The thing about mortals that Amarantha just couldn’t quite get over was how ugly they all were.
Well, that wasn’t entirely fair, was it? She didn’t think that all mortals were ugly. Just most of them. And it wasn’t really that they were ugly the way a bad pudding or a turd on the side of the road were ugly, just mostly unattractive. Beauty was subjective, certainly, but in her opinion, there was simply no comparison between, say, the average human and a Lares.
Take Wilhelm for example. He had two legs. Two. How was he even able to walk with just two legs? And to make it even worse, he didn’t even have a tail to help with balance. Of course, those were more mechanical complaints than aesthetic ones, but not having a tail was an aesthetic demerit, by Ulya! She had seen him naked. It was just… a round, fleshy haunch back there, like a shaved pig. But rounder, somehow. It was just bizarre.
The man’s whole physical composition was a mess. Hairless, except for in some random and weird locations. Bulging muscles on clear display whenever he took his shirt off; so incredibly strange to look at. And his face. What was up with the face? Those lips, those ears, that freaky nose… what even was the point of having such large and pointy noses when humans couldn’t even smell their own stinky feet half the time?
And yet, despite all of her complaints, Amarantha knew that Wilhelm was what most mortals would call a handsome man. She even recognized his appeal, in her own way. She certainly wasn’t attracted to him, but she had grown to appreciate the little details that made up for the strangeness. He had pretty eyes. Also, his smile was very nice. He did that well. And when she thought about his figure from an artistic perspective, she saw the symmetry and could enjoy the… well, she wouldn’t lie to herself. He was still kind of ugly. But for all the years she had known the man, even when she was a half-blind kitten, he had always been a great person and an even better friend.
All of that was to say, she understood why Jocelyn was in love with him.
What she didn’t understand was why the silly mouse wouldn’t just have sex with him already.
“She needs to stake her claim,” Amarantha said as she adjusted her perch on top of Ketty, her walking stone cauldron. “Some dainty princess or powerful sorceress or really forward prostitute is going to catch hold of him and steal his first time if she doesn’t.”
“He does seem like the kind of man who would be too afraid of being rude to push his way out of a seduction,” Kerr commented as she walked next to her.
“More like he wouldn’t notice that he was being seduced until his pants were already unlaced,” Maeve said from the other side of the cauldron. “He’s so… innocent.”
“That said,” Kerr held up one clawed hand. “I don’t think he would ever go through with anything with anyone other than that jolie fleur. His eyes are for Jocelyn alone. Balls, too, I presume.”
Amarantha liked Kerr and Maeve. They were both smart and clever, which were not the same traits and far too infrequently failed to be found in the same person. They had humor, too, and she could banter with them with the same ease she would any of her longer-standing friends. Even better, she could talk about Wilhelm and Jocelyn and the rest of the party with them without having to worry about offending anyone. They were both completely irreverent, which was the best kind of reverence, in her opinion.
It helped that Kerr had a tail. And proper ears. Well, they were more like cow ears than Lares ears, but they made more sense than human or elf ears. Overall, Kerr was much easier to see beauty in, since she was a therion, and therions were generally attractive to her.
Not that Amarantha was basing her opinions on others solely on their looks. A person’s physical appearance was honestly the least important part of how she judged them. It was just so much easier to understand what Kerr was thinking and feeling because she had those ears and a Villthyrial-blessed tail on her exceptionally round rear. Plus, she didn’t hide her emotions behind a wall of temple training the way Lucia did. Amarantha was almost positive that the Paladin was actually a human who just had some sort of weird mutation or something of the like to get horns and a tail, because it was unnatural how little she used her proper body parts to convey her meaning.
Maybe if she got Kerr to hang around Lucia during their mission together, the ice fox might melt a little…
“I could shift into Jocelyn’s form and stir the pot a little,” Maeve offered. “Nothing overt. I wouldn’t even need to touch him. A loose towel early in the morning, a sheer shift late at night, a bit of unexpected cleavage; that sort of thing. I don’t think it would take much.”
“Hm, I like the idea,” Amarantha said as she tilted her head from one side to another in thought. “But I know Jocy wouldn’t like that, and Willy would get mad if he found out. That’s a poultice we should shelve for now, just in case things get dire.”
“No worries,” Maeve shrugged an orange shoulder. “I’m happy to help, as long as I don’t have to suck Willy’s willy or anything like that.”
Maeve was a good person too, in Amarantha’s book. Still weird, because she was a shapeshifter and apparently she chose to look like a human made of orange jelly, but a good person nonetheless. Maybe she could convince the Fetch to try being a Lares for a while? It’d be nice to hang around someone who didn’t tower over her for a while.
“Saving yourself for the day you get to slurp on the giant’s pillar, hmm?” Kerr teased while grinning wickedly. “You’ll need an empty stomach for that.”
“Fuck, I am so ready for that,” Maeve slumped dramatically as she let out a little whine. “I have never been this hard up before. I caught you and two of Jadis in the pantry the other day and I almost—”
“That was you?” Kerr interrupted with a raised eyebrow. “I thought that was Thea’s mother knocking on the door!”
“I had to shift into someone innocent, otherwise I probably would have broken down and just, you know, gone for it,” the Fetch admitted. “Besides, you were being too loud. Someone else was bound to discover you two. That was my polite way of giving you a warning.”
“You could have joined us,” Kerr told Maeve. “I wouldn’t have minded, and I doubt Jadis would have, either. You could have turned into Eir and just gone right at her cock. Jadis wouldn’t have even questioned it.”
“No, I won’t do that,” Maeve sighed, her expression a mix of amusement and resignation. “I want Jadis to want… well. Me. Not me pretending to be Eir.”
“I understand,” Kerr smiled knowingly. “I really do.”
Amarantha understood what the Fetch was saying, too. She hadn’t yet found anyone that she was interested in from a romantic perspective, but if she ever did, she would want them to love her for her, not because of what she looked like. Which, when she thought about it, might be just a little hypocritical, considering how much she was judging people based on their looks, lately.
…but humans were just so ugly.
Amarantha sighed, then shook her head while resolving herself to be a little better.
“I don’t understand fellatio,” she said, deciding to get the mood back towards something fun rather than sincere. “The whole process sounds weird and painful to me.”
“I guess it would be with a mouth filled with teeth like yours,” Maeve made a face. “Actually, how do therions do it? Male therions, I mean?”
“Lots of tongue,” Kerr answered distractedly. “Not much sucking. I think we’re here.”
Looking around, Amarantha saw that their conversation had carried them all the way to the fallow field that they had been directed to by some of the city guards. There were a few soldiers on the other side of the open space, but otherwise, they were alone. It seemed they had arrived early, which was no surprise considering they had avoided all of the crowds.
Amarantha didn’t enjoy all of the praise and accolades that came with being in the Hero’s party. She could play nice and do her part when needed, but she made a game out of avoiding the adoring public whenever possible. She had gotten pretty good at the game, too, though she felt like traveling with both Wilhelm and Jadis was cheating. Those two gathered crowds like hogs gathered flies, so it was practically kitten's play to slink out of the area unnoticed, even with Kerr and Maeve walking beside her.
“Let’s go sit under those trees,” Maeve pointed to the left where a few fig trees could be seen. “I bet the fight won’t even start before noon, and it will be boiling out here by that time.”
“I have a potion you can take if you’re feeling too hot,” Amarantha offered as she mentally directed her Ketty to follow behind the Fetch. “It’s sort of still experimental right now, so it might make you burp and fart uncontrollably for a few hours, but I’ve almost got the ratios correct.”
“I’m a Fetch. I don’t burp or fart unless I want to.”
“That’s convenient…” Kerr grumbled.
A couple of hours later, after Maeve had been forced to take the antidote, the two promised opponents finally arrived at the field. While the battle between Nephilim and Valbjorn was supposedly a private affair and not something that was supposed to be advertised, it seemed that rumors had spread and half of the soldiers in the city were gathered around the large, open meadow. Amarantha imagined that every man and woman who wasn’t on duty had shown up to see what was being spoken of as a grudge match between the two women.
In all honesty, Amarantha felt a little bad for Captain Odilia. She’d never met the woman, and by all accounts she sounded like a real mule, but apparently, she had already been forced to read a public apology in front of her troops. Getting a beatdown in front of all those troops too was pretty harsh.
Of course, the thought that Jadis wouldn’t defeat the captain never crossed her mind.
“Can you hear what they’re saying to each other?” Maeve asked as she watched the Nephilim and Valbjorn talk in the middle of the field. “I can’t make it out, and I’ve never been good at reading Valbjorn lips.”
“They’re just going over the rules again,” Kerr said as she leaned against the trunk of the fig tree they had claimed as their spot. “No weapons, no armor, no spells, just a bare-handed brawl. First one to be knocked out or give up loses.”
“Is that a pun?”
“…it is now,” Kerr answered a moment later.
After a little while, two of Jadis’ bodies walked away from the third who was still standing in front of Odilia. Amarantha guessed that it was an attempt at making the fight fair. She hadn’t seen the Nephilim fight since the debacle in Eldingholt over the winter, and even then it had been a limited view, but she still knew that three of Jadis was too much for a single person to handle on their own unless they were someone at Halvor or Rein’s level of skill. Odilia had to be strong since she had reached CLR one hundred, but that didn’t mean she was on the same level of a Hero or Hero adjacent fighter.
“Here, take these,” Amarantha said as she suddenly remembered the potions she had prepared ahead of time. “They’ll enhance your senses so that you can keep up with high-Agility actions.”
Maeve frowned at the bottle that Ketty held out to her with one of its wooden limbs.
“It’s perfected,” the Lares rolled her eyes before leaping up into the branches of the tree overhead so she could get a better view. “No adverse effects. I promise.”
Both Kerr and Maeve took the potions that Amarantha offered them just in time, as only a few seconds later, the fight began.
It turned out that Amarantha was wrong. Jadis hadn’t removed two of her bodies from the fight to make it even. She had removed them so she would have more time to beat the snot out of Odilia before the Valbjorn was knocked out.
“Holy gods,” Amarantha overheard one of the soldiers nearby exclaim. “How high is her Agility?”
“That is brutal,” another woman said while looking away.
“Someone should call this off…” a third man commented.
All of the nearby murmurings from the crowd mirrored the Mystic’s own thoughts. She had seen some vicious fights between people of high levels over the past couple of years, but she was still taken aback by the ferocity Jadis was displaying as she struck the struggling Valbjorn. It was like watching an alley cat wear out a rat before making the kill. Amarantha wasn’t opposed to a little hunting, but even she didn’t play with her food like that.
Kerr and Maeve, however, both looked completely unfazed.
“Oh, she’s trying that grappling technique Noll taught her last week,” Kerr commented. “She always learns that sort of stuff so fast.”
“That doesn’t look like one of Noll’s techniques,” Maeve said a second or two later.
“Uh, no, that’s definitely a Jadis original,” Kerr winced.
Amarantha watched as Odilia dug her way up and out of the ruined earth she had been slammed down into. Letting out a bestial roar, the Valbjorn charged at Jadis, heavily clawed paws swinging in wide arcs that would have broken through timbers twice as wide as she was long. Before she had taken even four steps, Jadis was at her side, practically appearing out of thin air as she moved with a speed that made the grass around her feet flatten like they were subjected to gale force winds. A giant pale fist slammed into Odilia’s left side in an upward punch that sent the woman flying several feet to the side. Amarantha’s ears flattened at the sound of crunching bone as Jadis moved to follow up on her attack with a twirling kick that caught the captain under her chin. It was thanks only to Amarantha’s heightened sensory potion that she was able to see several of Odilia’s fangs go flying through the air along with a spray of blood.
Amarantha wasn’t a combat expert. She didn’t fight Demons with her paws, and when Halvor started talking about axes or Rein spoke about spear techniques, she had to fight an instinctive reaction to fall asleep. However, she couldn’t spend years around such people without unintentionally learning a few things about how to fight properly. As such, she knew enough to be able to tell that Jadis’ technique was what Wilhelm would generously refer to as “rough around the edges.” She clearly knew how to fight, but it was equally clear that the woman didn’t have any weapon or combat skills, nor did she have the experience that came with years of dedicated training. That was why it was so impressive that she was kicking the tailless butt of someone who obviously did have that experience and those techniques.
To the Valbjorn’s credit, she lasted several minutes longer than Amarantha had expected before a particularly hard knock to the head put her to sleep. When Odilia did finally go down, it was to a mix of cheers and sighs of relief, as even some of the crowd seemed to feel a little bad for how hard the captain had been beaten.
As both Jocelyn and Eir rushed out to the middle of now torn-up field, Amarantha followed Kerr and Maeve as they headed to where Jadis’ three selves had gathered.
“I feel much better now,” all three of Jadis sighed happily as she stretched her arms over her heads.
“Remind me not to ever get on your bad side,” Amarantha said as she watched those furless muscles ripple across the Nephilim’s gigantic and strange body.
“Don’t worry,” one of Jadis turned and winked at the Lares. “You won’t.”
214