The next morning Elaina woke to find herself alone in bed. Rolling over, she saw Royce standing in front of a mirror, fixing her hair and making minor adjustments to her breasts beneath the revealing dress. The witch caught sight of Elaina in the mirror and gently waved without turning, “Morning, I grabbed your clothes from the baths this morning before anyone ran off with them. I thought it might look a little strange for you to be walking around naked or in my clothes.”

Elaina returned the smile, having half expected to wake and find out that somehow it had all been just an incredibly vivid dream, “Thank you.”

“My shift in the healer’s tent is about to start, so I hope you don’t mind that I rush out of here so soon,” Royce said as she put in a different pair of earrings.

“No, not at all,” Elaina answered as she crawled out of bed. The magical fire had burned all night and kept the tent warm enough that the morning chill she had become accustomed to was absent. She walked naked over to the clothes stacked at one end of the table, picked up a tunic, and slipped it on after giving it a good long sniff.

“Good, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea or anything,” Royce said as she finally turned to face Elaina, leaning in to steal a kiss from her.

“And what idea would that be?” Elaina’s brow furrowed with concern.

“I don’t know,” Royce admitted as she grabbed a satchel from the end of the bed, “That I’m ditching you, that this was just a one-off, that sort of thing.”

Elaina opened her mouth for a follow-up question before deciding against it, realizing that doing so would betray too much of the insecurity that she was experiencing just then. Royce whirled around to head for the flap of the tent but stopped when she caught sight of the look on the swordmage’s face.

“You... Are coming back tonight,” Royce sounded a little hesitant now, “Right?”

Elaina regained her composure as she reached for her underwear and slid them on, “Yeah! Of course, I mean... if you don’t mind.”

The vishanti beamed happily, “Of course!”

Elaina felt warmth in her cheeks as she blushed, averting her eyes bashfully, “Alright.”

For a moment, the witch looked torn between whether she should stay or go, eventually deciding that getting up to the healer’s tent was a more pressing matter, which it was. “Great! I’ll see you tonight, then.”

When Royce was gone, Elaina took a moment to bask before folding her laundry. The sounds of the camp around the tent felt distant as the swordmage replayed the previous night’s events in her head. It didn’t just send her cock to hardening but her heart aflutter. Even after they’d decided they needed to stop for the night, the two of them had stayed up for another hour or so just talking in bed.

The next few days were much the same amid a whirlwind of busy days preparing for what was to be the next battle and passionate nights with the vishanti woman. Elaina would go to Royce’s tent later at night after the evening meal and leave pretty early in the morning, the discretion they had during the daylight hours leaving none in the camp the wiser as to what the two were getting up to. At least that’s how it had been at first, but it didn’t last.

After a meeting with the landgraf, she’d had cause to go up to the healer’s tent to present Royce with a scroll detailing the order of new potions being requested by Elsebeth. The tent was far less crowded than it had been the first time that Elaina had gone there. There were no more wounded sitting out front of it, and the cots inside were more than half empty. Those she had been able to treat had been saved, those that she couldn’t had perished, and those who still needed time but were stable enough to do so in their tents had been moved. All that was left were the few who required additional observation or had suffered some form of injury since the battle itself. Willowridge wasn’t entirely secure, and many soldiers had been injured simply by venturing too far off and encountering what remained within.

“This shouldn’t be a problem,” Royce said, glancing over the list that Elaina had handed her, “now that I don’t have my hands as full here, I should be able to brew more of these up. The first batch can be out tonight, I think.”

“That quick?” Elaina couldn’t help but sound a little impressed.

“Of course,” Royce winked, “You know full well that I’m a woman who knows what she’s doing.”

It couldn’t be helped when the two stole a few moments out back of the tent. Elaina pressed Royce against the remains of a stone wall from a long-gone outbuilding as the witch hiked up the skirts of her dress and pulled her panties to one side to give the swordmage free access. Elaina found herself surprisingly adept at getting her trousers open with one hand, freeing her cock and driving it deep into the vishanti’s cunt as she crushed her against the wall. Several times during their impromptu encounter, Royce would shush Elaina so that they wouldn’t be heard, even though it was the witch’s moans that were most likely to expose them. It turned out that even if they had been quiet, Resius still would have seen them, though he didn’t say anything about it until that evening with Elaina.

Royce pleaded with Elaina not to cum inside her, not because she was worried about pregnancy but because she still had a full day of work to do and didn’t want to be leaking the whole time. So after the witch’s body shuddered with her orgasm, she slipped off the thick piece of meat to fall to her knees and finished the swordmage with her mouth. She swallowed every last drop that Elaina had to offer, filling her belly with thick she-cum before wiping her mouth clean and composing herself to return to work.

Elaina had spent the next ten minutes or so swearing that people could see it written all over her face when she returned to her duties, joining the men at the entrance of the keep to bar it from the outside, so they didn’t have to worry about watching their backs when the Orbonne company finally decided to show itself. Of course, they weren’t the type of fortifications that would last against a prolonged assault of fiends, but it would be enough to delay them and allow for separate plans to be enacted if that’s what it came to. Despite her insecurities, none of the men there seemed even to suspect that she had been hilt deep in the vishanti just moments ago.

Elaina let her guard down on the matter, which made Resius confronting her all that much more jarring.

“You’re a complete idiot,” the occultist whispered at her as he took her by the arm to drag her away from the meal line. She had barely managed to get much food onto her tray.

“What-? What are you doing?” Elaina said, jerking her arm away from him, confused. “What are you talking about?”

He glanced briefly at some workers passing by, waiting to speak until they were out of earshot. He looked much better with a little more time to heal. Though his hair was still fuzzy like a small kitten, his flesh appeared mostly mended, and his limp was gone.

“Royce,” he said flatly, “I told you not to get mixed up with her, to not let her get into your trousers, you bloody git!”

Elaina stared dumbstruck for a moment, unable to formulate a convincing denial, “What makes you think that I have?”

“Because I-“ his voice had gotten a little louder as he became frustrated, and he forced himself to quiet down before continuing, “Because I bloody saw the two of you!”

“What!?” Elaina replied in a strained whisper, “When?”

“Earlier today, behind the bloody healer’s tent!” Resius growled, taking another few steps back away from what might have been some prying ears nearby, “I was doing a sweep of one of the towers. I looked outside, and right below, what should I see but the two of you going at it like animals!”

Elaina’s face grew hotter, nearly dropping the tray in a fury, “You watched us fucking?”

“No, I didn’t watch!” Resius protested, “I mean, I saw it, but it’s not as though I sat there watching for my personal entertainment!”

Elaina gave him a skeptical look, tossing the tray onto a nearby table, suddenly losing her appetite. The clatter of the tray earned them a few glances from some men nearby and the knocker behind the food line, but they returned to what they were doing almost immediately.

“How long has this been going on?” Resius demanded.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but a few days,” Elaina replied gruffly, crossing her arms over her chest.

“A few days!?” the man ran a hand across the fuzz on his head as he shook it in abject disappointment, “You’ve been keeping this from me for a few days!?”

“It’s no one’s business but ours,” Elaina snapped, “I told you, who I have sex with is none of your god’s damned business, Resius. None. We haven’t been lying about it. We just didn’t see a need to announce it to the world.”

“You should have told me,” Resius fumed, jabbing a finger in her direction, seemingly blowing past everything she’d just said.

“You want to talk about disclosure?” Elaina growled, her temper getting the best of her now, “Alright, let’s talk about disclosure and how you didn’t tell me what that ritual of yours would do. How it was going to damn near kill you with some kind of ancient magic, no one else here seems to even know! What’s that all about?”

“That’s different,” Resius waved a hand dismissively, “Totally different situation.”

“Is it? Because it seems to me that you’ve got this idea in your head that you’re trying to protect me from something, presumably because you regard me as a friend. But it never crossed your mind that I might want to protect you for the same reason? You left me in the dark on everything. You let me go out there and swing my sword around while you damn near sacrificed yourself over some stupid fucking water!”

The lecture took a little of the wind out of the occultist’s sails, but only briefly. He was frustrated enough with being caught off guard by this that it would give him all the energy he needed to resume the argument. During one of the conversations with Elsebeth over the last few days, the landgraf had mentioned to Elaina that she suspected the magic employed by Resius had been incredibly ancient. That’s how the swordmage knew that he had been playing with something dangerous that ran in his blood that he’d let out with the ritual. Elsebeth had a few guesses as to what it could have been, having a robust education in magical theory and history even if she didn’t practice it herself. Not that any of the theories mattered because none of them had made Elaina feel better about it.

As Resius took a drink from his flask before he moved to press on with what Elaina assumed would be more bullshit.

“And let’s talk about that,” Elaina gestured at the flask, “We’re out here working our asses off, fighting for our lives, hanging on by a thread, and you decide it’s a perfect time to just be day drunk all the time?”

The man froze, staring at her with an expression she found strangely tricky to read, “Mate, you’re crossing a line here.”

“Am I?” Elaina pressed, taking a step closer to him, “What’s that like to have someone just jam their nose into deeply personal affairs like that, I wonder?”

“It’s sacramental wine,” the occultist said through his teeth.

“I don’t give a shit!” Elaina snarled, “I don’t give a flying fuck if it’s the top-shelf wine from a celestial’s personal stores first bottled when the gods originally farted out the cosmos, Ryan! Why in the Nine Hells would you decide that now, of all times, is the time to crawl into a fucking bottle? Right when we need you the most!”

“Because I gave you that,” Resius scowled, pointing at the amulet around her neck, “Without it, the only way I can keep the voices of fiends, ghosts, and other nasties from invading my thoughts is this.”

He held up the flask they were arguing over before taking another hit, “And it doesn’t hurt that it helps get me through all the terrible shite a guy like me does in this line of work.”

Now it was Elaina’s turn to have the wind taken out of her sails, not understanding what it had to do with the amulet, “What do you mean?”

“Sacramental wine, sort of like holy water, except it gets into the bloodstream a lot quicker,” he explained with a distinct edge in his voice, “the powers and abilities from evil entities have a much harder time reaching me with it in my system. Much more difficult to influence me or invade my thoughts and memories.”

“That’s bullshit,” Elaina retorted, though she didn’t believe that it was, she just didn’t want to concede the point to him so readily.

“If you say so,” Resius grunted, “But because I gave that to you, I need to use something else to ensure I can do my job here.”

The swordmage looked down at the amulet around her neck, feeling a sudden wave of guilt wash over her, threatening to extinguish the righteous anger burning within.

“I didn’t know,” she admitted in a much smaller voice, “You didn’t tell me.”

“Because I didn’t want my friend to worry about me if I had everything under control,” Resius offered. She was dangerously close to tears now that she realized what she’d just been jumping down his throat about.

“I’m not a child,” Elaina said in weak defiance, “I can make my own decisions.”

“No, you’re not a child,” Resius acknowledged, “But that’s not---.”

A sound not unlike that of the occultist’s gun, albeit louder and at a greater distance, cut him off. The both of them jumped when they heard it and again when another identical sound followed it a second after. Elaina could feel the concussive force of the sounds faintly in her body, “The fuck was that?”

A sound like a hiss and a whir could be heard overhead, rapidly approaching them before suddenly two explosions erupted against the side of one of the towers along the outer curtain wall. Debris from the tower rained down in all directions, with large chunks of stone tumbling into the bailey and narrowly missing any of the tents erected there. Elaina’s eyes went wide in horror as several more of the sounds came from the distance, out past the bridge perhaps. Seconds later, more explosions pummeled the tower and parts of the curtain wall, completely knocking them down.

“Cannons!” Resius roared, readily abandoning the argument with Elaina as soldiers and workers scrambled for cover and a response.

“Return fire!” someone ordered over the panic of the crowd, and what remained of the next closest tower began furiously cranking a catapult. Elaina followed Resius, who was running toward the gatehouse. Another volley of cannon fire split the night, striking both the catapult in the tower and dashing it to pieces, as well as the gatehouse. The portcullis that had been lowered now had a large gaping hole in it as a cannonball punched through it and bounced another several feet before tearing a leg off of a soldier and rolling to a stop.

The debris from the gatehouse showered anyone nearby, most of which dove futilely for cover the moment they realized they were under fire. Several more shots echoed, slamming into the curtain wall and reducing it to rubble within seconds. The little protection it would have offered them was now wholly lost, as holes large enough to let in an entire army opened up along its length.

Elaina expected the attack to continue, with cannon fire reaching farther and farther back until it found a dense cluster of people to splatter across the grounds, but it didn’t. It stopped. The only sound for a few moments was that of their people yelling to one another, trying to call for medics or order troops to cover the gaps in the gatehouse and curtain wall. Then there came the sound of a horn, long and deep like an ancient beast waking from a centuries-long slumber.

The landgraf came storming down from her tent, approaching the gatehouse with two squads of soldiers flanking her. She was dressed for a fight, so Elaina fell in behind them and followed. Though she wasn’t wearing her armor, she still had her sword on her, which meant she wasn’t useless in safeguarding Elsebeth’s life. The swordmage glanced over her shoulder briefly to see if Resius was still following but couldn’t find him in the chaos.

Archers took position along the top of the gatehouse and the inner curtain wall. Small lines of flame were ignited in front of them to light the ends of their arrows when ready. By peppering the enemy with such ammunition, the battlefield would slowly become more lit, allowing them to fight in the dark. No order was given to fire yet as Elaina and the landgraf continued to the outer wall.

“My lady,” a soldier called out as he approached, “They’ve sent an envoy to discuss terms!”

“Of course, they have,” The landgraf grumbled, “Want to give us a chance to give up the castle to them, so they don’t have to destroy it.”

The possibility of the Orbonne company arriving with firearms had been discussed in one of the many meetings over the last few days. It had been determined that anything larger than rifles would have been unlikely because the Orbonne company was strained for financing at the time. Cannons were expensive. It would have made more sense to take the same coin one would spend on a cannon and use it to purchase rifles for soldiers instead, giving them a wider spread of firepower at numerous targets. But this wasn’t just a cannon; it was many cannons. How had they acquired such powerful weapons in such numbers?

“Woodlock,” the landgraf commanded, “You’re with me. Let’s see what these bastards want.”