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Loose Threads
One Hundred
April watched him finish changing into the clothes he wore to go to Nightraven’s with an unhappy frown. “I wish I could go with you.”
“I wish you could too.” He finished buckling on his belt and gave a hard shake of his shoulders so his gear fell into the places that years of adventuring had made them settle into.
She gave him a slightly lecherous smile. “You don’t look forward to meeting new women to seduce?”
“If I were that way, I’d be doing that here.” He smiled back at her. “Am I?”
She shook her head and draped her arms around his neck. “You are not. We should add to the family and you’re fighting even that.”
Iain kissed her. “I miss the ones we’ve lost, April. I know we can never replace them, but the truth is that the harem has been rather large for a while. Since I think it was too big and I can’t bring back the women who I cared for, what does adding more strangers to our family do?”
“Unless you want to destroy all of our enemies by orbital bombardment,” April replied tartly, “we need to be stronger to deal with threats that Vanessa won’t agree you can deploy Theodora and Daya for or go after herself.”
“So was what I did to the leagues was a mistake?”
April put her hands on her hips. “I never said that, Iain, and I won’t. The leagues had everything you did to them coming and more. And we were lucky in that the world blames Haven for what happened. Stephen and Kozakura are taking responsibility for the destruction of the leagues. We can’t suddenly develop the same capabilities or people will wonder. And wondering will lead to questioning and that leads to theorizing and then we’re under the same kind of scrutiny Haven is currently under. It makes people dislike and fear them. We don’t want that.”
“What does that have to do with adding to the harem?”
April’s eyes narrowed, but her voice was soft when she spoke. “Iain Grey, we lost nearly half of the adults in the harem on that day. We lost a lot of strength and we lost a huge amount of depth. The rest of us are not strong or versatile enough to make that loss up and we still need that strength.” She reached out and took his hand. “My love, we have to recruit. We need at least some of that strength back.”
“I guess I should listen to the opinion of the senior most member of the harem.”
April blinked. “What?” She frowned and then paled. “Shit. I hadn’t even realized that with Eve’s death I’d become the most senior. And it doesn’t matter. I think things are complicated enough right now and I am content being your beta. The absolute last thing we need right now is for it to look like anyone, and especially not I, am trying to undercut Ninhursag’s authority. I would like to ask that you promise me to never say that again.”
Iain raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”
“I am.”
“I promise.”
“Have you told anyone else?”
“I mentioned it to Bellona.”
April smiled. “I’ll talk to her. She’ll understand the need to keep that quiet. It’s fortunate that Bellona is one of the few of us who can keep secrets even from herself if need be.” She took a deep breath and Iain could watch her brace herself. “And it is my duty to tell you, with Ninhursag’s knowledge and consent, that you can look for additions while you’re off with her.”
“You don’t want me to.”
“I want the clan to stay strong enough to protect us and our children. What I want for me isn’t important for the survival of the clan, Iain. You don’t let what the clan needs be less important than what you want and we won’t either. You will never stop loving me and that will have to do for me.” She smiled slightly. “I won’t let you.”
“And I won’t let you let me. It still doesn’t feel right to even consider doing anything like that.”
“Good.” She smiled at his surprise. “It isn’t right. You already know that I hate the idea. But it is necessary. You have had good instincts with the women you offer us to consider.” She cocked her head. “What about Nightraven?”
Iain eyed her warily. “What about her?”
“She would definitely make us stronger. Would she consider joining the clan?”
Iain’s response was instant. “I think that while she’s my teacher that would be a horrible idea.”
April nodded. “I thought that might be your answer. And by the time she isn’t, hopefully this issue will have long since been resolved. I had to ask.”
“I suppose you did.” Iain shook his head. “Now give me a minute for my heart to restart and then I can go.”
April laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck so she could kiss him. “Come back to me safely.”
“That is my goal.”
“Good.” April stepped back and flopped onto his daybed. She gave him an inviting smile. “I’ll be waiting right here, just for you.”
“I already don’t want to leave.” He winked. “See you in a few seconds.” The shadows rose up to cover him and he was gone.
***
Iain trotted down the stairs and through the heavy door into the first floor of the library. The bright lights revealed shelves of books that stretched away from the doorway for a hundred yards to the left, right and in front of him. Every ten yards there was a small table with two chairs, a pitcher of water and two ceramic goblets sitting upside down next to the pitcher. It was one of Iain’s responsibilities to keep the pitchers full of fresh water and the goblets clean. “You sent for me, ma’am?”
Nightraven waited for him next to closest table. She held out her hand to reveal an irregularly shaped semi translucent blue stone that fit snugly in her palm. “This is for you.”
Iain recognized it as a rough cut sapphire. He carefully pulled it from her hand, his eyes widening as he felt the magic in it. “Thank you.”
“I give each of my students copies of part of my library for their studies. This is yours.”
Iain had seen this before. The People used sapphires and other variants of corundum in a manner similar to pokepacks to store things, although the storage capacity varied by the size and purity of the gem and was usually much more than anything clan technology could accomplish. However, according to his memories of his notes, there was still a problem. “I understood that this only happened when one of your students was ready to strike out on their own. I haven’t been here for nearly as long as your other students before they reached that point. Am I ready for that?”
“You are not. However, I have a mission for you that will take some years and you will use these books to continue your studies while you are away on it. When you are truly ready to graduate from being my student to being my assistant, I will have another selection of books ready for you.” She clasped her hands behind her back. “You will not have known of this mission from your memories of what you have seen of my life and my previous students because I have not sent any of my other students on this mission, not even Kerrik.”
“I see, at least a little.” He tucked the stone away in his pouch. “What is my mission?”
“You are going to travel to another Toril world and reside there for some years while gathering information on the events taking place. I wish to see where they will differ from the events that took place on this world during the age called the Founding Time.” A set of coordinates appeared in the air next to her. “This is the world you will travel to.”
Iain knew his history. “The Founding Time covers roughly six thousand years.”
“You will have to reside there for at least half a millennium. How much longer you will have to stay after that will be determined by the information that you have collected up to that point. You will return to me and I will decide if you need to continue the task I have set you or if you have completed it to my satisfaction. There is also a test involved. You must live during this time as one of the People and you may not return to your family during this mission.”
“Why?” He smiled when her eyes narrowed slightly. “Other than the obvious ‘because I order you to’, I mean.”
“I do not find your insolence amusing.”
Iain’s smile vanished. “With all due respect, ma’am, you turned me into a dragon because you decided that I would do as the person you needed for your plans. You chose me. You have said that you’ve been observing me for a while, so you had to have known what I am like. Therefore you should have known how I was going to react to having my humanity ripped away without my permission before you ever did it. You should also have known what my personality was like. According to Caintigern, my charming personality is what is going to help me piss off anyone you two think we need to kill so I can lure them to someplace where we can dispatch them, presumably with a minimum of furor.” He rubbed an eye. “Now, if you don’t need me anymore because you’ve got Caintigern now and you didn’t know she was alive when you transformed my spirit, you could release me to go on my way, but I suspect that if you could have, you already would have.” His hand dropped. “Now you tell me I have to go into isolation for a lot longer than I’ve been alive and I want to know why I can’t see the people I love. I have not yet told you to fuck off, so I have not yet begun to be insolent.” He sighed. “All right, I apologize for that last bit where I was being insolent.”
“I accept your apology.” She smiled slightly at his surprise. “I have been watching you, Iain. I understand that if I do not accept or refuse your apology, you are likely to be even more upset with me than you are now.” She pulled out a chair and sat down in it. “There are spells that can be used to detect known bloodlines of the People. The ruling bloodline that Caintigern and I share is well known. If we are detected before we are ready to be found out, our plans will be for naught. While it is unlikely that we are being searched for specifically, a basic precaution would be to use this magic as a sentry system to watch for the return of members of the ruling bloodline that are not aware of the betrayal so they can be eliminated. Your bloodline is unique and therefore it is completely unknown to the People. They will not know to look for it. You will have to scout for us. If you are detected and you have had contact with your family during that time, it is possible that Blacktooth’s spawn could locate them and they will be exterminated. While I do desire the information you will be gathering during your mission, it is also a chance for you to learn what you must do to keep your family safe when you must scout for me among the People.”
“Fuck.”
“What is the reason for your profanity?”
“I can’t argue with your reasoning.” He clenched his fists for a second. “Permission to speak freely?”
Nightraven inclined her head slightly. “Granted.”
“I am really looking for a reason not to hate everything about you and, so far, I am not finding one.”
“Is this because I am correct in my reasoning for you to undertake this mission?”
“It’s because all of this is your fault and I had no choice. I have to spend centuries away from my family because of you. No, they won’t know it, but I will. And, yes, you can tell me that this will help me get stronger so I can protect my family from any conceivable threat. It’s the truth, after all, but only to a point. The problem is that I’ll never be strong enough to protect them from you and because my first loyalties do not lie with you, they’ll never be safe from you.”
Nightraven regarded him silently for several seconds. “Will you consent to become my mate?”
Iain’s jaw dropped. “What?”
“I have sworn to you that I will only allow you to breed me. I must have children. The Royal bloodline must continue. I have also agreed to allow you to help me raise our children and to see if your method will produce daughters who are stronger than they might otherwise be. You believe you cannot trust me and you believe that you cannot trust my oaths. You can believe that I want my daughters and my sons to be as strong as they can possibly be. If you help me to make them that way, I will do nothing to lessen your aid, which would include not harming the women of the lesser races that you insist on having in your life, as long as they do not interfere in my goals.” She filled a goblet with water. “I understand that they are important to you. That is why I want you to go on this mission, so that you will make any mistakes now and later not unduly put them in danger when we are avenging my bloodline.” She drained the goblet. “Will you consent to become my mate?”
“I consent. Will this change how my lessons go?”
“It will not. Does this surprise you?”
Iain shook his head. “No, it doesn’t. I would like to return home to warn my family of how long I will be gone. That way they will at least know.”
“You will twist time so you are not gone from them for long. It will only cause them undue pain.”
“I love them and they deserve to know. I realize that you don’t really understand what that means.”
“I am not like Caintigern. I do not wish to plumb the depths of your emotions. If you wish to spend time with your women, do so. However, do not remain there for so long that you become even more reluctant to carry out this mission.”
Iain wasn’t sure that could be possible, but he’d pretend. “I won’t. It will help me protect my family from one of the biggest threats to them, so I need to do it and I need to do it well. You do understand that my living on the world during this time period will change the events that happen no matter how much I try to avoid influencing anything.”
“I expect it and I encourage it.” Her eyes glittered with amusement at his shock. “We are the People, Iain. Our very presence influences events whether we actively seek that influence or not. It is best to actively influence events as to ensure that the results are positive for us. Passively influencing our surroundings is what led to foolish adventurers attacking Caintigern when she merely wished to be left alone. Actively deterring visitors would have given her much more peace than she received until she went into hiding. It would also have required very little effort. You merely wished to be left alone, you were passive in trying to be left alone, and it resulted in atomic weapons being used to kill some of your family. As the People we will never have true solace, no matter what we do and no matter where we reside.” Teeth gleamed whitely behind slightly parted lips as her smile widened. “If nothing else, we will be considered to be like the ones who call themselves true dragons and we will be sought out for our treasure. Even here and even now, while pretending to be human, I am beset by both attackers for my valuables and petitioners for my aid when I truly only wish to be left alone.”
“And yet you want me to live openly as one of the People.”
“Yes. You will have to do that when you are scouting.”
Iain shrugged. “Well, if they do attack me, I’ll deal with it. When may I leave to see my family?”
“Today you will pack. Tomorrow morning go see your family and return in the same instant. When you are back at my tower I will send you to this world.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
***
April watched him step out of the shadows, close his eyes, inhale, hold it for several seconds and release, completely emptying his lungs. His eyes opened when she spoke. “How long were you gone?”
“Fourteen months.” He sat down on the bed. “I have missed you.”
“It must not be too bad since you’re not ravishing me,” April pointed out as she sat up. “What happened?”
“I have to leave again in a few days and I have news that is,” he grimaced, “not good. I wanted to get that out of the way before any ravishing happened.”
“You’re coming back?” He nodded. “Anything else we can work through.” She scooted around into his lap and wrapped her arms around him. “What is it?”
“When I leave here the next time I have to go on a mission. I had to get special permission to return to warn my family about it before I leave again. I’m not supposed to have contact with you during it.”
“Are you invoking privacy?”
“For harem, no. For anyone who is not harem or becoming harem then, yes, I am invoking privacy.”
“Good. You can tell me and we can figure out how to tell the others. What’s the worst part of it?”
“I will be gone, for me, at the least, five hundred years.”
“At the least.” He nodded. “What’s the longest possible time or is it open ended?”
“She didn’t say, but the period of time she’s interested in spans around six thousand years. She did say she didn’t think I would need more than the five hundred years to finish her project, but that it was conditional on the quality of my work and her opinion of it.”
“Can she lie?” He nodded a second time. “Would she lie to you?” Once more he nodded and her arms tightened around him. “I’m not Lucifer or some of the others. The idea of living centuries or millennia is still just words to me. I can’t really comprehend what you’re saying.”
“I’m somewhere around my first century and I don’t think someone can understand living a hundred years or five hundred years until they have already done so.”
“I guess we get to test that you won’t stop loving us.”
“I won’t. I didn’t stop loving you after fifty seven years. I won’t stop loving you after five hundred or even five thousand years. You are the reason this is my home and I will always return to you.”
She looked up at him with a teasing smile. “What about the others or is it that you come back for me and they’re just here?” Iain stuck out his tongue and she laughed. “How long can you stay?”
“As long as I need to but as little as possible.”
“I’ve called a meeting of the command staff tomorrow after lunch and I’ve invoked clan survival.” She flashed a grin. “It’s a good thing you’re the host, since you’re also the only subject on the agenda.”
“Just great. I’ll have to arrange for food and drink.”
April snorted. “I don’t believe that ordering Theodora to take care of the refreshments takes that much work.”
“I’ll ask, not order. I might even say please.”
She smirked. “Oh my, the extent you will go for us is incredible, Iain.” Her smile faded. “I’ll brief Ninhursag first, so expect her to come cuddle you later today or tomorrow morning without warning.” She pulled away from him. “However, first things first. You get changed and Sofia will meet us on the Danger Room for your testing.”
Iain chuckled and stood to begin undressing. “One day, you know they’re going to figure out that you and she use this as an opportunity to fuck me senseless and they’ll try to insist on taking your place sometimes.”
“Ganieda and Marguerite already know,” April said. “Being nosy telepaths and all. We had a talk about it.”
“And?”
“And this is one of the very few perks Sofia and I get because we are the clan’s training officers. We put in a lot of extra work and hours that they don’t and we deserve something special for it.”
“I’m not disagreeing with you.”
“Good.” She frowned. “Hmm.”
“What is it?”
“Bellona. She’s one of the trainers now.”
“Do I have enough stamina for the three of you?”
April regarded him thoughtfully. “Brutal honesty time. Have we ever actually fucked you senseless?”
She’d asked for brutal honesty. “No.”
“What about if we included Bellona?”
“It would definitely add to the workout. She likes different things than you and Sofia do.”
“And we can compensate for that by adding another area in the room we use for stamina testing. And it’s not that different since I commonly like things that Sofia usually does not and she often likes things that I usually don’t. Can you handle the three of us together?” She smirked at him. “Are you up for a challenge, milord, or have we finally found something that’s too much for you?”
“A challenge, huh? Do your worst, wench.”
April grinned. “We will. Theodora, please prepare the testing room for use and ask Bellona to meet us on the Danger Room. Tell her it’s training related and to drop what she’s doing.”
Theodora’s amused voice surrounded them. “Done. She’s on her way. Have fun.”
April’s grin widened. “We will.”
***
“I call the meeting to order,” Iain said. “This is an unscheduled meeting called by April and there’s one item on the agenda, that being me and a new issue that’s cropped up. I have just returned from a trip to Nightraven’s. I have to return to her unusually soon so she can send me on a mission that she claims will last at least five hundred years, during which I cannot be in contact with my family. As usual, I will make sure that when I return, only a few seconds will have passed here. After learning about what I was going to be doing, I asked for and received permission to return and brief you on what was going to happen.”
Kasserine’s eyes narrowed. “First with my son and now with you she meddles. Does this woman have no other purpose in her life than to cause trouble with the ones that are important to me?”
Vanessa put a gentle hand on Kasserine’s arm. “Iain has been her student for some time before we met you, Kasserine. Iain claims he learns much from her lessons.”
“My son was her prisoner for a thousand years and he was very much changed when he returned to court. I do not want her doing the same thing to my husband.”
“She lets me come home regularly, which she did not allow Kerrik to do,” Iain said. “As for this mission, all I can say is that every one of her other students went on various extended missions too.” He smiled slightly. “And let’s be honest, Kasserine. One of the things you didn’t like at the time was the fact that Kerrik had grown up during his apprenticeship and he was much less likely to blindly follow orders given by you or the then ruler of Evermeet, whether it was your sister, one of her children or anyone else for that matter. And that had more to do with him realizing what was going on behind the scenes in Evermeet than anything else that happened while he was with his teacher.”
Kasserine looked thoughtfully at him. “You could be right. I hadn’t considered those events in quite some time.” She suddenly looked sad. “I was a terrible mother and for what, loyalty to another portion of my family that was not loyal to me or mine?”
“You were loyal to the ideal that was Evermeet,” Iain said gently. “You’d been raised to be that way and, truthfully, it isn’t bad that you were.”
“You have an excellent relationship with Kerrik now,” Lucifer pointed out. “The past is something that we cannot,” she glanced at Iain, “or should not try to change. Accept that and now look to the present and the future, where you are married to Iain and where you will raise your new children here with us and, finally, where you and your son are friends.”
Kasserine gave her a grateful smile. “You are correct, as you often are, and thank you for taking my mind off of missteps I made in the past.” She looked at Iain. “Please continue your explanation.”
“There’s not really a whole lot more that I can tell,” Iain replied. “While I’m not supposed to have contact with you, I will plan to cheat my butt off so as to maximize my chances of finishing this project in the minimum time and ensuring I’m as safe as I can be while doing so.” He looked over his shoulder at Theodora and Daya. “We will talk later about the items I want to take with me in order to make this much more likely.”
“We’re already making plans of our own,” Daya said.
“I know you have to return as soon as you can,” Ninhursag said. “Can you stay long enough to give everyone in the harem as well as Kasumi, Ygerna and Kasserine each a full day with you?”
“I can, but you need to add Ava to that. She deserves her own day with me. If she and Kasserine decide to pool their days together, that’s fine, but she is my wife too and deserves the same treatment any other wife would get.”
“You’re right,” Ninhursag said. “I’m just used to considering them together, and I shouldn’t. There’s one other thing.”
“What’s that.”
“I know you can return in the same instant that you leave, but in this case I want the harem to realize that it’s not really that way. I want you to stay away five days, one for each century that you’re gone from us. It’s not really the same thing, but it’ll reinforce to us that you’re away when you shouldn’t be since it’ll be the longest time that we’ve ever been apart.”
“You’re sure?”
“I am.”
He nodded. “Very well. Is there anything else?”
“There is.” Ninhursag looked around the room. “Some of us met and discussed this yesterday, after April told me what was going to happen. We don’t want you to spend that time alone. We’re worried about what will happen to you mentally if you don’t have anyone to care for or to care for you, so we want you to find women to have relationships with while you’re there. If you fall in love with them, so be it, and you can bring them here when your time is up.”
Iain’s voice was flat with annoyance. “I’m a sociopath. I’ll be fine.”
“You’re not used to being alone anymore, Iain,” Vanessa smiled at him. “We don’t want you to turn back into what you were or, more importantly, what you were in the process of becoming when you met Scheherazade. She told us what your mental state was like then.”
“My mental state was functional and it will be functional there,” Iain said. “This is my family. I don’t want to start another one somewhere else and I certainly don’t want to deal with the fallout if I get involved with an elf or some other person or race who has a representative here who is already claiming to function as the gatekeeper for her respective race.”
Kasserine cocked her head curiously. “There will be elves where you are going?”
He ground his teeth. “I shouldn’t have let that slip out. Yes. I will be going to another Toril, and I’ll be living there sometime after the last of the Crown Wars ended and the dark elves became the drow and were exiled to the underground. I haven’t been given permission to talk about this and I don’t want to get you in trouble with Nightraven.”
“Will you be living on Evermeet?”
“I don’t think so. I suspect I’ll be living somewhere on the mainland.”
“And the land was filled with kingdoms of elves during the time that I was there. I presume that will not change after the Crown Wars end.” Iain nodded and Kasserine smiled. “I will speak with Ava so she will understand if you come back with another elf wife.”
Iain shrugged. “Ok.”
“Iain.” Ninhursag looked at him expectantly. “I want your promise.”
“You want my promise for what?”
“I want you to promise not to stay alone and to seek out women to have relationships with.”
Iain’s jaw muscles clenched for a second. “No. There is no fucking way I am going to promise to go dating as soon as I’m not with the women I love. I won’t be celibate and that’s the best you’re going to get. Change the subject.”
Iain,” Ninhursag said quietly. “This is important to us.”
“I am not going to go looking to add to the family while I’m on this mission. Look, if something happens, fine. I’ll try not to fight it. But my history of looking for love and affection without you ladies is nothing short of horrid. In that past is the girlfriend I won’t discuss and several more like her. Now you drop this or I will get all pissed off, stay that way and then probably consider being celibate for as long as I can while I’m gone just to spite all of you.”
“If something happens,” April asked, “you won’t fight it?”
“I said I’ll try not to fight it.”
“That’s the best we can get?”
“Yes.”
“Then that is what we accept,” Kasserine said firmly.
“Do we get souvenirs from this trip,” Vanessa asked.
Iain frowned. “I wasn’t planning on visiting tourist shops and I doubt there are really all that many of them. What do you want?”
“I want an Iain. I want him safe and sound and I want him happy with us.”
He chuckled. “I’ll see what I can do.” He looked at Ninhursag. “When will these days with you ladies start?”
“Give us a couple of days to rearrange schedules.” She frowned. “What about Mielikki, Monica and Arianrhod?”
“I’d say yes to Mielikki,” April said, “and no to the others. Mielikki is almost inner clan already, while Monica wants to take things slowly and Iain hasn’t started dating Arianrhod. For the same reason I’d say no to Golden Cloud.”
Ninhursag looked at Iain. “Well?”
“I’ll wait until you present me with a list. If I think it needs adjusted, we’ll discuss it then.”
“What is your opinion of April’s opinions?”
“I tend to agree with them.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do for them.”
Iain nodded. “Is there anything else anyone wants to add?”
“Yes,” Vanessa said. “I don’t think this should leave the inner clan. Ygerna pointed out after his last extended trip that we don’t want to make a furor that outsiders can notice and wonder about. I think that should be the case here too.”
“She is right,” Kasserine added.
“I’ll make sure the others know this is to be kept a secret,” April said.
“If you want to keep this low key,” Iain said thoughtfully, “you might scatter out the days I spend with each of you a bit so they’re not quite so obvious. I can stay that long if necessary.”
“That will make scheduling them easier too.” April noted.
“Then that’s what we’ll do.” He looked around. “Is there anything else right now? Then we’re adjourned.”
***
Iain leaned back in the chair in his lab. “Ladies.” Theodora and Daya stood on the other side of his desk. “What I want to do is build infrastructure of a sort in the universe I have to do this mission in. However, what I don’t want to do is leave a trail that can lead back to here. In a perfect world I’d have anyone trying to backtrack end up someplace that’s fairly unpleasant, but it’s most important that they don’t find my family, including you two.”
“What are the potential problems,” Daya asked.
“There are very few asteroids in the Toril system and most of them are part of a tiny group called the Tears of Selune, which has a fairly active space going presence. I’m uploading the information I have on spelljamming and what the local space population will probably be like. What it really means is that we’ll have to ship anything I want there since it’ll be difficult to find the raw materials in space to make it.”
Daya frowned. “What will be the ROEs?”
“If something comes too close and has detected clan hardware or wants to invade our property, it’ll get warned off. If it ignores the warning, destroy it.”
“I disagree,” Daya said. “With our technology, capturing the ships will be fairly easy unless they self destruct, which is actually hard for them to do. And magic or psionics designed to control living beings is unlikely to work on our remotes since they are not magically operated automatons. If we see signs of losing control of any drones or other hardware then we can always destroy the ship and everything on it as a last resort.”
Iain shook his head. “A collection of spelljamming ships will just lure more there.”
“We’ll move them far away and we can hide them in the vastness of space.”
Theodora smiled amusedly at her harem sister. “Are you sure you just don’t want a reason to cause trouble for the illithids and the Neogi slavers?”
“I also want to cause trouble for any other pirates, including humans, the drow and the beholders,” Daya replied tartly.
“You realize that the defenses will have to be automated,” Iain pointed out. “You can’t be there either.”
“We know,” Theodora said. “And we don’t like it even more than your living harem does.” She smiled suddenly. “We can route the gates through several star systems, with Dominique’s help. And the last one we use will be close to where the Magog world ship is.”
“I don’t want our stuff to get jumped by the Magog,” Iain protested.
“We have sufficient mechanical gate systems to use them instead of depending on organic spellcasting and their availability. This means that the last gate system will be mechanical,” Theodora said. “We’ll set it up to operate automatically but if there isn’t an IFF it recognizes, it’ll open a gate to the Magog universe instead of the one we’ll be using for transiting.”
“That’s just mean,” Daya said. “We can kill them ourselves.”
“It also won’t work,” Iain opened a drawer and pulled out a foil pouch of jerky. “This is a magical culture and they would use magic to look at the magical energy from the last gate opened and then open a gate of their own using those coordinates.”
Daya smiled amusedly. “I know what we’ll do then. When we open any gate to or from this Toril universe, which I am naming Twenty Three since Twenty Two is already designated for the Toril universe that we are currently planning to colonize, the gate generator on the Toril side will wait until the gate is closed and then open another gate to the region around the Magog world ship. It’ll open the gate just long enough for it to stabilize and then shut it down before anything can transit.” She gave Iain an expectant look. “Will that do what you want?”
Iain thought for a handful of seconds. “That should work.”
“Then we have a plan,” Theodora said. “What are we sending you besides a satellite constellation that’s fully cloaked and has thermonuclear self destruct charges on them?”
“I never said anything about thermonuclear self destructs.”
“No, you didn’t, but that’s the design you’re going to get.”
“As long as I have the access codes in case I have to change a light bulb on one of them, fine.” He opened the pouch. “I want the constellation and I want enough backups that I won’t have to worry about coverage being degraded. I will also want a small manufacturing setup and enough raw resources to build anything reasonable,” he eyed the two holograms, “by my standards of reasonable, that I might need.”
Daya cocked her head. “Is your home or base going to have our normal level of technology in it?”
Iain shook his head. “As much as I’d like that, no. What I’ll want from the setup is planet wide continual surveillance. I don’t want sensors on the ground, I just want the most detailed orbital surveillance you can provide and I want coverage to be as complete as possible.”
“So you want a full suite of geosynchronous and polar orbiting satellites,” Theodora said. “Magical detecting sensors are not very long ranged.”
“Do the best you can,” Iain replied. “Set the system up to download to the gate complex as well as to a small network I’ll set up wherever I’m living. That’ll let me review what you find and see if there’s anything I might need to go take a look at.”
“You will want some small, speedy shuttles to get around if some of these things are time critical,” Daya noted.
“Very small,” Iain said. “I mean it.”
“There are some small heavily stealthed recon shuttles for high threat environments where not being detected is more important than weapons,” Daya said thoughtfully. “Some of them are as small as jet fighters from this world.”
“I hope I won’t need them at all, but small is better in this case.” He sniffed the pack and resealed it.
“Not hungry after all?”
“I suspect I’ll be eating a lot of jerky in the near future,” Iain replied. “Which brings me to my list of things I will be carrying in with me.”
Daya shook her head. “No, what we need to discuss first is clan rules.”
Iain frowned. “Clan rules?”
“You are traveling to a new world and we are going to be able to provide security on it. This means it falls under the travel protocols you helped to establish and I am in charge of.” She smiled. “I know I cannot forbid you from going since this mission isn’t optional, and I also know that the clan cannot go with you. but since we will have a constellation available, I want you to agree that we can query your twee for your location at any time and it will respond accurately and in a timely fashion.” Her smile faded. “I realize that you may be in the so called Underdark and it is many kilometers deep, so one of the first things we will do is place subspace repeaters on the surface so you’ll have to go really far down there before we cannot find you.” She shook her head. “Locating you shouldn’t be in issue, but there’s magic otherwise you couldn’t go more than a few kilometers underground before the temperatures, pressure and the water table drove you back upwards. So, do you agree?”
“With the understanding that I may be in the Underdark a lot and it won’t be for the reason that I’m trying to avoid the surveillance net, yes, I agree.”
“Good. Now we can look over your list of things you want from us.”
Theodora grinned. “Let’s see if you can find something that we can’t provide for you.”
***
Iain finished filling the cup with tea and offered it to Mielikki, who took it with a smile. “This is very nice,” she said as he poured his own tea. They were sitting together on the back porch of the house in Tokyo that he’d bought for Kasumi and were looking out over the property. “I haven’t been here before and the juxtaposition of civilization and wilderness in the landscaping is well done.”
“That would be the decorative abilities of Kasumi and Yuko,” Iain noted. “I just make sure they don’t run out of money and Ninhursag provides someone to help make sure everything is properly rooted and happy.” He smiled when she turned a curious eye on him. “I’m not putting myself down. What I know about garden and floral design could be summed up with two words, those being very and little. Because of that, I adopted a completely hands off approach to doing anything here unless they need me to intimidate some contractor. It’s made everyone involved fairly happy.”
“Have you had to intimidate anyone here?”
He shook his head. “Yuko is more than intimidating enough on her own. And the only person we had any problems with was the contractor doing the earthquake proofing. Yuko intimidated him, he swore he’d do all the repairs for free in a timely fashion and make sure the house was properly redone and I made sure his ear got reattached.”
“She pulled off his ear?”
“She was kind of upset and grabbed his ear. She says he jerked away, the ear came off and then she bitched for a while about human frailty.” Iain shrugged. “Kasumi was noncommittal when I asked about it, but I expected it since it’s her grandmother we were discussing. I questioned Nishiko alone later and she confirmed that while that did happen, she observed the event and thinks Yuko did jerk hard too. I finally decided that, in the end, what mattered was that he got his ear reattached and we’re finally getting the work we paid him to do.”
Mielikki chuckled softly. “In the end, that is what matters. Have there been any problems from the Nipponese government about what Grey is doing here?”
“Nothing has been said but we have noticed that, before we bought this property, the military only sent patrols though this area when there was a dangerous feral pokegirl sighting so they could capture and then tame her into the military. Recently that has changed. What we’re seeing now is that military patrols come through roughly once every two weeks. Strangely enough, each patrol stops off at the house to politely check up on Yuko and make sure things are quiet. If she’s not there, they politely leave her a note informing her of their visit. She finds the whole thing rather charming and feels it shows the humans are having the proper amount of respect for the power of Grey. I think it shows they’re keeping a close eye on us.”
“I believe your assessment is probably closer to the truth.” Mielikki sipped at her tea. “I thought Yuko was hunting any feral pokegirls that came around.”
“She is. I know she kills a bunch of them, but she does capture some as well. That’s why we have an agreement to sell any feral pokegirls to a shop owner here in Nerima who has a cousin in military procurement and she buys them from him. She gets an attagirl for getting good pokegirls, her cousin makes some money for his store and we don’t get a reputation for hunting pokegirls inside the city.”
“The shop owner knows what we are doing,” Mielikki pointed out.
“And he also knows that if we start getting requests to hunt troublesome pokegirls instead of the locals going to the military we will immediately stop selling to him. I can sell them in Texas and since they’ll speak Nipponese and perhaps English with a Nipponese accent when woken up, they’ll be quaintly exotic and probably sell very well.” He smirked. “Not to mention Yuko might have said something to him about how many ears he might still have attached when everything settled out.”
“I thought we didn’t make threats.”
“Texans don’t make threats. We try not to make threats. As you’re well aware, Yuko is a force unto herself and has at least a couple of hundred years of bad habits she’s working on. About the only thing she has instantly adopted from her new clan is our philosophy about there being clan and there being outlanders, and the shopkeeper is most definitely an outlander.” He put his teacup down. “More tea?”
“Please.” She waited until she had a fresh cup of tea. “I do not want you to worship my analog when you go on this mission.”
He put the teapot down on the trivet. “Very well, I won’t.”
“That leaves me with a quandy. As your goddess, while I cannot see into your mind, I can see your heart. I am concerned that, without the guidance of a goddess, in the centuries you must pass through, you will slowly turn into a being that should not return here. You will not stop loving the people here, but it would be easy for what you are to take steps that some of those here could not accept and, more importantly, you could not hide in your behavior when you return.”
Iain grimaced. “If you can see into my heart, you probably know I’m concerned about it too, but I have no choice in doing this. I’ll just have to muddle through as best I can.”
“I know you must do this.” She glanced at him. “Nightraven exists on the world I came to the forest from.”
“I wasn’t aware of that.”
“The one that I know of is very powerful and very reclusive. Even the avatars of gods are cautious around her. Is yours the same way?”
“She’s not mine and yes.”
“Then she could quite easily destroy your family and our clan. Is she using that to compel your obedience?”
“She has never directly threatened them.”
Mielikki smiled. “You are being even more careful than usual in your word selection as you answer my questions. What would happen if I asked you to tell me completely what was going on between the two of you?”
“I would politely decline. You’re not more powerful than she is and I like you. I would miss you.”
“I thought that would be your response.” She shrugged. “And it does not matter. I accept that you are her student and that her teachings will make you more powerful. I also accept that there is currently nothing I can do to change anything about your servitude to her, even if I desired to.”
“I wish some other people could be that understanding,” Iain said wryly.
She smiled again. “I do too. However, I still have that quandary.”
“Do you have a solution?”
“I do. You are not going to easily accept it, but I do.”
“If it helps me not become a monster that Lucifer decides she has to pit herself against, I don’t care how little I like it.”
“Good. As I said, I feel you need a guiding influence in your life and yet I do not want you worshipping my analog during the time period that you are gone, no matter how long that turns out to be. You are mine and I will not share you with her. But I am not jealous of your relationship with others and so I have spoken with Ava and with Dancer regarding the situation.”
“Um, I was following you until the sudden segue. Now I am lost.”
She smiled. “Ava and Dancer are ordained priestesses.”
“I wasn’t sure about Dancer, but yes, I know Ava is a priestess of Eilistraee.”
“Were you aware that the Eilistraee from my world was my friend? She and I got along very well. Our philosophies mesh rather neatly.”
Iain raised an eyebrow. “Is this going where I think this is going?”
“When you spend your day with Ava, she is going to present you with the books of the religion of Eilistraee and then she will ordain you as a priest in her religion.”
“Is Ava still an active priestess here? She and Dancer are probably the only worshippers of Eilistraee on this world and their goddess is not here.”
“They are the only priestesses on this world, but several of the moon horses worship her as a protectress of them from monsters. And I realize that Eilistraee isn’t present on this world, but they are still praying for and receiving spells from her. And I am not substituting for her nor is anyone else that I can detect.”
Iain shook his head. “This isn’t going to work. There are only priestesses of Eilistraee. Males are not allowed to become priests.”
“That is not true until after the Crown Wars,” Mielikki said. “Ava and Dancer have never experienced that and, according to the religion at the time of their ordination, males can become priests.” She smiled. “Next argument.”
“You want me to do this?”
“I do.”
“You think it’s good for me and might help keep me from coming back as a monster?”
“I do.”
“I am not going to argue with you.” He smiled slightly. “What am I supposed to do if she shows up at my place?”
Mielikki chuckled. “You’re a smart man, Iain. If a goddess shows up at your place, unless her name is Danu or she is evil, you do what she wants and make sure she she’s satisfied when she leaves.” She smirked. “Completely satisfied, just as you would do for me.”
“You’re not going demand to be my only goddess,” he asked teasingly.
“You make it sound like you’ll be bringing home dozens of goddesses, Iain,” Mielikki flashed a quick grin. “If you do, I will share you with them.” Her smile vanished. “But not Danu.”
Iain shrugged. “I don’t really see that as an issue.”
“And did you see our relationship before it formed?”
“No,” he admitted, “I did not.” She smiled again and he shrugged. “Fine, no Danu.”
“I’m glad we are in agreement,” she said with a laugh. “Now, I would like you to show me around the property.”
“Very well.”
***
Dancer nickered a greeting before speaking. “Stallion.”
Iain nodded. “Dancer, I hope you are well.”
The moon horse mare chuckled softly as her ears flicked amusedly. “I am. Should I call you Stallion or Reluctant?”
He shook his head. “I’m Iain and I’d prefer if my unicorn herd name wasn’t used outside the unicorn herd. I’d really prefer it if it wasn’t used inside the unicorn herd, but that’s apparently outside of my control.”
Dancer laughed again. “The lead mares have decided that we wish to become outer clan and to have twee. Does one of us have to let you breed us until she too is gravid?”
Ava twined her fingers in Iain’s. “In case you haven’t realized it, Dancer would like to volunteer in such a situation.”
“The blood of unicorns runs through our veins already,” Dancer said seriously. Her voice turned teasing again. “But another infusion of unicorn blood would not be turned down. And the blood of a dragon would be welcomed.”
“I’ll tell April about you flirting with Iain about him breeding you,” Ava warned in an amused tone.
“Then you won’t have me around anymore,” Dancer snickered. “And we both know you don’t want April to make me disappear almost as much as I don’t want April to make me disappear.” She looked at Iain. “I would welcome your attention as a stallion, but I also know you don’t wish to breed any of the moon horses. If you change your mind, I am the senior mare and should be first in line.”
“At least you’re honest about what you want.” Iain looked thoughtful for a moment. “If my foal with Golden Cloud is a colt, you can talk to him. If it’s a filly, eventually someone down the line will throw a colt and you can talk to him when he comes of age. If he’s anything like me, he’ll be more than willing to try new things,” he flashed a grin, “or mares.”
Dancer laughed again. “You are truly a stallion at heart and that is an excellent solution that will not result in April serving you moon horse steaks carved from my thighs.” Her ears flicked. “Mielikki told us that she spoke to you about our goddess.”
“Actually, she told me that you and Ava were going to speak to me about your goddess. She also told me what she would like me to do when you do. I don’t like her reasoning, but it’s sound and so I’m going to accept her wishes for me and accede to your request.”
“Good.” Ava kissed his cheek and let him go. “But first we have a picnic to devour!”
The sun had moved well across the sky when Ava opened a pack and offered him a Dikon. “This holds copies of all of Eilistraee’s religious writings that we could find in the libraries we brought back from Evermeet as well as all of the ones that I have.” She was uncharacteristically serious. “I’ve written up a guide on reading them. I wish we had a couple of months so Dancer and I could hold lessons for you. Eilistraee has been part of our pantheon since the elves were brought into the world and she is much more complicated than first appearances would lead someone who has not been inculcated in the secrets of her worship to believe. I even tried to get Ninhursag to allow us to go somewhere else so we could give you at least some of those lessons, but she denied my request. I understand her reasoning, but I still don’t like it and I don’t believe she understands how important it is for you to get the kind of background that only Dancer and I could provide. The books will help, but you are going to have a hard time as one of her priests since you will not have gone through a proper novitiate. She will read your heart and understand why, but it doesn’t mean she will necessarily go easy on you because of it. You might want to find another priestess to seek guidance from or at least to offer some advice to you.”
“Ava asked her brother to bring her some religious texts from our religion from the time that you are Nightraven’s student,” Dancer added. “He did and our hearts wept at our Lady’s determination throughout all of the uncounted years she has worked ceaselessly to save the drow from themselves. Then we were furious at how poorly they have treated her when she has their salvation as her only priority. We are concerned that she will see you as a powerful potential tool to use to bring her love to them. You understand that if you do become her priest, she will be able to make demands on your time and she will. Our goddess is too intelligent and too vested in the salvation of the drow to allow such an opportunity to pass without seizing it.”
“Mielikki said they’re friends and I presume she knows what she’s doing,” Iain replied. “I know she wants me to return, so I don’t think she’s sending me on a suicide mission. Besides, I don’t think Ava would do this if she thought it meant I wouldn’t come back.”
“You will,” Ava said confidently. “My goddess sent you to me. She knows that Mother and I need you and she would not take you away again so soon.”
“Hopefully she’ll never try to take me away,” Iain said wryly. “So where do we begin?”
***
“Strip down to your underwear,” Candace smiled, “if you have any on, and lie down on the examination table.”
“I have found that underwear still works well for its original purpose in being worn and so I still wear it.” Iain began removing clothing. Once he was down to his briefs he laid down on the table. There was a soft whirring noise as mechanical arms dropped down from the ceiling and began taking microscopic skin and tissue samples across his torso and legs.
Candace watched the sampling from a safe distance. “Do you want me to keep wearing underwear?”
Iain shifted his head to regard her curiously as he considered her question. “I know that you, Bellona and Elizabeth all wear underwear. Do you wear underwear because you want to or because you’re supposed to?”
“It was a rule put into place by Branwyn,” Candace said carefully. “Shikarou liked an amount of violence with sex and trophies of his conquests. Tearing off our panties did both since he had to rip them off and it gave him an easy bit of fabric for him to keep. I’ve noticed there are a few women here that you are rougher with but you’re not very consistent about it and I haven’t been able to discern a pattern to your behavior.”
He chuckled as the arms withdrew back into their housing. “That’s because you’re looking at it backwards. I’m not rougher with a woman because I want to be, it’s because she wants me to be rougher with her at that particular time.”
“So the pattern I was trying to see is with the woman you’re with?” Candace looked thoughtful for a moment. “Then I was trying to make one pattern out of several. No wonder it made no sense.” She rested a gentle hand on his chest. “But what about what you want when you’re with someone? More importantly, what about what you want when you’re not with anyone?”
“I get plenty of variety with the women in my life,” Iain said. “Bondage, S&M, group, some outdoors stuff, indoors stuff, it’s a wide gamut. And if I want something specific, I spend a bit of time with the women who like it too.”
“I’m glad you’re making sure your needs are met too.”
Iain lifted his head to look at her for a second. “They’re wants, not needs. I don’t go feral.”
“The need to reproduce,” Candace heavily stressed the word need, “is a fundamental part of any properly evolved organism. If there isn’t reproduction, the species dies out, so evolution has selected for creatures who want to reproduce enough that it could easily be called a need.” She pulled a stethoscope from a drawer built into the table and put it on, pressing the cold bell to his chest. “Take a deep breath, hold for a five count and exhale completely. Repeat until I tell you to stop.”
Iain obediently started breathing as ordered. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
She smiled. “I am. I’d gotten out of practicing medicine in favor of running the tamer program in Haven. And I’d never done real non pokegirl veterinary medicine before but now I have you, my sisters, the goblins, unicorns, moon horses and the livestock to take care of. Even with Irena’s help, I’ll always have something to do, and with the various races and animal species we have here I’ll always be learning new things. Sit up.” She moved the bell to his back. “Breathe again.” He did so. “Good.” She quickly checked his ears and eyes before stepping back a pace. “Now, making sure that it’ll still fit comfortably on my table, change to your dragon form so Theodora or Daya can get more samples before we continue your exam.”
Iain shifted to his small adult dragon form and flopped down on his stomach as the arms whirred down again. “The table can function perfectly well without them.”
“And I doubt they’d miss the opportunity to oversee taking samples of their favorite person,” Candace said. “Right?”
Daya’s voice came from the air beside Iain. “Right. We all want baseline samples and this way we know we got all of the ones we will need for his return to see what’s changed.”
“I’m still worried about your mental state while you’re gone,” Candace said softly.
“How so?”
“You are going to be going through some events that you’ve never gone through, Iain. I’m not just talking about living several times longer than you already have, I’m also talking about what will happen while you’re doing it. You are going to outlive every human you will meet there and you might be friends or even more personally attached to them. You hide it well, but until you started the therapy sessions with Vanessa, you’d been avoiding dealing with the deaths in our family. I’m worried that you’ll do that again.”
“I’ll spend most of my time alone so it won’t be an issue.” He glanced up when the arms retracted back into the ceiling.
She put the bell of the stethoscope on his back, just under where his right wing folded. “Iain, you’re not an automaton. Everyone needs some social contact, even, hell, especially people like you. If you isolate yourself completely, you’ll go psychotic. Now breathe deeply like you were breathing before.”
Iain started taking deep breaths. “Especially people like me? What does that mean?”
“Iain, I haven’t been here that long but I already know that, other than your family, you have fewer than ten real friends and very few acquaintances. That isn’t healthy but it’s fine here because your family is so large. However, I worry about what will happen to you when you’re away from us for an extended period.”
“Is this your version of ‘you need to find more wives’ that I’m hearing?”
Candace shook her head. “Male friends would be fine too, Iain, but you socialize with men even less than you do with women.”
Iain growled softly and Candace tensed. “Why is my weakness pretty and smart women,” he wondered aloud.
Candace relaxed. “You frightened me. When Shikarou growled, he was either angry or frustrated, neither of which was necessarily safe for others to be around.” Iain’s head twisted so he could regard her with one eye and she smiled. “No, you’re not like that and I am so grateful that’s true.”
“Did he ever hurt you?”
“I don’t think he did so on purpose, but sometimes he did lash out and sometimes we were too slow to get out of the way.”
“He’d changed over the years, hadn’t he?”
“I don’t think he enjoyed being king as much as everyone thought he did,” Candace replied. “Shikarou externalized his stress and acted out when it was at its worst. Roll over on your back.” He did and she put the bell on his chest. “Breathe. And your weakness is smart women because you’re smart and you don’t tolerate stupid people very well.”
“What about the pretty part?”
“What you see as attractive are signs of good health, like clear skin, a clean smell and bright eyes. That’s evolution telling you which women are likely to be good breeding partners and which might not. That same evolution has conditioned you to desire healthy women more than ones that aren’t healthy or are past breeding age. They’re more likely to successfully bear a child to delivery and a child from a healthy woman is likely to herself be healthy.”
“So where do freckles come into that?”
Candace laughed. “Perhaps, to you, it’s a sign that the woman is getting enough vitamin D.”
“Maybe.”
She pulled the stethoscope away. “You can roll over and spread your wings.”
He did. “So which am I as a dragon, veterinary medicine or not?”
She began examining his wings. “Good question. You’re not human and pokegirls, including the dragon types, are covered under veterinary medicine, at least they are in the Blue League and pretty much the rest of the world where we came from. Here, I understand that the policy is that if someone is sentient they’re a person and not covered under animal medicine. I like that attitude and am going to encourage it in any medical personnel in the clan, be they primary clan, outer or satellite.”
“Was it that way in Haven?”
“It depends on who you asked. There was no single and clear cut policy on it and a lot of thing fell under ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it’ that came with us from the world we traveled here from.” She frowned. “My twee says to call it Three. What is that?”
“We number the various worlds we’ve either traveled to or have to reference in order to try and keep confusion down. Three is the world Shikarou and Kerrik brought the people of Haven from to this world, which is One.”
“How many worlds have you numbered so far?”
“We’ve cataloged twenty three of them.”
“That’s a lot. How many of them have you actually visited?”
“Most of them. Are you done with my wings yet?”
Candace reluctantly released his wings. “I like they way they feel. Your scales lie smoothly and the overlap is subtle.”
Iain folded his wings and sat up. “What’s next?”
“Well, Irena will be along in a few minutes to collect the sperm sample that Daya wants.”
Iain spoke in a teasing voice. “You’re not going to do that?”
Candace sat down on the table and stroked his head. “I am a pokewoman, Iain. My only child is Stephen and I am in a new place and surrounded by very young children who have been given to you by my harem sisters. If I get any sperm from you it is going in my womb and I am not giving it up.” She smiled slightly. “So Irena will take a sample for Daya. And since the first ejaculation is the highest quality, she’ll get the first one today. You did do as I asked, right?”
“I haven’t orgasmed today.”
“Good. So Irena will collect the sample for Daya and then the rest of the sperm you produce today you will give to me, since it is supposed to be my day with you.”
Iain shifted back to his human form and snuggled Candace against him. “So why did you schedule my exam for today?”
“I enjoy spending time with you, Iain. I don’t feel for you like I did Shikarou, but I like you and I want to spend time with you. I also love medicine and this way I got to have you to myself when I gave you this exam. It lets me be alone with you while I’m doing what I love. I have also learned that you are an incredibly private man, Iain, and if we’d found anything new during this exam I was going to invoke privacy so you could decide if you wanted it known. If anyone else had been here, I couldn’t guarantee that for you.”
“You’re smart, pretty and you have those freckles,” Iain said with a smile. “I’m in your thrall. Please be gentle with me.”
“We’ll see,” Candace said airily. “It all depends on what my mood is after you get done with Irena.” She smirked at him. “She only gets one ejaculation and it goes in the sample cup. Do you understand me, mister? The rest of it is mine.”
Iain grinned. “Yes, doctor.”
Iain Grey
Harem
Ninhursag Grey - Elfqueen & maharani
April Grey - Duelist & beta
Dominique Grey - Blessed Archmage
Pandora - Fiendish Archangel
Zareen - Nightmare
Sofia - Ria
Vanessa – Evangelion
Lucifer – Megami Sama
Ganieda – Snugglebunny Splice
Heather - Elfqueen
Marguerite – Unicorn
Scheherazade – Dread Wolf
Irena – Sanctuary Goth
Lynn – Dire Wolf
Rosemary – Mistoffeles
Dianthus – Elfqueen
Outer Clan
Golden Cloud – equine unicorn
Arianrhod -Fey Goblin Female
Satellite Clan
74 male Goblins
89 female Goblins
Queendom / Outer Clan
73 Elves
Dionne - Elfqueen
Adrianna - Elfqueen
Heltu - Wet Queen
14 Wet Elves
Dead Harem
Dead Harem (22)
Eirian - Silver Dragoness
Aurum - Gold Dragoness
Skye - Blue Dragoness
Emerald - Green Dragoness
Beryl - Red Dragoness
Julia - human
Ling - Cheetit
Matilda - White Tigress
Liadan - Twau
Sorrel - Armsmistress
Natalie - Blazicunt
Maria – Slutton
Rhea Silvia – Chimera
Geraldine – Human analog of Iain
Alabaster – Dragoness (white)
Onyx – Dragoness (black)
Lapis – Dragoness (blue)
Garnet – Dragoness (red)
Iolite – Dragoness (purple)
Malachite – Dragoness (green with white swirls)
Dabria – Dark Queen
Omisha – Demoness
Mother Children
Vanessa
Myrna (Age 4)
Saoirse
April
Dorothy: Duelist (Age 3)
Meara: Duelist
Regan: Duelist
Lucifer
Olivia: Megami Sama (Age 6)
Seraphina: Megami Sama
Miram: Angel (Age 5)
Zareen:
Caltha: Nightmare (Age 0)
Kim: Nightmare
Xanthe: Nightmare
Epona: Nightmare
Philippa: Nightmare
Nott: Nightmare
Nyx: Nightmare
Sofia
Anna: Ria
Esmerelda: Ria
Monica Chambers
James: Jamie Harris kid (Age 2)