The bedroom of Liam Vanderbilt’s palace was filled with a soundscape that beggared the imagination. Moans and cries, gasps and pants, the slick contact of flesh and tongues. The drip of arousal.
Mary gasped and threw her head back, her hair slicked to sweat strands that plastered themselves to her forehead and shoulders, dark black against her crimson skin. Her skin itself gleamed as if it had been freshly oiled – the lubrication of raw lust. Her sharp fangs hooked her lower lip as she ducked her head forward, writhing her whole body. Like a snake. The motion caused her breasts to bounce and jiggle as she ground her sex against Liam’s face and his questing, oh so experienced tongue.
Mary was a lilin – and the Hierophant of Babylon. But her normal duties in navigating the complex ecclesiastical politics of a city with almost as many gods as it had guilds were left at the door. Along with most of her official outfit.
Most of it.
Her wimple – soaked as her hair – remained on her head, though the edges that were normally flush with her cheeks were in disarray and her hair had escaped from the upper fringe with her wild bucking. Meg crooned as she watched her face. But Meg was watching through slitted eyes – as she was herself riding Liam’s cock like a pro. Her legs were spread wide and she bucked herself up and down, up and down, her breasts bouncing in a wild, fast pattern compared to the more sedate writhing of her friend and fellow lover.
Liam’s hips didn’t so much thrust up into Meg as they tried to match her excitement. His cock – still the biggest, thickest, most impressive cock on Purgatory – spread Meg’s cuntlips wide and his balls slapped against her ass with every passionate thrust.
Liam’s eyes were closed and he was mentally recounting every tiny, dry factoid he had read today. Not to keep them in his mind – he had scribes for that. No, he was trying his best to keep himself from climaxing deep inside of Meg before she had-
“Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiammmm!”
-cum at least...twice more. Liam closed his eyes and coiled his tongue up to rub against Mary’s most sensitive spot. The effort paid off with a gush of the aphrodisiac that Mary’s kind secreted when aroused. Or nearby other men. Or when they breathed. Mary shuddered and her fingers pressed against Liam’s broad, muscular chest, her fingernails digging in as she kissed Meg with the wild abandon of a woman truly lost to the orgasmic pleasure flowing through her.
The two women’s tongues met and sparred, and Meg reached up to squeeze and grip Mary’s left breast, her other hand finding Liam’s and squeezing it almost hard enough to crack bone.
The moment seemed right. With one last lick, from the base of Mary’s cunt to the very top, almost teasing against the cleft of her ass, Liam let himself go. The pleasure he had been holding back only by long, long practice surged through him and his vision turned almost white. His eyes half closed and he made a rough, animalistic noise. The noise of a beast, finally finding satiation. He shuddered and came, and felt Meg’s pussy accept his seed as she continued to moan and mewl into Mary’s mouth.
The two women kept kissing as the raw passion of sex receded in slow, quivering waves. Liam himself felt utterly drained, floating on the basking pleasure of the afterglow while Mary continued to drip-feed him her nectar. He licked it up as she casually sat on his face, gasping and panting and trying to get her own self under control. Her tail lashed from side to side as she breathed heavily, then put her still gloved hand to her crucifix.
Those two elements of her outfit had been what she had first wanted to remove.
It had been Meg who had purred: Leave ‘em on. I like remembering you’re supposed to be a Christian.
Mary had stammered theological counter arguments.
Between kisses, of course.
Slowly, the two women laid beside Liam. Each of them positively dripped with sweat as they sprawled against him and let the faint breeze of the open window steal across them. Liam felt his own heat recede against that wind. Deserts got cold rapidly, but Babylon was no longer quite the desert city it had once been. Heat from the tightly packed homes, open cookfires, the factories, all of it combined with the greener and greener hills surrounding the city to leaven out the harsh shifts in temperature that made deserts so killer.
Mary slipped a red finger along his chest, tracing the lines of his muscles. Her dark red lips – almost black in the dim light – kissed a bead of sweat. Meg sprawled on her belly, with her rump facing him. Her head hung over the side of the bed. Liam knew that she was testing herself. He reached out to gently caress her rump. He was here for her. Meg groaned, then growled, then jerked her head up. She gasped.
“Ah, fuck...” She made a quiet, queasy motion. “O-One second!”
She scrambled out of the bed and ran off, dripping cum on the stone floor behind her.
Mary clucked her tongue softly. “No luck on curing it?”
Liam shook his head. Meg had been injured during the final brutal battle of the war. A part of her brain, the part used to help her internal balance and flight, had been wrecked. Tethis, despite doing her best, had yet to devise a cure for something so small and deeply rooted and complex. The end result was that Meg had been without the true ability to fly for the past year. Normally? Normally, it had remarkably little to do with her day to day life.
She walked, rather than flew. Some Valks sneered at her for her ‘deformity.’ But Meg remained roughly the same cheerful girl that she had been when Liam had fallen madly in love with her. She still seduced the occasional handsome lad or pretty girl she met while traveling about town. She still adored both of his children with a fierceness that made Liv’s standoffishness with Marion seem all the more unnatural by comparison.
But then there were times like this.
Where she would test herself and find herself wanting. Liam knew that she would have two moods after a wave of nausea was dealt with. He gambled that she was in the mood to be comforted.
He had never, ever, taken the bet that she had wanted to be left alone.
It was easier to leave when unwanted, then to arrive when one was absent.
Liam came to the bathroom after Meg had finished wiping her mouth down. He did know for a fact that she hated being seen to vomit. It was just something valkyrie didn’t do. But afterwards... he stepped up behind her nude body and wrapped his arms around her belly. His hands stroked her and he nuzzled against the top of her head. It still amazed him that he was taller than her. When Meg was striding through a battlefield or a palace, in her fine clothes, with her wings folded behind her like a cape?
She seemed a giantess.
“Hey,” she said, softly.
“Hello, pretty girl,” he said, grinning. “Did you know that a wicked Christian is running around your house?” His hands stroked along her thighs, then dipped forward. He teased the light tuft of her pubic feathers. “You better get on his case. He might start converting people.”
Meg snorted, grinning at herself in the silvered mirror. Another new invention – a year before, it would have been polished bronze. As it was the only thing that reminded Liam that he wasn’t back on Earth was the lack of electric lightning and the fact that the bathroom still used a chamber pot. The palace was an old building, with thick foundations and thin walls. It would be a pain in the ass to add plumbing, while the sprawling new districts of the city were being built from ground up – he had directed the plumbing to go there.
“I may just need to find this man,” she said, turning to face him. She smiled, but it was a sad smile.
Liam took her hand, squeezed it. “When I head off to Uten-Ha, I’ll ask Anubis for any embalming records for valkyrie. Maybe those, uh, procedures will help guide Tethis.”
Meg frowned, slightly. “Do you have to go?”
“Anubis said he will come over the blinking stars – I can’t possibly ask him to come without an escort. And there are no ships better than Babylonian ships.”
Meg frowned harder. “Then can I come?”
“I need someone to-”
“Take care of the babies,” she said, sighing. Muttering under her breath. “Brax is almost old enough to take care of himself.”
Liam arched an eyebrow.
Meg smiled, shyly. “I did say almost.” She shook her head slightly – then wobbled. Liam put his hands on her shoulders, squeezing her and then enfolding her in a warm hug, his back pressing against her wings. She was so warm and soft. Her feathers were perfect. He closed his eyes and he nuzzled her hair.
“Tomorrow, I’ll be heading out...”
“Before you do,” Meg murmured. “Can you do one favor for me?”
“Sure, but I thought you were still looking for a good enough dildo,” Liam said, grinning casually.
“Not that one!” Meg laughed, then turned around. She punched his chest, gently enough to barely be felt. “No. I want you to talk to Liv and Tethis before you go. I...” she sighed. “It’s not right, this rift between Liv and Tethis and Fizit. I may have hated her guts, but she’s the mother of half of your kids! And Liv’s the mother of the other half.”
“Is that really all it took for you to forgive Fizit?” Liam murmured.
“Well, that and her amazing titties,” Meg said, cheerfully.
Liam smirked. Then he leaned in and kissed her.
In the end, he didn’t get much sleep at all, even with Mary trying to be the responsible one. She was moaning the words ‘we need to get up early tomorrow!’ even during her fourth orgasm.
***
There was a single action allowed within the long disused and now more than a bit vandalized temple of Ares. The paint was peeling and the gilt was gone, the priests having fled and taken up under new gods or goddesses - those that hadn’t been driven from the city for announcing their support for Ares’ bid for monodeism. But the temple persisted.
That action?
To cut.
Livianna of Sparta stood on the central dais and glared at a flame that danced in a brazier she had lugged through the city and planted back in its rightful place. The old brazier had been beautifully decorated. This one was the cheapest she could have gotten. She put her hand on the hilt of her sword, breathed in. In. In. She breathed in memories. Memories of love and loss, of confusion and anger. Of a cold certainty. Of a single moment where she realized just how utterly, how completely outmatched she was.
Her father was Ares.
And she was going to kill him.
With that certainty, Liv drew and slashed with her sword in a single smooth motion.
The flames did not even flicker.
Liv scowled at her sword. She slammed it back into the scabbard with a clunk, then drew it again, slashing again. She put every iota of her strength and speed into it. Elven reflexes, married to the half-divine blood flowing through her veins, it should have been enough. She had heard and read and listened to reports, delivered second hand from Fizit, about her father’s new powers. They shared no theme, no connection to his old purview.
What god of war could summon a lightning storm, or be seen in two places at once?
What god of war could heal the sick, or bless the needy, or cause crops to grow with the snap of his fingers?
Liv breathed in once more.
Drew.
And once more failed to match that blinding, impossible speed of his.
Instead, all she was getting was a sore arm, shoulder, back and head. No, not just sore. An intense migraine pounded between her temples. She growled, then drew her sword again, so sloppy that even a human might have disarmed her and run her through. Might. If he had been an exceptionally good one. Fury exploded through her and she spun away from the brazier and hurled her sword as hard as she could. The bronze tip struck the wall and smashed into stone about five inches above Liam Vanderbilt’s head.
He ducked and rolled away from the cloud of debris and the quivering hilt. He came up, his hands spread wide.
“Whoa!” he yelped.
Liv blinked at him. “Fucking knock!” she snarled.
“I did!” Liam looked at the sword, then at her. “Jesus Christ, are you okay?”
Liv snorted. Sniffled, actually. She hated that she was near to tears. She wiped at her face and shook her head. “No. The one man I ever loved is dead. He was killed by my father. You’re living with the woman who tried to get one of my friends assassinated. One of your friends. Said friend also won’t talk to me because the man I love was party to said assassination attempt.” She put her hand over face, growling. “Because of all of these myriad of amazing things going on, I’m just fucking peachy!”
Liam sighed. “Uh...” He looked like he was about to mention something, but thought better of it. If it was the something or rather someone - who Liv thought it was, then he made the right choice.
“And, worst of all.” Liv jerked her hand away from her face. “Worst? You...” She clenched her jaw, then clenched her fists, then screamed out something between pain and rage as she kicked the brazier as hard as she could. Coals and bits of flaming wood clattered across the abandoned temple floor as the brazier flew through the air and rebounded off the stern face of Ares painted on the wall. The fresco was peeling, but it was still intensely satisfying to see a spiderweb of cracks filling up what had once been Ares face.
Liam paused. “Training’s not going well, is it?”
Liv snapped her head up to glare at him.
Liam had this most annoying ability to look both hang dog and hunky enough that she both felt bad for him and wanted him to stop looking hang dog. After Brax, Liam was the man that Liv would say she... liked... the most. He had defeated her, back when she had been loyal to her father. Before she had learned that her conception had been more Hellenic than she had imagined – won not through romance or even trickery but rather through force.
The then untried, barely bloodied warrior had defeated her. And what had he done?
He had held her life in his hands, as a war-slave, and he had treated her with more compassion and gentleness than her father ever had. First, she had despised him for weakness. But…
Liv shook her head.
It took loving Brax, who had been the same mix of strong and gentle, to make Liv realize how much she had indeed liked Liam.
Not loved.
Liked.
She wasn’t ready for love again. And Liam was not Brax. He didn’t have Brax’s twisting mind, nor depth of confidence. Nor, she thought, his wild side. Brax had been as savage as she was, he had simply contained his beast. Liam was all puppy, underneath the muscle and swordsman stance. But sometimes, you needed a puppy. Liv looked up at Liam and readied herself for the hardest part of training.
“I can’t do it,” she admitted. The words came from her slowly. Painfully. Like teeth being pulled. “I...I’ve been doing nothing but training for a year. And I just. Can’t. Do it.” She put her hands over her face, rubbing her palms against it.
Liam stepped closer. His hands went to her shoulders. “You know, uh, Fizit and Tethis could help. Tethis is the finest scholar I know. And we’re dealing with new kinds of magic, things that Purgatory has never seen before.” Liv snorted, loudly, sliding her hands down just enough to see his expression. Liam made a face at her. “Fine, yes, I just want you three to see eye to eye.”
“I’d see eye to eye if they stopped being such unreasonable cunts,” Liv snarled. Her nose trickled with wetness and she hated herself for almost crying.
Liam snorted. Then his eyes widened. “Liv...”
“What?” She wiped at her nose. “I’m not fucking crying!”
“You’re not...” Liam said. “Look at your hands.”
Liv looked down at her hands.
They were streaked with blood.
Her migraine pounded harder.
“Oh...” she whispered. “Huh.”
Liv didn’t remember much about the trip to Tethis. She didn’t remember leaving the temple, though she did recall stumbling against a wall in an alleyway. She didn’t remember crossing around one of the large markets near the center of town, but she did remember the pain of her migraine as the noise of the market stabbed into her temples. She didn’t remember arriving at the small house with a wizard’s shingle out front. She did remember the expression on the gobliness’ face.
It started off with a cheery smile and an excited expression on seeing Liam. “Oh, hel-” she had started, then she saw Liv leaning against Liam. Liv had rolled her head back, opened her mouth to say something...
Then all she remembered was sprawling on a low slab. Tethis’ room was filled with scrolls and books and tomes and a small glow-crystal that provided a pale illuminations. Tethis and Liam were whispering to one another – but they had forgotten Liv was an elf.
“I may hate her,” Tethis whispered. “But I wouldn’t overlook a brain tumor. It’s not a tumor.”
Liam sagged, almost hard enough to drop him into the waiting chair set against the wall. Liv started to glare at the white stucco that covered the walls. This place was so... plebeian. Tethis was the court wizard of Babylon and she lived in this tiny place?
“Then what is going on?”
“I don’t know,” Tethis said. She looked at the table. “By Bastet’s tits, I would kill for one of those MRI machines you’ve talked about.”
Liam sighed. “Well, you can make illusions. Can you make an illusion that’s like an MRI machine?”
“I can work on it.” Tethis sighed. “But it’ll take time to get it working. But I can keep her alive, make sure the pain doesn’t get too bad.”
“And maybe stop being mad at her?” Liam arched an eyebrow.
Liv felt the sudden urge to pick up the biggest tome next to her and throw it at his head. She didn’t need him to fight her battles for her. She could beat Tethis all by herself.
Tethis looked to the side. “I still have nightmares, Liam. Four men, breaking into my place, stabbing me... do you know what it feels like to feel your life blood pouring out of your thigh?” She paused. “I spent months hanging between life and death and do you know what I saw? What I felt?”
Liam was silent for a time.
“Nothing.”
Liv blinked and craned her head up, her ears perking.
“Nothing?” Liam asked.
“No... no scales. No feather. No Ammit. Nothing but blackness and... and... and nothingness.” She shuddered from her pointed eartips to her toes.
Liam considered. “I’m no preacher. But, um, you weren’t dead. You were just being kept in stasis. No need for your soul to go anywhere, right?”
“That’s... that’s what I tell myself,” Tethis whispered, her hands sliding along her shoulders, trying to warm herself. She sighed, then walked over to Liv. She looked down at the other woman, her head cocked to the side. She held out her palm, channeling magical healing into Liv. It felt warm and fuzzy, and it washed away some of the pain that lingered inside of her head. “So. Having fun listening in on us?”
Liv scowled. “I wasn’t spying or anything. That’s more Fizit’s job.”
“Yeah, you were more of a passive accessory,” Tethis shot back, her voice growing sharp.
Liv felt the immediate instinct to strike back. That was how she had been trained – in social life and in combat. Instead, she bit her tongue and rolled her head to the side, not wanting to look at Tethis as she muttered. “Sorry.”
Tethis was silent for a while.
Then she sighed. “Well, I’ll get you something to drink. And keep working on an imaging spell.” Turning to Liam, her voice was slightly cheerier. “And you? You have a ship to get on, don’t you?”
Liam laughed. “One more thing before I go!”
“What?”
“How’s the work on the cure for Meg?”
Liv closed her eyes – letting the wash of words that came from Tethis move over her like a tide. She felt so very tired. So very sleepy. The lack of a migraine felt like a weight had been removed from her back and put, instead, on her eyelids. She closed her eyes tighter and let herself go boneless and limp. But as she tumbled deeper and deeper towards sleep, she was bothered.
Tiny flashes and sparks and motes of color seemed to dance in the darkness of her closed eyes.
She had no idea what they could possibly be.
But she was dolefully certain that they couldn’t be anything good.
***
“All hands, atten-shun!”
The voice of the chief petty officer of the BSN Constitution boomed out and brought every sailor to attention as Liam stepped off the gangplank. He looked around the ship with a slow, casual glance...and inside, felt his inner nerd squealing. The Babylon Surface Navy was a motley collection of triremes and longboats purchased from the Aesir and Hellenes during times of peace, and new ships being put together by Babylonian shipwrights. A mixture of cultures and technologies and magics, from every part of Purgatory and from distant Earth, had all been used to create the Constitution.
But the name had been all Liam.
Like her earthly sister, the Constitution had three layer wooden hull. They hadn’t the same white oak as the American eastwest, but experimentation and exploration in Purgatory’s rain-forests had found something that could withstand cannonfire to the same level. But the true pride and joy was the fact that she did not have a single mast or sail. Her decks were dominated by turrets for archers, musketeers and cannons to be used, allowing her to fire in all directions, with her lower gun-decks providing the broadside punch that sailing ships of the 18th Century used.
In the end, it was a terrifying amount of firepower, and the perfect sort of thing to sail through the Platonic Sea to the Pesdjeti kingdoms. There, they could pick up Anubis and bring him back home in style and safety.
The captain of the Constitution was a short, leanly muscled goblin man who Liam had met a few times before – Harold of Thorheim had been Aesir before he had moved to Babylon, and retained the long ponytail that was common there. The rest of him was all Babylon; the blue uniform of the navy was cut neat and trim, and he saluted Liam with the discipline that Liam’s naval board had hammered into their crew.
Liam himself had had no idea how to organize a navy but almost every admiral that he had managed to find for Babylon had adored every single bit of military history and protocol that had been stored on his iPhone’s broad range of books.
He had simply let them do as they wished, gave them the money to accomplish it, and watched.
“Welcome aboard, Free Lord,” Captain Harold said. “Do you wish a tour of the ship, or do you want to head to your state room directly?”
“A tour, if you’d be so kind,” Liam said, trying to not grin like a loon.
Harold, for his part, managed to restrain himself to a slight smile. But Liam could see the pride sparkling on his face as he walked Liam and his two bodyguards (hand picked by Fizit) along the decks of the ship. The crew went back to their duties the instant the boatswains started to blow their whistles, and the bustle of the ship filled Liam with heart. It wasn’t enough to have a cutting edge ship.
It helped to have a cutting edge crew too.
But then Harold led him to the steam engine and it took every bit of Liam’s two years of practice at being elected head of a growing city-state to not leap and shout: Fucking sweet!
The steam engine was made of carved and fitted crystal (for the parts that needed to be sturdy) and brass (for the parts that needed to bend.) The boilers were a pair of large crystal spheres, and the magic that had made them sturdy had also made them clear enough to see the water and steam within. The surging, boiling liquid writhed around a pair of small sparks of light that glowed brightly enough that it was hard to look directly at them. The steam rushed out to drive pistons and gears and connected levers.
“And they never stop boiling?” Liam asked.
“Never,” Harold said. “The real issue is when we need to sit still, like in port, or if we start running low on water for the boilers. Fortunately, it’s easy enough to get water in the Platonic Sea. Cleaning it with magic, then dumping it into the system is one of the tasks the crew has to do.”
Liam shook his head in wonder.
It was a simple idea. But to see it executed still made him giddy. Essentially, the watch stations that gave Babylon it’s perfect reconnaissance and communication had to be protected by spells as they floated so near to Purgatory’s miniature sun. Even when it was shut down during the night, that sun radiated immense amounts of heat.
That heat was shunted from the watch stations…
To at least two of these beads, sitting in the boilers.
“It’s more like a nuclear submarine than a 20th Century steamship,” Liam muttered.
“That’s what the designer told me,” Captain Harold said. “Though the more I learn about Earth, the more I think we need a lot of catching up.”
Liam shook his head. “You know, for the first year I spent on Purgatory, I thought that making references to technology and TV shows that no one else had ever seen would drive me crazy.” He grinned at the goblin. “Now, I kind of miss it.”
“I don’t,” Captain Harold said, chuckling. “I love those Drizzit books.”
Liam snorted.
The two of them turned, starting to head up and out of the engine room, leaving behind the fusion of Earth science and Purgatorian magic. Utterly unaware that, settled in the corner of the room, covered by a tarp and resting near a box of spare parts and machining tools, was a tiny keg of gunpowder. Affixed to the top was a dull, glowing crystal, etched with runes.
The runes throbbed and glowed as, in the city of Babylon itself, the conspirators clustered around the key that was tied to the runes. It looked like a thin dart of crystal with a simple rune etched in the middle. The woman holding it breathed slowly in, then out.
“This is for my son, you bastard,” she whispered.
Standing at the door to their hiding room was the lilin who had brought them news of Liam’s planned expedition to Uten-Ha. She wore a dark cloak that concealed all of her face, save for a fanged grin. She withdrew a small bomb from her belt pouch and tossed back her hood.
Agent Rao, one of Fizit’s oldest and best spies, tossed the bomb casually onto the table. It sparked once and exploded with a roar and a flash of light as Cross Guard kicked in the door, shouting and bellowing. Conspirators staggered and clutched at their faces. Many were clubbed to the ground. Others were kicked.
Rao stepped over, looking around. The bomb had been made to destroy magic as well as blind, laced with null-crystal. She saw bits of shattered crystal from the bomb casing and the key, spreading across the scorched table top. She nodded, then grabbed the blinded woman who had been holding the key. The woman coughed, gagged, swallowed to clear her throat, then choked out: “You bitch!” Her voice sounded as raspy as if she had eaten sandpaper. Considering she had been facing a flashbomb filled with null-powder, Rao couldn’t blame her.
“Hey, think of it this way,” Rao said, clapping restraints on her wrists. “At least your judge will be even handed.”
And she shoved the conspirator to the door, with the rest of the group of guild masters and disgruntled civilians.
Unaware that the key rested, not in fragments on the table, but deep in the woman’s belly.
Safe.
Waiting.
Primed.