<~> Chapter 334All of us sat down on our rge padded couch built into a basin in the floor naked. When you had access to terra magic, you had a lot more freedom in customizing your walls and floors as long as you were careful about the structural integrity. Tornick had helped us determine our limits on the house, and Morrigan and I had plenty of magic to make adjustments. Our changes made our home a lot more unique than I was used to.

  Bel flexed her wings a few times and looked at me with a serious expression. "Did something happen at work today?"

  "Corrine and a group of ex-Tamin padins and priests were spotted heading in our direction today. Torien was able to recognize her during scouting, and we were sent to meet with her since the two of us are familiar with each other," I told her.

  Bel's eyebrows rose, and she gave Torien a quick gnce before refocusing on me. "She was headed here? Did you turn her away? Why didn't you come get me?"

  I frowned. "We thought that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to involve you yet, since you can't hide your succubus features."

  "And you're pregnant," Torien added.

  Bel squinted at Torien with a dangerous look in her eye, but I continued before that could go any further. "The group didn't seem hostile, and they had been turned away from other pces they had tried to seek refuge from. After a long conversation with the other council members, we decided that we needed to take them in."

  Bel sat forward. "You're not serious, you're actually allowing the Tamin church into the city?"

  Morrigan scooted over and pced a hand on her leg. "Bel, they're ex-Tamin church members, and our city needs more people who can fight the loose demons. It isn't widely known yet, but we're facing severe food shortages if we can't stockpile more food before this coming winter. The more we learned about the situation, the more dire things look. We need them to help protect our farmers from demons while they work outside the walls."

  "Then more people could just become succubi like us. No one is in danger of starving," Bel said defiantly.

  "You know that the transformation has some limitations. It's not the right fit for everyone, and I don't want people to become succubi just to avoid starving to death. I agree that it would help the food situation if more people became succubi, but I don't want anyone to be forced into that choice," I replied.

  Torien sighed. "I understand some of your misgivings, Bel. I am not fond of the Tamin church either, but these people quit the church after they killed Sorsette. That's got to mean something."

  "For what it's worth, Corrine said that she had been collecting Tamin church members in Norta who were not prejudiced against beastfolk. They may integrate better than we think," I added.

  Bel stared at the ground with a frown on her face as her fingers flexed against the fabric of the couch. When the silence continued to hang there between us for a while, I decided to touch on the unsaid question all of us were thinking. "Do you not want to see her again? If it's about that, we can just keep her away from you. I'm sure she'll want to see you, but you don't have to meet with her if you don't want to."

  Her ears fttened on her head as she looked up at me. "I'm afraid of seeing her again. I don't want... She'll just hurt me again..." Bel looked more vulnerable than I had seen her behave in months. Most of the confidence her true form afforded her was gone right now.

  "Like I said, we can keep her away if it's a problem," I told her.

  Bel shook her head. "If she's living in the city... I'll want to see her eventually. I just... I don't know if I could handle being rejected again." Bel sniffled as tears began to stream down her face. "I don't want to do it again. What if we make up, but then I do something that makes her hate me? I don't want to make up only for her to leave me again."

  I pulled Bel into a hug and kissed the side of her head as she cried into my shoulder. There wasn't really anything I could say. Everything that came to mind wouldn't help her feel any better. Unfortunately, the decision has already been made. The council wants the group to come. The only one who was strongly against it was Tenna, and even that was for reasons without much merit beyond blind distrust. So I just held Bel and rubbed her back while she cried.

  After a little while, Bel pulled away and wiped the tears from her face. "Is she already in town?"

  "No, I'm going out to bring her back into the city tomorrow. They're camping some distance out of the city for now," I told her.

  "And the city... the city really needs them?" she asked hesitantly.

  "I think we do," I said with a nod.

  "Fine, but I'll... I'll need some time before I can handle talking with her again. What about the succubi?"

  I scratched the base of my horn. "We haven't told them about us yet. We're not sure how that'll go. Even if they don't hold as much prejudice against the beastfolk, it might be difficult to make them accept a new race of people who can transform themselves."

  Bel reached down and rubbed her gravid belly. She looked a lot farther along at six months than she should be. If the various healers we've consulted with are accurate, she could go into bor any day now. Our somewhat... estic bodies because of our nature may mean that the birth goes easier than it would for other species, but we aren't sure yet. We're not even sure what our children will look like, or what it will mean to have a succubus child.

  Lori cut into the conversation after listening quietly the entire time, "If it means anything to you... I hope that you would try to forgive your mother for what she put you through. I never really had children of my own, but I feel responsible for my two nieces the way a mother might. Mothers are just people too... and people aren't perfect. The situation between you has changed so much, so I think that now would be the time to offer her another chance."

  "I'll... think about it," Bel replied with a sniffle. "She'll need to know about the succubi before I even begin to consider it, though. If she can't accept our sisters, then why should I give her another chance to accept me?"

  I nodded. "That's fair, and not something I would argue against regardless. I don't want you to do anything that would put our baby at risk."

  We spent some time waiting for Bel to calm down. It was a bit of a surprise that anything could push her to tears like this. It was something that hadn't happened since she had donned her true form. There was a certain level of emotional stability that this form seemed to provide under normal circumstances.

  "Sorry that I came over while such important things were happening," Eira said. "I came over thinking that I'd like to spend some family time with you all, but now I feel like I'm intruding."

  Bel smiled at her. "No, I'm sorry that our time together is being marred by something so... unpleasant. You're always welcome to spend time with us, Eira. This is the first time I'm seeing you in your true form. You look very pretty."

  Her eyes trailed down Eira's true form. It looked more built than her regur one. Her shoulders were broader, and her arms looked thicker. She was naked right now, so her rge cock dangled between her thighs and twitched to life when Bel's eyes trailed over it. Eira's normal body had a young tomboyish look to it, while her true form had more of a strongwoman amazonian feel to it. Her usual form had become pretty muscur since she started adventuring, but this form took that to another level.

  I had to step in when Bel licked her lips, because it was obvious where things were headed from the way the two were looking at each other. I still wanted to talk about some other stuff before things moved in that direction.

  "First, let's talk more about our day. I'm not ready to head upstairs yet," I said, cutting in.

  "Oh! Bel, you should see the new pocket watch that Mimi made for Lilith! It looks really nice," Morrigan interjected.

  I stood up and pulled the pocket watch from my scks where I had discarded them with the rest of my clothes. It felt a bit small in the rger hands of my true form, but she had made it rge enough to make it comfortable to hold in either. I unclipped the chain from my belt and brought it over.

  Bel took the watch with interest before opening it up and examining the dial closely. "These are the hour and minute markings that you were talking about? That would mean the time is nine... forty-eight, right? A little bit before the fifteenth bell, or the st bell of the day. I see those marked on the face of the pocket watch too. This looks amazing, Mimi. How accurate is it?" Bel asked while looking up at her.

  Mimi smiled and looked excited from Bel's attention. "It's pretty accurate! It still loses a bit of time, but less than a second a day now. I've tried to get it more accurate than that, but there are so many pieces that can contribute to it losing time, that it's the best I can do right now, I think. I was already going to make some for all of us though! Torien said she would help me with the materials!"

  "Is that so?" Bel asked her.

  Torien blushed and nodded. "I think it would be useful for all of us to be able to schedule down to the minute, rather than bells. Maybe we could have a matching pattern on the front or something, to remember eachother by."

  Mimi cpped. "Oh! I love that idea! Hmm... I might need some help with a decorative design. Would that be something you would help me with, Bel? That wouldn't be too hard on your body right now, right?"

  Bel turned to Mimi and ughed. "That would be fine. I'd like something else to do, if I'm honest. Being home by myself all the time makes me feel like I'm being zy... I can only study my healing books for so long before I start to get exhausted by them. It's been a little while since the two of us worked on an art project together. It would be nice to see one of our drawings as an engraving." She snapped the front of the pocket watch shut and looked over the smooth metal of the outside cover, where an engraving or an embossed image could go.

  "Sure! Maybe you can come visit my shop tomorrow once I'm done helping Lilith!" Mimi replied happily.

  After Torien and Lori talked about their day scouting, I told her what happened on the trip to meet the ex-Tamin members, since the events led into each other. Now that Bel had already let her emotions run their course, she was able to listen to the story from a pce of detachment. I could feel some of her inner conflict leak into the bond after hearing about how they looked, and some of Dominik's observations about them, but I could see that allowing her mother into town still wasn't a comfortable prospect for her at this point.

  Once we finished up the story, Morrigan was quick to jump in to talk about how things were going at the mage community meetings to stop things from getting too emotionally heavy again. She and Raya were making a lot of progress teaching the other mages wild casting, and she hoped she could get around half of the people who had been mages before system's end to get casting again soon. It was much more challenging to teach them wild casting now that learning mana sense was harder without the system, but she was making good progress. Apparently, it was easier to teach them internal mana manipution first, a skill that we learned with Theo on the way to the capital. That felt a bit backwards, especially since enhancement magic wasn't the most common casting discipline, but Morrigan expined that it was easier to teach them to move their mana first so they could start to sense it both inside and outside their body, rather than the other way around now that the system wasn't there to help them. It had been a minor breakthrough that had helped them better teach wild casting to everyone.

  Not everyone was as interested in Morrigan's progress as I was, especially some of the more technical parts, so the others' hands began to wander throughout Morrigan's story. I could feel the sexual tension rising in the room as Morrigan's expnation went along. By the end, I knew that it was probably for the best that we didn't put things off any longer. Lori also noticed and decided to excuse herself the moment Morrigan finished. She gave Eira a wink before slipping away though, so it looked like there was an open invitation for her if she got bored. Eira winked back, so it looked like she got the message, but after my conversation with Eira this morning, I knew her eyes were set on someone else for the night.

  Bel licked her lips. "Finally, let's go upstairs. I'm getting hungry and I need to blow off some steam after all of that. I can't wait any longer."

  Saine

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