“Is it always so messy?” Korith asked, scrubbing herself down with lukewarm water. Getting it to that temperature had required proximity to the fire and Aclysia’s magic. A little more attention may have helped it along further, but no one was willing to wait. Of the three women, Aclysia was the least sticky, and even she required it to get rid of the sweat.

“Depends on how much we ask the big guy to get freaky,” Reysha responded, currently in the process of helping Aclysia clean the hard-to-reach spaces between her wings.

Apexus placed down a second bucket of water. That one was cold and for him to clean himself with. He had about as much surface area as two of them combined and he also lacked the majority of bodily functions that made cleaning necessary. Practically all the dirt on him was from their bodies or the surroundings. “I try to keep it clean,” he said. “It made for a better first time.”

“I mean… can’t disagree with that,” Korith chuckled, a little bit nervously. She wasn’t quite sure yet how to handle this particular social dynamic. Harems weren’t unusual where she was from, so that part did not bother her. It was more that she had expected something fundamental to change now that they had done the deed.

There were some changes, just not on the level she had expected. The last bit of personal barriers had fallen. Nudity was just not a big deal to the quartet and now they had no qualms whatsoever about brushing against or over her. The little touches were warm and pleasant. A physical extension of the tender words they had exchanged previously.

Or of casual lewdness.

The entire room, including Aclysia, gawked at Korith, when she grabbed one of her boobs and lifted it up to properly clean the underside. “The-they’re not that impressive, okay?!” the kobold stammered, feeling flattered and self-conscious because of the constant stares.

“Yeah, no, squishy, ya can’t say that when they’re about as big as my head,” Reysha disagreed.

“Let me help with that.” Before Korith could consider that offer, Apexus was already acting on it. Now that he had full confirmation that the kobold had a taste for being bullied by loved ones, the humanoid slime felt he had full agency to act more assertively around her. Reaching around from her behind her, he lifted the light brown bags of softness up. The excess of their size spilled over his palm.

“T-t-thanks?!” Korith yelped, feeling a definite wave of arousal. His hands, so much larger than hers, caused her body to remember last night. Besides that, it was actually helpful. After she had cleaned herself in the now reachable areas, she ‘forgot’ to ask Apexus to let go again. Eventually, he still did. As fun as her breasts were to hold and knead, a harem meant that paying all of his attention to one woman left others wanting. Apexus first helped Aclysia clean herself, then Reysha. That was only an excuse to touch them.

That Reysha was left for last was a tactical decision. Unsurprisingly, feeling her up led to the tiger girl getting hot and bothered. With her borderline nymphomania, that transitioned swiftly to her having a morning quickie. Aclysia and Korith watched and caught up on their lack of interactions last night. Apexus and Reysha had done plenty of teasing the kobold between them. As a fellow submissive, Aclysia had not had opportunities to get directly physical with their newest addition.

When they finally made it out of the house, Korith was grinning broadly.

“Someone’s liking our lifestyle,” Reysha observed.

“It is in line with the biological imperative of procreation,” Apexus remarked. “It should feel rewarding to enact mating behaviour with lasting partners.”

“Darling, while you may be correct, that is a fraction of the adoration I feel for you,” the metal fairy holding his right arm stated. “I love you; I want to be as much one with you as the physical reality allows.”

“I love you too,” Apexus responded and kissed the metal fairy.

“Awww, ya two are cute,” Reysha cackled from the sidelines and cried out in agreeing surprise when she was pulled by the waist.

“You love me,” the humanoid slime asserted.

“Hmmm, ya know what, I won’t even be flippant about today,” the tiger girl got on her toes. “Yeah, I love you, Apexus.” She kissed him as well.

“I love you too!” Korith proclaimed, somewhat to the surprise of the trio. It was the first sentence this morning she hadn’t stammered. That was because it was not a hasty confession. “I’ve been meaning to say that all morning,” she admitted. “Maybe that’s a bit quick of me but… yeah, I do.”

“Eh, at least you fell in love with him when he looked like a guy,” Reysha shrugged it off. “Makes ya two steps less freaky than me or the angel over there.”

“I will let you know that my attraction to entities is entirely based on character,” Aclysia retorted. “As a divine creation, being capable of love is already an exceptional state of affairs. Most angels are…”

“…barely sapient, yeah, I know,” Reysha waved off. “I’ll call bullshit on that ‘entirely’ though. You had some strong fucking opinions about the ideal jawline.”

“I accept that criticism,” Aclysia sighed.

Apexus, meanwhile, bowed down to kiss Korith like he had done the other two. That she was so short made it a difficult affair and halfway through, Apexus decided to just scoop her up. Her plush bum was resting on his muscular lower arm, as he held her in front of her and pressed his mouth on her soft lips. She reciprocated a bit clumsily, but with great enthusiasm.

When their kiss escalated to the point that Korith started to moan, Aclysia cleared her throat loudly. “Much as I do enjoy affection and pleasing our darling, we should get to the port. We can continue as we desire on the ship.”

________________________________________________________________________

“Cuntwaffles, everywhere!” Joey declared, the heel of his foot drumming on the planks of his ship. “Why do I even do this?”

“Because you like hearing me moan while another guy fucks my brains out?” Reysha suggested to the ever-annoyed captain. “I mean, I am cute enough.”

“Shut the fuck up,” the ever-annoyed captain snapped back immediately. “The only good thing about having you lot on board this time around is that there’s nobody who you can actually annoy with your fucking. Except for the shortstack, I guess.”

“Uhm, actually…”

Joey pinched the bridge of his nose, Korith’s tone saying everything the captain needed to know. “Of fucking course… whatever, keep it in your cabin and clean up after yourselves. If you stain or break any of the hammocks, you’re buying them!”

“Okay,” Apexus agreed. “Thank you for taking us along.”

Joey stared at the humanoid slime, not knowing what was under that membrane, and clicked his tongue. “No idea what Maltos did to you, but you do seem less fucking hostile.”

“I learned better self-control,” Apexus reported truthfully. “More importantly, I decided that I’d judge you less harshly for using swear words to cushion your sentences.”

“I use swear words to cope with the incompetency of literally everyone around me,” Joey turned to the two sailors who were drawing in the boarding plank. “If you two work even slower, we might get ready in time for the NEXT high tide!”

Korith shouldered her warhammer and told the captain, “If you need any help, you know where to find us.”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll keep that in mind,” Joey said, sounding a little less aggressive than usual. “Until I need you to pull three times your weight, do me the favour and get out of the way of my crew. This’ll be a long enough voyage without people standing in our way.”

The quartet obliged and moved into their quarters. Since they truly were the only non-crew passengers on this voyage, they did have plenty of space to themselves. They stowed away all their stuff in one chest. The moment they were finished, Aclysia cuddled up to Apexus and Reysha asked, “So, anyone still in the mood after the march?”

“I’m content,” Aclysia said, sitting in her darling’s lap.

“Same,” Korith answered.

Apexus shrugged, he was ambivalent about it.

“Dangit,” Reysha sat down, legs folded, and rested her cheeks on her palms.

“You could just… you know… take care of it?” Korith pointed out. “You don’t seem exactly bothered doing it on your own.”

“Read the room, squishy, there’s time to lewd up the atmosphere and there’s time to talk about something else,” the tiger girl responded, as if she was the reasonable one. She tracked Korith with her blue eyes. “Besides, who could get in the solo mood with ya pacing up and down like that?”

Korith did not stop walking from one wall to the other, even after it was pointed out to her. “I need something to do,” she whined. “Anyone up for a game?”

“Depends on the game,” Apexus said.

“We could play Rolmers,” Korith suggested. That was a game reasonably popular with everyone in the room. They agreed and she fetched dice and cards to play it with. Rolmers used a Poker deck as tiles, four-sided dice as the players and a six-sided die to roll. As the game progressed, the tiles became less and less and people who moved across empty tiles lost life. Each of the players was assigned one of the four varieties of cards and had options of how they could accelerate or slow that gradual decay of the field.

A round of Rolmers took about an hour, so it was a good game to kill time with. It also didn’t last so long that an unfortunate wave rocking the ship became a gameplay tragedy.

Once she had set up the game, Korith let out a heavy sigh. “I know, right?” Reysha asked. “I can already see that Apexus is gonna win. Bubble butt is going to support him at every turn and then jump into the void.”

“In the spirit of fairness, I will withhold my favouritism,” Aclysia rested the side of her face against the humanoid chimera’s biceps. “Deserved as it is.”

“That’s not why she is sighing,” Apexus said, while combing through the metal fairy’s hair. “Still bothered by the compromise?"

“How could I not be? It’s so much money!” Korith complained, her tail slapping against the ground.

“How much money entirely depends on our performance. It is a risky gambit from his perspective. One he certainly would not take without Maltos’ request weighing in our favour.”

“Hoard deserves everything…,” Korith mumbled.

“Would Hoard even like dragon parts?” Reysha asked.

Apexus tilted his head, “Why wouldn’t it?”

“Dunno, feels like a priest eating his flock.”

“Dragons are Hoard's competitors, not its followers,” Korith responded. “The rivalry continues between the common servants.”

“I do wonder if we’ll run into proper kobolds,” Reysha hummed.

The shortstack let out a deeply unhappy squeal, “Proper?!”

Reysha cackled and received a soft chop to the forehead by the male in the room. “She is just trying to rile you up,” Apexus said. “She’ll keep going if you keep reacting.”

“Which means I’ll keep doing it forever, ‘cause you’re so delightfully teasable, squishy.”

“…You know, I could shatter your kneecaps.”

Reysha’s grin turned dangerous and she picked two cards from the board, putting them on the discarded pile. Then she focused on Korith. “Ya know, the only thing I like almost as much as sex is violence,” the redhead purred. “So go ahead. Bite me.”

A double tap on Aclysia’s shoulder let her know that she had to rise from her current position. Korith was unsure how to deal with the situation, and only became more unsure when Apexus suddenly grabbed Reysha by the arm and threw her on her back. The tiger girl reacted immediately, answering the act of aggression with a kick to the abdomen.

“Uhm, should we do something about that?” Korith asked, moving herself between the combatants and their game.

“No, they just do that occasionally,” the metal fairy assured her. While Reysha punched Apexus in the jaw, the slime stayed primarily with grapples. Because their bodies were so vastly different in size, sturdiness and regenerative powers, the level of violence used was highly asymmetrical. “Just remember that Reysha is more animal than person.”

Just as she said that, Reysha got pressed to the ground by the large slime. Even as she struggled and grunted, her lips were spread in a mad smile. “I’ll remember that, Clysia!” the tiger girl hissed gleefully. Squirming, she managed to break out of the grasp.

“Give it a few minutes,” Aclysia assured her, continuing the conversation while Apexus and Reysha rolled around. “Have you ever considered the Paladin as your Class? You’re quite venerating of your creator deity.”

“No, don’t think that’d suit me,” Korith shook her head. “Hoard doesn’t really work with the Church either. It’s like… its own thing.”

“I admittedly know little about it. The knowledge my father left me after my exile was largely limited to the original thirty-tree. What does worship entail?”

“Well, primarily, I put a bunch of valuables on a pile, money is best, and then I pray to Hoard and it takes it.”

Aclysia blinked a bunch of times. “It claims it? Does the money become blessed or does it literally…-?”

“It literally disappears, yes,” Korith made a ‘poof’ gesture with her hands.

Heavily, Reysha hit the ground next to Korith, making the blonde jump. “Oof…!” the redhead wheezed when the impact was followed by a knee on her back pinning her down. “So, uh,” Reysha pressed out, while trying to squirm her way out again, “do you get something in return or do you just think it's funny to make money disappear?”

“The Hoard blesses major contributors in various ways,” Korith said.

“Examples?” Apexus asked, smacking Reysha on the ass. The redhead yelped and giggled, her attempts to wiggle out growing weaker.

“Stuff happens.”

“Specific examples?” the humanoid chimera requested.

“…I’ve no idea,” Korith confessed. “Scriptures on this are intentionally vague. Us Goldborn just know that it’ll be worthwhile… Service to Hoard is about the journey!”

Reysha hit the ground three times with her flat hand, signaling that she yielded. “Whew… well, that seems fun,” she said. “Still though, we have to give poor Joey something for this.”

“I mean… yeah… not like the Dragon Isles are on his road home.”

“The journey will take us between seven and thirty days, depending on winds,” Aclysia reminded them. “The distance travelled is roughly three times that of the journey from Golden Fields to Weststir. Adding to the cost are logistics and that he has agreed to wait until we can make the trip back.” The metal fairy took her turn, finally deciding that she did have to capitalize on the bad position her darling was currently in, to keep things fair. “Asking for rare resources in return is a more than reasonable desire.”

“I suppose so,” Korith sighed.

Her unhappiness with the state of payment aside, the party knew they were fortunate to have a direct route to the Dragon Isles. Under regular circumstances, they would have needed to first make it to the Prince-Republic of Weststir. The only ship that made the trip to the archipelago was a military vessel that supplied a watchtower in the area with all of the necessary goods that could not just be grown locally. It would have added another two weeks to their travels, just to get there.

They just had to hope this was a quick and safe voyage.