Soon the first set of buildings in the glossy white granite and marble of academia came into view. Students went about corralled between the garden district and the campus sprawl with the festive sounds of light conversation and soft instrumentation lilting vibrant under the gentle glow of floating lanterns.

The captain and the elven spearmaiden caught the attention of all those surrounding them. Their armor appeared as exotic costumes, out of place and almost archaic; their horses intruded the grounds as overly vested beasts, an exotic addition to the stark modernity of the plainly ornate campus plazas.

The captain's voice startled her. The roughness of it, though honestly earned through his bardic performance, had no place amid the soft, genteel whispers of their present environs.

"You seem troubled," Bierdé inquired.

She relaxed the tension in her face to put him at ease before speaking the lines she had prepared.

"Though the courier service isn't a boring life, I too miss the camaraderie of my fellow maiden. Our battles were never so fierce as to draw comparisons to the Bloody Seven. I killed a fair share of goblins, regardless. Shredding kobolds to ribbons with the jagged, kris edge of my maidenspear, outsmarting the conniving bastards..."

Now that the words flew from her tongue, Leresai grew concerned. They were less than adequate to sustain her cover.

You are a simple spearmaiden of the provençale stock of elf. No attempts at a higher meter.

However, by remaining plain-spoken, she risked losing his interest. She needed to challenge him to keep the captain engaged.

"... But, I have to say. There is a matter that still bothers me. That places limits on the extent I can derive pleasure, or what you would perhaps refer to as 'meaning', from the kill of the beast."

Captain Bierdé raised his head. His brows revealed to be furled in a tight clinch.

"Please continue," he pleaded. "My reminiscing is becoming a bit rude."

"No pardon is necessary, Captain. When I am back at camp after a successful mêlée, I return with my emotions strung to a high chord, my mind sublimely alert, but once that feeling wears down, I lay there at night, and I wonder about those of whom we kill. I feel as if my own glory brings about a sadness into this world."

"They are mere monstrosities, driven by evil", Bierdé said, dismissively.

"That is just it. When we are killed in battle, elvenkind can look forward to the Summerlands of the EverSolstice; for mankind, your paths are myriad. When goblins die, they return to the Abyss.

"This life, as they live it on mundane Earth is nothing but shit smashed under boot. Short-lived, vicious, with no joy to be found and their pleasures even fewer. For them, this life is it. It is as good as it will ever be.

"Their howls when stricken down sound with the reverberation of a sadness that if I were to feel it, I certainly couldn't bear it. My loathing in such circumstances would be all-consuming if I were to have been born to a life so misbegotten as a kobold's."

The journey through the university was short as the road transversed through the width of the central campus block and not along its substantial length.

Above the university the road led to Chapel Mound where the old cathedral had been set ablaze five years previously. Leresai could see an emblem of the Midday Star grace the central steeple of the recently constructed temple ziggurat.

It replaced an emblem dedicated to the Twin Travelers. The moon was a finger and thumb spread width against the rod holding up the seven points of the ornamented star by the measure of her hand.

It was now in the seventh hour past noon by her reckoning. Just after the eleventh hour, the crescent of light would give way to the new moon.

Music of bell, bowl, and wind chime came from above them. It still sounded exotic to Leresai's ears even though she was no stranger to this quarter of the city. She had even been inside the ziggurat when she peeked inside the heart vessel within to confirm Rhoethella's suspicions.

"You will find yourself in a sweet lull to that strange music before you even realize it," Bierdé warned. He gestured to an assembly of Natya dancers on the steps.

"Their motion, swaying so sweetly, is most beguiling."

She regarded the dancers. She once blended in with this very troupe in a guise that made her appear as a native of the Niagatanee islands in the D'jestre half of the Mooring Sea. They tended to be the tallest of the Eastern stock.

She was treated well, like a long lost sister, by the other dancers during her short stay.

"I've heard the D'jestre temple was built on the same site where the old cathedral burned down."

"That is correct," Bierdé confirmed with an askant slow nod.

"Why would they be allowed to do that? Are the grounds not sanctified?"

"Sanctified? As in the grounds form a connection to the eternal and true that grounds a mere inch over do not?

"I suppose, do not all things have loci? Isn't that what the thaumaturgist call it?"

Bierdé chuckled. "True enough, all things not demonic have specific disposition."

Monks dressed in burlap, swaddled in layers of cloth crossing their chest in subdued colors of a dull blue and gray, strode the outer streets encircling the hill where the ziggurat stood. Most of whom were evidently D'jestre, though many appeared to be native of the tall, fair-haired Midvries. The Temple of the East was gaining converts.

"I was pondering upon your words, White Hawk. About the creatures returning to the Abyss. That death rattle of theirs I have heard it myself on many an occasion.

"It is imbibed with the knowledge of their eternal torment. Your words resonate with me, though I am not bothered by their, in lack of a better, less profane word, 'fate' as you are. Their existence tempers and hones our own purpose so that we ourselves are reforged into a better people."

Bierdé paused long enough to bow his head in a greeting to a monk. The captain threw the man a coin in alms. It flashed of newly minted silver.

"Spend it wisely, good father," Bierdé told him before turning back to Leresai.

"Would you like to know what Prince D'tuout'N told me about the other side?"

"I would be most curious," she answered, stifling a matter that bothered her.

"He said, 'Bierdé, in the beginning there was only the Abyss and Oblivion both without substance, and a Mundi without spirit. Monstrous creations infused with demonic spirit naturally crossover into the wretched Abyss.

"The souls of man and elf naturally return to the peace that is Oblivion from wince Mundi stole a bounty of geist that formed our souls in the first place. Everything else is a construct, even the EverSolstice of my people'."

Leresai gasped. "The Crown Prince does not believe in Eversolstice?

"That is not what the prince meant. Eversolstice is a construct. A tulpa created by merkind to achieve a desirable afterlife long before Sunwelder was even a gleam in his mortal mother's eye. That is, Eversolstice was created to reshape the eternal destination of elvenkind much more to the liking of your ancestors."

"This, I did not know," she said. "It is profound, but it changes nothing about what I believe."

Leresai looked away to the east. From the apex of Chapel Mound just before the street that held the ziggurat, she could see the harbor bay with its drift of lights in the nightlife bustle.

Ships slid through the rap of waves guided by the three lighthouses planted on the islet host of Zhair's Pillar. It was built on the ancient ruins of Castle Barso and Old College. They were destroyed by the fleet of Izdun the Patriarch over a thousand years ago.

Farther out, the Twin Travelers' shimmered in the night air above the Doukres Bay waters. Leresai and Captain Bierdé passed by the ziggurat. The D'jestre structure was formed of dense meteoric and molten black rock engraved in gelded patterns. The floor and roof boards that lined it were set in a jade-colored metal unfamiliar to the Midvries. It shined with a subdermal luminescence.

Leresai upon reflecting on their conversation understood what bothered her. Captain Bierdé had avoided answering her question concerning the D'jestre.

It was time to pry.

"The temple is a lovely edifice, Captain. How does it compare to the old cathedral it replaced?

His unburdened left hand grazed the mane of his beast ever so slightly.

"I have my own opinions, but in the House Lyoneid, it is of no little discretion. My own opinions if expressed would be speaking out of turn. I'm a mere guardsman to the diplomatic corps, but still sworn to uphold the will of my Lord, Archduke Lyoneid."

"I see," Leresai said letting a capricious sulking frown press almost child-like against her chin.

Bierdé snorted back a near titter. Her pose must have been more comical than she intended.

Still, it worked to her greater ends for he gave her an answer less politic.

"I say that with such restraint, even as we have grown to be fast friends, so formal and so frosty.

"But officially, I am supposed to give a good-natured, but derisive sneer, and then say with most gruff pragmatism, 'what do I care, so long as they don't worship at the feet of the Patriarch? Aside from that, the D'jestre can go about as they please', and when we, those who serve to staff the palace, pass by a monk of the Temple we are to throw him a silver piece to convey to other residents of Nevespora that we accept them as our own, untroubled that they brought the plague with them nor troubled by any other aspect of their manners, mores, and means that differentiates them from us no matter how harshly they may contrast with our own social graces.

"But my opinions, I shall abide by the command of my Lord and keep them to myself."

"I won't pry any farther, Captain."

His nod was terse though his smile remained friendly.

Did this go to the heart of the matter? The reason why the conspirators purpose so well aligned with her own geas? They brought unfortunate haste to her task as the palace insiders had failed at an attempt on Lord Carro's life soon after he was appointed Treasurer to the House Lyoneid.

She had to take actions that were less than circumspect to make up for their blunder.

She left that question open for the moment as she saw the obelisk in the middle of a street square that marked the Cemetery of the Commons. The second-largest boneyard in Nevespora, counting the Catacombs of the First Dead beneath their very feet.

At the street square, they made a turn Westward towards the House Lyoneid grounds. The outer wall of the cemetery came into view. Covered in long vines of ivy, the wall stretched along the south sidelining the current street in their approach to the palace.

Leresai's eyes darted to the cemetery wall; she imagined a small mausoleum edifice within. It's marble rotunda walls overlapping like fingers clasping; it's pendentives made of twine ivory arches.

In the center lay Brietess; her corpse by the necromancy of Pestilence herself was not encroached upon by decay.

She turned her head forward so Bierdé would not catch her as she ruminated in a most un-fey like manner. The top of the bridge towers leading into the palace grounds came into view.

This close to the palace entrance, there was still an unresolved matter that lay beneath Leresai's skin. She was tempted to close her eyes to call on the silver for guidance, but to do so would be conspicuous in her present company.

Leresai thought back to when the feeling made its presence known. She imagined her tummy, beneath her supple muscles, an itch spread from her navel to her pubis much like a gasp of lost breath. Suddenly, clenching her vagina an intense jolt invaded her inner cavity wall. The moment came back to her.

There is talk of an assassin on her way to Nevespora, coming from upriver... but evidently avoiding the riverboats.

They have to know how she obtained the package and deduced from that knowledge that she would have avoided the riverboats. Recent memories gushed back like the joyful and exquisite pain of an open gash.

The rough handed sailor, who dragged her by the tits into an alleyway along the wharf in the port town of Gareen. Hands all calloused up, and scabs running the length of his arms. They scratched into her ribs with every thrust as she thrust in a grind against his arms when he fucked her from behind.

When he showed his softer side with a tender caress of her hair, she smacked her hip bone into his abdomen. He responded in kind with a tight jerk of her hair, snapping her head back. He put his gritty thumb in her mouth.

"Bitch, you be gettin' your ass ridden. I dare you to bite me thumb."

She answered with manic laughter that made him stutter his thrusting motion. She clenched his thumb with her molars and stared up into his eyes, grinning wildly.

The sailor laughed. "Bitch, I like you fine. You one crazy one, tho'."

He lifted her haunches and gripped her tight. With a jack rabbit's quiver in his legs, he released a long moan. Pushing down with a huge palm, he pressed the indention beneath the curve of her spine. His cock squeezed out of her pussy. She felt the warmth of his cum splayed on her ass cheeks.

With a gasping sigh of relief followed with a blustering swear, the sailor smacked his cock against her haunches; his jizm rubbed out and smeared along her asscheeks. Pulling his trousers up, he snorted a flippant, "I'll see what I can do."

He gave her a wink and tied his trouser rope together as he strode off whistling a chanty.

She scurried to an open-air bath shack. Her hands squeezing a much a much-eroded iron grip. She pumped fresh water into a bucket and poured the water into a sieve over her head.

Boats sailed on one side of her, sailors waved to her, harshly expressing aesthetic appreciation in three languages mingling together.

On the boardwalk nearby, longshoremen walked in-troop carrying crates between them.

Leresai took a block of lye soap and scrubbed her loins and belly where she now itched. The sailor from the mail barge was the fourth she had fucked that morning.

Hosparr once showed her the crab-like creatures that nested in pubes and caused so much discomfort. They especially proved troublesome for the hairy-faced, hyena-like men of the Gnoyul tribe from the Nayasid Desert.

He handed her a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers to remove several of them off the soft downy of his pubic hair. Between the tiny metal grips, the critter was nearly translucent with six appendages jostling about struggling to be free.

Now under the wash bucket in Gareen, she did as she learned to do when she was first summoned to Temple as a young woman. For that year she was expected to stand at the steps as a temple prostitute, receiving all of whom the sister goddesses, the Sœurarchy, called to sojourn and tithe at the Grand Temple in the holy city of Meizsol.

The men brought with them vexations from their many lands, but the gift of the silver protected those of whom lived in service to the goddesses.

Now the silver shimmered its warmth beneath her skin. She could hear the crabs pop and she could smell their burning aroma as rising smoke curled wispy from her platinum pubic bush.

Her vagina, she lifted in the curve of her palm to examine more closely, with the lips of her labia red and crinkled, appeared nearly mangled from the morning exertion. She concentrated upon the silver, pushing it deep into her vulva flesh.

The flesh wrenched against her palm. What was spent was now revitalized. Leresai appraised her pussy. Her lips were always on the thick and long side even as a young woman. Given the gape of her hole was wider as her hips and cervix grew to full adulthood shortly after her year at the Temple, she now welded her pussy more expertly when engaged in coitus.

Gripping a cock as tightly or loosely, as dry or ejaculate drenched as she pleased given the sublime control she had of her body and mind.

She pumped more water into the bucket and pushed it into the sieve. Feeling horny again, and having not reached release herself, she forced the bar up her pussy, relishing the harsh tinge of the lye in her vaginal cavity.

The silver was not through with her just yet, and it came on her, of the sudden, wild, extending her senses as if to guide her.

Now into the mind of another, even seeing through his eyes the tall, muscular but lean woman like an ivory figurine, her back a plexed symmetry of beveled ribs that graced the long curved risen snake of counter arching vertebrae.

A bar of soap clutched between her thighs, slowly pleasuring herself.

She had an ass shaped like the double wedges of a primitive flint rock arrowhead. Long, nearly flat but sleekly rounded at the hips her derriere well pressed into thighs that curved up along the crease between which folds of a long scarlet vagina covered in platinum curls with lips bunched-up forward swallowing the bar of soap.

Having his full attention, she leaned over slightly to expose her anus. The ring of a starfish-shaped sphincter, puckered forward on the albino, displayed cutely in the color of a peach's skin.

Leresai displayed one of her talents and winked its grooves in a counterclockwise fashion, slowly flashing for the voyeur the anal gape inside in a rhythmic dance of taut muscles.

She could feel the mind of the man now weak with arousal. She turned around and smiled while clenching her thighs to cum. He was the one. From his trim beard, and formal jacket and clean slacks she surmised he was an administrator for the port authority.

Two days she spent in his bungalow servicing him. In the last several hours of that time, she waited while tied to a hemp rope that held her fastened in an intricate set of knots, dangling upside down from the ceiling boards.

A choker on her neck protected it from rub burns, but the rest of her body spun slowly. In the midst of twisting knots the control rope unwound from a spool on the wall. Leresai's body throbbed from the soreness.

Finally, he rushed through the door, his face slackened to a low grin. He threw a package on a dining table. Leresai maneuvered her head and twisted around to study it.

A royal seal in the signet of the Sunwelder. Unbroken. She could read the name to whom it was addressed.

"Perfect," she said.

He pushed on a set of ropes that brought her thighs down to his groin. Her head, feet, and arms left dangling above. His fingers tried to dig into her anus. His other hand pulled his cock out.

He frowned for a moment.

'You said I could fuck you in there. I even told you of the obsidian coin." He pleaded, nearly in tears.

Leresai smiled down derisively at him. She loosened her sphincter and gripped and released his fingers teasingly with a massage.

"You may proceed," she commanded.

She found herself nodding and sighing along to a story Captain Bierdé elaborated upon once she shook herself out of the revelry of her escapades in Gareen.

"I brought Mer'Kendretta to the House Lyoneid on that occasion. While we waited in a tea room she practiced finger exercises on her cithara, preparing for her recital. She asked me to read the lines she wrote for Archduke Lyoneid; I did so, and I utterly lost my breath, gasping in horror.

"'My dearest, Mer'Kendretta,' I tried to explain to her, 'you can't say these things to an Archduke of the Midvries.' You know the unassuming nature of your people, T'nonnon'Be, that we so often mistake for innocence and naïvité. She simply shrugged, bemused that I would find anything objectionable.

'What do you mean,' she protested. 'This is what I am most renown for; surely Lyoneid would be so honored that I wrote a soi'mordreleid just for him.'

"I can tell you, friend. I feared for my very head as I talked her out of reciting those words, replacing them with a traditional Elven pastoral. There is no tradition of poems suggesting a lord kill himself in the Midvries."

Leresai asked, "isn't she the poet who wrote a poem adapted for a play that began, "I am enveloped by memory, widower of the woman I was?"

"Yes, that does sound familiar to me," Bierdé answered, his tone of voice nearly frosty.

Leresai realized he may just wonder why a fey maiden would be memorizing a funeral elegy and she recovered quickly.

"I recall the lines from a play I once saw in the Suüdlands. I can't recall the name of the play, but the lines were strikingly pretty."

Bierdé snorted with laughter. "How did they make a sex romp out of that?"

With the gate of the cemetery on their left, her head turned up to gaze at the Moon as the Archstone above the iron tongs lined up with the steeple of the center mausoleum behind it. Her eyes then drifted low on him to chide.

"It isn't all sex romps and blood vendettas in the Suüdlands, Captain."