45. True Happiness and Something Shaped Like Hope

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/48/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

What does it mean to be human?
Kishiri turned the question over whenever her mind cleared, even as Ashera and Lalilalai—who had arrived later—worked her body between their hands. No answer came.
Pride, honor, dignity—none of these belonged to her.
She had been raised from birth to be a tool.
She received orders. She protected other people’s pride. Her own will never entered into it.
Even so, she had refused to become something other than human.
If that refusal did not come from dignity, perhaps it came from instinct: the species trying to keep itself alive.
They say that when a human life is in danger, the wish to bear a child rises of its own accord.
The species refuses.
It is not the wish of the individual.
A life, in the end, is only a journey toward the most complete self-satisfaction one can manage.
If that is so, what meaning is there in being bound to the human species at all?
It had taken a long time—but Kishiri was, at last, beginning to accept that the meaning was none.

Everything was being overwritten by pleasure.
Even the instincts imprinted at birth thinned and faded before something so overwhelming.

Lalilalai’s tongue entered through her mouth and filled her lungs.
Ashera forced her throat open as well, twisting a long tongue down until it occupied her stomach.
In a “sane” state, the act would have been impossible to accept. Repeated often enough, the resistance vanished.
Now she asked for it herself. She wanted them inside her again.
The faintly warm, soft tongues moving through her chest and belly had become, to her, something precious.

So she wished to give something back.
After they had ruined her from within, she pushed Lalilalai down in turn, and when Ashera leaned close she met her mouth.
They scattered saliva, tangled those long tongues, and drove the joined length into Lalilalai’s throat.
They kept that kiss going inside her, sinking it as far as the stomach.
The sensation of her gullet being scraped drew a glad, strangled cry from Lalilalai.
Kishiri and Ashera used the sound like a drug, and answered it with sweet, broken voices of their own.

There was no longer any part of Kishiri they had not claimed.
From her feet to the crown of her head they had mapped her, and the inside of her was no exception.
Shadows sank into flesh and stroked every fiber of muscle with care.
Every opening the body possessed was reached as far as reach would go.
Organs they could not arrive at from without were taken up in their hands after her belly was opened, and tasted directly.
The heart was the worst of it. Each touch sent a pleasure so violent she thought she might die, and her mind went white.
The first time they opened her, she had screamed in terror. She grew used to it soon enough.
Perhaps an ordinary person would not.
She was made to grow used to it.
Because it felt good.
Once a human understands that an act is giving pleasure, vigilance collapses at once.
Heart and body begin to fit themselves to what is no longer human.

It went on like that, again and again.
At last Kishiri told them, of her own will:

“I want it—I want to become … the same as you two. A Demi-Vamp!”

She no longer needed the shadow lurking in her brain.
Goodbye to a cramped world.
Hello to a bottomless swamp.
Humans decide, on their own authority, that the highest thing is to be rewarded after suffering.
That is wrong. It is only an excuse for compromise.
Nothing surpasses a happiness that lasts.
Everyone, in truth, already knew it.

Continue reading →

44. Danger Zone XXX

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/47/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

She dreamed a nightmare.
A dream of slick, misshapen things crawling over her whole body.
In time the misshapen things tried to enter Kishiri from the mouth; her jaw was locked, and they could not.
So they looked for other openings.
A human body has fewer holes the will can close than it likes to think.
Against an abominable fluid organism, it is helpless.
She was entered.
From below to the face, through every opening that would not shut, they came into her, writhed, swelled, and tried to force their way out.
No matter how thoroughly one cut off stimulus from outside, if one was being changed from within, there was nothing to be done.
Kishiri’s flesh was being changed.
A body trained slender and supple became a swollen monstrosity, closer in shape to the misshapen things assaulting her than to a person.
Comrade.
You are a comrade.
The thing writhing in her ear whispered it to her, over and over.
Kishiri shook her head and resisted with all she had.
And on the other hand, she thought this as well.
If her flesh had not rejected magic—if she had been an ordinary human, without a trained mind.
She might already have been at ease.
Then the “true body” of the misshapen things appeared before Kishiri’s eyes and peered in.
It looked like Ashera. It looked like Lalilalai. It looked like Kishiri herself.
It jammed its own skull into Kishiri’s mouth, and tried to force its way into her.
A grind.
The jawbone came out of joint.
The flesh of the cheeks tore with a series of snaps.
The throat, too, was avoided; blood poured in quantity from the neck.
And the thing went in as far as the heart, fused, and began to pulse.
The blood was contaminated, or replaced.
The blood running from the split neck went black and stagnant.
The body was being fatally remade.
And even so—what Kishiri’s body felt was not pain, but a pleasure so strong she nearly slipped into rapture—

◇◇◇ Continue reading →

43. Remaining Myself, I Become Someone Other Than Myself

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/46/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Kishiri found that she had been asleep on the bed.
When she woke, the view beyond the window was already dyed madder-red.
It had been morning only a little while ago—too long for a nap.

“Good morning, Kishiri.”

Lalilalai was lying beside her.
Kishiri’s small body fit neatly in the woman’s arms, wrapped through and through in that warmth.

(I … I went back to my own room. Why is Lalilalai— No … that’s wrong. This is … her room. I—that’s right. After I left Lily, I came here …)
“My. Still half asleep? You insisted, you know. I have been lying here without laying a hand on you.”
“… Sorry. Lalilalai.”
“It’s all right. I was able to watch a very dear sleeping face.”

Apparently the sleeping face had been thoroughly observed.
Together with being called “dear,” it made her unaccountably ashamed; Kishiri buried her face in the woman’s chest.
Then her head was pulled into a tight embrace, and a violent mass of flesh surrounded her face.

“Mmgh …”
“Fufufu. An honest Kishiri is truly lovely. And you, too, are far happier this way, are you not?”
“…?”

She did not understand what Lalilalai was saying.
When Kishiri looked up from the woman’s chest, Lalilalai narrowed her eyes, loosened her arms with a rapt expression, and—
A wet crush.
A sound in the brain.
Kishiri understood, by instinct, that a kiss was being asked for, and brought her face closer.
What followed she registered only as a courtship gesture she knew by theory. There was no sensation. No taste. Lalilalai looked pleased, and that, for Kishiri, was enough.

“And you will still say you feel nothing? How very sad.”
“I don’t mind … If Lalilalai feels well, that’s enough.”
“How devoted. Ah, that is why I lament. Why a person as self-sacrificing as you cannot be happy.”

Lalilalai pitied her, and stroked her head.
A wet sound.
Then the viscous noise sounded again in Kishiri’s brain, and she—returned to her right mind.

“—?! Wh-what … why am I here … and just now … that—…”

The feel of Lalilalai remaining in her mouth.
Kishiri covered her mouth with her hand and shook her head again and again.

“I discussed it with Mama. What ought to be done. As you are, charm will not take properly, and to leave the insensibility untreated would be far too pitiful.”
“What … are you going to do?”
“I will rebuild your body to my preference.”

Lalilalai’s mouth hooked up.
That was madness. It was in no sense love.
Kishiri shoved the woman’s body away, and by spring of the body alone leapt from the bed and landed on the floor.

“You cannot run. Not as you are now.” Continue reading →

42. Let My Love Bloom in Your Innermost Depths

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/45/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Kishiri was brought into Ashera’s room, laid on the bed, and bound hand and foot by something black.
The room’s owner and Lalilalai stretched out on either side of her and spoke into her ears.

“You needn’t be so wary. We only mean to make you feel well.”
“…”

The gag meant to keep her from biting her tongue had already been removed, but for some reason Kishiri’s mouth would not take force.
It was not that she could not speak. She simply could not bite her tongue properly.
They had likely done something to the muscles, or the joints, on the way here.

“I don’t even hate that kind of defiance. Refreshing, isn’t it? Getting to teach Kishiri, who doesn’t know ‘real happiness,’ with my own hands.”

Ashera set a hand on Kishiri’s chest and, with one hand, began undoing the buttons of her outer clothes.
Kishiri’s face did not change.

Lalilalai moved as well. They worked at her from both sides, trying to pour charm in through contact with the skin.

And still Kishiri’s mouth stayed in a hard line, as if she did not even feel the tickle.
Ashera and Lalilalai, touching her directly, noticed the strangeness.
Two of them at once ought to have forced some change in body heat, willing or not. Kishiri showed no such tendency.
At the same time, there was a sensation that the magical power of “charm,” which ought to have been flowing in through the skin, was being struck away.

Ashera thought, abruptly, of the possibility that the girl had been educated from early childhood.
If one were raising a child as a spy, or an assassin, instruction alone would not suffice.
In some cases, one would rebuild the body into a convenient shape.

“You don’t feel anything when you’re touched, do you.”
“…”
“That face says, ‘And what of it?’”
“In other words, an absence of sensation?”
“Something close. But a body that refuses magical power isn’t something you can make easily. There’d have to be a matching price.”

Pleasure, of course—and pain, most likely, as well. Taste, probably, was dead too.
Only after going that far could a human acquire resistance to magic.

“Fine. We change the method.”
“What do you intend?”
“If the outside won’t work, we touch her from the inside.”
“Ah. I see!”

Lalilalai clapped her hands in understanding.
From behind the two of them, a single black tentacle extended.
It had come from their shadows.
It approached Kishiri’s ear slowly, and slipped, with a wet sound, into the canal. Continue reading →

41. A Feeling That Does Not Die Even in Death

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/44/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Kishiri excelled at covert work.
She had been raised for that purpose from the first. Had her employers not been carelessly destroyed, she would still be killing people in places the sun never reached.
They had received their punishment at the hands of the soldiers Lily led, and Kishiri had been left alone.
The one who had not passed sentence on her, but had asked instead, “Will you fight for the country with us?”, had been Lily, and no one else.
Lily was hopelessly kind. She strained herself until watching her made one uneasy. She was surely not, by nature, the sort of vessel that ought to become captain of the knights.
And so Kishiri had thought:
I want to stay at this person’s side. I want to support her from the shadows.

—I have to tell Lily. Now.

Having witnessed Narkil’s death, she moved at once.
She had already found it suspicious.
The replacement soldiers, all of them women. The plainly abnormal closeness of Ashera and Lalilalai. The strange atmosphere that hung over the castle.
But she had not yet obtained the material for certainty.
That was why she had said she would go to Lily’s room and still had not done it.
Now that she had seen the truth with her own eyes, there was no time left to hesitate.

Her small, thin body raced through the castle without a sound.
At a speed ordinary people could scarcely even catch with their eyes, Kishiri had almost—

“What’s the rush?”

At the last moment, she was found by the people she least wanted to meet.
Ashera and Lalilalai. Already, she judged, fallen into the enemy’s hands.
She thought of ignoring them and passing through. She could not.
Her arms and legs were already caught in something that could only be called “shadows”: black, formless, without temperature.

“We were just looking for you, Kishiri.”

Failure.
I should have moved sooner.
Kishiri regretted, sharply, her own lack of resolve.
If the enemy possessed some means of rewriting them, there was only one thing to do here.
Abandon the conceit that she, of all people, could resist.
Bite through her tongue. Kill herself.

“Ngh—?!”

Before she could move, a mass of that same black stuff was forced into her mouth.

“Don’t go wasting your life, Kishiri. We aren’t gonna eat you. We just want to understand each other, that’s all.”
“Quite so. And besides … Kishiri, you must become my ‘Mother.’”

Conversation was already useless.
She had to escape at any cost—but bound hand and foot, every method was already sealed.
Endure. There will be a chance. She made herself believe it.

“All right. Let’s go to my room.”

Still bound by shadows, Kishiri was taken to Ashera’s chambers.
In the end, the crisis unfolding in the castle never reached Lily.

Continue reading →

40. Today Is Garbage Day

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/43/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

To be honest, Lily had not wanted to look at the other knights’ faces, and she had not wanted to report on the king who would not come out, who had made no progress at all.
But several days had passed since the first meeting, and she could hardly remain silent forever; so she had steeled herself.
Thus seven knights gathered before a captain suffering from a stomachache—and yet—

“… Why don’t we just start and not worry about it?”
“No, but still.”
“I think we ought to ignore it as well. Though it is obvious that nothing has progressed, so dissolving the meeting as it stands would also be fine.”

The knights’ gazes were all turned on Ashera and Lalilalai.
That the two of them got on like cats and dogs was common knowledge among them.
Only a few days ago they had had a spectacular fight and made a magnificent mess of things.

“Even so, this sudden about-face is more than even I can hide my confusion over. Oi, you two, are you listening?”

Even when Narkil addressed them, there was no reply.
Ashera and Lalilalai had their arms linked, looking only at each other, building a world of two.
… Or so it seemed; they had, after all, been able to hear. Ashera looked toward Narkil and spoke.

“Have you been talking about me and Lara this whole time?”
“What else would I be talking about! What is that distance … or rather, that way of calling her!”
“Lara is Lara. This kid asked me to call her that.”
“I still have the memory of Mother calling me so. Therefore I wanted Mama to call me that as well.”
“… Mama?”
“Yes! Mama Ashera!”

Lalilalai’s smile was as pure as a child’s.
Faced with an expression that unsoiled, Narkil swayed and crumpled.

“You all right, Narkil.”
“Madis, give me one of your medicines … something terribly strong, the sort that lets one flee reality.”
“It isn’t that I don’t have such a thing, but you would never return to reality.”
“I don’t care! That Lalilalai is calling Ashera ‘Mama’! It is a nightmare, it must be a nightmare! Or rather, Saints, David—are you two not far too calm!?”

Shown a scene he could not accept, yet having grasped that abuse was wasted on a world of two, Narkil turned the point of his anger elsewhere.
Saints and David, however, only answered with a careless “Haha.”
Meanwhile the atmosphere between the two who were looking at each other continued to rise.

“Mama, I cannot bear it any longer.”
“You sure? Everyone’s watching.”
“I do not mind. Whoever may be looking, whatever they may say, only Mama’s words reach my ears.”
“Lara …” Continue reading →

39. Ten Tenths of Righteousness Is Sophistry

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/42/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Lalilalai was conscious of herself as a holy woman.
She believed it because she possessed a deeper love than anyone, and because she could, in fact, love even a person she had just met, without conditions.
And her love was, as a rule, not refused.
That was because Lalilalai had a body men found ideal, and because she housed in her heart a maternity that could make even a woman go weak—and yet
for some reason, it had never gone well with Ashera alone.
Why did Ashera not merely reject her love, but deny it entirely?
Until now their strengths had been matched, so Lalilalai had been able to believe in her own love.
This time, however, she had lost.

“Are you saying my love was wrong?”

She had been turning that over ever since the quarrel the other day.
It ought to have been right. Why, then, had the Ashera who denied it been able to win?
However long she thought, only one conclusion presented itself.

“It is because you do not know love. Poor Ashera.”

Lalilalai murmured it.
—That’s exactly why I can’t stand the likes of you.
She could almost hear Ashera’s complaint.

“If we held one another even once we would understand, and yet … if only you would entrust your body to me for a single night …”

So saying, she took her cup in both hands and sipped her tea.
Drinking this herbal tea was said to warm the body through and through.
Keeping one’s temperature a little high was, apparently, one of the secrets of pleasing a man.
That said, the partner she currently had in mind was a woman.

“Lalilalai. You in?”

Speak of someone and they appear, or so the saying went.
Just as she had been thinking of Ashera, Ashera’s voice came from beyond the door.
Lalilalai could not help feeling it was fate.

“I am here. I shall open it at once.”

She answered, hurried to the door, opened it, and received her with a full smile.
She had expected Ashera to be scowling, and so she had made her own smile a little more extravagant than usual, thinking that at least she herself should.
Contrary to expectation, the woman who appeared wore a mild expression. Her temper did not seem bad.

“Sorry. Showing up all of a sudden.”

That first utterance gave Lalilalai a violent sense of wrongness.
If her memory was correct, this was the first time Ashera had ever directed an apology at her.
A smile, too.
Something quite good must have happened.
As Ashera was now, it might even be possible to convey Lalilalai’s love.
She had begun to hold that hope.

“Please do not trouble yourself. If anything, I am simply glad you came.”
“That’s a relief.”
“I shall brew tea at once, so please sit and wait.”

Lalilalai spoke as she turned toward the pot.
Ashera came up behind her, opened both arms—and held her, gently.

“… Ashera?”
“Forget the tea. There’s something I want to ask of you today.”
“And what would that be?”
“Up to now, you and I have done nothing but fight. I’m sure that’s because the ‘love’ each of us had in mind never lined up.”

By that point, Lalilalai already understood what Ashera wanted.
So her body began to prepare to receive her.
Heat rose through her; her skin took on a faint flush and grew damp.

“If we understand each other, I think we can be real companions.”
“Ashera … I have been waiting for those words all this time.”

They tilted their heads and let their mouths meet.
Before long their tongues twined, and they began to make nasal sounds.
When Ashera’s hand then crawled over her through her clothes, Lalilalai rolled her hips as if dancing.

“Ah, haa … just as I imagined. You are terribly passionate.”
“What were you imagining me doing, exactly.”
“That much is decided. Shall I tell you why I did not leave my room after that battle?”
“You don’t have to. This room’s full of your scent.”
“… Shall I air it?”
“What’s with the meekness. It’s not a bad smell. Just smelling it makes me want your body more and more.”
“Kyah!?”

Ashera scooped Lalilalai up in her arms. Continue reading →

38. I Cannot Do It as Well as You

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/41/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

“Oh? Chii-chan, what are you doing in a place like this?”

Miyako had come to the dining hall to wet her throat, and found Chigusa sitting alone, sunk in thought.
Chigusa was supposed to be handling Lily, the captain of the knights. How was that going?
Lately Miyako had been glued to Ashera and they had hardly spoken—so she took the neighboring seat and leaned in.

“Mya-nee?”
“You looked bored out of your mind. What’s wrong? Something happen with Lily?”
“… Something of that sort, yes. I did tell you that the vampire who changed me into this body was named Camilla.”
“Yeah, I heard.”

Chigusa spoke with a grave face.

“Apparently that Camilla was a friend of Lily’s.”

Miyako cocked her head.

“Huh? But wasn’t Camilla the one who tried to lay hands on a princess named Sara and got cut down by the knight captain?”
“That much seems to be true, but there appears to be more beneath it … No matter how many times we speak, Lily only blurs that part and will not make it clear.”

And so today, too, Chigusa had been waiting in the dining hall, hoping Lily would come.
The one who actually arrived, unexpectedly, was Miyako.

“Come to think of it—the first place they dumped Chii-chan’s body was a trash heap, right?”
“Yes. That is where I met Camilla.”
“I’ve thought this for a while. Even for people who came from another world, isn’t that sloppy? Same goes for Camilla. They were careless enough to throw her out in a place like that, and that’s how the Chii-chan we have now got born.”

Chigusa had wondered the same thing for some time.
To the people of this world they were outsiders; their lives were worth little. If one thought of it that way, it was not unnatural.
Camilla, however, was different.
She was a vampire with high regenerative power, and she had been Lily’s friend.

“One possibility that comes to mind is that someone ordered it.”
“Is there even anyone who could do that? Still, that does seem like the likeliest one.”
“Mm …”

Thinking did not produce an answer.
At that time, the castle had held any number of people who could give orders to soldiers.
Unlike now, when almost no one remained properly alive, there was no way to narrow it down.
In the end, it seemed they would have to draw it out of Lily.
And yet something snagged strangely in Chigusa’s memory.
Camilla’s traces had not all vanished.
The memory of that time—it was certainly still there, somewhere in Chigusa’s mind.

Continue reading →

37. Not Madness, but Ignorance

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/40/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Camilla Dilideed.
It was the first time Chigusa had heard the full name, but if it was someone connected to the captain of the knighthood, and the name was Camilla, it could hardly be unrelated to that vampire Camilla.
Inwardly shaken that Camilla’s name had come up in such an unexpected place, Chigusa listened to the rest.

“The Dilideed house is a noble family, not especially wealthy, but they keep a villa in the royal capital. Camilla was a handful from childhood, and she used to sneak into our estate in secret.”
“What were the guards doing?”
“Exactly. Well, perhaps they saw that she and I were close and looked the other way.”

Whether that counted as being considerate was a dubious question.

“And so, after those secret meetings, once Camilla and I began attending school in the capital, we were finally able to associate openly. She was good with a sword as well, and we often clashed as rivals.”
“To go up against you, Captain—that’s considerable skill.”
“Well, at school we were among the top, at least. Camilla may have thought that if she surpassed me, who already had the captaincy lined up, she could enter the knighthood.”
“… Perhaps so that you could be together?”
“Who knows. Neither of us was honest, so I don’t know what she was thinking when she tried to join. But she was certainly fixated on strength.”

Hearing that, Chigusa thought.
Perhaps Camilla, too, had been a being granted a vampire’s power, as she herself had.
She did not know the finer circumstances, but Camilla had probably been unable to surpass Lily.
And so she had not been able to join the knighthood.
Still wishing somehow to catch up, she had—offered herself to the inhuman.

“What is that Camilla doing now?”

Chigusa knew the answer, but she asked anyway.
There was a chance, however slight, that it was a case of mistaken identity.
Lily answered at once.

“She’s dead. I cut her down.”

The reply she had expected.
In other words—the Camilla Dilideed she spoke of was, after all, almost certainly the very person who had made Chigusa a Demi-Vamp.

“It’s about time… If you wouldn’t mind, would you listen again sometime?”
“If someone like me will do.”
“Thank you. That’s a help.”

So saying, Lily left the mess hall at a quick pace.
Watching her back, Chigusa felt, strangely, a little forlorn.
Perhaps Camilla’s feelings inside her were appealing for something.

Continue reading →

36. Into the Depths of the Story

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/39/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

After the meeting, Ashera did a light bout of combat training with David at the training grounds.
It had gone a long way toward relieving her stress—but on her way to the showers to wash off the sweat, she came face to face with the last person she wanted to meet.

“Geh…”
“Oh my, what a coincidence, Ashera. Were you training with David?”
“None of your business. Leave me alone.”
“Is it so strange to take an interest in the movements of one’s fellow members of the knighthood?”

Fellow members or not, they had never once acted as a group.
To begin with, opportunities for the members to be clustered in the same place like this were so rare it was doubtful they had even happened once.

“By the way, Ashera, I am in a terrible bind.”
“Good for you. Stay in a bind forever.”

Ashera had no intention of listening to anyone’s troubles; she fluttered a hand and tried to leave.
But Lalilalai, at her own pace, put a question to her.

“There is not a man to be seen anywhere in this castle. At this rate I cannot fulfill my duties as a holy woman.”
“Then Madis or Narkil would do, wouldn’t they? Or why don’t you seduce the king and drag him out yourself?”
“I did try, but no matter how provocatively, how sensually I spoke to him, there was no response. I had been confident I could arouse sexual excitement in any man, so I have been a little depressed.”

So she actually tried, Ashera retorted inwardly.
But perhaps that, too, was very like Lalilalai.
She did not choose to whom she offered her body.
Ally or enemy, noble or vagrant—if she was wanted, she gladly let herself be taken.
“That is my own form of love,” she would say, without once doubting her ethics.

“If there’s nobody around, that’s fine, isn’t it? It’s a rare holiday. Rest your body, literally.”
“Oh my, you are concerned for my body. How happy I am to hear you say such a thing, Ashera. I cannot help but… ahh, my body is growing hot.”
“… You really don’t pick your partners. What are you, a rabbit in heat?”
“How charming. A rabbit.”
“Yeah, sure. Below a rabbit, if you mean you’ve got no charm. Even they don’t go around casually aborting kids.”
“Casually? Did you just say I abort them casually, Ashera!”

A shadow fell across the smile that had not broken once until now.
The subject of abortion was a land mine for her.
Ashera, for her part, grinned at the sight—in other words, she had understood it was taboo and brought it up on purpose.
Lalilalai closed the distance by a step and set her hand on the hem of her coat.
Then, as if to show Ashera her skin, she rolled it up and bared herself.

“My eldest son, Edge; my second son, Lugrade; my third son, Alphaus—”

One by one, she pointed to the tattoos of fetuses carved into her torso.

“My eldest daughter, Muse; my fourth son, Sein; my second daughter, Norn; my third daughter, Room; my fourth daughter, Kiria; my fifth son, Jess; and my sixth son, Bardon!” Continue reading →