Chapter 64: DD3 Chapter 010 – Frustrations

“Come back to bed… it’s early…” Typh groaned. 

Her words were muffled by the pillow she’d buried her face in and were barely comprehensible as a result, but by now Arilla was an expert at interpreting the dragon’s pillow-speak. 

She ignored her lover’s request and quietly slid out of their shared bed, confident that the half-awake woman would soon return to her slumber. In the dim light of the early morning, Arilla effortlessly made her way across their cluttered bedroom floor. Her skill [Slayer’s Sight] cast the room in vivid false colour, replacing natural light with stamina and allowing her to get dressed in the dark without even needing to light a lamp. It was a trivial detail, but after a lifetime of early rising it was easily one of her favourite things about her newest skill. 

Her bare feet gracefully stepped between pieces of discarded armour and sweat-stained clothing that she had declined to return to their proper place the night before. The empty armour stand loomed in the corner, guiltily reminding her of the lack of care she gave the near-priceless artefact. Arilla quickly selected her outfit for the day, feeling a flicker of remorse at the grim certainty that she was sure to ruin the fine garments she was about to wear. If today was anything like the day before or the day before that, then she would be lucky if it was only sweat and grime that tarnished the carefully folded garments she’d removed from the dresser drawer.

Arilla paused after catching sight of herself in the floor-length mirror. As she was wont to do, she slowly traced the fine scars that adorned her chest—her memento for surviving Rolf what felt like lifetimes ago. The marked skin was softer now than it once was, but her scars were still very much unwilling to fade away entirely, her charisma score be damned on that front. She’d be tempted to think that everybody else was wrong with their claims that the attribute was changing her if she couldn’t clearly see the results of the much-maligned stat subtly altering her body elsewhere. 

The prominent muscles along her otherwise flat stomach looked like they’d been sculpted out of marble, and the near-total lack of fat to highlight them didn’t really make sense when she considered the size of her breasts and hips. Her hair was an even more vibrant shade of red than ever before, developing deeper tones and lighter highlights that made her think of actual fire rather than the unruly ginger mop she’d once possessed. And she was absolutely positive that her freckles had definitely never fallen in such an aesthetically pleasing pattern before she’d gained her class.

Staring at herself in the mirror she didn’t hate what she saw, but the irrefutable proof of her own vanity staring back at her was a little hard to handle.

A pillow was flung towards her head at some speed and the warrior in her instinctively swatted it out of the air. With her strength, the fabric split and a small cloud of goose-down erupted from the sub-par stitching. The escaped feathers swirled in the air on a hidden breeze, taking their time drifting down to the floor. 

“I said, come back to bed,” the dragon commanded and looking at her, sat up on her elbows beneath thin sheets, the suggestion was only more compelling the second time around.

“I don’t have time—not if I want to be there for first watch,” Arilla explained.

“They can do without you for one day. There are other classers in Helion. Some are even stronger than you,” Typh teased.

“Will you skip your meetings for today if I stay?” the warrior asked.

“I would if I could. Halith would have my hide! There’s some human nonsense about ‘experience markets’ that needs my personal attention,” the dragon complained.

“I’m not going to be late if you’re unwilling to do the same,” Arilla said, turning away from her lover to resume dressing for the day. 

“It’s not my fault my work starts at a reasonable hour. Skip a morning, just this once.”

“I can’t. You know the Queen always tries something after dawn. I may not be the strongest, but people are counting on me to be there. Our people.”

“Fine.” Typh shot her a petulant look in the dark, but no further pillows were thrown so Arilla assumed that she had ‘won’ the argument.

A moment later a sensual moan accompanied by the sound of wet skin on skin thoroughly dispelled her of that notion. In the crystal-clear gloom of their unlit bedroom, Arilla looked over her shoulder and was treated to her favourite side-benefit of her perception skill.

With her legs splayed, bent slightly at the knees, Typh’s hand was delicately placed atop her pubis. Her thin fingers delved into her slick folds with deliberately enticing slowness. The smell of sweet cinnamon steadily filled the room, rising in intensity with the dragon’s obvious arousal.

“That’s horrendously unfair,” Arilla commented, but Typh paid her no heed. 

Instead of a reply, all the warrior got was another breathless moan. In spite of her resistance, she slowly turned back around to face the bed, because how could she not? The half-done up buttons of her shirt were already forgotten as her skill-enhanced eyes drank in the sight of Typh masturbating in what was a very transparent attempt to get Arilla back into bed. A lot of things had been running through the warrior’s mind up until that point; duty, honour, the agonising boredom of siege-warfare, and breakfast, but when the dragon arched her back and thrust her breasts into the air it became incredibly hard for Arilla to keep any of it straight.

She bit her lip and took an involuntary half-step towards the bed. The rapid rise and fall of Typh’s chest were mirrored by the increasingly frantic motions of her hand—curling fingers rubbing past her clitoris to delve deep into her vagina only to quickly return for another pass of that sensitive organ. 

“Come here,” Typh commanded.

“You know I can’t,” Arilla answered, refusing to either step closer or to resume dressing.

“Pity.”

With a devilish smile, Typh began to knead her own breasts with a free hand while she continued to play with herself. Alternating between cupping and tweaking, the dragon put on a show that Arilla couldn’t help but follow. It was gratuitous and more than a little bit over the top, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t working.

Everything from how Typh’s hips made slow thrusting circles just above the mattress, to how her slow fingering was so very loud was designed to entice and tease. Arilla felt her resistance wane, the siege wouldn’t collapse without her, and five or fifty minutes spent here would certainly help her relax. 

And she did need to relax… 

Their eyes met and the dragon smiled, their moment of connection was only thwarted when Typh shuddered in what was a very convincing attempt at an orgasm. 

“Come here.”

“No.”

Golden light condensed into Typh’s waiting hand. A curved rod with more than a few bumps and ridges of its own disappeared just as quickly as it had been conjured between her pink folds. Arilla couldn't look away—she has no desire to. She watched the dragon make use of her magical construct with slow, languid strokes. Each plunging motion of the glowing rod was punctuated by emphatic moans that gently stoked the warrior’s own building arousal.

“Last chance. Come join me.” It was another command posed as a question, but this time she had no intention of disobeying.

Arilla walked around the side of the bed, her hand reached out to touch her lover. Typh’s legs opened wider, inviting her in and in that moment, Arilla wanted nothing more than to touch and taste—to ride the dragon’s face until her release reached untold heights. A thousand base desires rose up in her all at once, with one sinister and more powerful urge rising high above the rest.

"You know you could kill her now if you really tried," Rolf suggested, the ghost giving voice to her own abhorrent temptation. 

The warrior’s breath caught in her throat only to be replaced with her own mounting gorge as she fought back against it. That horrible, beautiful resonance that she couldn't help but feel. The Noble Slayer within her chest smelt the Sovereign Conqueror hiding behind Typh’s dragon class and bared its ravenous fangs. 

The dragon was vulnerable—defenceless—with Arilla's strength and the element of surprise she knew that Rolf was right; in spite of the level gap, she could win. 

Horrified by her own thoughts, Arilla choked back her vomit. Her outstretched fingers reaching for her lover's sex—or neck?—pulled back, closing into a clenched fist. She brought back her hand and held it firmly in place with the other, intent on keeping it far away from Typh where it could do no harm.  

“I—I have to go,” Arilla stuttered, her words barely audible over the thundering of her heart. 

She ignored Typh’s confused complaints and quickly gathered her remaining clothes and discarded armour from the floor before she fled the room. Moments later, she stood there in the hall, half-dressed and with her arms full of the clothes and armour she had yet to put on. She wanted to cry, but she refused to give Rolf the satisfaction of her falling tears and as if summoned by her thoughts, the grim visage of the man she’d killed appeared beside her. 

He was horrifically burned as he always was, although rather than wearing the armour he was encased in when he died, Rolf was dressed in simple clothes that were growing increasingly stained by the second. Every one of his movements caused his crisp and blackened flesh to break over and over again, weeping clear fluid with every agonising movement. His perpetually jovial mood seemed to ignore all of that, the ghost grinning widely as he casually packed a pipe with tobacco, uncaring of how his own failing body leaked onto the dried leaves.

“You’re such a pussy, Arilla,” Rolf mocked. “You’ll never get to a hundred without taking risks.” 

“Shut up, Rolf,” she said, and she didn’t need to hear the dead man’s echoing laughter to know that she was slipping. 

Arilla didn't need to do any soul-searching to find out what was wrong with her. She already knew exactly what the problem was. 

She was a Noble Slayer and her class hungered for noble blood.

***

Arilla found her horse already waiting for her outside of the manor’s front steps. The stablehand, a recently classed youth with a tamer tag proudly floating over his head, had saddled and bridled the tawny mare that the warrior had affectionately named ‘Moody’. Moody was not a Thesian Charger or a member of one of the other proud lineages of warhorses that were typically favoured by high-level classers—largely for their ability to bear their attribute-enhanced weight. Instead, Moody was a common Terythian workhorse, a breed famed more for its stubbornness than its reliability.

Her status as both Typh’s consort and the Lord of Rhelea entitled her to a far better horse, but she liked Moody all the same. There was a simple pleasure to be had in riding the otherwise unassuming mare and for someone who had ridden a dragon, it wasn’t like a Thesian Charger or any other beast could ever compare. With a bribe of a half-eaten apple, Moody allowed Arilla to mount her and soon they were trotting past the clusters of tents that filled the estate’s once well-manicured lawns.

As she rode up to the gate, four mid-bronze classers filling the classic roles of ranger, rogue, healer, and mage hurried after her. They climbed atop their own far more prestigious mounts and with obvious practice in the saddle, they quickly caught up to Moody’s half-trot. Arilla didn’t know any of the classers’ names, but as the adventurers assigned to protect her seemed to change without any real pattern, she had yet to make the effort to learn them. With a nod to the sergeant on duty at the gate, the reinforced entrance swung open to reveal Helion in all of its untamable glory.

Immediately, everything grew significantly louder. The privacy wards that protected their secrets from prying eyes also muted the noise of the city. When the gates opened, the sudden onset of jeers and shouts from the baying crowd reminded Arilla of exactly how unwelcome she was within their city. The four long months of polite occupation had done little to temper this group's anger. The members of which were either loyal to the crown or just hated the ‘foreign’ army of ‘monsters’ that now patrolled Helion’s streets. 

The hundred or so citizens who had congregated in the street outside the estate were unsurprisingly incensed by Arilla’s predictable arrival. Their eyes fixed on her, and just like they always did, their hate-filled shouts intensified in both volume and the creativity of their hurled insults. 

“Dragonfucker!”, “Traitor!”, “Monster Lover!”, “Kingslayer!”, and “Bitch!”, rose out above the chorus of angry cries. She hated it, the ungratefulness of it, but so long as they toed the line Arilla had every intention of ignoring them. The mob was primarily unclassed and therefore completely harmless to someone like her—few who’d taken a class would dare to show their faces amongst this crowd. To prove her point, the squad of pewter rank warriors who quickly emerged from within the estate’s gatehouse were able to easily push back the mob. With practised expertise, the soldiers wearing Typh’s colours opened up a path wide enough for Arilla and her entourage to ride through.

The height of her horse, along with the distinctiveness of her enamelled armour, made her a tempting target, and they were only halfway through when rotten fruit and eggs splattered against the mage shield erected by her assigned caster.

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“What a way to start the day,” Arilla sighed, still reeling from her class's violent urges.

“Do you want us to disperse them, Lord Foundling?” the mage asked, displaying a concerning amount of enthusiasm at the prospect of tossing offensive spells into a mass of tightly-packed civilians.

“No! We can handle a bit of thrown fruit. Just keep the shield up until we’re further away. We have more important things to do today after all,” she hastily replied. 

The warrior pulled hard on her horse’s reins, and with Moody begrudgingly falling into a brisk canter it didn’t take them long to get clear of the usual commotion around Typh’s estate. 

Helion had undergone several profound changes since it came under the dragon’s control. In the early hours of the morning things were still relatively quiet, which only meant that the bustling crowds weren’t too thick for Arilla to ride through. Species of all shapes and sizes filled the streets and the shopfronts lining them. Wary-eyed humans were gradually mixing with their nonhuman neighbours, the former of which were only just getting used to the idea that the monstrous invaders weren’t there to eat them.

Heavily armoured ratling patrols kept the peace, but with the level advantage firmly in the nonhumans’ favour, their presence was primarily there for the humans’ benefit. Hard lessons had been learned from the early days of the occupation when freshly classed warriors tried to earn easy levels from level-capped goblins. Hard to clean tragedies aside, things were actually looking up for the people of Helion.

Despite the obvious tension that the new arrivals had created, the availability of classes had taken the city and the surrounding countryside by storm. People of all stripes flocked to Helion from all over Terythia, with some even coming from the Kingdom of Tolis to the east and the Sasyarian Republic to the south. Given time and a lack of obstacles, Arilla knew that the offer of unrestricted classes would lure travellers from even further away, but that freedom of movement was not something she expected to last for much longer. 

Along with all the ongoing construction projects to house the new arrivals, businesses were springing up where freshly classed professionals followed the instincts granted to them by their craftsman classes. People walked taller, with a new sense of confident pride, secure in the belief—misguided or not—that they would never be taken for granted again. There were constant queues that stretched around corners at each one of the various classing stations set up around Helion. There, eager citizens waited their turn to become more than just helpless peasants and the streets outside were filled with those happy to show off their new System granted powers.

It made her smile, but despite the new sense of life she had given the city, Arilla couldn’t escape how those joyous sounds of everyday life always hushed whenever she rode past. There were only so many level 93 warriors in the city, and few were as well known as her. Moody would clop past, and people would pause their conversations to watch her pass. That estrangement ate at her. Even the Rheleans who’d followed her to Helion weren’t that much better, although they at least had the decency to look at her with more respect than they did fear. 

She supposed it was to be expected given all that she had done, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.

Her party turned a blind corner on their short ride to the siege grounds, and Arilla was surprised to be confronted by another angry mob, but this time the hostility didn’t seem to be reserved for them. Anticipating trouble she nodded to her mage whose translucent blue bubble shield appeared around them. Arilla dug her heels into Moody’s flanks who picked up the pace and her party of five pushed their way through the angry crowd. The edges of the arcane barrier moved the civilians aside, forcing away those who had gathered around the entrance of a nearby classing station.

A beleaguered squad of guards were struggling to keep the throng of people at bay—barring the doors to the small building which housed the dungeon core with their bodies and the wooden shaft of their spears. Arilla spotted the sergeant’s pipped collar and noted the deep cut above the woman’s brow with a frown. When the mage’s barrier parting the crowd pressed up against the doorway with the guards, it readily enveloped them, giving them a much needed reprieve from the crowd outside who slammed their empty palms against the blue barrier.

“How long can you hold it for, Mage?” Arilla asked.

“Hours if I must. It’s annoying, but until someone with real levels joins in I could keep this up in my sleep,” the mage answered, with only a slight frown to show that he was upset by her not knowing his name.

“Good. In that case, wait here and let me know if there’s any further trouble. The rest of you, on me.”

Arilla dismounted from her horse and approached the injured sergeant. With another order, the healer’s arm was raised and the cuts and bruises decorating the overwhelmed squad sealed up amidst a soft green glow, leaving new pink flesh behind.

“Sergeant, what appears to be the problem?” Arilla asked.

“Thanks, Lord Foundling. I was worried there for a hot minute,” the sergeant replied whilst leaning against her spear for support. “Perhaps it’s best if I show you.”

The Noble Slayer nodded her assent and followed the guardswoman inside the small office while the rest of her party watched the entrance with the soldiers. Absent-mindedly, she considered the possibility that this was all part of an elaborate trap. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d dodged assassins in the past few months. Before she could begin to dwell on that possibility, she was inside the utilitarian building which followed the same familiar template that all classing stations did. A clerk with a class inspection skill and ledger, a chained dungeon core on a cushioned pedestal, and white painted walls with bare floorboards. It wasn’t a particularly large room, but it was crowded. 

While Terythians were well-known for their diverse heritage, the landlocked country having a long history of taking all comers from all corners of Astresia, these people were noticeably foreign. Lighter skinned with an almost olive complexion, Arilla didn’t need to hear their accent to place them as Padians. What in the Gods were they doing here? Without someone to speed along their passage on the Old Roads, it would take well over a year to walk from Padia and these thirty or so downtrodden people certainly didn’t have those kinds of resources. They couldn’t have heard about the offer of free classes before they had left their homes, so again the question asked itself, what were they doing two-and-a-half-thousand miles west of their country?

She opened her mouth to ask just that when she noticed the worn-out soles of their shoes, their ragged and threadbare clothes, not to mention their smell which the room’s clerk was obviously struggling with. Scanning the room, Arilla noted that they didn’t have a single item of value between them and it would be overly generous to describe their physical health as ‘poor’. Each adult’s face had the same haunted look of past fear and loss that she hadn’t seen since Rhelea had fallen to a Monster.

“They’re refugees,” Arilla said.

“Yes, Lord Foundling. Or at least they claim to be,” the sergeant added with narrowed eyes.

“You don’t believe them?”

“It’s not that, M’Lord, it’s just… Aber, Agrovia, and now Padia. What’s next? Us?”

“No. It will be Aspardella and then Tolis if it carries on, but Tolis like Agrovia doesn’t have its capital on the coast so it should recover. Aspardella will survive as well if they heed our warning, but we don’t have the political clout that we once had,” the warrior explained.

“Really? Huh…”

Arilla raised an eyebrow at the guard's almost disappointed response, but she decided to let it go. International politics wasn’t for everyone and Tolisian bankers—the country’s most notable export—were hardly well-liked to begin with. Padia’s fall all but confirmed that the elves’ white ships had chosen a southern route around the continent. Which was a shame as it would spare the most hated countries the brunt of their pillaging, whilst also ensuring that the nations renowned for bravery and valour all suffered beneath their elegant blades.

Still, while the elves' brutal excesses would account for the Padians leaving their homes behind, it didn’t explain their presence in Helion. Arilla left the sergeant behind and marched towards the centre of the room where the refugees huddled together. Thanks to the dungeon core, they were all level 1 with a variety of classes surprisingly weighted heavily in favour of combat. There was no easy way to tell who was in charge, but when she pointedly cleared her throat it didn’t take long for a middle-aged man with greying hair and deep brown eyes to step forward from the rest.

“My Lady—” the man began.

“I prefer Lord, but please carry on,” Arilla interrupted.

“Uh, yes. My Lord, we are but humble fisherfolk seeking sanctuary in this city. Please do not send us away. We have travelled far for many months without rest. Ever since the white ships came and razed Pones to the ground,” the Padian continued.

“You’re from Pones?”

“Yes, My Lord, a small city to the south of the capital—Marhes.”

“I know of it. What I don’t understand is what are you doing here? No matter which way you go there are at least two Padian cities between Pones and the western border, and then all of Tolis between Padia and Terythia.”

“My Lord…” he trailed off, worrying his hands while he looked to the men and women gathered behind him for support.

“I won’t help you if you don’t answer the question,” she threatened. 

The man swallowed, and a fevered look momentarily appeared in his eyes. She knew then that trying to send the man and his people away would end badly—not that she had any intention of doing so. 

“When Pones fell, rumours had it that the royal family was dead and that Marhes, Cambidralma, and every city within a day's march of the coastline had fallen. They said the same thing happened in Agrovia and that there was no help to be had there so we moved inland to escape the ships. Only…” the man paused, his fists clenching in anger.

“Go on,” she urged.

“Only they turned us away. Every town, village, and city we approached said they couldn’t cope with our numbers,” he said, spitting onto the floor—an action she decided to politely ignore. “When we got to Tolis we thought we’d finally been saved. They even gathered Guides to walk us faster on the Old Roads, but rather than take us to a Tolisian city they marched us hard. They abandoned anyone who couldn’t keep up. They didn’t give us nearly enough food or rest, and they forced us to walk past the Terythian border where they abandoned us. Please, My Lord, we don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Arilla paused for a moment. She tried not to look at all the desperate eyes on her while her mind ran through the calculations. It was hard, and she kept getting distracted by a crying child, and the knowledge that whatever came next, she was going to have to disperse a mob of angry civilians outside.

“Helion remains accepting of all comers, regardless of their nationality, species or class, but I have one last question. I understand why people here would object to your arrival. They’ve had to accept a lot lately and I think your group was just the straw that broke the ogre’s back. I’m not even mad that you decided to take classes before petitioning the administration here for help or permission to settle. What I want to know is why would anyone care about thirty refugees?”

The man shuffled awkwardly at her. 

“There may be quite a few more than just thirty of us.”

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