Preparations

The ceaseless echoing of a hammer rang throughout the forge, only interrupted by the hiss of steam or the wheeze of bellows stoking a fire. An insurmountable heat was built up from this forge, easily hotter than what most men could even survive, let alone work. And yet, within this hellish environment, a single dwarf pounded away at a hunk of metal over an anvil. His brow was soaked with sweat, his powerful arms that had seen the creation of a thousand heaps of a thousand swords ached from exertion, and yet he still worked diligently and without complaint. His duty was that of a forgemaster, and he would be damned if he relented from his duty for even a moment. It was a duty that had been his for centuries, as shown by his long grayed beard and numerous tattoos. Most other’s eyes or mind would have dimmed with such advanced age, yet his could still pick the slightest of imperfections out in any crafted weapon, and his wit was sharp enough to know if any deal was fair no matter what others would promise.

“I'm surprised to see you still working after all this time,” Sigmund said, stepping forward into the light of the furnace. A soft smile graced his battle worn features, having last seen the dawi when life flowed through him.

The dwarf offered only a brief glance in Sigmund’s direction before returning his attention to the metal he was working on. “Canne trust an apprentice wi’ these orders,” the dwarf said, never losing a beat in his hammering.

“I suppose that's fair,” Sigmund said, walking a bit closer. Not too close, as he knew more than anyone that the dwarf would be quick to reprimand him if he fully stepped into the old codger’s workspace. “Are you not surprised to see me at all?”

The dwarf gave a short snort. “As if **** coul’ keep a damned Viking from collecting a weapon.”

To that, Sigmund could not help but laugh. “You haven't lost your wit, old man.”

“An’ I hope you haven't lost yer gold,” the dwarf replied. “You still owe me half for the rest of the weapons.”

“Of course,”” Sigmund said as he pulled out a rather hefty looking pouch. “I’m thankful that it had burned along with my body. Otherwise I would have had to have spent the last centuries resaving up for all this.”

The dwarf said nothing in response, just simply gesturing with a simple nod of his head over towards a scale on Sigmund’s left. It was rather ornate looking, made of gold and bronze with small dwarven faces carved into each intricacy of the scale. Sigmund, knowing what was being asked, placed the pouch onto the scale, watching as it very slowly sank lower and lower. After a few moments of silence, only broken by the continued hammering of steel, the dwarf looked up at the scale before giving a grunt of approval.

“Proper payment for proper weapons,” he said before giving a sharp whistle. As he did so, a younger dwarf came out from a corner, wiping sweat from his brow. The older dwarf gave him a short nod before gesturing to the fire. The younger dwarf nodded, taking the still hot piece of metal from his master and slowly putting it back into the fire. The older dwarf wiped his hands on his heavy leather apron before walking over towards a large weapon rack home to dozens of battleaxes, maces, swords, bows, and every other weapon that the dawi found themselves crafting.

The older dwarf looked across the rack before his hand shot out, grabbing the handle of a sword still within its sheath. He then grabbed a hand ax not too far from the sword, and a small knife also in the same vicinity before walking over to Sigmund with the weapons in hand. He quickly laid them out on a table before taking the sword and pulling it from its sheath.

Sigmund’s eyes went wide as he marveled at the blade. While yes, he had ordered the weapon to be constructed centuries ago and thus knew what it was supposed to look like, seeing such craftsmanship in person still took Sigmund’s breath away. The blade was of polished runesteel, a rare metal now that John was the only Nordic runic mage left. It shone with a slight hint of magic in its blade, its silvery metal almost blue in the light. The hilt was bronze with a red handle, and on the guard was a slot for a runestone to be placed within.

“You are lucky that I honor my deals,” the dwarf said while inspecting the blade one final time. “Many dawi would have given their beards just to have a single sliver of the steel used in this blade. But we had a deal, and I knew you would return for it one day.”

“And your honor is worth every piece of gold I gave you,” Sigmund replied. “A true work of beauty that is.”

“Her name is “Byrnrhun”. It means Shining Rune.” The dwarf held the blade forward, allowing Sigmund to hold it and inspect it on his own. “While runestones are rarer nowadays, I am certain that you had the foresight to save up a few to be inlaid into the hilt.”

Sigmund nodded, and while that was technically true, he did not see it necessary to share the truth of his source of runestones with the craftsman. That was John’s secret alone to share. “Brynrhun is beautiful, and will be a gift to those who wield her. But I am afraid she is not my blade to wield.”

“A gift?” the dwarf asked.

Sigmund nodded as he looked over the two remaining weapons. “Aye. I have had a recent encounter with a swordswoman who is protecting a man I have been told to aid. By Odin himself, no less. She is more than worthy to wield such a blade, and will be able to use it when my time protecting the mage has passed.”

“I hope she is. This blade should only be wielded by those who can respect the craftsmanship put into it.”

“Oh, she will be worthy,” Sigmund said. “Maybe she needs training, but I’ve met her mother. I know she’ll be ready one day soon.”

“Again!”

Talia dashed forward at Mavis’ command, slashing her practice blade across the body of the training dummy ahead of her. Quickly she raised her other blade, catching an incoming attack from a magically autonomous dummy before using her first blade, now wrenched free from the body of the first dummy, to jab the second dummy in the neck taking him out. She could not have a moment to revel in her victory as she had to shift her body to dodge an incoming spear attack, the fabric end narrowly missing her side. Quickly she compensated and brought both of her blades down onto the spearman dummy, causing it to crumple onto the floor. With said dummy now dead, she readied her blades and took up a ready stance to deal with any incoming threats.

This proved to be the correct move as two club wielding dummies moved towards her, magic fueling them as they swung around what were essentially NERF bats at her. She tried to time the swings, ducking beneath one of the clubs before jabbing it through the chest with one blade. However, she misjudged the timing as the plastic bat smacked her in the back causing her to stumble.

“Fuck,” Talia swore to herself as the dummies slowly returned to their predetermined positions, letting her have a moment to collect herself. Before John had been arrested, they had managed to discover that John’s illusion barrier creation rune had the ability to make a very cheap training room illusion barrier. It was cheap enough that John was actually able to create some reusable runestones (or at least two for now) that could access it. It wasn’t anything compared to the slightly more expensive barriers, as those had actual enemies to fight and gained actual XP. But as training grounds went, this one was really, really good.

The dummies were all enchanted to run on different set routines. Sometimes they could be used as just basic standing dummies, sometimes the arms could move for unarmed combat practice and to practice blocking, and as was the case with Talia’s current training, the dummies could be set on certain trajectories and set to certain actions to mimic an actual battlefield.

Of course that particular level of complication required someone to be sitting in the metaphorical backroom of the training ground to run it. Which is what Mavis was doing for Talia.

Speaking of the devil, Mavis walked towards Talia, pushing a dummy to the side to approach her… close friend? Girlfriend? Fellow fuck-buddy? Talia never could quite get down what the two of them were to each other, beyond the idea of them being close friends.

“Not bad at all, Talia,” Mavis said with her arms crossed. “You’re getting much more fluid and more used to returning to your main stance when finished with anyone nearby.”

“Still failed though,” Talia said through belabored breaths. “If that were a real club, I would be little more than a bloody pancake.”

“If those were real guys wielding those clubs, they wouldn’t have charged so quickly.” Mavis retorted. “You just cut through three men in the span of a few seconds. Even meatheads that use clubs would know better than to go charging you down.”

“That still doesn’t excuse my mistake, Mavis!” Talia shouted. “Now let’s run it again!”

Mavis gave Talia a puzzled look, cocking her head to the side.

“... What?” Talia asked.

“What’s wrong?” Mavis replied.

Talia was silent for a few moments as the legendary blade in human form looked at her, seeming to ponder and gaze straight through to Talia’s soul. For all Talia knew, that is what Mavis was doing. She wasn’t exactly sure what the full capabilities of the Sword of Souls was.

“I just…” Talia began. “I just… it’s unfair.”

“What is?”

Talia sighed before continuing, “I’m 149 years old. Barbed wire was just invented around the time that I took my first independent breaths. When I first managed to pick up a blade and try wielding it for the very first time over 100 years ago, I decided then and there I wanted nothing more than to be a swordswoman. Even if I was told that elvish women have to be healers or subscribe to bullshit gender roles, I wanted to be a swordswoman.”

“And now you are,” Mavis said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “You are actually training to be an amazing swordswoman.”

“And yet just yesterday I saw an 18 year old paladin be far stronger than I was on the battlefield. A month ago I met a young man who healed me with a rune and proved to be my equal on the battlefield, and he hadn’t picked up a sword before that very day.”

“Oh,” Mavis said quietly.

“Yeah. ‘Oh.’ I just… I always thought I was doing decently in training myself. But now I learn that what took me one hundred years to learn took less than a fifth of that time. Not even to mention John, though his powers are kinda cheating at the whole thing.”

“He does get to go around most issues that others have in training,” Mavis said. She looked to Talia thoughtfully, who had been looking away shamefully the entire time. After a moment or two, she reached out and took Talia’s hand in her own. Talia looked up at her, only to watch as Mavis turned her free hand into a blade and gave Talia a quick cut across the palm.

“AHH, FUCK!” Talia exclaimed, grabbing her hand as blood began to pool in it. “What the fuck, Mavis?!”

“Heal that,” Mavis deadpanned.

“W-what?”

“Heal it,” Mavis said again. “Just do it.”

Talia looked confused, but either way, she would have to do what Mavis said. She looked down at her bleeding hand, concentrating her mana into it as golden light carefully began to stitch together the wound. A couple of moments later and her hand was perfectly fine, with the only evidence of anything having occurred was the blood that had dripped onto the floor.

“There. Fixed it. Now why the hell did you-”

“How much mana did that take?” Mavis interjected, causing Talia to become even more perplexed.

“Uh… I-I don’t know? A little bit. It wasn’t that bad of a cut.”

“John has a healing spell too,” Mavis continued. “It’s one of his most expensive runes and takes a while to heal.”

“Yeah, I know. He used it on me. What are you trying to-”

“And Moira has healing as well. But she has to channel divinity to do so, and her magic is bound by the rules of her cult,” Mavis said, not stopping to let Talia speak. “And yet, even without trying, you still are better at something you don’t even like to do than those who try to put more focus on it.”

“Hold on. You can’t compare my healing magic to theirs,” Talia said, to which Mavis gave a small grin while letting her continue. “Mine comes from my elven heritage and is something we can just… do. John had to learn a new rune to cast his magic, and Moira has other things that her healing does that mine can’t.”

“But you’re still better than them.”

“But you shouldn’t compare us,” Talia continued. “They have disadvantages and… oh. Oh, wait, I see it now.” Talia couldn’t help but grin a bit as it clicked in her head what Mavis was doing, what she was trying to tell her.

Upon seeing that smile, Mavis began to speak again, “Talia, you are an amazing swordswoman with a lot to be proud about. You are fighting in a very different style than John or Moira, with different struggles and issues you have to overcome. Sure, the two of them are quite good for their age, especially compared to the two of us. But just like with healing magic, you shouldn’t be trying to see who’s better at one thing when you are all different in your styles.”

“But it… it’s still annoying to think that all my time and practice hasn’t made me any better.”

“Hasn’t made you any better?!” Mavis scoffed before gesturing to the dummies surrounding the two of them. “Talia, a month ago you couldn’t beat the two swordsmen. A week ago you couldn’t beat the spearman. Today you couldn’t beat the barbarians.” Mavis gave her a small grin. “Every time you think you’ve hit a road block, you manage to pick yourself up, push yourself further, and prove you aren’t going to be stopped anytime soon. You beat the swordsmen. You beat the spearman. You’ll beat the barbarians, and then beat whatever is standing in front of you next.”

Talia blushed a little at all the praise, rubbing her arm nervously. “Okay, okay. Enough of that. You’re gonna make be blush.”

“Oh, I can do more than that, Talia,” Mavis said with a small wink. Talia gave a short chuckle before moving back to her starting location.

“You have a point, though. I’m doing better than I was yesterday, and that’s all that I need to be better than.”

“The best leaders in history certainly thought so,” Mavis said with a nod. “I should know. I was their sword.”

“Wanna run through this one more time?” Talia asked. “Then we can go join Moira, Naoto, and Callie in figuring out where the Helheim we are going next.”

Moira drummed her fingers on the table nervously, awaiting Callie’s finalization of being “released” from custody. While she had gone to talk with her father, Callie had been returned to the prison to be put in a holding cell until her father gave the final go ahead on her release. Granted, Moira had thought that she would be able to do said release entirely on her own, but her father still had the official title of “Commander”, so there was only so much that she could do without daddy’s approval.

Much to her chagrin.

Now that she had the official approval to have Callie go along with them in the hunt for Lifthrasir, Callie had to go through all the official things that John went through to be properly released. Paperwork, return of items and clothing, being informed of certain restrictions that were in place due to her being not fully released, so on and so forth. Then, once all of that annoying bureaucracy was complete, she would be brought back here to finally give the locations they needed, as well as any other important information she had been withholding until her freedom was guaranteed. So all Moira had to do was wait.

And wait.

And wait.

The sound of the door creaking open caused Moira to jolt her head up, though all the excitement in her quickly faded away as she just saw that it was just Detective Shirogane.

“Did you get transportation for us?” Moira asked.

Naoto nodded. “Rilree agreed to let us use the ‘Doom Wagon’, though she said that she would want to go along to ensure that her baby doesn’t get too banged up and make any repairs that are necessary.”

Moira let out a noise that was somewhere between a groan and a sigh. “Lady above, everyone and their mother seems to want to come along on this official manhunt.”

“Well, hopefully she will be the last one to join up,” Naoto said with a small smile as she slid into the seat beside Moira. “My commander returned my call on my way over. He said I am good to come along.”

“Wonderful,” Moira remarked. “Don’t get me wrong, I am happy to have John and his entourage join us on this hunt as we could use the skills they bring, not to mention they have been more interesting to talk to than the average knight from the Order. But I could use someone around who isn’t… well…”

“A complete stranger?” Naoto asked.

“I mean, I did only meet all of them a day ago. Aside from John, but I really don’t count anything before that as a true and proper ‘meeting.’”

“Well, this might be a great time for you to get to know them better,” Naoto remarked. “You and I both know you could use a few more friends that aren’t middle aged knights who are going to be subservient to you in a year or two.”

“Very true,” Moira said with a small chuckle. As she did so, the door opened up with a loud squeak, to which Callie walked through into the room. Unlike her previous visit, she was now dressed in significantly more casual wear with a pair of tight ripped jeans covered in paint, an old white t-shirt with a band logo on it that showed off one of Callie’s shoulders, a belt, some combat boots, and a few small bits of jewelry here and there.

“Ah, ladies and… well there ain't any gentlemen in the room. So just ladies, we are back in business,” Callie said with a grin, spreading her arms and walking with a confident gait towards the table. Quickly she hopped into the chair, propping her feet up on the table before resting her arms behind her head, letting out a long and content sigh.

Moira just stared, trying her best not to glare, but still wanting the woman to take this seriously. “Technically you're not in business yet. You still have to-”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Find Lif, probably kill him, stop whatever dang nasty plan he has for all of creation. I just… I really love not being in handcuffs and manacles any more,” Callie replied with a smile. “It’s a shame, though. I had a nice pair of fuzzy ones in my room that are probably going straight to the garbage. Unless tall, dark, and ugly wants to use them.” She pointed through the door, where the knight that had escorted her here was standing, looking a bit awkward. “Dude seems to have a thing for putting sexy people in handcuffs. Maybe it’s a kink.”

“It’s his job to arrest people.” Naoto deadpanned.

“Hey, I don’t judge! Well, I do, but not to their face.” She then turned around and gave the knight a big thumbs up, despite him having easily heard everything that Callie had said. “Doing great there, buddy! Keep up the good work.”

Moira sighed, signaling the knight that he was dismissed. The knight gave a short bow before running off, probably back to the prison. Moira then looked back at Callie, who was… chewing gum?

“Where did you-”

“Want some?” Callie asked, pulling a small box of gum from her shirt. “It’s still pretty good, even for being a month old.”

“No, thank you,” Moira said. She then picked up the papers that had been sitting on the table, the ones with the coded messages on them, and pushed them over towards Callie. Callie responded by removing her feet from the table and picking them up, still loudly chewing her gum. “We really need you to tell us exactly where these different locations are so we can-”

“Chase after Lif, I know. Geez, you Order fucknuts are on a one-track mindset,” said Callie, chuckling a bit. She then quickly separated the papers into two piles. “Okay, so these three papers I recognize. They are some budget sheets from a few of our offshoot branches in different states. Well, calling them offshoots is a bit incorrect but… eh, point stands.” She then gestured to the other piles. “These ones I don’t recognize in the slightest, so they would have been handled by Lif personally. But knowing him, they probably have to deal with one another in some regard.”

“What do you mean?” Naoto asked, taking out her notebook.

“Well, Lif had this whole paranoia about you guys being able to figure out what we were doing and intercepting our plans, especially since the most profitable branches would often need a lot of intercommunication and supplies from each other. So his solution was to have all of the guilds talk to each other in code.” Callie then reached over to one of the piles, the one that she had said she recognized, and pulled a paper off the top before pointing to the coded message at the top. “See, he would teach each leader of the smaller guilds how his code works, and then give them each a personal passphrase and codeword, cause he really likes using keyed Vigenère

cyphers.”

Naoto grinned, and Moira could see her pump her arm subtly. “I knew it.”

Callie looked up with a small smile on her face. “Oh, really? Fan of overly complicated codes?”

“A bit,” Naoto said. “I always love a good puzzle.”

“So you know how they work then?”

“I don’t,” Moira chimed in. “Would you mind explaining?”

Callie gave an overly dramatic sigh before pointing back to the sheet. “Well, how Lif ran it was that each guild leader would receive two phrases to keep in mind. The first would never change, that being the alphabet shifting phrase.”

Moira looked confused at Callie before looking up at Naoto. The detective gave a nod before pulling out a notebook. “The alphabet shifting phrase just moves around the letters of the alphabet. So if something like “CAT” is the phrase, then you would remove “C”, “A”, and “T” and place them at the front of the alphabet before continuing as normal.”

“Right. Lif loved to give them long complicated phrases from books that would have, like, 90% of the letters removed. He then would give them a new passphrase, with each new leader getting a different one to keep things a bit secretive.”

“And how would that passphrase be used in the code?” Moira asked.

Again, Naoto explained it to her, “Well, how this kind of code works is you make a grid. One side will have your passphrase, and the other will have your altered alphabet. The grid is filled out by finding each letter of the passphrase in the altered alphabet and rewriting the alphabet from that point. Then when you run your message through the code to encrypt it, you go through the passphrase as many times as you need and match up its altered version of the alphabet with the other altered version.”

Moira was silent for a few moments before letting out a tiny, “Huh?”

Callie gave an audible groan, which Moira really felt was undeserved. This was complex, it wasn’t bad that Moira was slightly confused. Naoto, meanwhile, had quickly flipped to another page in her notebook before placing it on the table in front of Moira. On it was a chart with several letters on a grid.

“Okay, so this is one I did a while back out of boredom,” Naoto started to explain. “The alphabet shifting phrase is my last name, cause it’s longer, and the passcode is my first name. See how on each letter of my first name, the alphabet is repeated with that letter being the starting one?”

“Sure,” Moira said, the wheels in her brain turning more now that she could see an example.

“Well, when you have a phrase you want to translate, what you would do is look at the particular run of the alphabet for each letter based on how far along in my name you are. So if we were to translate your name like this…” Naoto wrote down the word “Moira” on her pad beneath the grid. “We would start with “M” and at the top of the passphrase. Based on our code, “M” gets translated to “X”. Then for “O”, we would go down one letter on the passcode to the second alphabet.”

“So then it would be “C”,” Moira chimed in, starting to smile a bit. “And then for “I” it would be “A”, then “R” would be “W”, and finally “A” would be “C”.”

“Right! So your name through these two codes would be translated to XCAWC.”

“Dang, that is complex,” Moira commented before looking up at Callie, who was casually checking her nails. “And every guild has a different passphrase and passcode?”

“Well, every one of them has a different passcode,” Callie explained. “If they are similar enough and in the same region, they might get the same passphrase to shift the alphabet to. Usually if it’s a small offshoot branch or a second guildhall for the same guild.”

“That’s still a lot of codes going to a lot of places,” Naoto said. “There is no way you know all of the codes we need.”

“Nope. But I do know who the leaders of the guilds are, and I know that these three sheets,” she then splayed the three sheets in the “I know what these are” pile in front of her. “Are all specific guild locations in America. In fact, I know which guilds they belong to as well.”

“And those are?”

“Well, you have the sheet for the Pittsburgh guild of “Cracked Anvil,”” Callie pointed to one of the sheets before pushing it towards Moira. She then pointed at another sheet, saying, “This one belongs to a guild called “Hell on Mirroden”, and this last one belongs to “Broken Skull” down in New Orleans,” and pushed the last sheet over to them. Naoto had already picked up the sheet for Cracked Anvil, and was counting something on the coded phrase.

“Well, the phrase on the top has enough letters and in the correct positions to translate to “Cracked Anvil, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.” But without both the passphrase and passcode, I have no idea if we could translate any other messages in the same code.”

“And that’s why you’ll bring me along,” Callie remarked with a grin. “I mean, you already agreed to do so, so you can’t back out now. But I think what your first step needs to be is going to these guilds and finding the leaders so you can translate Lif’s notebook. Clearly these three places have some sort of significance to him if he went back to Alfheim to get these pages.”

Naoto rubbed her chin in thought, while Moira looked at the other two sheets in front of her. Slowly she turned to look at Naoto. “Would Rilree be fine with us driving to all these places?”

Naoto gave a small shrug. “I don’t see why not. She loves to get out of the house, and I can bet she will want to hang out with John more. The man has a bit of a magnetic personality and seems to make friends easily.” She then gave a small knowing smile, staring off through one of the windows.

“In fact, I can only imagine what fun they are probably having.”

Rilree gave a low sharp whistle in amazement. “Thor’s balls. You were hyping yourself up but I really wasn’t expecting it to be this… big.”

John grinned. “Yeah, I get that reaction. Though not in those exact wordings.”

Rilree grinned up at him with an almost hungry smile. “Well, I’m not like most other girls. I can really be impressed by your… size.”

John narrowed his eyes. “Okay, now you’re intentionally making innuendos.”

“What? I would never want to make innuendos about something so… huge and weigh-”

John sighed, putting his hand of cards down as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Please stop talking about my board state like it’s my dick.”

Rilree gave a mock gasp. “John! So foul! You can’t think I was trying to be sexual while talking about your large board state.”

John first looked at her, then down to the table between them. After going inside the Doom Wagon, John had been shown some of the amenities within. Things like the multiple beds, the two bathrooms, the kitchen, living area, basically it was the size of a decent sized apartment all fitting into a vehicle no bigger than an RV, at least from the outside. John had asked how this was possible, something that Rilree had handwaved away with, “Magic.” She then showed John one of her treasures within the Doom Wagon, that being her collection of board games and a few Magic decks.

No less than 10 minutes later, the two of them were balls deep in a game of commander, with Rilree piloting a Jhoira deck while John was using a Jetmir, Nexus of Revels deck.

Rilree gave a small chuckle, untapping and drawing for the turn. “Well, don’t get your hopes too high. You’re cute and fun to talk to, buuuuut you need at least a second date with me before I drop the overalls.”

John looked up from his own hand, watching as Rilree began tapping some artifacts for mana and drawing a lot of cards. “I wasn’t expecting-”

“Oh, don’t be a prude,” she interrupted. “I know you were looking down my shirt at the girls. And that’s fine, I know I’m hot as shit. But don’t think that you being a cute guy and me being a hot girl will auto-earn you sex. I’m not that easy.”

“I just.. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable by looking,” John said, almost stammering.

Rilree shrugged. “You didn’t. Honestly, it was just kinda the norm, though I guess it’s nicer to have you do something like this rather than one of the dwarves around here. Half of them are older than my uncle, and that shit just gets creepy.”

“I can imagine. You gonna attack?”

Rilree made a slight noise of well-meaning mockery. “Pfft, no. Not when you have that kind of a board. I mean, Jesus. Plus three plus zero to all your creatures with vigilance, trample, and double strike? If it weren’t for my Propaganda, I’d be screwed.”

“You certainly seemed to like taking a propa ganda at me,” John said with a tinge of amusement in his voice.

Rilree gave a short but genuine laugh. “Smooth, Newman. Real smooth. I see why Naoto likes you. I end my turn.”

John nodded as he untapped and drew for his turn. “I should probably be getting back to my group, actually. Gotta get prepared for traveling across the country after all.”

Rilree gave him a small shrug. “Eh, yeah. Plus they are probably thinking we are having sex instead of playing Magic. Might wanna go correct them on that.”

John paused in playing a card from his hand as the oddest sense of deja vu came over him. However, it soon passed, and he and Rilree continued to play for several minutes afterwards.

She would eventually win after using a Cyclonic Rift to bounce everything back to his hand, and as he was leaving he felt a notification go off on his phone. Before he could check it, however, Rilree gave him a hug goodbye and said she looked forward to traveling with him. She also advised to get his butt out of the workshop as fast as possible, as they had some customers coming soon to check things out and might not be the most civil when it came to their treatment of humans.

It wasn’t until John was heading back home that he bothered to check his phone, only to see that said message had come from Rilree. It was a photo of her, sans shirt, showing off that she had some tattoos that John hadn’t noticed for some reason (magic, maybe?) and also that her tits looked absolutely salivating.

It also came with a single caption, one that caused John’s head to be filled with lewd images of Rilree bouncing on his lap the entire way home.