Forbidden Tomboy 15 – Spawns of the Rift

“Mhm…” Lu Zhi hummed.

The imperial tomboy sat cross-legged in the bed, mere centimetres away from where Lee and Ehtra were worshipping the Gamer’s pole with their tongues. Her deliberative noises had nothing to do with the scene, nor with the hand of John that cupped her petite breast. She reacted little to the touch.

“You do not sound entirely satisfied,” John remarked.

“You discovered a smart woman in my court, unaffiliated in her factions,” the Heavenly Jade Empress said. “Smart enough to have been out of my sight for now. One must wonder if her being found now was a fluke or deliberate on her part…”

“For once, I think it was a fluke.” John put his hand on Lee’s head and guided her to the tip of his cock. A little whimper came from the grey angel, who blushed furiously the moment she realized what needy sound had left her. She watched Lee deepthroat her Master’s cock all the same. “I genuinely feel like she just wants to be left alone.”

“Which is useful and bothersome simultaneously… Alas, if she will offer me her pragmatic support, then I am obliged to take it. There are more columns supporting the prime minister’s palace of lies that I must topple.”

“If you are done deliberating, do you want to sit on your other throne?” John asked.

Lu Zhi needed no time to answer that. She straddled John’s face and placed her pussy on his tongue. The empress was delicious, both in the taste of her womanhood and the pitch of her moans. Eating out the strongest woman in the world while getting a double blowjob by two of the strongest women in the world certainly was within John’s definition of a successful evening.

Qingmei continued to bounce around in his head for a little while. There was still that simple desire of youth in him that had him wish to simply fuck anything that was offering and he had the feeling that the lamia would have offered had he pushed a little further. The fantasy was seductive. The reality that she did it for power and that he could not be certain he wasn’t the first put a sombre note on it.

John chased her from his thoughts – and Vinh as well while he was at it. They were both women that he no doubt would have gone for in another stage of his life. Now, neither of them offered him anything new. His power would serve to elevate theirs, and in order to justify that kind of relationship, John had to really like them even before he started to court them. He did not know either of them. He just found them attractive.

What he found more attractive than them, though, was the act he was entangled with. He turned his thoughts to Lulu. She writhed on top of him, wiggling her shoulders playfully at the hovering sphere he used to observe the scene. He turned his thoughts to Lee and Ehtra. Their tongues glided over his cock, tasting his precum with glee. He turned his thoughts to Claire. She barged into the room and his mind.

“I fucking found it!” she exclaimed.

The erotic energy in the room dispersed in a wave of shock. Claire interrupting her Master’s lewd time was odd enough, but hearing her curse was… John couldn’t even remember when that had last happened. At least not on a quick dig through his memory.

Lu Zhi got off his face quickly enough that John managed to sit up by the time the aggressively excited vampire made it to the bedside. She pushed a hand into her inventory and retrieved a book.

It was old. Magical means had been employed to prolong the life of paper, ink, and glue, but the age of the book was apparent all the same. The title had faded into the rest of the green paper cover. Hints of symbols were still visible but only scarcely so. Not enough to make out what they had once been.

“Where did you find this?” Lu Zhi asked, beholding the book with instinctive veneration. While John had respect for old things, the imperial tomboy came from a culture that outright worshipped ancestors. She may have been a reformist figure, but that only went so far in removing her from the soil she was grown in.

“The Imperial Archives of the Scholars of Grain,” Claire reported.

John did not dare touch the ancient paper with his hands, not soaked with sexual fluids as they currently were. “We need to clean up, we’ll meet in the living room in 5 minutes.”

Claire nodded and they took the quickest shower in their lives, threw on some clothes, and then gathered up around the table. The open folding doors left the room open to the adjacent park, where ducks waddled and deer nibbled on shrubs.

Nightingale wove around them a shroud, putting a violet filter over the world behind. Once they were covered, the conversation began properly. “Tell us what you found,” John invited the vampire maid.

“Most of the book is just ledgers of grain collections and reports of the state of the villages. However, towards the end, there’s something very interesting.” Claire opened the book from the back, her fingers moving carefully not to rip apart the brittle glue. She revealed a two page spread, a stylized depiction of a field of wheat around the corpse of a sharkish-octopus thing. The art was so removed from reality that it hardly represented the real thing, but it was clear enough what it was supposed to be. “The village of Ninchang experienced great wealth by cultivating their food in the vicinity of the corpse of a Spawn of the Rift.”

Claire turned another page, skipping over ledgers and to the one page report written about it all.

“The Rift of Linzhi has been closed for over twenty years, sundered by He Who Separates Heaven and Earth. This corpse was left in the area after the great jellyfish was felled and its timber burned so that it may please the gods. Although bountiful, we believe that this grain does not please the Mandate of Heaven.” Claire closed the book. “I believe this means that these creatures are related to the jellyfish depicted in the dining room.”

“A theory well founded, yet with its issues,” Lu Zhi said and took the book from her. “Tianlong.” The name of the patron god called it from its host’s skin. The jade dragon kept its size limited, curving around the back of the Heavenly Jade Empress like a floating shawl. Two pairs of eyes moved in unison, scanning the pages. “Ninchang is no village on our maps, but we know of Linzhi. It is a city in the southeast of Tibet.”

John realized the two issues in that statement. One was that this meant that Lu Zhi currently lacked the reach to investigate the area, as Tibet was hostile towards its former overlord. That was a current problem. The other was one of the pieces that did not align. “China was a great empire for many, many years, but it certainly did not contain Tibet in its early years.”

Lu Zhi continued to read the tome. “This tome is ‘only’…” she put it in air quotes, “…about 1700 years old, judging by the cities that I do recognize and that were destroyed since. It is possible we had an alliance with Tibet at the time. It could also be that the name was used for a different location… Linzhi itself is only an alternative name for the place…” She furrowed her eyebrows.

“For the imperial bureaucracy to forget this is possible,” Tianlong spoke. “In isolation, that is, but the administration of the Empire of Tradition would not forget all tales of ‘Spawns of the Rift’. For I to forget, for them to forget, for us to forget…”

“There is a conspiracy in my court,” the Heavenly Jade Empress growled. “An old one with backers powerful.”

Nathalia inspected her claws as she asked, “To what end would one wish to hide enemies of the past?”

“There’s two reasons I can think of. One is to hide one’s shameful part in it.” John gave a glance at Claire. “The other is to hide future transgressions.”

“Master, I wish to pledge my support to the Heavenly Jade Empress in revealing this conspiracy,” Claire stated firmly.

She knew he wouldn’t deny her. What possible reason could he give that was valid? Why would he want to? If it was just some family trying to hide a shameful past, then that was no problem at all. If someone somehow had an idea how to open a Kingdom gate that would allow a fresh swarm of these things to arise… then there was going to be an issue.

John could not and would not ignore the situation. The life-eating spawn from beyond this world were never something that should go ignored. His reservation was not with aiding in the situation, but with Claire’s obsession with it.

John got up and sat back down next to his vampire maid. The gesture left her confused, an emotion that melted into her love for him when he put an arm around her. Pulling her to his chest. “It is your life and your choices are your own,” he told her.

“And I choose to serve you, John,” she answered in a low, venerating tone. “Every day anew, I choose this life for me.”

That was all John needed to hear. Wherever his Claire went, she was still his woman and that was all that mattered. He kissed her pinkish red lips. “You have my blessing with it then. Just make sure you have alternatives organized for the farms.”

“Mhm, having a secondary spy could be advantageous… You can wear many faces, yes?” Lu Zhi asked.

“Affirmative,” Claire answered, adjusting her facial structure to more closely resemble Aclysia, as an example.

“For the time being, I believe you are best suited to operate on your own. Research into the matter further, until you have a broader lead for me to pursue,” Lu Zhi stated.

Claire nodded eagerly, then nuzzled against the Gamer some more. It appeared that having had some success, she was happy to be clingy again, at least for a little bit. John was not entirely finished with the topic however. “We should settle on a name for these things,” he said. “Spawn of the Rift is a bit unwieldy. Rift Spawn, for simplicity’s sake?”

“Works for me,” the imperial tomboy answered and the rest of the room agreed.

John gazed past the shroud of darkness around them and watched a certain black-haired servant toss food to the ducks. They surrounded her as a horde of hungry fowl was wont to do. Had Daiyu known she was being observed, she no doubt would have lost that content smile on her face. The little view of simplicity was a nice reminder of what he struggled for.

“We still know far less than I’d prefer… and we also have a few more questions, like what the ‘jellyfish’ is supposed to be.” He thought back to the hyper-stylized picture of the Rift Spawn. Who knew what the original creature had looked like before getting turned into such a simplified symbol? “Alas, we’ll just have to chip away at it until we find the foundation of this house of cards… Anything else I can do for you in regular politics, Lulu?”

“Hmm…” The imperial tomboy pondered the question while Tianlong hovered over her. It appeared still perturbed by the prospect of its memories having been messed with. John could understand that wholeheartedly. The sanctity of the mind was one of those thresholds that was to be crossed only for the greatest of reasons and manipulating a god was no small matter at all. It had to have happened in the short times between contracts, when the god of tradition was at its weakest. Even then, it was an oddity.

Perhaps the god of tradition himself had agreed to it and just wasn’t aware of it anymore?

John left the accusation unspoken. He wanted to find out more about this, but it was ultimately Lu Zhi’s problem.

“I do not think so,” she finally answered his question. “To operate more against the prime minister and my other enemies will just put their guard up.”

“Don’t want them to look at their feet before you pull the rug,” John agreed. “Perhaps I will simply have some friendly visits and establish genuinely beneficial deals for both sides then. Lower their guard a bit?”

“I trust in your diplomatic instincts.”

“I have a list of potentials,” Nightingale revealed. “Sharing tea has brought me illuminations.”

The conversation naturally turned to dull things from there.