Scenes From A Destination Wedding Weekend, Part 11: A Look Inside The Groomsperson's Room

Harper

{reveal "Author Citation"} Laura is the Mistress of Harem Hotel: Haunted Castle and Nick is the Master of Harem Hotel: Island Vacation. {endreveal}

Sometimes, Harper really appreciates some of her more mundane transformations. It took her only 7.3 seconds to get ready for the wedding. Her outfit is equipped directly from her wardrobe in Inventory storage, perfectly creased and presentable: a uniform suit that she would wear to court in the royal family colors, sword on her hip. The jewelry is sparse but tasteful; if Sam wants her to wear a tiara she will, but she prefers going without. Her hair is worn mostly loose, a long wavy trail down to the small of her back, only bunched together with a few ribbons that her hair tied itself. Her makeup transformation handled coordination with her outfit on its own, too.

She gives Nick, who, despite only needing to handle putting on a tux, is well behind her in being presentable, a slight glance. So, like every time she felt like she had a few minutes where she didn’t need to perform, she summons her tablet to approve footage for broadcast. A Host’s work is never done.

Harper miscalculated.

Laura Black swaggers over, chiding, “Can you not take five minutes to relax, elf?”

Harper glances up at her fellow groomswoman. The sight of Laura’s attire reminds the sea elf a bit of Scarlet’s little red dress. Gold trim instead of silver, fire proof instead of fire spreading. Backless to let those dragon wings breathe. Laura’s red hair tumbles down her back. The effect is quite striking.

Tablet replaced with a couple of champagne flutes and a bottle of Skye’s Evermead from her Inventory, the sea elf smirks, “I can and have. It was quite pleasant. I imagine that it is not too early for a little drink?”

Between Mage Hand and prehensile hair, it does not take too long to serve a couple of pours of that liquid elven ambrosia. Harper takes a sip. Effervescent, sweet (but not cloying), notes of cherries, honey, some rose petals that Skye must have added to this batch as an experiment. Harper sighs in contentment.

Laura looks equally as pleased. “Not bad. Any chance I can get a bottle to take back to the castle?”

“Greedy,” the sea elf teases, “I sent you one of Skye’s first bottles yesterday, by your perspective. But here...” Harper summons a fresh bottle, handing it over with a flourish, “...as an apology for Evelyn. Even if she didn’t get hurt, she suffered quite a fright from something I allowed.”

Laura graciously takes the bottle, arching an eyebrow at the reason. She queries, “Can I ask something potentially uncomfortable?”

Harper nods, taking another sip.

“You had advice for everyone else, but not me. Why?”

Harper sits on the question for a beat, mulling over it. “An exaggeration, I am sure, but I thought you were doing reasonably well. What advice could I offer you? It’s not like you have your own version of the hag that tormented me and mine. Shar cares about you and yours.”

Laura’s wings flare out for a few seconds, generating a gush of air that sends Nick’s bow tie flying across the room. Harper’s hair returns itself perfectly in place. She growls, “How did you deal with not being human anymore?”

“Oh.” Harper blushes, a little embarrassed that she didn’t consider that. “I do have a little experience dealing with a pet dragon, though the species of dragon is different from whatever your transformations are modeled on. What, specifically, is bothering you? Physical changes, like temperature sensitivity? Mental changes, like a sudden compulsion to hoard treasure or a noticeable increase in pride or anger? Or is it leaving your humanity behind?”

The answer is none of those. “Power. I have no idea how strong I am now, and am not much inclined to test it. But it keeps teasing me, testing me...”

“Ah. Well, I would first advise that you test your limits on a somewhat regular basis. Not to get stronger, mind you, but so you know how much to restrain yourself. Your casual strength, what you can do without any particular effort, went up just as much as your limit. You have babies coming. What you may perceive as a light burping tap could crack a baby’s vertebrae, if you don’t know how strong you are. As far as specifics, with your permission, I can scry you. It’ll let me read your character sheet. I can at least provide some comparative benchmark examples of what you could likely do.”

Laura nods, “Do it.”

Harper presses her thumb into Laura’s forehead, then begins to read. The results are... annoying.

“Well, good news, bad news. Good news, you won’t be crushing any babies accidentally. You have to be intentional with your aura. Bad news, the aura is... vague. Unless you want to activate it, I can speculate.”

Harper has experience dealing with dragons. Laura’s aura doesn’t faze her. Nick, on the other hand, slowly creeps out of the room like an especially anxious mouse. He left his cummerbund behind.

It is a simple thing to ritually cast Identify on the aura to get a decent grasp on it.

“Sliding scale of power. Low end, like this, I might be able to beat you at arm wrestling, if barely. The woes of being a dexterity fighter. Upper end, well... My strongest companion is Josie. She maximizes her strength enhancing transformation and she can lift about 1.25 tons, which is a giant pain to set up, let me tell you. Assuming that I am doing the math right, I would guess that you could lift about 8, 9 tons at max aura right now? You could get that up to maybe 11 tons if you work on good lifting technique. Stamina curve is similar, except Josie would last longer than you doing burpees or whatever. I’ve seen her do 12 full 8-count burpees a minute for 72 hours straight once as a charity dare thing when she opened her gym back home. How you feeling?”

Laura pauses, evaluating, “Fine. I can do this all day.”

“I’m sure you could. A thing I have seen in my own experience is that the whole animal-girl transformation thing is often not just a physical ‘bolt on some extra parts’ experience. There are mental aspects of it, little personality tweaks to bring the lady closer in alignment with expectations. I know that Tina got hornier from being turned into a bunny-girl. I know Josie, who was already a little prickly, got more... easily irritated. Think back to yesterday. Anything you noticed about yourself when you were going dragon mode on Mark?”

“It started before I even got to the rock wall.” Laura admits. “Kevin was struggling to keep up with me, in heels. Herman of course was always there with us whenever we noticed him, like he’d been waiting.” The tall redhead rolled her eyes at the god of speed faking a race. “By the time we breached the bamboo, first by the way, I was already amped up on adrenaline. More than adrenaline. I’m not usually at all competitive physically. Work is another matter entirely, but when Mark showed up I bristled. I was ready to carry Kevin up that wall myself. And when Mark cheated, it stopped being about the climb at all. If Andy hadn’t shown up, I don’t know where the escalation would have ended.”

Harper shakes her head at her likely future son-in-law, then snarks, “Probably with me sabotaging my own team by Resilient Sphere-ing the dumbass.”

Laura looks like she wants another drink. Harper pours the redhead another glass of Evermead. Laura downs half of it in one gulp, then declares, “That is a loss of control I. Do. Not. Like.”

“The more you lean on that aura, the more dragon you are going to be in temperament. Dragons are territorial by nature. Possessive. Arrogant. You should see some of the things my pet dragon did to my treasury. I can’t guarantee that Mark wasn’t goading you, but he is well aware of some of those mental changes. He literally started hoarding his companions panties recently.”

Harper pauses to snort at their fellow Master’s Support Association member. “So, you got riled up in the moment. It happens to the best of us at times. Unless you are planning on running into other dragons regularly, it probably won’t be that bad again. Still, there are things you can do if you want to avoid that loss of control. Practice with your aura and learn how it works. Josie’s Bloodlust feature works similarly enough to your aura. Using hers helped her understand how to manage the emotional havoc of dipping into it. Alternatively, check for an upgrade in Shar’s shop. Or Scarlet could use Magic of Career Change on you, write you a prescription? Ask her at the reception?”

Laura laughs. “I upgraded it as soon as I got it, to make it stronger for more stamina. Keeping up with a harem is brutal, but you know that.”

“Yeah. You’re still in the minor leagues there. Try being both a good harem mistress AND a good mother to 30 to 50 school aged daughters. Surviving afternoon snack time is worthy of a badge of honor. Seriously, I was suggesting an upgrade to give you an emotional stability boost. Maybe something like being able to use Command and Conquer on yourself? Order yourself to stay in control. Spitballing, since I don’t know what all Shar put in her shop.”

“I could probably Command myself to calm down. I’ve already used it to put myself to sleep on a restless night. The Aura boosts it too. It’s supposed to only work on my contestants, but it’s gone way past that now. I only get one upgrade a week, to be fair to the others, since it costs me nothing.”

Laura pauses, finishing off her Evermead. Harper pours her a third glass; Laura stares at the wine as she continues, “Children. Children are going to be a whole other issue that I am glad is months away before I really have to face. Four children already on the way is nothing compared to your wasp swarm, but it’s four more than I ever expected to have.”

Harper smiles, “Oh, you are never ready until they are there, whether it’s your first or your hundredth. And don’t think you get to stop at four. Candy alone will probably get a half dozen kids from you. And you haven’t knocked up Gabriella yet; her transformations have been inching her towards the breeder archetype.”

The conversation is interrupted by Sam dragging Nick back into the room by the ear. The blue-haired girl barks, “You two, don’t scare the normie.”

Harper apologizes to said normie, then returns to her point, “So, advice on that, for what it’s worth. One, you should talk to Dinah while you’re here, schedule some OB/GYN visits for your companions. Transformations can make pregnancy issues that you might not expect. Let’s just say that needing to personally do an emergency C-section on your wife is not something I would recommend. I am sure they are fine, but it never hurts to double check.”

“Two, be prepared for weirdness. I am assuming that your kids are going to inherit some dragonness. Again, schedule ultrasounds with Dinah. I don’t have experience raising baby dragons, but there will be some conflicts that arise just from their natures. I can remember so many weird little scuffles between our bunny-kids and our tiger-kids.”

“Three, you may not want to hear this, but you may need at least one of your companions to be a stay-at-home mom. I get the whole ‘strong independent women’ thing, but, when you have a dozen kids that can fly and breathe fire? You don’t hire a few nannies and call it a day. And, from personal experience, Skye loves raising our children way more than whatever 9 to 5 she could have gotten instead.”

“Susan has already claimed that role, and I wouldn’t be shocked if Candy retires to homeschool the lot once they are old enough. No dragons yet, the wings and the aura didn’t come ‘til after the pregnancies. Tiny flying faerie twins are going to be a handful all on their own though. The OB/GYN we can skip at least; my transformation doesn’t just make the pregnancies possible, but ensures they will be healthy. Sorry to dragon out on you, Nick.”

Nick, awkwardly trying to get his cummerbund on correctly, gives a nervous chuckle, then says, “It’s okay... really...”

Harper takes a brief moment to toss a Vix plushy at the author from her Inventory, noting, “Give it a squeeze. It’s got a Calm Emotions effect on it; keep it.”

Turning back to Laura, she notes, “I do not have all the nuances of your transformations memorized, if it isn’t obvious. I would still recommend the doctor trips. My twins came out perfectly healthy; they are here at the wedding, in fact. It did not change the fact that birthing twins is too often a death sentence for mama elves in my now home dimension. When your kids come out with dragon wings, it is bound to cause problems, assuming that your transformation doesn’t get around the physics of childbirth. Better to know ahead of time. Still, you seem to be handling the situation better than I did when I was in your phase of the game.”

“My season is far less cruel than yours was from what Shar says, but thank you.”

After handing Nick the rest of the mostly empty bottle (it’s rude to start a toast without a drink in every pair of hands), Harper raises her glass and says, “You’re welcome. Good luck herding your cats, both of you; may they never gang up on you in an unsexy way. Slainte.”

The rest of the Evermead goes down smoothly. She has a whole thirty seconds before Sam bursts in to get them in position for the ceremony. She isn’t tempted to check the footage waiting for approval the whole time.