Voluptuous.
The four-syllable word popped into Jadis’ head unbidden. Voluptuous really was an excellent adjective to use to describe the elf cleric standing naked in the archway leading to the bathhouse soaking pools. Exquisitely beautiful would work as well, as would pretty much any variation on the word gorgeous.
In cruder terms, the woman was stacked.
With a white towel draped over one arm, Jadis could see Eir’s body on full display. Her breasts were large but didn’t show a hint of sag, perfectly shaped and capped with dark red nipples that stood erect in the cold air. The priestess was far shorter than Aila, a comparison that Jadis knew was skewed, but the shorter stature of the elf truly emphasized the bounty of her chest. Her waist was narrow but flared out at the hips in a way neither Jadis nor Aila could match, giving the elf a classic hourglass figure. She didn’t have the lean muscle definition in her arms, legs, or abs the way Aila did either, much less like Jadis’ athletic bodies. Instead, Eir looked soft, plush to the touch, even. Her dark red skin was as unblemished as Jadis’ marble-like complexion was; though lacking the muscle tone Jadis possessed, Eir’s flesh looked silky smooth and irresistibly touchable.
Jadis was busy thinking about what it would feel like to run her hands across Eir’s lovely thick thighs when she noticed the nervous look growing on the elf’s face. She was still standing there in the archway, her fingers twisting together anxiously, dark purple eyes not quite meeting hers.
Realizing that Eir had asked a question and she had just left the poor elf hanging for probably a solid thirty seconds, Jadis mentally shook herself out of her distraction and did her best to recover from the now slightly awkward atmosphere.
“Sure, come on in and join us,” Syd said, motioning for Eir to sit to her right.
Eir’s face instantly brightened as she headed over at a quick but controlled pace. She demurely slipped into the water next to Syd, greeting all three of Jadis as well as Aila. Once Eir was fully situated in the pool, there was a bit of an uncomfortable silence between the five of them, conversation topics not immediately popping up.
Jadis couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to her that Eir was purposefully not looking anywhere near her three bodies’ crotches. Did she know about her unique biology? The steamy water wasn’t exactly much cover, but with the way she was sitting her dicks weren’t obvious either, not to a casual glance.
Maybe the elf knew some details about the nature of Nephilim? She’d have to explore the possibility.
Eventually Jadis decided to break the tension with an old classic standby line.
“So. Come here often?”
“Um, somewhat, yes,” Eir said, finding her voice. She seemed to come out of a trance, clearing her throat and blinking rapidly for a moment. “We have a bath in the temple, but sometimes it's nice to come here to relax since it's larger. Do you use these facilities regularly?”
“Didn’t know they existed until today,” Syd answered with a casual shrug.
Jadis didn’t miss how Eir’s eyes were briefly drawn down to Syd’s chest with the motion. A suspicion began to form in her mind that the lovely elf’s presence at the bathhouse might not be a simple coincidence. Interesting.
“My fault, really,” Aila said easily. “I keep forgetting that these big oafs have no knowledge or experience of the city. Should have suggested it earlier so they didn’t have to try and squeeze into that little tub in the inn.”
“Oafs!” Eir squeaked out. “Miss Aila, not to be argumentative, but I don’t think it’s entirely correct to refer to Nephilim as ‘oafs’ as you put it. They should be treated with greater respect.”
The cleric’s passionate statement was met with raised eyebrows, from both Jadis’ selves and Aila.
Before the arcanist could respond, Dys let out a chuckle and grinned teasingly at the somewhat flustered elf.
“But what if I like being called an oaf?”
Eir tilted her head like a confused puppy. “You do?”
“We like being called just about anything so long as its Aila doing the calling,” Dys explained with a wink.
“Not the ideal pet name, admittedly,” Jay added, “But I think it’s a work in progress.”
As Jay spoke, she slipped her hand to Aila’s thigh under the water, running her fingers up and down the pleasing flesh there. Aila made no outward reaction to the touch, not taking the bait and getting riled up at Jadis’ teasing, but she didn’t reject her advances, either.
Dys shifted her position a little, raising her knee up out of the water so that her body blocked Eir’s view of Aila a little more. Simultaneously, she slipped her left hand behind the arcanist’s back, moving to palm her extremely squeezable buttocks.
That too prompted no outward reaction. Jadis idly wondered how much the redhead would be willing to put up with.
“Well, if it’s what you want,” Eir replied to Jay and Dys’ assertions, the doubt on her face washing away as her eyes slid hungrily along Dys’ exposed leg. “Then I shan’t make any objections. My apologies for overstepping my boundaries, Miss Aila.”
“You’re perfectly fine,” Aila said, her voice hitching on the last word as Jay’s middle finger gently caressed the crease of where her leg met her hip.
“Let me ask you, though,” Syd said, drawing Eir’s attention. “Why do you care if Aila calls any of us an oaf, or dumb, or a fuckwit for that matter? What’s it matter to you?”
Eir flinched at the crude insult, slipping a little lower into the water.
“I’ve never called them that,” Aila clarified, face placid as a mountain lake while Jadis groped her under the water.
“Um, ah, it’s just. Ahem,” she cleared her throat, looking every bit the innocently bashful young priestess. “As you are Nephilim, I believe you should be treated with the reverence you deserve.”
“Why would we deserve any reverence at all?” Syd asked, interested in the odd thinking of the priestess. “We’re just people. Nothing particularly special.”
That wasn’t true. Jadis was a reincarnated soul, sent to Oros from another world on the personal mission of a god. She didn’t think it likely there were too many other people around who could claim the same. Not on Oros, at least. Who knew about other planets. So Jadis knew that she was certainly a special existence on Oros, at least in that sense. But why did Eir think so? She couldn’t know about her origin or god-given mission. At least, she didn’t think she knew. Would the elf have some inkling based on her apparent relationship with the gods?
“Goodness, how can you say that?” Eir gasped, looking offended at the very idea that Syd had dismissed her nature as anything less than extraordinary. “Nephilim are the Children of Lyssandria! Her most beautiful, most beloved of creations! Heralds of her will and rightful stewards of her dominion, the Nephilim epitomize everything we who dedicate our lives to our Lady Lyssandria aspire to be. You three are her avatars on Oros!”
Jadis’ lascivious hands stilled in their motions across Aila’s skin for a moment as she took in the implications of the information imparted by Eir’s impassioned speech. She had realized after her interview with the magistrate that the Nephilim were a known race on Oros, albeit an extinct one. Vraekae had also mentioned that the race of giants were “Lyssandria’s Children” but she hadn’t known what exactly that meant, lacking context that the magistrate had not provided at the time.
If she understood Eir correctly, the cleric was saying the Nephilim were some kind of chosen race of a goddess named Lyssandria. A race that had been wiped out by demons thousands of years ago, far back enough in history to have been forgotten by the everyday person like Aila or Sabina, but still important enough to the religious practices of the priests who worshiped Lyssandria to be remembered as their paragons of virtue.
And if a young priestess like Eir knew, Jadis was as certain as dawn that High Priest Gerhardt knew, too.
Jadis’ hands resumed their unseen travels along Aila’s flesh, continuing to tease her companion. Whatever strange revelations might come from her conversation with Eir, she wasn’t going to let herself be distracted from what was truly important to her.
Though she could multitask.
Syd leaned her elbow on the edge of the pool, shifting slightly closer to Eir, forcing the purple-haired elf to lean back to maintain eye contact with her.
“Thank you for the explanation,” Syd smiled genuinely at the elf, enjoying the way she was growing flustered with her proximity. “We’ve never been told about our status with Lyssandria before. In fact, we know next to nothing about Lyssandria. Our patron god is D, so he’s the only one we have any familiarity with.”
Eir looked lost, dark purple eyes widening in disbelieving confusion.
“D? Do you mean Destarious? But he’s—he’s not your patron! He can’t be. Lyssandria is—”
“Unknown to us,” Syd interrupted, propping her head up on her hand as she gazed down at the smaller woman. “Not saying we’ve got any kind of problem with her; we just don’t know the lady. D’s our god. Our secondary classes are dedicated to him, actually. Is that a problem?”
Syd’s question was asked with a raised eyebrow. Jadis was curious to see how the priestess would react to the information. Was there some kind of long-standing beef between D and Lyssandria? Were the two deities at odds, meaning Jadis’ reincarnation as one of Lyssandria’s children was meant as some kind of slight? D hadn’t mentioned any gods other than his stepfather, the god she presumed was called Valtar based on context, and Samleos. What was Lyssandria’s part in the family squabble, if any?
There were several moments where mixed emotions played across Eir’s beautiful face. Jadis amused herself trying to follow the expressions. Well, mostly she amused herself by trying to get Aila to break her composure without putting her fingers on any directly erogenous zones, but still.
“I suppose it’s not wrong,” Eir allowed, finally coming to some internal decision. “But you simply must let me teach you about Lyssandria! She is your true patron, even if the mercurial D has claimed your loyalty for now, you three are simply meant to be Lyssandria’s representatives on Oros.”
“You can tell us all about her,” Dys chimed in, her lips quirking up at the eagerness Eir was so obviously showing at the idea. “Later, though. It’s been a long day and I’m sure we’d all rather relax than turn this nice bath into some kind of Sunday School teaching event.”
“…Sunday School?” Eir asked, looking even more confused.
“Never mind the weird words they use,” Aila broke into the conversation, her voice remaining surprisingly level despite the things Dys was doing to her rear. “They have some odd phrases mixed into proper imperial that come from being from a secluded mountain tribe. You learn to ignore the nonsense.”
Before Jadis could make a smart remark to counter Aila’s statement, the redhead’s hand found its way to Dys’ ass, giving it a good squeeze that almost made her jump. Turnabout was fair play, it seemed, and by the way Aila’s fingers were moving across first Dys’ and then Jay’s skin, she was set on making Jadis be the first to break her composure.
“Just one question, actually,” Jay spoke up from her spot furthest away from Eir. “What’s Lyssandria’s relationship to Destarious? They aren’t on bad terms or something like that, right?”
Jadis genuinely hoped the answer was no. If D was using her very existence as some kind of underhanded taunt, she’d have to find some way to navigate being a living insult.
“No, not really,” Eir answered, assuaging some of Jadis’ fears. “Though I suppose there are many stories in the combined scriptures telling tales of Destarious’ tricks, sowing chaos on the mortal and immortal realms just for his own amusement. As his mother, I think Lyssandria has always been more tolerant of his mischief than other gods.”
Ah. There it was. D had reincarnated Jadis into the body of an extinct race that were ostensibly the chosen people of his mother. That felt like all kinds of weird when she thought about it. The possibility of her existence being an insult seemed less likely, but there was no way it wasn’t some kind of ploy on the part of the off-kilter god.
Shit. The whole situation felt like it was veering more and more into the realm of political maneuvering, a detestable domain Jadis had no interest in engaging in. Not that she could afford to be ignorant, not when literal gods were the ones doing the maneuvering. She just didn’t want to deal with the implications at the moment, not when she wasn’t even sure what the implications were or if she could do anything about them. In any case, it was getting harder and harder to concentrate on anything other than the way Aila’s hands were teasing her or the way Aila felt under her fingertips.
She wouldn’t mind using her apparent status with Eir to get one thing she wanted, though.
“Can I ask a favor of you?” Syd said, grinning in a way calculated to make the obviously crushing elf twist and turn in her seat. “We’d never met any other races before coming down out of the mountains. But we’d heard of them. And there’s one thing we’ve always wanted to do.”
Eir stared up worshipfully as Syd practically loomed over her.
“Yes?” she said, a small quaver in her voice.
“Would you let me touch your ears?”
Eir’s breath caught in her throat. By the way Aila suddenly pinched both of Jay and Dys’ buttocks, she got the feeling she might have gotten a little too personal. Still, it was too late to take the request back. Boldly, she added a reciprocal promise.
“If you do, I’ll owe you a free touch wherever you want.”
The elf froze at Syd’s offer. Out of the corner of Jay and Dys’ eyes, Jadis saw Aila roll her eyes and felt her resume her gentle underwater caresses.
“Deal.”
Eir squeaked the word out, practically vibrating in anticipation.
Syd’s grin widened. Taking immediate advantage of the permission given, she reached her hand out to Eir’s slightly twitching left ear and gently ran her finger along the lower edge, tracing the straight line all the way to the tip before rubbing the end between thumb and forefinger.
“Oh,” was the only verbal response to come out of Eir, but the single syllable spoke volumes and, by tone and virtue, sent a pulse of warmth straight to Jadis’ cores that combined with Aila’s touch made it almost impossible for her to keep her cocks from jumping to immediate full attention.
Syd only brushed her fingers along Eir’s soft ear for a moment longer before she pulled away. The act was dangerously addictive. As she pulled back, Eir’s head leaned toward Syd, following the escaping hand for a brief moment before she seemed to come to her senses and forcibly pulled herself back.
“I really, really hate to spoil the mood,” Dys said in a voice darkened with building lust, “but we should probably be getting out of the bath now. It’s getting late and while we don’t turn pruney, I know Aila is starting to.”
“Yeah, thanks for the touch,” Syd said, eyes still locked with Eir’s. “I’ll owe you one back later, okay?”
The elf simply nodded, perhaps not trusting what noises might come out of her mouth if she tried to speak at that moment.
“Then I suppose we should get going,” Aila agreed, standing up and letting the water cascade off of her lithe body as she got out of the pool.
Jadis couldn’t help but watch the tantalizing show as Aila strode naked over to a bench where she’d left her fluffy towel. As Aila began drying herself off, the realization came to Jadis that she would have to get out of the water next and put on her own show. This caused her to glance back appraisingly at Eir, the elf apparently having not looked away from Syd once the whole time.
“Quick question,” Syd said as she shifted in the water to face Eir fully. “Have you ever seen any depictions of Nephilim? Naked depictions?”
Jadis couldn’t tell if Eir was blushing, not with her wine-red skin color, but the way her ears twitched and her eyes widened was a pretty good indication of just how flustered the question made the elf.
“Yes, I have,” she practically whispered.
“Oh good. Then you won’t be surprised,” Syd noted nonchalantly before standing up to her full height in front of the beautiful priestess, Jay and Dys doing the same behind her.
As Jadis’ three selves exited the pool and retrieved their own towels, casually drying off in the cool air of the bathhouse, Eir sat frozen, her head locked in one position, eyes comically wide. She made no response to the farewells Jadis and Aila sent her way, just sitting unmoving in the same spot as they exited the pool room.
“I think you might have cracked her,” Aila murmured as she led the amused giants out of the bathhouse.
559