"Still?" Miyo asked, with a raised eyebrow.
"Still," Rykard confirmed, his voice authoritative and unquestioned. Miyo's tails fluffed up a bit, an extension of goosebumps to her fur. Her pale, firm butt was a nice cushion for his hand to lay on, as they headed outside.
It was the third time the redheaded vixen was presented to the village in her full nudist glory and it made eyes bulge even more than the last two. The first time people had been too overwhelmed by the sight of a real life sovereign using his haremette as everyone imagined kings would do in private.
As the son of an emperor, Rykard of course knew that even monarchs were typically too faint of heart to do what he was doing. They were too busy respecting the family of their wives for political reasons to actually ask her whether she would enjoy getting paraded through the hallways or to be eaten out by a particularly echo-y corridor.
Some people just didn't know how to have fun.
The second time probably had been less shocking for the locals. Miyo getting carried naked from one house to the other had been a short lived affair. In both the first and second case, she had been either practically or actually unconscious.
Now the six-tailed fox was walking next to Rykard, her expression a neutral calm, and her tits jiggling with every step. She moved about with the typical grace and certainty of a noblewoman, except she wore a dress more pleasing to the eye than any finely woven cloth. Under the golden ball of a sun in the empty, midnight blue sky, her pale skin looked doubly beautiful, freshly scrubbed clean and revitalized by her man's highly effective usage of Restoration magic. He probably had added another couple of days to her lifespan. If he got good enough at it, he could keep his entire future harem nubile.
Not that Restoration was the only path to eternal youth.
The intense stares of the artists did not cease. Pleasingly, Rykard found no one who had even a glint of disapproval in their eyes. Those that snapped out of their post-peeping haze rapidly grabbed canvas and coal and started sketching the form of their future queen. 'Good, they should take references. Wouldn't want inaccurate representations of my vixen standing around,' Rykard thought and squeezed Miyo's juicy behind. She let out a little appreciative hum.
Beyond that, there was no overt excitement to any of her display. No erect nipples, no hastened breathing, no dusting of red on her cheeks and no slick wetness to her smooth slit. Miyo did not have a kink for exposing herself, her casual nudity was simply a matter of her having nothing to be ashamed of. Only Rykard's word in the matter was important. He was fairly certain he could train her to instinctively get turned on when he exposed her. Just a matter of positive reinforcement and perhaps a bit of consensual Manipulation.
Standing in the middle of the centre of the village, Rykard looked around. "Kaela!" he shouted, when he failed to find the brunette dragon woman. The commanding tone swiftly got his chosen guide to step out of her house. The coal on her fingers indicated that she too had been sketching what she had witnessed so far. "We are ready for the tour now."
"O-of course, Ry- King Rykard!" The brunette stammered and approached. Although red in the cheeks, she did stare unashamedly both at Miyo's exposed hourglass figure and the definition of Rykard's muscles under his custom-fit clothes. "Follow me!"
They were guided to a house a bit away from the village, located in a particular position alongside the valley that natural air currents, shaped by the surrounding cliffs, carried the smell away from the rest of the houses. A proper precaution, since the stench in the air was the heavily artificial scent of paint.
"This is where half of our artistic process begins!" Kaela cleared her throat, to reign her nervous high pitch in. She opened the door of the removed house, revealing four metal basins within. All were filled with a large serving of paint, constantly stirring by means of a mechanism that, judging by the sound of rushing water, was kept in motion by the outgoing stream from the bathhouse.
"Remarkable," Miyo complimented and looked around the room.
Rykard did the same, spotting various sacks of grinded down materials along the walls. "How do you produce this paint? Alchemy?"
"We use various rocks we find alongside the metals and grind them down into dust for the colour. For the carrier, we use a mixture of flour, water and salt… flour is really the hardest thing to come by, especially now…."
Rykard rubbed his chin and nodded. No outside trading meant they were bound to what basic necessities they could gather and mountains made for bad farming. "This will be fixed as my realm expands," he stated with sovereign certainty. He looked into the basins. They were mixing red, blue, yellow, and black inside them. To lighten the colour, they likely just thinned them. "There's truly no alchemy involved?" he asked, demonstrably sniffing the air.
"J-just a little bit at the end of the process, so it sticks better to metal… nothing beyond that," Kaela assured.
"A crafty solution," he complimented. "What do you think of this, Miyo?"
"A crafty solution," she echoed, her tails waving thoughtfully. "Your single-minded focus on creating figures of the attractive and erotic did equip you with interesting skills. Continue the tour."
"Y-yes, my Queen!" Kaela stated and headed for the door. It was only Rykard that caught the vixen's pleased little smirk. They were guided back into the village proper and to the dragon woman's house. This time, rather than entering the building proper, they stepped into the half-open workshop at the side. Each of the houses had something like it.
There were two furnaces, one made from stacked stone bricks and the other forged from treated metal. The former looked like it rarely saw use and was most likely a tool for the creation of the latter. A large anvil and workbench otherwise dominated the room. There were various metal tools, some highly specialised, others general purpose.
"Each of us has their own forge. Our people are quite resistant to the heat, so we can work here all day without much issue. We smelt and shape the metals on our own, since our projects all have individual demand and all of that…"
Miyo picked up a long, well-crafted rod of metal. It had been hammered into a round base, one side jutting out. It was one sharpening away from making a serviceable blade. "What is this supposed to be at the end?" the redhead wanted to know.
"Uhm, the first segment of a wing. I'll fold a thin sheet of bronze around it to serve as the membrane."
"Crafty," Miyo complimented once again. "Do you believe you could smith weapons?"
"Y-yeah… we use a lot of weapon smithing techniques to make sure the statues survive the elements for a long time… plus, we used to trade swords and such…."
Miyo glanced at Rykard, who acknowledged her thoughts with a nod. It would be an option to institute a 'sword tax' or similar program to assure a part of the local productivity went into arming his forces. Such would obviously decrease the production of fine art, but it may be necessary to assure a future standing army had the armaments to be viable against or superior to the other Competitors.
Kaela gestured at her rack of tools. "Whenever the Exile Hexagon was emptied of people, the houses and everything else were copied along the land, so they left behind fully functional sets. Each generation of new artists has been taking over and expanding on what is on offer. The only thing that did get changed after we were transported here were the mines."
"I'd be interested in seeing that." Rykard stated.
Again, the eyes of the entire village traced them, as they marched across the central plaza. "This is… the communal minecart," Kaela stopped for a moment at the endpoint of the rails that Rykard had noted earlier. "It would be inefficient if we all went in there at the same time, so we have a mining rotation going on. Someone fills up the minecart, then everyone takes what they need and smelts it as they need it… well, most of the time Tuaren does it… he likes mining more than most of us, and we trade him other things in return."
A typical exchange of goods and services, nothing too unusual there.
They followed the tracks of the minecart into the actual excavation. Immediately, the oddity of the room became apparent. Rails branched off in various directions, only to vanish into the cave walls where tunnels would have been just two days ago. The stone and the deposits within it had been refilled, assuring that Rykard's domain didn't suffer from the exploitation of the land at the hand of previous generations.
The sunlight that filled the only intact part of the excavation, a ten metre deep and four metre wide tunnel, was enough to highlight the various shimmering veins that cut through the brown and grey rock. As had been advertised, the metal in the stone was so dense and pure, it was laughably easy to find and would be just as easy to smelt out of the stone.
"If it's our turn, we just… grab one of those and get to it." Kaela gestured at one of various pickaxes that were lined up against the mine's right wall.
"Do you have a breakdown of frequency of metals found?" Miyo enquired. The brunette dragon shook her head. Such detailed intel had, unsurprisingly, not been kept in this decentralised Exile Hexagon. "On personal experience then, what metals do you encounter most frequently?"
"Iron and copper, followed by tin, gold and silver rarely, sometimes platinum," Kaela gave the rundown. A good spread of commonly useful metals. Nothing outstanding, like mithril or orichalcum, but that could be found later. Those were too difficult to work without a master smith anyway.
They returned to the main village and wandered around for a bit, asking questions as they came to mind and chatting with the locals. Eventually the constant attention on Miyo wore off. The men and women, almost equally, never quite stopped staring but they managed to get back to what they had been doing previously.
As the day progressed, they were eventually offered a second meal. Rykard accepted with regal grace and ate in a large gathering with everyone else. He had a long and pleasant chat with several members of the community, as did Miyo. They didn't learn anything outstanding or new, but the impact of a conversation with one's subjects could never be underestimated.
Once the meal had been eaten, a question was posed by Kaela. "S-so… are you two staying the night? Most of the village will set out to the festival site tomorrow."
"Then we will accompany you," Rykard decided. He doubted touring the mountains for another day would uncover something else to be learned. Better to get to the festival site a day early.
Although Kaela offered her modest bed, Rykard preferred that he and Miyo occupy the bathhouse for the night. The spread of blankets and pillows he was carrying along was simply more comfortable and the bathhouse would be an acceptably private place, with close access to the bath in the morning.
Thus, one rest later, Rykard felt the return of his vigour with the full force of his morning wood. Miyo took care of it the usual way, careful to swallow it all. Then they had their morning bath and breakfast, and finally joined up with everyone else.
Setting out was a pretty simple affair. Everyone interested in the festivities gathered up in the village square. Today, that did include everyone. 'No doubt they want to see what change I will bring,' Rykard thought smugly, as he followed people carefully stowing away paint and metals in their travelling bags. "Kaela?"
"Y-yes?" the brunette dragon girl was swift to respond, finalizing her own preparations right next to him.
"Will I be required to bring with me my own materials if I wanted to participate?"
"T-typically, but I'm pretty sure we'd make an exception for you… not like you had the time to gather them up…"
Rykard nodded approvingly. Perhaps he could, and would, fix this with magic rather than further taxation. If such an attempt to dazzle failed, it was good to have a fallback. His attention shifted to Miyo.
The redhead was checking her shoes. A pair of boots looked mildly out of place on her otherwise naked form. They were, however, necessary. Last Rykard wanted was for the vixen to hurt her feet and that, sadly, mandated shoes. Carrying her was not a possibility if they wanted to keep pace with the rest of the group. Beyond that, she was as confidently nude as he demanded.
On the road, Rykard walked with an arm around Miyo. Her soles were shielded, but she could still stumble and now that she was confirmed to be pregnant he had a large additional reason to keep her safe. Not that he needed that reason to enjoy her nuzzling against his side. What love her face did not express, the rest of her body language certainly did.
"You are most fortunate these people are so akin to you in their open depravities," Miyo commented.
"Just to me?" Rykard asked, eyebrow raised.
"Us," the fox woman gave immediately. "Do we maintain our designs about sampling the local cuisine?" Miyo's eyes hungrily moved onto Kaela. The brunette was currently talking to another villager, chuckling nervously as she did. Doubtlessly she would have been even more unnerved if she had caught Miyo licking her luscious pink lips.
"Seems like you already have a dish picked out."
"It practically presented itself. The garnish is plain but pleasing to the eye."
Rykard shook his head and chuckled, "That you ever voiced a hesitance over multi-course meals."
"I never had anything against additional appetizers. I merely had concern about sharing the main course with others. Such selfishness, I leave behind." She leaned up to his ear. "I am growing rather excited at the idea of you putting siblings into other willing sex slaves' wombs, Master."
A deep, pleased hum accompanied Rykard's hand casual brushing over her pussy. A bit of wetness stuck to his finger. "Not right now," he playfully chided his submissive, then licked her sweet juices off the digit.
After about six hours of travel, Kaela fell back. They were in the process of climbing the steep final stretch of a rocky hill's ascent. They had left the mountains proper behind two hours ago, leaving them in a landscape of grass and craggy hills. "You'll be able to see the festival grounds once we're over the hill."
"Already?" Rykard asked. He had assumed they would be travelling all day.
"We're one of the closer villages to the festival grounds. It's… well, you will see."
Just as Kaela said that, they made it over the ridge of the tall hill. A steep downward slope descended down to one of the few truly flat areas of the Hexagon. Between the cliffs of a massive mountain, the outskirts of the range of hills, and the shore of the central lake, was a grassy plain.
Although flat, it was not empty. Hundreds of plinths stood in an almost orderly grid around the area. As Rykard got closer, he spotted the many statues that stood atop them and the many artists already working on them. The scantily clad, erotically posing statues of various dragon women were either getting a fresh paintjob or removed from their plinths, to be hauled over to some kind of decently sized wall of fame.
"Everyone who wants to participate is assigned a plinth," Kaela explained. "A-and at the end of the festival, we have a few rounds of voting about whose is the best. G-gradual elimination and all of that. Statues from last year get removed in preparation for the day."
"Interesting," Rykard remarked, then moved as casually as rapid movement allowed. Janking a man off to the side, he saved the dragon man from the fate of being squished by massive metal thighs. The representation of a woman kneeling on something hidden under her flowing skirt hit the ground. "Not the kind of facesitting we'd want to end up under, right?"
The man barely caught onto what had just happened, when up from the plinth came a loud apology. "Oh, gods, are you okay?"
"Yeah thanks to this guy, this… by the gods you're…"
"King Rykard, yes, and don't be too mad at your friend," he let go of the random artist and walked back to his entourage. "He was merely distracted by the first of my harem."
Miyo bowed her head in a curt greeting, before Rykard had his arm around her again. "Looks like I am a safety risk," she joked.
"You do turn heads effortlessly," Rykard agreed.
"Plenty of opportunities for you to leave an impression," the redhead hummed.
Despite those words, that was the only major incident created by people gawking at the naked fox woman. There were a few people sputtering or stumbling, but none other dropped a statue.
At the centre of the field of statues was an actually open space. There, tents had been erected by the early arrivals and more were in the process of getting put up by those that had just gotten there. In total, about 500 people would fit into this space. That sounded about right for the total population of this Hexagon.
The village Rykard arrived with swiftly started the process of putting up their own tents - beginning with the extra they had packed for him and Miyo, of course. Not a luxurious dwelling, not even by tent standards, but it would do.
Rykard would have helped put it up, had he and Miyo not gotten swarmed by locals the moment they stopped walking. Just like the villagers before, the many artists were busy gawking at and, past their original surprise, sketching Miyo. The vixen struck a confident pose, emphasising her long legs and large chest.
Whenever Rykard wished, he could direct their attention to him. A clap of his hands would do it.