Max was swimming in the space between landings. The wonderful nothingness of nonexistence. The heavenly calm and quiet that was as close to death as Max could ever hope to get.
"Well, I wasn't expecting that." A silky, sulky tone whispered lightly and full of awe. "Beautiful and terrifying. As a bride should be." A hand touched one of Max's arms and an eye cracked open.
They were in a recognizable darkness from a long time ago. A yawning and familiar emptiness.
Home.
Groans followed by whimpers escaped Max. "How are you here? I'm sleeping." Max grumped, a hellish gasp escaped from a many-toothed maw, and another arm wrapped around Puppy. At least his sleep hadn't been interrupted.
At least Puppy was here with Max in the nightmare of emptiness.
Princess tsked and whispered some more. "You are sleeping still. You said you'd try to visit me and you haven't. It's been days." His hands trailed over large arms and under large arms to tickle the delicate undersides with light touches. "The dog came by my tower a few times in the past few days talking of hunger, but wouldn't get too close for fear of upsetting you. I would have gladly fed him from my own veins, you know, like a good groom does." The hands didn't stop caressing. "I thought I'd remind you that you have a princess in a tower who wants to spend time with both of you. I will visit all of your dreams if I have to for you to understand that there is no going back for us." The hands that were touching arms stroked lightly and lovingly and his voice got deeper and a little growly. "I would feed you both." His tone changed quickly and got cajoling. "You know you change into colors I've never seen before?" His hand trailed down and went to another arm. "You are rather large, aren't you?"
"Ugh. I'm dreaming?" Max opened another eye, groaned, and coiled arms and arms tighter around Puppy, who made a happy whimper and opened his mouth to bite again at Max with baby wolf-vampire fangs. Max tried to roll away from the sleep-disturbing pest of a vampire so Max and Puppy could rest and recover from the past few days.
"Yes, my bride. Which explains," he motioned with his hand over the arm, "this. Is that your original form or just how you see yourself? I mean, I can make it work in any form because you are mine, but if this is you, you are more of an alien than I was expecting." Princess's hand stilled. "Not that it's a bad thing. You are quite lovely in a lot of ways. It just wasn't what I was expecting." His hands slowed. His breathing got closer and his mouth hovered over the arm he had been petting. "How do you taste, I wonder?"
Max cracked open yet another eye and muttered, "...can't be my original form, come sleep with us or go away, so tired, please shut up..." Max reached up with another arm and grabbed the princess. He did not, could not fight it. Tucked him in next to Puppy close to the center of Max's mass, near where the countless arms, a hellish mouth, and closed eyes met on a body that could not fit on any bed in the demesne. Could not fit into any room inside of the demesne at all. Max put another arm over Princess's mouth to make him quiet. The placating shh sounded like a soul-shaking threat from a lower hell. Put another arm around his torso and cuddled him exactly like the Pup was getting cuddled.
Soft and firm.
Warm and protective.
The worst fate imaginable only holding and protecting them.
Claws at the ends of tenacles were neatly tucked away and tastebuds on the underside of arms were placed against Puppy and Princess skin to taste their levels of comfort. Hormones and chemicals analyzed by an eldritch brain made to end all things. After Princess had a moment to realize there was no topping an abomination like Max with brat behavior or snide comments so there was no use in trying, both were relaxed and pliant and tasted of contentment. Both let Max's arms maneuver them into the most comfortable position for them all and the three all reveled in the two humanoids being surrounded and held by a being that was beyond both of their, and their world's, comprehension.
Max rolled over inside of the endless and eternal empty nothingness with most arms gently holding the precious two and one arm draped over the few eyes that had opened in the dream. Mentally relaxed back into the oblivion of a well-earned sleep.
***
Max woke up the next day alone in bed. There was a sprinkling of blood drops on his pillowcase, and the sheets smelled like Puppy, but other than that, it was like every other morning he had woken up in this apartment.
After the surgeries of the past few days and the shower afterward with Puppy, Max stumbled into his most comfortable pajama bottoms and then into his bed. He was followed by a clean but awkward Puppy, who had a smell of hunger and arousal and residual wine.
Max wouldn't hold it against him. This body was hot, so that was fair.
Puppy gently and cleanly bit into Max's pec when given the go-ahead and drank as deeply as Max could stand. Max cast a heal on himself and let Puppy continue. After the pup was sated, they both laid down in a cuddle and went to sleep. Max held Puppy close and they breathed each other's air and stroked each other's skin. Max trailed flight feathers over Puppy's back to put him into a deep sleep. Not exactly platonic, but not overtly sexual.
They'd have to talk about it and be adults and stuff, but Max was hesitant to even broach the topic because feelings often got shattered when Max was involved. Max was increasingly horrible with emotional stuff with every life that had been spent. Death had chipped away at his ability to process his and other people's emotions.
It is probably a flag, who knows? Max rolled a shoulder.
Anything that happened between the two of them would be at Puppy's insistence and his request. Puppy would have to do the talking. Puppy would have to make all the moves. Max would not, could not, dare not try to instigate a relationship with someone so far under his influence unless it was clear from the beginning that any sexual relationship Puppy had with anyone, ever, Max involved or not, had no bearing either way on his place in the Court. He couldn't have Puppy thinking that his place was contingent on keeping Max satiated.
That was the role of the villain and Max wasn't doing a villain run.
Fucking is easy. Fucking things up with fucking is also easy.
Max groaned.
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Miles: Good morning. I heard you groan. The humans are awake. The old man is asking for you.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Max: Thank you for looking after them. How long did I sleep this time?
Miles: Seven hours. Not bad.
Max: I'll be right there. Let me put on clothes.
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***
The infirmary was quiet, even if it was full of patients and almost a quarter were under the age of thirteen, as far as Max could tell. He wasn't good at judging ages, but he knew a kid when he saw one. The rest were either in their teens or early twenties, with five being middle-aged. The old man, who looked as if he were in his late seventies or early eighties, was the outlier. All were quietly eyeing Cora and Cyrus moving around the room, with a wary eye also on Flower, who was updating his etched runes in the floor from 'Sleep' to 'Rest.'
Max walked over to his first surgery patient. The old man was already looking better than he had before Max had to root around in his abdomen. His face wasn't as sunken in and his eyes held actual life instead of a dead soul. His hands were stroking the elf-woven blanket and he looked as if he were deep in thought.
"Welcome to my court. You may call me Max. I have questions for you if you up to talk with me? If not, I can wait until you're feeling up to it." Max put on his best calming and soothing smile to relax the old man. He was hoping that all the extra charisma in his [Bedside Manners] would cut through a lot of the song and dance.
The old man skipped any sort of pleasantries that Max had expected from someone who had been rescued from utter hell. "Did you save them?"
Max's expression didn't change, but his insides got a lot cooler. "Them, who? I saved all of you that came into my mound brutalized by a sanguina and her human stable hands."
The old man was insistent. "The hands. The hearts. Did you save them, too?"
Max's pleasant smile did not fall. His face did not change. He answered, "That's what I wanted to ask you about. What were those? Beating hearts animated by hands that had souls tied to them is quite upsetting, but I'm guessing you had reasons for smuggling them in your and your children's guts."
The old man laughed. He looked relieved. "You did. You did as I asked. They weren't destroyed?" His eyes teared up.
"No. I put them in jars and suspended them in healing potions."
"Oh, thank the lost ones. It wasn't all for nothing, then." The old man laughed until he sobbed.
Max hated to push, but man, he didn't like this. "And who did those hands and hearts belong to then?"
"My name is William." His voice cracked. "We were the last priests of the god of knowledge, Arthothe. The hands and hearts are the ones of our order who have fallen to the savageness of a godless world." The old man wiped a tear away. "We were condemned with eternity and charged with holding the last weapon our god brought to this world. We executed our duties faithfully and earnestly, waiting on Arthothe's return."
Max handed the old man water and told him to sip it slowly.
He continued his unlikely tale, "We lived on a mountain in the Northern Slopes and were forgotten by all, we thought. Until one night, our sanctuary was raided by human military forces and we were captured. We thought we could resolve whatever they were after peacefully, but were slaughtered to a fourth of our numbers." He sobbed a little but continued, "I used the little, last of my magic to hold their souls until we could escape because Arthothe was clear that should we die, we would be punished for failure and our souls fed to the weapon. The hands and hearts were from burial rites that Arthothe granted the faithful, so it manifested that way." The old man blinked more tears out of his eyes. "The hands and hearts from our insides are holding the last of our people's souls, protecting them from being eaten by a monster. The ones you call children..." William trailed off and stared for a moment. He spoke to the air as one would do if they were calculating mental math, "The raid happened centuries ago. We were kept in a dungeon under an old church for a long time, and then in an institution where we were experimented on so they could try to recreate what our god had wrought upon us. They kept cutting the others out of us only to find them returned to us after a short time. They never could find a way to exploit our curse and so they punished us." He swallowed thickly. "Ten years ago by my best guess, the humans, having gotten bored with not being able to harness a god's curse and bored with arbitrary cruelty, forgot who we were. A corrupt official sold us off to the blood drinker. She used our divinely gifted blood to stave off the worst of her insanity." He looked back at Max. "All of us were alive to see when the last gods fell millennia ago." The old man, William, cleared his throat of cry-phlegm. "We were cursed by a god to live forever unless killed. And if killed, we become food for the end. We are damned. We all see that now."
Nods happened in every bed in the infirmary. The whole room smelled sad.
Max asked, "The weapon? What was it? Can you describe it?"
"Arthothe called it an oribos. A small snake that can eat magic."
Max stood up quickly and yelled, "Your crazy god brought a baby ouroboros to a magic-filled planet? What the fuck? God of fucking knowledge my ass!"
William said, "One of Arthothe's roles was to be charged with unleashing it at the end of time to cleanse the..."
Max interrupted with a yell. "Well, fuck yeah, to cleanse the world! That's what the snakes do! They don't leave anything behind! That's what all the stupid fucking idiot gods say when they usher in a cataclysm. If your stupid system hadn't exploded with its fucking monster-summoning dip-shittery, your dumbfuck god would have killed everyone in a way worse way. The fuck!" He threw a glass and it shattered on a wall. Took a moment to breathe and calm himself down. "Did the humans take it?"
William was nonplussed by the explosion of Max's vitriol. "That's what they said they were there for. I didn't see, but I assume so, yes."
Max was livid. "If your apocalypse cult was so insulated and forgotten, how did any of the dumbfuck humans get to know about it?"
"We all had the same thought early in our imprisonment. The only thing we could think of was that we had a rogue member of our order leave a few centuries ago. He always refused the idea that he was a keeper of the end and wanted to break free. When Arthothe walked the world, the rogue was about to be banished from the sect. But the gods died and the curse was placed before we could expel him. We suspect it was either him or someone he had told."
"Okay. Well." Max sighed in defeat and looked over at the golden spider who had slowly walked up the side table and was unnoticed until Max looked at him. "Our anchor needs to be upgraded to resist Class 4 magic eaters. I did my best when we got Puppy, but an oroboros is a level bigger. Tech is the way to go. We should consider moving it out of the city. They can see mana wells and hunt that way, but until fully grown, they have soft enough scales. If it's in the hands of the humans, we need to tell the Conclave and take measures to make back doors into sister realms." Max looked back at the old man. "It's been centuries? Was it still alive when the humans came? When they are hatchlings, they are delicate. That's why they haven't eaten all dimensions, ever."
The old man shrugged. "It was alive when they showed up. I don't know if they kept it that way. We only fed it our blood and only once in a century. The rogue didn't know the exact feeding schedule because he wasn't trusted with the information."
"Okay." Max made some calculations and quick decisions. "World eater aside, what do you all want to do now? I can regrow your innards over months, or we could put artificial ones in you and send you on your way. The enslavement was broken when we removed your collars and no one will come after you to enforce it. Did you want to be sent on your merry little ways, or..."
William shrugged. "We have nowhere to go. Our sect was destroyed. If we were to leave here, we would just end up enslaved again."
Max began to be frustrated. He did not want this. It was a flag. A huge flag. "Do you want me to facilitate somewhere for you to go?"
The old man looked around at the clean white walls and the faces of his little apocalypse sect. The others had naked hope on their faces. "You said this was a fairy court? Are you the Lord over it?"
"You can't use that word anymore. It's considered a slur. But yeah, I'm the Lord of this court. You're in the House of Max." Max's shoulders slumped. Fuck.
"Are your people long-lived? Long like us?" His voice was dream-filled.
Max grumbled. "I have mostly elves. So yes."
"Do you have a library? We are devotees of knowledge. We would spend our days immersed in it. Arthothe is probably dead and gods are gone, but learning is what we were all passionate about."
"Fuck," said Max.
"Fuck indeed," said Miles.