Shalltear moaned with pleasure when the vampire bride finished her off.  The pale flesh of her familiar was cool to the touch, and yet to the diminutive true vampire guardian, only one thing could have been hotter.  ‘Lord Ainz… my Lord.  My love…’  His fine calcium bones, their perfect structure, that glorious red orb.  Not to mention those penetrating red eyes.

It was all… ‘Glorious!’  Shalltear thought the word, but shouted only a desperate banshee-like “Yaaaahhhh!”  Her little hands tightened on the head of the dark haired familiar whose final desperate flicks of her tongue sent her mistress over the edge.  In the throes of passion, she felt the skull ‘crack’ in her hands.

Her climax… and the unlife of the familiar… had both reached their end.

She banished the summon to dispose of the unmoving corpse, and then crinkled her nose.  ‘They may call me a pervert,’ Shalltear thought with quiet dignity, ‘but even I don’t like to stink.’  

And with that thought, she went off to the baths.

The baths of Nazarick were as decadent as Neuronist’s room was painful, the rising heat of the water kept a constant fog of steam that thickened the deeper into it that you went.  No true barrier to the vision of the ones who used them, it was a nod to the idea of privacy.  

Not that Shalltear cared if she was seen when she peeled off her dress in the changing room and exited again.  The soft earth gave in under even her light weight, the bending blades of grass caressed the bottoms of her feet like a lover’s touch.  The smooth white tile marked her path into the wet, and she sank into it with a sigh.

“You really should use a towel.”  A matronly voice said from within the steam in deeper waters.

Shalltear followed the voice and her lips tightened in restrained displeasure.  Technically her superior, Albedo was also her rival.

She was also a source of significant envy to the vampire.  Shalltear’s eyes went immediately to Albedo’s chest.

The succubus batted her wings, sending little waves of water in the direction of the vampire.

“Look all you like.”  Albedo said and stood up, a haughty expression on her smiling face, her hands were on her hips, though not a tall woman, the succubus was a powerful warrior.  “That way you can easily see why Lord Ainz will choose me over you.  Why… you’re even smaller than the little waves I sent over to you.  No wonder you pad your bra.”

Shalltear fumed and felt the urge to cover her chest, her one insecurity.  “Maybe I need pads, but ‘mine’ don’t sag either.”  She gave a lecherous look at the demoness and leaned forward, her eyebrows rising and falling, her smile one of absolute mockery.

Albedo turned red in the face, “They don’t sag!  My body is perfect, yours on the other hand…”  Albedo approached and looked down at the pale vampire, “if mine is a feast, yours is an empty plate.”

Shalltear glared up at the dripping wet beauty, the water flowed over the contours of her breasts, and slipped down over her smooth belly to rejoin the waters of the women’s baths.  The vampire Guardian raised a fist, then brought out her finger, pointing at Albedo.  She wanted to speak.  Shalltear tried to think of something, anything to say back.

She couldn’t.  Her finger fell back into the fist, and her hands fell to her sides.  Her wits failed her and she sank into the water, defeated.

Albedo didn’t feel the rush of triumph over her rival, if anything, she felt like a bully.  ‘Rival or not, that stung.  A fight is a fight, but… too far is too far.’

The Guardian Overseer lowered herself into the water as well, wondering what to say, and hoping her wits did not let her down.

“A proposal?”  Arche repeated the words with as much dismay as relief.

“You can come up off of your knees first.”  Sebas said, and she slowly rose in time with the blush to her face.  

When she did, she darted her eyes left to right and then, still acutely aware of the hand that had not released her wrist, she gingerly sat down on the couch beside him again.  Arche had a difficult time meeting his eyes until he released his hold over her wrist.  When he did, with a heavy slowness she brought it back and folded her fingers into her palms and set the knuckles against one another.  Arche’s lower lip quivered as the shame of her forwardness and desperation ran rampant for several seconds before he spoke.

“That is better now, isn’t it?”  Sebas’s voice retained its dignity, and yet was somehow warmer.  Arche gave him a tiny, fearful nod.

“Why don’t you start by telling me everything.  Then I’ll explain what I mean.”  Sebas suggested, and under his penetrating gaze, there was nothing she could do but pour out her heart.

Arche told him everything.  Her family’s fall, her father’s spending and rising debts to cover his lost status, her mother’s ‘slightly’ lesser spending that was centered around trying to net a wealthy husband for Arche herself.  The risk to her sisters, the slave auctions that had taken nobles who refused to bow to their changing situations, and that dark looming fate that was waiting just beyond the hill when her father’s debts were called in.

She spoke of her connection to Foresight, becoming a worker, leaving the academy, she confessed everything as if he were an interrogator, or as if he were a temple priest to whom she had to unburden herself in safety.  Sebas felt like both depending on what Arche was about to say, and finally it was done down to that night.

“...So I was supposed to seduce you, the hope was that having ‘damaged’ my worth, or even impregnated me, you would do the proper noble thing and marry me.  Then…”  She looked away, out into the stars, “Then my sisters would be safe.  Life as a worker is hard and dangerous.  We don’t get the support of guild investigators, we don’t have any security.  We’re disposable ‘heroes’.  My talent carried me a long way, but there is never a tomorrow promised to people in my position.”  Arche gave Sebas a wry, half proud smile and relaxed as if a great weight had lifted from her shoulders.

Arche extended a hand outward toward Sebas again and closed the other into a tight fist that turned her tan fingers white.  “That’s everything, Lord Tian.  I tried, I failed, and I humiliated myself and disgraced whatever was left of my ruined family name along the way.  I guess… I guess all I can say is that I’m sorry.  If it had worked, if you really did rescue my sisters, I’d have spent my life trying to make up for trapping you tonight.”  Her head hung in defeat.  “Really.  Especially because I simply don’t look like a noble anymore.”

“Do you like being a worker?”  Sebas asked, interest piqued over her last words.

“Some of it.”  Arche admitted readily, though the shiver of excitement suggested it was more than ‘some’.  “My teammates are more like family than my parents. We lay our lives down for one another, we’ve saved each other’s lives countless times, and there’s a satisfaction to getting things for myself.  I don’t have to bow or scrape to my father, I earn my life.  I don’t need to depend on someone else.  I’m not really fit to be a nobleman’s wife anymore, no matter how I was raised.”

Arche didn’t spit when she said the last sentence, but Sebas felt her scorn for the idea, so it was unsurprising when she laughed.  “Look how I messed up tonight!  I couldn’t even walk in a way to draw your eye, let alone anything else!”  When the laughter began to fade she rested her hand on his thigh.

“Whatever your offer, Lord Tian, thank you for not making a mockery of my disgraceful self tonight.  I’m truly thankful, you really are a great man, and you’d make a noblewoman very, very proud as a husband I am sure.”  Arche said with a well of gratitude that overflowed from her lips.

Sebas inclined his head in a slight, lordly nod of acceptance.  “How far would you go, to save your sisters?”

“I was going to give up the life I liked, to have my mother’s life, Lord Tian.  To stop my father’s folly from destroying them, I’d even be a concubine.  I’m the only one who can properly protect their happiness.”  Arche hissed the promise out and rose her eyes to his, he searched her face and found no reservations.

“Would you put your comrades to the test?  Even knowing they might not pass?”  Sebas probed, and Arche pursed her lips shut tight.

“I- I don’t own their lives, but- but if it is a test I know they’ll pass, I think they would forgive me that.”  Arche responded with a tentative uncertainty.

“Swear your life, your soul, your magic, your talents, your everything, and swear to put your comrades to the test, and I will see your sisters saved.”  Sebas offered.

“What of my… my parents?”  Arche asked.

“In a few days, I’ll let them decide for themselves.  But first, you must ask for it yourself. You must, out of your own strength, ask for the help you need, and put everything on the line for it.”  Sebas gave the instruction, and Arche searched his face as he had searched her own.

She searched for cruelty, she searched for malice, she searched for plans to hurt those she loved, and found no evil.  “Is this what they call, ‘a leap of faith,’ Lord Tian?”  Arche asked through a pounding heart.

“I believe so, Arche, I believe so.  Now, will you make the leap, or do I walk out without your word?  I won’t offer this a second time, I promise you.”  Sebas said without any reservation nor hint of compromise.

“You swear, nothing bad will happen to my sisters, no matter what?”  She asked, “They’ll have happiness?”  Arche pressed the question, leaning close enough that she could feel the breath coming past his lips to caress her face.

“In my master’s name, I swear.”  Sebas made his vow, and Arche slowly stood up, she brought her hand up to her forehead and felt the dampness of sweat there, soaking past her glove. 

“It’s a deal then, I hope to the four this isn’t the biggest mistake of my life.  F-Forgive me, Lord Tian or… may I- may I call you Sebas?”  Arche’s weak smile revealed the weary spirit that lived inside her flesh in that moment, and Sebas stood up as well.

“You may.  Tomorrow, tell your parents that you failed, and that you’re going on a job, then come to my home, and wait there.”  Sebas gave the order, and Arche could only bow, her throat suddenly dry and her eyes threatening to flood when the stress of the day hit her all at once.

“I’ll see myself out.”  Sebas said, seeing her distress, he reached for the door handle.  “Everything will be alright.” 

With nothing else to do but watch him go, Arche could only give tiny nods and pray to the four that he was neither lying nor wrong.

When she was alone, Arche went to her room, peeled off the dress she despised, wiped off the makeup she wore, and flung herself on a bed that had long ago begun to feel too soft for her to be comfortable in.

‘Gods who watch over us… please… please don’t let this be a mistake.’  Arche prayed, and closed her eyes to sleep.