“I’m so excited, John, I just don’t know what to do with myself!” Claire was rummaging and tip-toeing around the various shelves she kept in her room. Each went from floor to ceiling and held various potted plants. Little spiderlings constantly skittered between the barely blossod seedlings, while conjured wolves and bats of her household checked on larger plants. UV lamps provided them with light.
John found it interesting that the lamps did nothing to hurt the vampire. It was the esoteric value of the sun, it appeared, more than the physical makeup of its rays that bothered soone of her ilk.
“I’m so excited! A marriage! Ah, finally I will get to see the customs of binding two people in love, until death does them part.” A sinister twist joined the glee of her smile. “Death shall be all that can separate us. Death shall be avoided forevermore. Death shall be a challenge to overco.” She twirled between the shelves. “I’m so excited!”
“I can tell,” the Gar joked, then patted his lap. The vampire maid danced across the divide and joined him on the sofa. “I love what you did with the place,” he purred into her ear.
Claire initially had very little interest in having her own room. As she stabilized in her new life and beca gradually less dependent on him, albeit no less obsessed, the idea grew on her until she eventually transford the space she had been given.
Most of the room was dedicated to life in one way or another. The shelves full of growing plants were the most imdiately visible, but there was more in this room and beyond. A massive panorama window replaced an entire wall, giving view of a vivarium that effectively was a slice of rainforest. Animals and insects no bigger than a mouse lived there in a finely cultivated ecosystem, fish and shrimp swimming in the river that cycled on through, a sizable pond at its centre.
“I have more, if you want to see it!” Claire offered, her voice betraying an excitent that he couldn’t deny.
“In a mont,” John promised and pulled her to his lap. She rested her head swiftly and he caressed the chin of her attractive face. Compared to her pale white, his own skin looked almost dark. “How are things at Nightfall?”
“Don’t you read my reports?” Claire asked with a playful wink.
“I’d like to hear it from you,” the Gar said. “Unless you think this isn’t an appropriate topic for our rare alone ti.”
“I do not mind whatsoever, Master. Difficult, is the answer.” Claire stretched like a tired dog. “Nightingale and I do our best to vet those that think themselves worthy of serving you in such an entrusted role, but they really make it hard. Your people are selfless, compared to what I used to deal with, but your lack of chains and cruel punishnts raises the standard trendously.”
“You need to trust people to be selfless for them to develop such traits,” John told her.
“Absolutely, I wasn’t complaining.” Claire grabbed his hand and put it on her chin, keeping it there as if it was a warm towel on a cold winter day. “Your wisdom knows no bounds, my one and only, utterly perfect Master. I just don’t want to have any issues because so people decide they know better than you.” She sighed, between dream and reality. “It does not help that a lot of your history still goes over my head. I have been given much of the knowledge, but I still struggle to unpack your history. It is much denser than the Iron Domain ever was.”
John nodded. “If you had a variant of my Favour chanic, that would work nicely.”
“It really would,” Claire agreed. “A consensual binding to your will, not the thralldom you despise so much. If the chanics offered such a path, I would take it swiftly.”
“Hm, it’s not unlikely that it will, in due ti.”
“I would be happy as your spyglass, so to say.” The vampire maid blinked, the green of her eyes flashing in their natural red for a brief mont. “You have enough people that fight, you need soone that can give you peace of mind. Soone that can break your enemies long before they catch a flash of iron. Let be that tool for you, Master, let be the instrunt of your calculation, your justful domination, and let be the excuse for you to spend more ti at ho giving snuggles!”
John found the danger she posed beyond adorable. He pulled his hand up and she held onto it, keeping it always latched onto her face. Even when he pulled her into a tight hug, she refused to let his digits leave her features.
Long and longing breaths filled his ears with the singular sound of her continued life. Under the surface of her skin pulsed the beat of her core. John felt the magic that kept her animated, that allowed her to pilot this body crafted in the image of what she should always have been. Fingers combed through her short hair.
“My Claire,” he whispered to her.
The vampire maid pressed against him. She refused to let go of his hand. Head rested on the top of his shoulder, she whispered, “I love you. I love you. I love you, Iloveyouiloveyouloveyouloveyoulove…” The stream of words was intermingled with half-crazed giggles.
Together, they tilted to the left. They fell down on the leather. She rested against his chest, their legs hooked into a tight knot. On the spiritual level, they were bleeding into each other, united by their shared delight in this mont. John closed his eyes, just basking in it. Sowhere, the ticking of a clock reminded him of the unstoppable march of ti. For just a few minutes, he ignored it.
They existed. They basked in the entrancing presence of each other. They were naught but two souls intertwined, existing physically next to each other. John felt almost liberated from the constraints of his body, hovering next to himself, as one with his love as anyone could be.
Inevitably, an intrusive thought dragged him out of that synchronicity. He sighed at the loss, Claire grumbled. “Why can’t you lose yourself completely in our love, Master?” she asked accusatorily. “Why must you think of things that aren’t ?”
“You know why. I wouldn’t be the one you love if I didn’t.” He let the intrusive thought rise to the forefront and continued the earlier talk. “If you could make binding agreents that are as strong or stronger than my Favours, that certainly would solve a lot of issues. Until then, are you and Nightingale working together well?”
“We complint each other well. She likes the broad picture; I like the details – and Siena likes to train the newcors.”
John nodded. Nightfall did as much work as an organization of its size could be asked of. Like with most things Fusion, the issues were neither with a lack of funding nor enthusiasm but simply with a lack of people and ti.
‘I suppose I could invest in the Monster Girl Creator Class to see if I get another Monster Girl Ascension Perk?’ John considered and opened his Class nu. He had a few levels to spare, not having invested any since the grinding session.
‘Two Class Levels to spend right now… might as well put one into Monster Girl Creator and the other in Starforger,’ he decided. His habit of using free ti to clear Class Challenges ca in useful once again, especially since Starforger, for once, did not offer him a Challenge that had been an imdiate roadblock.
Celestial Seekers looked like a trendous choice and its Opportunity Cost was more forgiving than what John was used to. Celestial Heartkiln was alright, but he did not have the ans to properly make use of it. He was not a crafter, so putting the ability to shape Astrotium into his hands was like giving a toddler gold foil to decorate their macaroni art with.
White Stars, dull as it was on paper, was the correct choice here. Now that the Starkiln was saving excess mana produced by the Guild Hall in the dium of the Arcane Stars, he needed to up the storage limit to make it a suitable long-term piece of fuel.
Pleasantly (in a way) the system let him pick the Perk despite him lacking the SEP. It put him in a minus 2 deficit though. The Perk would not be active until he had paid that off, so there was no effective difference.
‘Onto the next one,’ John thought.
Two repeats and one new choice. One very interesting new choice at that. The Golem Infusion was imdiately attractive and yet John found himself drawn to the two repeat choices. He had picked up neither because last ti around had promised him integration of tracanas and that had been shortly before he had taken Ehtra under contract.
10% Upkeep reduction was nothing to sniff at, but it also wasn’t that fantastic. 10% would save him about 30 mana per second, which would mount rapidly over the course of combat. That being said, John was not mana starved at this ti and he was raising his Wisdom every level to keep it that way. He was already working with a surplus of about 170. 30 more was good, but it was not direly necessary.
The retroactive Stat application was simply too good. Aclysia would benefit from it the most, granting her more than 400 Stat Points she had missed out on earlier. He pressed the button. “Not what I wanted to see, but I guess another Monster Girl Ascension Perk would be too much to ask for a second Class Level.”
“You shall acquire what you desire in due ti, Master,” Claire purred. “I should also remind you that you have a wave of upgrades for all of us ready.”
John acknowledged that with a plain nod. Artificial Spirits got new Perks whenever the tracana Master Skill reached the levels 50 and 100 and he was a fair bit above 50. He could and should trigger the Perks soti soon. However, these days that was an event. Aclysia, Beatrice, Claire, Delicia, Ehtra, Momo and tra would all get one new Skill and one new Perk, making for 14 choices in total. That took him at least 15 minutes, if all choices were fairly obvious. There was no reason why he couldn’t take that ti out of the morning orgy but he just hadn’t recently.
“After the wedding,” he responded. “Now – what else have you been working on?”
Claire smiled. Finally, the hand she had kept pinned on her face was allowed to be lowered. Only so she could hold it while pulling him into a side room, of course.
An imdiate difference in temperature and moisture made it clear to John what kind of room he had stumbled into before his gaze wandered over the many glass cages around. A vast variety of reptiles lingered around in those cages, snakes primarily, with variants of monitor lizards second. “You’re collecting a whole zoo,” John pointed out.
“This world just has such a delectable variety of life!” Claire exclaid excitedly, unlocking and then sliding to the side a glass panel. The snake that rested behind lazily peeked out its head. Like most reptiles, it was happy to just hang out in a confined space all day. Unlike regular reptiles, this snake had been modified by a biomancer to make for a better pet. Once offered, the two-tre long danger noodle coiled its way up Claire’s arm.
The red and black scales of the animal glistened smooth under the artificial light. It respectfully approached Claire’s face, booping her nose with its snout, before inspecting John with semi-sapient eyes. It was curious enough to betray intelligence, but not intelligent enough that John felt like he was looking at a being beyond instincts. It was much like a dog, in that way.
“This one is my favourite,” Claire told him. “I got it just a week ago, but if anything happened to it, I would kill everyone in this nation and then myself.”
“You really are quick on picking up references,” John pointed out.
“Can’t be left behind.” Claire smirked, while her pet snake slithered over her shoulder, then down the other arm. She wore the serpent like it was a decorative elent of a gala dress – a scarf of so kind. She looked gorgeous with it.
‘A gorgeous little devil,’ the Gar thought. ‘Maybe that is what she could beco? Devils make contracts…’ “So you really are assembling your zoo in here?”
“I want my private retreat filled with the wonders of life,” Claire answered. “I want to preserve species on the verge of extinction. I want to be a barricade so that nothing like the tyrant’s slaughter of the ecosystem can befall this gorgeous world.” The vampire led him down another pathway. Locked doors prevented the different areas from interacting with each other.
They entered a sizable walk-in vivarium. It was not the one they had looked at in the living room. That one had been mostly filled with insects and amphibians. This one appeared to be dedicated to rodents, from tiny mice to capybaras.
“It’s your ti to hunt,” Claire whispered to the serpent and it dropped from her shoulders. The entirety of the local mice population entered a sudden panic at the scent of the predator now in their midst.
John did not comnt on the perceived cruelty of the scene. Experints of the mice utopia had made it quite clear that rodents, and likely mammals by and large, were not built for an existence without peril. Beyond that, Claire was a woman that could be cruel. For how adorable and lovable she was, it could not be forgotten that she had been eager to be a traitor in a world that lived by strength and strength alone. Even if she disagreed with that way of running things, it had shaped her.
“A serpent requires their hunt,” Claire answered his thoughts. “It would be unwise to let the world forget about predation and it would be unkind to appease such a cute snake with frozen food.”
“I can see it one way or another,” John comnted and followed Claire when she gestured for him to follow further. The snake was left to hunt.
They erged in a miniature desert next. ‘Miniature’ had to be put in large quotations. The chamber was easily the size of a basketball field. Momo had her library, Lee her indoor gym, Nightingale her tea rooms, so Claire having an entire complex of different indoor bios was almost expected.
“I don’t pay attention to your private life enough if it passed by that you did all of this.”
“I deliberately hid it from you,” Claire answered with a smile on her lips. “I wanted you to be pleasantly surprised by my projects.”
The Gar couldn’t help but wonder how far the word ‘projects’ carried in this case. “How do you keep this place running?”
“A variety of factors.” They climbed a dune, so Claire could point him at a few points in the wall. “Do you see it, Master?”
John strained his superhuman vision, until he spotted a number of sealed holes in the sky blue walls. Simulated clouds crawled over the enchanted paint. “Access tunnels?” he theorized. “I suppose you don’t co down here personally to get your snakes to where they’re supposed to feed.”
Claire smiled, as she typically did. “Always so observant,” she purred, attaching herself to his arm. “Scarlett helped put together a system that will allow the various bios inside here to interact and cross regulate. Too many herbivores in the jungle? Let the wolves in. The wolves are too greedy? Present them with a herd too strong for their desires or spread diseases that will make them too la to succeed. From the build up of waste to the overgrowth of plants, all can be regulated if the right animals are introduced and if all else fails.” Claire casually threw out a hand, sending a fist-sized spider flying. It skittered away, itself having access to and knowledge of the sealed tunnels courtesy of being part of the vampire maid’s household. “My extensions shall assure the balance.”
John and Claire fled from the simulated heat of the desert and continued on. “A zoo is the wrong word then,” he comnted. “You’re running a preserve.”
“A preserve indeed,” Claire answered. “If ever this world is wiped clean of life, I want there to be a wellspring of suitable candidates in these halls to restart it all. On that note, I think we should make it a point of policy to introduce more species to our permanent Protected Spaces. They are often so devoid of anything that’s not a plant.”
“That’s preferred, by many people.”
“Then many people are wrong, what else is new?” Claire made a tossing gesture. “Too afraid of a snake that would never bite them to accept the majesty of a serpent in the trees. Too inconvenienced by a rat accessing badly secured rations to play with such adorable animals. They would rather deny their cat the ssiness of a hunt than realize that the protein in the kibbles they buy cos from slaughterhouses.”
“I know where you’re coming from,” he assured her, “but this is not my call to make.”
“I suppose not, by your own restrictions.”
“Without those restrictions, I would be another tyrant.”
Claire’s disagreent was harsh and swift, her eyes switching to red for the duration of her answer. “No, my love, you would not be. You know better. Give yourself more credit.” They were in the middle of one of the connecting corridors, when Claire stopped and slung an arm around his neck. “There is a line between having the tools of a tyrant and wielding them like one. You make yourself less when you deny that you are more.”
The kiss silenced any rebuttal he had.
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