<~> Chapter 159

We sat across from each other again. Our emotions were still running a little high right now. If the temporary bond did anything, it strengthened our shared emotions, put us on the same page. Revealing how I saw Torien really made a strong impression on her.

I cleared my throat. "Now that we've shared that experience, I wanted to ask once again if the two of you would like to become Succubi." There was no need to invite them to be part of my family, they were already my family, no matter their choice.

Anxiety swirled off of both of them. Torien still seemed uncomfortable by the idea itself but Morrigan was interested. I could tell her reservations came from her sister's reluctance, not her own.

"I'm not sure..." Torien scratched at her arm. "It feels like a big change and I'm not sure what it will mean for us. For me and Silva... and for me and my sister."

She turned to Morrigan. "Will we look different from each other? Will one of us change radically and the other stay the same? Will we even still be sisters?"

Morrigan's brows furrowed and she pulled Torien into a hug. The question had irritated her and the offense could be felt through the bond. "Don't be silly, of course we'll always be sisters. I'd still accept you as my sister even if you turned into a giant bug. ...but please don't turn into a giant bug."

Torien squeezed her, with an amused look on her face. "Don't worry, I don't want to be a giant bug."

Tisha waved. "Uh, if the two of you are concerned about looking different, Jade and I were able to plan out the transformation together. That's why we look so similar, it was intentional. Maybe you could both decide what the two of you will look like the way we did. Not that you'd necessarily have to look the same to be sisters of course, but if looking similar is a factor, that can be planned around."

Nervousness filled Torien. "I still don't know... I'd like to talk to Silva at least. See what she thinks... if that's okay?" She turned to look at me with the question on her face.

I smiled at her. "I'm not going to push you into a choice. I would like you to become a succubus with me but I will never force you to make that decision... Besides, becoming a succubus would mean you need to have regular sex. Not that um, you're incapable of course but I'm not sure if that would be something you'd want."

Torien flushed and looked away, the emotions running through her were hard to read. Probably because they're not solidly formed in the first place. She doesn't know if that would be something she wants or not.

"What about you Mori?" Torien asked her sister while pulling back from their hug.

Morrigan got a sour look on her face. "I... I would like to become a succubus. I enjoy sharing the bond with Lilith. I enjoy the sex..." She turned to look at Bella and Mimi who had mostly been quiet this entire time. "I love all of my girlfriends..." She took a deep breath. "But I also love being your sister. I'm... not sure if I would want to become a succubus without you. But I also don't want to push you to do something you don't want to do either. We don't have to choose right away and I can wait for you to make a choice. Lilith promised to keep us with her until she can free us, we have lots of time to decide. So no rush."

Anxiety built in Torien through the silence so I decided to step in before she made any rash decisions. "Don't decide now. Not while you're affected by the bond. Take some time to think about it. This is not a choice you should rush into. You've heard the speech I keep telling the girls living here, unlike them you have plenty of time to think about it. Go ahead and talk with Silva about it first at the very least."

Torien took a deep breath. "Okay. I'll talk with her. But I feel like this isn't a decision I should keep putting off forever."

After a moment of quiet, Jade cleared her throat. "Now that you've talked through all of that, are you interested in feeling more of the bond? A tighter connection like this is more intimate but it might be a good experience to feel the full scope of the bond while we're connected."

"Yes! I want to feel it!" Excitement and anticipation poured off Morrigan and Torien smiled wryly at her reaction.

"Sure, let's try it then," Torien agreed.

Tisha and Jade's control over the bond was interesting. They had lowered the scope of the bond for us to only include this room and it wasn't until I was feeling more of it that I realized it had happened at all. Maybe I was still more used to the smaller connections I had with the members of my party but it was a surprise I hadn't noticed sooner.

Once again the bond opened up and I felt connected to all the women of the brothel doing their own things. As we connected to them, they connected to us, and it led to no small number of them giving winks and flirtatious feelings back through the bond. A few of them were with customers or paired up themselves and echoes of their pleasure flowed through as well. Curiously I could feel three succubi with Theo who had at some point made it back to the brothel. Raya and Sibyl were now chatting with Silva in the common room.

"Amazing..." Torien mumbled with wide eyes. "Do you feel them all the time?"

"Not quite," I answered. "Most of the time it is a little bit more limited in scope. Maybe 30 feet now? It's Tisha and Jade's powers that are extending the reach to every succubus in the brothel."

Raya looked Torien's direction and gave her a wink.

"...I can feel how attracted to Silva Raya is... It feels kinda odd." Torien chuckled. "I can also see how useful this could be in combat. It's like having eyes in multiple places at once but it doesn't feel overwhelming either."

I nodded. "It can be. It's good for sending messages or quickly sharing impressions but the biggest benefit is the spatial awareness you gain. Even if you're not paying too much attention to the bond you can feel the others' positions and feel the emotions enemies and allies draw out from other succubi. It makes it easy to track people even in a hectic situation. It's never been too distracting either, at least not for me. What about you two?" I asked Mimi and Bella.

"It helps me judge how much pain Lilith and Mimi are in and when they get hurt. It can make it easier to know who to prioritize when healing in fights, not that Mimi needs much healing of course. ...That hasn't stopped me from panicking though, like when that dullahan smashed Mimi into the floor that one time..."

Mimi shrugged. "Sharing emotions through the bond feels normal. It feels less weird than talking out loud for me. I don't have to plan my words out, I can just share my feelings. I like it better."

I had noticed that Mimi seemed to prefer sending emotions through the bond even when speaking to me. She wasn't as confident in her vocabulary despite her overall language being really good for someone who had been all alone in a dungeon all her life. I wasn't going to question it honestly, so many weird things were happening all the time I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"My favorite thing is how much easier it is to be honest through the bond," Tisha added. "Jade here used to keep everything bottled up and hidden, the night we changed we had the best heart-to-heart ever and now I feel closer to her than I ever have before. She doesn't need to hide her affection for me behind teasing and mean pranks anymore."

Jade turned bright red and the embarrassment coming off of her was thick. "It's easier to express yourself like this. You don't need to worry about saying the wrong thing or someone taking something wrong. It's also harder to hide things though."

I nodded in agreement, "Yeah, it's much easier to read each other's true intentions. It's not exactly like reading each other's minds but with the emotional aspect it's a lot harder for misunderstandings to happen."

"Yeah." Jade nodded. "When you can share emotions it makes it a lot easier to share and connect honestly."

Tisha stretched. "Alright, I think that's enough for today. We'd love to share the bond with you again sometime if you still haven't come to a decision but I think this is good for now. There's still a bit of daylight left and I'd like to take care of a few things before the sun goes down."

"Sure, thank you again for sharing this experience with us," I said.

I could feel my connection to Torien and Morrigan fade away. It was kind of cold and lonely for the two of them to be cut off like this. Morrigan slid between me and Bella and rested her head on my shoulder.

Tisha and Jade stood up and opened the door for us. Jade stopped nearby and waved. "See you tonight Lilith, I assume the rest of the girls will be done tonight, right?"

"That's the plan I think. It's been a lot of... work to transform everyone but we're not going to stay in Goldenhearth for much longer. I want to make sure everyone who wants the opportunity to join our family can before I leave town and I'd rather not delay our trip much once everything with the city leadership is taken care of. We have already stayed in Goldenhearth a lot longer than we originally planned to."

Jade nodded. "We appreciate everything you've done for us. It doesn't take an empath to know how much you've helped all of us," she said with a wink.

Tisha laughed. "We'll see you later tonight then!"

***

When we walked through the lobby Silva was animatedly talking with Raya and a few of the other Succubi girls. She seemed to be having fun so we decided to head to our room to talk about the experience we just had.

Torien leaned back on the comfortable couch in our suite. "I admit that experience was intense... I could see how all being connected and sharing emotions like that could be addictive."

"You should try it during sex, I almost came my brains out when I was connected to them in the middle of the orgy," Morrigan joked.

Torien's eyebrows rose. "What's... that like?"

Morrigan face grew into a smug grin. "It's amazing. Just like you can share emotions, you can share sensations too. Imagine what it feels like to be in a room filled with succubi, you can feel everyone fucking and being fucked at the same time. It's crazy."

Bella perked up. "It's also really nice when it's just the two of you too. It's not as intense as the um, orgies are, but sharing absolute focus on each other feels amazing, it's like you become both of you at once. It's easy to get lost in nothing but each other. It's a nice feeling"

Torien began to squirm a bit. "Let's change the subject. What are our plans after you finish up the... business in the Ruby Vixen?"

I scratched the base of my horn. "Well... I still need to speak with Nathaniel about the 'cult of Lilith,' we were supposed to talk about that today but with the raid and... Jasper, I'm worried that will be delayed further. After getting that information and finishing up here at the Brothel, I suppose all that remains is finding a carriage to the capital."

"Hmm..." Torien looked down at the floor. "I wonder if it will be easy to find a carriage going that direction. It struck me as strange that most people leaving the city are headed toward Traehall. Between that and the general confusion, I wonder if it will be easy to find one. We may have to walk there."

"Is that safe?" Bella asked.

"Should be," Morrigan replied. "Walking isn't ideal but it should get much safer the closer we get to the capital city. Camping will require watches but just our group shouldn't attract the large groups of monsters caravans do."

"What about things like the stream stalker? I don't think our group could take on something like that alone," I asked.

Torien shook her head. "Nothing that big could get this close to the capital. The roads between the outer baronies and the capital city are patrolled by knights. They're not as high level on average as higher-tier adventurers but their coordination and training more than makes up for it. Knights would make the guards we fought with look like a joke by comparison."

I swallowed at the memory of Jasper commanding the guards against the shadow behemoth.

"Even if something did," she continued, "it's not likely that it would chase us far. We could probably just hide and wait it out if it was just our group."

Sighing I leaned back on the couch. "Would buying a carriage help or hurt us in this situation?" I asked. "I doubt they're cheap but maybe we could find something."

"Help, for sure," Morrigan said. "Since the roads are patrolled we would make much better time with a carriage. It might be a different story when we head back to Traehall but this close to the capital, taking a carriage is unlikely to attract many monsters the same way it might on the frontier. And on the way back we could probably link up with a caravan headed that way."

I nodded. "Sounds good then. Maybe I can ask Oceane to introduce me to someone in the city who could help us with that. We would need to find a horse or an uuna for it as well. If everything goes to plan I'd like to leave in the next two or three days."

I looked over our group before realizing Silva wasn't here still. "Uh, Torien, do you mind filling Silva in about all of this? I didn't mean to leave her out of our impromptu strategy meeting."

Torien smiled wryly. "Sure, leave it to me."

Saine

Hello! More bond shenanigans. Sometimes I feel like I'm blue-balling people with the twins being so hesitant to take the plunge but I think it's fun to explore that side of things. Torien is a bit repressed sexually, despite recent developments, so who knows if that kind of change would be good for her in the first place? I promise I'm not doing this just to mess with you! As always, thanks for reading!

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