But Léonne's response is unexpectedly cold, "You know that the heroes who succeed are the only ones whose stories are written in the books, right?" The chill in her tone even makes Alissa's tail stop wagging.
Honestly, we should've expected that from her. Alissa knows that she's a very cunning woman, the kind of realist that can easily see through our bullshit.
"Then we just need to win," Alissa immediately replies, sounding as stubborn as a mule.
Léonne narrows her eyes, her body completely tensed up, suddenly looking like a predator ready to pounce. "You're completely unconcerned about the dangers that lie ahead?"
"We've been through too much to worry about what we don't know," Yunia interjects, her elven pride flaring up in defense against the cold interrogation.
"Even though we don't know our future, we're preparing ourselves as best we can," Alissa piles on, mimicking Yunia's lofty expression.
Léonne gives Jacques a look, signaling for him to back her up, but he just shrugs. "You raised her that way," he dodges responsibility.
"What did you expect after you crammed all those ideas into my head about the honorable duties of a Blood Slave?" Alissa accuses Léonne.
"You are his wife, now!" She exclaims in indignation.
Alissa puffs her chest full of pride. "I was more than just a servant, and now I'm more than just a wife. We're all in this together, until the end."
Jacques laughs, his deep voice reverberating through possibly half the estate.
But Léonne is incredulous. "You're laughing? Our daughter has delusions of grandeur, and you're laughing?"
"Don't be mean, they aren't delusions. The Gods are clearly fond of them all," Jacques tries to calm her down.
The angry old fox shoots a glare towards Alissa. "I want her to take this more seriously instead of skipping along with an 'everything will be fine' attitude just because she believes that she's in a hero's story."
Alissa clenches her fist in annoyance. "I don't believe that 'everything will be fine,' I just know that, no matter what happens, I'll always stay by Wolfy's side without any regrets."
Léonne pauses for a moment. "Even death?" She quietly asks, her anger subdued.
Alissa nods slowly. "Even death."
An awkward silence settles in, but is then broken by Jacques' low chuckles. "You raised her that way," he repeats with a smug smile.
And Léonne becomes silent, staring intensely at Alissa while anxiously tapping her finger against her thigh.
"Arreira prepared us, somewhat," Ciel quietly chimes in. "He pushed us to the limit, and while our failures weren't real, it gave us all a new perspective on the consequences."
Léonne turns to Ciel, and her anger slowly fades away as Ciel's pure smile disarms her until she finally sighs tiredly and lets the tension in her body wash away.
Both mother and daughter are a bit hard-headed, and this time, Alissa's steel forehead won the exchange.
Léonne relents and gives her some honest advice, "I don't think you'll ever be ready for your future, so never stop growing."
Alissa smiles lovingly at having received genuine acceptance from her mother. "Thank you, Mom," she politely replies and bows.
"Be safe, child," Léonne whispers back.
--
Then the sweets arrive, and Alissa suddenly brightens up when she sees who's bringing them.
"Louise!" She shouts and nearly tackles the small woman, but first, she lets Louise put down the tray, and then they immediately hug each other.
"I couldn't believe my ears when they told us that you were coming back!" Louise shouts back in delight, and Alissa buries her head in the smaller woman's poofy red hair.
"Sometimes I can't believe it myself," she confesses and laughs softly.
"And now you're a Queen!" Louise giggles in delight.
They break the hug and stare at each other, Louise gushing with happiness while Alissa wryly smiles.
"We just inherited the elven royal mandate, we haven't actually been crowned," Alissa embarrassedly explains.
"Yet!" Louise shouts and giggles again.
"Queen Alissa of the Blinding Arrows," Allura teases with a cheeky grin, making Alissa wince, still uncomfortable with her old Title.
"You guys know everything about me, this is so unfair!" Alissa whines since she's unable to return the banter.
"Oh, I'll tell you all about Allura," Ofilia slyly interjects with a subtle grin.
"Ack!" Now it's Allura's turn to wince.
"Have you met the Hunters yet?" Louise eagerly asks.
Alissa shakes her head in the negative, "No, we just got here and have really just been talking so far."
She grabs Alissa's hands and pulls her out of the room. "Everyone needs to see how much you've grown! The last time some of them saw you, you still had that young kit air about you, but now, they need to see the woman you've become!" And Allura follows them.
Louise's noise level is quite different from all the other werefoxes I've seen so far.
"We'll save you some sweets," I assure Alissa through [Bind].
"Thank yo-…" Her reply is interrupted as her brain goes in overdrive. "Montague!" she shouts and gets a hug from a tall, gray man, who's gray in both hair and skin tone. He's one of the Sworn Hunters, the same as a knight but with a cooler name, and Montague is kind of the brute of the bunch.
"Who is this woman? You remind me of a kit I once knew, but she certainly wasn't as beautiful as you," he teases like a friendly uncle, just slightly triggering my jealousy.
While she exchanges warm greetings with a handful of Sworn Hunters, we gorge on the sweets, and my sweet-tooth comes out in full force. I immediately recognize Apaisant as chamomile, but the flavor of Frele eludes me. It tastes a bit citric and fresh, but it also has a very mild and delicate feel to it. If I had to guess, I'd say that it's like kiwi.
"It seems that she was very loved," Ciel comments with a small smile as she looks towards the other room.
Four pointy fox ears point straight up, and both Léonne and Jacques turn to her.
"Of course she was," Jacques states matter-of-factly and continues eating his dessert.
"The Sworn Hunters are almost like an extended family," Léonne explains.
"Our knights aren't that close with us…" Yunia remarks, sounding a little conflicted.
Léonne turns pensive eyes towards her. "I assume that you have a lot more than we do."
"Not currently, but we have the capability to support many more."
"The bonds weaken the more people there are," Jacques sagely points out and takes a sip of his tea, the small teacup looking comically small near his large red beard.
"Hm…" Yunia hums in thought as she swirls the tea in her porcelain cup.
With the conversation slowing down again, I ask a question that has been growing within my mind, "Léonne, the werefoxes seem to be quite isolationist, so I didn't expect you to know so much about world history."
Her ears and tail point up in surprise, which is pretty fucking cute, and then her expression turns sly. "I studied history to learn how my ancestors kept the Misty Low Forest under their control. Learning about world history was just bonus material to prepare me for unforeseen events."
Learning history so that she could repeat it.
Lina and Yunia look up attentively, their curiosity piqued, and now that I've given them a good conversation starter, I just sit back and watch them talk, feeling quite proud of my little maneuver.
--
After a few minutes, the loud chatter in the other room starts to die down, and Léonne rings the bell again.
"Prepare the twenty-fifth," she cryptically orders, and the servant quickly leaves.
Once the excitement dies down, the Sworn Hunters continue sharing their stories with the Lordsguard. Klein and Anton have quite a lot in common with the Hunters, so they easily get along. Warriors and hunters are the same no matter where you are, so they easily bond thanks to their kindred search for glory or a good fight.
Then a group of old, but dignified werefoxes arrives at our room, and Léonne introduces them to us. They're the Elders, a group of old rulers that safeguards and organizes the succession of power in the Misty Forest. They don't have the same degree of absolute power as the elven Elder Council does, but they could easily enforce the rules by working with the temple and riling up the commoners to rebel.
Alissa comes back to greet them, and the stern-looking Elders become kind old grandparents in front of her.
"Where's Gurrier?" Alissa innocently asks, and they all go silent, giving her sad smiles.
"He passed away in his sleep a few months ago," Léonne announces.
"Oh…" Alissa mumbles, and her tail goes limp.
Jacques and I walk up to her, but I'm faster, so I give her a hug first. Neither of us wants to touch each other, so he just lands his large, clawed hand on her shoulder.
"He's certainly resting in Paradise, watching you with pride," he softly consoles her, his previously loud voice incredibly quiet now.
Alissa sniffles and pushes me back. "I'm fine," she lies, but there's no [Heal] that could mend her wounded heart, then she smiles weakly and sends me an image through [Bind] of her trying to pinch me. "I'll be fine," she quietly adds.
"What do you do with your dead?" Ciel politely asks Léonne.
"We cremate them and store their ashes in the Tomb of Veneration. His spirit could potentially still linger," she quickly answers, already understanding where this is going.
Alissa smiles brightly and dries the corners of her eyes. "I'd like to go there, but I understand that he might've already moved on," she states, her voice quickly gaining confidence with every word.
Jacques nods and grunts, "We'll go there soon."
"But there's something that we need you to see first. Let's go outside," Léonne suggests, and Alissa's tail stiffens, wary of her mother's unusual playfulness, but I couldn't detect a hint of mischief in her tone.
Our large procession crosses through the estate, and the servants we pass by stop to bow to us, to Alissa, specifically. She pouts at her mother, but the cunning old fox keeps her expression impassive.
Once we reach the entrance hall of the estate, a pair of servants open the double sliding doors for us, revealing a long, inclined grass garden with a great view of a good part of the town from atop this hill the estate was built upon.
But what really catches her attention is the formation of dozens of werefoxes in pristine gray scale armor mounted on other large foxes, spears at hand and shortbows slung over their shoulders, all lined up in a perfect grid, their faces stern and figures unmoving.
Memories flood into Alissa's mind as she recognizes them as the 25th unit of the Town Hunters of Roubaix, the equivalent of the Townsguard. The unit she herself was responsible for training into fully-fledged hunters.
"Sheathe!" The biggest fox in the front and center shouts, and the spearmen store their spears in their [Item Box]. Ironically, his rider is the smallest werefox girl of the unit.
"Dismount!" The large fox orders again, and they all obey in perfect sync.
"Transform!" The foxes glow, returning to their humanoid form, the biggest fox becoming the largest man among them.
"Salute and cry!"
In unison, the soldiers all grab their right fox ear with their left hand and shout. "Welcome back, Dame Alissa, the drillmaster, the Juicemaker!"
The what…?
"Oh, you didn't…" Alissa mumbles as she takes a few weak steps forward, her voice wavering with emotion. "You… fucking… didn't… CALL ME THAT!" She bellows in fury, then [Equip]s her Bastion armor and bow.
"Transform and retreat! RETREAT! SAVE YOURSELVES!" The leader of the unit screams in desperation, and they all flee with their tails between their legs as Alissa chases after them like an enraged dragon.
She [Fly]s up and launches a flurry of blunt [Mana Arrow]s at their backs until either the mount or the rider collapses.
"'Juicemaker'?" Roxanne repeats, sensing a delightful history behind that name.
Allura grins like a little, foxy evil spirit as she explains, "Let me tell you about the time when Alissa almost made juice out of a boy's balls."
Oh, boy.
--
Young Alissa was a bit of a savage. Her slave training dulled her edge and made her much more submissive, but the wildness she inherited from her mother is still there, though it now usually remains hidden until my cock occasionally draws it back to the surface.
She hunts them down one-by-one since they don't really have an easy way out of the estate, but she starts showing them a bit more mercy with each cry of pain. The riders have it the worst since they can't heal themselves or cut off their sense of pain like the mounts could, but it seems that the mounts are deliberately allowing themselves to feel every single arrow that hits them.
Ciel goes to them and offers healing to the wounded, and no small number of the young warriors become awed at the exotic, curvy angel that descends to give them aid.
Once Alissa gets back, she shoots an annoyed look at Ciel but doesn't openly complain.
The unit of Town Hunters languidly moves to organize itself again, but then Alissa turns around and glares at them, driving them to quickly form back up, now with them all in their humanoid form.
"Everyone, thank you," she announces, and they all salute her again by grabbing their right fox ear. "At ease!"
Godsdamn, she looks so hot when she's giving orders like this.
Alissa gives me a pouty look as she blushes, and the Town Hunters now come up to her one by one to give her their congratulations.
The tall leader is the first to reach her, and the others form a line behind him. "Dame Alissa, congratulations on your marriage and Lordship," he politely gives his blessings. That's Goureuse, Gou for short, the leader of his unit, a tall and rather flat-faced, orange-haired, and muscular werefox.
"Crown Lord Alissa Ryder," she corrects Gou with a snooty tone, then grins cheekily.
He grins back and bows. "Yes, yes, my Royal Lord."
She walks a bit closer to him and whispers, "Please tell me that you married Margoth."
"M-maar~…" He grunts and chokes on his words as he straightens his back. "F-fiancée… she's my fiancée."
Alissa sighs in relief and pats his shoulder. "Thank the Gods, and congratulations."
He smiles embarrassedly and moves along.
--
"How are you alive?" Alissa jokingly asks a sly-looking man who has thin eyes and a very wide grin. That's Solent, the unit's clown.
"Cheeky foxes never die," he immediately shoots back and snickers.
--
"Congratulations, Margoth," Alissa gives her blessing to the short girl that had been mounted on Gou.
"Congratulations, Alissa," she returns the kindness, and the two share a warm hug.
--
After passing her, they each salute us as they give us their respects.
"Your Highnesses! It was an honor to be trained by Lord Alissa," they exclaim one by one, then they gather together again to return to their duty. They'll be free at night, so I think we'll meet up again with them then.
Alissa waves to them as they leave, then un[Equip]s her armor and reties the sash of her not-kimono before it unravels.
"Well, this is definitely a new side to Alissa that we'd never seen before," Roxanne casually remarks with an evil grin, tapping the tips of her fingers together as she plans out some banter.
Alissa walks back to us with a stiff expression, trying to appear unaffected by our teasing. "You won't be able to use this against me!" She boldly declares.
Roxanne's evil smile doesn't even twitch. "Uh huh. But how about we all meet up with your unit to drink some alcohol together?" She suddenly jumps to the side and grabs Allura's shoulder. "And what if we bring your sister along…? I'm sure that she has some new stories for us about the 'Juicemaker' that everyone would love to hear about."
Allura grins at her sister without a hint of shame, and Alissa stares at her in wide-eyed disbelief at her betrayal.
"She's too young to drink," Jacques intervenes, trying to throw Alissa a life preserver.
But he just activated Roxanne's trap card. "Oh, I didn't even think of giving her alcohol, no," she denies with an overly-dramatic tone, then she turns to him and displays her cunningly evil grin. "But if you're that concerned, how about you join us and share some of your stories of Alissa as a baby…?"
Alissa blinks, Jacques blinks, and Léonne grins.
"That's a wonderful idea!" He exclaims and laughs, but it quickly weakens into muffled chuckles when he sees Alissa's glare.
"A party in Alissa's name sounds like a perfectly appropriate way to honor her return," Léonne suggests, her chilling tone so filled with evil that it surpasses Roxanne's.
Alissa looks each of them in the eye, and a long, tense silence drags on, then her eyes fall on Roxanne, and she whispers with a deadly tone, "I'll punish you later."
"Please do," the evil succubus happily accepts.
Alissa closes her eyes and groans, then she decides to ignore them and comes over to me, and I help straighten her clothes.
"Anyway, now that was really something. I'm glad that I got to see this side of you," I remark with a kind tone.
"No more teasing, please," she weakly begs.
"I'm serious. I'm happy that I was here to see this," I reassure her and kiss her forehead.
She sighs tiredly, but her tail starts to softly wag, then she turns to her parents. "Thanks for doing this," she mumbles, and chuckles softly.
"You deserve it," Jacques comforts her.
"All of it," Allura adds cheekily.
"Now, let's head over to the Tomb," Léonne suggests, and we head out.
--
We leave the Elders behind and descend through the long, grass garden along a sloped cement path. It seems that it gets cleaned pretty regularly since the dampness of the air here should encourage the growth of moss, and that would normally make the steps pretty slippery.
Along the way, a group of foxes comes to greet us, loudly yipping and wagging their tails like excited dogs until the Sworn Hunters give them little tidbits of food.
Alissa stops to pat some of them, and a few of the older ones seem to recognize her. Then we use [Animal Tongue] to get permission from the foxes to pet them, though Aoi needs to change into her humanoid form before she can even get close.
As wereanimals, Klein and Anton also manage to get close enough to pet the foxes, but the rest of the Lordsguard remains on guard, though the Chimeras seem very envious of us.
Hukarere suddenly approaches us and asks in Reo, "[So, uhm… I have a question]."
I move some points around to understand her better and gently reply, "[Yes]?"
"[Do werefoxes fuck animal foxes]?" She bluntly asks in a way that only a Chimera could.
"[Do weredragons fuck dragons]?" Hana immediately shoots back.
"[Lord Aoi is intelligent, though]," she retorts.
"[Fair point]," I admit.
Alissa tries her best to sound scholarly as she explains, "[Foxes only enter heat during specific seasons, and they search for a mate, not just some fun, so it's incredibly disrespectful to mate with a fox and then abandon it]."
The truth is, getting fucked by a fox is one of her fantasies, so she had clearly thought it through very thoroughly long before she met me.
"Every werefox is taught about these things!" She quickly defends herself in my soul space, but we all know how much of a depraved slut she truly is.
"[What if you don't abandon it]?" Hukarere continues, sounding rather fascinated.
"[Then you'd better get ready to become the parent of a fox]," Alissa amusedly answers.
Hukarere's tone starts to remind me of a child's since it's so full of wonder. "[Can a male werefox impregnate a female fox? What about the opposite?]"
"[Both are possible. Also, a werefox woman can be impregnated by an animal fox in both of her forms]," Alissa awkwardly replies.
"[Divines, step on me]," Hukarere mumbles in awe.
A fox shows me their belly and giggles loudly as I scratch it, then my hand brushes against something familiar, and I realize that it's a female.
"Mating season starts soon," Alissa whispers to me and bumps my shoulder with a smirk.
"Oh, Gods…" Anton mumbles as he immediately realizes what we've been talking about, and then Klein blushes just a second after him. Sex in their animal forms is just about the most intimate act possible for a wereanimal.
Alissa notices Allura's intense, surprised stare, and Alissa holds a hand over her mouth as she had completely forgotten how sensitive werefox hearing really is. Thankfully, their parents weren't paying attention.
"Mo~m!" Allura suddenly shouts, and Alissa darts towards Allura to gag her.
--
--
Hall of Fame of Patrons
The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:
Prince PreownedFIN.
Prince Creamy Spinach.
Lord Andrew Meyers.
Lord Samuel Lim.
Lord Bill.
Lord Novgarod.
Lord Michale Erwin.
Lord Bakerdea.
Lord Maurice.
Lord Empyrean.
Lord Mattirro Draca.
Lord Colorblind.
Lord Fullmoon.
Lord Sean Drake.
Lord EESDESESESRDT.
Lord FrostyCube.
Lord Mike Bartter.
Lord Cardinal Steiner.
Lord Krawn.
Lord Warwulfv.
Lord Jorge Franco.
Lord Christopher Welsh.
Lord DJ.
Lord Philip.
Lord Tenebris Lupus.
Lord ImportantNPC.
Lord The Tallest Joshua.
Lord Copey Dunt.
Lord Dracopuppy23.
Lord Freddie.
Lord Cidant.
Lord Stellerbattle.
Lord GoodKat.
Noble Salty Panda.
Noble Mild Fracas.
Noble Aclys.
Noble Shawn Plumley.
Noble CarlBaxter.
Noble Yeuromain.
Noble Brandon Lai.
Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.
Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted: manasongwriting.wordpress.com
Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime: discord.com/invite/3GqMxQc
Become a Patron patr**n.com/manasong and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.