I was in my house at the top of the "Fortress Nagini", as the lamia knights called my walled compound. One of the guards knocked on the open door. "Your Highness, you have a visitor."
I looked at the armored [Royal Lamia Knight]. She was wearing full plate armor on the upper humanoid body but her tail had no protection as she needed it for mobility, defense, and offense. And with the right perks, a lamia warrior's tail was as protected as an armored human. We had a hard time deciding if the armor should have a skirt or not. We tested several designs but in the end, we went with a miniskirt. The reason was a practical one as the junction between the snake tail and the torso was a weak point that could be stabbed from below by a skilled enemy. The skirt made that maneuver impossible.
It was also fashionable and quelled the criticism the bipeds had about half-naked snakes. Joke's on them, we are always half-naked. Even the town girls adopted that fashion. The lamias of Windemere wore miniskirts. And some of the most daring beast-kin girls adopted that trend and were also baring their "Zettai riooki" out there, much to the delight of the males and some females of culture. I'll be honest. Windemere was a furry geek's paradise.
"Have the visitor wait in the parlor. I'm going soon," I answered and the knight slithered away.
Bureaucracy was the malady of any sufficiently organized organization. Waste was the curse of all others. I put away the documents I was reviewing and went to the parlor. There I saw the familiar pointed ears of a Fulgen elf. He turned around and my jaw dropped. A face I hadn't seen in centuries, twenty-two incarnations ago. I shifted to the most adequate form to greet him and threw my arms around his neck. Even without my direct input, the disguise kit gave me black cat ears and a tail.
"Renyn!"
He laughed. Though he was called "The Poet of Pain", that elf was open to all kinds of emotions. I cried in his chest.
"Lily!" Renyn laughed and offered me a poem.
> Though her frail body endured great torment
> Her brave mind confronted darkest fears
> And her soul both grief and joy underwent
> She could still shed magnificent tears.
>
>
>
> Were her tears from sadness or joy?
> The foolish scholar couldn't contrive!
> To him, the answer proved elusive and coy
> That she'd shed 'em merely for being alive.
I hung from the tall elf's neck like a little girl. His melodic and well-modulated voice gave me goosebumps as he recited his poem. I laughed and cried in equal measures.
"Yes. Because we are both alive," I agreed with him.
"I missed you, child."
I let go of him and summoned a handkerchief. "How are you?"
The elf sat on the lounge couch and made himself comfortable.
"Oh, I was drearily bored until I got here. Sightseeing the world alleviated part of it, but I found it lacking in rich torment to feed my imagination. Petty men and monsters can only cause dull, gory torment. The common folk can't even understand why they suffer or what they can do to stop it. Nobles and Kings are too hedonistic and gluttonous. I can't bear them but I have to pay for my travel expenses. Maybe that was a kind of a pain in itself," He ranted and then met my eyes and his expression mellowed. "But I must admit my tastes have been tarnished by the most exquisite sufferer in this whole world."
I blushed. From him, that was a compliment.
"Do you want to hear a sad story?" I asked a rhetorical question. Renyn nodded and leaned forward, his elven ears twitching with eager anticipation.
I found in my old friend a confidant and my amateur shrink. I spent the next several hours telling everything to Renyn. From Apricot's struggles to keep her family together, Silverstreak to reunite with Nenandil and free the fairies, Alloralla torment as a banshee and rebirth as he knew about my brief tenure as Fulgen's ruler, Rosewise's attempts at finding a place to fit in.
Finally, I told him of my fifteen deaths at the hands of Bundeus's fanatics. Lakerta infancy in the necropolis. My journey to return to Windemere and reunite with my Queen. Lorna's twilight years when I had to live as a water elemental. Finally the fight against slavery and the death of a God.
He listened with a sympathetic smile. Putting everything out of my chest, baring my soul to Renyn. I told him of my fear of losing my identity, of becoming a monster. My worries about the future and my desire to see the nations and people I cared for thriving. I even used my hour of {Suppress Curse} to talk about Loki and the gods. Of how I feared they were scheming and toying with me, especially Loki.
He listened to everything without frowning or passing judgment. Then he spoke after a long spell of silence.
"You should take and complete that quest from the Mother."
I shook my head, "No way I'm either lying with a man or giving birth to a baby. Or being responsible for raising a child. Not with the risk that any given day, a dragon, a Demon Lord, or a deity will show up at my window and demand a fight."
He smiled wryly. "I understand your disgust for the more... carnal and fleshy aspects of femininity. You have a unique viewpoint as you lived both sides of the coin. I won't dispute that. But what's wrong with raising a child? Girl, you populated this nation with your children."
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He chortled and then added," I saw how the beast-kin and silk-folk of Windemere worship their 'Matriarch' Lily."
I paused to figure out if he was just saying my name or stating that Lily was their matriarch. It didn't matter if there was a comma there or not.
I also thought about the quest. What Yznera wanted was simple. She wanted the bloodline of the star elves back. The genetic key to its revival lied with me. While I was not ready to be a parent, much, much less a mother, I found that I was comfortable with fulfilling the spirit of the quest but not the letter. If that was the case, all I had to do was to see if Yznera was up to change it. I wouldn't experience the more carnal and fleshy aspects of femininity if I could avoid and/or fight back.
"I need to ask Yznera if she is amenable to amending the quest. Then I had to go to Fulgen."
"We could go together," Renyn offered. "It's been a few centuries since I've set foot there."
I grinned, "Oh, yes. I bet there will be a ton of elven princesses wetting their panties for the great 'Poet of Torment'."
He rolled his eyes, "Yes. That's the thing I want to see. The plague you unleashed upon Fulgen. The Forest wanted their Princess, you surely delivered."
Renyn knew how to not tug at a person's strings but to play them like a lyre. He teased well within each person's tolerance. That and he also had that blasted {Pinnacle of Charisma} Perk.
"I'm going to open a fae gate to go to Fulgen. Or a series of fae gates. If you can wait, I'll take you with me."
He seemed excited to teleport instead of taking a boat through dangerous seas. "When do we leave?"
"In a few years," I answered with a neutral expression, trying to gauge his reaction. "I still have some minor tasks to do here in Windemere."
He sounded relieved. "Oh, great! I was afraid I wouldn't have time to see everything this nation had to offer."
I chuckled. Elves and their skewed sense of time.
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Even with Renyn loose in Windemere, stirring all sorts of trouble, my life fell into a routine. At first, I often went flying around the borders, scanning our neighbors, trying to locate groups of refugees coming toward us, and clearing the roads of bandits. It should be the job of our neighboring countries, but who cares. I trained more kin and lamias, along with some silk-folk to become knights. Over the next few years, I graduated two classes of ninety knights each year, all of them level sixty-one. And I broke a few curses along the ride.
> Your Curse {Unskilled III} was downgraded to {Unskilled II}
>
> Your Curse {Unskilled II} was downgraded to {Unskilled I}
>
> Your Curse {Unskilled I} was lifted.
>
> Your curse {Greater Decrepitude} was downgraded to {Major Decrepitude}
>
> Greater Decrepitude (very rare): Your maximum physical Attributes are your racial average plus ten.
The immigration of escaped slaves ended. The many kingdoms were rebuilding what was destroyed and lost. Most temples dedicated to Bundeus were repurposed as temples of Galbarar and Yznera, the two biggest winners in the race to occupy the vacuum left by the dead God. In fact, most priests of Bundeus converted into priests of Yznera... that was odd. But I was assured by the System there were no more priests of Bundeus in the world.
> Your Perk: {Favored Enemy [Church of Bundeus]} is scheduled for removal due to obsolescence. At this time, you can choose to keep it, or select another favored enemy.
The choice was easy. Keeping the Perk was useless. Bundeus was not coming back. And I needed to find blue and white lamias. When I tried, it refused my choice. The System didn't let me pick my own species or another Perk. I'd like that suggestion from Nenandil to let her use my item box. I ended up choosing {Favored Enemy [Giants]}.
The enchanted wall around Dragonfall Valley was finally complete. It would create a "safer" corridor along the wall where delving parties could move along without engaging hordes of monsters and also focused the leaking spiritual energy inward, increasing the spawn rate. While an increased spawn rate was usually bad for a Dungeon, the open nature of Dragonfall and the proximity to the capital worked well for Dragonfall.
Delvers usually had to walk in dark tunnels for days to reach their favored hunting spots. And the tunnels hid dangers like an ambush from both monsters and delver murderers. In Dragonfall, one could make the trip back and forth in a single day, hunt in the open, and have the walls and the garrison as a safety net. It was a paradise of a Dungeon. Unless there was some burrowing or stealthy monster, you wouldn't be ambushed.
Adventurers from all the continent wanted to try it. The newly created immigration office was swamped with requests. Not even raising the taxes for foreigners dulled their enthusiasm. I felt bittersweet for cleaning the site of my fight with Bundeus before it could evolve into another such Dungeon. On one hand, we could have two of them. On the other hand, we would have two of them and one in a less defensible position. Sadian or another neighbor could very well invade to capture that spot. Dragonfall was in Windemere's backyard. An invader would have to go through the whole country to capture it.
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With Dragonfall secured and bringing wealth to the nation in the form of magic cores and monster bodies, it was time to expand Windemere east and up the mountain. It fell on me to trailblaze a path to the secret valley deep in the mountains. I studied the maps I'd drawn from firsthand observations flying over the mountains. I had to make seventy kilometers of the road up the foothills. Much longer as a straight road would be too steep.
But not without scouting it first. Clad in my favorite bird shape, I flew there. The valley was stunningly beautiful. Several rivers and streams fed the lake in the middle but there was no obvious outlet for the water. It probably rushed into the bedrock and emptied in an underground river. Forested and plains zones created habitats for several creatures. A herd of deers, bears, and very strangely, no monsters.
I spent a few days flying over the valley. I couldn't sense a single monster. Not even the ubiquitous horned al-Mi'raj rabbits. No sentients, either. It was an animal paradise, a wildlife preserve. I almost felt bad for tainting the place with people.
I landed in the middle of the plains and took my normal shape. Nenandil flew around me.
"What is the secret of this place?" I asked the fairy. "It is too idyllic to be real. And I can't find any signs of a guardian."
"The magic here is strange too," Nenandil replied. "Too dense. Too saturated."
Now that she mentioned, I could sense it too. My {Magic Wellspring} usually created that kind of distortion around me so I didn't pay attention to it. This whole place had a natural high magic density. Another enigma, as these kinds of spots, are highly contested. I immediately remembered McCalister and the academy. They came to Windemere to study and teach magic under the influence of my Wellspring, then mistaken for a natural phenomenon. Well, here was the real deal.
I cupped my hands, "HELLO? Guardian of the Valley? We wish to talk!"
Another thing. The Black Dragon King must've known this place. He flew over the mountains to fight me. There was no way to not see this valley from above. With this dense magic, why hadn't he settled in here? There must be a guardian. An elusive or maybe shy one that wouldn't challenge visitors unless they caused some damage. And neither Nenandil nor me would commit such a crime.
I tried shouting again, "I wish to know if this valley is claimed. Otherwise, I'm going to bring people to live here."
That got a reaction. I felt a pulse of divine energy as it passed through me and was siphoned. A presence and a male elderly voice came from behind me.
"Greetings, visitor from another world."