Despite Ted's initial enthusiasm, we didn't immediately rush to join the defense. Instead, we watched how the city normally operated in emergencies like this, with Ted giving us the grand tour, accompanied by one of the captains of the guards who was currently on rest rotation.
"There are five of you," the captain, a certain Trellen, said. "I want you to spread yourselves out to cover more of the city."
"Nope," I said immediately. "We don't split up."
"Come on, lad," Ted insisted. "I know you didn't do that silly ritual yet."
I crossed my arms. "Sorry. I could argue that we don't work well alone, but in truth I don't want to be separated from my girls."
"They are slaves," Trellen argued.
"My slaves," I said. "And even then, I am starting to dislike the word." I realized that I was channeling Zery in my mind, and the dragon was winking at me. "It is unfit to describe the bond that we share."
Trellen wa glaring at me, but did not speak.
I met his gaze. "Give me the section with the most action and I'll pull my weight."
Meanwhile, the bond was a mess of mean comments. "Geez," Vespera spat. "We barely even offered to help and already he's complaining we could be doing more. What an ass."
"He has a city to defend," Elyra said, taking the man's side. "But yeah, what an ass."
I smiled.
Trellen made us follow him into the hollow crawl space inside the walls, where we climbed a few stairs until we were right above the main gates.
"The land monsters are usually easy to deal with," he said. "Even if there's a big one that could tear the wall apart, we can hit it with spells through the arrow slits. It's the flying ones that pose the most risk. They can dodge and they can deliver some rather mean blows. Your new… Blackstone," he said through gritted teeth. "It helps, but we still need people."
Then we were above the wall itself. There was a sort of cement cupola filled with arrow slits everywhere, all the way to the top, each opening wide enough for most spells to pass through. The air outside was black with monster bodies blotting out the sky.
"This here?" Ted said, tapping the pitch-black stone around us. "Is where your stone comes in truly handy. Put your face against it."
Vespera did, and the wall suddenly disappeared in front of her. She jumped back, shrieking, and the wall was back to normal.
Ted laughed. "It's only transparent. But she's right to worry. Transparent is weaker, that's why it's not always on. But it allows you to see and even attack from inside. Spells too. Remember, though. Any part of you that's outside is no longer protected, and if you get dragged out, nobody is coming to retrieve you."
"We can go back inside, though, can we?" Zery asked.
Trellen glared at her and then at me. "Your slave—"
"Will need to fight," I said.
Ted nodded. "You can drop the slave collars during the tide as long as you are on defender duty. Don't worry. Your token will make sure you and your slaves can go back in if you happen to find yourselves outside."
Trellen scoffed. "If they leave the safety of the city, they are as good as dead."
The dwarf grinned. "You'll see."
I thought they'd leave after that, but they both remained behind. Ted, because this was as good a place as any to keep an eye on the fortifications, and Trellen because he was on rest rotation. When I finally swapped in with the guards, relieving five of them from their duty to go on rest, he also swapped in near me.
"Go all out, lad. The walls must not fall," Ted encouraged me. "Make waves while you are at it."
I grinned at him. "You heard him, girls," I said, snapping my fingers and making their slave collars and chains disappear. "Go wild."
To his credit, Trellen beside me flinched when the girls suddenly went all out and started casting, but his lapse in concentration lasted mere moments. One blink and a shake of his head was all it took for him to remind himself that this was a battlefield, and moments later he was pressing his face against the walls to scout for enemies.
Then he was outside. Despite his sneer and harsh words about being as good as dead, he went out of his own volition.
"Show-off," Vespera said.
Behind us, Ted was sitting on a stool, his eyes glowing as he flicked left and right, as if he were reading from a HUD screen. Around him, a ring of casters took up most of the inner space of the cupola, flinging spells through the gaps in the stone.
The monsters didn't have a strategy, letting the horde do what hordes did. The problem was that the horde was so big that not having a strategy wasn't a problem for them. Huge avian monsters kamikazed against the walls, trying to knock the fortifications down with sheer impact mass, after which they started to claw and tear and snap, using all sorts of magic to get through.
Soon, another use of the arrow slits became evident. The monsters could smell us, or at least sense that the gaps in the walls were the paths of least resistance, and so they concentrated their attacks there. This gave the casters free targets to shoot at point-blank.
The guards at the wall had it much harder.
Similar things were happening everywhere. At the outer walls. In other cupolas. Between the lithos blocks. Nowhere was safe.
I peered outside. Trellen was going all out, dancing around monsters five times his size with his sword and cutting them to pieces, empowering his full plate armor with a purple glow that made me think of weight and mass.
To my left and right, my girls were doing the same. Then, at once, we acted.
Elyra saw her one true love, the shining star at the center of the whole universe, begin to pull from the bond. If she could, she would have stared in awe at him.
He pulled once, and horns grew atop his head as a massive sword appeared in his hands.
He pulled again, and now he was bigger and covered in scales. So tall, giant, looming over everyone. She had to blink a few times to remind herself that this was a battlefield, because apparently all her mind was could think was how big he must be under his clothes, and what he could do to her should he try to take her while in this form.
Would he break her? Would he remake her insides to fit his increased size? Would it be permanent? The thought made her shudder in excitement. Fuck, she wanted him to ravage her now.
He pulled again, and his eyes and skin became green like the forest. At least she could concentrate on that now. The effect he got from the dryad meant that any cut and slash from the monsters would heal in a matter of moments now.
Finally, she felt the last pull. From her.
She felt blessed to have been the one to see the whole transformation, her role as a support allowing her some more leeway. She wanted to cry in happiness, but she had a job to do. Still, she spared him one last glance before he left, now showing off dazzling wings of light that were so radiant and beautiful they put her own to shame. The light she saw there was the light of his love for her, and she poured in her own love. He seemed to feel what she was doing, gripping the shield he had summoned from her power and grinning at her before launching himself outside.
She felt weak in the knees and so, so horny.
She cast a shield, letting Zery use it to vault over a monster and then slam down on it with the crushing force of the abyss. Moments later, the dragon had a new set of horns and a sword herself, and then her scales disappeared so that she could become smaller, human. She ducked below a massive four-legged beast that had crawled to the top of the wall, unseen with her new, smaller size. Then she was a dragon once more, the sudden transformation allowing her to thrust up and skewer the thing whole.
Elyra smiled. That was her Zery.
She refocused, casting a thin beam of pure red light and cutting three massive bats apart moments before they could crash right on top of Trellen. She saw the man's grimace as the realization he had been saved hit him; she watched through Vespera's eyes as the six halves of the monsters fell around him.
Then she stepped out. A gale of wind erupted from her wings, shoving a monster into another right as Vespera impaled them both with her tail.
Before she could be caught up in it, the angel retreated back inside the fortifications, and not a moment too late because Calla's vines constricted around a monster near them and made it explode in a shower of gore.
She stepped out again. This time, so that she could cast a shield deflecting an attack aimed at Sol's blind spot. He had seen it coming through her eyes, but trusted her to take care of it while he concentrated on a strange, many-headed hydra right in front of him.
So hot.
As she tried to return, another group of monsters had the gall to attack her. She ducked and weaved, faster than them. Just because she was a caster, didn't mean she was defenseless. She summoned a trio of shields and sent them towards the aggressors, the panes of force rotating with their edge aimed at the things, like impossibly sharp shurikens.
They cut them into mincemeat. Elyra jumped away from the shower of gore, and straight into another.
"Sorry!" Zery called from above, cackling. She was beating her wings, giving flying chase to a few firespitting monstrosities.
Elyra examined herself and cursed. "FUCK!"
She was covered in goop. With a snap of her fingers, she was clean once more, thanks to her magic. The problem was that her cleansing magic took care of everything. It cleaned every single part of her body.
She sniffed herself and cursed again. She had plans for later tonight, with Sol. Big plans. She wanted him to call her his filthy little slut, one-upping Calla in their unofficial race to be the one who'd degrade themselves more for him. Who was willing to change more for him.
For her part, she had formulated a plan. Already she was growing out her pubic hair even more, along with her armpit hair. Then she had stopped washing herself.
"Sometimes I fear you aren't quite right in the head, my cute cat-angel," Vespera's voice came through the bond. "Did this world finally break you?"
She has always been broken, she realized. At least, ever since her imprisonment. And if the flashes of memory from before and even during that time were to be believed, she'd rather die than become that person again. No matter how whole.
She could be a little broken doll for her Sol.
The sole idea of being the unkempt, messy girl despite being an angel drove her insane. And it wasn't like she smelled bad. At least, not to the people in the bond. She checked with everyone, although she had already checked by smelling the others herself. No matter their body odor, they either loved each other to the point they lost their minds, Zery's pheromones had fucked them up, or the bond made it so they couldn't NOT like every part of the others in the bond.
Still.
Filthy yes. Sweaty and smelly yes. Covered in monster gore was where she drew the line. Ah well. She could still play the pet part and demand scritches in that way Vespera explained to her. According to the demon, who Elyra saw was tearing apart entire flocks of monsters using her tail as a whip, needy bottoms such as her were actually the main drivers of a relationship when it came to reluctant tops like Sol. At least, this was their one-on-one dynamic, she explained.
In Elyra's mind, it was Sol who should show up with a whip and tell her she'd only come out of the room bloody.
According to Vespera, the only way to do that was to force that whip into Sol's hand and demand to be bloodied. What sort of strange subby bottom is that? But the idea of groveling and begging to be abused turned her on so fucking much.
Then she saw a whip. Oh. Her star had pulled more from her. Perhaps from all the talk about whipping? Now he had a halo and no more horns, and was using the whip to bisect enormous things that should by all means crush him.
So hot.
Then it was time to rotate out, but they were so close to level 6!
"One last stunt?" Vespera asked. Elyra could feel the impulse to smirk through the bond, the demon's own facial expressions mirrored in all of them, along with her mischief.
"Nephilim state," Elyra said, beginning to pour her magic into the bond.
"Not yet," Sol said. "Leave it as a finisher."
She reluctantly obeyed. Again, the image of the bratty bottom demanding things came to mind. She could beg him to do it. In fact…
"Please, Sol mine," she sent, trying to make herself as cute as she could. "I want to see you wrought in righteous silver fire again. Can you do it for me?"
Unfair, she knew. She also knew she had him.
Silver fire enveloped him, as they all retreated and poured their magic into him. Their mana pool was soon gone, but so were all the monsters in a hundred-meter radius. Nothing compared to the tide, of course, but seeing Sol wield that strange magic had been worth it.
She also did not miss the stunned looks all around.
"MAKE USE OF THIS DISTRACTION TO SWAP OUT!" Trellen shouted, along with more orders.
Elyra was ecstatic when the captain of the guards reluctantly, imperceptibly, with strained motions, tilted his head to Sol in a gesture of respect. The man stopped existing in her mind a moment after, though, because Sol was here and he was searching for someone to vent his slight frustration at having had to use his finisher move too early.
She wanted to be the one.
He knew it.
She knew it.
She melted into his rougher-than-usual scritches and tickles, trilling laughs escaping her mouth against her will and making her feel shy and vulnerable in the middle of all these strangers. And so very fucking wet. The heat intensified even more when she thought that she'd have to bear it, with nothing she could do about it until Sol deemed it was time for her to finally be able to get her release. Or, she could be sneaky and use Vespera's workaround, which Sol would no doubt discover immediately, leading to who knew what sort of tasty punishments.