Fighting Them There

###Fighting Them There: Chapter Twenty-Three###

###Fighting Them There: Chapter Twenty-Three###

Three women walked on a dusty path, but only one woman's feet kicked up tan clouds. The lake was only a few meters away, but the nearby source moisture didn't prevent the path from becoming dry and powdery. It was almost time for the Winter Feast, which was the Space Force's non-denominational Christmas, and yet for the part of the planet they were on it was neither winter nor summer. Camp Acheron was experiencing one of its two dry seasons that came with every trip around the local star. The lake shrank from its banks during this season, but a river's contribution ensured that the lake was present year round. Sophie and Miriam left no clouds of dust in their wake, not even footprints betrayed their passing. To a careful observer, the Valkyrie's feet never even touched the dusty soil, her rainbow step supporting her weight as completely as the ground might be expected to do. Even the finest scrutiny would have a hard time explaining Miriam's traceless passage, as her shoes literally touched the ground with every step. The Geomancer was using a very small amount of her magic to shape the ground around her, taking control of it without actually changing its shape. A subtle technique that used hardly any mana but required quite a bit of concentration.

Fiona's footfalls, on the other hand, each created a crunching sound and kicked up a puff of tan dust. Her Space Force issued boots were filthy, and she'd have to rub them down at the end of the walk if she didn't want to receive a very sarcastic talking-to from a technical sergeant. The guardians weren't able to give much in the way of talkback to hunters, but failing to take care of military issue clothing to military specifications was a reasonably open and shut case. As a hunter, she could wear, ornotwear, her dungeon equipment however she wanted and none of the enlisted guardians would have standing to say anything at all, and if Fiona's military boots weren't up to military specifications by the time she went to sleep, she would reap all of that frustration.

"I see you're wearing the collar?" While phrased as a question, it was a simple observation. Sophiewaswearing the gorget from her dungeon equipment, that much was obvious and indisputable. She had declared the piece of armor to be a symbol of her devotion to Max, a reminder in metal that she had embraced her relationship to her boyfriend and party member to consider him much more than that.

The blond had a dreamy look pass across her face before she answered. "Yeah, it's great. It's like Max is with me all the time. It protects me... it protects me from the weight of expectations. Everyone wants me to save the world. Save all the worlds. They treat me like I'm A-tier, like I'm Baba Iva or Fa Ying, but I'mnot. With the collar I can just let it all roll off me." She hovered so low to the ground that she seemed to be merely taller even than she already was. The Valkyrie would tower over Fiona and and Miriam anyway, but the extra centimeters of vertical placement made the other women feel even smaller.

Shaking her head, Fiona sighed. "No one has those kinds of unrealistic expectations for me. I'm D-tier, everyone knows that I'm just going to shut down a few minor dungeons and then wash out of the program. You might not be the next Moon Codex, but you have a future in this. Even without Max, your class makes you a player. Without Max... I'm nothing." What she'd said had come out a lot more self pitying and defeatist than she'd intended. "If Max collars me, it won't protect me like that. Not that I have a collar to wear anyway." She usually wore a black collar attached to Max's leash, a mana tether that was a piece of Max's dungeon equipment and improved the magical strength and mana recovery of whoever he put it on. That was the rub right there, Max could put it on anyone, and had to put it on every time. Itcouldn'tbe Fiona's personal ceremonial object the way Sophie's gorget had been elevated to being a slave collar.

Overly petulant or not, Sophie was impacted by the Vietnamese American's words. "Fiona," she said seriously, "Max is going to let you choose what kind of slave you are. He's not going to force you to be the kind of slave he thinks you should be. He's going to force you to be the kind of slave you ask him to mold you into." She gave an understanding sigh. "Look, once I realized I could be his slave, I wanted Master Max to justenslaveme. But that's not how it works. You have to enslave yourself. Your time is coming soon, as soon as you become a Night Wizard or whatever, you'll be his slave. Forever. You just have to decidehowyou want him to enslave you."

Miriam concurred. "In a way it's a loteasierfor you, because your hunter's rune is literally going tochange." The redhead crossed her arms. "There's no wayI'mgoing to change classes by the time Max takes full ownership of me. But your rune is going to stop saying 'Shadow Mage,' and start saying 'Property of Max Mitchell.'" The Geomancer used her finger quotes and spoke almost exactly like she did when she was egging Max on to make love to women in front of her. They all had their envy seals, and the progression they received when he behaved romantically or sexually with other women in their presence was substantial and felt amazing. But it seemed that Miriam was second only to Sophie in encouraging Max to do things with the other women that would feed her green serpent.

A great point had been raised, and Fiona turned her attentions from her own insecurities to that of her party member and friend. "Whatareyou going to do to surrender yourself to Max? You don't even have to do it, you could just carry on. You're powerful, your submissive urges aren't going to take you anywhere you aren't already. Max will fuck you in the pussy and the ass, but you can keep thinking about it. Ulzhari's rune already changed, and we started at the same time. I don't know how long I have before I do this expanded slavery thing we're doing."

"I don't have a lot of time either," Miriam admitted, "we're going toNurn, Fiona. I can't go there as being just a co-worker that Max fucks sometimes. I'm going there as his harem-wife. When we're talking to whatever heralds and marshals are in, I will be all-in. We all will be. They'll want to talk to Max, but they'll have to talk to his whole harem." Her voice and face seemed quite resolute. "Honestly, I think I'm going to do the same collaring thing that Sophie did. Maybe it's not very creative, but this wasn't the life I thought I'd live." She fingered her neck in contemplation. "Yeah, I'm going to have him lock my gorget on me and then have him riddle my ass until he owns me completely. Yeah. That's what I'll do." She seemed to be convincing herself of her own plan as much as she was explaining it to Fiona and Sophie.

Sophie thought it was a great plan. "That's so wonderful!" The blond was all smiles for the Geomancer. "We're going to be like sister-slaves. He'll put us on leashes and order us to service him together." The image of Sophie and Miriam on their knees, licking Max's cock from either side, flashed across the mind's eyes of all three women. It wasn't that long ago that such a vision would have horrified all three. Miriam would have been offended to be treated in such a manner. Fiona would have been terrified that she was being recruited for a bondage cult. Even Sophie would not have guessed that she'd be so looking forward to sharing his boyfriend.

It was worrying. The Night Caller had gotten over the idea that she was being recruited for a bondage cult. She was in the bondage cult. That ship had sailed. She was worried that Sophie and Miriam had so easily found their place as Master Max's collared slaves, and she hadn't thought of a place for herself. She didn't have a lot oftime, and if her self enslavement to Max was dumb it was going to be a shame she'd carry for the rest of her life. She didn't want to be one of those people who had to tell their children that they had a gimmick wedding in Vegas. When she told her kids about her harem enslavement ceremony, she wanted it to be something she could be proud of.

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First Lieutenant Cortes had a lot of messages on her pad, which was worrying. Camp Acheron was an important installation, but it wasn't actually very large. Most things she had to be told were things that people could tell her to her face. Even so, she spent nearly an hour dealing with e-mails every day, but that was the life of an O-2. As word of the Kwrtzl situation spread, the number of people who felt the need to bypass the chain of command by contacting her directly increased massively. She could only imagine what an actual hell the Colonel's inbox must be at the moment. The Lieutenant might be tempted to feel sorry for him if she didn't know for a fact that Major Moore defended his inbox like she was a center on his basketball team.

There was a particular idea that had escaped containment, and it had started creating e-mails that created more e-mails. Transmissions from Earth could only come in once per Earth day, but each batch was larger than the one before it. Lieutenant Cortes knew that she had to stop it before the reply-all chain made productive work impossible. "Specialist Clark," she began, "do you know why you are here?" Mostly the gate technicians just went by their first names, since their technical ranks weren't interesting. One didn't become a gate technician because of a long military career, but because of having been recruited by the Space Force out of a theoretical thaumaturgy program at a major university. In other contexts, she might have just called the woman "Leticia" like everyone else did. But this was a formal meeting, and she used formal titles.

"No Ma'am," Leticia was forced to admit, "I do not." Obviously it was going to be about the Tartarian interviews, because her job had essentially ceased being about anything else. As to what part of the interviews she was going to be grilled about, she hadn't the foggiest.

The officer looked at her pad and seemed to wish that it was an antacid and a cup of water instead of a device filled with classified military data. "Hunter Mitchell's Tartarian pet is levelfive, yet her only dungeon battle was a total defeat for her side. How and where did those levels come from?"

Right. That. Hunters of the Allianceonlygained levels by fighting in dungeons. A hunter who retired would stop gaining levels. A hunter who refused the call of duty and used their powers for personal enrichment on one of the Home Worlds would languish at level one for their entire life. The Tartarians, and presumably the champions of the other Nemesis Worlds, did not have that limitation. "The Thirst Tower, that's the war monastery that Kwrtzl was raised in for most of her life as a blade orphan," her clarification, if one were to judge by Lieutenant Cortes' expression, had not clarified much. In truth, the social systems involved were so alien that Leticia felt that she wasn't far off from just trying to explain it in the Salt Shell dialect of Tartarian that she'd been tasked with translating, "anyway, the Salt Tower has an arena where Tartarian conquerors have ritual duels and killing captives for personal enrichment and the appreciation of crowds. They go up in levels doing that, and they also go up in level when they get exposed to the magic that attaches the grafts."

It was a lot to take in. An asymmetry in the system that clearly favored the Nemesis Worlds. It meant that a black gate could potentially form at any time without any warning. Right now another Demon Lord of Guangzhou could be leveling up on Tartarus and the Space Force wouldn't know anything about it. "That's unfortunate. Do the Tartarians have more salty towers?"

Leticia shrugged. "The Thirst Tower isn't the only war monastery of Tartarus. There are twelve more Tartarian weaknesses and they all have at least one." She knew that she'd be asked about the Demon Lord of Guangzhou for the same reason she herself had grilled Max and Kwrtzl about that event, and so she volunteered some information about him. "The Demon Lord of Guangzhou trained at the Bastion of Anger, and the title of Lord of Anger has apparently been vacant since the Battle of Guangzhou. But um... for propaganda purposes the Tartarian people have been told that he's still alive and ruling an exo-colony." That detail was something Leticia felt really walked the knife-edge between tragedy and farce.

Having a horrible feeling that she knew where the discussion was going, Lieutenant Cortes sighed. "Let me guess, these training grounds are produced by domains somehow, and not actually something we can replicate without Hunter Mitchell raiding dungeons?" The question was completely rhetorical, but military protocol expected an answer.

"Yes Ma'am." Strictly speaking, some of that was pure speculation, but Kwrtzl was quite firm that she believed it all to be true.

There were too many messages on Lieutenant Cortes' pad. And the replies she was going to send were going to generate even more. Reluctantly, she agreed to add even more cooks to the soup. "Specialist Heidi Kwok is a thaumaturgical hyperspectral analyst," her voice becoming the monotone that accompanied a direct reading from her pad, "she has been granted an emergency security clearance sufficient to know everything you know about Hunter Mitchell and his pet Tartarian. She will be arriving tomorrow with a... one-point-two gigapixel hyperspectral camera and an eight Tesla magnetic resonance imaging device. Those will take some time to set up, and she should be able to get to work as soon as they are. So we want you to get her up to speed as quickly as possible."

Those were certainly words. Leticia was aware that the imaging systems they got to play with for gate targeting didn't get anywhere close to those numbers. "Um... Ma'am, aren't those things... don't they weightonnes?" The thought of getting equipment transfers of that scale approved had never even occurred to her. The Space Force got all testy with the gate techs when they requestedpens.

Lieutenant Cortes agreed. "The entire equipment package is forty-nine tonnes with an additional twenty-three tonnes of housing and shielding. Your new building has been allocated fifty tonnes of structural material." It was good thing the Lieutenant hadn't offered Leticia any coffee, because she would have sprayed it all over the place. That was more than two guardians' water allotment for an entire year. Andthatwater was filtered and locally sourced, not shipped through the gate on short notice.

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Though she was powerful enough to simply snap the bonds, Sophie continued to lay face down with her wrists tied behind her back and her ankles tied together. Besides the red silk ribbons that bound her limbs, she wore nothing but her gorget and a smile. "Thank you for binding me, Master." She said lustily. "I am ready to beusedby you, Master. All of my holes are ready for your Essence."

Max sat on the bed and ran his hands along Sophie's muscular thighs. Even without the benefit of her hunter's mark, she was a phenomenal physical specimen. Max and Sophie had trained seriously for years before their magical enhancements actually came in, and the results were obvious in her sculpted limbs and flat stomach. Powered by a B-tier vanguard class and Max's own seals, she was literally the strongest hunter in their crop. She quivered at his touch, allowing him access to every part of her backside. His fingers encroached on the junction of legs and pelvis, reaching the spiderweb pattern of the seal of binding before they even reached the gluteal fold. The seals had gotten much larger and more ornate than when they'd first been applied, and were substantially more extensive on Sophie than on any of the other women in his party. He wondered if there was a limit, or if she would eventually have scrollwork in red, green, and silver all over her body.

Putting such thoughts aside, he worked his fingers between her thighs, his palm on the seal of binding and the back of his hand on the seal of envy. She was warm between her legs, and as he crept upwards toward her crotch she only became warmer still. "I love you Sophie," he said softly as his hand reached the smoothness of her lower lips, "you should cum." His fingers began tracing the outer labia of her pussy, finding them slick with Sophie's arousal and hot with her excitement. "Yes, Sophie, you should definitely cum." To make good on his dictate, he pushed his fingers between her folds. Into her wet and accepting pussy, first with two fingers and then with three. Schlick. Schlick. Schlick. He poked into her again and again and was rewarded with a groan from the blond Valkyrie.

"Master!" She whined in confused desperation. "You're making me cum! You're making me cum without you! I'm being so bad!" She raised her butt to give him even better access to her genitals even as she shook her head into the pillow. "So bad. Sooo baaaad! Aaaaaah!" Max's fingers abruptly became much wetter as he pushed her over the peak. He frigged her rapidly as she rode out her orgasm and slowed to a gentle stroking when the explosion had run its course. Sophie lay face down on the bed, panting and twitching her pelvis against his fingers for some time before she was able to string together a coherent sentence. "Master, your slave came without you. I will accept my punishment." The eagerness in her voice was incompletely masked, giving away her game entirely.

He couldn't help but chuckle, though he supposed that was not perhaps the ideal reaction. He thought she probably wanted him to stay in character and pretend to be furious. Having squandered that opportunity, he changed tactics and went for an amused teasing instead. "Has Slave Sophie been a bad girl? Has she cum before her master?" He was having a hard time keeping a straight face. The reality was that he hadsevenwomen to take care of, and if they weren't cumming before him most of the time, he thought he might die of exhaustion. He'd found that his sexual endurance was beyond anything he'd imagined before his hunter's rune activated, but seven women was still a lot. Actually cumming in each of them was a huge ordeal that required water breaks. A thrilling, erotic, and extremely pleasurable ordeal, but something he wouldn't evenwantevery day. Cumming three to four times in a session was something he could manage easily, and he could manage that three or four times a day without regretting it if he had meals in between. What it all came down to was that getting his slaves to cum independently of whether he was cumming was an important part of his slave management plan.

Yet for Sophie's ploy, it was important that he pretend to be angry about it. "I'm so sorry, Master! Your Sophie Slave is a pathetic, horny slave who cums without your permission. You're going tospankme, aren't you Master?" With her ankles still ribboned together, her wiggling just moved her butt back and forth in a manner that was both awkward and erotic. Max was tempted to plunge his cock into one of her holes, maybebothof her holes, but that wasn't the game that was being played. Smack! His hand came down on her butt cheek, right in the center of the binding seal's web. "Oooooh! Master Max, you're making me apologize with my asssss." Smack! His hand came down on her other cheek, briefly covering the hole in the middle of the spiraling green serpent. "I'm so sorry, Master. Your Sophie Slave will do better!" Smack! "Oh!" Smack! "Ah!" Smack! "Aaaargh! Fuck!" He was pretty sure she was cumming again, but he pretended not to notice. Sophie collapsed back onto the bed, limp and satiated.