I was able to get a few more things done around the new house before having to head back into town before I ended up being summoned back by the girls.

  Since the paperwork hadn’t actually cleared on the new property—that was still a few weeks away—I didn’t strictly own the land yet. So what I’d done so far could be considered trespassing. But since the road that led up to my new hideaway was basically an unmaintained forestry road, and the nearest house was a good few miles distant, I wasn’t too worried.

  However, leaving my truck parked along the road for a few days was begging to draw attention to my new home. And I intended for it to remain a secret as long as possible. Maybe one day I would have a trailer put onto the property to act as a camouflage home, but for the next half of a year at least, I’d need to keep a low profile.

  Jameson and Gloria checked in on me a few times over the course of the day, since I’d touched bases to let them know I was in range to get a cell signal. It helped to keep my two closest friends happy so they wouldn’t jump down my throat next time I went out of contact for a week or more, so I didn’t mind.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, Liam,” Jameson was saying over the tinny microphone of my cell set to speaker as I navigated the rain-slicked roads back into town. “But the fact that you are supporting yourself on just the income from that Bitsy store is almost as unbelievable as a man like you making fine jewelry. I still don’t know how you got the funds together to start a business like that.”

  “It’s always the quiet ones that surprise you,” I countered with a snort. “The business is doing well, I just gotta hope that no one gets suspicious. My record keeping isn’t the best right now and I doubt the IRS would appreciate my filing system.”

  “Shoebox full of receipts?” Jameson teased, his words followed by the rustle of paper being shuffled about. “I would have thought your mum taught you better than that.”

  “Mom would have told me to toss it all in the fire,” I countered. “If the government wants a copy of the receipts, they can pay for them. Or something like that.”

  “God I wish it was like that,” Jameson sighed gustily before a sharp zip noise of graphite against paper came over the line.

  “Why the hell are you working on paper, dude?” I asked sharply. “Don’t you have fancy software for drafting?”

  “Oh, I’ll be moving all this into the software later,” Jameson growled. “The owner bought all these drafting supplies, though, and he wants us to use them up first so we don’t have to store them.”

  “Why not sell them? Or just throw them out if they are taking up so much space?”

  “Corporate efficiency,” Jameson snarled. “It would be considered a loss that we can’t claim on taxes if we throw them away unused or some shit like that. I honestly stopped caring when they started rambling about EBITDA or some other dumb ass jargon term like that.”

  “Never again will you get me into a regular job after this,” I promised him. “Sure, things are tight and my living situation is weird right now, but if I ended up in a normal job with a boss like Dutcher again? I’d get fired within an hour for breaking his jaw.”

  “At least with my office, I don’t feel a need to throw hands,” Jameson empathized. “Dutcher would have deserved it. These people are just morons. Squeezing a stone thinking it’ll bleed for some reason or that the world will stop advancing if they drag their heels long enough.”

  “True enough,” I agreed, letting the conversation lapse for a moment while I merged off the highway and onto the surface streets that led to my apartment.

  “You mentioned a weird living situation,” Jameson said amongst more rustling paper. “You gonna move in with those girls you keep talking about? You know Gloria will have your ass if you join a cult, right?”

  “I happen to still be using my ass,” I answered airily. “Gloria can’t have it. Also, I’m not joining a cult.”

  “I note you didn’t say anything about not moving in with one of these girls though,” Jameson said in a singsong voice. “Seriously, you said you were going to move out of that shithole sometime soon. Any word?”

  “Something is in the works,” I hedged. “Don’t wanna talk about it too much and end up cursing myself.”

  “Dude, with your face? You are already living a cursed existence,” Jameson teased, making me roll my eyes.

  “At least I don’t need a step-stool to reach the kitchen counter, asshat,” I shot back as I pulled into the parking lot of my shitty apartment building. “Seriously though, I might have something worked out. When I can confirm or show it off, that’s another question. But give it a couple weeks.”

  “I’ll hold you to that. You also know I’ll sic Gloria on you if you drag it out too much.”

  “Man, are you two dating? I swear you threaten me with her often enough that I’d think you two might be married,” I countered while pulling into my familiar parking spot. The sound of Jameson choking on his own spit brought a smile to my face.

  “Don’t even kid about that!” Jameson growled while still coughing.

  “Why not? You flirt with her the same as everyone else at the bar,” I countered.

  “Gloria is like my little sister. I flirt because it annoys her, but I could never actually kiss her. It’d feel too weird,” Jameson protested. I didn’t quite buy it, but before I could dig deeper, the edges of my vision flashed with violet light and a message scrolled across my vision.

  Rieka Coldeye has sent a non-urgent request for your presence regarding her arrival at Silverscale Manor.

  Transit? View summoning?

  “If that’s what you believe,” I said quickly, grabbing my phone off the console before hopping out of my truck and slamming the door. “I gotta go, just made it back to the apartment and I got stuff to do before I head back out.”

  “Fine, fine. Have fun with your mystery girlfriends at your freaky sex retreat in the mountains,” Jameson grumbled back through the line at me before I could swap it from speaker mode.

  I would have been embarrassed at one time, but now I just flicked the button to swap my phone to regular mode and pinned it between my shoulder and ear.

  “They aren’t a mystery,” I said while hurrying towards the building.

  “But you didn’t deny the sex retreat!” Jameson barked back, though I could hear the laughter in his tone.

  “Why would I? Seriously, though. Gotta go. Let Gloria know I’ll be back in touch when I come back down out of the hills, probably next week sometime if not sooner. The last thing I need is to get clubbed with her shoe while I’m not looking because you forgot.”

  “You got it, Liam. Have fun, ya lucky bastard,” Jameson’s annoyance faded to earnest care as we bid each other farewell while I hurried up the steps.

  I made it to my front door in record time, unlocking the door and rushing inside to quickly plug my phone in while I was gone. The message about the summoning remained hovering in my vision while I locked the front door in the dark apartment.

  I’d moved anything that I cared about out already, and other than my old mattress and the furniture I was planning to throw out when I left, it was empty of anything besides food and a change of clothes.

  Need to fix that habit of just diving into things, I thought and hit the ‘View Summoning’ option mentally.

  An image resolved of my four girls still inside the carriage. Shayla, Jane, and Rieka were on one side of the carriage, while Kassandra took up part of the other side.

  “Looks like they already have my spot ready for me,” I said with a laugh before hitting the ‘Transit’ option.

  This time, the travel was much more like I had been familiar with. A gentle gripping and tugging sensation and then I was zipping through time and space like I was on a roller-coaster.

  Light flowed past me like a tattered scarf, and through the rips in the shimmering rainbow, I could see a dozen different sights. One was of an immense serpentine tail covered in purple scales, another had the silhouette of a woman with a fishing pole in her hands before being blocked by a strange mass of fluffy red tails flailing back and forth, and the last had a square sandbox like you’d see in a city park with a small sand tower in the center that abruptly starting growing in size until it loomed high in the sky.

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  I really need to ask Cariad about these visions, I thought to myself as the colorful expanse of light shifted like the surface of a river, closing the tiny rents that I was peeking through and cutting off my view of them. Are these other worlds? Other universes? Or just hallucinations conjured up by my mind as I flow through chaotic space?

  Before I could do more than think about it, I felt myself land with a soft thump and felt the tugging sensation shift to the rattling-rocking feeling of riding inside a carriage.

  “Liam!” Kassandra cheered happily in my left ear, and before I’d managed to blink the lights from my eyes or adjust to the change in my surroundings, my arms were full of my dwarf lamia.

  Kassandra’s soft form squished into my chest while her muscular snake tail wiggled its way between and around my legs to grip me tightly. As if she was worried I might somehow try and escape her in the close confines of the carriage.

  “Don’t crush him, or one of us!”

  Rieka’s protest fell on deaf ears for her friend. Kassandra’s lips had found mine and all I could see was her shimmering brown slitted eyes, all I could taste was the kiss, and the only scent I could make out was the musky cinnamon scent that followed my dwarf lamia everywhere. From the hooded look in Kassandra’s eyes, I immediately knew that I’d been wrong in teasing the dwarf lamia back during our mental chatting.

  While my lower half was trapped, my upper half was not so I was able to get hold of Kassandra’s hands before she could do more than get my belt unhooked. Pulling them to the side, I managed to catch both her slim wrists in one hand and use that to spin her about so she sat across my lap, her firm bottom grinding into crotch and the erection that had magically sprouted there.

  Moving my lover like that had the unfortunate side-effect of breaking the lip-lock we had been sharing, but that was a sacrifice I was willing to make to not end up with the dwarf lamia in my pants.

  At least not in a moving carriage.

  As if to highlight the dangers of that sort of play, the carriage jolted under us, sending Kassandra bouncing with a squeal in my lap.

  “Down, girl,” I growled in Kassandra’s ear, getting a quiet groan out of the serpentine woman, but she stopped fighting me and instead cuddled into my chest while her tail continued to twine tighter around my legs.

  “Thank you, Liam,” Rieka said with a laugh once Kassandra settled down. “She was getting to be impossible…”

  “I’m excited!” Kassandra protested sulkily, though her face remained hidden in the mass of her red curls. “I can’t wait to see how things have developed, and show you all the manor and grounds!”

  “Oh, that reminds me,” I said while thinking quickly.

  I couldn’t spare a hand at the moment, the one that wasn’t holding Kassandra’s wrists was pinning her to my chest to keep her from grinding her ass into my crotch. I couldn’t just shift an extra arm right now, as I was still wearing my shirt and I knew that if I banished it to my Dimensional Pocket, then that would only encourage Kassandra to cause more problems.

  “What is it, Liam?” Rieka asked, leaning across the narrow open space between the benches.

  “Your mom called me over to pick up a message, something about orders and official paperwork. Hang on,” I said and released my grip on Kassandra’s hip quickly to summon the scroll that Queen Coldeye had given me before tossing it to Rieka.

  In the two seconds that took, Kass managed to wriggle herself around and push her skirt up so that her bare ass was now rubbing against my crotch, a wicked gleam in her eye. Before she could speak though, I had the hand back in place and pinched her butt making her squeal in surprise.

  Rieka caught the scroll without an issue and leaned back into her seat, ignoring the wriggling and squealing as I tickled Kassandra as punishment. Instead, my darling princess started working her fingers under the seal.

  “I hope you didn’t get dragged into another inquisition from my father again,” Rieka said, a grin dancing on her lips.

  “No chance to,” I answered, playfully wrestling with the giggling dwarf lamia in my lap now as her flirting had turned to trying to get revenge on me for the tickles. “Just showed up looking scary to intimidate her generals into behaving and then scooted back to work. The new place is looking pretty solid, I just need to be able to start taking the magical tools back so I can make it comfortable.”

  “It’s too bad you can’t take them apart and move them in pieces,” Jane said with a sigh, her chin cushion in one small hand. “I could try and teach you how to enchant, but that takes a long time since most of it is mathematics and the magical side of science for the components. You could do everything right, but it wouldn’t work properly because the ingredients came from Cortha, or it could work perfectly. No way of knowing until you try.”

  “Something to consider for later,” I said, giving the miniature scholar a smile. “I’m still interested in learning from you about that kind of thing, but I’m not in a rush. I’ve got enough on my plate between training my Manipulate Element, Shape-Shifting, and the Grant Power ability.”

  “Don’t forget about your Mana Reservoir power, too,” Shayla added from her spot on the other side of Jane.

  The large moth-winged woman was wedged into a corner, and looked the most uncomfortable of the four girls. Her large wings were folded tight to her back and looked uncomfortable, especially knowing how much she liked to flex and exercise them. But she still smiled sweetly at me, her fluffy antennae stroking the air like a pair of dancing hands.

  “Oh, I won’t forget about that one,” I said with a grin. “It gets a lot of workout from Manipulate Element, and that one is really the only power I have to exercise the Mana Reservoir.”

  “That’s good. I was thinking about it though, you remember how your Grant Power limits the amount of time that we can use the Mana Reservoir once it’s activated?”

  I nodded along. The girls had been discussing it heavily in anticipation for the next stage when I could finally give it to them. They had initially pointed out the conflicting fact between Mana Reservoir saying it was drained first and the Grant Power ability saying they could hold it until needed, but would only have a short window to use it once activated. We couldn’t test it yet, since I hadn’t mastered the Mana Reservoir (Moderate) rank yet, but it was a common conversation piece.

  “Yeah, wasn’t the current theory that you should be able to have the Mana Reservoir until you activated it, just like the Shape-Shifting thing?” I asked.

  We’d been practicing with minor applications of that ability, as it was the first and only one that I’d had high enough to actually be able to use with Grant Power, and that had gotten it high enough to pick up the lesser rank of Grant Power for now. That hadn’t changed the reduction or requirements, but it had allowed them to ‘store’ the changes for longer.

  Now, each of my girls had a stored Shape-Shifting effect that we’d discussed before. With only five pounds of mass to work with, it hadn’t been much so we’d stuck with cosmetic change in case one of them needed to hide.

  “Yes, that was our theory. It’s just not something we can test yet, so I have been rather excited to learn. Since we have confirmed that the power remains for roughly an hour once it’s activated, that should give us plenty of time to utilize it,” Shayla said with a small nod and a smile. “Did you want to keep practicing to improve Grant Power? I would actually be rather excited if I could get to your level of Shape-Shifting, or even just close.”

  “Why would you want to do that, Shayla?” Kassandra asked with a curious tilt of her head. “You look beautiful as you are!”

  “I’d like to be able to fly,” Shayla said quietly, her wings wiggling slightly despite being pinned behind her as she leaned on them. “Fly far better than the little wing-hops I can do right now. And to be able to shift and match my fluff and hair? To alter the coloration of my wings? It would turn my entire body into a canvas…”

  The longing in Shayla’s voice touched my heart, for both reasons that she gave. Shayla was the most lusciously figured of my four girls, and I’d initially shared Kassandra’s sudden concerns about Shayla disliking her figure. The moth girl wasn’t overweight, but she was far more plush than the other three, so I could have seen her having negative body image issues.

  Instead, she wants to paint on her skin and wings like they are a basis for her to create new art… I thought with a wry grin. I wonder how Shayla would react to learning about the elaborate tattoos we have back on Earth. Might be fun. Maybe once the new house is built, I can bring one of them back to Earth to show them that world.

  I’d been granted a rare power as a reward by the System, a power that I hadn’t explained to the girls just yet, because I had been ashamed of my shitty situation back on earth. A power that would let me bring one of them over to Earth if they wanted to visit.

  Traveler’s Call (Minor) - Cost: 0 SP (System Reward) - At the Traveler’s discretion, you can call out to those whom you have worked with for aid. The Traveler can call out to One contracted partner to assist you at the cost of 10 SP per day. Contracted partner can return to their home dimension at will, at no charge. Can be used on any plane the Traveler is currently present on. Summoned companion can decline the call for assistance, though it will still expend initial SP costs.

  The fact that it had a ranking, and was listing it as a ‘minor’ rank at that, told me that there had to be further expansions on the power. That meant that I could potentially bring one of the girls to visit Earth for a while.

  Or elsewhere, I thought with a small smile. This is still only the beginning of my journey as a Traveler. I’ve only really gotten contracts here on Cortha, but Cariad was telling me that Travelers are summoned all over the place for a number of different reasons. I should ask her about that…

  My brow wrinkled as that thought crossed my mind. There was something else that I’d wanted to ask Cariad about… wasn’t there? But try as I might, I couldn’t bring it to mind. I just had a vague feeling that there had been something else I wanted to talk to the cheery daemon woman about.

  Maybe it was about that dinner I owe her, I thought with a shrug. I still need to spend some more time with Cari… been so focused on getting the new place set up that I haven’t been pushing as much as I should to get to know her.

  Maybe it was Kassandra in my lap, still wiggling her butt against my crotch despite pretending to behave, but my mind immediately drifted to wondering what it might feel like to have Cariad in the same position.

  As long as touching her wasn’t making me dissolve that is, I thought with a shake of my head. I can protect myself with entropic energy for a while, but it would still wreck anything else she touched with bare skin. That’s a problem for another day though.

  Setting it firmly aside, I looked towards Rieka and opened my mouth to speak when the carriage gave another firm thunk and the rattle of the wheels outside changed tone to a higher note. Kassandra perked up in my arms immediately and turned a sunny grin upwards.

  “That’s the paved road! We just crossed over into the town proper outside my manor!”

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