Chapter 1919 – Counteroffensive 8 – The River King [Nathalia POV]

“A point in their favour, I would not want to be greeted by their hideous faces anyhow.” Nathalia looked up at the structure with mild annoyance. “If I remember correctly, the builder of this was one Lakamun?”

“The demigod leader of the Lake Alliance, yes.”

“I have to wonder whose brat he was.”

“He had volcano powers, one of yours, maybe?” Scarlett teased.

Nathalia blew fire out of her nose. “I do not remember all that I had thoughtless encounters with, but a child I would have recalled.” She undid the first button of her shirt. “It’s a shame to break this architecture, that is my only lamentation.”

“It is a unique building,” Scarlett agreed.

Both women stripped off their suits and stuffed them into their pocket spaces. If they were not going to get attacked, there was no reason to ruin perfectly good business attire. With a few hisses of pain, Scarlett exchanged her camouflaged set of limbs for the clawed and taloned combat variants.

Nathalia was as she usually presented herself. A tall, curvaceous woman, her caramel skin covered minimally by scales of black and the orange veins between them. The orange gemstone that she had carried within her since the day of her ascension shimmered atop her cleavage. Sharp claws of obsidian combed through her fiery, orange tresses, going around her curved horns while she watched her partners in this offensive get ready.

Lyndell, as a fellow goddess (of some description), simply unravelled the fungal fibres she had woven to create her mundane disguise. A regular gothic dress shifted into the extension of her skin that it usually was. Skin went from white to greyish as black and dark grey mycelium spread beneath the surface, mostly concentrated on her arms and collar. A veil like translucent satin grew, as curved, gradient horns sprouted from her forehead. Streaks like tear-smeared makeup appeared beneath her eyes.

Scarlett’s transformation was somehow the most drastic. Her arms and legs replaced with artifice was only part of it. A mechanical tail, matching the reddish-brass aesthetic of the heavily reinforced limbs, curved behind her back. In place of the suit, her still human torso was covered in black, synthetic fibres.

“If everyone is ready…” Scarlett placed an angular visor against her face. Enchantments and mechanical processes worked in tandem, causing the brass construct to unfurl. Hooks and cables connected with the pair of pointy ear replacement implants. Overlapping plates covered the top of Scarlett’s head. The elongated, almost triangular ‘beak’ of the front of the helmet gave her head an avian profile. “…let’s evict this parasite,” her voice echoed metallically through the speaker systems.

Lyndell began to walk before the other two could. The eagerness of this fascinating embodiment of the first foe was laudable. Nathalia did find her quite enticing. That her dress clung to her ass like it was painted on elevated that opinion greatly. For one, because the dragoness simply approved this style of dress and, for two, because her ass was absolutely gorgeous. Nathalia preferred her behinds on the plumper side, but she knew when she was looking at something perfectly balanced.

The only thing that managed to distract her from looking at that backside was Scarlett’s own. Although her legs were mechanical, her hips still swayed with the push and pull of muscles no longer present. Nathalia did not care for the logical explanation of this, she was just pleased to see it in action. Despite her androgyny, the augmented technomancer had the hips and the heart-shaped pillow of an ass that proved her femininity twice over.

“Are you going to focus on the task at some point?” Scarlett asked.

“I’ve been surviving while feasting my eyes for over ten millennia. Do not dare presume I cannot do so while remaining aware of danger,” Nathalia responded haughtily. The seriousness of her fellow haremettes was annoying at times. She was a dragon and god and they thought she would run into a wall while appreciating the female form.

“Where to?” Lyndell asked.

“Upwards,” Scarlett answered plainly. “I am registering a heat signature atop the tower.”

“May I eradicate this area?”

“I like where your head is at,” Nathalia commented.

“We’ll enter the normal way.” Scarlett’s red claws clacked as she flexed each individual digit. The joints were flexible, giving each finger a deceptive amount of reach. “Strong Lorylim are annoyingly chatty at times. Might be able to squeeze some shit out of this one.”

“Ew.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re one of those alien minds that takes everything fucking literal?” Scarlett pleaded.

“I am not, I found that formulation generally displeasing.” Lyndell continued to lead the way. “If we are delaying, may I chat to distract myself from my seething hatred for my former kind?”

“Can’t stop you,” Scarlett pointed out.

“You could, I know courtesy.” Lyndell began to climb a ramp, her eyes disdainfully glaring at the water that spiralled down beside them. “So, may I?”

“Go ahead,” Nathalia allowed her. “I’m interested in what you might have to say.”

“I wished to ask if this form is attractive?” Her grey eyes looked down at herself. “This body was grown instinctually, for the most part. I wished to emulate the golden one that defeated me – Lucifrena.” She stopped for a moment to check her cushy posterior. “I succeeded in that, according to my senses. Yet, I desire confirmation. Would a man like to place his hands on me?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

Scarlett and Nathalia answered right after each other.

“That pleases me.” Lyndell continued her walk. “What about John? He has so many women more gorgeous than I, such as you two.”

“Bold to ask women of his harem if you can seduce him,” Scarlett remarked, her dry tone filtered through the speaker.

“I think that is the correct path? Hiding my intentions sounds bothersome and treacherous…”

‘I like this one,’ Nathalia thought. “My mate certainly finds you attractive, but matters of lust and romance are on pause for now.”

“He told me this… it’s difficult to accept.” Lyndell let out a long, sad sigh. “Being alive comes with its bothers. I know I should wait but I just… desire him intensely. He has firm hands. I appreciate the shape of his jaw. Together, we will purge my former kin, Tiamat and Izha from the world.” There was a hint of aggression in that last sentence. “It makes my heart beat irregularly.”

“Right. Noted,” Scarlett drawled. “If you want to join the harem, you’ll just have to impress everyone currently in it.”

“A daunting task… I will try.” Lyndell continued to stride. “Thank you, that topic was on my mind.”

“From what I hear, it’s all you think about,” Nathalia pointed out. “John, I mean.”

“It’s his hands.” Lyndell gestured some vague shape into the air. “I really like his hands.”

“Have you picked up any other activities to occupy your time?” Nathalia inquired. Much as she liked talking and thinking about the love of her life, that was not all that there was to her. There had to be more to this entity, ancient even to her, as well. Nathalia wanted to coax that out, if only because she wanted that ass next to Rave’s in the bedroom.

It was John that had made the ruling that they would not have sex outside the harem. Nathalia just adapted to it by making sure her preferred women got in.

‘Do not be shallow yourself,’ she chastised her own, lustful thoughts. ‘You’re trying to be better. Be more than pride and indulgence.’

“I have picked up reading Edgar Allen Poe,” Lyndell answered.

“Of course you have,” Scarlett threw in another sarcastic comment. “That’s entirely expected.”

“Indeed, I asked the internet and the internet provided that which speaks to the darkness in my lonely heart.”

“Are you laying it on thick or are you serious right now?”

“I am entirely serious – yes, I am aware that many others who say it are not or speak of things they do not understand.” Lyndell clenched her hands into tight fists. “Compared to the isolation that came before, this life does not feel quite real.”

“It will,” Nathalia assured, “in due time.”

Lyndell did not look back at Nathalia. “Have you also suffered?”

“Only under my own hubris.”

“Ah…”

It was neither a judgemental nor a confused sound. Ultimately, their conversation ended there. That which had caused Lyndell’s rage to swell came into view all around them.

Veins made of fused bodies covered the walls. They were laid out in archaic patterns, steady enough to invoke the illusion of stability but too frequent in their gaps to be pleasant to behold. As they advanced, the weave of bodies only got denser and the pattern more oppressive, a purely visual terror that made Nathalia feel like insects were crawling all over her.

That particular assault on the senses, she had been expecting. Chaos and trypophobia were well within the Lorylim’s typical designs, as was the melding of bodies. They compensated often for the lack of quality material by getting a whole lot of it. In this case, the entire population of the capital seemed to have been swept up in it all.

The sights were familiar, the sounds were familiar (squelching and the cackling of the damned), even the damp feel of the air on her skin was familiar. It all matched her previous encounters with the first foe.

The scent, however – the taste, however – those were not familiar to her experience.

The air was clean, remarkably so. Nathalia was reminded of the way an underground lake smelled, one removed from any biological staleness, one that existed in serene quietness deep within a cave of stone and minerals.

Even Nathalia, who had lived for a long time proud of drifting carelessly from one pleasure to another, remembered this scent in the context of Tiamat.

“This will be difficult,” she told her companions.

They emerged in the uppermost chamber. It had been a dome of magnificent beauty. Intensely complicated enchantments surrounded the central points of the rising ceiling, still visible as runes that glowed through the carpet of fully liquified bodies. Water endlessly poured out of the highest point of the dome, entering the greedy veins of the Lorylim and through them flowing into a translucent sack.

It was filled to bursting, stopped from this imminent fate only by the veins at its bottom that gave it an outflow. Clear water at the top was filtered through that which grew inside, turning black in the process.

It was a dragon, a small one by Nathalia’s standards, yet immensely powerful. She knew that dragon, scarcely, but she knew him. Horns formed a crown of blue around a neck of sandy brown. His was a serpentine body, a middle point between the European dragons like herself and the Asian dragons such as Tianlong.

For all of the beauty of sand and rivers that there was to this dragon, the touch of the Lorylim was clear. His wings were made from mostly fused hands and the formations of faces could be seen among the lay of his pristine scales. While his eyes remained closed, something crawled beneath the lids.

“This is Abzu, Tiamat’s husband,” Nathalia revealed. “The god of order.”