The conversation with Lengos had left a residue of moralizing on Yerga’s skin, as sticky and irritating as a spider’s web.
The paladin spoke of death as a burden, whereas to her, it was an art form, a dance, the ultimate liberation.
She needed to wash his words off her.
She needed to feel something real; namely, herself.
The river winding at the foot of the camp was an inky ribbon beneath the moonlight.
The water, fed by melting snow from the high peaks, carried a bone-numbing chill that paralyzed the breath.
But not hers.
Perval, who had headed down to the riverbank to wash the dried blood from his split knuckles and refill their waterskins, froze in the deep shadow of a sprawling willow.
The monk felt no cold; his body was a furnace, and the numerous scars crisscrossing his chest gleamed in the starlight like a map of bygone battles.
Instinctively, he sensed a shift in the air.
It was no longer just the stillness of the night.
It was the palpable tension preceding a grand spectacle.
He remained hidden; not out of shame, but out of pure, almost reverent curiosity.
Yerga did not simply enter the water.
She annexed it.
Her robe slipped from her shoulders with a soft rustle like a sigh, revealing a body that seemed entirely incongruous with the harsh landscape.
She was too smooth, too perfect, gleaming in the starlight as if carved from pristine ivory.
When her foot touched the surface, the water didn’t dare freeze her.
On the bank, perched atop the pile of her discarded silks, sat her skeletal cat, Void.
The creature licked his fleshless jaws with a phantom tongue and watched his mistress with dead, green witch-fire burning in his eye sockets, keeping a silent vigil.
Perval held his breath, watching a sickly, neon-green magic drip from her fingertips.
The necromancer’s power didn’t just seep into the current to warm it; it reached further, stretching out toward the battlefield.
From the riverbed and the surrounding brush, the skeletal remains of the slaughtered bandits tore themselves free.
Ribs, tibias, and vertebrae danced around her, weaving together with a soft, rattling clatter to form a tight, calcified ring.
They constructed a macabre retaining wall; a perfectly circular basin right in the middle of the untamed stream, damming the flow of the ice-cold water.
The water trapped within this sepulchral pool began to steam, generating a thick, mystical mist that draped around the woman like a silken veil.
She submerged herself slowly, celebrating every single inch of skin that vanished beneath the surface.
She tilted her head back, allowing her wild green curls to fan out across the water like the crown of an exotic tropical plant, pulsing with their own inner light.
She looked like a nymph who had slaughtered every other nymph just to claim the river entirely for herself.
He watched this ritual with a fascination bordering on actual pain.
He saw Yerga’s hands wander over her neck and shoulders, washing away the invisible grime of the skirmish.
Every movement she made was slow, deliberate, and fiercely provocative, even though; theoretically; she was entirely alone.
But Yerga was never truly alone.
She was always accompanied by her own magnificent reflection.
The monk watched the water droplets run down the curve of her breasts, shimmering in the eerie green glow of her magic.
This was no ordinary bath.
It was an act of pure self-worship.
The river caressed her body, and she accepted the tribute with half-lidded eyes and a soft, sated smile playing on her wet lips.
She radiated a shamelessness so absolute it seemed to possess a will of its own.
“Flawless…” she whispered to the night.
Her voice, low and vibrant, carried across the water, reaching Perval’s ears and sending a distinct shiver down his broad back.
In that moment, he understood.
Her beauty didn’t stem from nature.
It stemmed from the unshakeable conviction that the entire world existed solely to serve as her backdrop.
It was terrifying, and entirely mesmerizing.
As she began to step onto the bank, the water cascaded off her reluctantly, as if grieving the loss of contact with such a form.
From the darkness, soundless as a shadow, emerged Bregg.
The Death Knight, summoned by a silent command, held a thick velvet towel in his armored gauntlets.
He didn’t look at her; the visor of his helm was dead and hollow, yet his movements were filled with a strange, mechanical tenderness as he wrapped the fabric around her bare, steaming body.
Yerga accepted his service without a single word, not even deigning to look at him.
Bregg, his singular task fulfilled, melted back into the air, vanishing into nothingness before he could disturb the silence with even one unnecessary gesture.
The monk finally exhaled the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
He retreated deeper into the thicket, carrying empty waterskins but a thoroughly overflowing mind.
His heart hammered in his chest; not merely from lust, but with the profound thrill of an explorer who had just uncovered a fundamental truth of the universe.
He had to tell Neira and Duria what he had witnessed.
About a woman who could seduce the very elements, and about a beauty so fiercely confident it required no witnesses; though, paradoxically, it always seemed to find them.
The camp at the edge of the trail was bathed in a pleasant twilight, illuminated only by the cheerful crackle of the campfire.
Above the travelers stretched the vast expanse of the night sky, densely sprinkled with stars that, in this part of the world, seemed to hang just inches above the treetops.
Perval sat on a stump, rotating a charred stick over the flames.
Skewered on the end was a hunk of meat that, with a heavy dose of optimism, could be called a boar’s haunch, but in stark reality was nothing more than an overgrown squirrel.
The monk tore off a massive bite.
He chewed it slowly, smacking his lips with philosophical contemplation, before pointing the gnawed bone up at the heavens.
“You know what?
I was just thinking…” he began, the echo of his recent riverside epiphany still lingering in his voice.
“I look at this sky, at these stars, at the sheer vastness of the cosmos…
and I’ve come to the conclusion that the gods actually have a sense of humor.
Or, at the very least, a damn good taste in landscape architecture.”
Duria, perched on a flat stone across from him, didn’t even bother to look up.
With surgical precision, she filed her nails using the razor edge of a dagger.
In the flickering firelight, her white hair gleamed like spun silver.
“Perval,” she drawled with the tone of a bored aristocrat.
“If you are about to make an observation about ‘great, round moons,’ I swear I will cut out your tongue.
It would be very amusing for me, but terribly inconvenient for you when eating.
Baka (Idiot).”
The monk let out a booming laugh.
“No, no, my dear bloodsucker!
I’m talking about Yerga.
Have you ever stopped to ponder the sheer phenomenon of her beauty?
It’s…
an ontological riddle.
How is it physically possible for someone to be simultaneously so irritating and yet so incredibly hypnotizing?
It’s like watching a volcano erupt.
You know it’s deadly, you know it’s going to make a mess of everything, but you just can’t tear your eyes away from the lava.”
Neira, sitting slightly apart from the others, stared deeply into the dying embers.
Her serpentine tail twitched nervously, coiling around her ankle like a snake seeking warmth.
“It isn’t lava, Perv,” she whispered softly.”It’s…
gravity.”
The vampire snorted, pausing her makeshift manicure.
“Gravity?
Neira, darling, it isn’t gravity drawing eyes to her cleavage.
It’s master-class corset engineering and a profound lack of shame.
Yerga isn’t beautiful in any natural sense of the word.
She’s beautiful in an…
entitled way.
She walks into a room, and her very face demands: ‘Look at me, or I’ll have Bregg eat you.’ Mendokusai (Troublesome).”
The succubus adjusted her violet braid, a faint blush rising to her cheeks.
“That isn’t what I meant.
I am a priestess of the Goddess of Lust.
I understand the true nature of desire,” she explained, carefully avoiding the vampire’s gaze.
“Yerga’s beauty isn’t merely physical.
It’s her…
certainty.
She doesn’t ask for attention.
She annexes it.
It is, in a strange way…
pure.
Entirely devoid of hesitation.
Most beings are deeply ashamed of their desires.
She has weaponized hers into a religion.”
Perval pointed his gnawed bone at her like a schoolmaster’s cane.
“Exactly!
That’s it!
It’s the kind of beauty that smacks you across the face like a damn good pint of dark stout.
You don’t sit there analyzing the bouquet; you just suddenly feel incredibly alive!
I mean, look at that green hair of hers.
On anyone else, it would look like swamp weed dredged from a stagnant pond.
On her, it looks like the crown of the World Tree.
How does she do it?
Is it a spell?”
“It’s narcissism,” Duria countered, holding up her dagger to inspect her handiwork in the firelight.
“Narcissism is the most potent magic in this miserable world.
If you believe you are the most exquisite creature in the universe with the kind of terrifying force that she does, reality simply throws its hands up, surrenders, and agrees with her just to get some peace and quiet.
Bregg is the perfect proof.
The poor bastard has been dead for thirteen centuries, and he still follows her around like a lost puppy because not even Death itself had the nerve to tell her ‘no.'”
Neira buried her blushing face in her hands, her tail twitching violently.
“She…
sometimes she looks at me like I’m dessert.
It’s terrifying.
And fascinating.
And then terrifying all over again.”
“Hahaha!
Don’t you worry!” Perval slapped his knee.
“You’re just…
the cherry on top of the cake she hasn’t decided to eat yet.
But back to the point; have you noticed that she even fights like she’s posing for a bloody oil painting?
Just the other day, when that orc took a swing at her with a glaive, instead of dodging like a normal person, she executed a flawless pirouette just so her cloak would catch the wind aesthetically.”
Duria offered a lopsided smile, baring her fangs in a predatory grimace.
“And that, right there, is the difference between us.
I fight because it’s amusing.
You fight because you like to work up a sweat.
Zedora fights because she has massive underlying complexes.
But Yerga?
Yerga fights because she firmly believes the spilled blood of her enemies is an excellent color contrast for her complexion.
It’s the aestheticization of violence on a level even I haven’t achieved.
And I’ve had a few centuries of a head start.
Subarashii (Magnificent), in a twisted sort of way.”
“Do you think she…
loves anyone?” Neira asked suddenly.
“Truly?
Besides herself?”
A brief silence fell over the camp.
The only sounds were the campfire spitting sparks toward the stars, and the rhythmic, rumbling snores of Figlin drifting from the edge of the clearing.
The dwarf was fast asleep, propped up against a tree trunk, his hand still death-gripping an empty tankard.
He muttered in his sleep about “golden fish” and “overpriced ale,” occasionally swatting at his brass ear trumpet as it slipped down his cheek.
Perval scratched his thick beard, getting roast grease in the tangles.
“I think, Neira…
that she deeply loves being loved.
But you know what?
In this mad world, where corpses go for walks and vampires give themselves twilight manicures, that’s actually a pretty fair deal.
She is beautiful because she is free.
Free from everything that crushes the rest of us; doubt, fear, rules.
Nature was shamelessly generous to her, gifting her with curves a man could gladly drown in, and her ego casts a shadow vaster than a mountain peak.
That kind of power demands respect.”
Duria stood up, stretching her lithe frame with feline grace before sheathing her dagger.
“Respect?
Perhaps.
But I’ll tell you one thing.
If I ever actually die; like, permanently this time; I want Yerga to deliver my eulogy.”
“Why?” Neira asked, visibly surprised.
“Because she’d spend half the speech talking about how stunning she looks in mourning black, and absolutely no one would cry because they’d be entirely too busy staring at her.
And that, my darlings, is true immortality.”
Perval raised his half-empty skin of ale toward the tent where a steady, rhythmic breathing could be heard.
“To Yerga!
May she live forever.
Because if she dies, Hell won’t be able to handle the competition and they’ll just bounce her right back!”
“I’m fairly certain she’d walk in there and immediately assume the role of Chief Director,” Neira noted with a small, fond smile.
“And the very first thing she’ll do is change the dreadful décor,” Duria added.
Suddenly, a soft murmur came from the tent, followed by Yerga’s voice; sleep-laden and lazy, yet still maintaining an air of regal authority:
“If you don’t stop gossiping about me, I will have Bregg hug you all to death.
And Perval…
I heard that toast.
I am deeply moved.
But your jokes are just as sour as your cheap ale.”
The three companions exchanged knowing glances in the firelight.
The monk bellowed with laughter, Duria rolled her crimson eyes and muttered,”Urusai (Noisy),” and Neira buried her face in her knees, quietly praying to her Goddess for the patience to survive this bizarre, dysfunctional family.
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