A day passed, without much in the way of events. Rykard struck up the occasional conversation with Tess, but the master thief typically was disinterested. Miyo had a little more luck, but not much. As for Iceface and the other ice dwarves, they had amicable chats whenever they ran into each other.

Beyond that, Rykard and Miyo explored the gardens and used the hospitality of the gods for all it was worth. Whether this was the original Garden of Eden, an extension of the same, or a copy of it, they had no idea. Fact was that they were surrounded on all sides by nature too gorgeous to be natural. Everything was placed to please the sapient eye and whenever they wanted to return to the tree with the doors, they found their way back in too short a time to make sense in normal dimensions.

Their accommodations did indeed have everything they asked for. The first thing the two of them did was take a genuine bath. Cleaning themselves with conjured towels for three weeks had left them yearning for the sensation of flowing water on their skin. After that, they did the usual: fuck, talk, and play games.

Early in the second day, Rykard and Miyo sat in the garden. They had situated themselves just beyond the reach of the branches of the large tree, to catch some sunrays while also being close enough to catch any happenings. Neither Tess nor Iceface were anywhere to be seen.

A door, a new door, swung open.

Looking at it from behind was odd. There was a flicker in the air. An impenetrable wall of golden light where the back of the door had been. Rykard raised his from Miyo’s lap and quietly watched as a single man stepped out. Immediately, he took in his surroundings, finding the king and queen, mustering as much as they mustered him.

He was of advanced age. Dense networks of wrinkles surrounded his grey eyes. Silver hair and beard were both carefully trimmed and only slightly dishevelled by the demands of travel. He was attractive, his features sharp, his nose pointy. He was tall, his build moderate and covered in an armour that was resplendent in its design, but not ornate to the point of showing off. A blue cape fluttered behind him as he moved. A mild smile spread on his face.

“Well met!” he meeted them. The tone immediately reminded Rykard of war. It was that booming voice of a man used to speaking aloud, be it for motivational speeches or barking orders. From the sword on his hip to his upright posture, from his polished but clearly used armour to the washed-out stains on his cape, the man looked the part of the veteran general. “Did I make it in time?”

“You’re here six days after the earliest arrivals,” Rykard disclosed. “So yes.”

“Splendid, thank you for the information young man.” The general saluted, beating his chest with a gauntleted hand. “Benhuldran Culsanath is my name and I am a Contender. Who do I owe the honour to?”

“Rykard of New Eden and my queen Miyo Amaterasu;” he introduced them. “I am the Contestant of my faction.”

Benhuldran nodded sternly. “Thank you for being so straightforward, Rykard. I had feared for deceit to be my first greeting.”

“It may yet still be,” he answered with a shrug. “For what it is worth, I’d be willing to share where New Eden is located, provided you’d believe and you’d extend to me the same courtesy.”

“Of course,” the general answered. “Are our maps-”

“The same, yes, we tested that already,” Rykard interrupted him. It seemed to annoy the older man, but not enough to mention it. Swiftly, the king of New Eden told the newcomer about what kind of place he wanted to build.

“A… juvenile goal,” Benhuldran stated. “Admirable, potentially, but still juvenile.”

Rykard put his head back in Miyo’s lap and let the redhead answer for him. “Is it juvenile to strive for something that is better?” she asked. “There will have to be sacrifices and adjustments made, we are aware of this. We approach this with no naivety.”

For a few moments, Benhuldran just played with the handle of his sword, then he shook his head. “The gods would not have chosen you if you were incapable. Our ambitions will clash in due time, without us getting lost in the weeds of discussion. I apologize, should my tone have offended.”

“It has not,” Rykard waved off with a relaxed gesture. “I have so many better things to do then get angry. Have you seen my pillow?” He squeezed Miyo’s thighs and she shook her head, giggling ladylike all the while. Certainly not the way to look less juvenile. As the general had said, their ambitions would clash in one form or another anyway. “Where is your nation then? What are your goals?”

“Mine is the Huldran Empire, located to your north-east, between the two northern markers,” Benhuldran answered. “We shall unify this world in glorious purpose.”

“Quite the ambition, especially when you are so far behind,” Rykard pointed out.

Benhuldran took the statement with a simple laugh. “I have reasons to believe in my ability. I have arrived on this world only with the elite core of my soldiers - those that went with me into exile.”

“You can see everything I arrived with.”

Rykard’s rebuttal gave the man genuine pause. His eyes narrowed and Rykard could sense an attempt to scan his clothing for any magical effects. “You must jest.”

“Maybe I am. We’ll see when our ambitions clash, won’t we?”

The general was back to playing with the grip of his sword. “I can feel my joints ache for motions, lad. I think you’re not entirely lying… at other times I’d ask for a duel to test the truth of your words.” He forced his hand off the pommel. “For today, I shall remain patient. How many more are here?”

“Two others. They arrived about four days before me. One is a dark-haired woman, the other Contestant I have not seen yet. She’s an ice dwarf accompanied by her council. One of their number, entirely covered in ice, is her speaker.”

“That makes four of us then,” Behuldran rubbed his chin. “Almost half... I guess that is within the expected parameters.”

“I won’t tell you anything more about them,” Rykard stated.

“Neither did I plan to ask. It would be improper for a man to spill another person’s secrets.” Benhuldran turned his gaze to the door he had emerged from. “Unless you have further questions, I would retreat and test these magical facilities you described. I could use a proper bath.”

Rykard made a waving gesture. “Go take your rest. Feel free to come back out after though. The gods know that the journey was dull enough that we’ll take any kind of entertainment we can get.”

“Hear, hear,” Benhuldran agreed and turned away.

The door to his chamber had barely closed, that another one opened.

‘Sometimes, reality has a strange sense of timing,’ Rykard thought, then was distracted by the… entity that stepped into the garden.

The swing of the curves clearly identified her as a female. A pair of shapely legs flowed into a pleasingly concave and flat midriff, up into a pair of medium-sized breasts. Wild red hair cascaded down her back. Male pattern recognition immediately told him he was looking at something attractive. The rest of what made her rapidly diminished that impression, however.

Her skin was a thick, almost stone-like, leather, covered in ridges and spikes. It was a purplish, grey-black colour, interrupted by areas of glowing orange, reflecting an internal heat that Rykard could feel even several metres away from where she stood. A pair of long, curved horns extended from her temples, covered in cruel barbs. Her face was a featureless mask of abrasive, knotted tissue, leaving only two gaps for eyes that glowed like magma.

A thick tail extended from above her admittedly shapely ass. The tip curved off the ground and moved in a clearly prehensile way. From her back extended skeletal frames, between which the membrane of insectoid wings spanned. Everything about her was chimeric.

The entity took one look at Rykard and Miyo and tilted her head. She made a series of guttural clicking sounds, then tilted her head the other way. “We don’t understand you,” Rykard told her, when she repeated the noises.

“Wwwwwwweeeee d-d-donnn’t…” The crackling attempt at speech echoed from the leathery throat of the chimeric entity. With a wet squelch, the mask of her face suddenly broke open. An amber sap dripped from exposed teeth. “Weeee… we donnnt… we don’t understand you.” Lips rapidly formed above the teeth, finally letting her repeat the phrase.

“Slightly creepy,” Rykard thought out loud. “Do you need me to say things to learn the sounds perhaps?”

The entity shook her head. “I had merely forgotten the language,” she answered, her voice breaking at a few points, before slotting in at a melodic, feminine pitch. It was as if every one of her words was part of a song. “I do not mean to cause distress. It has been a long time since I have communed with fellow humanoids. I shall adjust my appearance.”

The leathery nature of her exterior began to thin, then concentrate in certain areas up and down her sides. A simple midriff came into view. Her horns shrunk to small, miniscule copies. Her hair straightened. Leaf-liked membrane covered her breasts, keeping her decent by regular standards. 

Most important was that the mask seeped away. It liquified, seeped under her skin, and revealed gorgeous features. A carefully crafted nose, deep purple, full lips, and yellow eyes, all sat in a face of purplish, black colour.

“I hope this is pleasing enough to converse with me?” she asked.

‘Would,’ Rykard thought. “Absolutely,” he said out loud. “I’m going to hazard a wild guess and say you’re from the desert area?”

“...I take it your swarms… apologies… your people do not devour all biomatter in the entire region?” The woman answered and let out a long sigh when he nodded. The sound was almost hypnotic, like the song of a siren. “I also take it that there are others around that you compared to already?”

“Indeed there are,” Rykard confirmed and considered his next step. She was not what he had expected out of the leader of the desertification Contestant. Simultaneously, she was clearly a shapeshifter of some description, and who knew what she actually could look like? What could hide under that attractive visage?

The previous three contenders had, for all the potential threat they presented, be of the standard sapient variety. She was different. Telling her where he was located and what his goals were could paint a target on his back - especially since his was fairly close to her realm.

Before he came to a conclusion on that, he was distracted by the particular way she stood. One arm hung loosely, the other reached for the upper half of its opposite. The thumb brushed over the scales covering her biceps, smooth and yet segmented, somewhat like a snake.

Her biology was fascinating, but not quite as interesting as seeing a chimeric entity like her seem… awkward.

“You want to ask something,” Rykard stated.

Being called out seemed to make the female being freeze. It did not strike Rykard as an act. It was all too fast, all too genuine. Her chest rose with a deep breath. A bit of orange against pierced through her skin, mostly so behind her sternum. When she exhaled, the furnace-like light ebbed away again.

“Say it,” Miyo encouraged her.

“Is it… bad to devour the entire landscape? To add the biomass of villages to ours?”

“Yes,” Rykard gave the obvious answer and noted the less obvious thing. “But you already knew that.”

She closed her eyes. Ignoring all of the scales, the horns, the spikes and the claws, her face was that of a woman that was, in that moment, incredibly vulnerable. She looked like she had just gotten confirmation on bad news she had been afraid would arrive for a while. “But I already knew that,” she whispered in her song-like voice.

Rykard pushed himself off Miyo’s thighs. Sitting up, one arm resting on an angled knee, he said, “Sounds like you find yourself in an uncomfortable situation. Want to talk about it, Contender to Contender.”

“As if I could not weigh into this conversation,” Miyo playfully chided her man, pulling on his ear with all the softness of a bantering mother-to-be.

“I do not… would it be appropriate?” the female chimera asked.

“I’m king, I’m making it appropriate,” Rykard decreed.

That got a chuckle out of both redheads. The newcomer took two steps and then settled down in front of Rykard. She tugged her legs away under her, sitting like a prim and proper lady. That her enormous tail laid in a full circle around her barely detracted from the view. She was gathering her thoughts, but Rykard felt like he got the gist of it just by watching her body language.

“Let me guess,” he said, trying to keep the conversation from getting too serious. “You’re the queen of a hivemind and while your species fundamentally is opted to adapt and devour, you would like to get along with other species. The boundless hunger of your swarm keeps this dream from becoming a reality. Are you supposed to let your people starve? Can you even change them without having them depose you? A hivemind has an underlying set of parameters not even the central node can change, after all.”

“...Yes,” she answered, obviously confused how he got that. “How do you…?”

“A combination of being attentive, reading history, reading speculative works of scholars, and alchemical experimentations with ant farms,” Rykard gave her the quick summary.

“I never guessed that ludicrous project of yours would actually be useful,” Miyo said, likely remembering the incident where said mutated ants had devoured the entirety of her favourite cake while she was bathing. “Even for you, this is an absurdly good read,” she had to point out.

Rykard just shrugged, “I told you I am getting sharper.”

“It is positively flabbergasting.”

“That is an interesting word,” the chimera woman mumbled. “Flabbergasting… that does sound like I am feeling.” She looked up. “Anything else you want to ‘guess’ about my situation.”

“Hm… you likely did not want to leave, but the Ocean Tiles promised coastal tiles, not to mention the bounties of the ocean itself, so the swarm likely pushed you into going through constant, demanding buzzing.” Rykard paused for a moment. “As for your ultimate motivation… if I were in your shoes, I would likely choose the evil of giving into the swarms demands and try to condition future generations to think more like you, so the character of the hive gradually changes until you get what you want.”

“Is your speciality diplomacy, perchance?”

“It's one of my talents.”

“If the others keep pace, you may just be the most dangerous entity I have ever met,” spoke the hive queen.

Rykard just smiled. She had no idea how right she was.

“I’d promise you my support, if we weren’t twenty days of travel apart.”

Immediately after he said that, he realized that he had worded that the wrong way. The swarm queen let out a long, long sigh. Emphasizing how far they were apart, despite how close they were at that moment, seemed to have reminded her how alone she currently was.

“By that I mean, I will help you, in the ways I can, once we get close enough. We all benefit from it, if your swarm is more civilized,” Rykard tried to salvage it, but the damage had already been done.

“I thank you for the gesture,” she answered. “If times permit, perhaps I shall contact you again in that capacity. Until then, I will do my best to walk the… tightrope, I believe?” She nodded to herself. “That should be the phrase. The tightrope of feeding my swarm and preventing it from eating unacceptable things.”

“An honourable charge,” Miyo tried to lift the mood.

“No. No, it is mere damage mitigation… perhaps the honourable thing would be to choose extinction.” She looked down at the grass. Pieces of her scales loosened from her skin and turned into small insects that gnawed at the green. They returned to her quickly, melding again with her, adding the retrieved biomass to her. “Perhaps it would be…” She shook her head and looked up. “Altana, the Ouroboros Queen.”

“Rykard, king of New Eden,” he introduced himself. “I govern the cluster near the centre of the map. Yes, the map is the same for all of us.”

“You’re the one that has been keeping our pace.” She nodded to herself. “I could have guessed as much. Would you be willing to enlighten me as to your purpose? What does your hive wish to accomplish?”

Rykard gave her the same summary he had given the others. “Maximize breeding opportunities. A wise policy,” she commented at the end. “If you are victorious, I will approach you for your seed.”

The formulation made Rykard laugh. “I take it your species integrates the ancestry of the best and brightest?”

“That is the charge of the queens. The swarm eats the rest,” Altana added, with a sour expression, then stood up. “It's been a pleasant talk, Rykard. I look forward to seeing your aptness. We will converse more?”

“Feel free to approach me when you see me,” he told her.

“Likewise,” Miyo added.

“Thank you,” Altana bowed her head, then stepped away, her every footstep heavy. Once she was back through the door, Miyo spoke up again.

“Definitely not what I expected.”

“No,” Rykard agreed, “but better. There is a route to tame that swarm without killing them all and if we subjugate them, I get a gorgeous monster girl.”

“The scales on her thighs would chafe your skin off,” Miyo cautioned.

“I’m sure she can get rid of those.”

It was the next day - the final day before the countdown would have concluded. It was the final night, the last few minutes before the day ended.

The contestants had gathered, each of them sitting in quiet anticipation of what would happen next. Even Rykard was taken by the mood. The work of the gods was one of the few things that could still awe him and this entire realm was a work of the god created purely to accommodate him. What would they put together when it came to their entertainment?

His attention was periodically drawn to the new face around. One of the first two arrivals, yet always having hid away, the queen of the ice dwarves had finally stepped out mere minutes ago. Rykard had imagined that she would have either been a hardened monarch that truly preferred to rule from the shadows or a figurehead that was cute.

It was the latter.

Sitting on a throne of ice that her subjects had carried her out on, the dwarven queen was the embodiment of what Rykard considered the peak dwarven attractiveness. She was short, of course, and stacked, very stacked. Her tits were as big as her head, her thighs and ass so thick it would have been a crime to hide them. Something either she or her tailor agreed with, as her goods were on rather obvious display, the deep blue dress hiding very little. Her blue lips were put in a nervous pout, her blue eyes constantly moved around, and her blue hair was tied up in an orderly bun.

Rykard would have loved to talk to her, but her entourage had formed a clear wall around her. Six dwarves, standing in a hexagonal formation. Even if the safety of the Contestants was guaranteed by the divine, they were protective of her. Rykard felt no need to cause a scene at this moment.

“One more minute,” spoke a man, standing behind Benhuldran. In his hand, he held a work of artifice - a timepiece - that ticked away towards midnight. The right hand man of the general, if his almost as ornate armour was anything to go by. “It appears it will be just the five of us, my liege.”

“Do not be confident until the battle is done,” the general answered, playing with the grip of his sword. “I sense a surprise about to befall us.”

The words came true with a half-second delay. An enormous explosion of thunder shattered one of the remaining five, unopened doors from the inside. Lightning, blue and bright, arched through the air, weaving into and following after a humanoid form.

By reflex, everyone threw up defensive measures. Rykard created a shield against the arcing electric magic, while the dwarves formed a wall in front of their queen. Tess pulled up her mantle of raven feathers, melding with the surrounding midnight like a curtain. Altana’s skin turned into a rubbery texture, refusing the electricity a conductor. Benhuldran pulled his sword and rammed it into the ground, using it as a lightning rod.

As quick as it had arrived, the thunder ebbed away. Remaining crackles filled the air around the person that had embodied it. “Not even close,” spoke a smug, female voice. Rykard had to blink one more time to let his eyes get used to the darkness again.

At the centre of the semi-circle of benches stoof a woman. She wore a tight leotard, or perhaps a dress so tight it might as well have been one. The skirt consisted only of a pelvic curtain. Her hips and thighs were on full display, yet her arms were hidden by a purple, gold-trimmed poncho-robe fusion, of kind, kept close at the front by complicated cords.

Her black hair was cut straight at the front, both for the bangs that covered her forehead and the strands that framed her purple eyes. At the back, it was bound into a single, long braid. In one hand, she wielded half-staff, too long to be a wand and too short to be a polearm, ending in a jagged blade. The other hand, she raised to her smug grin.

“Heh, hope that wasn’t too crackling for all of you losers-to-be. You can all go home now that Maliande is here!”

Rykard had never felt his brat radar go off that hard.