It turned out Jax’s default of sex-first-ask-questions-later had not totally screwed us. Her skill upgrades had simply randomized, which was coincidentally becoming something of a default around here. And given the ancient and unnamed ‘thing’ that was purportedly responsible for handling these important life transitions—at least for us—I was beginning to suspect random was once the order of the day for all of Vrekfren. Honestly, I would not have minded it so much had that still been the case, but that everyone else got to pick gave it just that extra squeeze of lemon juice right to the eye.

  As a summon… or a demonic race… or whatever we were calling it today, Jax only received two skill upgrades to my three, making them all the more precious in their distribution, but I was trying not to fixate on that. Overall, her skills were a good mix of offensive and quasi-defensive abilities, with only the one or two that would have been a real gut-punch had they been picked—namely anything involving her end of the Ailment-conversion chain—but after Mia had finished her report, I began to suspect I had been too hasty in crossing my fingers.

  The first skill to receive a Mark upgrade was Shadow Shift, which let Jax temporarily convert some of her mass into a brackish smoke. Mostly, it eased physical feats like jumping impossibly high, changing directions on a dime, or taking falls without grievous injury; but she could also use it to slip through small cracks, given time and patience. None of which was shouting for improvement.

  Like… Tenebrous Dance, for example. Her literal primary weapon skill. But whatever! It was out of my hands.

  However, at Mark II, the skill was kind of nuts. Instead of converting some of her mass, it let her convert all of it, effectively taking a skill that was only useful for getting around a little better and turning it into something with the potential for some serious defense. My girl could become insubstantial. At will!

  Sort of.

  To be sure, it was not instantaneous, and the few minutes we spent messing around with it, just lounging on the bed, revealed there to be some definite skill involved. With practice, she was able to let my hand pass through hers unimpeded, provided I moved slowly enough for her to react, so the potential was there to avoid attacks. And movement in smoke-form seemed at least theoretically possible, if far too difficult to master in a single sitting. But she was not about to start phasing through solid walls.

  All of which was a wonderful, if unexpected, addition to her arsenal.

  Then there was My Claws Hunt for Master. Again, not exactly S-tier material for potential skill upgrades, it was her ever-inconsistent ability to drain the Life from her targets on a successful attack. That inconsistency had long since led to our investment in supplemental abilities, from the aforementioned Ailment-conversion chain to literally consuming money, but it had come in clutch once or twice.

  Mark II, though, had some rather curious effects on the skill. For one, it changed ‘on attack’ to ‘on touch.’ Which… okay? There was not much difference between the two in a fight, but if she were trying to assassinate someone in a crowd, there might be the potential to drain them and slip away unnoticed. Which probably would not even kill them, come to think of it. It only drained a single ‘unit’ of Life at a time—about a single Toughness point’s worth, by my reckoning—so they would have to be on the brink of starvation. And it still would have come down to luck for the thing to actually fire… were it not for a strange little addition. If the target was affected by Lust, Jax could now activate the skill at will.

  And that was just about the closest a person could get to a full-on Succubus Drain ability without the copulation requirement.

  “Mia…” I began, pensively tapping my fingers together in a tee-pee beneath my nose, “I know you said you had nothing to do with it, but… I just don’t see how else this could have happened. You’re sure neither you nor Xhinn had any part in changing that skill?”

  “Mmm~ My lord… your voice crawls through me like a—” she let out a dainty little cough, “that is… no. Or yes. Quite sure. The Fifth may yet tread upon the fabric of your dreams, but she has no access beyond that. And I would never make a change of that nature without our First’s express permission.”

  “I dunno what ye be puckered about, Master,” Jax opined. “Sounds a fine idea to me. We already feed on the stuff. Why not give ‘er a skill to help wash it down?”

  I favored her with a bit of a side-eye. “I only feed off of Lust secondhand, thank you very much. And you’re right, it should make for an excellent skill combo. But that’s just it. It’s too good… too thematically on-point. That doesn’t just happen randomly.”

  “Doubtless, my lord,” Mia agreed, letting me know by tone if not by content that I was on the right track, but further queries in that vein were likely to be heavily censored. “Though I can assure you, at least as far as what skills were selected, they were absolutely random. That stuff was all over the place.”

  That stuff, huh? I decided not to ask about that, either.

  “Speaking of…” I gave the area another quick once over, “any idea where our stuff went?”

  “Arx were carrying it,” Jax reminded me.

  “Ah.” I grimaced. Hopefully, that would not come back to bite us. “And what about your new tag along?”

  Jax sighed and flicked her fingers. “Just there, Master,” she said with total nonchalance. “Been there the while, she has. Waiting patient-like.”

  Frowning, I followed her pointed digits toward the foot of the bed, then rolled that way so I could look over the lip. Sure enough, there Fekinell was… but she was not so much waiting as she was helplessly imprisoned. The poor woman was curled into a fetal position within what looked to be a gerbil cage the size of a steamer trunk.

  “The hell? How long were you planning on lying there without saying something?”

  The aquamarine-haired laoi tilted her head upward with an almost liquid serenity until our eyes met. Her irises had a shine to them now. Almost a silvery glow.

  “It seemed… a sacrilege to interrupt,” she explained.

  And that was all she said. She just kept on lying there. Staring at me.

  I quirked an eyebrow. I had known this woman for all of ten minutes, but that was plenty to see that something was off. Her voice was… deeper now. Confident. But more significantly, she had used an entirely separate accent—and this had been the first and only time she had met my eyes without flinching.

  “O…kay?”

  Silvered eyes… new accent… If I was right in my were-something-or-other theory, she was definitely showing signs. And no wonder. The Dungeon was the literal moon! But no claws? No fur? Not even a hint of eldritch monstrosity crawling around beneath her skin? This can’t be the extent of it. Maybe… she’s on the verge of transforming? Or maybe she’s partially transformed, but the cage is preventing it from going all the way.

  Not that it was much of a cage. Fanciful and golden though it might be, the bars were so thin even a bird could have eventually worked its way free.

  “Well, we’re done now, so… can you break loose?”

  She replied by way of tapping one of the bars, which hissed and spit at her angrily before unleashing a fierce bolt of electricity through her finger. Fekinell did not so much as flinch. Her silvered eyes just pulled away from mine to stare at her now-blackened hand. And then the black flaked away, leaving pristine skin behind.

  I nodded. Okay, yep. Monster.

  By that point, Jax had rolled off the bed as well and made her way around to our other side.

  “There be a keyhole here, Master,” she informed me, squatting to inspect the cage door. “Looks like Xyn were right: the Demon Queen ain’t keen on no Servants from other goddesses following us about.”

  Groaning, I flopped onto my back and sighed. “Great.”

  I guess it could be worse. We know where the cage is, at least.

  “Insult,” Ell protested. Her voice still retained that liquid coolness, but it was now colored by a faint hint of emotion—the first I had heard from her since awakening. “Base insult. I Serve not the Five.”

  “Maybe so, Ell,” I returned, grudgingly swinging my feet over the side of the bed to stand. “But Ahnbe gave you to us. Unfortunately, that makes you a central game piece in a divine pissing match. Sorry.”

  Fekinell’s silvered eyes followed me around the side of her cage for a moment before squeezing shut, as though finally succumbing to discomfort. But she did not lament her fate.

  “Our lord is mighty to wield the Destroyer’s name so cavalier. How came he this knowledge?”

  Jax glanced between us in confusion. “Be ye asking me or him?”

  “I would not dare address our lord directly, mistress mine,” Ell explained.

  A toothy sort of grin stretched across Jax’s face. “Ho? Mannered cunt, ain’t ye. Trying to butter me up so I’ll let ye call me how ye like? Ye’d do better wondering what me flaps taste of, hen.”

  “To answer your question,” I began, hastily cutting off that line of conversation, “she told me herself. As did the Demon Queen. The two of them have been arguing over who gets to keep me as a… follower or something. You are the Shepherdess’s latest argument.”

  Fekinell took a moment to let that sink in, then glanced thoughtfully at her confines. “I see.”

  Still grinning, Jax made to slap the top of the cage before thinking better of it. “No worries, barra. The master and I’ll have ye out of there quick-like.”

  Fekinell looked from her mistress to the lock with the faintest hint of pensiveness creasing her brow. “As you say… Mistress.”

  Then she closed her eyes, apparently settling in to wait.

  Jax snorted dismissively before coming to her feet and sauntering closer to me. “Bloody Servants,” she grumbled under her breath. “Mistress this. Mistress that. Ye tell ‘em, but do they listen? More trouble’n they’s worth, ye ask me.”

  A beat passed, completely deadpan.

  Then I swiveled on a heel and made my way toward the far end of the ‘room.’

  The walls were nothing more than a series of spike-leafed hedges that had been allowed to grow together. Whatever species they were, their tops had been cropped at a perfect ninety-degree angle and at a height even an Olympic pole vaulter would have difficulty clearing. That was not much of a hurdle for us, of course. I had my levitation spell, and Jax could have made her way to the top even before her skill had upgraded. Now, she could pass through the branches and spiky leaves of our confines with little difficulty—provided there were no magical shenanigans afoot. You never knew. However, there were a couple of installations that I wanted to investigate before we turned to creative solutions.

  On one side, there was what I took to be a door, just an upright rectangle carved a few centimeters into the topiary, with a crystal mounted in its center in the shape of an elegantly rounded heart. And on the opposite wall was its exact replica, but upside down. The tethers in my gut told me Lynnria was in the direction of the heart, while Arx would be somewhere past the, uh…

  Hmm. What do you call an upside-down heart?

  “Tits or arse, eh?” Jax mused, slapping me in the face with the answer with the grace of a wet codfish. “Ye think the Queenie be asking yer preference?”

  Of course. What did you expect?

  “I wouldn’t say I have one,” I returned idly. “It’s more important they be in proportion.”

  “But ye’d like ‘em bigger, if ye had the choice. Eh?” she asked, elbowing me.

  “A nice healthy size, sure,” I admitted. Shape trumped size, after all, and too much of a good thing absolutely existed. “But I don’t see the connection She’s making. Arx wins in both categories over Lynnria.”

  Jax grunted sourly. “Aye, that’ll happen when ye start with Stats like she did, the cheating cunt.”

  “Don’t be bitter. You think she’s hot, too.”

  “That don’t mean I want her hotter’n me!”

  I rolled my eyes, amused at the old argument, but I was afraid that if I let her drag me into it again, I might let her big surprise slip.

  “Well, let’s see if these crystals can shed some light on things, shall we?”

  So saying, I moved to Arx’s side.

  “Ah ha!” Jax crowed. “I knew it were tits.”

  I sighed. “Okay, fine… maybe… by a hair.”

  You could grow a truly excellent backside with enough work, but the perfect bosom required talent! Not here, of course, but my monkey brain had yet to catch up with the times.

  “Uh huh… Ye should know better than to hide things from yer Jax, Master.” She spread her hands mysteriously. “I sees all!”

  The urge to smile came and went without the slightest crease of my cheeks. “Yes, dear…”

  A gentle tap of the crystal prompted a dull vibration to ring out, which slowly morphed into an ethereal voice.

  "A path ahead, both lush and fair,

  Yet lurking teeth will bring despair.

  Tread with care, for the softest bloom,

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Holds the key to the darkest doom.

  To claim the prize, you must decide—

  Will beauty live, or will it die?"

  I pursed my lips as the voice faded away—one of Xyn’s many sisters, I assumed.

  “Huh. That’s… ambiguously disturbing.”

  Shaking my head, I moved to the second crystal, hoping that on hearing its clue, the two might help unravel each other’s mysteries.

  "A mighty roar blocks passage true,

  With claws that strike and strength undue.

  Yet whisper soft, and waters wake,

  A gift to drink—but not to take.

  Should courage bloom where wisdom fades,

  The way ahead will soon be made."

  My hands fell to my hips. “Well, Jax, what’s your all-seeing eye telling you now? Should we go with the lurking teeth or the claws with strength undue?”

  My lover let one of her fangs dimple her lower lip thoughtfully before answering, “Ye know me, Master. I ain’t one fer a bunch of sneak-some bollocks… unless we’s the ones what’s sneaking. But that first one said sommat about a Key, did it nay?”

  I glanced at Fekinell and her cage unconsciously as I summoned up the line in question. She looked like she could be asleep. Or dead.

  “The softest bloom holds the key to the darkest doom?”

  It was possible. That line about letting beauty live or die also seemed to line up with Jax’s theory—not that Fekinell was much of a beauty. Meanwhile, the opposite path was clearly the way out. But if the Demon Queen had meant it that way, why were Arx and Lynnria separated? I would have thought She would lead me away from the Key, not force me toward it.

  “I don’t know if we’re meant to take that literally, Jax. If so, opening the cage might not be the greatest of ideas.”

  Hmm… bloom is in both riddles too, now that I think about it. Something about flowers? My eyes skipped to the nightstand by the bed and then to the vase above it. Maybe the roses were a clue?

  “Bah! Ell be harmless as a shaking babe.” Jax hesitated, then gave the cage and its occupant a quick glance of her own. “To us, anyhow. But, er… no harm in taking a gander down both paths before we commit. Eh?”

  If my last Dungeon adventure had taught me anything, taking a gander could absolutely harm. Unfortunately, the only thing my intuition was telling me was that we were going to have to conquer each of them, one way or the other—just not in which order.

  “I’ll let you pick, then. But be ready for anything before you open it.”

  Jax nodded and, after a moment’s deliberation, moved to the crystalline breasts, just as I had. I opted not to comment on how that might reflect on her own preferences.

  As she summoned her weapon, I began putting what defensive spells I could into place. Her claws and axe gained the deadly sheen of Detonating Sap Varnish, and the feel of enhanced accuracy stole over my limbs. But Fortunate Shadows was completely useless in this light. There were no shadows we could benefit from. Sadly, that meant Jax’s combat style, which functioned by obscuring her strikes within the surrounding gloom, would be equally blunted.

  If I had a skill point left, I might have attempted to counter that… but I was glad the option was not open to me, for once. At this stage of my career, I should be shoring up my strategy into something truly formidable, not jumping to fill every little weakness. So I let it lie. And with a glance, I signaled Jax my readiness.

  The door swung open with only the faint sound of leaves catching against one another to mark the event. Beyond laid a path that seemed similar enough to where we were now. Tall hedges on either side. Flowers of every description serving as a colorful trim to the perennial walls. The manicured lawn gave way to a stretch of packed gravel with wide paver stones. And in the distance, there was an innocuous-seeming left-hand turn. All seemed completely harmless, not a monster in sight.

  Except the birds had stopped their singing.

  Jax and I looked at one another, then carefully backed away, letting the door close again. Even without the riddle to warn us of hidden dangers, sometimes you just knew.

  Without a word, Jax brushed past me to try the ‘heart’ portal. Much like the first, it opened with barely a sound, and to a path that looked very similar to the first—hedges, flowers, paving stones… maybe a few spans wider. The only major difference was the gigantic bear resting on the gravel.

  The beast was a uniform brown. Teeth. Claws. Paws large enough to swipe a man’s head from his shoulders like a teed golf ball. The standard kit. Except when it stood on its hind legs to roar at us—which I should mention was plenty loud enough to shake the nearby bushes—I could not help but notice the curiously heart-shaped patch of fur on its chest with the words ‘i luv u’ written in a neat cursive. In English.

  Jax closed that door in a hurry as well.

  “Bugger that,” she proclaimed. “Did ye see the size of that bastard?”

  “Eh…” I returned weakly. To be honest, I was less concerned with its size than its more-than-distinct coloration. There’s no way that’s a coincidence. “It probably wasn’t that much bigger than a Mina bird.”

  Jax scoffed. “Says ye. Ye ain’t the one what’s gotta fight ‘im! Blast.” She made for the first door again before hesitating, then looked back. For a moment, she seemed lost in indecision, then glanced at me suspiciously. “Don’t look at me like that!”

  “Like what?”

  She threw her hands in the air. “Ye know what! Like I don’t know what I be about. If I had me mates at me side, I’d charge that tadger before ye could bob yer nan, but I can nay take the risk alone. One wrong move, that blighter’d have me guts to the floor, and ye’d be on yer own, starving the day. We both know how fast that can spiral.”

  She was assuming, of course, that I would have made a run for it the second she went down. And she was… half-right. Actually, I would not have even walked through the door until that bear had been dealt with. It was one of the few advantages of being a Summoner.

  “Score one for breakfast in bed,” I muttered.

  She thumped my chest with a smirk. “I do what I can. But mashing our bits together ain’t enough to keep ye fed up proper… more’s the pity. Special not while ye be casting them spells.”

  That was true. Jax fed from my emotions, and I, in turn, could absorb the Life Energy she created through sex. But as best I could determine, that only evened us out. It was better when I had access to the rest of the girls, but it still took a fair amount of time to fill my reserves that way.

  Jax groaned aloud and began pacing about, swiping her axe randomly through the air as she went. “Feck me. Master, I—maybe this ain’t the time fer it, but I feel like I gotta get sommat off me chest. Personal-like. I dunno if I got the speechin’ fer it, proper, but it be sommat like… well, do you ever wonder if ye’s tripped up somewheres?”

  “Only every other minute.”

  Where is she going with this? It sounded like even she did not know.

  She snorted. “Nay, I mean… ach, what am I on about? I do alright fer me ownself, I guess—what with me shadows and all—but… I just feel… wrong! I be a Tenebrous Warrior of Beguilement! How am I supposed to beguile shite with an axe?! It don’t make no lick of sense.”

  Ah, journeyman build woes. I knew that feeling well. There was nothing quite like stumbling your way blindly through a game’s opening act, only to wind up some thirty hours later with an ability setup that was limping along on hopes and prayers, severely underpowered, and not at all living up to the bright-eyed expectations you had on first opening that character creation panel. It was a surefire recipe for starting a new game—after a lengthy jaunt through the theory crafting forums.

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Jax,” I muttered, only paying her half an ear. After all, starting from scratch was not in the cards. We were our own trailblazers. There was no way we could expect our builds to be optimized, so we just had to keep muddling our way through until we found something that worked.

  None of which was getting us any closer to slipping past that bear.

  Maybe the heart is a weak point? But with that message… maybe we shouldn’t hit it there. Knowing my luck—and the goddess’s temperament—it would probably trigger a curse of some kind.

  But… hold on, that was no mechanical doll; it was an actual monster. Doesn’t that mean Ahnbe was involved? Did She and Xhinn patch things up? It seemed unlikely, given Fekinell’s imprisonment, but at the very least, the two were getting along well enough for the Mother of Monsters to take commissions. I had to suppose they had enough of a professional relationship to keep the business running despite these internal feuds. Unless Ahnbe was rummaging through my dreams as well?

  Scratching at my hatband with frustration, I turned back to Jax. It was a good thing she could not read. Otherwise, she would absolutely have wanted to talk about the implications of the bear’s furry tattoo… and frankly, I would rather pull my own teeth than go there. So I decided it best to humor this little mid-build existential crisis she had going.

  “That beguilement stuff only got tacked on recently. Besides, I think you pull off the sexy warrior thing pretty well.”

  “Aye, fer ye. But how’m I to wield ‘sexy warrior’ in a fight?” So saying, she spread her feet into a fighting stance, hefted her axe, and bared her teeth. “Look at this! Be this sexy? Got impaled straight through the waist the last I tried to rely on ‘Me Body fer Master Alone’, so I’m guessing not! And go figure. What critter’s gonna look at me, gnashing me teeth and yelling-like, and think, ‘Oh! There’s a hole I’d like to plug!’”

  I would. But then, I usually kept an appropriate distance away from that weapon. So she had a certain point. The defensive ability she was referencing was supposed to stun aggressive enemies based on some undisclosed Charisma-versus-Wisdom mechanic. It was… mostly functional… as long as she had yet to do any actual damage. But more often than not, it just made whatever she was fighting hesitate for a split-second before knocking her into next week.

  “Posture helps, dear.”

  The both of us jerked at the whispered voice. Its source was unclear, but it had sounded exactly like the one coming from the crystals. Yet no matter how much Jax called out to it or prodded the structures with her axe, no further comments were forthcoming.

  “Creep-some disembodied bastards,” she muttered finally, dismissing the matter.

  Personally, I was a bit more used to the ever-watchful Faen lurking about, and this had been rather tame compared to their usual comments. “She’s right, though.” Whoever it was. “It helps quite a bit when you stand more… suggestively.”

  “Say that when ye be half a second from getting yer paps bit off, mate. I got more to worry about than how the light’s catching ‘em,” she grumbled.

  “Speaking of the disembodied,” Mia put in, wrangling the conversation back a tic, “you could have an additional ‘mate’ at your disposal… provided you can capture something for me to inhabit.”

  I nodded along. “Two of them, actually. I can have as many temporary summons as I have lilim slots.”

  “I wouldn’t even try to slay the bugger on me lonesome, and now ye be asking me to catch it?! Bloody daft, the both of ye! I’s only got the 12 fer Strength, ye know. How’m I to hold it down? Snatch its knob and hang on?”

  I hummed thoughtfully. “Well… I do have that Lust pill. If I swallowed it and passed it on, you could hit the bear with it like you did with Xyn.”

  She folded her arms. “And then?”

  “Well…” Grimacing, I blew out a flummoxed sigh. Jax was plenty hot to my eyes, but that did not mean some bear was going to go for her just because she presented herself—even if it was out of its mind with Lust. Which was sort-of-kind-of-exactly the thing she was complaining about, come to think of it. “Your Life steal would work, anyway.”

  “Presuming that turned out like you were imagining… whatever that might be, it is doubtful your spell would consider the creature either Defeated or Captured, per its requirements. It would be Stunned or Distracted, at best. And this would not be a repeatable experiment; you only have the one Pill.”

  “Maybe if I could slip a rope around it somehow…” I shook my head quickly, remembering. “Nah, never mind. No rope.”

  Jax plopped onto the carefully manicured grass in a huff, then began filing one of her claws with the edge of her axe as though sharpening it might help. “I’m telling ye, ye figure out how I can fight and flirt at the same time—without risking a spear to me belly the second I let me guard down, mind—and ye’d put a right polish on me Class.”

  “Your skill point is unlocked now,” Mia reminded her.

  I stared down at Jax thoughtfully. Fight and flirt at the same time, huh? A strange idea had just popped into my head. It probably would not help with capturing that bear… but it might just be a step in the right direction.

  “Mia…” I began, “I’m assuming there are types of Warriors who can attach things like elemental damage add-ons to their strikes. You know, fire strike. Lightning strike. That kind of thing.”

  “Correct, my lord. But only consistently on achieving the First Stratum.”

  “Which I be,” Jax was quick to remind us. “But what’s that got to do with anything?”

  I held up a finger, asking for patience. “Would it be permissible to add something… more creative?”

  Mia let out a delicate little moan at the question. “Lust, for example? Yes, that could be arranged. As an Ailment, it would still be at a chance per strike, though. That is a thing Stratum alone cannot change.”

  Jax’s eyes brightened with anticipation. “I be liking the sound of this already.”

  “Not Lust,” I said quickly. “Though that might be useful, too. We’ll consider it for later. No, I was thinking…” I sighed. There was no way this was going to fly. “This is going to sound idiotic, but what if we could somehow make it so that whenever Jax does damage, it… it doesn’t hurt? What if we instead made it so that she dealt… oh, I don’t know. Pleasure damage? Is that a thing?”

  The axe clattered to the ground, and with a gasp, Jax clapped her hands beneath her nose. “Oh, I want this. Mia? Mia, please tell me ye can do this? Please!”

  Predictably, the two of us ganging up on her with questions caused Mia quite the combination of… let us call it orgasmic swearing. As best I could determine, most of it was a colorful reference to certain sexual positions I had never heard of and how they were perfect for angling her anal cavity so that I could insert an alien, rodent-like animal… which may or may not have been a euphemism for my dick. But I will leave the specifics to the imagination.

  “Actually,” she panted finally, “with Jax’s current Engraving Capacity… hmm. A moment…”

  While Mia when a-rummaging, Jax turned to me, clapping excitedly. “Oh, Master! Ye be a genius, sure! A proper genius. Pleasure damage? Whoever heard of such a thing?”

  “Probably nobody.” Because it’s dumb. And perverse as all hell. “The whole point of a fight is to kill a thing, not to make it feel good about dying. That’s just weird. But with your build? I dunno…”

  There was a potential there for something crowd-control adjacent. It might take a level or two, but I was hoping we could eventually leverage this into making things—if not surrender outright—then at least lose the will to fight. Then I could get my summoning spell to work.

  “Okay,” Mia said in a rush, about five minutes later. “What do you think about this?”