Rachel hummed contemplatively for a little while, chewing it over.
"So-" I began.
"I'm still thinking it over," Rachel said.
I nodded, and went back to playing with her hair in silence.
"...Okay, I've got it," Rachel said. "I felt jealousy at the idea of you impregnating the High Priestess, realized that this meant I felt possessive and wanted you to impregnate me instead, but when I then considered being actually made into a beta or omega and actually impregnated, I found I didn't like the prospect, and yet... something about that sort of... breeding-focused sex, still appealed to me as a receiving alpha. Which... doesn't make sense."
"No, no, it does, perfectly," I said. "I've talked to plenty of trans women with breeding kinks who nonetheless do not actually want to have a uterus and actually be impregnated."
"I see, I see," Rachel said, nodding.
"Anyhow," I said. "I have no intention of becoming a parent anytime soon, and told Amelia that after Lucifer left. Even with the culture of parenthood here at the Temple being a very different one, what with children being raised communally by a department of volunteer nuns who specialize in developmental psychology, I'd still feel my own cultural obligations tugging at me, and feel like shit for ignoring them and not raising my kids. Even if I would be terrible at it and am aware of this."
"You would likely get better rather quickly," Rachel pointed out. "What with having a plus twenty bonus to your Learning skill, and your refusal to do anything by half."
"Ahhhh, but the thing is, I don't want to raise children," I said. "Which, generally, children are able to pick up on, and do not respond well to. See, the fact that children are people who grow up and have their own stories is something I'm quite aware of, being as I remember being a children at one point."
"The singular is-"
"I know what I said. Point is, I'm well aware of the potential consequences of my actions, and I look at that and say 'that sounds bad, I don't want to do that,' and then I don't."
"I suppose it is nice of you to exercise foresight and good judgement on some matters," Rachel mused.
"Anyway," I said. "I think that, tomorrow, we should start making some new friends."
"Ah," Rachel said. "Yes, that. I... may need your help with that."
"It should be fairly straightforward, I hope," I said. "I already know someone here who isn't our host- the alpha who loaned me an outfit for the duel- so we might as well go thank her for the loan and then talk to her about whatever it is she's interested in. Just follow my lead."
----------------------------------------
"-but," Kara said, staring at the schematic, "if the crank is at the zero or 180 point, and completely horizontal, getting the engine started would require the flywheel to be given a good kick in the right direction... which, a ha, which can be resolved by adding a second piston with a different timing!"
"Ideally you'd want it to be three or four pistons for that sort of thing," I added idly. "You also want the crankshaft and the flywheel to be well-balanced and all that, with the crank timings being equally spaced around the shaft. With a two-cylinder engine, that'd be 180 degrees apart, and... well, that doesn't completely solve the cold start problem, as you can imagine."
"Yes, yes, that makes sense," Kara said, nodding and scribbling down notes.
Kara was a Black Stone- that is to say, her primary affinity was earth, and her secondary affinity was void. She also seemed to be of the same general ethnicity as Duke Nukem and High Priestess Amelia, with pale skin and blonde hair, as well as a light smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose and the tops of her cheeks, a feature I'd seen a few times before on the much tanner natives- or so I assumed- of this land.
She was also, and this is why I had borrowed clothes from her in the first place, very curvy. Okay, sure, she wasn't a match for me- nobody was. But she was padded like an ideal omega, who'd then been stretched out an extra foot or so, and then had her pussy swapped out for a cock. Well, presumably. She was an alpha. She was sitting behind a desk- we were in her (admittedly rather cramped) personal chamber that served as a bedroom and an office/study- and as such I couldn't see the presence or absence of the customary dick bulge that I found I'd just sorta come to expect from this place.
I really hoped this bitch was gay too. Well, and that she got along with Rachel. Rachel might not have felt much from the High Priestess, but hopefully, with the extra height on Kara, Rachel would be eager to be the filling in an alpha sandwich.
"Well, that's helped me out tremendously with my thesis," Kara said, once she was done. "Thank you, Lucy. You truly are an angel."
She was, also, the equivalent of a graduate student; at twenty seven years old, I would guess she was getting towards the tail end of that. Back home, a bachelor's degree was usually completed at 22, and then grad school for a Master's followed by a PhD would take... fuck, honestly, I don't know. Durations ranged all over the place depending on what degree program you were doing, and where you were pursuing it, and your own personal life circumstances, and the phase of the moon. I've seen people say it took them nine years to get from BA to PhD, and I've seen people- mostly in STEM- claim that three to five years is the standard.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
And all that bullshit was on another planet with a different culture! Here, in the Grand Temple of Kotor, key education continued through the twenties, to the point that, apparently, the average new mother in here was a little over thirty. Hell, maybe the thesis isn't even the final step of the process around here, and Kara's still got a bunch of other shit to do. I didn't know, and honestly, I was scared to ask. Her subject was mechanical engineering, anyway, and that was a much safer line of conversation.
"Do you mind if I change the subject, and ask about some... potentially very basic things that I haven't yet had explained to me?" I asked. "Which..." I turned to glance at Rachel, whose eyes had glazed over about ten minutes ago. "May be necessary, to keep this one's attention?" I elbowed Rachel, who jerked and blinked herself awake.
"You've saved me a lot of time," Kara said, shrugging. "Fair's fair; that time is yours."
"So, where did all the blonde people come from?" I asked. "Were y'all just always here, or..."
"Ah, history," Kara said. "I wasn't a good student in history, so you should run all this by someone else just to be sure..."
"I know this history rather well, myself," Rachel said, finally with a subject matter she could engage with.
"You can chime in if she misses something important," I said, patting Rachel's shoulder before turning back to Kara. "We're here to make friends and get to know people, and cutting you out of the conversation would be counterproductive."
"Fair enough," Kara said. "Alright, so... Hrm... Up north, there is a cold, harsh land, where the sun never sets in the height of summer, and never rises in the depths of winter. It is one of the few naturally void-aspected lands, and it is in that land that the Northwomen originate. Even now, their ways are harsh and warlike, and every so often they throw off a band of roving warriors, sometimes to raid, sometimes to settle in another land and integrate themselves as a new power. And, here in Nukem, a little over six hundred years ago, one such band arrived here, in the midst of a war between the Kingdom of Tepes- which Nukem was once a part of- and a rival kingdom that has now fallen, whose location was not recorded. For their aid in the war, their leader, Rollo the Walker, was given the title of Duke of Nukem; in recognition of this, and to spite the homeland that had cast her out, Rollo declared her family line to now be named House Nukem, taking the land's name for their own."
"I see," I said, nodding. "So..."
"So, the Northwomen are most often pale and blonde, like myself," Kara said. "And that band of a few dozen Northwomen warriors who'd survived the war were well-regarded, and had no trouble at all sowing their seeds. Blondes still make up a minority of Nukem, but you will find much more of them in the aristocracy."
"And the clergy," Rachel added. "Being as blonde hair is a Northern trait, as is the void affinity."
"That too, yes," Kara said, nodding.
"Alright, well, that answers that question," I said. "But now I've got two questions- one I had before we started, and a new one I have from that story."
"You may as well ask the new one," Rachel said.
"Why did Nukem stop being a part of the Kingdom of Tepes?" I asked. "And what's its status now?"
"Ah," Kara said. "That..."
"I studied this story myself fairly recently, if I may?" Rachel proposed.
"Go ahead, please," Kara said, visibly relieved.
"Four hundred years ago, someone was summoned from another world in Tepes proper," Rachel said. "She called herself Malice. Much like you, she was an Archmage, but unlike you, she was an omega, and far more tolerant of the politics of the nobility. Soon enough, she married the Crown Prince... and, finally, made her play.
"Somehow, she had twisted her void magic, achieving strange, terrible, and unholy effects. Foremost among these was the curse of undeath, applied first to herself, giving our world its first vampire. She quickly spread her curse among the royal family, binding them in blood to her, but when she attempted to spread it among the rest of the nobility, everyone revolted at once, and the First Crusade began, putting the vampires to the sword. But, despite their thoroughness... the Crusaders missed a few.
"Ever since, the crownlands of Tepes have been ruled by vampire queens, ever trying to reclaim their former holdings with armies of the undead. Some of the former holdings swore fealty to other kings for protection. Some turned on each other to try to conquer their own kingdoms. And some, like Nukem, simply declared themselves sovereign, beholden to no liege, and carried on with business as usual." Rachel turned to Kara. "Did I miss anything?"
"There's rumors that the original vampire survived the First Crusade," Kara said. "They're apocryphal, but they are talked about."
"Mmm, fair," Rachel said. "I knew about those, but they didn't seem strictly germane, and..."
"Oh, for sure, the rumors should be first on the chopping block," Kara agreed. "But..."
"But, you have a point," Rachel said. "Yes, there are rumors that the current Queen of Tepes is the original Queen Malice, who somehow survived the First Crusade. Nobody has diplomatic contact with Tepes, however, and Queen Malice's ascension happened four hundred years ago. Nearly everyone who remembered what Malice looked like is long dead, and the few elves who might remember her have likely lost their wanderlust, and would be exceedingly difficult to get in front of the current Queen of Tepes to identify her."
"Fair enough," I said. "It'd be nice to talk to someone from the same world as me, but considering the whole, uh... well, everything she's done, I think maybe I can do without that. Alright, now for my last question: why are there so many betas in the clergy?"
"The short answer is, that's where the void-affinity betas get sent to, instead of adopted into the nobility as knights," Kara said. "Plus, when two betas have a kid together, they're always going to make another beta. Now, every now and then, a noble decides to retire from the nobility to instead become a nun, or an alpha or an omega are born from the union of a beta nun and someone from outside the clergy- again, usually a noble- and is raised by the temple. That second one is what happened to me, actually. But! Still, for the most part, betas predominate in the clergy. And while I could repeat to you what I've heard of the full story of this... well. I'm well aware you've made the acquaintance of the High Priestess herself. You'd be better off asking her."
"Fair enough," I said. "Alright, so. What do people around here typically do for mealtimes? How's that work?"
"There's a central kitchen, and a number of halls spread throughout the temple where food is delivered by runners in their void spaces, which they're trying to train up. A big bell is rung three times every day to announce that one should stop what they're doing and eat; food is available at all times, but the company of a shared mealtime is not, and that's important to us."
"And what's the food like? There was this fish stew I got to try at Manor Nukem that I really liked, and..."