Calm within the Storm

John had expected to be woken up in at least one of his bodies. Some emergency somewhere that demanded his attention was certain to break out.

Nothing of the kind occurred. When he woke up, he did so to the usual sensation of a pair of lips wrapped around his cock. Tingles of electricity and tightness of the mouth made it clear that his short air spirit was the one taking advantage of his morning wood today.

John had emptied his balls plenty last night. It had been a short orgy by their usual standards, a ‘mere’ 30 minutes. Still, it had helped, and by this morning… it was as he had predicted. His mind immediately went to the war effort, but it did so casually. On the third day, he had gotten used to it. Stressing over matters was never helpful.

Neither was being too lax with things though.

“Before you tell Sylph that she needs to be fast,” Momo whispered sensually in his ear, “I’ve kept things in order overnight. There is no matter that requires your attention immediately.”

“We may have manpower issues, but in competency Fusion is unmatched.” John put in his contact lenses to see Undine’s face and underbust above him. His neck was perfectly supported by her squishy thighs. “I’ll enjoy my first morning as a king then.”

Doom and gloom would find them soon enough. At least for the moment, John wanted to dwell in the happiness of his life. It was pretty difficult to be in a bad mood when a sexy bunny woman was making her tall ears wiggle with every bob of her head. Sylph may not have been told to be fast about it, but speed was in her nature.

John put a hand on the back of her head to measure her speed a little bit. He wanted to enjoy this. Obedient to the pace his hand dictated, Sylph drew out what could have been over in seconds to minutes. The end result was, all the same, the green-haired woman going cross-eyed as she gulped down his cum.

Once the arcvolt elemental departed from his cock, John got out of the bed. In the kitchen, Ehtra and Delicia were preparing food. The alchemist was a decent cook and the First of Hatred knew how to slice things. Her usually sour expression was turned blank with thought.

“There was nothing more you could have done,” John assured her.

Ehtra acknowledged that he had said something with a simple grunt. Her confrontation with her siblings yesterday had ended with the two of them retreating, aided by a massive wave of Lorylim that had distracted the First of Hatred and Salamander. They were further unaware of Thresta’s location.

John and Lee had suffered the most from this war so far, but they were far from the only ones who were hurting.

Acknowledgement of the situation did not put a damper on the general mood of the room. Only half the harem was around, but the rest was safe where they were. They had done everything they could. They were healthy, naked, clean, and all of them were absolutely gorgeous. John held onto that bright side.

With a day removing him from the grim necessity of having declared himself king, he also could acknowledge that he preferred the title. He preferred a whole list of things about it, beyond the seductive dangers of the implications. Part of him still felt like he had given into the easy route to do things. The rest was so happy to finally have resolved that contradiction in his life.

“I believe you got time and energy before breakfast.” Nathalia sashayed past him and then bent over the back of the Couch. The helpful bit of furniture reshaped itself to support the enticing position the dragoness put herself in. The tall, light brown woman’s legs were straight and went on for proverbial miles before meeting the curve of her plump ass. Her back curved gorgeously. Her breasts dangled between her arms, so huge that the nipples were hidden by the mass that squished on the leather surface.

John indulged her and himself. His cock was still shining with Sylph’s spit as he rubbed the engorged head of his cock against the moist lips of the redhead’s swollen labia. They groaned in loving unison when he pushed inside, tight folds clenching around the only dick this nymphomaniac goddess would need for the rest of her life.

They were both too needful to make slow pace more than a transitional affair. His hips swung forwards and hers back, filling the room with rhythmic smacks. “Pull my -ah- hair!” Nathalia demanded submissively. An oxymoron, but the switch pulled it off masterfully. He grabbed the wavy cascade of orange red and yanked her head back.

Nathalia’s moans ended with the clack of her teeth. For a brief moment she was silent, then she laughed and screamed through her clenched jaw. Primal noises of intense satisfaction. Spasms accompanied the vocalizations of her first orgasm.

Getting back into the swing of things was easy for the Gamer. He slowed his speed while Nathalia rode out of her climax, then resumed pounding her with the same strength. Her fingers curled around the edge of the Couch. “Fuck – me – hard!” she pressed out.

John kept pulling her hair until he could see her face upside down. She looked not a day older than her mid thirties, gorgeous and mature, and entirely dissolved in the pleasure he was hammering into her. A wild smile was on her red lips.

The pounding continued. Two orgasms did not satisfy his ego, neither did three. It wasn’t until Nathalia’s fluttering eyelids and gushing cunt betrayed a state of permanent, sexual bliss that he considered his task completed.

His balls tightened. Nathalia’s insides were painted white with the thick, second load of the day. He still felt like he was compensating for the stressful days prior. His dick just kept twitching, filling her with more of his load. By the time his orgasm faded, he felt well and truly drained. Nathalia dripped cum the moment he pulled out.

Rave took his third load of the morning in the shower and Gnome took the fourth after he was back at the breakfast table. He was done with the season elemental in time for the breakfast to be presented. Cheese omelettes with salad at the side made for a good start in the day.

“Soon, you will have your first proper court session,” Siena purred.

“You could call it that. Military council would be more accurate though.” John swirled his glass of water, just to do something with his hands. “Court implies to me that I will listen to various requests.”

Momo stood up alongside the other two maids and collected the plates around the table. “Might be something you should do once we formalize how this actually works.”

“That is after we have crushed all but one of the Lorylim.” John sipped on the liquid and put the glass down. Siena’s right and Salamander’s left thigh made for pleasant places to rest his hands on. “Ironically, I don’t think the broad structure will look that different. I have always taken a degree of inspiration from constitutional monarchies.”

“We’ll sketch it up sometime,” Momo said. “More immediately, any announcements you want to make at the upcoming gathering? I’d like to know ahead of time.”

“Best we coordinate things,” John agreed. “I’ll obviously have to do a speech for the people that bravely laid their lives down yesterday. That is priority one. After that I’ll tell people the broad plan. We are waiting for our reinforcements to arrive, then we will organize our plans to push back in a broad offensive. I take it the special forces operations are already underway?”

“That is what I did overnight, yes,” Momo confirmed.

Fusion truly was short in manpower, but special forces they could keep up in with the other bottom rungs of the Divided Gates. They certainly had enough to go on evacuation missions that aimed to gather up as many people from the lesser population centres as possible. In absence of that, they could at least verify which places had truly fallen.

“Good, then I will just check on that after we move to the closed discussions. On that note, I will probably have some of you shift around. Nia, Nahoa, I would like to put you in Boston and recall Scarlett and Nightingale. Now that the situations have changed, so can our task forces.”

“That sounds agreeable,” Nia said.

“Affirmative,” Nahoa added.

“Think we can get in contact with Lulu?” Rave pivoted the conversation to another point.

“This is a situation where we have to wait for them to update us. Same goes for our other allies.”

“While we’re on that, isn’t it, like, super, duper, ultra, mega conspicuous we haven’t heard anything from the Horned Rat?” Sylph babbled. “Usually that guy is all, like, ‘All according to my ever growing schemes, mwhahahaha!’ and turns up exactly when he means to.”

“Well, as certain things proved before, he is fallible… He is also capable of making us think he’s fallible. It is somewhat conspicuous that he did not contact me at all so far, though.” John checked his phone just to make sure he hadn’t missed any messages. “There is a chance he is not doing so because he knows our communications are compromised.”

“Aren’t we all compromised?” Lee asked. “That’s one part of all of this that I still haven’t quite got: if Izha can invade the minds of basically everyone, why doesn’t he?”

“Because he can’t, that’s the simple answer.” John raised up his right arm and pointed at the Lorylim scars left on it. They looked like shadows of his bones, painted under the skin of the upper and underside of his lower arm. “He used to manipulate me through this, when there was Lorylim matter inside of me. He did the same for Undine. At least, that’s what I believe dissuaded me from certain decisions, like taking anti-Lorylim evolution choices for the elementals.”

“Ah, so he needs an inroad?” Lee asked.

“That’s how I understand it, yes. At least for people above a certain level of power, he can’t just pull the mind in this direction or another. As we know courtesy of that Layla woman, he is perfectly capable of reading minds though.”

“Cursed with it may be a more apt description.” Lorelei clasped her hands in prayer. “Were I incapable of ever averting my gaze from others’ emotions, I may as well be blind. I cannot begin to fathom the weight of creation’s voice droning in my mind endlessly.”

“Empathy for our enemy will not get us far,” Nathalia stated, arms crossed.

“I concur. He must be culled.” Ehtra mimicked pose and attitude.

“There’s no doubt about that,” Gnome muttered grimly. Even the kindest member of their clique agreed that there was no redemption for Izha, John believed in rehabilitation to a degree, especially for those who were victims of their circumstances. He had extended his hand to Eliana, despite what she had done to him when he had first freed her, and he had never regretted that decision.

Izha was too far gone for this to be a consideration. His mind was shattered, his body corrupted, and his deeds caked in cruelty. Mercy to the cruel was cruelty to the victims. Justice and vengeance were synonymous in this case. Nemesis was sister to Justitia, as they said.

“So the military planning I can give you ahead of time,” John said to Momo, “is just that we will focus on defence and shuffle Nahoa and Nia in for Scarlett and Nightingale. We probably have one or two days of politicking ahead of us.”

Hailey groaned. “Is Lydia r’lly that far away?”

“It’s a big ocean, and since they were attacked once, they are opting for the slow, unified approach. It was ambitious of me to hope they would arrive yesterday.”

Nia scratched the head of Velka, who was tapping by at that moment. The Magryph had been involved in the fighting, from what John had heard. Luckily for them, their pet was strong enough to withstand casual infection and smart enough not to mess with anything she couldn’t beat.

“We do look stronger for the fact that we’ve defended ourselves,” the pariah commented. After the three customary seconds of thought, she added, “That does not matter for this war.”

“It will matter for what comes after,” Nahoa stated. “Reputation is the tallest of walls around a nation.”

With no less than four other Divided Gates members directly providing their aid, there was a very real chance that Fusion would have to enter a state of economic vassalage for a while to pay them back for that aid. John had excellent relations with two of them and two more were headed by his women. That being said, they were still leaders of nations. Friendship and love were good enough between them, but it was absurd to ask the German people to bleed for him because their queen eloped with him.

The stronger they looked by the end of this, the less people would push for exploitative deals.

“What are we doing about the horny mushroom?” Rave asked.

“Stop calling her that,” John begged.

“Didn’t you say that her Libido is at 69?”

“Nice,” Lee threw in, entirely reflexively. She blushed when that earned her several deadpan stares. “What? We were all thinking it!”

There were other words in John’s mind. ‘My brain rotted Fateweaver can’t possibly be this cute.’

“However high her Libido is, this is not the time to chase new haremettes.” Momo did not even look at John when she said that. There was joking about his lack of self-control when it came to cute, dangerous women and then there was the current situation. From Lee, to Rave, the sassy support’s white eyes jumped. “We’ll do nothing about Lyndell besides cooperate.”

“I’mma be honest, I doubt it.” Rave leaned back in her chair. Entirely serious, she continued, “My intuition is tingling… I don’t think John needs to chase her at all.”

“And I won’t.” John tapped the hardwood tabletop with his index finger to underlie the point. “Until this war is done, I am not chasing anyone. I’m not willing to let my dedication to **** change what I have. Neither am I willing to chase skirts while I carry a nation’s expectations on my head.”

Approving nods around, including from Rave.

“Ironically, we somehow have a better handle on Lyndell than we do on Lucifrena and Layla,” John muttered. “No signs of them, I assume?”

“Oh, no, we had plenty of signs of Lucifrena. She consistently responds to our attempts to communicate with her. After we managed to put a phone in her hand, that is,” Momo told him. “Layla, however, remains entirely absent.”

“The stalker is a matter I still consider unresolved,” Nathalia growled.

“As is your right,” Momo assured. “We’ll have our own session to resolve that once this is all over. If she lives… she can say her piece at that time.”

The rest of breakfast was filled with simple banter.