Ualani came awake on the coast, on cold shores soaked in the blood of demihumans, their parts still strewn across rocks and floating in the very waters she crawled from. The red stained her fingertips and feet, turning her natural blue to purple. The tips of her wings dripped vivid red from their stingers, as though the blood spilt on this beach would never stop falling from her. The wrongness of the scene hit her like the crash of a tsunami, and battered her psyche, memories of long past cruelty and wrongdoing flooded her vision.

  Again? After not even a thousand years of rest, her people bled. Again she woke to suffering and slaughter, to unjust cruelty, and she knew why. Humanoids. Each time it was humanoids and their pompous illusion. Their curse.

  The cruelty of the humanoid races could not be quelled. It could not be put to sleep. It could only be beaten back and crushed until it fled to lick its wounds and scheme up some horrific return. They revelled in the slaughter of anyone they deemed “unlike them”. There had been a time when Ualani soared the skies, purified the land and brought life to all people. There had been a time, so long ago when she had loved the humans, the halflings and the elves, a time that she had hoped to see prosperity for all. Yet too quickly her love was tainted. Too quickly, she and all her kin had been reviled and cast out. Before reason had even a moment to take purchase, humanoids had begun culling, vilifying, degrading, and subjugating.

  The only recourse had been violence, and for a decade, Ualani had rained pain and death upon the beautiful lands she had once raised from nothing. She had scarred the child she’d hoped to raise and left the continent weeping in her wake. Only after ten years of fighting, of death and suffering, had humanoids finally seen fit to treat her people like people. And after that long decade, Ualani had trudged into the sea and fell into slumber.

  An eon later, just like she was experiencing in that moment, she had washed up, called to the shores by the cries of demi-humans, pushed to the edge of the world, cornered and waiting for the cold kiss of a blade. Ualani had woken to humanoids on the verge of another genocide, another massacre. And so again, the sky rained death and despair. Ualani's own tears fell for her people, and for the hurt she did to her own soul when she slaughtered, butchered, and broke her way across a continent that should have been bursting with life and joy. Again, Ualani scarred her child to tame the violence of humanoids. The losses were steep, crippling even, and some of the children of the world were lost to time, never to be seen again. Still, eventually, the battle was won. Humanoids submitted and left the demi-humans to live and recover.

  And again, Ualani, tired, wounded, and heartbroken stepped back into the sea, into the kind embrace of the void. Another eon passed, years countless to most. Yet for a third time, as though it were a curse upon her very soul, Ualani returned to the shore. For a fourth and a fifth time she had slain and slaughtered her way across the continent, desperate to beat down a cruelty more timeless than even she. She became numb to her curse, just to protect herself from the pain. She became ruthless and efficient, just to cease the suffering quicker, cleaner.

  Ualani didn’t even know what number of times this was. She only knew that it was too soon. That her heart hadn’t healed even a shred since the last time she felt her cheek in the sand, staining the land with her ancient tears. Yet, too soon, or not, she had been summoned, called to the land and from her slumber, her only peace. So again the ancient, lonely soul would walk the planet, and rain death from the skies.

  Ualani stood, spreading her wings, as if to stretch them, though she needed no such thing. The sea had, as it had each time before, restored her in youth and beauty, recreated her in her own divine image and placed her to do her duty. She did not feel tired, nor stiff. She simply felt resigned and disappointed. She looked over her body, over the shimmering blue-toned flesh as the light of her soul and the electric currents building within her played over her body in an aurora of pink, purple, and green hues. Her slender arms glowed with that light, as did the webbing of her splayed wings. Her tail lashed behind her, cutting through the water, where she longed to return, even now to escape the cruelty of ‘reality’.

  “Over here! There’s another!” came a voice from the edge of the beach. It seemed the humanoids had not left yet. They were not truly done desecrating the land with the blood of innocents. Perhaps a few could be saved?

  That notion would have filled Ualani’s heart with warmth 5000 years ago. The thought that she could possibly save someone. Now? It was her duty, what she was there for and nothing more.

  “How’d you get away, monster?” the male called, walking from his place near the tree-line, “You a swimmer?”

  Ualani didn’t even bother looking in his direction. She could feel him, from the vibrations of his voice, to the very subtle charges of electricity passing through his body, enhanced by the mana of the very planet he was killing. When he stepped within ten yards of her, she flicked a finger and pulled the magic from him along with those currents. The man dropped dead in an instant as she claimed all that he was to fuel the destruction he and his ilk had summoned upon the land. He was gone before his face hit the red sand.

  Shouting could be heard further down the beach, and in the forest, more humanoids searching for victims. Ualani began a slow, quiet walk, calm as the sea before a great storm as she moved toward the trees, and towards her own cruel fate.

  —

  Ambrose’s breath was heated and heavy as she raised her shield and bashed away the strike from the armored, goblin sized monstrous imitation of a Demi-human. Dungeons, so far as Ambrose understood them, were a high ranking summoner type monster that used magic and spiritual energy to manifest monsters that mimicked existing creatures in the world. The little beasts roaming this cave weren't actually goblins like the goblin folk she knew and might potentially shift into one day. Instead, they were more simple minded and focused on the goals of their creator.

  Ambrose tried desperately to keep her eyes focused on the little things as three of them attempted to swarm her with their tiny, simple weapons. Her shield moved with practiced speed as she intercepted strikes aimed for her lower legs and knees. Yet these monsters weren't the reason she was breathing hard. The hour or so they had been inside the smaller dungeon hadn’t taxed her stamina. No… it had been taxing her willpower.

  Ambrose had vastly underestimated the speed of her production as a Hollam. She had thought that her feeling of swollen fullness at the end of the day when she had visited Anastasia had been due to a slow increase over the day regardless of what form she had been in. Instead, she found that the Hollam only took a few hours to become fit to burst from her clothes if not milked. The pressure was akin to the feeling of having overeaten to a grotesque limit, where testing the firmness of one’s stomach both hurt and was a mild relief.

  Every time she blocked or strode too hard she found herself feeling miserable, not from the weight of her endowments, but from the pressure within, which was something that she endured for reasons she was fairly certain no one in her retinue would truly understand. From her youth, Ambrose had wanted to be a holstaur. She had wanted to feel close to Mizz Shatterhorn and the other cows she’d met, and to relate to their lives. Nothing was more well known to a cow than the suffering of overfull, unmilked breasts. And so… in some silly way, this swollen pressure made her feel truly like a holstaur, and she found herself basking in sweet misery as she fought underleveled monsters for the sake of understanding and working with her group.

  The other reason for her heavy breathing, she would have to admit, was a lot less innocent in its nature. Every time Dortieh moved to take down one of the low level enemies, her limbs flashing forward in co-ordinated elegance to jab at an exposed neck or spine, her sweater would ride high. The pale plumpness of her thighs alone had already been extremely distracting for Ambrose, but certain kicks drove the fabric higher up her body, exposing a rather racy pair of underwear that Ambrose would be lying if she didn’t admit that she had stolen more than one glance at during their time in the dungeon.

  She felt like a pervert and had tried to swear off looking when the beautiful living curse was moving in for her attacks, but even when she was not looking intentionally, Haori seemed dead set on being an equally distracting view. The angel had somehow adjusted her dress to show more of her cleavage, and even more of her thighs, leaving Ambrose very few places to safely look.

  Inwardly Ambrose scolded herself for her own behavior. She was in no place to be looking at her companions like that, nor was it appropriate to be looking like that anyway. She was appalled at her own lack of control. Never before had she looked at other women this way. Yet ever since her kiss on the rooftop, it was like she was completely out of control.

  There was so much more to admire about each of the women she was in the dungeon with than their bodies. They were both talented, Haori with the divine light that she used to make any scrapes, bruises or cuts the team earned disappear, and Dortieh with her nimble striking art. Yet somehow Ambrose’s eyes continued to wander against her own intention. She needed a ward, something to focus on, to keep her mind off of carnal callings that would only get in the way of her goals.

  Still, what could center her so when two of the most beautiful women she’d ever encountered were… well… flaunting was the wrong word, but what other word could she possibly use?!

  While she was distracted, one of the dungeon goblins stepped around the tower shield, swinging as hard as it could to bash Ambrose’s knee in. The pain, though minor, brought her back to herself enough to start her paying more attention to her surroundings. She grunted and put her hoof into the face of the little gremlin, the power in her leg sending it flying and skidding along the ground until it slammed into the wall of the well lit cave they were in.

  “Oh no! Ambrose, are you okay,” Haori asked, moving over to Ambrose as Dortieh swept the legs out from under the last monster, and her inky tendril passed over its exposed back laying a blackened curse on the green skin of the monster, which began to scream, only for steam to billow out of its mouth. Ambrose was caught off guard by the reaction, but before she could focus on what was happening to the enemy, Haori was crouched, her knees splayed as she got down to look at Ambrose’s knee.

  “I, uh, I’m fine,” Ambrose said, looking down at Haori, whose arms were squeezing her shapely, heavy breasts together and creating quite an entrancing depth of celestial cleavage. She pried her eyes away and to the side as Haori looked up at her from that low position, fighting down the urge to burn pictures of Haori and her body into her mind. “It was just a small hit.”

  “No, it wasn’t he hit you super hard in the knee,” Haori said, her hands moving through the long, fluffy furs along Ambrose’s lower leg as though examining the space. “Let me heal you,” she purred, pressing her chest to Ambrose’s knee. Ambrose roared at herself internally. This was not a sexual advance. This was an innocent angel woman attempting to be helpful in the best ways she knew how! This was not seduction, it was a kind hearted attempt to give aid to a companion. So why was Ambrose having such lurid thoughts?!

  The soothing energy coursing up her leg reinforced that statement, but the little kiss on the knee, the way she wrapped her arms around Ambrose’s thigh and pressed herself to the leg after the fact. None of that seemed like anything less than an honest attempt to drive Ambrose to madness. When the angel finally stood up, placing a hand on Ambrose’s midsection and looking into her eyes, searching for approval and so much more, Ambrose nearly cracked. Nothing made sense, her body, and her mind were in conflict and she wanted, needed to do something about it.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Her instincts, including the mixed in instincts of the deviswine told her to take the angel, to smother the divine in pleasure and affection and claim her and the black siren both as her first mates. It would be so easy, all it would take is a little shift in her will, a small dose of intent and she could ensnare and enthrall the pretty little angel, make her a toy, a willing lover for all time. Ambrose would never long for anything again if she just indulged herself.

  The thought was tempting, so very tempting that her bones ached and her mouth watered with desire. While she fought to keep simple eye contact with the other woman. She could feel the way the angel’s small, palm and slender fingers passed over the flat plane of her stomach through her uniform. The heat from that palm was like tossing tinder on her already blazing need.

  “Feel better?” she asked, her voice heated, husky and provocative in all the ways Ambrose wished it wouldn’t be.

  Her eyes wandered the beautiful face of the angel, her long lashes, and shimmering blue eyes catching Ambrose’s attention before the Beastiary roamed lower, past adorably, round cheeks to puffy, pouty, pink lips that seemed to glisten with temptation and promise.

  Yet it was those lips that brought another set of lips to her mind. “Ambrose. You are the wife of Dernia, the Manticore.” The voice came to her and filled her head. She remembered the meeting on that patio in her dreams, remembered the sensations, remembered the kiss on the rooftop.

  Giving the angel a pat on the back, and then a little hug, just to match her level of friendliness, Ambrose pulled away, giving Haori a confident smile. “Yeah. Much better. Thanks Haori,” she said, her mind much clearer with the vision of Dernia in her mind, warding away and slaying her perverse thoughts like she’d slain the castle guards. She intentionally didn’t think about how morbid the mental comparison was.

  I totally forgot to tell anyone in the royal family where she escaped to… Ambrose realised as she stepped to the side to give the healer more space while the group reconvened after another fight together in the dungeon. Still, she inwardly shrugged. She didn’t really feel like she owed them anything after the attack on her in front of the academy. If they were so noble and powerful, they could track Dernia themselves. They didn’t need a “peasant’s” help.

  Looking down and back to where the goblin monster had been, she looked just in time to witness Dortieh pulling the full spine out of the back of the sizzling, steaming corpse, which, Ambrose’s amazement, smelled like well cooked, honeyed ham. The ‘meat’ of the body fell away from the bone in hunks of piping hot, pinkness that, if Ambrose hadn’t known what it was, would have made her mouth water.

  “What the hells did you do to it!?” Albrecht asked, his eyes wide as saucers as he observed the limp pile of meat that Dortieh was gently tugging the bones from. Ambrose didn’t know whether to be impressed or horrified.

  “Cooking curse,” Dortieh replied, looking up and smiling in such an adorable way that Ambrose decided that impressed and enamored was the way to go. Haori and Albrecht on the other hand, didn’t seem to think so.

  “Cooking curse?” the drow asked, moving over to poke at the meat with his toe. The tender, juicy muscle fell apart like the most succulent feast pig Ambrose could imagine. The only problem was that the meat on display was goblin.

  “Yes,” Dortieh said, her smile widening, probably a little too wide for a normal person, displaying two long, sharp incisors that seemed more meant to pierce flesh than to crack into bone… “It is a curse meant to cook the target from the inside. It makes getting the bones easier,” she explained, holding up the fully intact spinal column, ribcage and pelvis to illustrate the point. “This way the skeleton stays intact and I can enjoy my favorite parts when I get home, rather than risking them by cutting into the monster to skin it and trying to peel away bloody flesh, which is, I am told, messy and grotesque.”

  Ambrose almost squealed with how cute the proud little curse looked as she explained her findings to the group and stuffed the spine into her satchel, which didn’t seem to get any bigger when she fed the pelvis and then the ribcage into the thing. Ambrose guessed that it must have been enchanted, but that mattered so little in contrast to how much she wanted to hug her new little friend.

  “But… that’s a goblin,” Haori said, still staring on in abject horror as Dortieh began easing the femurs out of the thigh meat.

  “No. It is a mana construct with the likeness of a goblin. A normal goblin would not cook so well unless they were a shaman,” Dortieh replied as the first femur came free with a slick ‘schlup’ sound.

  “But its bones are… gobliny,” Haori said, trying to get to a point that Ambrose could see, but doubted the black siren would care about. The Siren were well known for their more… humanoid based appetite off the coast, and she doubted that Black Sirens truly cared about the difference, even if their two races were only barely related in the grander scheme of things.

  “Yes. It has the skeleton of a goblin. Otherwise it would not appear the same as a goblin,” Dortieh agreed, obviously missing the problem entirely.

  “This creature eats human bone?” Albrecht said, backing away from the group, his face a mural of disgust and horror.

  Ambrose quickly rounded on him. “She is a person! Not a creature!” she corrected, with enough force in her voice to pull Albrecht’s attention away from Dortieh and her meal, and onto her.

  “But Lady Di, she plans to eat that goblin! If she would eat that, what’s to stop her from eating us!?” he asked, pointing at Dortieh

  “She just said it’s not a goblin! It’s a mana construct. And she hasn’t attacked you in the hours since we’ve been here, outside of the city, in a dungeon where it would be easy to claim you made a horrible mistake and died. Regardless of rank, this is a dungeon. Anyone could die here. Me included,” Ambrose protested. She knew very well that the curse likely would eat their bones if they died. She’d probably do it just so the food didn’t go to waste. But the black Siren wasn’t going to attack them unprovoked. Especially when she’d already picked up food for herself.

  Albrecht frowned at her point, seemingly unsure of what to think. Ambrose obviously had a point, but his history in the city and his long ingrained beliefs toward demi-humans were affecting his judgement.

  Rather than continue to entreat his sensibilities, Ambrose switched tactics, turning to the angel. “Haori?”

  “Yes?” Haori asked, turning away from where she had been watching the siren pack away her meal.

  “How long have you known Dortieh?” Ambrose asked, her voice calm and even.

  “Um… years now. Three or four years,” she said, looking back over to the living curse before looking back to Ambrose.

  “Between the two of you, who would win in a fight?” the Beastiary asked, her head tilting to the side.

  “Oh… Dorty for sure. She’s much stronger, and a hunter. And she’s apparently trained to fight, which I didn’t find out until today,” Haori said honestly, though she seemed confused at the line of questioning.

  “Have you ever felt like she would attack you, or someone you knew?” Ambrose asked plainly, not bothering to sugarcoat anything.

  Haori thought about it for a short moment before firmly shaking her head. “No. No, I don’t think she has. Not ever. She’s always just been calm, reliable Dorty…”

  Ambrose sighed, then nodded before turning her attention back to Albrecht, who seemed ashamed and as though he had already caught onto the point of Ambrose’s words. Still, Ambrose said them, so Haori wouldn’t miss it either. “That’s three years of evidence on top of your day spent fighting beside her, Albrecht. She isn’t going to attack you or kill you, or cook you if you don’t attack her. She’s on our team. And to her, that’s not a goblin, it’s a dungeon monster that she can eat.”

  Albrecht looked between Ambrose, and then Dortieh before sighing and nodding. “Fine. Fine. I just. I don’t want her eating that around me,” he said before turning away and taking deep breaths.

  Ambrose nodded, not pressing the issue. She couldn’t lie, she didn’t particularly like the thought of Dortieh eating a goblin or any other sapient, but she didn’t want to be a hypocrite either. So she sighed, shook her head, and then stretched, groaning as doing so reminded her of the pressure in her chest. She was very much looking forward to her visit to Anastasia’s that evening.

  Turning back to Dortieh, she smirked at the genuine excitement that seemed to spread on the other girl’s face as she collected her bones before straightening up and returning her attention to the group. “I am finished,” she declared, patting her pack and looking between the other members of the group.

  “We’ve felled quite a few of these dungeon monsters today. So I’m thinking it’s time to go back. We can discuss our teamwork on the way, and if everyone is happy with how things went today, we can plan to clear this dungeon and a few others over the coming weeks,” Ambrose said, looking at each of the members of her potential group. Haori seemed excited as always.Albrecht was still in a pensive state, and Dortieh seemed to be feeling rather neutral about the entire affair. “Does that sound good?”

  “Yup! That sounds perfect to me Ambrose,” said the angel, moving over to wrap her arms around the Beastiary’s arm and pull herself close. The squish of plush, yielding skin against her own had Ambrose focusing hard on Dernia in her mind, holding the manticore there like a pavise against her own dirty thoughts.

  “That works,” Albrecht said. “But I’ll be clear here. I do want to work with you, Ambrose,” he clarified, making his intention known.

  Ambrose looked back at him, a little surprised by that. She had expected him to think that she was being pushy or unreasonable. Of everyone present, she had expected him to want to separate ways as soon as the danger of the dungeon was behind them. Instead, he was declaring his intent to stay. “Oh? Well. I’m not going to turn you away. You kept larger swarms off of us and manageable, so I’d say you’re very valuable. I’m glad you’re staying.”

  “My too! Me tooo~!” Haori declared, squeezing herself so tightly to Ambrose that the Beastiary could feel her arm being submerged in tit flesh.

  “I… uh… Of course, Haori. Your healing is invaluable. I wouldn’t turn you away either,” she said with a smile, ignoring all the thoughts that tried to assail her.She hadn’t expected Haori to want to leave, but part of her, the part that was screaming about soft angel boobs in the back of her mind, had kind of hoped there might be hope of relief in the form of distance.

  Still, when she heard no immediate answer from Dortieh, she turned her head. Of all the group, the person she truly wanted to see more of, deep down, was the person who hadn’t said a thing. Ambrose looked over at Dortieh, her bangs shielding the eagerness that would likely have shown in her eyes. Dortieh had a pleased small smile on her face, her black lips curled into an adorable little cupid’s bow. She looked back at the group as though nothing serious was going on and she had no real reason to speak.

  “Um… How about you, Dortieh?” she asked, trying to keep her hopefulness out of her voice.

  “Me?” she asked, her head tilting slightly to the side as she looked at Ambrose.

  “Yes. Since everyone else decided to talk about staying in this group before we left the dungeon, I was wondering what you thought,” she explained.

  “Dorty, she wants to know if we’re staying,” Haori chimed in before the curse could answer for herself.

  “Oh. I intend to continue adventuring with this group for as long as I am allowed,” the siren said, straightening up and bowing to the group. “I enjoyed adventuring with each of you today.”

  Ambrose wanted to jump for joy and sweep the girl up into a powerful hug just to squeeze the cute out of her. The way she talked just made Ambrose want to crush her in affection, but the Beastiary restrained herself and showed her self control. “Excellent. Then, I guess this is our group. We’ll talk teamwork on the way back to the guild to turn in our materials and get our rewards, then I’ll be heading to Anastasia’s after that.”

  “Sounds good to me, Ambrose,” Haori said, glued to Ambrose’s arm like some kind of parasitic plant.

  Ambrose smirked, turned, keeping mindful not to toss the healer, and then started heading for the entrance.”So, about teamwork-”