The first signs of the issue already started to show after about an hour of their sex party. Initially, the two men quietly sat down on the front of the wagon, seemingly ready to deliver Chio and Arabella to the capital without a problem. But when they stopped on the side of the road for a pee-break, they had an argument on the way back. Gert, the bearded human, brought up the idea that only the driver needs to be sitting on the coach box, so one of them could be travelling alongside the sexy ladies in the back. Fletcher agreed, saying that the cart and the donkey belongs to Gert, so he should be the one driving. The human argued that since he is letting the halfling use his wagon for transportation (half of the hay was Fletcher's), he should be the one doing the driving out of gratitude.

“The donkey is more trusting with you, you are her owner!” the little man stated. “She almost ate my hat, remember?”

“Stop playing games, that was months ago! She is well used to you by now.”

“It's your cart, man. I'm not gonna drive it.”

“Neither will I.”

“Oh, will you two shut up?!” Arabella snapped, leaning out from the back of the wagon, staring at the men angrily.

“But ma'am... how could we decide?” asked Fletcher.

“We don't want either of your assess back here, there is just about enough space for the two of us!”

“Come on now, we are doing you girls a big favor!” said Gert. “You know what? Me and my friend will switch every hour. That's fair, isn't it?”

“Absolutely not! Don't kid yourself, fucker, we did YOU a favor. So now behave yourselves and do what you promised!”

“But...”

“No but! We will have our privacy till Plankwelle, or I'll show you just what I'm made of!”

“Arabella!” Chio nervously put her hand on the redhead's shoulder.

“Relax, I'm just threatening them,” the succubus said quietly.

“All right, all right!” Gert accepted. “We will leave you be.”

And so the two men once again got up next to each other on the coach box, and they continued their journey. Although the piles of haystacks separated them from the females at the back, Chio could almost feel the tension coming from their direction as they just silently sat there.

“Maybe we shouldn't have asked them for a lift?” the angel whispered.

“We can just ditch them once we are there,” Arabella replied. “You gotta be stern with men. Make them stick to their word. It's fine.”

The guys' second attempt of getting closer to them happened hours later, when the sun already began to set. Arabella tied the canvas cover at the cart's back to the roof, so that they had a nice open view of the outside world behind them. They were not too far from Plankwelle by now. Past an intersection, the dirt road has gotten quite a bit more wide and busy, it was one of the main roads leading into the city. Suddenly, they could hear Gert raising his voice at the other side of the haystacks.

“Girls, are you certain you drank merry brew?”

“Of course, we told you already,” answered Arabella.

“It's just that... my friend is a little concerned. You know, there are stories of women scamming men by tricking them into making them pregnant, so that they have to marry them and take care of them for the rest of their lives.”

“We wouldn't do such a thing!” Chio stated quickly. The truth was that neither her nor Arabella could bear children. It was known that angels and succubi are infertile, but of course they couldn't tell that to these guys.

“Yea, I'm sure this scam happens all the time...” Arabella rolled her eyes.

“It only needs to happen to us once,” said Fletcher. “And you coincidentally didn't have any of the brew with you by the time we met you, so...”

“We don't even know your full names! Or where you live!”

“Well,” Gert said, “we live in a village called...”

“Hey, what the fuck! Don't tell us!”

“Why not?”

“You WANT to be scammed, or what?”

“I mean... neither of us are married, so...”

Arabella laughed in disbelief. “Trust me, we really really don't want to do anything with you two, and we WILL ditch you. That's it.”

“Then... can we do it once more, at least?” asked Gert.

“I would rather not.”

“Were we so bad at it?” asked Fletcher with a sadness in his voice. “Sure, I'm just a halfling, I might be a little small for you two, but... you really seemed to enjoy it.”

“We did, we really did!” Chio clarified.

“Then why not do it once more?”

“I'm sorry, but it has to be a one time thing,” the girl explained. “It seems like you guys already got a little too attached. Saying goodbye would only be harder for you if we did it again. You need to let us go.”

“We just don't see why,” Gert said. “We are good, honest men, we both own a nice bit of land, we are diligent, we could provide for you and all that.”

“No way,” said Arabella.

“But it will be a nice memory for you for the rest of your lives, right?” asked Chio. “That's not too bad, isn't it?”

“I guess...” Fletcher sighed.

As the cart fell silent, the racket of the city began to rise around them. Soon, they were surrounded by the sound of hooves on the cobbled streets, people's chatter, children's voices, yelling, and laughter. It was a busy summer night, as usual in Plankwelle.

“To be honest, I am getting quite hungry again,” whispered Arabella.

“Really? Already?”

“It's been half a day! And the first time I got to be with men in a while. My appetite has been awakened.”

Chio gulped, and Arabella grabbed her hand. “I'm a succubus, Chio. You have to accept that. Don't worry though! I know where to go.”

Gert cleared his throat. “So... where do you girls want us to drop you off?” he asked. “I know a nice and cheap tavern if you need a place to stay, me and Fletcher will stay there too, so...”

There was no answer.

“Girls?”

The man halted the donkey and walked to the back of the cart along with his halfling friend. To their despair, the two females were already gone.

 

Arabella lead Chio down the harbourside, towards a small, rickety wooden house that stood right by the last pier. “The woman who lives here is a bit of a weirdo,” the redhead explained. “Oh, but you met her before, haven't you?”

“I have?” Chio had no idea who it could be.

“You sent us a message through her when you were captured in Cornertown. She managed to set up a shop there during the festival, her name is Thora.”

“Oh, that woman? She lives here?”

“That's right. She might not look like it, but she knows a lot. Before we do anything else, I wanna ask her a few things.”

“She is a very mysterious person,” the angel said. She remembered the last thing Thora told her very well: In the end, the key will be sheer determination. That's all. “She is a bit intimidating too. I'm curious to meet her again.”

“Well, here we are,” Arabella opened the cabin's door, making the mini-skulls hanging above it swing around.

The cramped room they walked into looked very similar to how Chio remembered that strange tent in Cornertown. There was a slight, but persistent bad smell, and a bunch of small tables and cabinets by the walls, with a variety of items showcased, presumably for sale: rusty knives, skeletons of animals, bottles of strange liquids, decks of cards, dirty looking jewelry, and more. Thora sat behind the table opposite from the entrance, looking at some rings with a magnifying glass in the light of a candle. She was a middle aged woman with greasy black hair, dark eyes, and a large pimple on her nose. As the lovers walked in, she looked up irritably, but then her eyes widened.

“Hello, my old friend!” Arabella leaned on the woman's table with one hand. “Yes, I'm still alive. Who would have thought, right?”

Chio nervously smiled and nodded at the woman.

“I wondered if I'll ever see you two again,” Thora said. “But to think you would appear at such a time...” she threw back her head and laughed with a raspy voice.

“At such a time? What do you mean?” the angel inquired.

“Let me ask you this: are you two planning to go to the Scorched Lands, by any chance?”

Arabella exchanged a surprised look with Chio, then she faced Thora again. “Yea, we are planning to go there.”

“Good.”

“How did you know?”

“You know me, rogue succubus, you have seen my intuition before.”

“Sure... whatever,” Arabella shrugged. “We are here to ask you a few things.”

The woman swept the rings and the magnifying glass off the table into a bag, which she tossed into a cabinet by her side, then she put her palms together. “What do you want to know?”

The succubus asked her about the aftermath of the chaos in Cornertown, specifically about the group of sellswords hired by Grunt Hollard. According to Thora, about half of them were captured alive by the main force of the Maidens of Death, but after their boss, Neia Silverlight died, the female mercenaries simply set them free.

“They returned here to Plankwelle to get their final compensation from Hollard; their mission was successful, after all. The elf woman paid for her schemes with her life.”

“Final compensation, huh? As if they did much,” the redhead straightened her back. “Really, it was mostly me and Chio. And Bashaq.”

The angel cast her eyes down. They only briefly talked about it with Arabella, but a part of her still felt guilty about begging the orc man to essentially sacrifice himself. Then again, that whole day was a storm of pure horror that Chio wouldn't have minded forgetting about. She knew it wasn't really her fault though, and that Neia Silverlight had to be stopped.

“I guess it still makes sense to reward them for their troubles,” the succubus continued. “Comes to show Hollard was fair. He better be willing to compensate us too, then.”

“He better be,” Thora nodded.

“I'll let him fuck me too, so i'm sure he will be grateful. What's up with him these days? Did he reopen the Rainbow House?”

“He has a new place. It has a different name now, I can't recall it.”

“And does he still live where he used to?”

“As far as I know, yes.”

“All right. Anything else we should know about?”

Thora slowly shook her head. “You don't need to know more.”

“Oh, come on now, you can't just tease us with your intuition bullshit and then give us nothing!” the succubus snapped. “Why were you surprised to see us now of all times? And why do you want us to go to the Scorched Lands?”

The woman looked at Arabella kind of irritably, but she still replied. “Just a day ago, someone visited me here. Let's just say I have a personal dislike of him.”

“Oooh, a personal dislike,” the redhead smirked at Chio. “She already isn't fond of people, so this sounds special.”

“Frankly, I don't know much about his circumstances,” Thora continued, “but I have seen him in my dreams, and I know the darkness in his heart. He is an utter fool, and a dangerous man. A despicable one. I have the suspicion your path will cross with his.”

“Great, sounds like it will be a lovely time.”

“Remember his name: Warren Crown.”

Thora's ominous words made Chio gulp. The pimpled woman seemed to notice it.

“Fate will do its course, Chio Tanaka. Your trials are far from over either way. You know that, don't you?”

“Our trials...” the girl repeated.

“Why are you hesitating, girl? What doubts do you have on mind?”

Arabella too looked at the angel, who was now in the crossfire of two curious gazes. She turned her back on them, and mechanically picked up a deck of cards, thinking for some long moments before she faced the other two again.

“I... I feel like I was all talk. When I rescued you from Chestnut Island. Thinking that our hardships are mostly over, that everything will be all right, that we will be free together... I'm not quite sure what that really means anymore.”

“Chio...” now the succubus was the one to cast her eyes down.

“Don't get me wrong, I would never give up on you!” The angel quickly grabbed Arabella's hand. “I love you, I truly do. It's just that... sex is kind of insane. It's so strange, and it has such a strong effect on people. I feel like wherever we go, we leave this trail of intensity behind us, we stir things up, we just can't help it. And that's scary. How does sex work? When to suppress it, when to let it out, how to go about it without hurting people... I just don't really understand.”

“Then figure it out,” Thora said.

“How?”

“By trial and error, if you have to.”

“Right. There is not much else we can do.”

“You have been reborn, Chio Tanaka,” Thora stated. “You are in fact free now, that's what really changed. It's up to you to carve your own path in life. These challenges that await you are of your own choosing, and you know it. So raise your chin up and have no regrets! Do what you have to.”

“Yea!” Arabella approved.

The girl sighed loudly, stretched her body, then she looked at the middle aged woman and did a little bow. “Thank you.”

“Good luck to you, fallen angel and succubus. Farewell!”

The lovers stepped outside into the night of the city, and walked down the harbourside while both of them were lost in thought. Large, dark bodies of ships on their left, stone buildings on their right. A fresh breeze was blowing past them, and on the terrace of a seaside tavern, a group of drunk sailors were laughing.

“Being the partner of a succubus is kind of a clusterfuck, isn't it?” Arabella asked suddenly.

“Of course it is,” Chio giggled.

They entered an alleyway which then led them to one of the main streets of the city. Even at this relatively late hour, it was still quite busy with carts coming and going, and street vendors yelling on the side of the road, advertising their products or bargaining with their wanna be buyers. The two of them walked across the street and continued their way towards the south, where Hollard lived. As they got a bit further from the city centre and the ruckus quieted down around them, Chio stopped, grabbing the redhead's sleeve.

“Arabella...”

“Yes?”

“I want to tell you something. You know... back when I was a futanari, meeting you was incredible. You were someone who liked me the way I was, you wanted me to be horny, you found joy in it. And you didn't mind leading me, taking care of me, even if a bit roughly, when I felt so weak and vulnerable. I can't put it into words how much of a relief that was. Even if we didn't get to spend a lot of time together back then, I will forever be grateful for you. For what you represented to me. And I know you, I know that you are trapped in your own fate as a succubus, that it's hard for you too, and lonely. I don't mind that being with you is a clusterfuck. I sort of expected it, it just really hit me these last days, once we started to actually... you know. Meet men. But don't worry! I am yours.”

“Daym. That's great to hear.” Arabella felt a bit awkward by this sudden and unadulterated rant of gratitude, but she really appreciated it, it was reassuring. “If you are mine, let's kiss!”

She pushed Chio against the side of the closest stone building, and they really went at it, but then all of a sudden a window opened next to them, and an angry old man's head appeared in it. He yelled at them to get lost, Arabella stuck her tongue out at him, but they quickly left. As they walked down a narrow street, Chio wiped her mouth and continued talking:

“I have to believe that the gift you gave me, the acceptance of my lust, is something that other people could use too. What we are doing with men is not fundamentally bad, it's a similar thing to what you did with me, even if their lust is not quite that severe. It's like... a complicated baggage of longing that's intertwined with other parts of their lives. Their hopes, their fears, the norms they taught themselves to follow. But maybe, just maybe if we engage with that part of them just the right way, we can leave a trail of relief and joy behind us. Isn't that a great way to look at it?”

“Have you become a poet in heaven, or what?”

“Heh. I was just thinking a lot about this stuff for the past few days.”

“But I get it, and yea, it's a nice way to look at it. It's just not gonna always work out. We can't guarantee that, Chio.”

“I know. We just need to try our best. Anyway, perversion is kind of fun to be honest. I think I'll warm up to your ways.”

Goddamit Chio, you are so fucking cute! The succubus thought, and she pulled the girl into another dark alley, where they could have a moment of sweet privacy, and practice a bit of perversion too.