Rykard looked around the room while he waited. There was a lot of iconography in the room that seemed vaguely familiar. Apples and fruit trees were quite common. Peaches were another subject. Both of those fruits were, alongside a wooden container filled with cool water, atop the tray that Mena brought into the room.

  “I take it apples and peaches are what you bring to honoured guests?” Rykard said, confidently reaching for the tray. His hand stopped short, just as Mena stopped short of actually putting the tray down.

  The king smirked for a moment, thinking himself to have made a correct read of the situation. Instead he found the chocote-skinned elf struggling to keep a straight face. Her eyes averted his.

  “S-sure,” she stammered, finally putting the tray down.

  Rykard finally got his hand on one of the fruits. He only nibbled on it for the taste - he cared more for the cool water. Not like he was eating anything that did not exist in abundance. Sitting next to him Vyra watched both the elf and her Master with keen eyes. She, like him, must have understood that he had veered quite incorrectly in that assessment.

  As much as Rykard wanted to ask in what way he was wrong, Mena did not give him any opening to. The priestess awkwardly grabbed her upper arm and averted her gaze, standing there like a shy lover. Whenever the king was about to ask anyway, she began to open her mouth, then backed away again.

  In the end, Rykard cut through the silence in an almost impatient tone. “I won’t get offended, just tell me.”

  “Apples and peaches are… well, they’re exceedingly common around here… we give them to any and all visitors. It’s just the baseline of hospitality,” Mena told him.

  “Ah.” Rykard cked the care and the social shyness to blush at being wrong. He took the correction with another crunching bite into the ripe apple. “Here I thought Tey would approve of fruits that are shaped like round butts.”

  And they were. The strange, erotic effect on this forest also caused the fruits to grow into a shape most certainly resembling various sizes of female bottoms. They were so artistic it was almost a shame to eat them - but they were also delicious.

  “She does… ehem…” Mena straightened up. “But I do not believe that is appropriate to talk about with a male stranger, much less a contender.”

  ‘Failed completely. The first joke did not nd and now her guard is up,’ Rykard reckoned. ‘Well, if we see more of each other, I’ll get opportunities to make up for it.’ His eyes roamed over her luscious curves. ‘She’d most certainly be attractive enough for my harem. Most of the women here would be… realistically I can only get 1 or 2 at a time though.’

  Mena seemed a bit confused by the way he inspected her. “Is there anything else I can do for you?” she asked.

  ‘A bit oblivious or does she just not mind?’ Rykard wondered. In any case, he decided to cut his losses. He would get answers soon enough. “No, that will be it. Thank you.”

  It took about fifteen minutes, most of which Mena spent outside the room, for Rykard and Vyra to be called on. They were guided deeper into the tree, up several storeys worth of stairs and climbable walls.

  Rykard could hear the moans long before he entered the chamber. Illuminated by mps of rge, glowing jars of sap, he saw the writhing bodies of ten wood elves sprawled out over a soft flowerbed. Five priestesses and five druids, all of them female, a pair of each engaged directly in lovemaking, their hands often roaming to their direct neighbours.

  Behind the sapphic dispy was a rge figure. A statue of Tey, carved into the wood, her form separated into two halves. One was wild and harsh, the other refined and graceful, both were gorgeous and looked down on the orgy with approval.

  “Wait here,” Mena requested, in her soft voice, and made her way over to the single woman that was not engaged in any lewdities: her sister Tena. The druid greeted her white-haired twin with a smile and whispered something into her ear that made the priestess blush.

  Swiftly, Rykard’s attention was redirected to the orgy. In the middle of it all was, currently, a woman with purple hair getting rapidly fingerbanged by a bck-haired druid. The present wood elves all had a nice spread of the local shades of brown their amazonian figures came in. The diversity extended to breast and butt sizes, as well as the levels of definition to their muscles. They were all, however, nubile in appearance, the oldest of them looking like the human equivalent of an early thirty year old.

  The woman getting her cunt rapidly fingered moaned her orgasm loudly. Her pussy gushed around the blurry digits, pussy juice seeping into the flower patch. Even if Rykard hadn’t eaten from the offered fruits, his cock would have been straining his pants right about now. He had no idea why they were having an orgy, but they were, and just standing there was difficult for the integrity of his pants.

  However, Rykard was more than a horny dog - he was a horny sovereign. Since he had just been wrong about one assumption, he felt it best to just fold his hands behind his back and wait out the lesbian orgy. He did not avert his gaze, neither did he move from the spot or hide the quite notable bulge in his pants. He just waited and eventually the entanglement began to peter out.

  The group of druids and priestess separated into two halves, sitting in front of either half of the statue behind them. Tena and Mena joined them at that point, taking their seats at the centre of the formation, right next to each other. They were the only ones that remained clothed.

  “You have quite the patience for a stranger,” one of the priestesses remarked.

  “I rarely mind watching attractive women engaged with one another,” Rykard stated. “Although I typically prefer to be involved, I understand that wasn’t my pce here.”

  “You understand well enough,” one of the druids spoke next. “As Tey wills, we greet any visitor to this blessed forest with a showcase of our bonds.”

  “It also helps to de-stress before a meeting,” a second druid joked.

  “One way or another, we have done as is custom now.” The priestess that spoke sounded deeply rexed, proving the point. “Now we deal with the fact that you are not part of any of our customs. It is arguable if we even should have done the ritual in front of a man.”

  “The sacred leaves clearly tell-”

  “The argument should not be had right now,” it was Tena that interrupted her fellow member of the council there. “You did it and we can talk about how appropriate that is for future instances ter. For now, we have the issue of the outsider before us.”

  “A man,” one of the other druids purred.

  “Quite the dispy of one,” a priestess, the oldest one, added. “It has been many years since we have seen someone so nicely built.”

  “And elven men don’t get jaws quite that nicely shaped.”

  “I wonder if his penis is as rge as he is tall,” Mena said suddenly, to the amusement of everyone else. “What?”

  “Mel, come on,” Tena jabbed her sister in the ribs with her elbow.

  “Hmm, in any case,” one of the priestesses half hummed, half moaned. The one seated next to her had leaned over and was already pying with naked breasts again. Public lovemaking was as casual an affair here as Rykard would have expected from the environment. He wondered if there still were pairs or if there was a degree of free love going on. He found both enforced monogamy and free use to be extremes of a spectrum best kept banced. “We should talk about the matter at hand.”

  “Indeed.” One of the druids picked up a pipe that had id hidden among the grass. The herbs within seemed to light on their own, when she inhaled. What left her mouth was bright pink smoke. “So, outsider, what brings you to us?”

  “A promise.” Rykard pushed out his chest a little more and let his gaze wander over the assortment of wood elves. Now that he had a little more to compare, the twins definitely were the prettiest of the bunch.

  “A promise?” Telena asked, skeptically.

  “A promise,” Rykard repeated with a smile. “A promise to join my project of a world that all of you might find very… enticing.” The gathered eyes of the elven leadership rested on him, followed as he began to move around the chamber. “It seems that your world had a terrible fate when it came to its creation games.” He stopped in the middle and stared up to the statue. “Saved by Tey’s beauty, obliged by her to survive, a miracle and a duty. Quite the tale.”

  Taking a step back, he headed towards one of the nterns. Its gentle, amber glow reflected on the nearby wood. Rykard ran a hand over it. It was as smooth as a cquered and freshly polished table, yet it was none of these things.

  “I cannot promise you that this world will not be conquered by a tyrant - only that I will not be one.” He stepped away from the wall. “Beauty and Survival, those are the twin aspects of Tey, are they not?”

  “Yes?” Mena answered, prompted by his gaze.

  “Then I do truly hope that my promise entices you. I wish to build a world of few worthy men and many wonderful women. A world, a kingdom, a nation of harems, where the most apt may prove themselves deserving of the most beautiful.” His words left the chamber in silence. Not stunned silence, not baffled, not any kind of true surprise. It was a deep silence, intent to have him fill it with eborations. “It is in the nature of an untamed world that few men prove themselves worthy.”

  Leisurely, he made his way across the chamber, inspecting a different kind of carving in the opposite wall. He followed the winding of artistically engraved vines. Up and up, until they connected with Tey’s hair.

  “A tamed world need not lose that aspect. As a matter of fact, I believe it must retain it if it is to function. I wish for a world where there are enough women for every man that a harem is an achievable reality and I wish for that to be a world where those men never take what they have for granted. It is equally in the nature of things that all things that are beautiful must be earned.”

  Rykard returned to the centre, where Vyra was waiting for him. In one swift motion, he embraced the vampire dy, pulled her along for three steps of tango, then id her across his arms. Passionately, he cimed her lips, drinking deep from her sweet aroma. The white-haired woman smiled dreamily when he let her go.

  “That’s the world I wish for - a world where all of you can continue to be with one another, yet find a man to be with as well. One man, shared among all of those that you would call your fellow haremettes. Not just a world where the most powerful cim everything they want, without the beauty of a retionship. Not just a world where emotions alone reign, without the proof of survivability. What I want is both. Yes, a bance of both, of harems, where one man may love as much as he is able to - truly love, not lust and own. Where women may find that their love multiplies, is shared alongside their burdens by all those that are bound together in one harem.” Rykard stopped, his arm around Vyra’s waist. “But I begin to repeat myself.”

  The mirthful tone of that sentence snapped the council out of their listening daze. They blinked and looked around, as if awakening from a dream. “That sounds like high ambition,” one of the priestesses suggested.

  Rykard immediately turned to her, pure conviction in his tone. “It is the only ambition that matters!” he decred. “Would you want to stay as you are? No, I believe not. Heaven of lust this might be, loving as you may be of each other, you have no men here and without men, how can your vilge truly survive in perpetuity? Even elves age. Would you want to give up what you have? No, of course not. Why surrender this delight you find in each other to the conventions of normal retionships?”

  The question left the council shifting in their seat. Especially the twins, as Rykard noted. It was good that there even was a difference they could draw between what they had and what was conventional. Rykard had been taking a gamble on that being the case, after hearing this specific forest was blessed with such lewdness. Luckily, it had paid off.

  “You might have to surrender a bit of it, that will be a matter to discuss with your individual harem, not me,” Rykard continued, softer. “But I offer you something greater. The best you can get, in beautiful love and making a sting legacy.”

  “My Master Rykard has already bred four women since beginning his conquest, three weeks ago,” Vyra joined with a well-timed revetion. “I myself became enamoured with his vision. He is a man of his word - and of responsibility.”

  The assurance of a fellow female seemed to drive the point truly home. Where they previously seemed willing to engage in the idea, they were now almost fully on board. Almost.

  “All of that seems quite… interesting,” the eldest of the druids said carefully.

  “And highly invasive,” Tena hissed, with a lot more caution. “You’re still a stranger. Your honeyed words could hide falsehoods.”

  ‘Really defensive, that one,’ Rykard thought. “What would it take for you to believe my words, Tena?”

  To that, the druid had no immediate answer. Instead, she looked to her sister. Mena had her hands orderly folded in her p. “I believe it is best we contempte this on our own,” the priestess said. “Give us a day, at least. Please?”

  “Sure,” Rykard answered happily and Mena sighed.

  “I understand that it's difficult to lose time… the rules of the game being what they are,” the priestess said, her voice as soft and feminine as ever. “You’ve been most patient, King Rykard, and we appreciate that deeply… I’ll guide you to a pce you can stay.”

  “We will guide you,” Tena stated and got up alongside her sister. Much to the confusion of the priestess, it seemed.

  Rykard let that little sibling disagreement py out and then just followed along. They guided him back down the tree, then back up. There was some hushed talking between the two, but in the end Mena seemed to win out. Tena backed away and the white-haired twin wore a strict expression on her face. It softened when she turned to the king.

  “Our quarters of honour, Rykard,” she said and tapped a random piece of the wall.

  It opened with the rustling of leaves. Behind it, Rykard found an extensive room. A rge bed of grass and flowers invited one to y down, while several branches growing into the room provided fresh fruit. A stream of water inexplicably surfaced from one wall and ran across the room like a miniature river, ending in a pond rge enough for a few people to bathe in.

  “We have kept the windows closed,” Mena added.

  “I greatly appreciate that,” Vyra said and bowed her head. “If I may say so, your hospitality is most generous.”

  “I agree fully,” Rykard added with a smile. “Don’t let us keep you any further, we’ll keep ourselves entertained.”

  “No doubt you will,” Tena said. She wanted it to sound dismissive, Rykard guessed, but she was looking Vyra up and down with moderate interest. Her eyes darted between the vampire’s enormous tits and her twin’s huge ones. “Anyway, to the debating!”

  “Yes,” Mena agreed and respectfully bowed her head.

  Rykard and Vyra stepped into the chamber. “A lovely pair,” the vampire commented. “Most worthy of your attention, milord.”

  “That is my initial impression as well,” Rykard said and plopped down in a corner of the soft grass that was practically couch-shaped. “A lovely Hexagon too. What do you reckon?”

  “Enormous riches,” Vyra answered immediately. “A fecund ndscape. Even if the erotic properties of the local flora and fauna are unwanted, the materials can be repurposed as baseline magical components. It will add great riches and splendour to our realm.”

  Rykard just nodded and Vyra, gracefully, sat down next to him. It was still only the early afternoon and they had the rest of the day to kill now. Plenty of things they could do. Plenty of things they could not do and instead emute the local rabbit popution.