Aelene Date, Part 1: Follow the Cobblestone Road

Harper

Phew, that was a stressful hour. Harper was barely able to write her letter to Andy, keep Glitterdust from causing trouble over there, and scan a bunch of other letters for troublesome presents before needing to head to the Green Room for the start of the next date. Inside is Aelene, wrapping up her video letter. Huh. Sending a lesbian porn book to a kindergarten teacher? Given where we are, I guess that’s fine. Harper gives her a thumbs up after she turns off the phone.

“Oh, sorry, Lady Harper. I was trying to contribute again. I hope that it was okay?”

“Sure, I’m glad you’re trying to help others.”

Nuzzling into the small of her back, Harper feels the floating horns of Glitterdust gently scraping her skin. Skye walks in soon after, giving everyone a nervous wave.

Aelene starts, “Looks like we are all here. Shall we head out?”

Suddenly, Harper feels a lot colder. The air feels a lot drier; her lungs are already starting to ache slightly. They are standing on a cobblestone road cutting through a prairie, with grass almost growing up to Skye’s shoulder. The wind blows harshly, causing her lovely little drow wife’s teeth to chatter. Harper squeezes her in close. The road appears to head to a mining town of some sort, built into the side of a mountain? Please not another volcano...

Prudence appears before them. She intones as she presents the quest papers, “So, just like last time you were here, Harper, none of you are to head more east of here. I will note that there is no ocean for you to take a dip in, Harper, on this side of the line. Again, if you reveal your quest, it becomes null and void. With that, I’ll let you have at it. Enjoy!”

With that, Prudence disappears. Harper tries to take in how the others react. Glitterdust wiggles her spines as she reads her quest. Skye looks confused. Aelene just gives it a glance, noting, “At least it was written in Elvish for me.” Harper reads hers, suddenly becoming very concerned: Harper’s Mountaintop Quest: Personally Kill 50 Harpies. Reward: Reduce the over-leveled penalty for the party by 50%. Wait. Really? What kind of date did Aelene come up with?

Aelene senses some confusion as they walk along the road. “Lady Harper, Lady Skye, and good zemeitsa Glitterdust, we are on the road to Teleptafelya. It’s a small mining village on the inland outskirts of our Queendom. It is our source of mithril and iron to arm our troops. We lost contact with the village a month or so before the invasion started. We are here to investigate. If it is what I suspect, we will be delivering the first fatal blow to The Hunger.”

The Hunger. The collective of monstrous species that’s attacking our future home.

Aelene continues to explain, mostly for Skye’s sake. “So The Hunger are 4 monstrous races that will converge on a large location to overwhelm their defenses and gorge on helpless civilian flesh. From the underdark, troglodytes. From the sea, sahuagins. From the land, gnolls. And, from the air, harpies. The first three hordes of monsters attacked, but the harpies never arrived. Our defenses definitely would have failed by the time I was kidnapped if the gnolls had air support from the harpies.”

“Wait, Aelene, when did you send us?”

“We are here about a day or so after we lost contact. If I planned things correctly, we killed the harpies before they could be a threat to the capital. So, my betrothed, are you ready to do your duty for your people?”

Tina

After the meeting and subsequent letter writing / recording, Daphne whispers something to Mattie and drags her off to do... something. Josie (in her usual sports bra and thong bikini bottom) scoops up Tina and princess carries her in a different direction.

“Uhm, cutie, where we going?” Tina flutters her eyes and nuzzles into Josie’s sports bra.

“Gym. This is as good a time as any to start your new workout routine. Remember you asking for it yesterday morning?”

Oh, we were actually serious about that? I didn’t think we were serious about it. Gulp!

Scarlet (already clad in some leggings and a crop top) scoots beside the striding wolf-girl and kisses Tina on the forehead. “Oh, we working on toning some of Tina’s curves? Can I join you?”

“Sure. Tina, you got workout gear in your inventory, or do we need to turn back and get you dressed?”

Tina sighs. Darn my fashion collection hoarding. Might have been able to get away if I didn’t keep my entire wardrobe in my inventory. “I got some workout stuff on me.” Josie deposits Tina in the locker area of the hotel gym and watches her change. Tina hopes that Josie lightly teasing her clit as she watches may get her out of this. It doesn’t.

The trio starts with a “light jog” around a little perimeter track. Tina soon lags behind, huffing and puffing. Both Josie and Scarlet lap her once, then twice. The swat on the bunny-butt Josie gave her as she passes by hurts her pride more than her backside, and her backside hurts. Five minutes later, Josie tells her to stop. Tina struggles to catch her breath.

“That was a light jog?”

“Yup. HIIT AMRAPs next?”

It’s like Josie is speaking a foreign language. “What does that even mean?”

“High Intensity Interval Training. As many reps as possible. So, we do a particular exercise or sequence of exercises for, like, a minute, and you try to do it as many times as you can. That way, you can slowly work up to not dying from a 10 minute jog. Sound fair?”

“Oh. Okay! I’ll try.”

Josie has the trio start with jumping jacks. Scarlet and Josie do this criss-cross thing with their feet instead of just being them together and they clap their arms up top. Tina loses count from how many she does, her arms don’t quite make it over her head. Josie’s phone goes off. “Not a competition, Tina, but 60. Scarlet?”

“79. Tina?”

“Uh, eleventy billion?”

“Tina got 29, but they were baby jacks. Still, good job not quitting. Next up, squats.”

The **** continues. Squats. Then twisting bunny hops (which Tina felt like she won, but Josie said the goal was number of hops, not jumping height). Then jump squats (which Tina was actually declared the winner, based on height). Then the absolute torment that are burpees. Josie and Scarlet do these 8-count ones, yet they get more of them in than her. Tina feels exhausted.

“Water break.”

Tina guzzles down an entire water bottle as her girlfriends sip and chat. Scarlet gives her a side hug as Tina refills her bottle. “Hey, you okay?”

Tina gasps, “Dying.”

“Aw, you’re doing fine. Starting these sort of things are hard.”

“Yeah,” Josie adds, nibbling on Tina’s neck slightly, “you should have seen the old lady when she first joined the gym. She passed out about halfway through. Too stubborn to know when to quit. You’re doing great and we’re watching out for you. I think we had enough cardio for a bit. Let’s work on some strength conditioning next. Arms, legs, or core first, Rabbit? Your choice.”

“Um, whatever is easiest?” I hope there is something easy.

“I’m going to push you as hard as I can regardless. So, where do you want to get one step closer to right now: the old lady’s muscly arms, Scarlet’s sexy toned legs, or my yummy tummy?”

Tina loses her connection with reality, drooling over how sexy she’s look with all those extra muscles (like Laura has!), crushing oranges with her tits and watermelons with her thighs. She doesn’t notice Scarlet wave her hand across her face. Nor Josie licking some sweat from her cleavage. The double handed butt slap gets her attention.

“Yes!”’

“Okay, all three then.”

Skye

Harper got to work preparing the group to resist the harpies’ seductive song. She ritually cast Telepathic Bond, ignoring Glitterdust’s grumbling that her telepathy could handle communication for the party, then starts handing out earplugs. Then the group start to walk down the road. Lady Aelene mentally explains everything she knows about Teleptafelya. It’s a small mining village, mostly Eilistraee worshiping drow and deep gnomes. They mine raw ores and smelt it into ingots. The Nimlith Grove Army makes bi-monthly trips to Teleptafelya to collect the ingots, paying a fair market rate in food and coin, and takes it back to the capital for smiths to fashion weapons and armor. Civilian merchants also make regular trips for iron, copper, and other common metals. Harper makes a telepathic joke about missing dwarves, but the reference confuses Lady Aelene. “What’s a dwarves?”

“Huh. A fantasy species not from here. Sorry, Aelene, human brain sometimes get jumbled into memories from this home. Don’t worry about it.”

“Ok, my betrothed.”

The prairie is pretty, in a stark kind of way. The grass gently sways in the too cold wind. A few grasshoppers hop around between the stalks. Walking helps keep her warm. Clinging to her lady love also helps. Harper wraps an arm around her. Lady Aelene looks on edge, scanning the horizon, double bladed scimitar in hand. Glitterdust looks a little bored, occasionally bellowing out a loud psychic shout to try and spook the harpies out. Grasshoppers flutter away every time.

About 150 feet away from the edge of the village, Harper pulls Glitterdust back. “Rooftops of the village is the first place they’d be able to launch an ambush. Let’s figure out what we’re dealing with before we spook ‘em out, okay?” With a snap of her fingers, Vix appears and eats a handful of Rat Leavings. The fox then starts to run over and shimmy up the wall of the nearest village building.

“Going into Vix’s senses for a bit. Tell me if something is approaching us.”

Harper’s eyes go black. She sits very, very still. She starts psychically declaring numbers on particular rooftops. By the time her eyes return to normal and Vix is back on her shoulder (eating more snack food and getting some scritches), Lady Aelene has a low-key map arranged. “Looks like about 30 of them, maybe more? Definitely enough of them to wipe out an Army escort.”

“Okay, here’s the plan.”

Daphne

Daphne half-drags Mattie to Dungeons for Damsels. She has a sale to make. She’d have to actually drag Mattie there, but she told her that she made a special thing for her. Still, Mattie is willing to play resist.

Awkwardly pulling herself over the counter, Daphne swivels around and gets on her feet. She pulls out the rounds. Mattie’s eyes light up. “Wow, Daph, you made shotgun rounds for my baby? That is the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me!”

“Ooooh, that’s what these are. What’s a shotgun round?”

“I’ll show you! Just hand them over.”

“Ah, wait. 20 BP for a box of 10.”

“BOOOO! I thought you were doing a nice thing for me!”

A notion strikes the mermaid as her tiara starts to glow. Maybe I offer her my body to help make the sale. “Hey, I made it with my shop restocking transformation. It’s for the shop. When the game is over, I bet I could just give ‘em to you. But until then, I gotta sell it. I could get you off to sweeten the deal, if you like?”

Mattie looks a little confused. “Uh, Daph, your tiara started to glow. What’s up with that?”

“Oh, sorry. It’s a really good magic item, but it makes me want to sell my body?”

“Ah. Well, look, I don’t have a lot of BP left. I’ll buy a box, but I want to try some tester rounds first and maybe you getting me off. Maybe.”

Daphne shrugs, thinking, that’s fair. She grabs the 5 extra rounds and ask for uppies to help her out. Mattie begrudgingly complies. They soon walk outside to Mattie’s impromptu firing range. A few minutes collecting coconuts later, and they take position behind the firing line. “Ever shoot a gun before, Daph?”

“Nope.”

“Wanna?”

“Eh, maybe?”

Mattie spins her gun around and hands it to the mermaid. The astral elf walks Daphne through the process like a proper rangemistress. The loud “BANG!” scares her. Her grip is too loose, so the gun bounces back, making the shot go almost dangerously wide. Mattie carefully takes the gun back once the recoil is done.

“Maybe if I can find a more newbie friendly gun for you, we’ll try again,” Mattie declares. The astral elf then fires off a good dozen shots, turning a coconut into a sea sponge.

“Ah, that felt good. Let me try my tester rounds, now.”

The first round only hits the coconut once, which is a disappointment. The second round basically takes the targeted coconut apart, as does the third. And the fourth. The final round makes the hit coconut explode into a few chunks. “Ok, these are pretty good. The spread could be a bit tighter, but I like ‘em. I’ll go buy a box. How do you feel about fingering me?”

“Sounds fun. Anything else you want to buy?”

Mattie: -20 BP (+10 revolver shotgun rounds)

Glitterdust

Skye has climbed up to the rooftops. While she gets ready to ambush some of the ambushers, the others are supposed to serve as a distraction. Glitterdust really wants to shout out about what a big, sexy, scary dragon she is, but Harper said no. And Glitterdust really, really wants her reward. She drools over her prospective quest prize. Glitterdust’s Mountaintop Quest: Learn to respect your MtF goddess as a person. Reward: Your MtF goddess will actually have sex with you. Simple! I trick MY MtF goddess into being into ME, and she will give ME much love and sex and all of that good stuff!

Glitterdust is so distracted that she doesn’t notice that Skye has already launched her ambush. Aelene’s reflection taking a defensive position in front of her lets her know that the fight has started. Once she realizes it, she starts, telepathically shouting, “I’m a big, sexy dragon and all of you should cower down to ME!” to everyone that can hear her. As much as she wants to actually show off her big, sexy dragonness, Harper told her no during planning, so she does the next best thing: summons a duplicate of her own. With an order of “Eat the harpies!”, her draconic spirit (shaped exactly like her dragon form) gets to work, crashing down onto a rooftop across from Skye and chomping down on a harpy. The psychic blast of it’s draconian breath kills one and definitely attracts the others.

Then, Glitterdust’s MtF goddess begins her grim work. She starts her dance of blades, becoming a blur of mithril and blue flesh. Her casting impeccable, her aim true (if not particularly dense of enemies) as a blast of silvery sunlight shoots her the tip of her blade, burning a harpy away in a blaze. A mote of that light travels to her other hand, waiting to be released again.

A bunch of harpies start flocking towards the group. Some attack Glitterdust’s spirit to no effect, some attack her goddess to no real effect (one of which earned a grievous wound for it’s efforts), and a bunch go after Glitterdust. Aelene’s reflection smacks one real good, but Glitterdust is left to dodge a whole slew of clawed swipes. One gets her good, but she keeps her focus.

Skye is doing something, Glitterdust guesses, but her attention is focused on more immediate surroundings. Aelene’s reflection slices off a harpy head, then Aelene proper does the same to the harpy Harper hit. The MtF goddess fires off another blast of sunlight, incinerating another harpy, then, quick as lightning, seems to teleport all around the dragon, slicing apart harpies with brutal efficiency. By the time she returns to her position by Aelene, all of the harpies in melee reach are dead. Glitterdust fires off a psychic lance. Her copy tears apart a harpy, then flies over to another rooftop to blast ‘em there.

Another wave of harpies start their attacks. These spread themselves around. The only one that seems to even really do anything is a harpy that gives Glitterdust a couple of talons to the face. Glitter still keeps her focus.

Again, Skye is doing something. Between real and reflective Aelene, she beheads 3 of the swarm around them. The MtF goddess fries another bird-brain, then, quick as a thought, lashes out with psychic energy at the remaining harpies around them. Ooooh, MY MtF goddess has some psychic spells? It’s like she was made for ME! Neither harpy falls, but the one by Glitterdust seems stunned. Glitter’s lance doesn’t kill the harpy by Harper. Glitterdust’s sexy copy in the air does it’s thing. Only 3 more up there at the moment.

Then the next wave adds 6 more attacking the spirit, their claws helplessly bouncing off of it’s hide. A bunch swarm around the roof that Skye may be on? Then, Skye is back, panting a little. Aelene and her reflection lop off a couple more heads. Harper teleports to the rooftop the spirit first blasted, then fires off her sunlight beam; from the distance, she looks happy with the results. A harpy from the rooftop starts to flap her way to the MtF goddess, but won’t reach.

Eh, between MY copy and MY goddess, this fight is over. I can just relax and drool over her MtFness. Her copy chews one down, then draws worthless attacks of opportunity to line up a decent breath attack.

The last few dive bomb towards Aelene. Glitter takes a side swipe, but her dragon copy still flies above. Aelene and Skye handle them. Harper kills another harpy; Glitter’s copy kills another too. Glitterdust just sits down and gets comfy. Her tail waggling as she drools over her MtF goddess.

For the first time, the MtF goddess does not aim perfectly. Her sunbeam blasts through the dragon spirit and a bunch of those harpies. The dragon survives, temporarily blinded by the blast. So, too, do a couple of harpies, but her copy handles those (despite not being able to exactly see them). Harper’s next sunbeam kills 1 harpy and leaves 2 more nearly dead. Her next psychic attack finishes those off. Glitter’s copy gets the final kill.

Party Kill Count: 35 Harpies

Harper Harpy Kill Count: 16

Harper pants heavily by the time she gets back to the others. “What... now? Search for... survivors?”

Glitterdust already knows the survivors are aware of what just went down. “<Aranel Tyalangan, Arbancano Aelenetheria, we were not expecting you,>” a voice from a nearby root cellar shouts, “<and why would our good Tari Kaelisterie send such a humble retinue to accompany her heir and her heir’s betrothed?>”