Yuriko startled awake and felt her head pounding and her mouth tasted as if something had crawled in and died on her tongue. She blinked at the unfamiliar ceiling for a long moment, before her Radiant energy, which had been completely restrained into her core last night, flared up and washed across her body, consuming the remnant alcohol and restoring her to her norms. She blinked as her perception showed her an…unusual scene.

Her memories were a bit foggy, but the mists cleared up soon enough, and she groaned at what she recalled. That did explain why she was on a bed made out of couch cushions and pillows, why Blanca was curled up next to her with her make-up ruined and her mascara running down her cheeks. Why Juliette was spooning Sofia on Yuriko’s other side, and why Mark and Javier Villareal were curled up like puppies by her feet and why their faces were pressed up against her naked toes.

She was still clothed, though her shrug was in a heap underneath another pile of clothes. Blanca was in her bodice, exposing her toned body. Her fluffy bunny tail was wiggling in time with her snores. Juliette was almost fully clothed, except her underwear was tangled on her ankles. Sofia was all but naked. Mark and Javier were wearing naught but their underpants.

On the table in the middle of the room was a pile of cards as well as a large collection of bottles, glasses, and mugs. There was a pile of coins too, but they weren’t the country’s official coinage. “Gambling chips,” Yuriko muttered, remembering the term.

One of the wolfkin, the darker-haired Mark, nuzzled her foot. Her condensed aura actually prevented anyone from touching her skin, but the margin was thin enough. The fact that she could feel through the barrier, meant that it made little difference. Only the fact that he was clearly asleep prevented her from breaking his nose.

“Ancestors, what did I drink last night?” she muttered.

Well, several bottles of high-proof liquor mixed in with delicious juices, and other stuff that masked the taste of the alcohol, probably. It did make the card games and the rest of the party games more fun than they would normally have been.

Six of them had commandeered the private space, which was roughly a dozen paces across, had a couple of tables and a set of chairs, as well as a couple of sofas that were piled high with cushions and pillows. The windows opened out into the countryside and the view from on high was exhilarating. It was an altogether different feeling than what she got while flying. Oh, Javier was nuzzling her toes, too.

She pulled her feet away from both of the wolfkin boys, but there was hardly any room in the cuddle pile, not when she was right in the middle of it. She could just get up and leave…

Blanca shifted around and pressed up against her side. Sofia threw a hand over Yuriko’s body and murmured sleepily. The windows revealed that it was barely dawn, though that meant she should have been up and training already.

But a languid feeling overcame her, and she felt her Anima, her Mien, and her body relax from the strain she’d been putting herself under for so long. She could feel the tightness of the threads bound to her begin to flex and relax. She had an inkling that if she allowed her Mien to strengthen, she would be able to push True Connection to allow her to speak with her Mum and Da, not to mention Gwendith and Heron, wherever they were, at the moment.

She wound up shifting herself a bit so that the two boys weren’t so close. Her dress had ridden up to just past her thighs too. She continued to review her memories and tried not to blush too much.

“What kind of game?” Yuriko asked Juliette as the four women sat down around the square table. Juliette removed the cards from the case and spread them out, all the while surreptitiously glancing towards the main hall. Yuriko could see why. The cards were a set that was unpopular in Nirlith but was well used by those who lived in Briardale since the suits were the five Elements of Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood.

The sets were hand-painted with vibrant colours and were lacquered. Yuriko took one, a three-mote Wood, and flipped it over to admire the back art. It was a lovely abstract pattern infused with the artist’s grasp of the Ennoia of Art. Or perhaps painting? Yuriko wasn’t sure since her Ennoia was pretty far from that one, but she thought Heron would appreciate the interpretation.

“Fortaleza,” Juliette said as she gathered the cards and shuffled them. She dealt seven cards to each of them, then held them up in her hand. She placed the remainder of the deck in the middle of the table and drew a card. “The object is to empty your hand by the time the deck is cleared. You draw a card, then discard another, but you can also create forts with a combination of cards. Three of the same number, across different suits, or three of the same suit sequentially. Another may add to your forts, as well as their own, but one card must always be thrown to the discard. The next player may pick up the last discard to create a fort, but in that case, they will not draw from the deck. The first to empty their hand wins the game and five extra points, and for every fort you have, you gain three points, plus an additional point for every card beyond the third in the fort. As the winner, the losers pay you in chips with a value equal to the difference in your points to theirs. If their points are somehow higher than yours, you end up paying them.” Juliette grinned, “Loser of the set, as in the one whose chips go empty first must pay a forfeit.”

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“To whom?” Sofia piped in. “The rest of the group or just the one with the most chips in value?”

“Hmm, good question, what do you boys think?”

Mark Villareal scratched at the back of his head, “Uhm, you sure you wanna play against two professors?”

“Nonsense, why not?” Blanca said, her face was already pink from the liquor she drank. Yuriko sipped her own bubbly concoction and greatly enjoyed the fizz against her palate.

“Uhm, I mean…” Mark sputtered, then he glanced at Yuriko, sighed, and said, “Well, we won’t protest if you’ve no problem with it, professors.”

“So, which will it be?” Juliette smirked at the boys, “Hmmm, you two will be the biggest winners no matter what, with four beauties in the same room.”

Javier coughed, “One peerless beauty, at least.”

“Hey!” Juliette yelped and Sofia sneaked a kick in, only for her to wince and grab her toes.

“What are your legs made out of?” Sofia growled.

“Uh, skin, muscles, and bones?”

The two girls exchanged incredulous glances then snorted in laughter. “Alright,” Sofia continued, “Loser pays a forfeit to the chip leader. At least for the first set.”

So began a round of gambling. Unfortunately for the others, Yuriko could see whatever cards they were holding with her perception. Fortunately for them, she wasn’t about to cheat so she pulled her perception away from the table, though she kept it active outside. At which point, it became rather clear, she wasn’t any good at gambling. At least not Fortaleza.

She wound up near the bottom at every round, but thankfully, she was not the chip loser by the time the set ended. That honour belonged to Blanca.

The first forfeit wasn’t so extreme. No, Juliette won the round and asked the Khuni woman for a shoulder massage. Mark replaced Blanca on the seat and the game continued. In the meantime, servers brought drinks and snacks to the room. The presence of the Secretary and a Professor required a greater level of service. In the meantime, the other private rooms were getting quite…heated. Yuriko stopped observing once clothes went off, but it happened so many times amongst the surrounding chambers that she simply sighed and retracted her perception fully.

And so the rounds went. They drank and indulged in wine, beer, and spirits. Yuriko enjoyed the heady feeling, the line of fire that ran down to her tummy, the loosening of her control, and the fact that the drunker she got, the funnier everything else seemed.

Eventually, she did lose the set, and the winner of the round, Sofia, got her forfeit.

“Tell me, professor! How many Life Elixirs did you take to keep looking so young?” Sofia giggled. “Why, you look younger than the rest of us, and it’s not fair that someone so much older would look younger! What about our vanity, eh? Young girls like us are flowers!” Yes, Sofia’s speech had gone from logical to something nearly irrational, bereft of sense. But it was actually really amusing, ehehehe!

“I’m not!” Yuriko protested. Her long rhetoric boiled down to a simple denial. “I haven’t taken a–hic–single Life Elixir, or any other youth retaining potion!” She rubbed her nose, “Nope, this is just how I look!”

“Oh, your Refinement Formula must be…hic! Must be, well sought out by other women then!” Blanca yelped. “Can you teach me? I’d like to remain young looking all the way to my twilight years. How does it feel, anyway?”

“I don’t know.” Yuriko pouted.

“Oh, but you must be as old as I am, or a few decades beyond me?” Blanca smirked, “You’re a True Magus! Nobody reaches that level without decades of study.”

“Hah!” Yuriko snarked, “Nope! I’m not decades older than you!”

“Oh, then how old are you then?” Mark asked innocently, his nose wrinkled as he leaned over and inhaled, “Your scent doesn't really tell me anything. Well, other than you smell really, really nice, and you seem to be…simmering.”

“Huh? What does that even mean?!” Yuriko pouted but Mark just chuckled and waved the comment off.

“You shouldn’t ask a Magus their age!” Blanca said, the hypocrite!

“But she lost the forfeit, so spill!” Sofia and Juliette said in unison.

“Alright, alright!” Yuriko hiccuped, “I’m seventeen…no, eighteen.”

“What, centuries?” Blanca asked in dismay.

“No! Years!” Yuriko said. “I turned eighteen last Season.”

“You’re eighteen?” All five of them said in disbelief.

“Yup!” Yuriko said brightly.

“You’re…you’re not lying, are you?” Blanca asked, her face pale and her tone flat.

“Nope!” Yuriko took a glass of brandy from across the room, floated it to her hand with her kinesis, and drank it down.

“But you…but you!” Blanca sputtered, “I mean, I’m attracted to someone less than half my age?”

“What difference does it make?” Yuriko asked philosophically, “We’re all adults here. Uhm, are you four already eighteen, too?”

“About to be,” Mark and Javier said.

“Yeah, just a couple of weeks ago,” Sofia said.

“Just last Season,” Juliette said.

“See, all adults here!” Yuriko giggled. “Except for the boys!”

“Do you believe that?” Sofia asked Juliette, who shrugged.

“You know how when Professor Davar lies or evades questions? Does it look like she’s doing that now?”

“No, and you’re right.”

“Hey!” Yuriko protested, “I can lie…convincingly.”

“Nope!”

Blanca was blubbering into her drink, drinks as she grabbed a bottle of distilled liquor and kept refilling her glass.

The other two girls didn’t seem to mind, except Juliette said, “Say, if you just turned eighteen you haven’t gone to your Gala Presentacion, yes?”

“Huh, what’s that?”

“It's a ball every young person goes through on their eighteenth year, a sort of presentation to society as adults,” Juliette explained. “The one closest to today will be in a couple of weeks back home in Virtalla. Right after the elections, I think. It’s the one I’m going to attend. Both of you come with me!”

“Huh, sure.” Sofia said, then nodded to the two wolf boys, “What about them?”

“If they’re not eighteen yet, they can’t.”

Yuriko giggled and nodded. “Sure, why not? It’ll be a nice start for next Season!”

And afterwards, the game got rowdier and raunchier as the night progressed, with the forfeits being clothes stripped next, and a few flirtatious acts afterwards, culminating in the cuddle pile Yuriko found herself in the next morning.

She sighed as she finished reviewing the night and wondered if the five of them would even remember anything when they awakened.

Hmmm, discretion seems to be in order! Yuriko carefully extracted herself from the pile, retrieved her shrug and her shoes, and beat a hasty retreat.

Unfortunately, Elemental Hearts and training as Magi made it incredibly difficult to forget things, so all five of them remembered the night.