Useless. Absolutely useless. I watched through one way glass as Goatee, Balta Baker as I’d learned from the interrogation, writhed under the touch of a second-circle pain spell. I’d thought it would be satisfying to see them suffer, to teach them the cost of touching what was mine, but any vindictive pleasure I’d felt had fled after the first few hours. Now… I just felt tired.

This was so pointless. We weren’t going to get anything else useful out of these men, not with the means at our disposal. They were already dead in all but practice, only kept alive by whatever last scraps of information the Earthshadow interrogators were hoping to squeeze out of them.

I slumped back in one of the heavy armchairs Adonia had asked the servants to drag down to her family’s dungeons and closed my eyes, even while my mana sense continued to keep careful watch over the three tightly bound prisoners in the neighboring rooms. Adonia was long gone, she’d stuck around for the initial interrogation but had gone slightly green and rushed out of the room once things had turned a little more messy. It was good to know she had such a weak stomach for the future, but I couldn’t be bothered to look forward to when that information might be useful. Not right now.

I suppressed a sigh and mentally adjusted one of my protective spells. Instantly, the muffled shrieks and screams coming through the glass faded into a mild buzz of white noise. That was better. His voice was getting rather grating, though it was still less annoying than Glasses’ obnoxious whining and high pitched begging. Neither Briella nor Cayla’s screams had been half as unpleasant as this.

To pass the time, I began to silently go over the scraps of information we had managed to get out of the three thugs-for-hire. I’d had such high hopes when we’d first gotten them down into the dungeon, a circle of truth that I’d prepared the day before already waiting for them. That had faded quickly once I’d found just how many oaths of secrecy the three fucks had willingly sworn themselves to.

Despite hours of torture and interrogations, all we’d found was that none of them could tell us anything of value even if they wanted to. They couldn’t say who hired them, what they had been hired to do, how they were hired, or much of anything else really. The closest we’d gotten was when Goatee had managed to mouth something about a bird at a pub, but that wasn’t particularly helpful. There were a lot of pubs on the island, and we weren’t even sure that was in any way applicable to what we were looking for. He had clammed up immediately afterward and hadn’t said a word since one way or another.

The documents we’d found had been barely any better. The majority of it was related to prior contracts, some sales records, and a surprising amount of stores and other property that the trio appeared to own or have stakes in. Apparently, they’d been rather smart with their money, investing it back into a number of businesses to give them perfectly legitimate funds to operate with. A lot of their ‘work’ had been done on commission from one of those businesses, doing such things as procuring reagents, guarding shipments, and something that was labeled as ‘scouting competitors’.

We’d found a few things that looked promising, a few recent payments that lined up marginally well with when Lea had been attacked, but I was skeptical of how helpful they would be. There was a long list of obvious pseudonyms, ‘Rocky’, ‘Whitebird’, ‘Boots’, and so on, each charged for simply ‘services rendered’. Very useful, I was sure. Maybe there was something I wasn’t seeing, but I just didn’t know what we could do with such vague information.

I exhaled loudly. This was a waste of time. I stood up and turned to the maid Adonia had assigned to guide me when I was inside the estate. She was a young, meek looking woman, though no amount of makeup and simple clothing could hide the second-circle core spinning slowly inside her chest. I didn’t buy her act for a moment, she was clearly some sort of disguised guard, and I doubted she was a day under forty.

“Let's go,” I told her, “I need to go talk to Adonia.”

She turned away from the wall she’d been facing and the feigned trembling of her shoulders stilled, “Ah-ah-of course, sir. The Heiress is likely in her rooms. This way.” She really was quite committed to the role, the small flinches every time one of the interrogators evoked a particularly loud scream were especially compelling.

I let her lead me out of the dungeon and up several narrow flights of stairs. We were rather deep underground, at least four floors beneath the already rather large mansion. My mana sense wasn’t particularly good for fine detail outside of things filled with mana, but the difference between rock and air was still noticeable due to the sluggish way mana moved through solid matter and I could feel vast amounts of mostly open space on either side of me. The land under the manor was absolutely riddled with tunnels and passageways.

As we moved higher, rough stone walls were replaced by fine marble and polished granite hung with paintings and tapestries. Clearly that area was not something the Earthshadows liked to advertise to their guests.

As my guide had guessed, Adonia was in her large suite of rooms. I could clearly sense her lying down through the wall on my left. However, there seemed to be something of a snag in my plan to speak with her.

“Our lady is otherwise occupied,” the guard outside her door told my guide briskly, “come again another time."

My guide turned to look at me, an apologetic look on her face and her mouth open to say something, but I cut her off. “I need to leave soon and this won’t take long. Could you tell Adonia I would like to speak with her?”

The guard’s nose wrinkled and he straightened his back and turned to face me. “Our lady,” he began, putting special emphasis on the first word, “commanded that she not be disturbed. You may wait and she will make time for you when she so chooses.”

Ugh. “Could you just pass a message that I–”

“Heiress Earthshadow commanded that she not be disturbed,” the guard all but growled, leaning forward menacingly. Wonderful, just wonderful.

“I just wanted to discuss our next steps now that–”

“And you can do so later.” He sniffed dismissively, “Regardless, I do not see reason to bother our lady with such trivialities. I am sure one of her attendants shall be more than enough to debrief you. Perhaps––”

He continued speaking, but I ignored him as I suddenly realized what this was. I could feel Adonia moving around in the other room, so she was clearly neither sleeping nor doing anything particularly important. In fact, as far as I could tell she was listening to something, our conversation out here perhaps? This was one of those stupid games that nobles liked to play. She was trying to assert dominance in some odd, backwards fashion. Great. She’d been mostly dealing with me straight so far, but apparently now that we’d made some progress it was time to start the one-upmanship.

Well, whatever she was playing at, I didn’t particularly feel like dealing with it today. “Very well,” I told the guard, interrupting him mid word, “you can inform the heiress that I shall return when I am next available.” I turned away and began walking down the hall towards where I knew the stairwell was.

After a moment, the fake maid hurried after me, but I didn’t bother slowing down so she could catch up. I’d spoken with Lea earlier in the afternoon and she’d been planning to get some more sleep, so there was no point going to see her now. Similarly, I was pretty sure I’d gotten all I was going to get out of men and I no longer felt any particular need to personally punish them for their actions. Adonia’s men had already done plenty to ensure they would regret it with every fiber of their being before they died. It had been a long day already and I wasn’t going to be wasting my time with this garbage as well. I would come back in a day or two and see if she was willing to act like a normal person.

I arrived at my room feeling tired, frustrated, and just overall in a bad mood. Between the fighting this morning, listening to hours of interrogations, and now wasting most of another two hours taking the long way around Avalon to avoid an all out brawl that had broken out between a dozen or so fifth and sixth years.

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It was strange, it felt like I had made so much progress, and I had, yet it seemed like we’d accomplished so little. Sure I’d finally tracked down and captured the men who had beaten and raped my closest friend, but that didn’t change the fact those things had already happened to her. Worse, I was no closer in finding the person, or people, ultimately responsible for what had happened and now down my most promising lead.

I needed to calm down, take some time to unwind and relax. Perhaps I could have a lazy evening, read something interesting with a cup of tea and some dessert from the cafeteria maybe? That idea was immediately replaced by something slightly less calming but no less relaxing when I stepped into my room to find Rea enthusiastically harvesting Mistletoe wearing nothing but a broad smile and a narrow band of cloth to hold her chest in place.

I looked silently between Rea, the large stone rod slick with glimmering pink fluids clutched in her hand, and Mistltoe’s plump, quivering backside, and suddenly I knew exactly how I was going to relax tonight. It was still rather early in the evening and not only was tomorrow Sunday, but I had cleared nearly my entire weekend just in case the situation with the thugs had taken longer than anticipated. My lips involuntarily curved up into a small smile. Yes, this was an excellent idea.

The door slammed closed behind me and I focused on my favorite purple-skinned pet. “Rea,” I began gently, “be a dear and get that lovely backside ready for me, hmm?”

“Yes Master, this slave obeys.”

“Good girl, good girl. When you’re done with that, make sure you’re ready to go too. I think someone’s earned themselves a bit of a reward.”

“Yes Master!”

She got to work with renewed enthusiasm, a nearly manic grin on her face as she used the juices splattered across her arms and still gushing from Mistletoe’s abused lower-lips to ensure the elf’s other hole was properly lubricated. It made for quite a show, particularly once Rea noticed that I was still watching and added some additional bouncing to her efforts. My pet might not be as stacked as Miranda or my cows, but it still made for a compelling show.

I stripped quickly and reluctantly turned away from the spectacle and stepped out of the room to get washed up. I doubted that Rea would have minded me just the way I was and I would probably need to clean up again afterwards, but I didn’t think I could properly enjoy my evening without washing away the last remnants of the day’s activities. It wasn’t really a physical thing, between my temperature-adjusting circulations and the protective spells I’d been sustaining throughout the entire day I didn’t think I’d really gotten dirty or anything, but I’d found over the last two years that a hot shower had its own ways of calming me down.

I came back a few minutes later, skin flushed red from the pounding heat of the shower, to find a now fully-naked Rea waiting for me. The cup of tea I’d been fantasizing about on the way back to my room was waiting for me beside her, resting just out of the way on a small table. She really was a treasure.

I was slightly surprised to see that she wasn’t holding it on a tray, she seemed to disdain using furniture when her body would do the job, but it didn’t take long to realize why she’d made such an unusual choice. Rea was kneeling on a small throw-rug just outside the bathroom, her knees spread widely and chest thrust proudly forward. That was all pretty normal behavior for her, but this time the effect was amplified by the metal bands around her wrists that held her arms behind her back in a tight reverse-prayer position. Ah, I’d been wondering what she’d done with the old prototype she’d asked for.

It was certainly a good look on her, the dark metal contrasting wonderfully with the pale purple of her skin and the rosy blush on her cheeks. “Very nice pet,” I told her appreciatively, then demonstrated as much by leaning over and gently running my finger up through the valley of her breasts. “Dessert tonight looks positively scrumptious.”

I placed a gentle kiss on her forehead and she shuddered faintly under my touch, chest heaving as her breath hitched. Lovely, now I could have some fun and leave her to marinate in her own arousal. Experience told me it would only make the payoff even more intense for her. It was more efficient that way.

Moving over to my cows, I could see that Rea had gone above and beyond what I’d asked of her as she so often did. Both of the restrained elves had been thoroughly warmed up, brought right to the edge of ecstacy without letting them push over that peak. Rea had discovered weeks ago that doing so over and over increased productivity by nearly thirty percent, though eventually they got to such a hair trigger that even just the light breeze from the door opening could get them off. More relevantly for right now, it also made them far more responsive and fun to play with.

I stopped behind Verdan, gently running my hands along the smooth, soft skin of her ample cheeks. My fingers sank easily into impossibly durable flesh and I marveled at how skin that could shrug off magic and steel like water could feel so perfect. Sometimes, it really did feel like elves had been made for this. It wasn’t like they were good for much of anything else.

One hand went up, then came back down, the loud slap of flesh on flesh echoing in the nearly silent room. Despite putting enough force to seriously injure a normal person into the strike, Verdan certainly didn’t seem to mind, her dripping slit clenching and unclenching around nothing but air.

That was anothering interesting tidbit that Rea had noticed. Initially, it had only been Mistletoe that had responded so positively to pain during harvesting. After a few weeks however, the efficiency of less extreme methods had petered off and she had begun to use the metal cane, chain whip, heavy clamps, and other tools I’d made for her on both cows.

Between everything that had been going on, I hadn’t given the change much thought. It wasn’t like any of them could permanently damage someone as durable as an elf, though I did make a note to ensure Rea knew not to use some of them on any of our more mundane guests. The chain whip in particular left angry red lines and welts along every inch of exposed skin when wielded with all of Rea’s boundless enthusiasm and I had a feeling a human would have been left rather worse off than that.

Still, it was an interesting change that really did deserve more attention than I had been giving it. My elves in general deserved more attention, they were my most valuable resource and I had been all but ignoring them for most of the time since they’d been acquired. Sure I had Rea making sure that their milking and feeding was continuing without interruption, but they had so much more than that to offer me. I hadn’t even looked at their inborn circulations in weeks, despite it having been one of the major focuses of my magical research and practice for as long as I had been at Avalon.

I sighed, my hands clenching tightly into the flesh of Verdan’s ass. Things just… kept getting away from me. I had suddenly gone from having plenty of time to study, practice, and pursue personal projects to frantically jumping from one thing to another. I needed to make a change, but I just didn’t know how too. I just… didn’t know what to do. What I should be doing.

I wish dad was here. He’d always known what to do. I missed him. Even after all these years, I missed him so much. I missed all of them. I missed the way dad would pick me up and spin me around whenever I got something right during our lessons. I missed the way mom would pull me into her lap and hum songs as she rocked me beside the fireplace. I missed Aunty Sweetglass’ hugs, how she would ruffle my hair and give me sweet treats fresh out of the oven.

Oh, how I loathed the bastard Lord Seatamer. I had hated those men that had hurt Lea, but watching the Earthshadow men torture them for information had grown distateful after the first few hours. Him? He deserved an eternity of suffering. Every agony I could inflict on him, every cruel ritual or torture I’d found in the library of Avalon, he’d earned every drop and more. Even before Lea had told me her story, I’d known that some day I would find him and I would make him regret the day he was born. No, not just him. I would find whatever bastard had sired him, whatever dog-whore had birthed him, and teach them the true meaning of pain. After? Well, I couldn’t say I cared much about the fate of a few girls I’d never met or heard of before, but touching my sweet, innocent Lea was unforgivable. I would…

I was pulled out of my thoughts by Rea’s voice, calling out softly behind me. “Master?” she repeated for what I realized must be the third or fourth time. “Master? Are… are you…”

I turned my head to see her half-standing on her little rug, body leaning precariously towards me as though she couldn’t decide whether it was safe to approach. Behind the slavish devotion, I could see a look of worry and concern in her eyes, and even the pleasant smile she always wore was missing.

My shoulders slumped and for the first time I noticed the oppressive weight of mana hanging in the air. Thick, billowing clouds of it were flowing like smoke out of my skin and the entire room felt cold and clammy. With a start, I noticed that my reserves were nearly fully depleted, the mana I’d kept in reserve throughout the day now spread like a dark cloud around me. I clamped down on my core in an instant and exhaled loudly.

“I’m fine,” I said quietly. “Everything… its fine.” I paused for a long moment, breathing deeply and evenly as I did my best to absorb as much of the mana in the air as I could. It was already deaspecting rapidly, collapsing back into simple ambient mana, but the echo of my former control over it still let me regenerate slightly faster than I would normally be able to manage. “Thank you Rea,” I whispered.

Rea’s smile returned, but I could still see some lingering worry. “Yes, Master. This slave is sorry for overstepping. Should this slave…”

“You’re alright,” I told her quickly. “Just… give me a few minutes. You’re a good girl, Rea. A really good girl.”

“Thank you, Master.”