Much, much later that night, the three of us were silently recuperating at a corner table back at the Righteous Table Leg. For the moment, we were content to tiredly listen to whatever it was that the lute player next to the fire was strumming. It was a simple and quiet melody that suited our mood perfectly.

Our… vigorous practice session at the bathhouse had run quite long, so not only had we missed the opportunity to shop for a decent change of clothes, but we had ended up missing dinner entirely. The bar was still open, though, so we did not mind too much. Besides, Jax and Arx were both full to bursting, and they had ended up transferring so much Life Energy to me that I was more than content.

It turned out that early onset hypothermia made excellent practice for my Status Ailment conversion aura, and I had gotten the skill all the way up to 17 before it maxed out for the day. In the meantime, what with all the excess Life Energy flying around, I had even managed to struggle through a little much needed practice with casting Detonating Sap Varnish.

Of course, trying to cast spells while a couple of oversexed lilim are pawing at you is no mean feat, but they absolutely loved it whenever I managed to finally power through their kisses to coat them with Detonating Sap. They claimed that the substance tasted like my own concentrated… well, semen to be blunt, and they had almost fought with one another for the right to lick it from their claws.

I declined their repeated offers to let me try it.

But at least I got the spell into High Novice territory, so it was a lot easier for me to bring its Words to mind.

Quite a few of my other skills also got a good workout, though none crossed into the 20s. The Hammer of Glory was close, though. I had to admit, I was more than a little curious to see how that one would advance, but for now, I was keeping my progress on it a secret from my lilim.

They would discover that soon-to-be achievement the fun way.

As for the lilims’ skills, everything along our Status Ailment skillchain was strenuously exercised. In fact, Jax’s lust resistance ability, Thirst for Master’s Touch, even managed to cross over into Low Intermediate, and she had reported that the skill now allowed her to keep a cool head all the way up through Emotional Ailment: Lust II.

I had not even known that was a thing, but it was not too surprising once I thought about it. After all, I knew from experience that Hypothermia had grades like that. Apparently, Lust II was the point where your libido started interfering with your ability to reason, and anything but attempting to satisfy your passion was a distraction at most. I had even unknowingly felt Lust of that magnitude back in the river with Arx, but of course, by that point I had been far too crazed with it to bother with reading prompts. It was no wonder that I was only now putting a name to it.

According to Arx, Ailment severity could progress all the way up through Grade V. She assumed that Lust would follow that same pattern. However, she had never heard of anyone experiencing it to that degree. Either it was too rare for stories to propagate… or no one had lived to tell the tale.

After that, the conversation had lapsed for a while, and we simply sat and enjoyed our drinks while the lute tickled our ears. I was sipping on some sort of concoction that Tips had described as a small ale made from the sparge of his own personal redgrass wine… whatever that meant.

However, it was the closest he had to a non-alcoholic option… which is to say that it was the lowest proof beverage he served. He claimed that you could drink several mug-fulls without feeling the effects. And that seemed to be good enough for Arx, so out of solidarity with the recovering alcoholic, we had elected to go in with her on a round.

It had an unusual sort of aroma which reminded me somewhat of wet straw, however, the taste was light and mildly floral. As strange as that sounds, I did not find it particularly offensive, though Jax was of a different opinion.

“Feh… shite tastes like laundry water,” she said, breaking the silence with a scowl. Delicately pushing her mug away, she glanced over at Arx across the table from us. “I dunno why ye even bothered with this. I be close to certain ye ain’t had a craving for no booze since ye was reborn. Ye ain’t even thirsty!”

Arx seemed a little surprised by the statement and frowned contemplatively into her mug. However, before she could think of how to reply, I cut in.

“Hmm… now that you mention it, I’m not really all that thirsty, either.”

That was a bit of an odd realization. After so long on the road, I had thought that I would be much more excited to finally have some real food and drink. However, now that I actually had something potable to hand, I did not have the slightest inclination to drink it beyond simple curiosity.

“Do you think it’s a side-effect from all the Life Energy?” I asked.

Arx cleared her throat, and switching languages, she said, “Maybe we should keep our personal matters to English? It’s extremely uncommon for a Class to deal with Life Energy directly, and that all three of us do is even more so.”

“Is that really such a big deal?” I asked doubtfully, though I swapped to English anyway. “Why would it matter what resource we use? I mean, surely it’s less unusual than the hedonistic stuff you used to have to deal with.”

Arx shook her head seriously, “It’s not really the rarity that’s the issue. Technically, everyone uses Life Energy. You can even buy a passive skill to monitor how much you have left. Most people use it as a simple way to gauge how close they are to dying. However, we can use Life Energy for more than just living, and that is quite potent. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but some of your spells are much more powerful than they have any right to be. Especially for their skill level.”

I pursed my lips thoughtfully. As far as I could tell, my spells seemed pretty underwhelming, but as a buffer and a healer, that was to be expected. It was a lot harder to tell how strong a spell was when all it did was to coat my lilims’ claws with a little bit of nail polish… even if it could explode.

Hmm… that incident with Menda’s wagons was pretty cool, though. All we had done was to toss a rock that I had Varnished into the flaming wagon, and it had been totally obliterated in the explosion. Then again, the fire had likely helped ‘loosen the lid,’ so to speak.

I twisted my lips to one side as I thought. What I really needed was something to compare myself to, but due to the nature of my Class, I had a feeling that was going to be difficult.

Maybe we should go check out that arena tomorrow.

I had no idea if I would find what I was looking for there, but if I could just see some other wizards in action—especially at something close to my own skill levels—then I would have a much better understanding of just how effective Life Energy was as a resource. As it was, my only recourse was to contrast my Life spells with the ones that used spell endurance.

And that was next to impossible. Their effects were totally different! Was moving shadows around for camouflage more or less powerful than healing a person? I had no idea, but healing certainly felt harder.

When I did not respond, Arx eventually continued, “Mmm… anyway, what I’m most concerned about is what will happen when people find out that we can steal it. I’ve never heard of anyone who can do that.”

“Meh…” Jax said dismissively before taking a pull from her flagon. Grimacing now that she was reminded of the flavor, she set it aside… a little further away this time. “And how many people have ye met what could cast balls of wind just because ye made them laugh a little, eh? How many could move so fast ye could scarce but see them just because a man grabbed their tit? I wager there be folk about what can do things stranger still than us three. Besides, ye weren’t bothered by it so much when we was draining that sod in front of Menda and his drivers.”

“Yes, well… he deserved it,” Arx said before taking a swig from her own flagon. Her lips pulled back distastefully at the flavor, and she paused to give her mug a thoughtful sniff. “I dunno. Maybe I’m worried for nothing. Still, the less people who know about us the better. Especially your ability to bestow tempered stats, Dearest. It would be… extremely bad if the wrong sort of people found out about that.”

“Well, I’m hardly going to start handing out fliers,” I joked, trying to brighten the mood. “Besides, I wouldn’t say that I can bestow them exactly. There’s quite a lot of baggage that comes with it, after all.”

Jax snorted into her beer, which she had picked up yet again despite her prior efforts. “Baggage he says… If I’d known what I know now, I’d have killed for me place at yer side.”

I cleared my throat, equally disturbed and embarrassed by the admission. “Right… anyway…” Casting about for a moment for somewhere else to direct the conversation, I decided to curve it back around to Jax’s earlier point, “Have you really not have any cravings for alcohol, Arx?”

She did not answer immediately. She had a pensive expression on her face. “I… hadn’t really thought about it. But I suppose not.” Glancing over at Jax, she smiled faintly, “I’m surprised you picked up on it. I didn’t know you were paying that kind of attention to me.”

Jax gave her a lop-sided grin of her own and thrust her nose haughtily into the air. “I be First Lilim! Be me job to spot troubles. Drunkard that ye were and with us stuck in the Dungeon, I were worried ye’d succumb to the shakes. Took me a while to get a handle on the flavor of yer cravings, too. They was subtle at first, but toward the end, they was getting fierce.”

Arx nodded. “Right… with my Toughness as high as it was and my poison resistance, I managed to hold them at bay for quite a while. But once I was reborn as a do-lilim… well, I don’t know. I just… haven’t thought about it since then. It wasn’t until Tips asked us what we’d like to drink that it even occurred to me that it might be a problem.”

“Huh… well, side-benefit, I suppose,” I said before taking a long pull from my own flagon.

“Mmm…” she hummed with a twinkle in her eye, “Now all I seem to crave is your cock.”

At that little quip, as if on cue, beer shot out of my nose.

Jax smirked and shook her head at me, “Master, yer too easy sometimes. Ye’d think that after all we’d done together, ye’d be used to such.”

“Oh… I’m getting there,” I admitted, though my eyes were still watering. “It’s just that where I come from, women aren’t quite so… forward. Especially in public.”

“It’s not like anyone can understand us,” Arx argued. “I’d never even heard of English before I became your do-lilim.”

“I ain’t seen no other humans around here, neither,” Jax said with a significant glance at me. “And I been on the lookout.”

Oh, right… that.

Jax’s self-concocted backstory for me was that I was some sort of deposed noble or princeling who had descended from one of the mysterious floating islands I had seen when I had first fallen into this world. I thought the whole thing was ludicrous and had never affirmed a word of it. Yet somehow, the two of them were of the firm belief that everything about me just screamed noble blood.

“I very seriously doubt that you will,” I assured her.

“Now, see… that’s why ye need yer First Lilim to look out for ye!” she argued back. “Wouldn’t be the first time that someone were hunted down because he had the wrong blood in his veins.”

I sighed. Not for the first time, I considered whether it would be easier to just spill the beans about my origins. I trusted Jax implicitly, after all, and Arx’s own Loyalty was well into the nineties.

Then again, I had held off this long. And besides, it was not really all that important where I came from. My lilim had their own secrets, too, and it was not as if they had been begging me to come clean.

Meh… they probably wouldn’t believe me even if I did tell them.

It was about then that the serving wench, Adja, stopped at our table. “Why you two ladies have barely even touched your ale. Is it…” she paused briefly to stifle a yawn, before glancing at my mug. For some reason, its presence seemed to confuse her, and she gave her head a quick shake. “Is it not to your taste?” she continued, glancing back at Jax. “I could bring you a nice melon wine instead. Its not too strong, and it has a few herbs in it to cut through the sweetness.”

Jax pulled a face at the suggestion. “I were never partial to no wine. But this ain’t cutting it, neither. What have ye got to make me tits sweat?”

Adja’s blue cheeks turned faintly pink at Jax’s ever colorful imagery. Clearing her throat daintily, she murmured, “Uh… right. Well, if that’s what you’re looking for, then don’t you worry. I’ve got just the thing.” Then turning to Arx, she smiled. “And what about you?”

“This is… fine. Thank you,” Arx said with a dismissive glance at her ale.

Adja nodded unperturbed and started to walk away, but I quickly interjected, “Uh… hello? I think that I would like to try that wine you mentioned?”

At the sound of my voice, she jumped. Quickly spinning, her eyes locked with mine for a brief moment, and she slowly started backing away. “Uhb… uhm… yes… Sorry! I’m… so sorry. I… I…”

Abruptly, she bumped into the table behind her, and with a yelp, she scurried off.

I blinked several times, more than a little nonplussed. “What… was that?”

Arx seemed more than a little mystified herself. “I’m not sure. She was giving off a strange mix of emotions. It was like you startled her somehow.”

“Aye… I expect that’d be because ye left yer skill on, Master,” Jax informed me.

“Oh, right. I forgot… appropriately enough,” I said with rueful shake of my head.

Forgotten in Stillness was not a skill I had to think about most of the time. It just quietly worked in the background, keeping me from drawing attention. It was a useful thing to have in the Dungeon, but now that we were in public, I would need to remember to turn it off if I ever expected to get any service.

“Still that’s no reason to go running off like that,” I said as I turned off the mental switch. “You’d think she was terrified of me.”

Jax snorted in disgust and took a long pull of her beer, finishing it off before slamming the empty mug to the table. Then, a long and slow belch rumbled up from somewhere deep in her gut. The two of us stared at her for a couple of seconds.

“What?” she asked before roughly wiping her mouth with the back of her arm.

As one, Arx and I turned back to our conversation.

“I’m… not sure that she was feeling fear exactly,” Arx said slowly. “It felt more like… she was nervous? But there was something else there. It was almost like…” she paused to look to Jax for help, somewhat unwillingly.

Jax pushed her empty mug around for a moment before sighing. “I can see why ye ain’t picking up on it. That girl were so nervous, she were about to wet herself. The taste of that covered up most of the rest,” she explained before rolling her eyes to the rafters. Then, with a sigh of lament, she went on, “She thinks that ye be the most beautiful creature she ever did lay eyes on.”

“Who me?” I squeaked as my spine straightened in surprise.

“I see… so that’s what raw attraction tastes like?” Arx muttered to herself. “Interesting. Kind of a… bright, fizzy flavor? Usually, I taste it with arousal, but sometimes it’s separated out. I was wondering what caused that.”

Jax nodded, “Aye… a bit like a spice, I think of it. Gives it a little kick.”

“Wait… wait a second! Go back,” I cut in. “You’re telling me that girl was so attracted to me that she fled in terror?! But my Charisma’s only 12!”

Arx chuckled, “That’s more than enough for a little town like this. Trust me. In fact, now that I understand what I was feeling, that guard at the gate could barely even look at you. Actually, that explains a lot of the looks we were getting around town, too. ‘Snails… no wonder I was feeling so protective.”

Jax grunted in agreement.

“Well, surely I’m not the only one,” I deflected uncomfortably. “There had to be plenty of guys who got an eyeful today. In fact, that other gate guard was staring at you two so hard, I thought his eyes were going to pop out of his skull!”

I caught a slight grin growing on Jax’s face as I spoke, and she quickly cast a speculative look over at Arx. “Did he now?” she said, turning back to me. “And how did that make ye feel, Master mine? What were ye thinking to have yer do-lilim eyed so shameless by such as he?”

Odd question… How did she think I felt? Besides, she would know that better than even I did. Still, I had seen that glance at Arx.

So… maybe it was rhetorical? For Arx’s sake or something? They had been on the topic of emotional flavor, after all. With that in mind, I decided to try and answer as honestly as I could.

“Well… I don’t know. It was pretty rude, so I guess I was a little irritated. He wasn’t exactly being subtle.”

“Oh… be that all?” she replied with a certain gleam in her eye. Then, while taking on a pained expression, she exclaimed, “But he were such a big and strong guardsman! What if he used his station against us? What would ye do then? How’d ye feel if he’d start to pawing at Arx’s juicy little fanny? Running his tongue—”

“Mercy’s tits! Stop!” Arx said with a disgusted look on her face. “How can you even joke about that! I feel nauseous just thinking about it! Besides, you know perfectly well that you’d be the first to rip out his throat were that to happen. Guardsman or not!”

Jax rolled her eyes again, though for some reason she looked a little frustrated. “Fine. Fine. Yer right, of course.”

Right about then, Adja reappeared with our drinks. From the looks of her, she seemed to be doing her level best to seem aloof and disinterested, but it was quite obvious from her trembling that she was barely holding it together. That and my lilim were both wearing facial expressions that I could only describe as, ‘Girl, please.’

Clearing her throat delicately, the blue-skinned waitress sat a pewter mug and a fluted glass on the table before folding her hands in front of her waist. “Here you are, Madam.” Then, glancing at me, a bit of a wan smile tugged at the corners of her lips, and she dipped into a brief curtsy, “Sir.”

Very stiffly and deliberately, she turned and began to walk back to the kitchen. However, before she was halfway there, she glanced over her shoulder at us. Of course, as she had been one of the chief subjects of our conversation, the three of us were staring right at her, so her composure was quickly strained to the breaking point. Whatever else she had intended, it probably did not include tripping over one of the many chairs and tumbling to the floor.

The bar crowd had thinned considerably by that point, but even so, the place quickly erupted into laughter. One particularly drunken individual even valiantly attempted to help the poor girl back to her feet, but his efforts only resulted in them both crashing back to the floor. Twice.

Eventually, she managed to escape from the futilely accommodative drunkard and fled.

Jax snorted once the spectacle had died down a bit and turned to me. “I take it ye believe us now?”

“Well…” I admitted, “honestly speaking, if I did not have the two of you telling me exactly how to interpret all of that, I would be more than a little confused. I probably would have assumed that she was just really clumsy.”

“’Snails, Dearest. Really?” Arx laughed brightly. “That is so you. I can just imagine you asking her what her Agility is. She would die!”

Jax chuckled along with her for a few moments at my expense. However, after a moment, she patted my leg. “Oh, don’t take it to heart. To be true, it settles me to hear such. She wouldn’t make much of a do-lilim, anyway.”

Arx’s claws abruptly slammed into the table and set the drinks to wobbling. From the look on her face, she was almost as surprised as I was by the action.

“Here now!” Jax admonished her, quickly snatching up the fluted glass before handing it to me. “Control yerself! Ye almost spilled the Master’s drink.”

“S-sorry, I… I’m not sure why I just did that,” she admitted before trying to pull her hand away… only to discover that her claws had embedded into the wood of the table.

“I… think I have an idea as to that,” I hedged before accepting the glass. Curious, I sniffed at the wine before sampling it. Just as advertised, it was sweet in a fruity sort of way yet quite sharply herbal. It was palatable but it would never make it into my top ten. Glancing back up at Jax, I continued, “Actually, I’m a little surprised that you’re able to talk about that sort of thing so candidly. You’re usually much more of a jealous little rage-monster.”

“Jealous?” Arx repeated in surprise. Slowly, she shook her head before managing to free her thumb. “No… no, I don’t think that’s it.”

Jax nodded sagely, “Aye. I told ye before, Master, and now as I can taste it off Arx, I can tell it sure. It ain’t jealousy. There be a clear difference.”

“Okay,” I said, slowly sipping at my fruit wine. “Maybe you should explain then? Because it certainly seems like jealousy from where I’m sitting. Why else would you two feel ‘protective’ when you sense other people’s attraction for me?”

Jax grimaced at the question. She had tried to explain this to me before some time ago, but then as now, I had not understood very well. On the other hand, I was not all that certain that even she understood it. She had been operating on instinct for the most part.

“I ain’t sure I can put it to words,” she said finally. “Like I said, I can taste it off Arx. It be different. But I ain’t got a name for it.”

“Okay. Well, let’s think about this clinically,” I said. “Jealousy—at least in this context—is what you feel when you sense a threat from someone… uh… let’s say ‘encroaching’ on your relationship. Is that not what you’re feeling?”

Both of them shook their head at that.

“No,” Arx said easily. “We’re bound. We belong to each other. Not much of anything can threaten that. Certainly not some silly little waitress.”

“That goes double for me,” Jax affirmed. “I been slow on the uptake, I’ll admit, but since me Loyalty tipped over, I been feeling calmer about things. It’s helped to settle me, I think.”

“More than that,” Arx added, finally jerking her hand free of the table. She made a pained expression at the damage she had done to the wood before subtly attempting to cover the holes with her mug. “And this may sound odd, but now that I’m thinking about it, it makes a sort of sense… to me anyway. But, in order to encroach on our relationship—as you put it—they would have to be able to somehow change how you feel about us, right?”

I nodded along. “Right.”

“Well… I don’t know why, but I feel like… that isn’t possible?” she finished hesitantly.

I blinked. And then I blinked again.

“What?”

Jax abruptly snapped her fingers excitedly. “That’s it! Ye got it exactly! I ain’t realized it ‘til ye said it just now, but now as ye have, I feel the truth of it in me bones. The binding can only grow stronger betwixt us. Ne’er to weaken!”

I stared back and forth between them for several moments. Actually, now that I thought about it, I had never once received a notification that I had ever lost any Loyalty from either of them. In fact, it had never even occurred to me that I could lose percentage points… and that was more than a little strange. So, maybe they were on to something here.

Still, this was the first I had heard that growth of our feelings toward one another might not be one-way.

“Well now, wait a minute! How could you possibly know that? Do you guys have some kind of… of… I don’t know. Relationship meter with me? Like I do?” I asked.

They seemed more than a little taken aback by my question, however after a moment, they both cast a speculative glance at one another. Then they hurriedly began to mutter under their breaths.

“Shite,” Jax muttered eventually before jerking her eyes up to Arx. Then stabbing at the air with a claw, she growled, “Don’t ye dare! Ye know me point be locked!”

“I’d have to wait until tomorrow anyway,” Arx replied with a shrug. “I don’t even have a skill point to spend right now.”

“Oh no!” I said, putting two and two together. “If you’d have to buy it, then it isn’t worth it! We have better uses for your skill points than some relationship meter. Besides, you guys are empaths. I’m not! It’s only fair that I’d have something to level the playing field.”

“Aw, come on!” Arx whined. “It’d be so fun!”

“Nay, absolutely not. The Master be right. Be a frivolous waste, that!” Jax said with an air of finality. However, whether that was because she actually agreed with me or because her skill point was locked was hard to say.

“Right… well, anyway. Even if a meter like that exists, that doesn’t prove anything. Your meters might be able to go down,” I argued before deciding to bring the subject back around. “Besides, it still doesn’t explain why you two are always so… aggressively… protective.”

Slowly, my voice trailed off, as a potential consequence of this intruded on my thoughts. If what they were saying was true, and binding someone really did condemn me to slowly but inevitably grow closer and closer with them, then their behavior did make a kind of sense. If I were to bind a poor candidate—someone who was a psychopath or just inexorably evil—then maybe it would not be soon, but eventually, we would end up in love with one another.

“You guys want to vet them first,” I said finally. Jax had even once said as much, in a way. She had asked me why I would ever want to bed someone who was ‘unworthy.’ I had not understood what she meant at the time, but if this was true, then it made perfect sense. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Maybe. I’m… not positive about any of this,” Arx admitted. “I just know that whenever someone who isn’t… us… looks at you. I don’t know. I just feel like I should be there to stand in their way. And… and I almost want to…”

She hesitated before glancing to Jax for help again, but she had taken the opportunity to take a sizable swallow of her new beer. As the flavor registered, she hastily jerked it away and almost gagged before immediately succumbing to a coughing fit.

And then she hiccupped. It sounded almost dainty in contrast.

“Minging fud… that twally weren’t talking out of her fanny flaps,” she growled, giving the tumbler a bit of a stink eye. “What be Tips thinking to serve this swill?”

“You did ask for something to make your tits sweat,” I reminded her.

“Aye… well… I weren’t being literal,” Jax argued before quirking her eyebrow at me. Then she gave her chest a little shake.

I smirked before leaning down to kiss her nose.

I have no idea why, but after all the things we had done with one another that very day, that small and simple act of affection actually caused my lilim to flush with embarrassment.