Much as Rykard wanted to stay with his harem for as long as he could, time was very much of the essence and they had dallied long enough. Once he had scrubbed himself clean, he pced a final kiss on every forehead and then met Miyo outside.

  The vixen had put together two travel bags. They did not contain much. Arrangements for comfortable sleeping was the primary thing inside them. Any food contained was more an alchemical ingredient than actual rations. They would be on the Grid for too long for any amount of food they could carry to st them. It would be by Rykard’s variety of magics that they had to sustain themselves for the duration of the journey.

  The point where the Hexagon he left them with would be pced had already been agreed on. They made their way to that part of the frame, taking shortcuts through the Hexagons where they could and walking the pin grey stone of the Grid where they could not. Once they arrived there, Rykard reached out to the benevolence of the gods and offered them a phrase.

  “Builders that can be trusted to expand my estate properly!”

  The decration was taken by the gods and immediately answered by the manifestation of a titanically and infinitely complex network of summoning runes. As earth filled out the frame, rising from the groundwater below, Rykard considered his choice again.

  Obviously he did not want to leave his women with anything too dangerous. Simultaneously, there was no reason to handle them with kid’s gloves. Each of them was an exempr of their field, capable leaders or innovators, not to be taken lightly. Builders were something his nation direly needed and it was only right that those builders were good enough to expand the heart of it all, the masterfully made and designed estate he called his home. Using the words ‘trusted’ and ‘properly’, he hoped, would prevent anything too terrible from being thrown at them by the will of the gods.

  The Hexagon that ultimately shaped up before him and his queen was a puzzling sight. It was level. The entirety of the Hexagon was a level field, as if someone had, with steady hand, pulled a ruler over a heap of sand in a cup. The only interruption of that perfect ftness of green grass were gargantuan trees, six of them so rge even the most distant of them, located at the other side of the Hexagon, looming in the horizon.

  Inspecting the tree near them, its enormous roots located just a few steps away, revealed that they were made of stone. Or, at least, the bark was. Rykard could faintly feel the life force of the actual pnt in there.

  “If only I had the time,” he shrugged and left that mystery for the harem that was likely about a day and a half behind them. Him and Miyo had travelled as quick as their feet would take them, the others would have packed and prepared properly for a diplomatic mission. “Let’s keep going,” Rykard said to Miyo.

  “I am waiting for you,” she responded, amusement swinging under her cool tone.

  Rykard raised his hands, smmed his palms together, and then drew them apart in a calling gesture. The cp had not produced a sound, instead rippling into the Conjuring Realm, loosening a great amount of matter that he then pulled on to create a magnificent carriage.

  “So you can still do that,” Miyo mused. “I was beginning to doubt you.”

  “That toy cart was a fluke,” Rykard responded and bowed towards the entrance of the carriage. The door opened on its own, a staircase magically unfolded, and he gave his love a satisfied smile. “After you - Unless you would dare deprive me of the sight of your butt swinging?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, Rykard,” Miyo answered, her tone as sincere as the swaying of her tails was amused.

  It was deeply fortunate that he loved being with Miyo, because the next three weeks were a terrible slog.

  They spent over a day rolling across the level pin of the new Hexagon. Past its initial oddity, it was dull. A vast expanse with the occasional massive tree. Nothing for wandering eyes to really behold while they looked out of the window of the carriage. The only things to do all had to do with each other.

  Rykard felt Miyo up. Miyo performed a tender blowjob. Rykard carefully cleaned Miyo’s body with a hot towel. Miyo beat Rykard in chess. Rykard beat Miyo in strip poker. Miyo rode Rykard. Rykard bent Miyo over the table between the opposite benches. Miyo rested her head in Rykard’s p. Rykard rested his head in Miyo’s p.

  That was just the first day and it got even duller from there.

  The pure sameness of the journey could not possibly be understated. Once they were off the Hexagon, the only thing before them was Grid. Grid, as far as they eye went. Stone paths that inexplicably hovered above a vast reservoir of fresh water below, too far down to swim in without getting stuck. There was nothing to eat, there was nothing to drink (unless one wanted to be stuck in an ocean without shore or dder), there was nothing to look at.

  Every day, Rykard would conjure their carriage. On most days, he was successful. The vehicle he pulled from the Conjuring Realm was luxurious, self-driving or drawn by strong horses, letting them make good time. On a few days, he summoned something slow or nothing at all, forcing them to spend it on foot. Oddly enough, those were welcome changes.

  They ate what he could make. Using Alchemy or Conjuration, sometimes Restoration, he sustained them on food that consistently had the bnd aftertaste of the magically created. It was far from satisfying, but it kept them moving. They cleaned each other, then they cleaned themselves, just to do something different that day.

  They had sex. Incredible amounts of sex. When they weren’t fucking, they were pying games. In the tter days of their journey, Miyo had her first tussle with morning sickness. They had been in the middle of wake-up cuddling when she had suddenly felt immensely ill. Rykard had managed to alleviate the symptoms with Restoration before they had any mishaps.

  The journey had an element of tenseness to it. Every day that passed sunk more cost into it should they not arrive in time. Any wrong fork taken could cost them days. There were no ndmarks. There was nothing but the grid and them on it.

  Rykard had heard before of sailors that got lost out on sea or explorers that found themselves in an endless white pin after sudden snowfall. He had never quite understood those tales until that point. There was nothing to be actively afraid of, but the sheer scale of it let even a man like him feel a bit of existential dread.

  They spent much of the journey with the curtains closed. They fucked and they talked. They talked about this and that, about their lives, about their dreams, and they joked. They bantered back and forth like they always did. They bantered and they quietly existed next to each other. They napped and they sparred. They did everything to keep each other’s mind of the mind-numbing boredom of the journey. They succeeded, of course. How could Rykard not be thoroughly entertained by her presence?

  Still, he was relieved when they stopped, at the end of the 17th day, and saw it at the horizon.

  It was a light. In the night of the new world, there was no light. No stars and no moon shone. There was only ever a soft ambient, inexplicably light level that allowed certainty where one pced their foot next.

  That golden light could only have been one pce.

  At the end of the 18th day, they arrived at the Divine Entrance.

  The st carriage shattered into a spectrum of light. Rykard rolled his shoulders and rexed his magical circuits. They were barely taxed, but it was still nice to know he wouldn’t have to keep them active for at least a little bit. He turned to the Divine Entrance.

  “It’s an interesting structure,” Miyo said, already gazing up at it.

  Interesting was a way to put it. Rykard found it magnificent in its simplicity. A bit of golden soil separated the very edge of the divinely cimed Hexagon from the massive teleportation field that stretched out before them. It was a vast, hexagonal space, beaming godly light up into the sky.

  “Shall we?” he asked, taking his queen’s hand.

  “Yes… all three of us,” Miyo said and caressed her stomach. At the start of the journey, there had been no signs of her pregnancy. Now, she had a little bit of roundness showing. It was just enough to let the discerning see that she was bearing his child.

  The reality of becoming a father, six times over, had dawned somewhat on Rykard on the way. No reason for him to change, but every reason for him to be twice as protective of his queen as before. “She’ll be the youngest participant in a Divine Game in history,” he joked.

  “I doubt that,” Miyo answered. “An infinite number of games across an infinite number of civilizations - someone must have been knocked up minutes before attending.”

  Back and forth like that, they talked, as they stepped into the golden light.

  The brightness swelled. Miyo’s hand tightened a little stronger around his. The field of view was entirely consumed - and then suddenly returned.

  They stood in a luxurious foyer. Soft piano and violin music surrounded them. Food and drink were presented on a long table, covered by a gold-white sheet. The entire room was fashioned from white marble and gold time, interrupted only by the bck and grey veins that ran through the stone.

  “Pickles!” Miyo shouted with an enthusiasm that he had not heard from her in possibly ever. She ripped her hand out of his and rushed towards the banquette. The usually so elegant woman stuffed a handful of the small vegetables into her mouth and began to chew.

  ‘I’ll chalk that up to the pregnancy,’ Rykard decided and looked around the room. It was rge, but not too rge. The style reminded him of his own estate, but given a holy touch. Rather than embellished versions of his nation’s history, he saw icons of various gods painted in a minimalistic style on the pster of the white walls. Beyond that and the table, there was only a small Hexagon, glowing with the light of the teleportation spell.

  Rykard stepped off and went for the table. Even if he did not have the same craving for pickles, he did appreciate the offering of genuine food. The taste of actually grown nourishment nearly overwhelmed his taste buds. They swiftly ate their fill, then Rykard had to help Miyo with another wave of morning sickness. The name was rather misleading, considering it could occur at practically any point.

  Once that was abated, their attention turned to the sole door that lead out of the room. “The gods did guarantee we would be safe and the game hasn’t begun yet,” Rykard reminded his travel companion.

  “I wonder if we are the first… most likely not,” Miyo responded, cleaned the remaining pickle juices of her pink lips, and then gestured for him to lead the way. “This once, you should go through first.”

  Rykard nodded, stepped forwards, and pushed down the door handle.

  The room they stepped into was no room at all. A gorgeous garden, worthy of the title of Eden, greeted them with the song of nightingales. Water gently pattered down a meandering rivulet, an ornate bridge crossing it in a gentle arch. It was all the very image of idyllic. The trees bore many fruits and their leaves were all shades from green to gold.

  The door they stepped out of just existed in the middle of this ndscape. It, and nine others like it, were pced in a semi-circle around the edge of the canopy of a massive tree. Under that tree stood several benches and on top of the benches sat two figures. One was infinitely more interesting to Rykard than the other.

  She was a pale beauty, with long, straight hair. Her lips were as bck as the strands that cascaded down her back. The way they parted hid one of her blue eyes from view. Barely any of her skin was visible, but all of her figure was on dispy. A tight corset and leather pants hugged the narrowness of her waist and the width of the hips and thickness of her thighs. The deep cleavage was clearly presented, framed between the tightness of her top and the feathers of a raven-made mantle that covered her back. Two meandering bck lines decorated the soft flesh of her bosom, meeting and disappearing where the two mounds met.

  “So we do get more competition,” she spoke and closed the book she had been reading. The gothic beauty stood up and faced Rykard, her hands now on her hips. Her voice was even, calm, and measured, betraying nothing but the fact that she was paying attention. “I was about to die of boredom.”

  “That’s what you get for travelling alone. All dwarves know to always stick to the cn!” the second figure spoke, his tone was simultaneously animated and frigid. His body fully reflected that dichotomy. While his gestures were wide, the arms that made them were so encrusted with ice that it was difficult to say if there was even a dwarf under there.

  The same went for the rest of him, especially his face. From the spiky hair to the yers of his beard, this dwarf seemed to be made entirely of ice.

  “And I thought we would be the exotic ones,” Rykard joked.