“This is a nice building you have for your guild headquarters even if it is a little bare bones at the moment but that’s okay because it has room to grow and your mercenary company isn’t very large right now though considering how big you and your sisters are that’s kind of ironic I think but you three are also big in the sense of fame around Far Felsen so I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to find some mercenaries with no company that might want to join I mean you might even be able to recruit a few away from their current companies so long as their contract is expiring or they are allowed to break it though that would probably put you on bad terms with the other mercenary companies because that sort of thing is frowned upon but you might be able to get away with it if you make the right kind of deal but I don’t know if there’s anyone around the city you’d be willing to make a deal with a rival mercenary company for but still it’s clear you’d have the room for them here if you do end up going that route!”
Jay nodded along to Sabina’s ramblings as she showed the excitable half-elf around the first floor of the Fortune’s Favored company headquarters. There wasn’t actually much to show off since the one giant room was so bare, but the smith received the mostly empty building with enthusiasm. A serving of meat pie from a stoic Hans was welcomed with even more appreciation, as was the sight of the open area behind the building.
“This space would be perfect for a workshop!” Sabina exclaimed, the faint glow in her eyes shining brightly as she took in the courtyard. “More than enough space for a forge and anvil and a workbench and a space for tools and the buildings all around are businesses so we wouldn’t have to worry about keeping people up at night and I could make most of it myself and then I could work on weapons and armor for the whole guild right here and if I do manage to get an enchantment class then there’s space for an enchanting table too and even if I don’t get an enchantment class if you do recruit someone into the guild who can we can work together out here and it would be amazing!”
“Absolutely,” Jay nodded. “With the primary renovations done with the main building, a workshop expansion sounds like a great next step. Our head smith should have her own forge and not be forced to share out in a common workshop.”
Sabina flushed at the flattering title Jay had bestowed on her, her bronze skin darkening further. Her sharp but shorter ears twitched in a way that reminded Jay of Eir. Possibly the elven way of showing embarrassment? She’d have to experiment with the idea later.
“Would your sisters be okay with working on a workshop for me?” the smith asked in an uncharacteristically short sentence while wringing her fingers together.
“I can assure you with absolute certainty that they are on board,” Jay deadpanned.
“Where are they right now? Because if you need to be with them I don’t mean to get in your way because I know the three of you are usually together at least I usually see you three together and the talk around town is that you three are usually together and if you all are busy with something you should go ahead and leave me be and I’ll just go back to work at the common forge for now and—”
“They aren’t here because we’re actually getting ready for you,” Jay interrupted Sabina, cutting the word avalanche off before it went much further.
“For me?” Sabina chirped, her eyes big. “In what way?”
“To take you on an outing, of course,” Jay casually explained.
Crossing her arms and leaning against the wall by the back door, Jay grinned down at the dark-haired half-elf.
“We’re eager to try out that great new armor you made us, plus it’s been a while since my whole team has been outside the walls together. We wanted to get out and give our new equipment and skills a real test, so to speak. Since you need leveling, figured there was no time like the present.”
“Really? Right now!?” Sabina practically shouted, her arms exploding into a flailing spectacle as her mouth went into overdrive. “But I don’t have any weapons or armor or training and I don’t know anything about fighting in a personal sense and plus I still need to work on those weapon ideas you gave me yesterday and that’s going to take more time and I know I’m going to need to get an enchanter involved because you just can’t make weapons that big and heavy without enchantments because the metal will bend otherwise and the edge and handles will deform so I still need to find someone who can do those kinds of enchantments and isn’t going to bilk us on the price plus we need to source the eleria crystals and any other materials that might be needed and—”
“Don’t worry about all that!” Jay cut Sabina off again with a laugh.
Moving to physically still the agitated smith, Jay took hold of both her hands and held them firmly, bringing all of Sabina’s movements and ranting to a halt. Jay grinned down at the wide eyes and twitching ears of the flustered half-elf, taking note of the way her breath caught.
“I told you, my sisters are taking care of all that. As are the rest of our team. We’ve sourced a few replacement armaments, weapons that are a little better than the makeshift stuff we’ve been using so they will absolutely do fine for the small excursion we’re going on today. Besides, you don’t have to do any fighting today. At most, you might get the opportunity to deal the finishing blow on a few demons we incapacitate, if we get the chance to. Otherwise, you just get to sit back and soak up the proxy bonus experience.”
“Oh, well,” Sabina said, shrugging and smiling but making no attempt to extract her hands from Jay’s. “That’s fine then!”
“Good,” Jay grinned, giving the smith’s hands a little squeeze before letting go. “They should be back any minute now, so let’s go inside, okay?”
In fact, Jadis’ other selves in the company of her beautiful teammates were only thirty seconds down the street, but she wasn’t yet ready to explain how she knew that to Sabina just yet. She liked the hyperactive half-elf and was very happy to have her join the mercenary company, but Jadis didn’t quite have the trust level with her that she did the others. Though, Jadis hoped they would get there, with time.
Time felt like it was in short supply this morning, a feeling that was entirely Jadis’ own fault she had to admit. She’d kept her companions up well into the late hours of the night with her lewd rituals and more than a bit of just plain fucking. In consequence, they had all been late to rise that morning and much of the early hours were gone by the time they pulled themselves out of their giant-sized bed.
A better consequence of the debauched night were the three new skills Jadis had replicated from Aila, Thea, and Kerr. Nephilim Wellspring from her redheaded girlfriend, Stable Footing from her shy shieldmaiden, and from the incorrigible Kerr? Well, it had been a hard choice since she had so many more passive skills to choose from, many of which were attractive in their uses, but in the end, they had agreed on Path Less Travelled.
| Path Less Traveled (Replicated) Passive Skill. Your movement through untamed wilderness terrains is greatly improved, allowing you to bypass obstacles that would otherwise slow you down. Any attempts to hide or move stealthily in wilderness terrains are similarly improved and others will have a harder time tracking your movements. These benefits are lost when moving through tamed, cultivated, or otherwise civilized environments. |
While Jadis wasn’t the stealthiest woman in the world and was likely going to be even less so once she had her heavy plate armor on, the first half of the skill still looked highly useful to her. Jadis had spent a lot of her time on Oros in untamed lands, so being able to move through it with more speed and certainty felt like a good choice, especially since she often acted as a mount for her companions when they were trying to move fast.
Yes, Jadis was quite happy with the results of her first night spent in her new bed with her drop-dead sexy lovers. Three new replicated skills being almost a side benefit to the fun that she’d had with her companions. She hadn’t selected a skill from Eir, however, since none of her passive skills really seemed to fit. Besides, by that point, the elf’s brain had been turned to putty by so many climaxes and even Jadis’ knees were feeling a bit wobbly. There was only so much fucking she could do in one night.
There was also something Jadis had forgotten to take into consideration when it came to performing her rituals in a bed. And that was the mess left behind. Jadis had been forced to strip the blankets and sheets from the bed or risk the mattresses being ruined. She was definitely going to have to invest in a lot more sheets so they could be quickly traded out while the soiled ones were being laundered. That, or she needed to invent the washing machine.
While Jadis mused over the idea of how to explain the idea of an automatic washing machine to Sabina for the smith to try her hand at making one, her two other selves arrived back at the tavern-turned-guildhall, along with the rest of her squad. The group immediately went to greet Sabina, welcoming the smith into their company with at least polite grace if not genuine warmth. Eir and Kerr had never met the half-elf, after all, but Thea knew her by sight at least.
“That’s a very pretty dress you’re wearing!” Sabina said with a bright smile. “I didn’t think you were the type to wear dresses since you were always wearing leather pants every time I saw you with Jay and Dys and Syd which is fine because you have really nice long legs and I would show them off too if I had legs like yours but the dress is really pretty and the blue matches your eyes so it really suits you!”
Jadis had to hide her smirking faces as Aila stiffly accepted Sabina’s innocent comments. Jadis knew why Aila had chosen not to wear her usual form-fitting attire that day, and it had little to do with how nicely the dress matched her eyes.
“Not one word,” Aila quietly warned Syd a few moments later as Sabina was distracted by unloading her opinions on Thea’s makeshift shield at the nearly mute woman.
“Of course not,” Syd agreed, face locked in a mask of seriousness. “I would never breach your privacy like that.”
There were a few seconds of silence between them as they watched Thea slowly shrink away from the exuberant smith who was still talking rapid fire at her.
“I just think it’s very brave of you to be willing to go out in public with all that meat dangling down there.”
“Shut up!” Aila snapped, whipping around to punch Syd in the side which only resulted in her shaking her own hand out from hitting the brick wall that was the Nephilim’s abs. “I don’t want her to overhear! And it’s not dangling! I’m using wraps!”
“Still awesome that you went for it and Kerr didn’t,” Syd said around a barely contained laugh.
“Only because I don’t have a dress and couldn’t fit all that schlong in my pants,” Kerr whispered in a sing-song voice from Syd’s other side.
“What couldn’t you fit in your pants?” Sabina suddenly spun around, directing her attention on the therion. “Was it your tail? I bet you have all kinds of trouble with your tail. So many tailors and armor smiths around here don’t take into account therion bodies with their wares which is a shame since it means you have to spend extra just to get a decent pair of pants adjusted for your tail but at the same time it makes sense since there are hardly any therions in Weigrun much less Far Felsen so I guess there isn’t much of a market but don’t you worry because I promise I can make armor for you if you want it because I’ve made armor for other therions before and actually if you want I might be able to make some adjustments now if you like because I’m not too bad with sewing needle and—”
Sabina’s ramblings continued as she rounded on the amused Kerr, her amusement only growing into outright laughter as the half-elf dove right around her side and started pulling on the belt of her pants and checking the positioning of the hole made for her gray-furred tail. She seemed completely heedless of the fact that she was practically groping Kerr’s ass to check the fit of her pants, which only made the absurd situation better in Jadis’ opinion.
“Yeah, I think you’re going to fit right in,” Jay shook her head with a laugh.
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