I stepped back out of the room, as did all the elven men, leaving Karana, Saria, and six other dark elven females to help them dress and deal with the initial trauma of being rescued from their torturous existence. All the men were out with me in the hallway, along with a still angry Regina at my side, when Karana released her spell.

  I had to walk out of hearing distance to calm my mind, when the sobbing started.

  Regina put a comforting hand on my shoulder, and I looked into her eyes. She still looked angry, but also compassionate and supportive.

  It was an hour later when we walked back in the council room. Since the corridor, I’d also been to see and heal the rest of the women that were held down there but had been rescued in the first effort by the human guards, along with a few men as well who were captives.

  Jaren looked grim.

  Saria asked, “What happened?”

  Jaren shook his head, “Your elves delivered the men to cells. We don’t know how it happened, but they’re all dead. It looks like someone with a magical talent over water filled their lungs and drowned them. My guards who were outside the cells swear they didn’t see anything. My guess is whoever was in charge of that place, was cleaning up and killed them to prevent questioning.”

  Coren said, “At least the women are safe, thanks to Karana’s plan. I’m sure whoever was responsible will make a mistake eventually, and we’ll catch them.”

  That sounded entirely too reasonable, and Coren looked… smug? It made me suspicious, but he had telekinesis not control over water, and I knew without proof it would be foolish and a waste of time to accuse him of anything. Plus, he’d been with Jaren the whole time, and there’s no way he could have just passed orders without the Jaren hearing them, so it had to have been someone else.

  I admitted to myself I never liked Coren, but it was fuzzy thinking to blame him for everything evil that went on in the main city.

  Saria replied in an even voice, “Perhaps, but if there is a leader, or leaders of this group, they’ll probably lay low for a while. All we can do is keep an eye out, in case they rebuild another place for their perversions. While other evil men no doubt exist in the city, I doubt it will be easy for him or them to start a new following, so we’re making progress. I’ll have my magical earth talents fill the tunnels, and seal off the entrances.”

  Jaren asked, “Did the women know anything?”

  Karana shook her head, “They were kept separated from their children, and weren’t told anything, just used as things. Perhaps if they saw the leader again they could identify him, but they don’t know who the leader is, to them it will just be one more face among evil men. I did learn their husbands were tortured to keep them in line. It will be a long road of recovery for them, and I have offered them warrior training to help them with that.”

  Coren sneered, “Training, for weak women without power?”

  I couldn’t hold my tongue.

  “It will empower them, and it will allow them to feel as if they’re taking control of their lives.”

  Coren snorted, “Let’s adjourn for the day, you can let us know tomorrow if your little warriors think of anything else.”

  There were no objections, and no one punched Coren in the face, at least outside of my imagination. It also gave me another idea.

  I slipped up beside Karana as the council broke for the day.

  “Would you join us for a moment, in our suite?”

  Karana nodded with a smirk and a sultry sidelong glance through her eyelashes, as she reached out and claimed my arm.

  I laughed despite myself, she was irrepressible, even in the face of today’s horror.

  Chapter Ten

  Regina got her, Karana, Saria, and myself to drink, and gave me stink eye to make sure I remembered I wasn’t out of the woods yet.

  Karana raised an eyebrow, “So, what did you have in mind for me today?”

  Saria looked amused at Karana’s antics.

  I sighed, “I’m not sure how much I want this to be known about my powers as a flesh sculptor, but it occurred to me if the ladies wanted to feel empowered, never have to worry about being abused again, and even fight against similar evil in the king, I could… help them with that? It would even surround them with men and women who believe as we do, who would respect them, if they joined us to fight for freedom.

  “Learning to wield a weapon is one thing, but I could, and am willing to, give them new magic. If they agree to wield it not only on their own behalf, but on behalf of others who suffer under the king’s evil, and those of others as they have. They would have to be taught to wield them, but I could grant them control over one of the elements easily enough.”

  Karana looked at me in shock.

  I laughed, and winked, “It was worth making the offer, just to see you speechless.”

  She blushed, “I didn’t realize you’d be capable of that.”

  I frowned, “It isn’t that hard. I won’t experiment on people, so new magical abilities in humans is something I’m not going to offer, but it’s safe enough to copy other’s abilities, and grant it to someone else. It would also remove their current magical ability.”

  Karana’s intense stare was making me a little uncomfortable, there was warmth and speculation in her eyes that I’d never seen before, as well as the normal teasing seduction I usually saw there. I knew she respected me and was fascinated by how I’d won Saria’s respect and heart, but I had a feeling that estimation had just gone way up in her eyes.

  She eventually nodded, “I’ll make the offer, and ask them to keep it to themselves whether they accept or not. I imagine some will want to not feel helpless anymore and fight against tyranny, but others will not want to risk their lives in battle against the king’s forces with children to take care of. It will be hard enough for them to face down assaults from evil men. I’ll let you know.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  We chatted for a bit longer about the situation, and what could be done for the women to help them heal as we finished our drinks, then the dark elven mage left.

  I pulled Regina onto my lap, and she sat stiffly as she looked into my eyes.

  “What did I do love?”

  She said coldly, “You’re an idiot.”

  I frowned, “Why?”

  She sighed, “I appreciate your impulse to protect me, but it was my body that should have been covering yours. You can heal me, if you’d been hit by a stray dagger or fire, you could have died down there. There’s no one to heal you.”

  I sighed, “You’re right, but I can’t do that. I can’t hide behind you and put you at risk, some things can’t be healed, even by me. Death is beyond my power.”

  She didn’t look appeased.

  “Would it help if I told you I was working on that issue? When I’m done I won’t be any more vulnerable than you are to anything but a violent and immediate death.”

  She asked, “How, you can’t heal yourself?”

  “No, but I can make something that can. Much like I made that virus to extend my life.”

  She asked, “When?” her eyes were defensive, and she was obviously worried about me. She’d been angry, so she wouldn’t get upset.

  I turned to Saria, “Now? If Saria can stay in this afternoon? I need to work with her armor.”

  Saria asked, “My armor?”

  I nodded, “So I won’t have to reinvent the wheel, your armor does a lot already, I just need to add a few things, and then I’ll make two copies of it, sort of, for me and Regina. All of our armors will be capable of healing wounds, keeping us healthy, and blocking spells like the charm in your ear. So, you and Saria will heal from wounds even without me present, and I won’t be so vulnerable to being killed if there are overwhelming numbers charging me, or a distance attack. The suits will also change their color, appearance, and even their size.”

  Saria shook her head, “That’s impossible. The living artifact we have that creates these living suits of armor prepares them for bonding. Once bonded to an individual, that bond can’t be transferred, and it can’t be worn by anyone else, or controlled by anyone else’s thoughts. The armor actually dies, when it’s bonded host does. More than that, copies can’t be made, if the armor is cut into two pieces, the biggest piece will regrow to its full form, while the smaller piece will wilt and die. Those defenses keep our armor out of the hands of our enemies.”

  I smiled, “That’s all true, but much like I can control a human’s glands, muscles, or organs with my magic, I can also temporarily suppress those biological functions of your armor. I can cut off a small piece, and make it believe it’s the largest piece, and grow a whole new suit. I can also make it believe it’s unbonded, so the copies will bond to me and Regina. I believe the elf who created your armor system must have been a very good flesh sculptor.”

  Saria nodded, and smiled, “I don’t know why I’m surprised anymore by the miracles you do, how long will it take?”

  I replied, “Not long, I’ve been studying the problem all morning in council. There is one catch.”

  Saria raised an eyebrow in question, and I was relieved to feel Regina relax against me. Maybe I was forgiven for putting her life over my own?

  “What catch?”

  I said, “The amount of magic a lifeform can channel is pretty much endless, but how much they can channel at once is limited to its relative size. Our bodies have a lot more cells than the armor, therefore we can channel a larger amount of magic at once, and the armor can’t support everything I want to add. The size, shape, and color part isn’t an issue, nor the regrowth it already has. But the healing of the host and blocking of spells will most likely need more magic than it can channel by itself.

  “So, it will siphon magic from the wearer through the bond, if the wearer is harmed and they need healing. That means for the few seconds it takes to heal a wound, your telekinesis would be much weaker for that one moment, as Regina and my powers would be. Still, that’s better than being dead, isn’t it?”

  Saria nodded, “It would also do the same if attacked by a spell?”

  I replied, “It would, but only as much as it needed to in order to defeat the spell, and only for a split second, instead of several seconds. I doubt you’d even notice.”

  Saria asked, “Why size and shape?”

  “So no other humans will know we have elven armor, we can make it look like a piece of gold jewelry, a ring or necklace, or a pair of shorts.”

  Saria bit her lip in thought, “Alright, but be careful with it.”

  The armor melted off her body and onto the table. She stood up, completely naked, and stretched like a predatory cat, in a seductive manner. Damn, she was so beautiful and erotically sensual, and I loved the way she let her guard down in front of us, for obvious reasons.

  She grinned and raised an eyebrow at my obvious reaction, and then walked away toward the bedroom. She looked over her shoulder at Regina and raised an eyebrow.

  “Coming?” she said sultrily, “Our husband is going to be busy with my armor for a while, we should… get out of his way.”

  Regina snickered wickedly, and gave me a kiss before following my sexy elf into the bedroom.

  I groaned, and stared at the door for a full minute, my mind picturing my two beautiful mates pleasuring each other in various ways, and me missing it.

  Fuck.

  Then I sighed and got started on the armor. The sooner I finished, the sooner I could join them. I felt the same need to reaffirm life and joy as they did, after the horrors of the day…

  Chapter Eleven

  The armor took about thirty minutes with testing, thanks to my preparation. Although when I sliced two pieces off of it and had them grow into a separate not yet bonded armor, all I was able to test when I bonded to mine was its ability to heal a cut, and its ability to shift into shapes by my imagination. I’d need a mage’s assistance to test its ability to fight off spells, or maybe I could just have Saria try to use telekinesis on me directly. I wanted to keep it a secret if I could, but I did trust Karana.

  I was able to make it look like several things, but the texture was still a limiting factor. The bonding mental interface with the armor was ingenious, and one of the things I saw no reason to reinvent. I could make it appear as breaches and a shirt, but the color and texture were too uniform and exact, it wouldn’t work very well trying to make it look like normal clothes. I wound up just going with under clothes, and I could wear my clothes over it. It was still armor and would protect my torso and upper legs to a certain extent, from physical weapons. The ladies could reclaim or bond to their armor later.

  I was hardly invincible now, but I also didn’t feel like my life was hanging by a thread of chance. I could still be overwhelmed and killed, or be taken out by a lucky shot with an arrow or crossbow bolt, but I no longer feared being wounded and bleeding out. More than that, neither could my mates if I wasn’t close enough to heal their injuries.

  Then I joined my two mates, who were in a quite passionate sixty-nine. I undressed including my armor and watched them for a while before I joined in, they were so beautiful together, so different yet perfect in their own ways. The sounds of pleasure they drew from each other as they reached their heights was mesmerizing.

  They both welcomed me after that, quite enthusiastically…

  The next morning, I tested the armor against Saria’s telekinesis, we never did manage to leave the bedroom that night. It was successful if used directly against me, but if she gripped my clothes or threw something at me it wasn’t effective against it. That was okay, preventing a telekinetic from snapping my neck with a thought, or a fire ability from roasting me from the inside, or a water ability from forming water in my lungs was more than good enough.

  Still, I had to make sure it didn’t make me stupidly overconfident, I still felt a lot safer even knowing I was still vulnerable, just not as vulnerable.

  Curiously, the protection was bypassed by touch, as if the armor had to be between the magic and myself, because it didn’t block Regina’s ability to cause pleasure when she stroked my cheek.

  I still needed to test it against mage spells, like stun, paralyze, and other magic that directly affected a body or mind, but I wasn’t sure how to approach Karana about it, or if she’d be angry that I’d bypassed the protections created to prevent humans from gaining elven armor. I had no intentions to pass it out to other humans, it was enough to protect myself and my family.

  There were also other things I’d work on, which I thought of. Some of them were good and for healing, but like the virus even the good things could be twisted for evil purposes, like extending the suffering of torture. I’d think long and hard before I did any of it, I could protect the morality of my own power, but not the morality of my creations in other’s hands. I’d probably never do some of it, like grenades of exploding fire or earth would be easy enough to make. All I’d have to do is give the fire talent to a seed, and have it set to gather a large amount of power over time before it exploded. Activate it with a thought, and toss it into a group of enemies. There were a lot of tricks like that, flesh sculpting humans was just the tip of the iceberg my power was capable of, and I was only limited by my imagination and morality.

  I did make one more change to my armor, and only my armor not the others. It occurred to me that if I could mentally order it to change color, I should be able to add an offensive ability to the armor. The problem was, say I gave it telekinesis, and it used my own magic to fuel that ability. In reality, I’d be mentally telling my armor to attack someone, and the armor would try to do it, but the armor didn’t have eyes, so wouldn’t be able to target it even if the target was clear in my own mind.

  My own magic was pretty deadly in a fight, but the range was only fifteen feet, and it couldn’t affect anything that wasn’t alive, like arrows, and bolts. So, I needed my enemies close, but not close enough they could stab me in the head or heart, and my attack couldn’t be targeted, so under all those conditions I improvised.

  I gave my armor the magical talent to control air, but only in a very specific way. At my command, a ring of air would blast out around me in an expanding cone. It was an area attack, so the armor didn’t have to see, but was variable enough to send a cone in the direction I chose. For instance, if I thought about a blast of air in front of me, it would shoot it out of the armor in front of me. It couldn’t see, but it knew where it was on my body, and with a cone effect it wouldn’t need to have perfect aim.

  It would be powerful enough to knock away a charging man, and perhaps even turn away an arrow or bolt. Of course, that meant I’d have to see the latter coming, which wouldn’t be easy, or even very likely.

  A few elves stopped us as we approached the council chamber and spoke to Saria briefly in their musical language. It wasn’t good news, Saria’s face tightened, but I had no idea what it was about until we got inside the council chamber.

  Saria said to the others without preamble.

  “The king sent a force of five hundred, and they’ll be here within thirty-six hours. The scouts saw two mages, but there could be more.”

  Jaren said, “That makes the fight even.”

  Coren looked incredulous, “The king’s army will be full of powerful talents, and we only have one mage. The numbers might be even…” he trailed off.

  Jaren shrugged, “Defender’s always have the edge in a siege, despite them probably having more magical war abilities than us, even numbers are in our favor.”

  Coren didn’t look convinced.

  Karana sighed, “We also have surprise on our side. They’ll no doubt try to paralyze our elven forces, and fail, while my spell will be quite effective on their troops.”

  Jaren frowned, “Won’t that freeze my people as well?”

  Karana smirked, “Not if they’re standing on the walls it won’t, they’ll be protected by the wards I imbued into them. We’ll have to make sure the citizens are at least fifty yards away from the gate though, or people inside the city could get caught in the spell. I’ll cast it when they rush the gates, if we’re lucky we’ll take out half their numbers with my paralysis and our fire wielders in the first few minutes.”