Day 2/7 of the Voyage to Regalia

  Rykard woke up in the rge bed, surrounded by three sprawled out women. Helenn was his personal tit-pillow/cuddling toy, Tena id curled up in the curve of his midriff, and Lyvia pressed against his back. By and rge, Rykard did not like being the little spoon, but he could tolerate it if it meant getting sizable breasts squished against his back.

  Curiosity quickly got the better of him though and he peeled his way out of the embrace. The three haremettes cuddled up to each other. He would ‘punish’ them ter for not waking up before him and giving the proper service.

  Not that he was currently suffering morning wood anyhow. He had emptied himself quite thoroughly yesterday, to counteract the embarrassment of that blowjob. A bath was in order, but not nearly urgent enough to put off his search for Mena.

  The search was over before it could really begin. The white-haired priestess knelt by one of the corals that grew from a flowerpot. She traced the hard surface with a finger, then held her hand against one of the openings.

  “You seem interested,” Rykard noted, as he approached.

  “I am but… uhm… shouldn’t you put on some clothes?”

  They were in the foyer now and the threat of other high-ranking members of the fleet strutting through was realized by two of them doing so at that exact moment. They saluted in greeting, before continuing on with their tasks. Rykard waved after them. “I hardly believe that will be an issue. I screwed their admiral’s brains out in front of them.”

  “Right…” Mena shook her head and pyed with the shoulder straps of her white-golden top. Ultimately, it remained in pce though. The topic returned to the coral. “Lyvia described the ship as a colony of organisms, so I wished to investigate how the pnts py into this… they aren’t pnts at all.”

  “Of course not, they’re corals,” Rykard stated.

  “Co-rals,” Mena repeated the word slowly.

  “Did you not have such things in your homeworld?” the king asked.

  The priestess shook her head. “We did not engage much in alchemy or engineering.”

  “Corals can be found in the ocean, by nature,” Rykard informed her. “They’re the hardened secretions of a kind of invertebrate that use them for shelter and protection.”

  “Ah… our world did not possess any true oceans.” Mena gently caressed the side of one of the many arms of the structure. Following themotion, a worm-like being poked out its head. Mena smiled at it for a moment, then it pulled back. “It appears these corals are the ventition system of the area? They regute heat and moisture in the air and in return, the crew throw food into the pots?” Mena gestured at the standing water that filled the pot about thirty centimetres deep.

  “An alchemical alteration of the corals, no doubt,” Rykard stated. “Biomancy can change living beings in a great number of ways… does that viote Tey’s teachings?”

  Mena shook her head and stood up. “Tey is not a purist nature goddess. More intelligent species alter and domesticate less intelligent ones at all times. Alchemy is a shortcut to what evolution would enable anyhow. This ship, in its entirety, is another ecosystem worth cherishing.”

  ______________________________________________________________________

  Later, the same day.

  “This ship, in its entirety, is an invention worth cherishing!” Helenn bbbered, following Rykard over the deck. After the bath and the morning orgy, they were now in full exploration mode. Lyvia had briefly showed them the command post at the top of the stacked decks in the back third of the ship, then she had stayed behind to actually command her ship for the time being.

  Mena and Tena had decided to try and communicate with the various organisms that made up the ship some more. Rykard and Helenn had chosen a more explorative and scientific approach. They would see the blueprints in due time, until then they wanted to decipher its many mysteries by themselves.

  Helenn flew ahead of him, tching onto one of the massive mana crystals that jutted out the deck. “Ohhh, that must be the distributive network!” she pavered, gesturing at the runic socket that the carefully worked, blue gem was set in. “Are all of the organisms attached a to central, metal framework that supplies them with magical energies to keep their altered genomes stable and the ecosystem running?”

  “I think its primarily a failsafe mechanism,” Rykard commented. “If there was constant drain on this mana crystal, it would be depleting before our very eyes. Even a store of that size would have trouble keeping this entire ship alive.”

  “Very true, very true,” Helenn agreed. “It must be there to feed regenerative efforts in case the ship is wounded and to fuel little imbance in the ecosystem!”

  “It likely also functions as a furthering of the command node,” Rykard stated. “Assure signals from the bridge make it everywhere and all of that.”

  Helenn pushed herself off the crystal and hovered a bit up. “One… two… three… I count three more on the surface of the ship… ohhh, just the effort that must have gone into the artificial mana circuitry of this organism…!”

  “It’s almost as fascinating as the fact that you can float without drifting away,” Rykard pointed out. Between the winds, created by the other ships to accelerate their sailing, and the Leviathan’s own speed, originating from paddling organisms down below, the cherub should have had plenty of reasons to at least not effort to retain her position.

  “Rykard, you silly stud, you know how I work!” Helenn hovered down and nded on his offered arms readily. Now getting carried by him like a very stacked, very short princes, the naked angel continued speaking. “I wouldn’t be a very good walk-n-fuck if I just dangled from your dick! Subana, in her endless wisdom, has made it so my hovering is in retion to a physical object.”

  “And that is why, when I use you as my carriable cocksleeve, I can actually thrust into you. You’re effectively ying in the air no matter where I turn, because your hovering is in retion to where I am.”

  “Exactly! I am so practical!” To prove the point, Rykard banced the weightless blonde on one hand and rubbed her hairless cunt with the other. The stream of words immediately ended, the mind of a sex toy taking over her brilliance. Not paying any mind to the sailors walking about, Rykard fingered the cherub to completion.

  “What I do wonder about is whether or not you could still experience momentum loss if you were pushed far enough away from the object you are anchored to.”

  Helenn eyed the railing. They had stepped up tremendously close to it. She was too smart to question whether he would push her over for an experiment though. “Well, the drawback of the way I hover is that I cannot go too far up indeed, compared to people that can actually fly. If you were to punt me off the ship… I would probably just change where I am anchored too fast to feel any difference… unless I was like… super-concussed or something.”

  “If anyone ever concusses you, I’ll make sure they have more holes than not,” Rykard said casually.

  “Yes, protect your private sex toy!” Helenn snuggled up against his chest.

  “More than a sex toy, so much more,” Rykard caressed her stomach.

  “Breeding sve?” Helenn suggested.

  “Simultaneously accurate and fully inappropriate. We’re not in the bedroom right now, Helenn.” He put a long and loving kiss on her pink lips. “You’re one of my women, the mother of my first son - no erotic humiliation or pet names attached. I love you.”

  “Rykard…” Helenn was stunned for a moment, then cuddled him with renewed intensity. “I love you too! I love you sooooo much!”

  The two of them embraced tightly. For a little while, they only paid attention to each other, then they gazed out into the ocean. There were barely any waves. The only winds originated from the boats and other stirrings came only from the rge beings that swam in the depths. Rykard had been assured that a whale had been spotted on the way to the coast, even if he was yet to see one himself.

  It was a near perfectly smooth expanse of deep blue, contrasting with the fwless light blue of the cloudless sky. A single ball of light hovered far above, the divine daystar that was as much sun as it was moon, sitting there until a Divine Game brought someone the right to change it. Many of the smaller vessels were scattered about, adding dots of decoration to this blue canvas. From below rose a faint golden shimmer…

  ‘From below rises a faint golden shimmer…?’ Rykard thought and quietly put Helenn aside.

  “What-?” she started to ask but stopped herself the moment he bowed over the railing. His eyes strained. Alchemy and Alteration wove together to help him pierce the water. It was faint but unmistakable. Something was glowing down there. A temple complex of some kind.

  “Look at that,” he said out loud. “The Treasure Tile.”

  “The Treasure Tile!” Helenn decred excitedly and peeked over the railing herself. “I can’t see anything! Oh, oh this is so exciting! Let’s stop the fleet and check it out! Let’s check it out right now!”

  “CAW!”

  Rykard’s eyes snapped to a crow that had suddenly manifested next to Helenn. The angel did not react to it at all, continuing her bbbering. Rykard, however, saw the manifestation of bad luck and made promises as clear as day. Its feathers, a foreboding shade of bckish blue, shimmered in the sunlight.

  “CAW!” it excimed warningly, blue eyes blinking as it tilted its head.

  “I made a promise, Helenn,” Rykard answered. Purring pleasedly, the crow disappeared the moment he spoke those words. The cherub, by contrast, let out a long disappointed groan.

  “AAAwwwwwww… right…” She pushed herself off the railing and then hovered back around. “Forgot about that for a second… let’s keep looking around! I want to see if there are more metal bits to this ship!”

  Rykard ughed and followed the chipper blonde. As he walked, he gnced over his shoulder, back at where the crow had been. The Bond Crow was no unreasonable god, continuing contracts that required reted parties to be alive to see them concluded was not part of its program. In other words, if a manifestation of the contract surfaced at this juncture, then it stood to reason that Tess was still alive.

  A small bit of certainty. Alive was a broad category, when her nation was gone and she had brought the closest enemy faction against her. Still, it was a bit of certainty.

  It would have to be enough for now.

  __________________________________________________________________

  Day 5/7 of the Voyage

  “Are you serious?” Tena asked. “Are they serious?”

  The redhead held her nose with one hand and gestured at the foul-smelling basin with the other. Excrement mixed together with saltwater created a stench that Rykard decided not to expose himself to for long enough to have it cling to him. One step back and the king and his haremette were back in the corridor. Their guide pulled the door back shut. Suction cups along the rim made sure that door stayed sealed vacuum tight.

  “It’s unaesthetic, but efficient,” Rykard stated. “Everyone shits and that goes back into the cycle of nature. If the organisms of the ship can re-use that, then all the better.”

  “Still…” Tena wretched a little bit.

  “You’ve been spending too much time in your convenient forest,” Rykard pointed out with a chuckle. For his part, he was happy that his curiosity got sated. He had been wondering where the tubes under the porcein seats led to.

  “A minor correction, if I may,” the guide raised her voice. “The basin I just showed you does not feed the ship directly. Please follow me as I expin.” They got back moving and the guide kept on talking. “The… waste is used by smaller organisms such as shrimp or other water insects. Those are then allowed access to a rger ecosystem.”

  A new door opened and the smell of ocean filled Rykard’s nostrils intensely. They stepped into a room easily fifty metres deer, four high, and ten across. It was a hall that must have filled out a sizable portion of the ships insides. Within it were a myriad of basins and gss tubes, filled with rocks, corals, and the various forms of marine life that lived between them.

  It was gorgeous, in a quiet, almost alien way. The light was kept deliberately low, bioluminescence cutting through the curtain of false depth here and there. The fish were attracted to the bioluminescence - missing the mawed tendril lurking beneath them. A swift bite, a short struggle, and the fish was dragged down a tube.

  “The waste feeds insects and pnts, they feed the fish, the fish feed the ship and us,” the guide summarized. “Fresh food access could be vital during longer missions. It remains to be seen if the oceans of this world will become rge enough to warrant such exploration.”

  “This makes things less terrible,” Tena stated and shooed the guide away with a gesture. “Wait outside.”

  The guide looked to Rykard for confirmation, who just shrugged. With no word to the contrary, the monster girl marine obeyed the order of one of New Eden’s leading haremettes. Tena and her man were left alone in the complex.

  The druid immediately started to explore in more detail, running about the tanks, inspecting them one by one. “The ocean is so weird,” she excimed.

  “That I can only agree with,” Rykard stated, as he watched an eel squeeze through a tiny gap. A spsh made him turn his head back to Tena. The druid had jumped into one of the tanks. By the time he had made his way over, she had surfaced. “What are you doing?” he asked, amused.

  “Regretting my life decisions - saltwater burns something fierce,” Tena rubbed her eyes with one hand, with the other, she clutched a giant red creature. “What’s this?”

  “A lobster,” Rykard told her. “Quite tasty, if cooked properly.”

  “We’re eating that then.” Tena tossed the crustacean over to her lover, who effortlessly caught it. Massive cws ccked.

  “You know, you didn’t need to jump into the tank to get it yourself.”

  “Awww, Rykard, I thought you knew better than that.” The drenched redhead nded next to him, a dangerous grin on her brown lips. “Things taste better when you hunt them yourself.”

  ________________________________________________________________

  Day 7/7 of the Voyage

  Rykard was on the bridge.

  More than the bridge, he sat in what was simply called the ‘command throne’. A chair of moderate comfortability located atop the ‘command bridge’, the pce where only the high ranking officers were allowed to stand to give orders out to the various subordinates that interfaced with the ships organic or mechanic systems.

  Lyvia had invited him up there and offered him the seat. “It goes to the highest ranking official onboard,” she had simply stated. Rykard, never one to refuse the offer for a comfortable chair, had accepted.

  Through the gss that let the people inside the tower keep a 360 degree overview of the surrounding ocean, Rykard saw the buildings of Regalia rise. First into view was a rge dome, its ceiling painted a blue so bright that it rose even from the sky. White and beige stone and red brick were used to build the majority of its walls, gold and silver trims and blue mana crystals interspersed.

  The buildings were tall, universally, and connected via bridges on various levels. Walkways existed, simirly, on all levels, crossing rooftops, running along third floors, or actually being where Rykard was used to, on the ground level.

  Although there was no true ‘ground’ level. The lower parts of the buildings were marked with the weathering assault of saltwater. Where there normally were roads, there were waterways. Every house, it seemed, had at least one boat tied to a basement exit. Those doors, sturdy enough to keep a flood out during high tide, were currently all visible. It was immediately obvious the city had been dealing with votile weather in the past.

  The city was gorgeous, all of its blocks and all of its monuments, of which there were many, rising from the water. Water that was, judging by everything around, typically quite shallow. Marshy nd encapsuted the goon on all sides, except for the south.

  In the south was the canal. Tall walls of stone and carapace secured a deep channel dug through the nd, connecting the two bodies of water on either end. Near the middle, two waterways forked off to allow ships coming from either direction to be led into the simirly dug-out, massive port instead. A canal and port that they were now heading to.

  If the city was impressive, then the port was a true piece of artwork. Chunks of stone that must have taken a ship each to just get to the pce were stacked in the thousands to create a structure that hugged along the sides of the circur port. Enormous sidearms could be drained and used as drydocks, one of them even rge enough for the Leviathan itself. All over were half-open halls with ramps, perfect to let the ships once built be let to water.

  “Welcome to Regalia, Sir,” Lyvia stated. “Your city.”