Chapter 509: A Game For Cuddles [Bonus - ]
Silas laughed softly beneath his breath, watching the eight silver predators settle down like an oversized pack of hound puppies.
"You all are really cute..."
He leaned back against a smooth slab of basalt, extending his long legs across the fur-lined blankets.
He pulled the heavy, silver-threaded collar of his cloak down around his chest, closing his eyes to let the ambient warmth of Aurelia’s flame settle into his bones.
The cavern was quiet, a bit too quiet for his liking to be honest.
When he opened his eyes again, several pairs of female eyes were locked onto him.
Silas froze.
The space on his left was already occupied by Eluned, who had curled her slender silk-robed legs beneath her and anchored two hands around his forearm.
But the space on his right... a wide empty stretch of soft bearskin blanket was completely unoccupied.
More importantly, the flat broad expanse of his chest was entirely open.
To the exhausted freshly fed warriors trapped in a freezing cavern, that open chest looked like a prime piece of real estate.
Tasmin’s amber eyes flicked from the corner of the mat to his collarbone, her jaw tightening with subtle assessment.
Kadi was nervously adjusting the brass bangles on her wrists, her dark eyes darting toward his boots with an unmistakable hungry intensity.
’Tch... Eluned really is a bitch.’
Beside her, Aeliana sat with her knees pressed tightly together with her silver-gold irises wide behind her wire-rimmed spectacles and her chest rising and falling in shallow rapid breaths as she stared at the fur trim of his coat.
Even the Princess had crept two inches closer across the wool, her cheeks flushed a light peach as she curled a lock of azure hair around her thumb.
The only one who wasn’t currently calculating an approach vector was Thor.
The towering God of Thunder was lying flat on her back three paces away with her boots kicked off and her massive woolen stockings resting against Titan’s furry rump.
Her mouth was slightly open with a tiny comical line of clear drool pooling at the corner of her lips as she stared up at the granite ceiling, her chest heaving in slow massive rhythms.
"Mmmmph..." Thor grunted in her half-sleep, muttering toward the rock. "More salted ribs... Silas, tell the dwarf to bring the four-gallon cask... this cave isn’t half bad... quite comfy, honestly..."
Eluned slowly raised her head from Silas’s arm, her emerald eyes narrowing as she surveyed the competitors circled around the mat.
An incredibly wicked smirk spread across the World Spirit’s porcelain lips.
’Look at her,’ Eluned thought, her gaze lingering on the drooling thunder deity. ’Even after centuries of wandering between dimensions... Thor is still the exact same lumbering oaf as when I first laid eyes on her in the old realms. She has zero feminine cunning but these other girls...’
She sat up, smoothing her green robes over her thighs with an exaggerated graceful rustle.
"Well, well," Eluned chimed, her melodic voice cutting through the heavy silence of the cave. "It seems our Lord is rather cold... Every single one of you is staring at my husband’s chest as if it were a platter of roast quail."
"I am merely observing the defensive posture of our commander’s position," Tasmin rasped without blinking, though her ears twitched.
"I was checking his cloak’s weave," Morwenna lied through her teeth, her black fringe falling over her gray eyes as she crossed her arms over Tidebringer. "Making sure the dwarven alloy wasn’t warping under the heat."
She would have jumped at it but she didn’t want to be called a virgin by Eluned again.
’Even if I’m a bit rude... I want my first time to be lovely.’
"You’re both terrible liars," Eluned purred, tilting her head. "And since I am a benevolent goddess who believes in fair governance, I will not monopolize the Lord’s warmth... I propose a trial. A contest if you will!"
Silas blinked, his composure instantly slipping into deep suspicion.
"Elu, wait, I don’t think we need a—"
"Hush, Silas, the men don’t dictate the terms of the inner pavilion," Eluned interrupted smoothly, waving a pale hand dismissively in his face.
"Aye, pipe down, Captain," Morwenna barked, suddenly leaning forward with sharp competitive fervor. "If there’s a wager on the table, a sailor doesn’t turn it down... What’s the game, weed?"
"A simple game of Root and Stone," Eluned declared, raising her right hand.
From her palm, four tiny smooth wooden blocks of heartwood manifested.
Each block was carved with four distinct elemental runes which were Gale, Tide, Earth, and Ember.
"The rules are simple," Eluned explained, her eyes sparkling with divine mischief. "Each player draws two blocks blind. We place them in the center simultaneously... If your rune counters the opponent’s, you advance one step along the stone grid. If there is a clash, the one who can channel a micro-thread of that exact element to ignite the carving wins the contested ground, for those who don’t have the affinities, you can just pour your mana and it’ll give the same effect. The first one to take the center stone... wins the right to use the Lord as her personal mattress for the remainder of the watch."
"I’m sitting right here," Silas pointed out dryly.
Nobody listened to him.
"A duel of elemental intuition and reaction time?" Aurelia murmured, her golden eyes lighting up with quiet interest. "I see..."
She usually wouldn’t participate in this but honestly Aurelia wanted to check if she was really seductive to someone like their Lord.
"I have excellent manual dexterity," Aeliana whispered, pushing her spectacles up her nose with her mind already mapping the probability combinations of four runes.
"I’m in," Kadi growled, rolling her shoulders like she was stepping into a gladiatorial pit.
"Let’s see your steel, then!" Morwenna grinned savagely, dropping to her knees at the edge of the mat.
From her spot by the Alpha wolf, Thor cracked one storm-blue eye open.
She looked at the seven women huddled around four wooden blocks with deathly white-knuckled seriousness, then glanced at Silas, who was rubbing his temples in utter defeat.
"Gwahahaha!" Thor’s belly laugh rumbled through the cavern, vibrating the dust on the stalactites. "Mortal women are truly terrifying creatures! They face down monsters with cold steel, and now they bicker like wolves over a single scrap of bone! Silas, you are truly a doomed man!"
"Thanks for the support, Thor," Silas muttered.
"Anytime, comrade!" Thor bellowed, resting her chin in her hand to watch the spectacle unfold.
"Round one!" Eluned announced, tossing the blocks onto the center of the blanket.
CLACK-CLACK!
The first clash was between Morwenna and Tasmin.
The Pirate Queen slammed down a Tide block with enough force to make the blanket jump.
THUD!
Tasmin countered with Gale...
"Current breaks before the squall," Tasmin rasped, her eyes narrowing as a wisp of razor-sharp wind curled around her fingernail.
FZZZT!
"Not when the tide has iron in it, shadow-rat!" Morwenna snarled.
Her gray eyes flashed and a microscopic drop of high-pressure sea moisture formed at the tip of her index finger, slamming into the wooden block with a sharp tick that forced Tasmin’s wind to shatter.
"Point to the quartermaster!" Morwenna roared, thrusting her fist into the air!
"That was improper pressure application," Tasmin clicked her tongue, retreating to the rear rank with a dark scowl.
"Next!"
Aurelia stepped forward against Kadi.
The Saintess laid down Ember, her block radiating with a pure immaculate silver warmth that smelled of dried lavender while Kadi slammed down Earth, attempting to smother the flame beneath a micro-barrier of dense sand grit.
CRACKLE!
"Faith does not suffocate beneath dirt, sister," Aurelia whispered.
She really hated talking like that but it pissed people off and if she managed to pull that off then the person could lose their focus.
The holy flame flared, glassing the sand into tiny translucent beads in an instant.
Kadi groaned, throwing her hands up in defeat as Aurelia claimed the square.
"Now... the semi-finals," Eluned purred, stepping forward to face Aurelia herself.
The World Spirit didn’t even drop a block as she simply looked at the remaining pieces, and a tiny living vine erupted from the wood, flipping the Gale rune forward with effortless divine authority.
Aurelia’s Ember clashed against the living wood, but Eluned’s primordial mana was simply too vast as the vine absorbed the heat, blooming into a tiny white flower that settled on the stone.
"My square," Eluned smiled sweetly.
"Your pride will be your undoing, Lady Eluned," Aurelia murmured, though she bowed politely as she yielded the mat. ’It’s just bullying...’
"Which leaves..." Eluned turned her predatory emerald gaze toward the final challenger.
Sitting alone at the edge of the blanket with her knees trembling slightly, was Aeliana.
The high-elf secretary adjusted her wire-rimmed glasses with a shaking finger.
She had never engaged in high-stakes territorial gambling, and standing against an immortal spirit who held authority over the basin’s soil seemed like professional suicide.
"Come along, long ears," Morwenna teased from the sidelines, leaning on her elbow. "Show the weed what that brain can do!"
"You can do it, Lady Aeliana!" the Princess cheered softly, pumping her small fists.
Aeliana swallowed hard with her throat clicking.
She reached into the wooden cup as her slender fingers closed around the final two blocks.
Eluned smiled, confident in her overwhelming elemental reservoir as she placed Tide onto the center slate.
"Tide covers the shore," Eluned declared. "Show me your move, Aeli."
Aeliana looked at the block.
Her mind, which had spent a while cataloging thousands of tons of ore, tracking dimensional frequencies, and calculating spatial drift, didn’t view the blocks as elements.
She viewed them as spatial coordinates...
’If Tide moves along the third axis... then the displacement vector requires a void,’ Aeliana calculated in a microsecond. ’Anything that helps me win.’
She dropped Gale but the moment the wood touched the blanket, Aeliana didn’t summon wind.
POP!
A microscopic paper-thin spatial vacuum opened directly beneath the rune.
The pocket of empty space collapsed inward, creating a tiny pressurized vortex that violently pulled the atmospheric moisture from Eluned’s Tide block, completely desiccating the wood before the World Spirit’s mana could anchor into the grain.
CLACK!
The Tide block went dull with its blue carving fading to gray ash as the cavern went dead silent.
Eluned’s jaw dropped. Her emerald eyes widened until they were completely round.
"That..." Eluned gasped, pointing a shaking finger at the dried block. "That was spatial manipulation! That’s cheating! That wasn’t a wind spell!"
"The rules stated an elemental manifestation to manipulate the carving, Lady Eluned," Aeliana answered softly, her voice remarkably steady as she pushed her spectacles up her nose, though her entire face was rapidly turning the shade of a ripe strawberry. "A spatial vacuum is merely the displacement of atmospheric air so by physical definition, it falls under the Gale quadrant. The center stone belongs to me."
"TCH!" Morwenna clicked her tongue, though an appreciative grin split across her face. "The pen-pusher took the prize! Unbelievable!"
"Hooray!" The Princess squeaked, clapping her hands together.
"Splendid reasoning, Aeliana," Aurelia smiled warmly though inwardly her eye twitched. ’It should have been me...’
Eluned sat frozen, staring at the empty wooden square as if her entire divine lineage had been personally insulted.
Aeliana stood up on trembling legs.
She stepped across the woven mats with her soft leather slippers making no sound against the wool as she reached the edge of the blanket where Silas was leaning against the basalt, stopping right beside his outstretched boots.
She looked down at him, her large golden-rimmed elven eyes shimmering with an agonizing mixture of terror, shyness, and overwhelming desire.
"L-Lord Silas..." Aeliana whispered, her fingers nervously pleating the fabric of her charcoal trousers. "May I... do I have permission to... claim the reward...?"
Silas looked up at his usually composed secretary.
Seeing her standing there, blushing to the tips of her long ears, looking at him like he was the only source of warmth in the entire freezing universe, his heart softened completely.
He reached out, his gloved hand catching her wrist and gently pulling her down toward the blankets.
"Permission granted, Aeli," Silas said softly. "Come here."
Aeliana didn’t just sit.
The moment her knees hit the fur, all the nervous hesitation completely dissolved into pure possessive instinct.
She collapsed forward onto his chest with a soft trembling gasp.
THUD!
She wrapped both of her slender arms tightly around his neck, burying her burning face directly into the crook of his collarbone, inhaling his scent with a desperate breath.
And then, before anyone could blink, Aeliana shifted her lower body.
SWISH!
With the fluid terrifying flexibility that nobody knew an elf was capable of, she threw her right leg completely over both of Silas’s thighs, locking her ankle behind his calf in a fierce iron-clad leg lock that pinned him flat to the stone floor.
She anchored her hips against his waist, curling her entire body over his torso like a living breathing blanket, pressing her soft curves against his armor until not a single millimeter of air remained between them.
PFFFFFT!
Across the mat, Kadi violently spat her mouthful of bone broth straight onto the stone.
"WHAT IN THE DESERT IS THAT?!" Kadi choked, coughing frantically into her fist. "SHE LOCKED HIM DOWN LIKE A RUNAWAY CAMEL!"
Tasmin’s jaw went slack, her void-daggers nearly slipping from her fingers. "That... that is an advanced technique that Brida practiced... Where did Aeli learn ground-grappling?!"
"GET OFF HIM!"
Eluned let out an outraged shriek, launching herself forward across the blankets with her emerald hair whipping wildly.
"LET ME AT THIS ELF! LET ME AT THIS HOMEWRECKER!" Eluned yelled, her pale hands clawing at the air as she tried to drag the elven girl off Silas’s ribs. "SHE DIDN’T JUST TAKE THE BED, SHE BUILT A FORTRESS ON HIS PELVIS!"
Morwenna caught Eluned around the waist from behind, digging her boots into the mat as the screaming goddess thrashed in her grip.
"Calm your roots, you overgrown weed!" Morwenna barked, laughing so hard her ribs ached. "It was your game! You set the stakes, you drew the runes, and the long ear elf outplayed you! Take your loss like a proper captain!"
"I WAS ROBBED!" Eluned wailed, though Morwenna hauled her bodily back to the far side of the mat.