Epilogue – Two weeks and now it’s time to say…

It was a nice two weeks, even if nothing truly remarkable happened. As Rodaclam had threatened, he involved John a bit in the paperwork mines of the empire. He didn’t get to see any of the true state secrets, of which John was sure there were plenty, but he at least got some experience in the middle level administration work. That ought to come in as valuable.

Maximillian dropped from the face of the earth after a joint press conference with Lydia and handing his crown and cape over to his sister. Ria took them with much hesitation. Another important scene during the conference had been when somebody asked Lydia an important question.

“Are you in a sexual relationship with John Newman?”

To which Lydia had simply responded with a, “Yes, but Germany will always be my first interest.” It caused a minor ruckus with the more moral people in the community, but she wasn’t the only higher up who was polyamorous so it faded rather quickly.

Nariko left for the Abyss Auction HQ after speaking to Rave a couple more days. The two of them sparred and eventually departed in an if not good then at least acceptable state. Rave then spent the rest of the break training with Metra and deepening her skills.

Eliza spent most days in her continuous effort to gain control over Thana more easily. It was a successful endeavour, for the most part. She could prevent the slip sometimes, and when she lost control, she could reliable get it back after some time. However, she was in no condition to fight. Whether it was the excitement of fighting or just the witnessing of human suffering, her being even close to a battlefield easily triggered the switch. It was much harder to come back from there, especially if she used Soulburn.

It wasn’t quite clear where Eliza’s natural powers ended and Thana’s influence began. It seemed that Bloodburn, at least, was the mad girl’s own power.

But she was stable, so they had not much reason to stay any longer. John made his decision to leave at the turn of the month, and so, on the first of February, he opened his eyes to the ceiling in the mansion one last time. It was white, a plain colour that Lydia hadn’t allowed Rave to change no matter how often she asked.

The same couldn’t be said about the rest of the room, with the fuzzy carpet laying over the wooden planks and the ocean of pillows he was resting on. He reared his head and looked over the room. In a corner stood Sylph’s box of sweets, guarded by a number-lock. A gracile oil lamp decorated the windowsill, a female flame called Salamander flickering inside as she slept. Rows of books decorated the shelves, detective stories and heavy magical or scientific literature.

Lydia was already up and in the process of getting dressed. Most of his other girls were sprawling around him. Rave was snuggled against his right (although she was lying with her feet next to his face), while Aclysia was on his left, with Momo then attached to her. Eliza was lying on top of his feet after a joking comment that that’s where her place was which she then took as a sexually charged command. Metra was laying next to the bed, having complained that it was too soft to rest on. Not that she or the two other artificial spirits even needed sleep.

Sylph, like a helium balloon, was resting against the ceiling, and John knew from the gentle caressing on his neck that the pillow his head was resting on was Undine. “Okay, my pretties, we’ve got to get up,” John said; “The queen is already dressed.”

“I will prepare breakfast!” Aclysia enthusiastically exclaimed her self-chosen duty but then only moved after deepening her embrace for a few more seconds. When she did make her move towards the door, she did so with a sassy bookworm still attached to her.

“Five more minutes,” Rave grumbled, grabbing the blanket and turning herself into a ball while robbing everyone else of the warm layer.

“Cocksucking whore,” Eliza cussed her way into the awakened state, “I was having a fucking bitching time of a wet dream.”

“I can see that,” Lydia commented, finishing her clothing process by quickly braiding her hair in an orderly fashion. She would have to undo it in just a few minutes time for her shower, but it wasn’t like the queen to leave things suboptimal just because they were temporary. “My cleaning crew will have an interesting time with this house. From restoring the neighbouring room to making this one clean.”

The neighbouring room was, of course, the one that Thana had ripped to shreds. “You want to preserve this one?” John asked while getting out of bed, kissing Eliza while sitting up and then putting his suit on. He grabbed a golden egg on a chain out of the newest addition to the room, a small terrarium, and hung it from his belt.

“This mansion has enough rooms for guests either way, and I am hopeful that we all will stay here once more in the future,” Lydia said and looked out the window, to the small arena outside. “You certainly left your mark. For better or for worse.”

“I like to think that it all ended better than it was before,” John smiled, gently caressing the blue translucent pillow that transformed into a red-scarred glove a moment of happiness later. “We got the magical issues with Eliza solved, for the most part, and although she still has the occasional panic attack, you got on your god-chair, I got WAY stronger, Jane got stronger, Undine got her issues resolved, really, the whole journey was pretty up and down, but you can’t say that anyone in it is worse off than before.”

“I guess that is fair,” Lydia said and headed to the kitchen one floor lower as John began the process of coercing Rave out of bed.

“Come on, there is breakfast downstairs,” John said, gently shaking the blanket ball.

“There also is not a warm bed downstairs,” Rave complained, voice muffled by the sheet between them and followed by a long yawn.

“I will kiss you good morning if you get out of there,” he promised, and that then did the trick. His girlfriend poked her head under the edge of the blanket and stared at John. She looked around, everyone else had already left for the breakfast table.

“Gimme dat kiss then!” she demanded, and he bowed down. A moment before their lips met Rave suddenly sprung at him like a jack-in-a-box. Landing on the floor with a loud ‘thunk’, John let out a slightly pained groan but shouldered it as the naked light in his life breathed her warmth into him with the simple touch of two pairs of lips.

The moment passed, but it left John with that wonderful elevation in his stomach that nothing but love could cause. The kiss ended with the short and wet, lustful sound of beloved parting. Rave sat up and looked at her form, her long legs straddled over him.

She was exactly the right kind of athletic, muscular enough to still look thin while remaining healthy. Her fair skin had a few of those red lines one got from laying on crumpled sheets for too long but beautiful nonetheless. Her breasts were a bit smaller than John would have liked, at a B-Cup they could have stood to gain a cup size. Her teardrop shaped face was framed and partly hidden by her insanely dishevelled, neon-pink hair that criss-crossed all over the place, with tips curving upwards. She smiled with both her glossy, full lips and her brilliant blue eyes, a hue of pink light dancing around her iris and twirled with one of the many, weirdly long strands that grew out of her otherwise neck-long hair.

“Mhm, I like kisses, I start better,” she said and grinded a bit against his erection.

“You are beautiful,” John just whispered, ignoring her remark. “Never leave my life, please.”

“Creepy much?” Rave laughed and fiddled with his pants; “Ya think we have time for a quickie before the morning shower?”

“And a quickie in the morning shower?” the Gamer smirked.

“Ya know me so well, tiger,” his girlfriend laughed as she raised her hips and went down with a long moan again.

______________________________________________________________

“What the hell took you so long?” Momo wanted to know when they finally arrived at the breakfast table. “Wait don’t ans-“

“Between the fucking ‘Oh, Oh, Oh, YEEEEEEEES’es, the constant slapping sounds and their heated faces, what in the name of that fucked up thing in my head do you think it could have been?!” Eliza interrupted the freed spirit between bits off a bagel.

“-wer that, I already know, you have been fucking around, as always,” Momo completed her sentence and rolled her eyes at the blood mage; “Doesn’t take a genius to smell sarcasm, Eliza.”

“I will tear your smartass to pieces!” Eliza growled.

Lydia chuckled in her seat, and everyone stopped what they were doing, from eating, to sitting down to look at her.

“You people need to stop that habit of freezing in shock whenever someone does something mildly unexpected,” Momo exempted herself from that running gag and swished over the surface of her e-reader to mark a sentence; “It makes you look stupid.“

“Shush,” Rave waved the support off, “we just witnessed Lyly, grand queen of anal, chuckle at Eliza being angry. This is like the Great Wall of China growing legs to ride a horse or something.”

“I did not laugh at her rage,” Lydia corrected the lightbearer off-handily while spreading some sausage on her dark rye bread; “It is the fact that even on our last day together in this mansion, all of you are the same chaotic individuals as always.”

That was a damp reminder of where they were, and John sat down, taking the golden egg off his belt and placing it on the table. Stirwin quickly transformed out of his item form and asked for a single thing, ‘Meat!’ John did him the favour and grabbed a piece of pork, cutting it into bite-sized chunks as the conversation continued.

“I will ask one last time. John, would you like to stay as my chancellor?” Lydia voiced the question in an earnest but non-serious way and bit into her bread, she already knew the answer.

“No, I plan to go back to the USA still. Maybe to conquer it, if what I find is so terrible that I think it needs a complete restructuring, or maybe to just elevate the current status quo to a better level,” John said; that was the new resolution he had come to. He had been so blinded by his own arrogance and past experiences that the idea that somebody else was already there and had a good value structure that he could just help spread hadn’t occurred to him.

In hindsight he realized what the Father of Light had done, he had spoke in John’s voice to make the Gamer realize that his own thoughts were capable of revealing to him more than just the truth he wanted to hear, if he just listened to it. It was all giant metaphors with these super-powerful elemental beings.

“Either way, I am going to take a plane to Amsterdam later today, stay there for the day to go sight-seeing a bit and then take a plane home,” John laid down the plan, as he threw one of the bite-sized chunks of cut pork into Stirwin’s mouth, who then gulped it down whole as crocodiles do. “I will have to build some sort of company front for my Abyssal business so my mom doesn’t get worried when I tell her I dropped out of college for certain now.”

“Ah, Brenda is chill, she will get it,” Rave waved off, “as long as you show her ya have the dough and live well, I don’t think she will look too deeply into it.”

“I guess,” John shrugged and finally got to his own breakfast.

“I will see you off in Amsterdam then,” Lydia decided; “Have you heard from Nia?”

“Nope, nothing,” the Gamer sighed; “All I know is that the Rat didn’t have an answer for me either when I wrote him a message on the Abyss Auction. Knowing her, she will appear again at some random time and say something like ‘I came for the promised petting zoo’.”

“That indeed seems like what will happen,” the young queen agreed.