I put Shenerah down on the bed, not in the room I had told I would use, but one of the others. She looked fearfully at me, tears in her eyes, but I ignored her for the moment and turned to Yathanae. “What the fuck should I do?”

“What you threatened to do,” she replied with a shrug. “It’s the way of the world. Even elves will use conquered spoils.”

“No, I can’t do it,” I said with a shake of my head.

“Why did you threaten to do it then?”

With a sigh, I told her, “Normally I would just threaten them with a painful death versus a quick death. However, I can’t kill them, so I had to think of something that would keep them in line. It was the only thing I could think of in the moment.”

“You’re a strange man, you revel in violence, you’re strong, but what most men in your position would love to do, you shy away from,” she said and reached out caressing my hand. “I guess there’s a reason why Emerald wants us to have your children.”

A small voice asked behind me, “You’re not going to rape me?”

I hung my head, without turning around I answered truthfully, “No. Never. Nor do I allow my men to do such a thing. I guess we’ll have to keep you knocked out or something instead. Yathanae, do you think Ilmadia or Siphanien knows any plants or compounds we can keep them asleep with?”

She nodded. “They should be able to do so for a short while.”

“Okay, I guess we’ll have to do that for as long as possible and then kill them when it’s no longer feasible,” I mumbled. “We’ll just have to make sure they don’t know where they are.”

“I’ll see to it,” Yathanae said and turned around to walk out of the room.

“Wait!” Shenerah exclaimed behind me. We both turned to look at her, and she quickly went on, “Please don’t kill me, I don’t want to go back there. Ever.”

“Excuse me?” was all I could think to ask.

“If I become reborn, my father will demand that I carry two of his children, I ran away shortly before entering adulthood, so that’s another child he’ll want to put in me,” she said in a hurry, anger and revulsion in her eyes. I think mine reflected confusion and some revulsion at what I heard as well.

“Your father will do what?” I could not believe my own ears.

“When the human race revolted, the People—Uhm, I guess you call us lampads, was almost wiped out. Only my father, Aymon the Immortal, and four females we call the Mothers survived the Fall,” Shenerah explained calmly. “To repopulate the race and keep it pure, Aymon bore children with his own children, grand-children and so on. However, he still insists on doing it, despite the fact that we have a population size that doesn’t need to adhere to such a disgusting tradition.”

“I did not know that,” Yathanae mumbled.

“That’s sick,” was my reply. I felt sick. Breeding with your own children was just so wrong. All this race purity bullshit was really starting to get out of hand. What was wrong with people?

I looked at the ebony elf, with the golden-red eyes, sitting on the bed and looking very small. She seemed more afraid of dying than of me. “If you want, I will take you with me to my Hold if we survive the next three moons.”

Her eyes held a bit of hope in them as she looked at me. “And what price must I pay for this?”

“You’ll have to be a serf, work at the Hold as everyone else does, you won’t be forced or asked to have sex with anyone, in that regard, it’s your life,” I explained. “I can’t remove the collar and manacles. At least not yet, but I’m going to look into it.”

“What work would I be doing?” she asked, still guarded.

“I don’t know what you’re good at. Since you’re a priestess you would probably be used to relay information, I don’t know if you can do anything else than resurrect, or if we somehow can move your resurrection point to somewhere else,” I said with a shrug.

“I can do that,” she said while emphatically nodding. “Besides the resurrection, I can control fire, just like any ignimancer can.”

“Good to know,” I said with a nod. “While that would be valuable, I’ll not ask you to fight against other elves.”

“Thank you,” she said with a smile.

Yathanae rejoined the conversation, “We still have a problem though.”

“My mother,” Shenerah said at once.

Yathanae nodded, which made me groan. I thought I knew the answer already, but I had to ask, “Is she a reasonable person that we can make a deal with?”

Shenerah shook her head. “You saw that she tried to kill me, even though she knows what awaits me. She hates our father as much as I do, but she hates you even more. You killed her. She had to sacrifice my sister.”

“Sacrifice?” I asked, shaking with anger at the thought of a parent sacrificing their child.

“When we’re Reborn, the Fire Lord intercepts our soul before it can join the weave that keeps the Destroyer locked up, but another soul needs to take our place,” Shenerah explained. “Aymon makes us sacrifice one of our own children, or we can sacrifice one of his. If we sacrifice one of his, we have to carry two children for him. Since I have no children, I would have to carry two of his.”

“That’s just fucking sick,” I grumbled. Yathanae looked a bit pale after that explanation as well. “She knew that was awaiting you, yet she still tried to kill you and send you back. You’re right, I don’t think she’ll be willing to make a deal. So what the fuck are we going to do? And by the way, how the hell did she attack me?”

“You’re the one utilizing these cursed objects, not us, so how should we know?” Yathanae responded with a little heat in her voice.

“Right, sorry. I’ll have to ask Ethan,” I said. “So what do we do about Axina?”

“We continue to bluff, the two of you have sex, we make it sound like you’re raping her,” Yathanae said, which caused immediate reactions from both me and Shenerah.

I said, “I’m not sleeping with anyone without Lily’s consent.”

“I’m not interested in men,” was Shenerah’s reaction.

Yathanae groaned. After a minute, she asked Shenerah, “What about me?”

Shenerah blushed mightily, but still nodded enthusiastically. Yathanae gave her a predatory smile before looking at me, “You’ll have to provide some commentary for her mother’s benefit.”

This time it was me that groaned. It was going to be hell.

Two hours later, I made my way out from the barracks, shirtless, with sweat pouring out of every pore. I was dragging Shenerah by her collar, her clothes ripped and her face bloody. The looks I got were weird, filling me a bit with contempt. A lot of the male soldiers gave me looks bordering on admirations, their knowing smiles lecherous. The women, especially the mages, looked uncomfortable. For them, it looked like I had broken the promise I had given, the one about them not getting raped.

I did not rape anyone, for most of the two hours the session lasted, I was exercising. Pushups, pullups, vertical pushups. All kinds of exercises that I could do in a tiny room, all the while trying to ignore the sapphic show happening on the bed right next to me. Towards the end, I joined Yathanae for a quickie. To my shame, I did not last very long, but three of my senses had been stimulated for two hours.

We ended the whole thing with my punching Shenerah in the face several times. I made sure to take her pain away first. It was Shenerah herself that had asked for it, but I must admit I did not feel good about it. One thing was killing females in battle, hurting them for a bluff or any other reason felt—unclean.

When we got to the pole Axina was tied to, she struggled to get out of her restraints. She was gagged, something I had ordered after five minutes of her screaming threats at me. Her face was wet from tears, and her eyes shined with fury and worry. Fury at me, worry for her daughter.

With a casual motion, trying to convey utter contempt, I sent Shenerah sprawling to the grown at her mother’s feet. With a sneer, I said, “Don’t worry, didn’t impregnate the bitch this time. Your pathetic attempt amused me. However, if you try again, what she just went through will feel like love. Do you understand me?”

Axina stared daggers at me, but her eyes quickly softened as they shifted to Shenerah who was hugging her legs, crying and sobbing. Whimpering she pled, “Mother, please—don’t make him hurt me again. I’m so ashamed of what happened.”

I left the two under the watchful eye of Yathanae who had joined us outside. I was making my way over to Ethan when Anders intercepted me, his eternal shadow, Chione, following not too far behind.

“What the fuck was that? You fucking animal,” he screamed in my face.

“I did what I had to, now get out of my way,” I said.

He shook his head. “No, I won’t let such an injustice stand, I’ll—”

It was not me who interrupted him, though it was a close one. One second more and I would have decked him. Instead, he was interrupted by Chione, who was tugging on his sleeve. He looked at her and she gave a small shake of her head. With a large contemptuous snort, he stalked away with her following behind.

As soon as I was within a few metres of Ethan, I demanded an answer, “Ethan, how the hell did she manage to attack me?”

“Milord, I’m not sure,” he said with a frown. “I checked her when you had collared her, all the connections from the manacles were in place.”

“I know that. I put them on her and when I was making the modifications to her accessories, I saw that they were still in place.”

“Milord, it should be impossible for her to knowingly attack you. Not even subconsciously, when she had the manacles on,” he said, looking rather upset, afraid, and helpless. We just stared at each other for a while. “I’ll see if I can figure it out, but I can’t promise anything. Could you bring over one of the fideomancers? I would prefer that you don’t suspect that I had anything to do with it.”

“We’ll arrange that, and please see if you can find an answer. I think I got the situation handled for now. At least I hope,” I said and started to walk away.

“Ah, milord, a moment please,” Ethan quickly exclaimed.

“Yes?”

“If I might be so bold, how could you link the spell crystals to her mana pool?”

I shrugged. “I just did, I thought it was normal to do it that way.”

He shook his head. “It’s not. In fact, it’s the first time it has ever been done. And we have tried to do it for thousands upon thousands of cycles.”

“But you got the collars, they connect to the mana pool,” I pointed out.

“Yes,” he said and looked hesitant for a moment. He then rapidly said his next sentence, “But they were given to us by the gods and they’re involved in the creation of them.”

As soon as he said that, he collapsed, convulsing in pain. In a flash, I was kneeling next to him, flushing his system with healing magic. Both to remove the pain but also to repair the arteries that were bursting inside his body. No matter what I did, I could not remove the pain, but I was able to keep up with repairing the damage his body took.

This was the first time I had tried to heal his whole body, not just the head injury I had inflicted him with, so I found something interesting when healing him. His finger was missing, and he said it had been cut off with a Heretic Blade. Whenever my healing magic tried to heal the scarring at the end of his finger, or regrow the finger, there was a sort of backlash to my magic.

A backlash that felt like someone struck me in the head with a sledgehammer. So in the end. I kept away from trying to heal that, and just made sure he did not die while convulsing, which went on for a minute before he let out a sigh and fainted.

He had definitely revealed something he should not, and if the speed he talked with was any indication, he knew that he should not. Yet he had still done it. What he had revealed was also troubling. The Gods were involved in the creation of these collars and manacles, and they reeked of wrongness to my mana sense. One I had learned to ignore but still was aware of.

Also, I had somehow done something that should not be possible according to what he had revealed. Or only possible to do for the gods. That was slightly frightening and awesome at the same time. It was awesome to think that I had the same power as the gods, but also frightening, because what did that mean?

Was I demi-god? Unlikely.

Was the dream woman that had saved me a goddess? Would not rule that out.

If she was, why did she choose to help me? No freaking idea.

More importantly though, what plans did she have for me? That was the question that truly frightened me. I was pretty sure that nothing good could come from messing with the gods. Sounded like a recipe for disaster. Especially these Gods. They subverted prophecy, squandered talent, and so far I had not met a single human priest that was not an asshole.

Had not met a lot of other races’ priests, but so far two out of the three that I had met and interacted with seemed well-adjusted, and sexy as hell. Only the last one was a total psycho bitch. Of course, I could not really judge the fourth I had met since I had killed her before we had the chance to say hello.

While I had been musing, I had picked up Ethan and carried him into the barracks. I had found a bed that was not soaked in blood and unceremoniously dumped him there. It took ten minutes before he woke up with a groan.

“Seems like drinking a barrel of strong ale would be healthier for you,” I said with a grin.

He gingerly sat up and checked himself over. He finally looked up at me. “Thank you. That was a bad backlash.”

“You’re welcome, I’m not going to ask you more about that subject, I just want to know why you told me?”

It took a moment before Ethan answered, and when he did, it was a slow and hesitant, almost fearful, reply, “When I saw what you did, I became frightened. You could do something that none of us has been able to accomplish, and trust me we’ve tried.”

He groaned for a moment when he said that. It seemed to just have been a warning. “The main reason was that I thought you might be an agent of the Destroyer. However, an agent of the Destroyer would know of a way to destroy the soul. He or she would not need to keep the priestesses from being reborn.”

“What if I’m an unwitting one?” I prodded.

He looked thoughtful for a long time before he shook his head. “I don’t think so. The confidence you were projecting when you made those crystals, it was like you had an epiphany or something. Am I right?”

I considered it for a moment before I nodded. “Yes, almost like I was in a trance. I should be able to replicate the technique, but I don’t know why it works or even how I came up with the idea.”

“Divine guidance. Either it’s one of the Gods or the Creator herself. If you had been an agent of the Destroyer, surely you would have received a tool for destruction instead of a tool for saving lives,” he argued.

“I guess that would make sense,” I concurred.

“So, you just did something that should be impossible. Guided by divinity, either our Gods or the Creator. Either way, instead of working against you, I should work with you,” he said, his voice full of earnestness. “So far I’ve only been doing what you’ve asked of me, or to keep myself alive. That changes now.”

He got out of the bed and knelt on the floor, placing his right hand over his heart. “From this day forward, I swear to serve you willingly and fully, as you’re a chosen of the Divine. Either by my Gods or the Creator. Whatever the case, your cause will be a righteous one, and I pledge myself to your service in this life and the next.”

I was honestly very surprised by his action. I think it was a minute before I had gathered my thoughts enough to reply. “I thank you for that. It means a lot to me, but before you give that oath, please know that I might end up in opposition to the Church. You know that we don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things.”

He looked hesitant for a moment. “If it comes to that, then it will come to that. I might not be able to help you in that case, but I’ll not work against you either.”

“In that case, I’m deeply honoured,” I said and held my hand out to him. It took a few seconds before he clasped my hand and I pulled him up. “No need to kneel for me. Just show me respect, and I’m satisfied with that.”

He gave a small bow. “Milord.”

“I need you to get together with Yathanae, Ilmadia, and Siphanien, see if you guys can find a safe way to test if the manacles are malfunctioning for some reason,” I requested, and got an affirmative response immediately. I turned back to the barracks, I would need to get some sleep before evening when we would be heading out.