A Semblance of Stability

John entered the battle with 6’000 people at his disposal.

He ended the battle with 3’500 people at his disposal. Of those 2’500, most were outright dead and some were currently being saved from early onset infections. Removing a Lorylim from an organism was difficult, but not impossible, especially with Lyndell and Nia around.

The losses suffered here today were just a part of the story. Each of the four ports they had defended had come with their own set of losses. By his realistic projections, the roughly 12’000 soldiers and conscripts he had considered available at the start of the war had dwindled to somewhere in the realm of 7’000.

Fusion’s problem, like always, was manpower.

The civilian losses were still being counted. John preferred not to look at that statistic.

With Tiamat gone, it was decided that the Guild Hall would be disentangled from the Hudson Barrier for good. The IBMA had been broken, like everything else had been. What had been the capital of Fusion had been reduced to a desert of grey sand and ruins. The Lorylim had left nothing standing.

John currently sat on a ship to that end. It was him, Nia and Lee on it, no one else. The motorized vessel made its way to the edge of the Guild Hall, rejoined in its level with the rest of the river, and then over it. The boat stopped shortly thereafter.

The desolation before him had none of his attention. Both he and Nia were entirely focused on Lee. The genius Fateweaver was staring out at the greyed landscape, eyes filling with tears. “…Goodbye, Mom, goodbye, Dad…” she muttered.

Then closed the Protected Space forever.

____________________________________________________________________________

John retreated from the command room for the day after that. He wanted to be with his women immediately, but he had another one to talk to.

“So, you came to the conclusion to oblige me?” He approached Lyndell. The female form of the primordial Lorylim looked out into the sunset, sitting cross-legged at the exact spot that they had departed on earlier.

“I have nowhere else to go,” the sad woman answered. “You will enable my vengeance. After that, I will re-evaluate whether this life is worth living.”

Terrible as a thought as that was, John had no reason to talk her out of contemplating suicide. If this elder being removed herself, that potentially solved a lot of problems for him. At this moment, no one was loudly asking who or what she was. Peace time would change that, and even if the people took his explanation well, she could still turn into a hazard.

“Eyes aren’t made to stare directly into the sun, are they?” Lyndell wondered.

The miserable tone and innocence of the question mixed into something absurd. John couldn’t help it, he had to laugh. Lyndell’s head moved on her neck with awkward slowness. She blinked repeatedly.

“Sorry. That was… not quite what I expected,” he confessed and sat down next to her. “No, human eyes are not made to stare directly into the sun.”

“Many oddities to this form.” Lyndell lowered her eyes, until her chin hit her chest. Casually, she cupped both of her breasts in her hands and gave them an emotionless squeeze. She must have liked what she felt to some degree, continuing to do it afterwards. Her gaze then snapped to his face. “Eyes are useful. So is your pattern recognition. At times, it gets my view stuck in odd places. Faces. Trees. Wounds. Clouds. Hands.”

“You get used to it,” John promised.

He did not pull his hand back when she suddenly took it. Not to hold in any romantic way, but to inspect it, to feel the lines on his skin. “I’m curious about what you are. The feeling must be mutual. You can ask away. I have all of humanity to observe, you have only me to ask.”

“Then let’s start with the pressing question: are you hostile to humanity?”

“No.”

The word was heavy, her half-closed eyes remained focused on his hand. She kept turning it around brushing her fingertips over his skin. One time, she gently scratched him with her dark grey nails.

“Then a more sweeping question – what are or were you? I know nothing about the Lorylim for certain. I would consider you the goddess of genocide of that species.”

“I was the regret that remains,” Lyndell answered leadenly. “I do not remember the Lorylim as they were. I remember an eternity of loneliness. I remember the defeat I found in victory. I remember starving myself to **** over millions of years and then… her.” Lyndell’s grip on his hand tightened painfully for a brief moment. She reclaimed control quickly. “Tiamat. She mingled with us, broke us apart into a cacophony, infected us and so much of what was us surrendered to her dark purpose for the desire to have any purpose at all. In vengeance to what she did, I clung onto life.”

“Why did you attack me then?”

“I was the one aggressed upon,” Lyndell corrected him. “Although I would have engaged in hostility had I needed to, all to this end.” She gestured at her humanoid form, then continued answering his question, “I spent one of my lifetimes enacting my purpose and I spent thousands of lifetimes defeated by my victory. What ended the Lorylim died long ago. I have no memories of that time, only of being alone. I cannot be certain I am even the same entity. Perhaps, of the souls devoured, I am simply one that returned to a will of her own?” She shook her head. “The only certainty I have is that I was the last vestige that held out against Tiamat’s will. Now that I have separated from the collective, what I am is forever changed. I am just Lyndell. That is all the answer I can give you.”

“I find that strangely calming,” he confessed. “You are more human this way.”

“That is to your benefit,” Lyndell agreed, then put her slender hand against his. “I like how large your hands are.”

There was a warmth to her tone there that John could place quite quickly. She continued to remain focused on his hand. A gentle blush introduced a soft shade of red to her pale white face. Her black, full lips slightly parted. A breath left her tantalizingly slowly.

“Let me get you a room,” he told her.

“I would like that. I prefer dark places,” Lyndell responded.

______________________________________________________________________________

“The mushroom is horny?” Rave asked.

John raised an eyebrow at that question. Reactions by the others in the room ranged from putting their faces in their hands or laughing.

They were taking a collective shower. It was him, Rave, Ehtra, Nia, Nahoa, Nathalia, Momo, Gnome, Salamander, Undine, Sylph, Siena, Lee, Delicia, Lorelei and Hailey. A big chunk of his harem was present. Returning those that had fought in New Orleans to that city had been as much a consideration as pulling everyone else back. In either case, the decision had been to stay where they were.

The situation, for the moment, was stable. The assaults all over the country had ended and even the Lorylim must have faced some drawback from exerting this much power in this short a timeframe. There was plenty to do. They allowed themselves at least a night to catch their breath.

Nothing could really be done in terms of a counter-offensive until their allies arrived. All of them had since sent them communications that they had been delayed. The Illuminati, Rex Germaniae and the Sons of Rome each had mobilized their own fleet as fast as they could. The spearhead forces they had sent had all been intercepted in the middle of the ocean by gargantuan Lorylim beasts. They had won, but they had taken their losses and were now going for a more cautious approach.

On the other side, the Mandate of Heaven was still mobilizing, an effort slowed by the investigations on what had happened with Lu Zhi. John would have loved to go over there and check on the state of things himself, but his teleporter was in Taiwan, not in Beijing. He did not have the time to make that journey. He would have to wait for that to resolve itself.

Which meant his best course of action was to sit and wait.

“Genuinely did not expect that,” Rave continued. “Or, well, actually, I did but I kinda thought it wouldn’t actually happen. Your monster girl attraction has to end at some point.”

“I’m not even considering her for anything right now, beyond as an ally.” John’s tone was hard, despite his best attempts to relax. No one was served if he remained tense even while he was away from any commanding position. No one that had died, be it his parents or a nameless soldier, would want him to make his life ****.

It was difficult to relax.

‘Not getting too callous yet,’ he thought. He almost smiled at the fact that all of this was making him feel bad. Constant paranoia about becoming a worse person rewarded it when he suffered on behalf of empathy. ‘That’s a vicious little cycle,’ he thought dryly. “I have a great track record for not sticking my dick in crazy.”

He said it just to make a joke. The delivery was stilted. The chuckles around were weak. They were all taking the time off as best they could. It had been two days now since this war began. On the third day, things usually began to feel normal to John.

“How are you doing right now?” Momo asked, her eyes wandering between him and Lee.

John stepped into one of the dry islands within the shower room. With a crowd this large, he had decided to use the rainfall simulator. His hand went for the soap. Delicia stopped him with a dutiful smile. Firmly, she pushed him towards one of the benches. Once he was seated, she began to soap him up. “Kings don’t clean themselves,” she joked. “Monarchs never do any real work, they have peasants for that.”

John just chuckled at the comment. While her arms ran over his arms, shoulders and back, Lee answered.

“I… think I got it mostly out of my system?” Lee answered. “I don’t think I will ever quite… digest the fact that I will never talk to them anymore, but… I got to say goodbye and I cried my eyes out earlier, so… yeah, I’ll do as I know they want me to and live remembering them.”

“That’s good,” Momo said supportively. “John?”

“I’m unfathomably angry.” Surrounded only by artificial rain and his loves, he felt no need to hide this for even a moment. A fraction of that anger slipped into his voice, making him speak louder and faster. “I want them all dead, I want Izha dead, I want Tiamat dead, and only once I manage to crush them into dust will I get to finally have all this wrath go away!”

Nathalia and Rave had come over, the two of them joining Delicia in scratching the back of his head and pressing soothing kisses on his skin.

For that, he gave them the brightest smile he could muster. It would have been insufficient in better times. Some pressure released, he exhaled slowly to let the rage fade away to the background again.

“I will have my ****… and I don’t think I can say goodbye properly until the funeral. That being said, I will be fine.” He put a hand on Rave’s cheek, finding solace in the smile the love of his life gave him. “This is a tragedy, but I am still me and I still have all of you. Everything around me, everything that weighs me down, is temporary as long as that is true. I love you.”

“We’ll stick by you through the thickest and the thinnest,” Rave pledged and put a quick kiss on his lips. Nathalia, then Delicia copied the gesture, at which point John just needed to kiss everyone. He stepped back into the falling water, swiftly moving from haremette to haremette to express more than words with his tongue. He kept Lee for last, the two of them pressing against each other with all that they had to give.

They were dependent on each other in that moment. It was a fact that saved John from worse places. He had expectations to meet and expectations to be met. Reliance on another person and to be relied on, that was the cure-all for the soul. A reciprocal relationship in which all were willing to give what they could.

The kiss broke and Lee looked down. “Do you, uhm… want to act on that?”

The series of kisses had done what was biologically inevitable. Base male desires made his erect member throb. Lust ignited reminded him that he had no release in three days. The last time he had cum had been on the plane pre-crash. An eternity for his lifestyle.

A strange doubt overcame him, whether it was appropriate. The same strange doubt was reflected in Lee. Both of them overcame it. Biting her lower lip, she reached out to his manhood and began to stroke it. He groaned, let her work for half a minute, then carried her to a dry island so the shower would stop washing the lubrication away.

It was not long after that he found himself sinking into her tight pussy. Lee moaned. He kissed her neck. He moved slowly, lovingly, eager to revel in the sensation of this ultimate closeness. The other women around joined them, be it directly, by embracing them from all sides, or by engaging in their own sapphic lewdness with each other.

To confirm that they were still alive was only right.