Well… events have certainly been up and down recently. Yesterday went from socially awkward to fearing for my life… then fearing something entirely different… then to the absolute best night of my entire life… then waking up to having one prince expose himself to me, and then plotting to kill a completely different prince. The last twenty-four hours have certainly been eventful.

  Kiyui has surprised me most of all… and I do not just mean with the crazy amazing sex… I mean… that was a surprise… the best surprise ever… he can surprise me with that any time… it was simply the best thing that I have ever experienced. I mean with his plan for dealing with Petri.

  In all honesty… and I hope you don’t think me a complete arsehole for thinking this… but I always kind of thought of Kiyui as a well-meaning air head. Like… he’s always been such a sweet and lovely person. But I didn’t really think there was much else to him. Hell, I remember being so shocked when I found out that he could read and write. Gods… I must have sounded like such a prat.

  He isn’t an air-head at all. He’s actually got a very solid head on his shoulders. I grant you; he is rather na?ve… but there is a reason for everything he does. Even if I don’t understand or agree with his reasoning, it is definitely there. I have come to see that he thinks things through. He does what he thinks is best in any given situation and he is capable of coming up with some solid strategies. I feel really bad for viewing him as an air-head now. I’ll have to make it up to him at some point. I also need to thank him for everything he’s done for me… last night was amazing… how do people usually thank their partners? Flowers? Or is that cliché?

  Fuck… I’ll have to think about that later… we have too much stuff to do. We need to prepare for this expedition.

  After we got ready, we went and had breakfast. Phoenix’s dining room is huge… even Nomius was sitting in it perfectly comfortably. And her chef made whatever we asked for. Seriously, how on earth have we gone this long without knowing she had this kind of lifestyle. I get that she didn’t want us to treat her any differently because she’s a lady n’ all… but come on. This place is insane.

  Oh, and wait ‘til you hear this. You know those things she’s been carving… for like years… they’ve been gifts for Rosario… this entire time. He has them all on display on shelves in their dining room. Right back to the first one… which is a rather crude and sharp looking donkey, I think. She has clearly improved and got incredibly good at it over time. Which is even more impressive when you think that she can’t even use one of her hands properly. I mean, I know she carries around a little vice thing to hold it steady… so that will help… but still. There are over a hundred of the things. There is even one of me in all my armour. Rosario says she used to use the models to tell him stories about what happened on our adventures.

  Like, what the hell? Since when was she good with kids. I know she has always been protective of Tadwick… but she barely engages with him. She really has gone out of her way to look after Rosario and give him some semblance of childhood, despite the fucked-up situation. She spent a lot of time away with us… but her time back here seems to have been dedicated to him. No wonder he’s so worried that she is going to view him as a child instead of a husband. She’s basically been his mum for the last six years. Oh gods… that makes this whole thing so creepy. I’m going to try to block that out of me head now… so… moving on.

  We explained the situation to Phoenix over breakfast. She agreed to come along surprisingly easily. She said we owed it to Flora to see her last request through. Which is a very valid point. She actually seemed quite enthusiastic about Kiyui’s plan to kill Petri. I wonder if she has crossed paths with him before. Rosario was a bit hesitant about her going so far but she assured him that she would be back for his birthday.

  We arranged to meet up at my farm the following morning. Then Nomius, Kiyui, Tadwick, and I left. That halfling guy from the ball was arriving as we went. He gave us a cheerful nod as he walked past. Phoenix explained to us later that his name is Wynrun. Rosario is doing a research project with him on the creation and application of mana storage devices. Apparently, due to being a unicorn and a pegasus, Rosario produces an abnormal amount of mana, which makes him the perfect person to assist Wynrun in this research. I imagine it is probably good for him to keep himself occupied in Phoenix’s absence.

  Damecus did not take much convincing. He jumped at the chance to screw over the Viridescent clan. Agaroth simply said “there is no way you cunts are leaving me behind again!” Which is pretty much what I expect from him at this point.

  The hardest part was explaining to Tadwick that he couldn’t come. He’s been by our side at all times since we rescued him from that cave. I feel awful having to leave him like this… but this is dangerous. Not that before wasn’t dangerous… but this is different. Before he was being tracked down by a creature that wanted to… nope… nope… too disgusting… not even gonna think about it… suffice to say that leaving him would have put him in danger before… this time bringing him would put him in danger.

  He was finally placated by the fact that Nomius is going to stay with him… Nomius has been with him almost as long as we have. And since he is red, we wouldn’t be able to use him to frame the Viridescent clan anyway.

  The morning that we were due to set off, Phoenix and Agaroth arrived at the farm with a good amount of supplies. I guess she isn’t bothering to hide her wealth anymore. She even brought a cart with two donkeys to save on travel time.

  Agaroth gifted me a new cowl to wear. It isn’t enchanted or anything, so everyone can see my face. And it has holes for my ears to stick out, so I don’t have to pin them back anymore… which is nice. I really felt naked without having anything on my head all this time, so I very much appreciated it.

  As we were loading up the cart, Chloe arrived with a few knights. She said “the duke has heard that you are off to return your friend’s creepy ass mask to her mate or some shit. He’s very grateful for her sacrifice and wishes to help ya out. I’m afraid Flynn is the only one of my guys who isn’t too damaged to travel. Well… Lucas is fine… but asking him to leave when his brother is injured would be a dick move… so I borrowed these guys from Zafar’s unit. Ya already know Alex… and this here’s Boff.”

  Boff… or Christiano Boffrage, as I found out later… is a tall, rounded, and jovial man. Seems happy about anything and everything. Always laughing and smiling… but not like Agaroth does… Agaroth mainly laughs because of some dirty joke or comment that he’s made. Boff just seems like a nice wholesome bloke. Always goes by Boff apparently, has done since he was a child. Smells of slightly off milk… which is an odd smell for somebody who doesn’t work on a dairy farm.

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  He wears a bandana on his head, which is an odd thing to see a grown man wear. They seem to be much more popular among teenage boys. Probably because of all the pictures of pirates wearing them in stories. His weapon of choice is a glaive. Which is an interesting choice… it grants range… provided you have the strength to wield it. But it can make up close combat tricky.

  This is the first time that I have really spent much time with Alexander. He doesn’t like to be called Alex… Chloe just does it to wind him up. His second name is Krajewski… pronounced Cry-Ev-Skee… which is not a common name in this area… his parents travelled here from Saag Vasir. Which is fucking miles away… it is literally on the other side of the Equine Kingdom. He was technically born in Kataravonia though, so he is a Kataravonian citizen, and thus allowed to be a knight… unlike Kiyui and I.

  Despite being a rogue, he has quite a dignified and respectable look to him. He has one of those thin styled up moustaches… which is not a common style in the parts of town that my mum used to take me to.

  He has a curious smell to him… and I’m not just talking about the wax that he clearly uses to style his moustache. I can detect two different types of body odour on him… both male. So, either he was involved in some kind of wrestling contest just before we set off… or he recently engaged in some other sweat inducing activity with another man. I couldn’t smell any semen though, so I don’t think actual sex was involved. I keep wanting to ask him about it… but asking why he smells of another man is a bit personal… and asking if he is a wrestler is an odd question to randomly ask somebody… if I ask that he’ll think me weird. It isn’t particularly important… I’d just like to get some advice about my own relationship.

  Male to male relationships aren’t exactly frequent in the storybooks, so I have no idea what kind of things I should be doing. Like… am I meant to treat this the same as I would if he were female? In the books they always settle down and have kids and live happily ever after. We can’t have kids… is having kids essential to the happily ever after part? That being said… we have kind of adopted Tadwick… I know he isn’t related to either of us… and none of us are even the same race… but does any of that really matter? Surely how we feel is what is important… it’s only been a few months but we kind of do feel like a family.

  Urgh… I just want somebody to come to me and tell me what the rules are for this kind of thing. My whole life I have lived by a strict set of rules… to keep myself safe… to keep my secret… to prevent myself from getting hurt. Now that has all gone out the window. I feel like I’m just winging it all the time… I just want guidelines at least… I like rules… they help me feel safe… just… fuck… sorry… I’m getting sidetracked by my own issues again… fuck’s sake.

  Flynn seems nice enough. Now that I have had a look up close, his armour is actually pretty nifty. It is heavy armour but he moves pretty fast in it. He clearly looks after it well. The most interesting part about it is the helmet though… it makes him look almost demonic. It has a strangely bull like shape to it and has two protruding horns. It is genuinely quite intimidating and I have never seen a helmet like his before.

  He says that the helmet was Chloe’s idea. She told him that it would intimidate the enemy… especially when paired with his shadow self-ability. I have got to know him a bit and unfortunately his personality is about as average as his appearance. If it wasn’t for the cool armour and his fighting ability, there would be absolutely nothing notable about him at all… even his smell is painfully standard… he smells of stew with a hint of beer… which is the general smell of most men from the city.

  It didn’t take the seven of us long to get to Purresia with the cart. So, we had about three days to help them prepare for attack before the slavers arrived. They were a bit wary of our group at first. What with being so isolationist. But Shu and Shai, as well as Kiyui’s dad vouched for us. And they have been attacked by slavers before, so it wasn’t exactly something that they had never experienced. The higher-ups of the community wouldn’t talk to us directly so Shu acted as a go-between. Which I’m glad about to be honest, because it meant that I didn’t have to be all diplomatic with aristocrats again… cause fuck, have I had enough of those for the moment.

  Purresia is very idyllic. It has a beautiful cascading waterfall and a river runs right through the centre of it. It was nice to see it without having to remain hidden. Even if that did mean that I was being stared at the whole time. Even got to meet that Reisuke that Kiyui told me about. And Kiyui was right… his black fur really is gorgeous. It is honestly the blackest thing that I have ever seen. It’s like a black hole… you could genuinely lose yourself in it. Him and his band were playing music in the village centre. It was a shame that we were so busy setting up traps and defences around the place… it would have been nice to just sit and listen to the music.

  Kiyui is still very cagey about being here. It was his idea to come here and help them, but I can tell he is uncomfortable about this. He has been trying to remain on the outskirts of town as much as possible… or at his dad’s house. We wouldn’t have even met Reisuke if Shai hadn’t dragged Kiyui into town and to the bandstand.

  Meeting Reisuke seemed to make Kiyui incredibly nervous. If it was anybody else, I’d think it was nerves about trying to make small talk with somebody he had been intimate with… cause fuck knows that I will be beyond uncomfortable the next time that I have to speak to Smutisha… and all she did was grab my penis… we didn’t do anything like the stuff that Kiyui & Reisuke did. But knowing Kiyui, I doubt that is what made him nervous… hell… he speaks to Shu and Shai perfectly fine… and he gave Shu a casual blowjob the last time we were here. So there has to be another reason.

  Maybe it’s because Reisuke was the one that he was closest with… maybe he’s thinking about what his life could have been… if all that stuff with his demon side never happened… how he could have ended up playing his lyre in a band… he could have been married to somebody as beautiful as Reisuke… instead of this ugly goblin that he’s with now. Fuck… I’m starting to depress myself… moving on.

  We set up some pitfall traps, spike traps, arrow traps, gas traps, magic rune traps… having half the village help allowed us to set things up quite quickly. They already had bird’s nest lookouts built in the trees which was great.

  You know… what Kiyui said a while ago about sex not being such a massive thing here. Well, he definitely wasn’t lying. They are all incredibly casual about it. When we were working on traps and things, they would just randomly announce that they were off for a “shag break” and they’d disappear for like twenty minutes… then come back and carry on like nothing happened.

  And I don’t just mean the couples who were helping us. I mean all of them… even the ones who were in relationships with other people… even when both parts of the couple were present together… they’d go off with completely different people. Literally all of the women wear infertility runes around their necks to prevent unwanted pregnancy. They seem to just have indiscriminate sex with whoever happens to be nearby. That being said… they seem to draw the line at sex with outsiders… much to Agaroth’s dismay.

  Anyway… with all of the traps and stuff in place, Damecus and I set off to go and perform our part of the plan. We had to take a roundabout route so as to not accidentally bump into the slaving party on the way. We have prepared for this all that we could in the time frame. I just hope it all goes according to plan… because in all honesty… I am genuinely terrified right now… if we fuck this up, we could start a war. Fuck, I hope this goes well.