Chapter Twenty-Nine: A Soldier's Farewell
The attack had come unexpectedly, a steel ship coming in from the southeast and shelling the barely-fortified coastal towns and clearing the way for troops. They weren't all Earth troops, but they all had guns, and they had dozens of horses and a few tanks to boot. When Autumnal's navy came in to deal with the ship, the destroyer sank six navy ships without taking more than a scratch before Presimiwe got some mages on the scene and damaged the ship with fae magic, at which point it limped away and left the ground forces to do their business.
It wasn't a very big army - perhaps ten thousand men - but that was plenty big by fae standards. Vernal's entire army was about seven thousand soldiers, and there wasn't a single gun between them. Estival was a bit better off - we'd captured a few dozen guns and built another hundred… our problem was that we had about a thousand bullets between us and no way to make more since it appeared to be impossible to make gunpowder in Alfheim.
From the southern coast, the soldiers had marched inland and constructed a few primitive artillery cannons, which they used to shell Harvesthall, Autumnal's capital city, and fire at whatever cavalry rode at them. A siege force of about a thousand men was stationed outside the city, raiding all of the nearby towns and occasionally getting resupplied - the enemy was landing ships at night and moving supplies through intermittently-occupied port towns. The rest of the army continued through Autumnal, subjugating whatever towns they encountered and looting and pillaging whatever they liked. Harvesthall had been besieged five days ago, but this was the first message they'd managed to get out - snipers had shot the first few right out of the air. The kingdom's mages had faced off against the enemy army, but they had mages of their own - mages no match for fae magic, but who also brought guns and tanks to the table, so two or three of Presimiwe's people were taken out for each enemy mage they got. It was unclear whether the queen was still in the city, and it was only a matter of time before the city fell to the invaders. The army was dispersed and demoralized and the whole realm might fall.
"This is outrageous!" Alvaelic slammed his fist on the table. "Who are these invaders? Humans? Sauryx? Where did they come from?"
"It's hard to say, your majesty," the Autumnal messenger said. He looked exhausted and on the verge of tears. "They sailed in from the south… from the Outer Realms as far as we can tell, and their army has humans and sauryx… and a bit of just about everything. Some of their mages are fae. Without aid, I'm sure Autumnal will fall."
"No fae realm has ever fallen and autumnal will not be the first," Alvaelic stated. "You shall have two thousand troops…"
"Commanded by me," Calivar said.
The king looked at him strangely. "This is no time to be playing soldier, boy. I've got a general and captains for that…"
"Yes, father, a general and captains who don't know a thing about rifles and the tactics that rifle infantry use. I've been studying them for months, have interviewed the captured men a dozen times, and have started the only program in the fae realms for building rifles. If you don't want our soldiers to get slaughtered the way Presimiwe's men were, I've got to be leading them."
"He's not wrong," Captain Delcotha said. "The prince and I have spoken on the matter a dozen times and it's clear he's more knowledgeable than me with these new thunder-wands."
Alvaelic looked back and forth between the two men. "I shall expect a plan first thing tomorrow. If I'm not satisfied, then neither of you is going to Autumnal and I'll pick somebody else to lead our expedition. Am I clear?"
"Yes, father," Calivar said.
"If Calivar is going, then I'm going, too!" I blurted out - I hadn't meant to say it, really, but the thought of him marching off to face an army of Earth-men without me was unthinkable. That gave me a little pause in of itself - when had that happened? When I thought about who I really cared about in Alfheim, Meliswe stood atop the champion's stand, but Calivar stood in second place much less distantly than I'd have thought. This was the man who'd given Meliswe her ladyship, reintroduced Dill to her hometown, and given me the greatest gift of all - coffee, all in one day! Once upon a time, I'd blown him up over the Oise along with myself and now I Loved him… big-L love, the kind your heart goes aflutter over whenever you think about it. So if Calivar was riding off to save Autumnal, I was damn sure going, too.
"You're not going," Alvaelic chuckled. "Even if you were a real soldier and not a woman playing at warrior, I couldn't give you leave to go. What if you both got captured and given the accursed poison these bastards seem to love? The heirs of Vernal and Estival dead while Autumnal is in danger of falling? Three fae realms plunged into uncertainty and chaos? If you care about my son, you will stay here, where you can be the second person to learn of his exploits on the battlefield… if I like the plan he pitches me tomorrow morning. I have spoken on the matter and will not reconsider."
"Yes, father," I said. And, as much as I hated to admit it, the king was probably right.
+++++
I'm sure the coffee didn't help much with the jitters. Meliswe and I sat in 'our' little courtyard (it wasn't technically ours) sipping on coffee beneath a big umbrella. The first time she'd tried coffee, Meliswe had nearly vomited it back up, but she'd finished that small cup with admirable stoicism (probably just to humor me) and now seemed to be taking a liking to the stuff. Overnight, dark clouds had rolled in from the sea and were now treating us to a lightning show that could rival the guns of August. There was rain and wind, too, but not too much of it, and the breeze was actually pretty nice. But the storm somehow seemed portentious. Calivar promised he'd meet with us as soon as he was done his meeting with the king. It was an hour and a half after the start of the meeting and still no Calivar.
"Where is he?" I asked.
Meliswe wiggled her nose. "Hopefully giving a bad plan to his father…" It seemed doubtful. Calivar was just as smart as I was, though we were good at different things. I soaked up magical learning like a sponge, whereas he was as natural a commander and strategist as you could ever hope to find. "More caw-fee?"
"Yes, please," I said. This was cup… three? Four, maybe? I should probably stop. "Half a cup."
Just then, Calivar strolled into the courtyard, looking dashing in his military uniform, festooned with a dozen ribbons and brooches that didn't mean much at all - Calivar had never been to war, though Knut Dietrich certainly had. He stopped at the little awning at the edge of the courtyard - there were a full two yards of nasty weather between himself and our big umbrella. Meliswe made a happy little sigh - she was a sucker for men in uniform. I'd known enough assholes in fancy uniforms that I knew to respect the man and not the uniform. To wit: I also made a happy little sigh. Calivar, my second favorite person in all of Alfheim dressed to the nines.
"Well? How'd it go?"
"Very well," he said.
For a moment, I assumed that meant he'd delivered a bad plan and the king had torpedoed his insistence at personally leading the troops into Autumnal. But that was only good for the selfish little gremlin in my heart… very well meant, for all the fae realms, that he was going to ride out and teach the invaders that us Earth-folk-resurrected-as-fae took defending our adoptive kingdoms seriously. Suddenly, my hands were shaking, and I couldn't attribute it to the coffee since they hadn't been doing that five seconds before.
"Wh… when do you head out?" I asked.
"First thing tomorrow, but there's a lot to prepare before then."
"Lots to prepare," Meliswe repeated. "But you'll be back by six o'clock, right?
Calivar tilted his head. "What happens at six o'clock?"
She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. "Lots, my prince. But if you're not in our bedchamber by then, it won't include you."
"Five thirty it is," Calivar said. He dashed through the little strip of rain and crouched under the umbrella, inserting himself between us. He kissed me on the cheek and then did the same to Meliswe, and I thought he meant to whisper us reassuring nothings. No dice - he was after the coffee. He emptied the rest of our carafe into our extra cup and dashed off to make his preparations.
+++++
Our last night together was a tour de force. Calivar took his sweet time in making his preparations and five thirty came and went without him showing his face in my chamber. As the minutes passed, Meliswe and I got antsy and started a bit on our own. At first it was just lazing on the bed, staring into one another's eyes and kissing, little brief pecks on the lips and then on the neck, and then my face was in Meliswe's glorious cleavage smelling the vanilla and persimmon of the perfume she'd dabbed there. Then we were rolling and writing and gasping, almost wrestling one another as we disrobed, though I wound up on top, straddling Meliswe's slim waist. I brushed the rose gold hair away from her face and planted another kiss right on her lips, long and languorous, our tongues flitting past one another.
"I'm getting the saddle," I said.
Calivar arrived at six o'clock on the dot to find us well underway on our favorite toy, our zephrylites abuzz with energy as we rocked back and forth on the rumbling saddle and kissed and groped. I didn't even hear him come in. My head was swimming with pleasure between the thrumming of the zephrylite and Meliswe's soft lips at my breast. When he cleared his throat, I yelped and tumbled right off the saddle. Meliswe giggled at the sight and tumbled on top of me, her naked body warm and slick against mine.
"It looks like your saddle is a little unstable," Calivar said. "I think I might be of some help. I'm sure I've got some oil here that will ease things along…"
He was referring to Myrdwhye's Balm, a subtle tropical oil with certain healing properties. When applied to the skin, and especially when applied to sensitive areas of the skin, it provided a warm and tingling sensation that primed all of the nerve endings for pleasure while numbing them to pain. Artoro had mentioned to Calivar that it was a wonderful way to spice things up in the bedroom and, after trying it out a few times, I think all of us had to agree. And, since it was Calivar's last night before he rode to Autumnal, I decided to indulge him. He'd expressed interest in trying one of our rear entrances but hadn't complained too much when Meliswe and I insisted that our other holes ought to be enough. But with a little balm upon the bum, an exploratory finger made me gasp from the strange tingling sensation, and then he slowly slid in. Calivar's substantial manhood felt tight in there, but it didn't really hurt. In fact, there was something pleasant about it.
Meliswe mounted herself back on the saddle, slicking her oiled-up sex over the toy, while she and I kissed. Her emerald eyes kept flitting up to Calivar to see if he liked what he saw, and eventually he lowered himself further to get a different angle, gripping my breasts from behind as he pumped in and out of my rear, the little prickling, sparkling motes of pleasure that lit up back there far different from anything I'd ever felt before.
"Your derriere is exquisite," he whispered, the rumble of his voice tickling down my spine. Whether he meant the contours of my rear or the feel as it squeezed him, I can only speculate. Probably both.
I pulled away from Meliswe with a smack and tried to say something witty, but all that came out was a moan. He soon picked up the pace, grunting and thrusting with abandon, and I felt the warm bloom of his orgasm within me a minute later. Even that felt good somehow. Calivar tossed back a little phial of revitalizing potion - he'd be as good as new in five minutes - and sat heavily upon the settee, a dazed smile on his face. He watched Meliswe and me going at it some more before deciding we were so delectable that he'd have to have each of our holes that night.
"To remember Estival by," he insisted.
"Neither of us is from Estival," I sighed.
"Perhaps not, but my fond memories of my princess and my lady definitely come from here. Or shall I wile the rest of the night away pining for what might have been?"
Meliswe spun away from him, sticking her rear up in the air and, legs slightly spread, wiggling the delectable peach of her behind back and forth. "You couldn't help yourself if you tried!" she giggled.
"No, I suppose not. The flesh is weak." He gave her derriere a little smack, which elicited a delighted yelp from Meliswe. "On to hole two of six, my loves!"
In the back of my mind, I had a secret hope that we might romance Calivar so thoroughly that he'd oversleep and the army would leave without him. Meliswe and I certainly did all that we could to exhaust him, bucking, moaning, and shrieking in ecstasy until after midnight, all of us collapsing in a happy, sweaty pile after eight or ten rounds of lovemaking - between them, some holes got used twice or more. Calivar collapsed between the two of us, naked and snoring before I even closed my eyes. But he woke up before either of us, too. I awoke just after dawn to a gentle kiss on the forehead. As my eyes fluttered open, I saw Calivar, recently bathed and decked out in his smart military uniform.
"I'm leaving now, my princess," he whispered.
I groaned, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. "Don't go."
"I have to."
"Then kiss your lady goodbye, too."
He smiled, his lustrous eyes taking me in as I stretched out, nude on our bed. "Yes, my princess." He kissed me again, this time on the lips, and strolled around our big bed to say his goodbyes to Meliswe.
Before he shut the chamber door behind himself, I willed myself out of bed and dashed across the chamber floor, leaping into a hug that nearly knocked him off-balance. I kissed Calivar again, and whispered: "Stay safe. Because, if anything happens to you, I'm coming to Autumnal to rescue you, even if I have to do it all by my lonesome. I… I love you."
"I'm sure I'd remember it if you'd said that before," Calivar said. "And I love you… and that may be the first time I've honestly said that to anybody. Whenever I'm about to do something stupid, I'll think to myself: this might bring Laeanna into harm's way. And I cannot bear the thought of that. I promise I'll return as soon as I can."
I wanted to cry. I wanted to beg him to stay - but I knew that he couldn't, and I knew I had to be strong, so I shut the bedchamber door and waited for his footsteps to recede before I wept.
So i assume you chose Autumnal for the Fall wordplay.
I'd be lying if I said that didn't play into it. Though I then retconned the plot around it... which, if you do it before you release the story, is just old-fashioned plotting.
Random question
: How sentient - or perhaps even sapient - are those zephyrlites?
Will they, at one point, break out of their worn-down vessel and go back home into the limbo? Will they have family gatherings where Parent-Zephyrlite asks "Have you been a good service daemon or a little chaotic pest?" and the former vibrator saddle shuffles their spiritual tendrils in the nothingness of the limbo and mumbles "I dun wanna talk 'bout it"?
Good question. There are many sorts of elementals, some of which are quite intelligent - perhaps even as intelligent as a very intelligent human. However, these are in the minority and are far too powerful to casually summon. Most elementals are small motes of consciousness barely aware that they're alive. These most basic elementals are called zephrylites, also known as lesser air elementals. However, unlike with most sentient animals, a zephrylite's consciousness can grow significantly over time, becoming capable of greater awareness, more complex tasks, and even developing a personality. While they are ultimately limited in their growth by the strength of their vessel, after a few decades of growth, a zephrylite might be considered a zephiron or even, after two or three centuries, an urzephyr (an air elemental and greater air elemental, respectively). It would be considered a major accomplishment for a summoner to have one of these trained, and a master elementalist might have several urzephyrs under her control. And, when she sends that urzephyr back to their home in their dimension of endless, howling air and its zephyr-parents ask, "Have you been a good service daemon or a chaotic little pest?", the former urzephyr-love-saddle will shuffle its whispering air coils and mumble, "I dun wanna talk 'bout it..."
@OvidLemma Wonderful!
Thank you!