With Alira and the high priestesses, Ceris and Sheila, taking charge of overseeing Lotherain's repairs, I was left with some free time of my own. Belle had taken residence of Eudora's tower in her absence, and Eileen had commandeered the alchemy laboratory with Miuna. The three of them had spent the night restlessly researching and experimenting alchemical concoctions. No doubt in an effort to help Eleanor.

I arrived inside the tower standing on top of wooden debris from the destroyed gazebo. The mansion, however, remains unharmed. Lantessa was in the living room, feeding kindling into the fireplace.

"Are you… cold?" I asked the gorgon, who was rubbing her hands together.

"Oh, don't mind me. I'm just a displaced serpent. Never mind that reptiles cannot generate their own body heat. How I miss the warmth of the Valisca Archipelago," she said, hissing at her own misfortune.

"I guess you're kind of trapped here for the winter. You know we have a dragon who can breathe fire?" Zeke in question could likely go for some company. After growing out his wings, he wasted no opportunity to soar through the skies. The harpy sisters, despite their inclination to play, just didn't have the stamina to keep up with him.

Though if given the opportunity, I was sure he wanted nothing more than to be with me.

"The young drake is a nuisance. He speaks too much." Lantessa and her many snakes turned the other cheek. "You're here to see your companions, are you not? Leave me so that I may warm up in peace."

"I was. But since Eudora isn't here, I was hoping you could show me what happened to Aurelias first," I said.

The hair of snakes turned, but Lantessa continued to face the fire.

"Funny you should ask me of her since I was the one tasked to keep her broken. Very well. Come along." Lantessa guided me to a door behind the stairs.

It led to a cellar, but it wasn't wine that I encountered down there. Aurelias, the former knightess known as Humility, was spread eagle and chained to a rickety bed. Some stone blocks in the ground had been removed so that a familiar alraune's tentacle grew out of them. Two were clamped down on the knightess' breasts, suctioning the lactation secreting from her nipples. Three more were penetrating her mouth, ass, and pussy.

"Mmm… uuuu… mmmmh… aahhgghh…" Aurelias was utterly incoherent and mindbroken. The stout, refined image of the woman who decapitated King Marcus and nearly killed Eileen had dissolved from my mind, and was replaced with a bumbling mess.

"The one in her mouth feeds her all necessary sustenance. The one in her vagina keeps her pumped with aphrodisiac. And lastly, the one in her ass serves as an excretory tract. It's all very efficient and keeps one of the alraunes satiated," Lantessa explained with an expression only genius could only give to their greatest invention.

"I won't say she didn't have it coming, but isn't this a little much?" I asked.

The gorgon looked appalled at my insinuation. "But she rather likes it. Watch."

Lantessa pulled the tentacle out of Aurelias' twitching pussy. She responded by groaning, hopelessly trying to extend her hands in an effort to shove it back in.

"I help myself to her every now and then. Even Noelle cannot control himself around his former peer. He comes down from time to time to relieve himself," Lantessa said, reuniting the tentacle with Aurelias.

Eudora wasn't joking when she made the comment about reducing the greater knights to sex slaves.

We returned upstairs and ran into Noelle at the door, who bowed when he saw me.

"Oh. Hello, Ellori." Noelle's voice had been completely feminized. 

It made me anxious to regard him him when he appeared so much like a woman. He gripped the hems of his maid outfit, but even the frills couldn't hide the erection underneath.

"Is it that time again to see the knightess, Noelle?" the gorgon asked. She and a few of her snakes ran their forked tongues along his cheek. "Would you like to have me this time around?"

"I-I wasn't! Belle sensed your presence and sent me downstairs to fetch you," he answered blushing.

"Thank you, Noelle. I'll be on my way up," I said.

Belle, Eileen, and Miuna had their eyes glued to an oversized book on a lantern when I came in. My entrance didn't even occur to them until I made myself known.

"Any progress?" I asked them as I came into the room.

"Not a single." Belle was the first to look up and sigh. She threw a glance to Eleanor who remained unconscious on a cot near the reagents and ingredients.

Eileen appeared to be taking this just as heavily. The bags under her eyes were a testament to how much she had been working. Then there was me, treating myself to a threesome last night when I could have been helping.

"I've tried every known brew that could awaken those who had fallen into a coma or magical sleep. None worked. I tried to concoct new potions from what I learned these last few months, but all I'm doing is wasting reagents." My apprentice pushed herself away from the tome and stared into the cauldron with frown.

"Maybe Eudora has a bedroom we can check for clues," I suggested.

"She never slept," Lantessa said, leaning against the door frame.

Noelle was standing beside her and nodding. "My Lady Eudora spared little time for play or rest. She occasionally napped, but I knew better than to believe she was sleeping. It's more appropriate to say she was formulating her thoughts."

Eudora was working all this time to help us, yet we continued to regard her as an enemy. Guilt clawed at my chest more than Edith's taunts ever could.

Mira, Belle, and I might have been wrong about her. After all, this was the same merciless woman who butchered thousands. Yet when we pleaded for her to help Eleanor, she didn't bat an eye. To make matters more conflicting, the last soul she needed was the soul stone of pride. The very one I swallowed. No wonder she looked so defeated back then. Despite that, she saved me all the same and never brought it up to make me feel guilty for it.

I sighed.

I wanted to cry.

If Eudora were here, she would probably tease me about—

Sex slave. Alraune.

"Eileen! Do we have any more of the substance secreted by the alraune created from the cape sundew plant?" I startled her with my sudden outburst, but she fetched a vial from a shelf behind Eleanor that contained a clear, viscous liquid.

"We have two more of these. But I've already tried using them and couldn't make anything useful out of it," she said.

"The difference is you didn't make it while I was in the room," I replied.

Belle was the only one in the room who caught on. "Your dryad's boon."

"That's why you're at the top of the class, Belle." I smiled.

"Someone mind telling me what I'm missing here?" Eileen threw her hands in the air.

"Eudora had told me my presence raised the quality of any vegetative ingredient to their peak. That includes anything from an alraune. I had to be present!" I exclaimed.

My apprentice's eyes lit up. 

"But if Eudora knew this, why didn't she create a potion while we were all still here?" Belle asked.

"Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe she was searching for a method to extract what Discipline had pulled out first. Now that it's gone, we should be able to brew something to awaken Eleanor." It was only conjecture. If we had awakened Eleanor prematurely, who was to say she wouldn't try to escape. Or if what was embedded inside her could destroy her awakened consciousness. Whatever the case, it was our mistake for underestimating Eudora as usual. She thought ahead. I had to as well in order to fit into those shoes. I pushed the vial back into Eileen's grasp and held Belle's hand firmly. "Brew another concoction. Trust me."

Eileen and Belle went right to work. Miuna assisted them, performing tasks in their divided form for extra hands. In no time at all, we had a potion brewed the exact same way, but it turned out a different color than the rest.

I held the glass vial between my eyes, watching the blue and green liquid swirling inside but never mixing into a single color.

"Vessyra, my goddess. Hear me. Bless this vial with your love. Let it heal Eleanor so that she may reunite with her old friend." My prayers were answered by my magical energy seeping into the contents of the potion, and handed it to Belle so that she could do the honors.

"Will this really work?" Belle asked dubiously.

"It will," I assured her. "And it should be you she wakes up to."

Belle took the vial in her trembling fingers and guided it to Eleanor's lips, emptying it to the last drop.

We held our breaths. A minute passed by. Then another.

Eleanor suddenly sucked in a deep breath. Her eyes opened ever so slightly as the pupils adjusted to the light.

"Belle… is that you?" the knight asked.

My colleague, the witch of wrath, burst into tears and threw her arms around her friend.