Delicia’s new laboratory was a lot friendlier than delnick’s had been. Everything about the Apothecary’s lab had been impersonal and sterile, feeling inhumanely scientific. The alchemist’s place of research, by comparison, was gorgeous. Just like her own place in the tower, the walls were lined with bronze and glass pipes that all ca together to form a gargantuan contraption, pumping and distilling colourful liquids through the system.
Unlike her old tower, where all of this had existed in a single room, the supernaturally extended Palace with its greatly diminished security concerns offered her the space and ability to spread her operations through multiple rooms of her desire. So rooms were entirely pipes and wires, others contained a single workbench and shelves of materials, where Delicia did her craft by hand. Yet others were storage for Creator Puppets or used for the chiselling thereof. Ordered storage rooms, crafting chambers, survey stations, and all matter of other scientific and supernatural wonders, all extending around a central, round chamber where Delicia did most of her experints.
It was neither impersonal nor sterile, at least not in the sense of a feeling. The ground was stone, the walls wood and plaster, the ceiling stained glass that let in sunlight at impossible angles, compared to where this was supposed to be within the Palace – not to ntion that there was no stained glass anywhere along the Palace walls.
There was a charm to it all, a very ‘Delicia’ kind of charm. The layout was difficult to fully navigate past her height and there were stools and ladders all around to reach the higher places. While everything was clean, it was so in a way of a workshop well-used and maintained, not in the way of disinfecting everything regularly. The design was warm and a mixture of dieval and enlightennt period. It was all just so much more fantastical and esoteric.
John liked Delicia’s workshop.
That the owner was a bratty, smug shortstack instead of an ornery, bio-chanical eunuch certainly helped. Said shortstack was swinging her hips all excited, blabbering on about technical things she noticed. John did not understand half the words she used and the other half were just used to connect them into workable sentences. Even if he couldn’t follow her, having her gush on about her field of expertise was just adorable.
When John reached the part of the lab dedicated to Ehtra, he found that tra was already there. The First of Wrath stood by a large tal basin. Over a dozen different instrunts were attached to half folded robotic arms, surrounding that circle of steel and brass.
John’s good mood diminished a bit when he peeked over the edge of the basin and found the First of Hatred – or rather what the First of Hatred currently was.
From a destroyed exoskeleton of Astrotium and a sword, Ehtra had turned her partially restored mass into a half-humanoid shape. The legs were a slug like sludge, her spine a crooked and branching display of dorsal spikes, and her head was turned to the ceiling in a never-realized scream, shaped by a maw that dominated her entire mouth as two rows of nightmarish teeth. One limb was fused into the side of her crippled torso, the other was a thin stick that clutched her Astrotium weapon, incapable of lifting it.
She was tal, but the tal appeared like flesh in many places. Frozen flesh, as unmoving as her entire form was. To a mundane, she could have passed as an unnervingly realistic horror movie prop.
John simply found the sight distasteful. Considering everything else around, she stuck out like a sore thumb. “Any change?” the Gar asked and tra shook her head.
“We reached sustainable mass about thirty minutes ago,” Delicia explained. “She managed to form up a bit, then her mana reserves ran out.” The alchemist walked over to one of the many terminals around and tapped a few buttons. Above the basin, the arms with the many asurent tools on them fully folded in. “I’ve gathered basically all that we need. Once you contract her and your Perks affect her, I can start looking into the god-stuff we need to make her fully operational.”
“Truly you are a verbal genius,” tra comnted drily.
“Oh, I’m sorry, did you fix your sister? No? Did I do that? Did I?” The alchemist stretched the word obnoxiously. “Because I am certain that I did, so how about you don’t poke because I didn’t go to that fancy-shmancy speaking school.”
tra just let out a dry chuckle, and sohow that upset the shortstack all the more. She stomped, boobs bouncing, and maybe would have gone into one of her theatrical tantrums if John hadn’t stepped up to the creature in the basin. “Any intel on her ntal state?” he asked.
“Imagining a peaking microphone output, that’s what that looked like,” Delicia explained.
“A normal man I would tell that their mind would break if they tried to make a contract with Ehtra as she is right now.” tra’s tail wagged ever so slightly. “You are no normal man. Ehtra was among my stronger siblings and we reconstructed her with enough Astrotium to bring her up to in that regard.”
“Wait, we did?” John looked to Delicia. “Why?”
“It integrated best with what she was.” The alchemist let out a long and unhappy sigh. “Not like I just had a reliable list of what her proper material balance should have been. Unlike delnick with his bit of Tiamat, I didn’t and still don’t have a lot of her left to compare magical signatures. All I can tell you is that her body accepted and wanted a lot more Astrotium than she was initially made with. I managed to add so crystals and stones to it after her skeleton was completed. The more of her that works, the easier I can guess what’s missing.”
“Like a puzzle.” John understood that part. “It’s easier to get this when you don’t talk about Monekai’s Lines or such things.”
“Not my problem you don’t get what this peasant is saying.” Delicia stuck out her tongue. A mont later, tra hugged John from behind.
“My king,” the First of Wrath purred into his ear, “my candidate, my beloved, ruler of this great realm and holder of powers that can grind mountains to dust.” Behind every syllable was every ounce of respect, desire, and love she had for him, flowing through the ntal connection as much as her vocal cords. “You are about to revive one of my treasured siblings and for that I owe you. I hope you can forgive that I have nothing left to give you.”
Her hands trailed up and down his chest. One, rather forwardly, cupped his crotch. “You don’t owe for this,” John assured her.
“I disagree.” tra pulled her hands into less dangerous territory. The minimalistic clothes she wore did barely anything to keep the softness of her petite breasts from pressing against his back, nor her general heat from arousing his senses. “You are aware where a contract with her will inevitably lead?”
“Is it inevitable?” John asked. He was curious, not disapproving.
“You’re my king candidate. She’s one of my siblings most similar to ,” tra put it simply. “You were already thinking about breaking her in. You will. You’ll make her just like . Maybe even a little worse. Unlike , she’s rebuked all desires of the flesh. Once you break that barrier… I think you’ll like it.”
John’s inner hormonal teenager was quite attached to the idea of making Ehtra another one of his maids, with all the proclivities that typically went with that. She’d fit right in there, alphabet wise.
Then his eyes landed on the nightmarish thing before him again. “One step at a ti,” he stated soberly. “We are not waking her up because I want another harette. We are waking her up because she’ll be a powerful ally against Tiamat and the Lorylim.”
“There’s always the next war, my king.” With those words, the First of Wrath pulled away and left John to kneel down in front of the basin and the thing within. He placed two fingers on the forehead of the First of Hatred and sent an explorative spark into her.
A mind running on fus flared up like a magnesium torch. Chaos reigned, a muddled cacophony of colours and mories, all flashing by too fast and with too much overlap to be analysed. From the primordial stem of her consciousness, the aspects of her being forked out. Hatred rose from chaos, turned into pure rage. ‘BETRAYER! MOTHER! BETRAYER!’ the hatred scread and turned its attention to the only outlet there was.
It shattered against the might of John’s ntal fortitude.
As the broken pieces coalesced again, the Gar projected his intentions. “I am John Newman. I am the one that dragged you out of the Death Zone and that burned Tiamat’s touch off you. I am the king candidate of tra, First of Wrath. I am here to offer you a contract.”
Ehtra’s mind had fully reassembled itself. Like a wounded animal offered a piece of food, she lingered at the edge of this space of their contact. Every second he remained, he got a clearer image of her – as clear as they could be within these ntal landscapes. She had brown skin, darker than tra’s but not by much, and a female physique, although he could not make out the definitions of her curves. Neither was John certain of the colour of her hair or how long it was.
What he could make out was her naked back, covered in a myriad of wounds. Small and large draconic wings covered the ground around her. John did not rember seeing her rip them out. It was likely that these torn representations of Tiamat were just part of her psyche at this current point.
Ehtra straightened up, a tall figure, skeletal in one mont, feminine in the other. She stared at John with colourless eyes. “You offer a contract?” she asked, her voice was deep for a woman and harsh. “What vengeance do you desire?”
“Tiamat and the Lorylim must die.” The ntal landscape around him pulsed, the walls flashing and cracking like luminescent glass. “I will strengthen you and in return you will serve as part of my operations. Once Tiamat is defeated, we can decide if you wish to serve further.”
Ehtra carefully stepped out of her safe area, walking towards and then around him. She inspected a myriad of strands that connected John to the rest of his familiars. Plucking a particular, grey string like a harp, she created a short flash of tra’s presence in the space.
Afterwards, she circled back to his front. “Then you will be my 13th master,” she stated and extended a hand.
John took the hand and let her in. A string connected his back to her essence and soon a vital flow of intel rushed back and forth between them. The contract of a tracana was different from Artificial or Natural Spirits in many key components. Her appearance would change depending on what he wanted, consciously or subconsciously. Her powers, too, would have changed depending on what he required, but that was before she had rejected every last material of Tiamat in her body. Without the backing of chaos, changing her abilities entirely was not up for grabs, sadly.
Opening his eyes, John was greeted by a window.
‘I will not be judged by you regarding my taste in won!’ Pushing the sassy Achievent aside, the Gar instead followed Ehtra’s change.
The nightmarish, half-lted, frozen blob of Astrotium and faux flesh flowed like hot wax. The dorsal spikes receded, the spine straightened itself, the offshoots turned into a proper ribcage. Her head snapped forward, neck properly slotting into its socket, while legs parted out of the goo and arms consolidated into proper shapes.
The First of Hatred tried to move. She clutched her sword. The tip of the grey weapon sunk into the ground, Astrotium cutting into the Baelentium basin. Although her body was rapidly assuming a proper humanoid form, her limbs were too thin for her to stand properly. She collapsed and the blade screeched over the ground. The beginnings of human lips were pulled into a sneer. Eyes turned from colourless to green, retaining her disdain all the while.
“Delicia,” John said, to snap the alchemist out of her interested observation.
“Yes! Right!” The alchemist hurried over to various stockpiles that she had prepared at the side. Now that John’s Perks were active, Ehtra would find it much easier to integrate various replacents for the divine materials she had lost.
The First of Hatred reached out and shoved the material down her throat. It had been a while since John had seen such a base display of an Artificial Spirit regenerating and the tracana’s form of doing so seed to be even cruder. Where modern Artificial Spirits pulled from excess materials stored in a dinsional pocket, here the freshly swallowed materials erged from her gullet within her half-ford torso.
What were accepted clusters, ingots, bars, or other forms of chunks of materials beca thin strands that wove themselves in flesh and muscle fibre around the Astrotium bones. Those materials her body rejected, either outright or after Ehtra noted they were not properly integrating, clattered to the ground underneath her.
Delicia kept asuring Ehtra’s developnt. The margin of error, not to ntion the speed at which Ehtra was absorbing materials, was upped trendously now that she was under contract. The fresh mana John sent pumping into her defeated the lethargy. tra looked at her sibling impatiently.
John, perhaps, was the most interested in the ongoing transformation of Ehtra from a creature to a person. Although he had not made any specific requests, she had reached into his mind to gather the references of what she was going to look like while under his contract. What she was going to end up as was going to be a mixture of what she was like as a baseline and what he wanted. Since there had been no active wish, this was going to be a window into his subconscious.
A point was reached where Ehtra’s body, in its major materials, was restored. Just keeping general tabs on the situation, she had devoured tens of thousands of Tokens worth of materials, and that was without taking into account the Astrotium already inside her or the divine bits she was now trying to digest. The excess of what they had from Fenrir filled the gap of Tiamat.
Compared to tra, she needed little. The First of Hatred was part of a set of three, all materials that she had been created with had been split between herself and her direct siblings. ‘Perhaps that’s why she could devour that much Astrotium? She made up for what she could have had, had she not split?’ he theorized. He couldn’t know for certain. The already mushy rules of magic got even more bent and broken when the goddess of chaos was involved.
When it ca to replacing the parts of other gods and goddesses, there was a vast selection to offer. Fusion had good relations with many gods by this point and many Raid drops were approaching or exceeding comparable levels. Of the offered godly materials, she primarily devoured feathers of Nightingale.
While they disappeared inside her now fully ford torso, details of her appearance were finalized.
She had white hair, which was the least surprising developnt John could have guessed. She had white hair in most forms, he had been told, and his love for it was sothing he was acutely aware of, especially when there was a part of him that hoped that she would continue his alphabet assembly of maids.
Her hair was a mixture of semi-wild strands and braids. Two relatively thin braids began above her ears, curved around the back and then settled on her shoulders. A larger one reined in the excess of her cascading hair at the back, although much of it remained open. It created an interesting cascade between practical and natural, creating a different variety of the warrior woman vibe that tra had.
Ehtra’s skin, unsurprisingly, was a shade of brown. It was a tinge darker than tra’s, and stretched in taut smoothness over her figure. There was more muscle to her than most won, but not quite as much as tra. Her abs were defined but not cut, her biceps showed but not imnsely so, and her thighs had just enough squish to them to take out the hardest lines of the fibres.
Her figure, all around, was on the balanced side. While her thighs and butt were nice to look at, they weren’t overbearing. Her waist was reasonably thin, a flat stomach that was healthy and certainly away from the stick category. Surprising was the size of her breasts.
From two small bumps on her taking shape, over the middling swell of boobs, to two truly large bags of squishy chocolate, they grew. They stopped there, not reaching the truly enormous category. Rivalling Undine’s in size, those light brown mounds were tipped by deep brown nipples. They were the second darkest part of her, only outdone by her dark, almost black, lips.
They would have been the bottom piece of a truly gorgeous face, had the First of Hatred not imdiately pulled them into a sneer. The skin left of her nose crinkled, while a bit of her white teeth beca visible. The wrinkles continued up to her sharp eyes.
There was a special sothing about the way she fused being beautiful with being disdainful of… sothing. “Why these?” she demanded to know, cupping her large breasts. Her fingers sunk inside, revealing just how firm and squishy they were.
“I honestly have no idea,” John answered. ‘Do I have a craving for a big boobed maid?’ he asked himself. The answer to that was ‘sort of yes’, especially once Ehtra stood up. Tall and well-endowed certainly was a new taste among his servants – if she beca a servant, which his perverted brain just kept telling him to assu.
Standing, Ehtra was 1,83 tres tall, which put her the slightest bit under tra and John himself. That she was naked did not seem to bother the First of Hatred. That there were asuring tools all around her, however, did. Expertly moving her sword, she put its tip against the end of one of the chanical arms and shoved it out of the way. She did not destroy it, nor did she damage it, but her expression made it very clear what she thought of its presence.
Interestingly, the Astrotium weapon had changed with her. Considering it was a part of her, this was within expected paraters. From a crescent blade, it had changed to a more European longsword. The blade was broader than was typical and it was one solid piece from tip, over cross guard, to the poml.
Ehtra stepped out of the basin and imdiately glared at her breasts again, jiggling as she moved. Her glare imdiately moved to John. The new ntal connection radiated a casual disdain for everything. Much like tra could find a reason to be angry in the fact that she had to breathe, so too could Ehtra find sothing to hate in everything around and inside her. It was in her nature and that nature she had under control.
The disdain was secondary to curiosity. She reached out through the ntal network. For all the thoughts she had about her new appearance and its cause, she did approach respectfully. That respect waned a bit as she scanned his personality past what she had seen so far. It waxed, also, as she scanned through his deeds, although she only got the cliff notes version before John gently pushed her out of his mind again. Ehtra accepted it willingly. She had respect for the fact that there even was an open connection. This was not the norm for a tracana contract.
“King candidate,” Ehtra acknowledged and turned her gaze to her sister. “After all this ti looking for one to present to you, here I am ending up in the service of yours.”
“Finding allies was never your strong suit,” tra pointed out and walked back to John’s side. Tail wagging side to side with glee, mirrored on her face, the First of Wrath hugged John’s side. He put an arm around her imdiately and she humd. “Not that it’s mine either. I just happened to get lucky.”
Ehtra eyed the way the Breaker of Armies snuggled up to him, then her tail and wolf ears. “You’ve changed,” she stated, deliberately neutral in her tone.
“In a lot of ways, but not at my core,” tra answered with an easy-going smile. “You will too. This is an interesting age.” Her smile dropped. “When were you last active?”
“Before Mother Chaos betrayed ?” Ehtra growled, her eyes flashing whitish-green for a mont. She put a hand to her forehead, then sneered. “Tsk… I can’t quite… recall… I rember a contract I had with an… Indian…. Enki had him killed and then… it gets muddy.” The First of Hatred clenched her blade so hard the entire weapon quivered. “What year is it?”
“2019,” John answered.
Ehtra moved her lips silently as she thought to herself. “700 years?” she estimated. “What a waste of ti. Like this conversation. I was promised power. Also, does anyone have clothes? I tire of your leering, master.”
The way she spoke the title, plainly without respect, invoked a challenge in John’s brain to take her down a peg. ‘Is that just my inner brat-breaker talking or is that my inner brat-breaker noticing sothing?’ he wondered. He asked a more important question, “What’s your opinion on stockings and French maid outfits?”
“The hell are those?” Ehtra asked.
Not exactly perfect.
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