A Garden and a Reading

“I want a hedge wall.” Layla gestured first westwards, then drew a curve along the east. “From the base of the mountain to that little bay there. On the other side, make it curve from the water all the way to the passage between the two mountains.”

“As you command.” John tapped the buttons one after another. Money drained out of his bank account, but that meant nothing to him at this point. If anything, knowing that he was eliminating USD from circulation was an ease on his conscience. He still had no idea how the money situation in the Abyss had become so comedically bloated.

Well, he had some ideas and they all started with magic.

Contemplations of the global financial system were cut short by the twitching grip of nymphomaniac pussy. Metra threw her head back, howling as the first orgasm of riding him rocked through her. Her hips rolled erratically, a delicious back and forth that kept her constricting folds in motion all around his rigid manhood. From the grip of the entrance to her velvety, hot depths,

“Yes, just like that, that’s so nice,” Layla kept encouraging him.

“You know, I initially had pegged you as a submissive, but you definitely got a bit of a dominatrix in you,” John commented.

“Oh, do I?” Layla blinked twice in his direction. “Is that bad?”

“It’s not to my tastes, but my harem has way more bottoms than I know what to do with.” He grabbed the wild strands of Metra’s ponytail and yanked it like a leash. “Isn’t that right, sex slave?”

“Yesh!” Metra exclaimed immediately. “Use me, my Emperor! This set of holes belongs to you.”

John locked eyes with Layla. “Say it for me,” he told the brunette.

Swallowing, as if her throat had suddenly gotten parched, Layla stared at the scene. There was that pink lustre to her eyes again, not enough to shift her eye colour but enough to be notable. She bit her lower lip, unashamedly pushing a hand under her waistband to add physical stimulation to her storm of debauchery. The tight fabric let John count her knuckles as they shifted. “Good girl.”

Metra was right there with Layla, working her clit while using John’s cock to rapidly reach a second release. For his part, the Gamer was happy to study her back muscles. ‘Life is good,’ he thought. “What else?”

“I… owe the fae a bit so… could you make this area appropriate for them?” Layla requested, her voice steadying as her climax ebbed away. “Many trees, lanterns, mushrooms, that sort of thing?”

“I can definitely arrange that.” John released Metra’s hair, letting the blonde return to riding him like the warrior turned relief toy that she was. It was good she had already had a couple of talks with Layla on the way here, because she certainly wasn’t capable of conversation anymore. Right now, she dedicated her entire being to sheathing his cock inside her over and over again.

John copy pasted some assets from the Midnight Forest over to this new area and dispersed them all over. Then he painted the ground a changed colour. “Add some roads,” Layla said. “If you’re going to overhaul these areas soon anyway, I want this part connected.”

“Makes sense,” John agreed.

“And… mhm… could you add a bunch of plinths?”

“Just plinths?”

“I’ll have the statues of everyone commissioned another time.” Layla pulled her hand from her pants, then licked her juices off her fingers. It was a gesture done entirely for his benefit. “Would taste so much better on your cock,” she whispered.

John seized Metra’s waist and abruptly thrust up into her. A staccato of percussive impacts followed, the broad-legged wolf woman tilting backwards, stabilizing herself with her hands on his midriff. Her voice reached a high pitch, then disappeared into groans and gasps as the pleasure became too much.

One last buck of his hips, then his seed erupted from the tip of his cock. Metra’s insides were flooded with the sudden release. A mind wiped by ecstasy rubbed up against his soul, the gesture of an affectionate sex slave in the throes of her carnal zenith. Layla watched it all, wide-eyed, too mesmerized by the view of Metra’s pussy juices squirting all over the floor to even climax herself.

When it was over, John lifted the ancient warrior woman off his crotch. Her twitching, post-orgasmic form was placed on the lounger. John grabbed her by the base of the ponytail, standing beside her, and pulled her face towards him.

Glack! Glack! Glack!

“Anything else?” John asked, while casually fucking Metra’s face.

“Could you… cover the entire area in a permanent fog?” Layla requested.

“Whatever you want, you get.” The words flowed from his mouth naturally, backed up by a history of killing gods and fighting empires for the happiness of his women. Metra even managed to produce an agreeing hum, though John doubted Layla heard what he felt vibrated around his pistoning manhood.

“What if I want to set the world on fire?” Layla asked, sweet as marmalade.

“I’ll answer that in the same way as Aclysia and Claire justify their devotion to me.” John fixed his gaze on Layla. “If you were the kind of woman that would truly want that, you wouldn’t be standing where you are right now. Contingent on you being worthy of being in my harem is that I trust you that your desires are ultimately within an acceptable reach of my moral guidelines.”

Layla hummed. She probably would have preferred to hear an emphatic ‘Then I will hand you the matches’, or something of that variety. Though John was a bit crazy in his love for crazies, he considered himself an ultimately grounding influence. It was his duty to remain truthful. The reformed stalker nodded, in the end. “Makes sense.”

“That all?” he then asked the brunette.

“Just cum down Metra’s throat for me, please?” Layla requested. She straddled the line between command and request masterfully.

It took John almost seven minutes to reach climax again, even while treating Metra as nothing but a cocksleeve. By the end of it all, Metra was squirting again, set off by the seed pumping into her stomach. Layla watched it unfold, shivering in sympathetic delight. “Can you feel your legs?” John asked.

“Nah,” Metra sighed. “I don’t need to either. The pedantic bitch is behind the door.”

Beatrice opened the entrance to the room. “Correction: I am a pedantic servant. The only one with dog parts here is you.”

“Wow, truly, you are a creativity machine,” Metra drawled.

“Retort: there is no need to come up with new insults when you are as mentally stagnant as my choice of words.”

“…44-degree slope.”

Beatrice’s left eye twitched. Just mentioning things like this made her involuntarily imagine them and that imagination triggered her need for perfection – hard. Since no one in the harem was capable of beating the passive maid in a prolonged verbal duel, they had taken to beating her with this strategy instead.

“Accusation: you are lazy. Follow-Up: no treats for you.”

“I already got all my treats.” Metra licked her lips for emphasis then got comfortable in the lounger. “I’ll take a post-coital nap now. You lot have fun.”

Beatrice turned to John, bowing her head deeply in a well-studied motion. The artful mess of her long ponytail first fell over the side of her head, then settled on her shoulder. A graceful gesture returned it to its proper place, dangling to the middle of her back. “Master, if I may have the honour of accompanying you and Layla on your date next?”

“Of course,” John said. “I believe we are done up here then?”

“Got nothing I want to add to this little garden of mine,” Layla agreed happily.

They walked through the changed area. Though the fog gave it a bit of uniqueness, it wasn’t ultimately that different from elsewhere in the Guild Hall. That being said, it being yet another woodland to walk was much better than the uninspired green plane that had been there half an hour earlier.

They stepped through the gate that divided the thick wall of hedges, then returned to the pier they had come from. Once on the boat, it was once again time for John to lean back and listen to his future woman chat to one of his current haremettes.

Though, in this case, Layla did the majority of the talking.

“You really like pyrite, right?”

“Affirmative.”

“Is it just because of the shape or do you like eating it too?”

“Clarification: the shape.”

“I can get that, it’s fascinating that it takes that shape naturally. The world is full of wonders, though none are quite as great as John’s jawline.”

“Affirmative.”

“Oh, you think that John’s jawline is the greatest shape in the world too?”

Beatrice tilted her head in thought. “Disagreement: I prefer his abs.”

“Oooooh, that’s such a good choice too. Personally, I have a ranking of all the parts of him that I like the most, shape-wise. It sort of shuffles based on what I see at any given moment though. Do you have something similar?”

“Denial: I do not have something similar. Clarification: that’s because I have the exact same.”

“Oooooh, really?”

“Statement: though I retain my composure better, I share Aclysia’s and Claire’s rightful obsession with our Master.”

“Oh, you are so great! Where on your list is his cock?”

“Fourth.”

“Does that change often?”

“Irregularly. Though I find the phallus pleasing, visually there are other parts that I like more.”

“Beyond John, is there anything you like looking at? Besides John and right angles, I should say.”

“I have a kaleidoscope chamber.”

“Like… an entire room dedicated to kaleidoscopes?”

“Affirmative. Also, the entire room is a kaleidoscope.”

“This is less surprising than the day I learned you are into tarot drawing.”

John elected that moment to get involved into that conversation. “How is that going, by the way?”

“Report: I had lost interest after an initial fascination with the potential of emerging patterns. Having determined that it is not magical, I put them aside. However, Sylph approached me with a desire to pick up a new hobby, so we both have been studying and reading the cards.”

The Gamer hummed and looked around. They would be on the water for a bit longer. “Do you have the cards on hand? We could do a reading to pass the time.”

“If you desire this, Master,” Beatrice said. “Opinion: tarots are essentially cold reading. The statements are broad enough that they feel fateful regardless of what is drawn. Regardless, I agree that it can be a fun exercise.”

“This will be fun!” Layla declared. “There is no way the cards won’t confirm that we’re meant for each other!”

Beatrice reached into her inventory. Even with his mass-produced contact lenses, John could see that they were enchanted. That Layla gasped when she saw them told him they were perhaps a bit more potent than the passive maid gave them credit for. “Where… did you get those cards from?” he asked.

“Explanation: Momo provided them. She received them as gifts from another fae court. The Darkmoon Covenant, they called themselves.”

John raised an eyebrow. Fairies remained one of the many areas of expertise in the Abyss that he was largely disconnected from. The contemporary Abyss was so human-centric that he scarcely had to engage with the politics of magical creatures. Which, at times, felt like a bit of a waste.

“Procedure: I will do a 5 card draw of Major Arcana only.” As Beatrice spoke, the 56 Minor Arcana disappeared from the stack of iridescent cards in her hands, leaving on the 22 Major Arcana. “Shall I explain the rest as we go or immediately?”

“”As we go,”” John and Layla responded as one.

“It’ll be more interesting this way, right?” the reformed stalker asked the target of her obsession.

“Indeed,” the Gamer confirmed.

Beatrice knelt on the cushioned area of the ferry, leaving a good amount of space between herself and the dating duo. With a smooth gesture, she evenly spaced out the cards in a half circle before her, then swept them all back up. It was the first of a series of motions that saw her parting the deck into several stacks and then shuffling them into each other using various methods.

Truth be told, John could have followed them easily. Assuming Beatrice had sorted the deck beforehand (which was a safe assumption to make), he could have predicted exactly what card was on top just by virtue of that. However, individual cards often flickered in and out of existence, sorting themselves in the deck according to the whims of a network of enchantments that he could not parse. “Are you able to understand that weave?” he asked Layla.

“I can see it working… but no,” Laya responded.

Beatrice put the deck into a neat stack one last time. “Standard: you should draw the cards. Adjustment: due to being a harem member, I will draw the cards for both of you.” Rationale presented, the passive maid flipped the first card over, placing it next to the deck. It was the Empress, depicting Layla herself in a medieval art style, wearing an elaborate dress, smiling at a crowd of women to her left while raising a dagger to wolves on the right. “The first card speaks to the purpose of the relationship. The Empress speaks to emotional support, a sense of belonging, and opportunities to build. Layla’s fate in the harem is to develop and cultivate.”

“I always knew this is where I belonged, like a gardener in a garden!” Layla exclaimed.

“Weren’t you in a lesbian relationship until shortly before you got blasted with my aura?” John asked, drily.

“I may not have always known, but I always knew!” Layla insisted.

Beatrice drew the second card. It was the Hanged Man. “The second card speaks to a current lesson. The Hanged Man speaks of letting go of something for the good of the relationship and trusting that some things cannot be rushed.”

That mapped on well enough to their current reality of having given Layla all the time she needed to sort herself out and for him to get firm enough in his anti-expansion stance not to let Esmeralda in.

The third card was revealed to be the High Priestess, once again depicting Layla. “You would look pretty great in a nun’s outfit,” the Gamer muttered. The brunette by his side giggled in perverse agreement. The one on the card silently wagged her finger at him, while pulling her skirt up.

“The third card indicates an upcoming transformation,” Beatrice continued her dispassionate reading. “The High Priestess indicates a slow and subtle change, understanding achieved through time spent together. It means we will be able to rely ever more on Layla and she on us, as our love grows.”

The fourth card was the Stars, depicting several members of the harem as distant dots on a black sky. Unlike the other cards, it was, from John’s perspective, upside down. “The long-term outcome of the relationship sits under the Reversed Stars,” Beatrice analysed. “They stand for a loss of idealism and for disillusionment. The relationship may be tested. Layla may find herself needing to move past her idealized expectations.”

“Interesting…” the reformed stalker muttered.

John just hummed. He wasn’t going to let a piece of enchanted cardboard… actually that was crystal wafer. He wasn’t going to let a crystal wafer tell him that his harem couldn’t be the land of dreams. Sure, it wasn’t always milk and honey, but it was, on the whole, too good to be true – and yet it was.

If fate had a thing to say, then John would just prove fate wrong.

“The final lesson and legacy.” Beatrice said, before revealing the Lovers. Layla squeaked, John raised an eyebrow. “Conscious choices, commitment, the choosing of love against all odds, and a deep connection. Though the idealistic relationship will be tested, in the end it will be chosen for the sake of authentic love.”

Beatrice gathered up the cards, then bowed her head.

“I hope you enjoyed this reading.”