When I woke up, forced from a sated slumber by Lenore incessantly cawing into my mind, I was greeted by an image of destruction. I was lying atop Sigmir, who was resting on the remains of the bed, the mattress mostly torn, with the stuffing beaten out of it, the frame utterly broken, as super-human muscles had strained against it in the throes of ecstasy. The air around us was saturated with a delicious scent, one that made me want to dive right back in and wake Sigmir up, but a certain soreness made me realise that it might be a bad idea. Especially given that we would have to head to the ship soon, or we would miss our passage.

“Hey, wake up,” I gently shook Sigmir’s shoulder, getting a mumbled moan in response. Her state brought a proud smile to my face, knowing that I had caused her to be in that state.

“Mhm,” she mumbled, affectionately rubbing against me, but not quite waking up.

“You might want to hurry,” Lenore warned me, her voice filled with an amused mockery. “I did my best to keep the noise and effects of your nightly battle contained, but I’m fairly sure that there was some leakage,” she added, the amusement bleeding through quite strongly. Along the amusement came memories from her point of view, showing how Sigmir and I had been going at it. Loudly. Not only loud, in the sense of noise but in the memories she had shared, I could detect a different sort of emanation.

Looking at the situation in her memories, I tried to correlate it to my own actions during the night and realised what I had been up to. At one point, I had decided to use the Eisblumen as ropes, lightly tying Sigmir up and testing just how much I could do to her if I combined the bond between us with light, manual stimulation while she was unable to move.

The results had been rather glorious but the memory showed me that both of us had utterly lost control over our aura. Normally, we restrained the aura of a powerful being, one who had crossed the second divide as a matter of course, it had become ingrained in us to the point that we barely needed to speak about it. Just like a trained singer wouldn’t use the full power of their voice during a normal conversation, we only used the fullness of our existence when necessary.

Or, apparently, in the moments of highest ecstasy, when all internal restraint was lost and only the bindings I had wrought around Sigmir held her down, her muscles straining against them, and breaking some furniture in the process.

“Ooops?” I sent to Lenore, grateful for her effort to keep most of the effects contained while wondering just how much chaos the radiation had caused. Just thinking of it made me shake my head, the idea that we now had to consider radiation-shielding, just to enjoy ourselves, as if we were some sort of nuclear weapons. Utterly ridiculous, though there was a sort of phallic symbology to missiles. Not that any had been involved in our night.

Looking around once more, I realised just how devastating our encounter had been. All the furniture was either broken or stained and with a bit of help from Lenore, I was able to smell the air, thick with all sorts of alluring scents. None of which I planned to share with anyone.

“Help me?” I asked Lenore, and she projected pure mirth, but hopped over, landing on my shoulder. Together, we wove together a spell of Death, Darkness and Wind, while Sigmir quickly packed our few belongings, before stepping close. The spell took effect around us, power howling in the air, devouring anything that had ever been alive, even scouring away the top layer of any wooden surface. When my gaze focused on the remains of the bed, I felt overflow activating, my power swelling, as the frame and mattress were engulfed in darkness, the shadows devouring it and leaving nothing but dust in their wake. Dust, that was soon carried away by the wind, to never be seen again.

Sigmir and I were visibly exhausted, both moving in a rather slow and tender fashion, as we made our way down into the common room. Curiously, while almost anyone noticed and furtively glanced at us, none were bold enough to take an open interest. When I accidentally stepped into the path of a serving maid, she briefly met my eye and instantly turned a deep shade of crimson, even the tips of her slightly pointed ears blushing red.

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At the reception, Sigmir calmly paid for the room, not telling the innkeeper about the devastation we had caused. Luckily, he wasn’t too interested, there was a blush on his face that gave me an idea why and as we talked with him, the others walked up, looking a little embarrassed themselves but also incredibly amused.

“It sounded like you enjoyed yourselves last night,” Olivia chuckled, as we walked out of the inn, onto the streets of Torop.

“Why, yes, we most certainly did.” I brazenly replied, doing my best to act utterly unconcerned. In the privacy of my mind, where only Lenore could catch the notion, I felt a little embarrassed just how carried away we had gotten but when remembering the sensations, that embarrassment faded quickly.

Olivia only shook her head, amusement oozing off her, as she couldn’t help teasing us. Curiously, Adra didn’t join in for once, instead, she exchanged some furtive, but very telling, glances with Rai, rousing my curiosity.

I considered asking but while I was incredibly curious, there were some things I didn’t really want to know. Occasionally seeing Adra, Rai and even Olivia naked was one thing, mostly unavoidable if you travelled in the conditions we moved in, but it was a whole different question to consider Adra and Rai getting intimate. Just imagining how it would look made me shudder, quickly extinguishing any curiosity I might have.

On our way to the Naga Enclave, we noticed a few guards, heading straight for the inn. It was only after we had passed them that Lenore made noises of amusement within my mind, making me realise that we had channelled a rather massive spell of Death, Darkness and Ice in the middle of the city, barely caring to keep the effects contained or concealed. In a city that was covered in a massive magical formation.

“Oops?” I mentally stuck my tongue out, much to Lenore’s amusement. It made me wonder what the guards made of the room, magically scoured clean, both on a physical and a magical level. There simply shouldn’t be anything left behind, but a quickly fading aura of magic. Realising that it would linger for a bit, I pulled the concealing cloak of twilight closer around myself, carefully sticking in Sigmir’s shadow, a little worried that I might have messed up.

By the time we reached the Naga enclave, the others had noticed that I was acting weird, but hadn’t done more than frown, ask if I was alright and remain vigilant when I tried assuring them.

The Naga guards around the enclave gave us a quick nod as we walked past them, into their territory. Compared to our previous visit, there was a lot more going on now, with dozens of Naga slithering around, in and out of buildings, carrying weird crates, looking more like the shell of some sea creature, from one building to the other.

There might be a method to the madness, but I wasn’t able to see a pattern that made sense to my mind. Limited perspective might be to blame, or some sort of internal logic, but given that I was quickly developing a headache as I tried to keep an eye on all the Naga and look for it, I focused on Sigmir and let them do their work.

“Wavespeaker,” Adra gave a greeting to Wavespeaker Kelartis, who seemed to be the one directing and controlling the many Naga around us. “Where do we go from here?” she asked when the Wavespeaker focused on her.

“Take up position over there,” she pointed towards the shore, where a simple quay extended into the harbour. At the end of it, gently moving with the waves, was the weirdest ship I had ever seen, not that that meant much. Following the design and aesthetics I had seen from the Naga, it looked more like a large sea creature, with a shell-like exterior, forming a fully enclosed space. There were no sails, no deck or anything, just that one, large shell, floating on the waves.

“Certainly, we will try to stay out of your way.” Adra nodded, “Please sent someone once we can board.” she added, getting a nod in response.

“The Wavecaller of the ship will do so. Now, I have work to do.” she waved us off, before adding, “May the waves shield you and the tides guide you,” she wished us, before focusing on something else.

Despite the slightly abrupt treatment, none of us was offended, it was quite obvious just how busy she was. Doing as we were told, we moved to the side, waiting near the quay as we watched the spectacle.

Soon, a Naga from the ship approached, bidding us to board their strange vessel.

The next step on our journey was about to begin.