The phoenix queen had been simmering in her thoughts for hours on end.
As Erica lay within her bedchamber, she could not stop replaying the earlier unpleasantness with Abaddon in her mind.
Why was this happening?
Did he truly want to go to war?
For what purpose??
Was he truly the bloodthirsty man that she and the world had made him out to be?
If so then why did he say all of that nonsense about apologizing to her later?
Does someone dubbed by the world as ' the destroyer' truly need sentiments like that?
"Fuck... this is why I hate interacting with dragons. "
Erica threw off the blanket covering her naked body and sat up.
She pulled herself out of bed and walked across her pitch black room to her wardrobe.
Opening up the doors, she started getting dressed rather quickly as she began formulating a plan within her mind.
She had too many questions that needed to be answered and thoughts running rampant within her mind, and it was so overwhelming she felt like her mind was going to explode.
Once she pulled on her clothes, she quickly left her room and started her journey down the hallway.
She travelled through her castle to the western wing where her son resided, and pushed open the doors to his room.
Inside, she found the young prince lying in bed with a book resting on his face and the hand that Thea had broken in a sling.
"Caelum, get up."
"D-Don't kill me, I'm sorry!!"
Erica's son sat up on the bed, clearly disoriented from being woken up so suddenly and he was even more alarmed to see his mother in his bedroom in the middle of the night.
"Need I ask what you were dreaming about?" Erica asked exhaustedly.
"O-Only honoring our family in battle, mother."
"Yes, I'm sure."
She knew full well that her son was as far from a warrior as it got.
He trained in swordsmanship over ten years ago, and his instructors claimed that he was lazy and only interested in throwing his weight around.
Besides, unlike his sisters he hadn't managed to evolve once.
He was more quail than phoenix.
"I'll be leaving for a few days. Maintain pleasant behavior or I'll toss you into the stables for a few weeks."
"Alright but... where are you going? I had thought you would be preparing for the war right now, so why are you suddenly leaving?"
"I need answers about Abaddon's motives so I'll be going to Apeir for a while."
"Motives? What more do you need to know, he is a monster without an ounce of feeling in his-"
"Caelum, shut up."
After everything that had happened today, she had grown more than a little annoyed with her son's consisted shortsightedness.
"Does a man without an ounce of feeling within him look at your sisters like they are his own children? Does he make a pledge to me that he will apologize however he can?
Whatever he is, and whatever his motives... I need a better picture, a true understanding of why this man does what he does and why he is so determined to have our homelands."
Caelum wasn't used to being scolded by his mother, so he quickly shrunk beneath the sheets as she walked across his room to the window.
"As I said, act accordingly and do not embarrass me while I am away."
"Y-Yes ma'am."
Erica pushed open the glass window in her son's room and she gracefully leapt through it.
Caelum got up to close it so as not to let the cold air in, and he narrowly managed to catch sight of an enormous red phoenix alight in rainbow flames soaring through the sky.
- 3 Days later
Erica flew at her fastest speed possible to reach the dwarven lands of Apeir in record time.
And upon arriving in the rocky lands, she found... nothing?
The battlefields and mass graves she expected to find were just...not there.
Surprisingly, the lands looked healthier than they ever had.
The entire continent seemed to have been enriched by the touch of Mother Nature herself.
'This... makes absolutely no sense.'
Finally, Erica made up her mind to travel to the home of one of the men whom she despised the most within this world.
High above the clouds, she flew until she reached the city on top of the tallest mountain in these lands, and she landed in front of the castle on the peak.
Finally, she saw some traces of damage from the supposed war with the demons.
Darius' prized castle that he spent 100 years constructing, looked like it was about to come crumbling down at any second.
Even though she didn't like the old dwarf... she knew that he must have been unbelievably disappointed to see his work fall into this state.
The phoenix queen pushed open the double doors as gently as possible so as not to cause any more damage, and she slipped inside.
In the grand hall, she came face to face with a row of dwarven women wearing skimpy little maid dresses.
However... these dwarves looked quite a bit different than regular ones.
They were beautiful, with dark grey skin and eerie red eyes that seemed to be capable of peering through one's very soul.
In the top of their foreheads, they had small black horns that curled upwards like they were pointing towards the sky.
"You are Queen Erica Vermillion, correct? We hadn't received any information on your arrival."
The one who seemed to be the leader of the maids eyed the phoenix with a great deal of confusion, and the feeling was indeed mutual.
Erica looked the young maids in the eye as she tried to fathom what could have caused this kind of transformation.
Now she wished that she might have paid greater attention to the citizens on her journey and not flown so fast.
"Yes, Darius will have to forgive me for dropping by unannounced... Pardon my rudeness but why do you all look like that?"
The girls looked like they were strangely excited for some reason and their eyes lit up like stars on a clear night.
"D-Do you think we look pretty?"
"The Scarlet Emperor gave his blood to those of us in the castle first!"
"I-I was a bit disappointed that he did not let me drink directly from his body but... I am satisfied with this."
"I woke up and my boobs were a lot bigger!"
"I wonder if I am the emperor's type now..."
Erica blinked several times as she watched the maids lose any semblance of professionalism they had and start raving over Abaddon like schoolgirls.
"Right then..."
Eventually, she glided past the giggling girls without exchanging another word, and strolled about the castle like she had been here a million times before.
Luckily, she remembered the layout perfectly and was able to find the room she was looking for rather easily.
Bang!
Kicking open the door, she very nearly let out a retch when she found a scene that she never wanted to witness in her life.
Inside of Darius' bedroom, there were around twenty naked succubi, each of them curvaceous, gorgeous, and sweaty.
The dwarven king himself was in bed thrusting his life away, although he wasn't earning anything more than a few soft moans and encouraging words from the woman underneath him.
Erica was surprised to learn that he had also undergone the kind of strange metamorphosis as the maids, and he seemed to be even stronger than before as well.
Darius finally looked up from the bed and was horrified to see Erica standing in his doorway with her arms folded.
"E-Erica?! Why the bloody hell are you here?!"
"Believe me... I am asking myself that as well." In this moment, Erica seemed to be in dire need of a bucket to throw up into.
"Oh, what's this?"
"She's gorgeous~"
"Is she going to join us too?"
"I want to play with her first!"
Before Erica knew what was happening, a few of the succubi had started eyeing her like they were hungry wolves excited over new prey.
Their excited and lecherous gazes were slightly unsettling, and even though she was considerably stronger than them she started to back away in mild fear.
"I can assure you, I did not come here to play with any of you, so you can keep your semen stained hands to yourselves."
"That's right! You all belong to me anyway, how can you think of running off with a woman who is like my sister?!" Darius reminded.
"I don't even like you, old man."
"Erica, can you not be difficult for one moment!?" He reprimanded.
Erica rolled her eyes, but she didn't say anything else.
"Mr. Darius~ You're forgetting something."
The succubus that was currently being impaled by the dwarven king grabbed him by the beard and made him look down at her.
"Remember, my friends and I do not belong to you. We are here to make you feel good, but we are still free to do whoever and whatever we want according to our beloved emperor."
"Hmph! Why would Abaddon send me succubi who aren't going to obey my every whim? Sure you girls feel better than most but that is certainly-"
The girl underneath him casually lifted up her hand and touched Darius right in the center of his chest.
What followed was a serious of gross, animalistic-like groans as a wave of pure pleasure ripped through Darius' body.
"A-Alright... I understand."
"Fufufu, good!"
Erica didn't think she could gets any sicker from this arrangement, but watching Darius have a full body muscle spasm had done just that.
"B-Bucket... I-I need a bucket!"
One of the succubi handed her one immediately, and she proceeded to unload the contents of her stomach into the small bin.
"Gee... for a wee lass you sure do produce quite a bit of volume." Darius said jokingly.
Erica looked up at the dwarven king with eyes that could kill as she wiped her mouth of any lingering unpleasantness.
"I'm sorry ladies but... can all of you step out for a moment?"
For some reason the succubi did not seem like they really wanted to stay behind anyway and they all filed out into the hallway.
Although they still didn't have any clothes on.
Once they were all outside, they closed the door but the two of them were loud enough that the succubi could still hear what was going on.
"E-Erica why are you coming towards me with that bucket!? Get away from me lass, this isn't funny!"
"Put your little dick away you crusty old fuck!"
CRASH!
"Y-You damned songbird, you got it everywhere!! It's still fucking hot!!"
"What did I tell you about covering yourself you shrunken shit!? I'll finish demolishing this fucking castle with you inside of it!!"
The arguing continued to go on for so long that the girls outside eventually lost track of time, but they couldn't remember how long it'd been since they felt so entertained.
"Have any of you ever observed our Emperor and general Lusamine together?" One said.
"No, but I've heard they argue a lot."
"I've heard that as well."
"Same here."
"They do but... If you watch them closely it is clear that they care about each other a lot. I think these two are a lot like that."
The girls all nodded silently in understanding, as they tried to hear any traces of compassion in the arguing voices of the two rulers.
"Agh! I slipped in your puke you fucking bimbo!"
"You perverted old drunk if you're going to keep waving that thing around I'll burn it off!!"
...They had to listen very, very closely for any traces of warmth within their words.
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