First thing after breakfast was for Rykard to wander the up and coming nursery/daycare/childcare facility. ‘Whatever exactly the name for a separate house for the children is,’ he thought to himself, as he crossed the distance.

  The Buiga had put the foundation for the new building on the nearest, fttened hilltop to the Estate. At the current moment, there was no convenient walkway between the two buildings. From what Rykard could see, the builders had excavated a deep trench, which connected to the underground servant facilities of the Estate. An above ground walkway was likely pnned as the roof for a supply tunnel.

  For the time being, the Buiga were focused on finishing the second floor of the main facilities. The majority of the humanoid golems were working on that project, while others id the foundations for the surrounding wall. Rykard was insistent that these facilities had everything his children could need and that they also could not leave them unsupervised. The st thing he needed was a crafty four year old stumbling in on their dad getting frisky with all of the haremettes not on childcare duty.

  Rykard was a sexual deviant but he had his limits.

  As he walked about, the Buiga turned to their king. The humanoid beings had to turn the entirety of their torso to face him since their head was integrated into where the neck began for most other humanoids. ‘For a martial culture, that seems like a drawback,’ Rykard thought. ‘Then again, eliminating the neck as the weak point could be beneficial and it makes it so the Buiga are always focused on what is in front of them. Forges a greater reliance on standing back to back and builds trust by extension.’

  “Liege.” One the Buiga approached the king. At two metres, this one was exactly as tall as all others. Only the blue cobalt lines marbling their surface served as a way to differentiate it. Each Buiga, for their physiological sameness, had a personal set of lines in colour and shape, marking them like a full-body fingerprint. When it spoke, it croaked the individual words. The Buiga knew Common, the nguage that was, well, common among all worlds, but it was clear it wasn’t their preferred way of communication. “How - can - help - you?”

  “Just having a look around,” Rykard assured. “Do not mind me. I will speak up if something finds my disagreement.”

  “O - kay.” The Buiga turned around and returned to its task. Using a little spike at the back of its hand as the point and the other hand as the hammer, it was carefully etching decorations into the stone surrounding a window. The stone was currently a ft block protruding from the rest of the unpstered wall made from rock bricks. The floor was some kind of concrete, too grey and dull to be worthy of Rykard’s home. He trusted there would be carpet installed by the time they were done.

  Rykard poked his head into the various rooms. The constant sounds of tireless work reminded him of a camp of siege engineers. Granted, this was the first time the king found himself on an actual construction site. Typically, as royalty, they were only called to y the first stone or to open the building to the public. Everything in between he had not gazed on. Building siege equipment during war, that he had temporarily been made to follow - before blowing the offending gates open by conjuring a self-moving battering ram.

  Good times.

  Looking around, Rykard found nothing worthy of bringing up. The first floor was going to have the majority of facilities dedicated to housing children between the ages of 4 to 10. The age range where supervision gradually became less necessary. To that end, they would need a variety of sleeping arrangements and py rooms.

  ‘I wonder if a private school should be built for my children or if we sent them off once they’re old enough,’ Rykard contempted. He favoured the tter approach, mostly because he wanted them to have more social experience than the purely familiar circle. That was inviting disaster on several levels. ‘I’ll bring it up with the women ter.’

  On his way back into the main Estate, Rykard spotted the elven twins. They hung around in the gardens, inspecting the artfully arranged flora. Swerving in his path, the man of the house approached the fraternal twins. “I see you’re taking care of our flowers?”

  “Mel is,” Tena answered. The druid stood behind her kneeling sister, who was getting dirt under her fingernails. “Personally, I think we should just let the patches go wild and see what comes out on top.”

  “These patches do not exist for the sake of competition, they exist for the pleasure they bring to our eyes,” Mena answered. Gentle was her tone and gentler were the motions with which she healed where she had trimmed the pnts. “We assure them a nourished and fertile life in return for the services they do for us. A symbiosis that Tey approves of.”

  “Is this a theological debate between the aspects of the Twinned Goddess?” Rykard asked. “What is to be left to survive on its own and whose fertility should be preferred?”

  Tena looked to her white-haired sister to answer. It was obvious which one of the two was invested in scripture. “The aspects of Tey must always work in harmony,” the priestess said. “You have sampled knowledge of the faith, yes?” She lifted her eyes from her work for long enough to see Rykard nod. “Do you know the tale of the frozen ke?”

  “Can’t say I do.”

  Mena hummed, then began to recant in a rhythmic voice. “Tey brought to a forest fair, the touch of snow for many years. Under icy sheets, many animals were found. Most of them to death consigned, they faded from this life within the winter’s grasp. Critters, ever small, found themselves subsisting well. When spring came, they were alone, on an isnd in the ke, free of hunters and poison. The rodents were in paradise.”

  The priestess carefully dug a flower out by the roots and pced it in an emptier part of the patch. A touch of her fertile magic tinted the white petals a permanent, golden yellow.

  “Abundant food made their numbers abundant. So abundant, that they became incapable of understanding what effort meant. The mice grew older than they ever could before. The young mice found themselves bored and dedicated only to their own grooming. The era of opulence ended because the opulence was too much to bear and then… the new winter came.”

  “On sheets of ice, they prowled,” Tena took over. “Across the ke, now frozen solid. There they were: the wolves long forgotten. All, they descended on the rodents and crushed them between giant maws. Opulence was crushed and it was the wolves that feasted.”

  “And yet the rodents thrived,” Mena recimed the tale. “Most, it was the old and sick that died. The young and able, their opulence had to be earned. The right of procreation was attained no longer by existence alone.”

  “Through adventure and action, they now had to survive.”

  “And had they been more than rodents, they would have known that paradise is a hell unto itself,” Mena finished the tale. Respectfully, she pced a cut branch on a pile of waste.

  “A story of the tributions of safety,” Rykard summarized. “In equal parts a warning that one can never know what outside influences will end the era of prosperity and that prosperity in and of itself is no virtue.”

  The twins smiled. “You are a smart guy,” the redhead complimented. “Knew there was something that made you attractive.”

  “There’s much there,” Rykard boasted.

  “Tey teaches us that overbearing modesty is as dangerous as arrogance,” Mena said and rose from her work. Rykard did not mind that she got his clothes dirty when she hugged him. “You are most able, breeder of ours.”

  “Hmmm, that’s interesting title.”

  “Not too debauched, I hope?”

  “Not in the way I mind, as you well know.” Rykard cupped her bouncy ass with one hand. He would have done it with both, but Tena suddenly nuzzled up against him as well. Like a cat marking her territory, she rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. When he put his arm around her as well, she began to purr.

  “Now would be the time, sister,” the redhead said.

  “Hm? Oh, yes.” The priestess cleared her throat. “If we may add to your list of requests, Rykard, my sister and I would formally request that you bring to us the branch of an Elder Ent.”

  “Oh?” Rykard found the sound of that intriguing. He knew of ents, of course. The wise tree people were widely known across many worlds, rumoured to be one of the few entities capable of travelling between them at will. An elder of that species must have been quite a formidable being. “I will do this for you, but what for?”

  “It is custom that the ruler of a realm blessed by Tey has a shrine of great value to her,” Mena said.

  “Especially if that ruler has a chosen of Tey as his bride,” Tena added.

  “And her adorable twin sister,” Rykard stated, before kissing them both on the forehead.

  “An Elder Ent was chosen to be a fitting test of your ability to survive,” the priestess continued, her face softly red from a blush. “They are some of Tey’s preferred beings and one of their number should make even you strain yourself. From the branch you conquer, we will fashion a shrine to your and Tey’s glory.”

  “I’ll put it on my to-do list,” he promised.

  _________________________________________________________________________________

  “Rykard!” the king turned his head to find Hey sticking her head out of a window. “A word!”

  “Is it urgent?” he asked.

  “It is urgent to me!” the succubus returned and bowed further out the window. Naked tits dangled in all their massiveness over the frame, assuming the shape of the world’s happiest teardrops. “Will you make a dy wait?”

  “Since when are you a dy?” Tena shouted back.

  “Since long before you were born, follower of green!”

  “Green is objectively the best colour!”

  “That is absurd when red exists!”

  Rykard chuckled and disentangled from the twins. “I’ll see what she wants. You two keep tending to the gardens.”

  “As you wish,” Mena said. “We will see you ter?”

  “I’m sparring with Lyvia ter if you want to partake in a workout.”

  “Oh yeah, definitely,” Tena said. Her sister seemed less enthused. “Come on, Mel, we’ll get all round without getting as fat as those cretins on Machisma. We should be moving for as long as we can.”

  Leaving them to their talk, Rykard walked up to the window. Rather than make his way through the house, he just leapt up to the first story and sailed in via magic and raw muscle strength. Hey elegantly stepped out of the way, then grabbed him by the shoulders.

  The king found himself manoeuvred in front of a rge mirror. “Strip,” Hey ordered him.

  Rykard hardly needed a reason to and looking around the room told him why he should let her have her way. It was one of the many, many rooms in the Estate that had been previously empty, now filled with all kinds of sewing equipment. Fine red and bck cloths were kept on racks. Assortments of needles and various kinds of yarn, gold primarily, littered the rge work desk.

  Naked, Rykard found himself the subject of a measuring tape. Pleased, Hey hummed to herself, then set over to the work desk. Swift and confident motions fastened articles of clothing. “Put these on,” she told him, handing him a wine red shirt and dark pants. Both were of great quality and an appropriate level of ornateness.

  Rykard inspected the gold embroidery for a moment, before doing as she requested. “I did not know you could sew.”

  “I learned it in your absence,” she stated casually as if two months were enough for anyone to reach this level of craftsmanship. “You made my task the shaping of your nation towards our lustful ideals. I decided that a change of uniform for you was in order. Covering yourself in the glories and fashion of your home.” She made a tossing gesture. “What are the medals of a war compared to the regality of the maker of this world.”

  A point well made. Rykard looked at himself in the mirror. The sleeves were decoratively loose, while his broad chest was nicely emphasized by the snugly fitting material. The buttons were perfectly integrated into the embroidery, making them disappeared into the pattern that began around the colr and ended at his waist. The pants were comparatively pin, proper for a nobleman on the road.

  “This next,” Hey handed him a vest. The bck thing was even more ornate than the old piece and came with a belt that was as much enchanted gold as it was leather. A half-skirt yered around Rykard’s back. A bit impractical, but fashionable.

  Where, before, Rykard had worn a jade green piece of frill on his colr, to emphasize the colour of his green eyes, Hey now pced a rge emerald piece. It, too, fit perfectly into the pattern.

  “A tribute from your first subjects in Aulone,” she informed him. “The cloth is from Moydra, dyed in the Whisperwoods. The gold was delivered from Halyfa’s destroyed temples. The design, I tried to keep in line with your old uniform. It was fashionable, even if that scarf was ridiculous.”

  Rykard inspected himself in the mirror. Just to show off, he conjured a little magic circle. What stood before him was certainly an image of a sorcerer king.

  “Oh, and most importantly, Vyra showed me the trick for her dress.” Hey tugged at the front of the pants. Cloth that had been previously closed suddenly parted at the seam, allowing the succubus to grab his cock.

  Rykard proceeded to give her every reward she deserved.