be expected to resist such an enchanted shot. Even then, a bolt exploding on or above the open deck would savage the crew with its lethal splinters.

“Let’s get our drop done already.” Chona’s hoarse voice scratched against Tinvel’s eardrum through the voice tube. “We need to be back at altitude by the time the main flight arrives.”

“That’s not what the plan was.”

“The plan didn’t think we’d be spotted this soon. Weather’s too fucking nice.” He didn’t think he’d ever heard someone say that with as much disgust as Chona did in that moment. “They already know an attack is coming, and I think we want these dropped as soon as possible. You remember what the Governess said about civilian casualties.”

“Yeah.” Sara’s message to the fleet that morning had been less of a practical battle order or rousing speech, more of a threat against life and limb of anyone who was found guilty of pillaging civilian homes. If anyone in the fleet had woken up that morning with dreams of plunder, hearing their officers read out the venomous warning had crushed those ambitions to dust.

Making up his mind, Tinvel steepened his turn, feeling the Sunrise begin to lose altitude. “Alright. You ready on the drop lever?”

“Of course,” Chona snapped. “You think I’d tell you all that and not be ready? I want this done, Tin.”

He didn’t take her vitriol to heart. He simply allowed the Sunrise to keep gliding lower and lower as they headed away from the city. Their shadow zipped across several horse-drawn carts trundling down a dirt road as they went, their human minders panicking nearly as much as the animals by the sight of the Sunrise roaring past.

When the city’s outer border was about a kilometer ahead, Tinvel pulled on the stick, sweeping them around in a tight turn. Feathering the rudder to ensure they maintained an altitude safety margin of at least a few hundred meters, he leveled off only when the Sporaton city was directly ahead. Putting the Sunrise’s nose off to the left of the spire-tipped castle that defended the landside approach, he reached within the cowling to pulse his Intent into the forward engine.

“Combat speed,” he announced. A moment later, the rear engine surged.

“Combat speed,” Chona confirmed.

He kept them at a healthy hundred meters over the roofs of the tallest buildings as their plane accelerated. By his rudimentary estimate, they were just breaking a hundred and sixty kilometers an hour when the city perimeter blurred past below.

“Release!”

“Releasing!”

The plane shuddered as underwing canisters, originally built to hold boiling thermite, instead let fly thousands of small pamphlets. The message they carried was direct.

RUN!

The Tulian Republic Navy will soon arrive!

We do not want to kill you!

RUN!

We fight your lords and ladies!

Do not die for their riches!

RUN!

For the benefit of the illiterate majority, each pamphlet included a wood-etched print of a peasant fleeing beneath the trailing arc of a cannonball, an explosion striking an armored Knight standing on the right side of the page. As far as subtle political messaging went, this wasn’t the height of talent. But it would get the idea across.

“Give ‘em a shake,” Chona suggested. “I think a few are stuck up in there.”

Tinvel obediently waggled the plane from left to right, jogging loose the last few sheets as the Sunrise finished crossing the city’s width. As he pulled up on the control stick, cashing in their speed for altitude, he caught a glimpse of archers on the wall. The contingent of fifty loosed their arrows as one.

They couldn’t have missed by a wider margin. The bows they carried could probably send an arrow out a couple hundred paces or so on their best day. The Sunrise covered more than twice that distance in the time it took the ragged volley to land, peppering a plot of empty soil.

“Getting back up to altitude.”

The Sunrise pointed skyward as they flew out from the city, sketching a course roughly parallel to the winding coast. Compared to the sandy, gently sloping beaches of Tulian, the Sporaton shoreline was inhospitable. What few beaches lay between its rocky shoals were harsh and unwelcoming, piles of half-broken stones heaped up like a god had forgotten to finish sweeping them away.

“I see ‘em,” Chona announced. “Flight two planes are due south, about twenty kilometers or so.”

“How’s their formation?”

“Decent. Pretty loose, but it looks intentional. Guess Affe didn’t want to risk close maneuvers for their first proper combat flight.”

“Relying on our crystal radio for coordination, probably,” Tinvel guessed. “Hope it works as well today as it did yesterday.”

“Should we start cranking it out?”

“Let’s wait until we level off.”

Even the Fulleye design of biplane, with its twin engines forward and aft, wasn’t a particularly swift climber. Not by the impossible-to-match standards that David had reported were possible in his old world. In ideal conditions, the Fulleye could gain altitude at a rough rate of three meters per second. That meant it would take about fifteen minutes for them to reach three thousand meters, which was their current wishy-washy altitude limit. No one wanted to find out how quickly Tinvel and Chona could recover from air sickness. In the best case scenario, they’d wake up from unconsciousness with barely enough time to recover the plane before slamming into a hillside. In the worst case, they’d end up drunkenly attempting spins and flips until their wings ripped off high above the sea. Neither were eventualities worth exploring.

“Stop climbing,” Chona tersely ordered. “Any higher and I won’t be able to see much.”

Tinvel did as instructed, leveling off at roughly two kilometers or so. “Alright. Let’s start getting the antenna deployed.”

“Working on it.”

By now, Tinvel was attuned enough to the rattles and shivers of the Sunrise’s frame that even the bare amount of drag introduced by the crystal tether was noticeable to him. Leaving the deployment to Chona, he instead sent his vision eastward, toward the white masts that were dotting the sea.

The Tulian Republic Navy, TRN, was tacking in from the north. The prevailing winds of the day were southwesterly, requiring them to sail past the port before turning about, lest they be forced to slowly trudge against the wind during their assault. There were exactly twenty ships flying the green pennant of Tulian, black hulls featuring a single bright slash of white along their gundecks.

The most powerful of the ships, the brigs, took up the center of the line, sailing with barely a ship’s length between them. Though they didn’t have the prodigious size of their predecessor, the now-legendary Waverake, they were still uniquely impressive vessels. Though only thirty meters long from stem to stern, comparable to the captured cargo and military vessels that composed their fellow Tulian vessels, the lines of their hull were dashingly beautiful. It was clear even to Tinvel’s inexperienced eye that the rest of the TRN’s ships' impressively complex sailing rigs had been retrofitted to carry them. Their wide white sails were ungainly and oversized on their decks, lines and masts jammed in wherever they could fit. Not the twin brigs. They were sleek, efficient vessels, built from the keel up to carry cannons.

Their names could have used work, though. It had become something of a tradition for the first crew of a Tulian ship to be given the honor of naming it, which had led to some interesting choices over the last year or two. The first brig, the Tulian Republic Ship Backpay, wasn’t too bad. But it was sailing alongside the TRS Little Rake, a name which neither made proper sense (it wasn’t as if the Waverake had been named after a particular garden rake) nor was it half as humorous as its crew seemed to think it was. The Backpay and Little Rake were flanked by such illustrious names as the Spiteful Prick,Bastard Breaker, Ours Now, Piss Off, and, most incongruously of all, the terribly regrettable Legendary Ship From Which There Is No Escape So You Best Give Up Now.

That last one had to be Tinvel’s least favorite of the Tulian Navy’s ships. Supposedly the original ship, a captured Sporaton vessel of war, had possessed a laughably self-important name, something like Forever Undefeated or Eternally Invincible, and the crew which boarded her flaming, devastated hulk had decided they needed to one-up the former captain’s arrogance. He supposed it was a funny enough story, but it had made the mission plan’s paperwork a pain in the ass. He’d rolled his eyes every time he read the name TRS LSFWTINESYBGUN.

“How long until they reach the city?” Chona grumbled. “I want to get this shit done with.”

“Don’t know. Looks like they’re still about a dozen miles out. Can’t tell how fast they’re going.”

“Didn’t Professor Brown tell us you can figure it out by looking at how long their wake is?”

“You think I’ve had time to practice doing that?”

“I don’t see why not.”

He turned around to look her in the eyes, incredulous. “Really? After last night and this morning? You’re really going to say that to me?”

Chona looked haggard. Even in the hundred and sixty kilometer an hour wind, she was sweating. She had a deep-set scowl on her face and her legs were all but crushing the hand she had clamped between her knees, the other constantly fiddling with the speech mask that allowed them to keep up a conversation. She looked like she was in a terrible mood. But then her eyes met his, and she broke into a wide, cheek-splitting grin, a giggle bouncing through the speaking tube into Tinvel’s ears.

“Okay, fine. That might be my fault.” She leaned forward, wrapping an arm around his shoulders, and rubbed her cheek against the back of his neck. “Sorrrrrryyy, Tinnnnnny.”

He struggled out of her grip, wrenching around forward. “I’m trying to fly the plane, Chona.”

“And I’m trying to make sure you’re going to be ready for me when you’re done,” she purred, one hand drifting off his shoulder to rub the leather jacket over his chest. “Y’know, I really should have thanked Amarat before we left. Her Champion gave you such a nice look.”

“Chona!” He hissed, knocking her wandering hand away before it drifted into a dangerously distracting zone. “Come on. I know you’re not that messed up, alright? We need to focus.”

She retreated. “Ugh. Fine.” His seat jerked as she gave it a childish kick. “You’re lucky, you know? I can’t imagine how many human guys would kill for this. My dad always said it was the best part of marrying a vanara. Probably why we didn’t see many half-vanara kids when we went to the Empire, I bet.”

“That’s— gods, Chona.” He shook his head. “We’re about to fight for our lives. We’re going to have to kill people.”

“So what?” Through the rearview mirror, his peripheral vision caught a flash of her stretching tiredly. “I started killing people when I was eleven. It really doesn’t bother me anymore.”

Shouldn’t it? His tongue felt thick. He’d seen what those emcotton rockets had done to the remnants of that Old Tulian village. To the griffon they’d struck with a mere glancing blow. Today he was going to be firing them at people. On the ground. People who’d have no chance to fight back, people who, for all they’d be able to defend themselves, might as well be chained and blindfolded.

Not that different to a bunch of bandits that get burned to a crisp by a little girl hiding in the bushes, is it?

He glanced up at the mirror. Chona was leaning to one side now, elbow on the cockpit rim, chin resting on her palm. She looked bored. She was bored. Just waiting for it all to start. Even if she did have any anxiety racking her nerves, it was from her heat, not the fear of battle. Twenty cannon-armed ships on the sea and eight planes in the sky were going up against, if their reports were correct, a city that had been stripped of its Knights and mages in preparation for the spring invasion of Tulian. If they wanted to shell Port Agrith until it was nothing but dust and dirt, he doubted they’d suffer a single casualty to enemy action in the process.

Am I going to get like that? He wondered. Chona was far from the only one he’d met who was so accustomed to death. General Voth’s years in the Old Tulian royal army had him talking about taking lives with the same offhanded nonchalance that farmers spoke of threshing wheat, and he hadn’t even served during a period of true warfare. Just border skirmishes and internal squabbles. When this conflict was over, Tinvel wondered, would he even blink at seeing someone die? Even if he killed them? It seemed impossible, but it wasn’t as if everyone else had been born with some innate—

“Uuuuugggggghhhhh,” Chona groaned, throwing her head back. She scooted forward in her seat, throwing her head limply onto Tinvel’s shoulder. “I can’t believe how much having my heat sucks. I hate this shit so much, Tin.”

Shaken from his reveries, it took Tinvel a moment to respond. “I thought you said it wasn’t that bad?”

“When I’m getting fucked by you, sure,” she bemoaned, either ignorant or uncaring of Tinvel’s flinch at her casual brusqueness. “Feels great then. All stuffed full and cumming like crazy? Love it. This, though?” Like a frustrated child, she bit down on his shoulder and growled. “Fmmcking shiiit.” She unlatched. Her razor-tipped canines had left twin scratches in the leather. “Need to bring my vibrator up here with me next time.”

“Please don’t.”

“Are you really gonna stop me if I do?”

“Honestly?” He tilted the plane a bit further, watching a small bubble of dark splotches rush through the streets of Port Agrith. “Yeah, I think I would. And I think you’d thank me for it later.”

“Pffh,” she scoffed. “Probably. Definitely not going to thank you now, though.”

A few minutes passed in silence. Then, plaintively, Chona spoke up.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I need to get a fucking hold of myself.”

“It’s alri—”

“No, it’s not.” She straightened in her seat and lightly slapped her cheeks a few times. “Look, Tin, it’s my heat. I gotta deal with it, okay? Don’t want you going around walking on tiptoes for the next few weeks.”

“Okay,” he said, because that seemed like the safest thing to say.

“Don’t want to fuck everything up just because I didn’t pay attention to my stupid fucking mom when I should have.” She took a deep breath. “So. Fine. Just gotta… not get off. For a couple hours more. It’s whatever. And then we can be back at that cabin and in our cot and I’ll have you cum in me and it’ll be fine.”

“Oh. Um, actually, we’re supposed to be flying straight back to Tulian.” He winced. “It’ll require a few rest stops for recharging, but General Voth doesn’t want us staying anywhere overnight. We probably won’t get there until after midnight.”

Chona was dangerously silent. Then, quietly, she whispered, “But we already fucked in that cot. I don’t wanna move.” Then she tilted her head. “Wait. Why do I care about that?”

Tinvel swallowed. “Remember what I told you? From Sara? About your heat wanting us to be in the same area—”

“That’s stupid,” she snapped. “Why would it change where I want to be? How could it do that?”

“I don’t know, but—”

“Uuughhhhh!” Chona threw her head back and flopped in her seat, legs spread as wide as they could reach within the tiny cockpit. She was not, predictably, wearing anything beneath her sarong. Distantly, Tinvel made a note that he was probably going to need to throw that seat away. “This sucks!”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “It does.”

Things calmed down after that, for which Tinvel personally thanked multiple gods. The flight of trainees flying Halfeyes, headed by Affe in his recently completed Fulleye, arrived shortly. They stayed about a kilometer below Tinvel, circling in the opposite direction from him. They each had a large number painted atop their wings, from one to seven, save for Affe, who had of course painted his own name in bold letters that took up the entirety of the upper wing. Using the crystal radio, Tinvel began to coach them through the attack plan one last time, making the most of the time it was taking for the TRN to reach their staging point. It was a lot easier, he’d learned, to have the pilot’s undivided attention when they physically lacked the ability to interrupt. Occasionally he would call out a number and order them to wiggle their wings, which, he was pleased to see, always prompted a snappy reaction. They were focused and ready. At least as much as they could ever be.

He still wished they had better planes. Even for himself and Affe. The Halfeye had been designed as a low-speed, low-level biplane, something meant to send a mage skittering over the treetops as they unleashed a torrent of boiling thermite across the unruly jungle. It was hardly a combat plane, and a very far cry from a proper fighter plane, at least as the concept had been explained to him by Professor Brown. Even the Fulleye, while faster by a wide margin, was a paltry half-measure, cooked up as an emergency response to the appearance of Imperial griffons. Throwing a second engine on the back of a hybrid floatplane did not alchemically transform it into a top of the line combat aircraft. The Fulleye was fast enough that its flimsy wing construction required careful stewarding, lest a hasty dive end with the wooden struts and canvas skin ripping themselves to pieces. Using the borrowed terminology of Earth, the Fulleye design was closer to a fighter-bomber than it was an air superiority craft. He had some ideas on the drawing board for a true combat aeroplane, but those sketches weren’t anywhere near ready for production.

Even the Halfeyes were still orders of magnitude faster than the doddering sailing ships sitting far below, however. Their cluster of pilots continued to circle over the city as the ships crept steadily closer. They were probably moving at a speed that used to be considered breakneck, he knew. Not anymore. Tulian had introduced a new standard of speed to the world.

“Naval Command to TCA, req one.”

The voice, sharp and insistent, startled him. Tinvel hurriedly fumbled the crystal out of his shoulder pocket, listening intently.

“Naval command approved for one,” came the Nexus’s response.

“To TCA: appears harbor fortifications are concrete, not stone. Repeat, concrete. Admiral B’Leary requests shift of primary fire mission target to these structures. Fire mission also to serve secondary role as close reconnaissance mission to evaluate if enemy has replicated other Tulian defensive or offensive innovations. If proposal accepted, engagement should begin within the next five minutes.”

“Shit,” he muttered. He turned to Chona. “Hey! Those are concrete forts down there, not stone!”

“No fucking way,” she said, leaning over the side and shading her eyes. After a moment, she bared her teeth. “Fucking maybe, I guess. Can’t tell from here. All our intel said the King hated Tulian shit, right?”

“I guess concrete was too good to pass up. Admiral B’Leary wants us to attack them instead of the castle.”

“Probably worried that they actually got smart enough to build cannons of their own. But I know there’s not any metal down there, Tin.”

“He can’t see that, so he still wants us to attack them before he puts his ships in shooting range. You got any objection?”

The crystal buzzed. “Nexus to TCA. Response requested.”

He pressed the crystal to his lips. “Uh, TCA to Nexus, discussing options, please hold.” He glanced at Chona. “Well?”

“I think it’ll be fine,” she decided. “The castle would have been a harder target to crack anyway. Let’s go for it.”

He nodded, adjusting the crystal back to his lips. He had a brief flashing memory of one of Professor Brown’s flight instructions: aviate before you communicate, communicate before you navigate. He really should have Chona handle the talking.

Well, he thought, glancing at her clenched thighs, maybe once her heat is over.

“TCA to Naval Command: priority change accepted. Will require several minutes to inform aviators. If you can delay arrival, please do so.”

“Naval Command confirms receipt.”

Tinvel shoved the crystal back into his shoulder pocket, then switched his mouthpiece from the one used to speak to Chona for the one that let him speak over the crystal radio.

“Alright everyone, we got a mission change. Apparently those shore forts are made of concrete, not stone, which means we got bad intel. The Sporatons are willing to copy at least some Tulian technology. That’s got the admiral spooked, so he wants us to put those bunkers down before his ships get in range. All pilots acknowledge.” The tableau of wings immediately waggled in place. “Good. Remember, your attack profile has changed. I want you in forty-five degree dives all the way down like you’re riding down a hill, understand? No target fixation. We are not going to lose any of you to the damned ground, alright? The griffons are already more than hungry enough for our planes. We don’t need to feed the beach, too.”

Tinvel ruddered to the right, getting a better viewing angle of the fortifications. Far below, the Tulian fleet was beginning to furl its lower sails, giving him more time to organize his altered fire mission. A lot of people had things to say about the portly Admiral B’Leary, mostly by comparing him to the absentee Admiral Nora he’d never hope to replace, but Tinvel thought he was a good commander. Tinvel may not have known much about military strategy, but he still felt that any Admiral who was so willing to work with others was probably a good one.

“One and Two, you’re going to go in first. Affe, I want you running top cover and analyzing their performance. One and Two, you are not to release until you are below five hundred meters, but if you still haven’t fired by three hundred, you are to pull up immediately. Same rule for go-arounds, understand? Mounting a second attack is a hell of a lot better than crashing. Confirm with a wing waggle.”

One, Two, and Affe all waggled their wings accordingly, but in a frustrating display, Five also gave a brief tip of their wings, even though Tinvel hadn’t been talking to them. Worse still, he didn’t know if that was their fault or his. He’d been giving instructions to One and Two, but all the planes could hear him, and the advice was relevant to them all. Was Five in the wrong for acknowledging a message not meant for them, or was he in the wrong for not clarifying who should acknowledge it?

Just in case Five had somehow gotten confused about who was going on the first mission, Tinvel decided to be more explicit in his next set of orders.

“We’re going to be attacking in four waves. One and Two, then Three and Four, then Five and Six, and finally Affe and I are going in to hit anything that still needs hitting. This first mission is for one and Two only. Begin getting into a good diving position.”

One and Two both broke away by tipping their noses down, peeling away from the flight. They circled hard around, One in the lead, Two following, and placed themselves at a right angle to the forts that lined the sandy island. Tinvel would have said it was a textbook maneuver, but there wasn’t a textbook yet. He and Professor Brown had barely finished its introduction.

Briefly lifting his mask, he called out to Chona, “Here’s hoping that concrete is the only surprise they’ve got for us!”

“Don’t bet on it,” she said back. “They’ve been getting ready for this as long as we have. It’d be stupid to think their mages couldn’t figure something out.”

“Thanks! Really reassuring!”

“If you want to thank me, give it to me when we land.”

Tinvel shook his head, watching planes One and Two descend. His hands were jittery on the controls.

Alright. Alright, here it goes. This is for the powder factory, you bastards.

Tinvel was among the very few people in the world who could claim they had the best view of the opening shots of the second Tulian-Sporaton war. It was started with four spiraling trails of white smoke, wire-fed rockets stabbing toward a grey square on a narrow beach.

He had no idea how long it would be until the last shots were fired.

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