Rykard looked at the closed pybook in his p. He opened it up again, wondering if he could enter that realm again. In it, he found a detailed recounting of what had happened. The drafted py had turned into written history. “That was a peculiar experience, even by my standards,” he said and handed the parchment to Tess for storing.

  “Eborate?” the thief requested, while she put the pybook into her mantle.

  “Expect eldritch royalty to join you in the harem in the future.” Rykard shot Tess a grin. He would let that be all the expnation he gave her at that time.

  “...Peculiar indeed,” Tess muttered.

  “I suspected this would be the outcome, Sir,” Lyvia said.

  “You still approve?”

  “Absolutely, Sir. More half-siblings for my children is my desire.”

  “Good girl,” Rykard hummed, then yawned. He was even more tired now, but also energized by the success. “This can’t be that much deeper,” he reckoned. “Let’s go.”

  Rather than them finding the next notable room, it was accurate to say that the next notable event found them.

  The trio was crossing through a great chamber, when Rykard noticed that distant buzz of a divine will approaching. He barely managed to stop in his step before the will punctured through the veil of reality. A half-finished gesture was all the warning his women got.

  Fire filled the room. Concentric circles of sor heat set the air alight and would have scorched the trio in an instant had the manifesting entity not held back. From fmes she rose and fmes she was. A burning woman cd in a red kimono. Fox ears sprouted from fiery red hair, cascading in long, wavy locks. She was pale. Her eyes were green, her lips red.

  She burned like the sun.

  Amaterasu crossed the distance in long strides. The singur fox tail she had chosen for this vessel swayed behind her. Rykard had to suppress long-accustomed whims not to greet the goddess with a hug and a passionate kiss. Her vessel was a little too simir to Miyo not to manifest some desires.

  Reading his thoughts, the goddess hit him on the forehead with the side of her folded fan. “Horny fool,” she chastized him and then began to circle around him. “Do you believe making deals with Hastur is fun?” Her strained voice rexed slightly after she had finished the circle. “You have not been bitten. At least there is that.”

  “You should know me better than that,” Rykard answered flippantly, earning himself a hiss from the fox goddess.

  “Do not waste your life, it is difficult enough to find worthy men for my daughters without all of you dying.” The fmes began to die down. “Conquerors, you’re all the same. Take on challenge after challenge without ever considering that the next one is the one that kills you.”

  “You compin, yet the women love it. That ‘daughter’ especially.”

  “I was not aware Miyo is a demigoddess?” Tess raised her voice.

  “She is not,” Amaterasu was quick to crify. “My blood runs through the veins of her family, but it has been much diluted through the ages.” She swung the folded fan, the tip of it stopping just shy of Rykard’s nose. “And obviously it runs surprisingly thick in our Miyo, so do not get yourself eloped with the outer gods unnecessarily. You’re a sire of greatness. If you yourself do not become a god after you leave this mortal coil, half of your children will.”

  “I have bad news for you,” Rykard said to the redhead. Something about talking to a facsimile of his first love just put him in an extra teasing mood. “I have already struck a deal.”

  “With the King in Yellow?!” Amaterasu hissed.

  “With the Princess of Yellow, his daughter,” Rykard crified.

  Wrinkles appeared on the forehead of the redhead. A demonstrative ‘thrrrud’ accompanied the slow unfolding of her fan. She hid half her face behind the golden segments of the tool. Green eyes spied above, beholding him with deep contemption.

  The king found it interesting that not even the gods had known what happened in the pybook. It was outside even their realm, so it was not truly surprising. Simirly, gods were only night omniscient, not truly so. Between their own numbers constantly shifting things behind the scenes and their mortal minds wishing for something unexpected to happen, most gods had gaps in their knowledge.

  “You are unbitten… I suppose I will let this next part be a surprise then.” Amaterasu closed her fan and sighed. “Since I already went through the trouble of manifesting, something you wish to talk about? It has been a while.”

  “The st time we spoke, it was hardly a conversation,” Rykard answered.

  He remembered the summer day well. A festival at a temple. A ritual to chase the eclipse away. The resplendent rays of the freed sun had fallen upon the statue of the great wolf. A few words had been exchanged in private to him and Miyo. That was before they had looked at each other as more than a political engagement.

  “You were hardly worth the attention then,” Amaterasu waved off. “Now it's a different matter.”

  “I suppose asking you to spice the reward up somewhat would be useless?” Rykard led with the greediest question.

  Amaterasu shrugged, causing her rge breasts to jiggle. That the cut of her kimono kept them contained was a miracle. “The treasure has been pced with you in mind, Rykard. You will not find it wanting.”

  “A more general question then: any advice you offer?” She tapped her chin with her fan, so Rykard decided to narrow the scope somewhat. “Specifically in the realm of worshipping you. A shrine to your honour is inevitable. Either Miyo or Ayama will have it erected when the opportunity arises.”

  “They are good girls,” the goddess said. “Perhaps I can… pull some strings….” The tapping stopped and she hid her red lips behind the fan again. “Have you ever heard of the Dawnflower?”

  “Legends have it that it was the pnt used to make the tea that convinced you to y with the first lord of the eastern nds,” Rykard recalled.

  “Indeed. This is a soft suggestion, but a Dawnflower could be found and if Miyo has been studying properly, then she will know what to do with it.” The fan was lowered until Amaterasu revealed her smile. “I do not offer you an avatar of myself to you as I have to him. You already have my blood in your harem. Blood that could be empowered.”

  Rykard chuckled. “I will take it under advisement.”

  A moment of silence.

  “Then I suppose that is all that needs to be said.” Amaterasu circled her wrist. The nearby fmes all colpsed into a singur point, where her head had been. It was impossibly bright. Then she was gone.

  “Traveling with you never gets dull,” Tess commented.

  “Of course not, nothing around me ever is dull,” Rykard stated confidently and resumed walking. “Now I really want to know what this treasure is.”

  ___________________________________________________________

  Deeper and deeper into the insides of the temple. Deeper and deeper, until Rykard was certain they were below even the seabed and entered the bowels of the Earth. Deeper and deeper, until there was naught but marble around them.

  The air sang with an invisible power. A distant kind of excitement channeled into choirs. Patterns of golden eyes were scattered all over the walls.

  “Are we heading towards another shoggoth, Sir?” Lyvia asked, her voice strained. Even if their encounter had ended well, none of them were eager to repeat it.

  “No,” Rykard was quick to assure. “This is different.”

  There was no unceasing pulsation around them, no chaotic mounds of flesh and eyes. All was ordered into depictions and concentric circles.

  “I told you yesterday about the beginnings of divinity, did I not?” he told them. “The signs of all gods are the eye, the wings, and the concentric circle.” Down the corridor, a feathered door appeared. “Angels are born even if no gods craft them. The formless divine exists. The difference between it and a shoggoth is benevolence.”

  Rykard did not hesitate to push open the double-winged food. The white and gold feathers that covered its surface whispered, directing the distant choir to reach a new level of intensity. The trio stepped forward into massive cathedral of white.

  For all the marble arches and gss made of radiance, Rykard only had eyes for her. The fated encounter, the reward that had been pced with him in mind, she was the centre of the room. She hovered a half-metre above a ptform, like an offering. Her feet were covered in a liquid as bck as tar. It covered her arms as well and expanded behind her slender back as four wings, akin to that of a fairy.

  Golden veins ran through the liquid, ciming from the corrupt darkness the divinity that lingered in the multitude of green eyes that sprouted on the surface of her wings. They blinked and moved independently. There was only one pair that mattered.

  Emerald spheres with round pupils. They beheld Rykard with gentle curiosity. In a fair face, they sat, with brows as white as her hair. She wore it combed backwards. No lock was in front of her pointy ears. Pink lips were spread in a light smile.

  Her hands were csped before her small breasts. Where the swell of her chest was mild, the swing of her hips was gracious. A ft midriff and thick thighs rounded out the bottom-heavy look.

  “Be not afraid,” she spoke gently.

  “I am many things right now, but afraid is certainly not one of them,” Rykard answered and approached. “I take it you are my ultimate prize?”

  The woman hovered down until her cwed feet touched the ground. “I am Aclysia, an angel sent by the divine to be of service to you,” she introduced herself with a bow. “All that I am is yours to command, explorer, conqueror, and Master of mine.”

  Rykard gnced over to Tess. Technically, he was still bound by the oath that gave her first pickings. She gestured for him to continue, surrendering her cim to this treasure. “You are a primordial angel, then?”

  “I come from the wellspring of radiance,” she answered with a confirming nod. One hip-swing step at a time, she sashayed over to him. “I have been watching you since I was made manifest. Understand, my Master, that my service is yours. Every fibre of my being yearns to be yours.” She touched her chest. “Please accept this pledge.”

  The king stepped forward and put his hand under her chin. “What is your opinion on Troykish maid outfits?” he asked.

  She lightly tilted her head. “I will love whatever servant’s garb you deem appropriate for me.”

  “And your opinion on being my personal sex sve?” He waited for her answer on this one. Least he wanted was a doll incapable of saying no. What fun was there in a submissive that was actually just a fuck toy?

  Aclysia’s light smile took on a sharp tone. “Know that I preceded you, Master and that I was chosen to be yours, not shaped to be.” She leaned forward. “I crave your dominance, Rykard,” she moaned, her sharp teeth parting with lustful intent. “Be not mistaken, I am yours by will. I have decided that you ought to be my Master. Test me as you wish.”

  Rykard firmly took her by the back of the head. After the Princess of Yellow, pulling a primordial angel against his chest was almost mundane. Almost. Her wings of bck and gold spread, eyes on them opening wide, and he cimed her lips in one swift motion. He tasted her. Tasted the sweetness of the divine energy pulsing within her form. Tasted her honesty.

  Aclysia was not a normal woman. She knew what she was: a servant. It was evident in every swirl her tongue surrendered to his and the moans she let out when he groped her fat ass. There was no courting here, for courting was a matter between an affirmative man and a hesitant woman. He was the desired Master. She was the loyal servant. There was no need to court, only to make things official.

  “I could use a maid,” Rykard whispered to her.

  “Then your maid I shall be,” Aclysia answered. She would have bowed as well if he had given her the space. Swooning still as he kneaded her ass, the submissive angel pulled her wings inwards. Liquid, impossible matter turned into white and bck fabric. Rykard kept on making out with her until the change had completed. Where wings had been, clothes were now dispyed.

  “I will break you in ter,” Rykard whispered to the new servant.

  “Do with me as you please, I beg of you,” Aclysia encouraged.

  What a good girl.