Chapter 667 Hospitable
"Welcome to my kingdom, and thank you for the lovely gifts. Queen Jasmine sent along the statues already, and everyone loves them.
So much, in fact, that most of them left behind gifts and hurried home to have them mounted in their palace. "
Wolfe smiled at the feathered king's greeting. He didn't intend to argue about the price with anyone, so leaving satisfied before Wolfe even arrived was a great time-saving method. If there were still other Royals here, there would be obligatory parties, social events and much more.
"I'm glad they enjoyed the statues, Queen Jasmine was very proud of those." Wolfe replied.
"I think you will enjoy your stay here, unlike the more violent demons, my people specialize in a wide variety of magical skills. Part of that is due to an abundance of Fae lineage, but my people have always been better attuned to mana than most.
So, we have a much wider variety of magical devices than the others. The door is one of our masterpieces, but most of our magic is non-elemental, or what you might call arcane magic.
Instead of having an elemental aspect, they're nothing more than mana and willpower made manifest.
The Magi are excellent at it, with your innate skills for mana manipulation. If we have some time, I will show you in the morning."
Like queen Jasmine had been, the King was incredibly hospitable, and even the suite that he led them to was designed with their situation in mind. It had a total of ten separate bedrooms, but the master was designed for the larger Demons, or in this case, a large group of Demons, as they had turned the bedding sideways, with the pillows lined up lengthwise down a five-metre-long bed.
They clearly expected that Wolfe was doing lewd things with his companions, and they weren't exactly wrong, but after a long day of events and spell casting, they were more likely to need to actually sleep than anything else.
Most of them were looking pretty ragged already, even the guards, who had been dragged all around the party, despite their objections. Two of them would sleep at a time so that there was always one awake in case of intruders, but tonight was going to be a rough night for all of them, as they discussed who would have to take the first watch.
Chloe lost this round, and the others headed off to sleep while she settled into the couch in the main room to make sure that nobody was going to break into their suite.
Everyone else was in the pyjamas in the main bedroom when Wolfe entered, with a variety of expressions on their faces.
"We decided that everyone wants to sleep with the warm Magi, so there will be no lewdity or succubus antics tonight." Carmine explained.
"Oh, is that so. Then should we sort sleeping spots by who is most cuddly?" Wolfe asked.
"That's a good idea for next time. This time we just made Rail and Dana take the outside." Nimue replied.
That wasn't going to actually prevent lewd things from happening, but the little dryad was next to Rail, who really should have been born an octopus the way that she managed to entangle herself around other people while sleeping.
Wolfe briefly noticed when the guards switched shifts, and when Nimue ended up directly on top of him as Rail slowly slid closer during the night, but the bed was comfortable, and he was already used to Ella doing the same thing, and Cassie ending up entwined with everyone.
"Patriarch, the breakfast is served." Risa informed them the next morning as the smell of pancaked and bacon filled the room.
The local tradition must be to have breakfast in your room and then emerge for the day. The King was right, that did sound a lot more civilized than early morning meetings.
Once everyone was disentangled and dressed, this time in the provided robes with an invisible armour spell underneath, they headed up to meet with the Royals.
"The King has ruled here for a little over two thousand years, but mostly does things by proxy. There is a Royal Council for the day-to-day affairs, the Magic Council for the academies, as he is a firm believer in education, and then the War Council made up of his Generals in case of conflict.
He believes that keeping everything separate under his command reduces corruption, but he's also known to execute for incompetence, and that goes a long way to keeping them honest." The servant who had been sent to fetch them for the morning meetings explained quietly as they walked.
Everyone was wearing similar robes, but separated by the quality and the accessories. For example, the maids wore a durable cotton robe, in plain black with a white apron over top, the errand boys wore them with a series of large pouches on their belts, and the Nobles wore midnight blue robes in silk with silver and jewels.
The robes that were provided for Wolfe and the others were dyed sky blue, with only Rail and the bodyguards wearing silver trim, and the others in Gold. The obvious assumption was that the Gold was for Royalty, but Wolfe's was not trimmed with any precious metals at all, and instead had multicolour metallic thread woven through the pattern to give him a shimmering appearance in the flickering magical torchlight.
That had to be their version of a mark for Magi, Wolfe assumed. It was likely meant to indicate the elements that he was able to use, but they hadn't known for sure how many he was competent with or which ones, since he had only used a small variety of Elemental Magic while he was there.
It looked like the King had done some research if the colours were deliberate, though. Red, white, black, purple and another that seemed to be clear, but sparkled with a faint inner light. That wasn't obvious at first, but when they passed between torches and away from a window, Wolfe noticed that his clothing didn't just reflect light, it was also faintly glowing.
Hopefully, he got to keep these when he left.
The source of this c𝐨ntent is freewe(b)nov𝒆l