“We need to vary our tactics,” Juniper continued, the strategist in her fully engaged. “If he’s studying our patterns, predictability becomes a vulnerability. Josh, your Return Blade is our most distinctive weapon. He’ll be calibrating against it.”

  “So I stop relying on it?”

  “No. You develop secondary approaches so he can’t anticipate your full capabilities, and figure out new ways to use it so that he won’t be able to predict when it comes into play. Tonight’s mounted combat was exactly the kind of variable we needed. It’s new, he hasn’t accounted for it, and the Cavalier bond adds dimensions he can’t easily counter.”

  I looked at Clementine, still standing by the kitchen. She’d been listening to all of this with her arms crossed, but her expression was a lot more unguarded than I was used to from her.

  “So basically,” she said, “the horse thing isn’t optional.”

  “Nobody’s forcing you to fight,” I said.

  “Bullshit. I’m not an idiot, Josh. I can see the chess board. If I don’t help out, you’ll get killed—and then who knows what happens to me? Or Earth? I don’t have a choice.”

  She was right. I knew she was right. And she knew I knew she was right. And I knew she knew I knew she knew—I’ll stop.

  “We can figure out—”

  “I said I’ll do it, fuckface.” She cut me off sharply. “I’ll train. I’ll fight. I’ll figure out what this bond shit is about, but you better treat me good. I know you got some horny shit going on with these interdimensional sluts, but I will not be neglected if my destiny is tied to you. Got that?”

  I glanced at the others. Portia and Juniper were smiling, but Elysia was looking away pointedly. Still, it seemed like her way of saying she wouldn’t protest. “Deal,” I said.

  She held my gaze for a beat, then turned and clack-clack-clacked upstairs without another word. I heard her bedroom door close. At least she didn’t slam it.

  Elysia yawned against my chest. “I require sleep,” she announced. “And also to be carried upstairs, as my legs have turned to jelly from the emotional toll of watching you nearly perish.”

  “You were sitting on a stump drinking hot chocolate.”

  “The emotional toll, Sir Josh, was immense. I will require much love and affection tonight to get over it.”

  I looked at Portia, who was already falling asleep against my shoulder. Then I looked at Juniper, whose expression was still troubled but who managed a little smile when our eyes met.

  “Alright,” I sighed, scooping the princess up with one arm. “Everybody to bed. We’ve got a long day of figuring out how to outsmart an evil wizard’s homework assignments ahead of us.”

  As I carried Elysia upstairs with Portia trailing behind us like a sleepy duckling, I found myself thinking about what Clementine had said. The best she’d ever felt in her entire life. That kind of feeling was hard to walk away from. I knew because I’d been chasing a version of it since the first time I swung a sword at something from another dimension and realized my body could do things I’d never imagined.

  Tomorrow, I’d train with Clementine. And every night after that, something would come through the portal, and we’d fight it together, and we’d win, and on the other side of the multiverse, our enemy would take notes.

  But now it was time to rest, because the three-million-dollar Russian mattress was calling, and even existential dread couldn’t compete with space age sleep technology developed in the darkest reaches of Siberia.

  Chapter 5

  The next morning, Juniper cornered me after breakfast when the others were busy. She parked her whole serpentine ass between me and the coffee pot and said, “We need to talk about the ritual,” and that was that. I set my empty mug on the counter and followed her to the living room.

  Elysia was upstairs, allegedly admiring herself in the mirror. To be fair, Elysia herself was the one who made the allegation when I called for her, so it was more or less a fact. As for Portia, the dog girl was outside doing laps of the property on all fours because she saw a squirrel out the window when we were doing the dishes. Clementine went back into the guest room to change into her selection of my stolen clothes she’d picked out for the day.

  Juniper coiled up on the living room floor and nodded toward the couch. Her crimson hair was loose today, spiraling past her shoulders, and I noticed her hands were fidgeting in her lap. She kept lacing and unlacing her fingers. Juniper didn’t typically fidget. She was the most still person in the house on any given day, and the fact that her hands wouldn’t settle told me more than her face did.

  “The full moon is approaching soon,” she said.

  I nodded, and my erection bobbed in unison with my head. “I’m aware. You’ve mentioned it a few times.”

  “I’ve mentioned it because it’s important. Of the utmost importance, really.” She pressed her hands flat against her coils, forcing them still. “The ritual of consummation under the full moon is a sacred tradition among Hero’s Parties. It’s the formal bonding ceremony that seals the Champion to his Maidens and unlocks a significant power enhancement.”

  “Sex under the moon sounds rad for sure.” I leaned back on the couch and crossed my arms.

  “You’ve been briefed on the concept by two women who were too busy climbing on top of you to explain the mechanics properly.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, right between those crimson eyes, and I had to fight down a laugh. She looked like a stressed-out professor dealing with her worst students, and honestly, that wasn’t far off. “The act must be sincerely performed, or the whole thing fails. And you don’t get a second chance once we lose our virginities.”

  “I don’t think sincerity is going to be a problem for me.” I glanced toward the stairs. Elysia’s womb tattoo was probably boring a hole through the ceiling even now. “Not for them, and not for me.”

  “Not for them, or for you,” Juniper agreed, blushing. Her mouth twitched toward a smile, and one hand drifted up to toy with one of the golden caps on her horns. “Those two have been ready since they met you.” The smile didn’t quite form. She looked down at her coils. “The difficulty is on my end.”

  I’d figured that was where this conversation was heading. “Talk to me.”

  She was quiet for a few seconds. Her tail made a slow, restless loop across the hardwood, scales whispering. “I find this very difficult to articulate. In the Blasted Lands, we are not... forthcoming about matters of desire or love. Emotional transparency is considered a vulnerability, and vulnerabilities are exploited.”

  “We’re not in the Blasted Lands.”

  “No. We’re isolated within the mysterious twisting fields of Wisconsin, which has its own problems, but I take your point.” She looked up at me. “I have feelings for you, Champion, but you and I haven’t become physically acquainted yet. I’m worried I’ll be awkward and it could end up ruining things. And the idea of a deadline and such high stakes has me worried. I know it’s likely nothing, but I can’t help my nerves.”

  “Then forget the deadline and the stakes,” I said. “I think we already get along well enough to pull the ritual off. Sincere doesn’t mean perfect, and I don’t think it means you have to be already head over heels for me just yet.”

  She exhaled slowly. “You are very wise and patient, Josh.”

  “That’s a low bar for wisdom, but thank you.”

  She stared at me for a few seconds, and then her shoulders dropped about two inches from where they’d been bunched up near her horns. “Perhaps,” she said quietly. “Perhaps not.”

  “So, practical stuff,” I said, giving her the pivot before she could close back up. “How does the ritual actually work?”

  She grabbed onto the topic change eagerly. “The ritual isn’t so complex, actually. It only requires that you penetrate each maiden and release inside her outdoors under the full moon.”

  I nodded, stroking my chin. “Roger that. Penetrate with my dick and give you all the ol’ creampie treatment. I’m a master of that already, just ask Clementine.”

  “Yes, quite so. Three sequential bondings, one per Maiden. The order matters for tradition but not for the magic, which means—”

  “Which means Elysia goes first as First Maiden. That’s established and not up for debate.” I raised an eyebrow at her. “Right?”

  Juniper looked quietly relieved that I’d said it first. “Correct. Portia knows this. She simply enjoys pushing the boundary.” She folded her hands in her lap. “I’ll go last. I prefer to take my time.”

  Josh 2: Biggus Dickus registered that last sentence and tucked it away under “things to think about later when I’m alone,” which I never was anymore, so he’d be waiting a while.

  “About the power boost,” I said, pushing on. “What are the specifics?”

  Juniper lit up. This was her territory, the place where magic met math. She sat straighter, her tail coiling tighter, and her hands started moving as she talked. “A permanent bonus to all stats. All base stats increase by one, which sounds small but is rather significant.” She settled her hands back in her lap, and her tone shifted quieter. “One more thing. The ritual creates an emotional bond between all party members. After it’s complete, you’ll be able to sense our general emotional states—similar to how you can sense Clementine’s through the Cavalier bond. And we’ll sense yours when we try to.”

  “Like the party awareness I already have?”

  “Deeper, but yes. The party sense is tactical—location and danger. This is emotional. You’ll feel when Elysia is being possessive, when Portia is excited, when I’m...” She hesitated. “Concerned about things I don’t always mention out loud.”

  I tried to imagine a constant low-frequency feed of Elysia’s jealousy piped into my brain. It sounded exhausting. Also sounded like it would make me a much better partner to all of them, which was probably the point. “That’s going to be an adjustment.”

  “For all of us.” Juniper uncurled from her sitting position, which was an event in itself given how much snake had to go somewhere. “Now. I believe I requested the pleasure of your company for a walk.”

  “You did. Let me grab a jacket.”

  I told Portia where we were going on the way out. She’d just finished her lap and was panting happily on the back steps, tongue out, ears perked. “Master and Juniper are going on a romantic stroll! I shall guard the homestead in your absence!”

  “Keep an eye on Elysia,” I said. “She’s been in the bathroom for a while now.”

  “Aye aye, Master! Arf!”

  Juniper and I headed out across the property. This morning was jacket weather. Her tail left a wide flat track through the grass behind us, and every few steps her little black wings adjusted for balance when the ground sloped. I tried not to stare at the way her hips moved where human body transitioned to snake, because that particular junction had been occupying an unreasonable amount of my mental real estate lately, and staring would be creepy. I stared a little anyway. Sue me.

  We walked in silence for a while. I know that sounds boring, but after weeks of Elysia’s running commentary, Portia’s enthusiastic barking, and now Clementine’s creative profanity, walking next to someone quiet and reserved was a nice change of pace.

  “Tell me about the Blasted Lands,” I said after a while.

  She glanced sideways at me. “Why?”

  “Why not? What was it actually like growing up there?”

  Her tail slowed. She chewed on the question for a few strides. “Lonely, mostly. I was the only child in my district who looked the way I do.”

  “So you stuck out.”

  “Yes.” She kept her eyes forward. “The other children didn’t know what to do with me. In a country full of people who didn’t look the same, I looked somehow the most different.”

  “The tail?” I asked, arching a brow.

  “The boobs, actually.”

  I nodded, glancing down briefly at her glorious milk factories just long enough to not be inappropriate. “For what it’s worth,” I said, “I got the shit kicked out of me in middle school for being the tallest kid in class by four inches and not knowing what to do with any of it. My arms were too long, legs were too long, and I was even tripping over my own feet in PE. It’s not the same thing, obviously. But the part where you feel like you got assembled different from everyone else? Yeah. I know what that’s like.”

  “You grew into the height rather nicely, I’d say.” Her red eyes flicked over me and then very deliberately forward again. “Champion.”

  I smiled softly. “And you grew into the tits. Well. I mean, they’re still disproportionately massive. I could use those fuckers as punching bags, but—”

  “Okay, stop,” she said, frowning a little.

  “Sorry. My passion carried me away,” I sighed. Thankfully she smiled a bit at that, no doubt thinking I was trying to be funny.

  We’d reached the far edge of the property where the barn sagged against the sky and the grain silo stood next to it doing slightly better, structurally speaking. Juniper stopped and looked at it properly, running her gaze up from the cracked foundation to the weathered top.

  “I still can’t believe you started planning to have this remodeled for me before we’d even met in person,” she said. “Based on a dream.”

  “Based on common sense. You’re twenty-plus feet of snake tail. My hallway is three feet wide. Math said we needed more space for you to do your wizardy shit.”

  “Josh.”

  “Yeah?”

  She turned to me, and whatever she was about to say got stuck. I watched her try to push it out. She opened her lips, closed them, frowned at herself, and then sighed. “I am trying to tell you how much that means to me, but I get flustered when I try to be effusive.”

  “You can be reserved. I got the message.”

  She smiled warmly, eyes crinkling at the corners. Josh 2 demanded I kiss her immediately, but I told him to sit down and shut up. She’d asked for her own pace, and that meant her own pace. Even when she was standing three feet away looking like that.

  I reached out and tucked a stray curl behind one of her pierced ears instead, giving her the opening. She leaned into it for just a second, eyes closing, but when her tattoo started pulsing inside her top brightly enough to illuminate the space between us, she blushed and backed down.

  “We should head back,” she said. “Before your dog-girl tracks us by scent.”

  “She’d do it, too.”

  We walked back toward the house, and her tail bumped against my calf every few steps, which was probably an accident, but only about thirty percent of the time. The morning had been really, genuinely nice, and I was thinking about how weird it was that “nice” had become the most exciting thing in my life when six months ago “exciting” meant finding a twenty-dollar bill in a jacket pocket.

  Which lasted right up until we opened the back door and heard screaming.

  Elysia and Portia were locked in mortal combat on Super Plumber Kart 64. The arena was Rainbow Highway, the most sadistic track in the game. Elysia’s character had just launched itself off the edge of the course and a little turtle man on a cloud was currently fishing her out of the abyss.

  “Your mushroom power-up was STOLEN from my rightful reserves!” Elysia shrieked, mashing buttons so hard her whole body rocked back and forth on the couch. Her tiara had gone crooked, too. “That item was destined for me!”

  “I earned that mushroom fair and square,” Portia yelled back, on her feet now, controller at arm’s length. Her tail was going so hard the armchair behind her had scooted three inches across the floor. “The Moon Mother rewards the worthy, Your Highness, and the worthy use their items instead of hoarding them! Why, I bet you’ll hoard your pussy away from master once he finally claims us, and I’ll be forced to offer him mine multiple times a day. Oh, how he’ll abusively ravish me, and—”

  “Shut up! No he won’t! And no I won’t! My body will be his to use whensoever he desires! The First Maiden embraces her call to be the true love of the Champion, best prized in his—oh that fucking red turtle shell is so fucking unfair!”

  Portia just let out a little, “Tee hee!” in reply.

  Clementine was enduring the scene too, curled up in the armchair with a bowl of cereal and the expression of someone watching a nature documentary narrated by Gilbert Gottfried. “They’re the worst people I’ve ever met in my entire life, bar none,” she told us, cracking a smile at the end. “So they’re definitely growing on me.”

  On screen, Portia’s character was pulling well ahead, hitting every curve, nailing every boost pad, drifting through turns like she’d been born in a go-kart.

  “I am ROYALTY!” Elysia screamed as she drove off the track again. “The physics of this primitive entertainment device are fundamentally flawed! My inputs are too elegant to be accurately absorbed by the controller!”

  “Portia’s winning because she uses the brakes on those turns properly,” I said.

  “Brakes are a tool of the morally bankrupt!” Elysia’s whole body lurched forward as she death-gripped the controller. “A true warrior of Elfhaven meets every obstacle at FULL SPEED! This is the way of my people!”

  “Your people would drive off a lot of cliffs then.”

  The final race ended. Portia was in first. Elysia was eleventh out of twelve.

  Portia jumped up and pumped both fists. “VICTORY! I choose tonight’s entertainment! The Moon Mother has SPOKEN! Better luck next time, Your Highness!”

  Elysia huffed and stood, grabbing my arm and dragging me toward the stairs. “Take your prize. My prize shall be glorifying the penis of my one true love with my mouth.”

  Clementine and Juniper made brief eye contact and shrugged as one, but Portia was entirely shaken by the abrupt move.

  The dog-girl gasped, “N-n-no, wait! Let’s trade prizes! That’s not fair, princess! Princess—Your Royal Highness, wait for meeee!”

  Clementine sighed and stood up, rolling her shoulders. “If you’re already doing this, then I get dibs on his face.”