Prelude to Episode 28

Lina climbed through the hole Vashti had made in the ceiling while laughing.

"Well I'll be above the waterline for a little while I hope."

Looking around a dusty room full of ancient junk, she saw hundreds, if not thousands of old pots, masks, spears, musical instruments, maps, vases, some shields, pieces of armor, all just jumbled up in piles along each wall and haphazardly scattered around the room

There was no clear source of where the light was coming from, but the room was clearly lit, just like the other one.

Another window on the same side as the room below, which, when she looked out, she could see the water gushing out of the window below as one huge square arching stream of water which plummeted to some unknown place far out of sight...

"I'm sure glad that Vashti chick made this hole or I'd have drowned by now!"

Walking along the very long room which almost seemed to go off into eternity, she saw paintings hung along the walls, statutes, busts, and an occasional doorway which only led to more rooms filled with junk.

Lina seemed to have walked for hours, perhaps days, again, since time was impossible to measure here, she could by no means be sure.

She had no idea what was even going on below with Lonnie.

Perhaps she was still down there trying to say something under water and was too blinded by her own crying to even realize that Lina had come up through the hole in between the levels.

She was just happy right now to be dry and enjoying a bit of relative peace and quiet, so she just happily continued to walk and look.

"Lina." a full adult woman's voice came from behind her.

"Huh?" she jumped and turned look but there was nobody in sight. She was a long long distance from the window now, so it didn't make sense for the sound to be coming from such a great distance..

"Lina Inverse." it came again. It sounded like it was right next to her, but there was nobody there.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"I'm here by the window." the voice said smoothly.

"Why are you there?" She asked.

"Because unlike my sisters," the voice replied, "I will not violate the rules of boundaries."

"What do you want from me?" Lina asked.

"You need to apologize to my younger sister and make her stop crying."

Lina wanted to see who was talking to her, so she asked, "I want to see who I am talking to, if you don't mind."

"Come to the window then and see."

"That could take days." Lina responded.

"Then I can only project an image into your mind," the voice answered, "For I will not enter this place unwelcomed."

"Okay," Lina said, "I'm ready then."

An image appeared in her mind, of a massive, muscular being with four arms and four wings, eight breasts, four piercing eyes, fangs, massively clawed paws for hands and animal type pawed feet for legs, which made the being stand much taller than if it had human type feet.

This thing was terrifying!

"I am Valkyrie," the soft smooth voice said, "Vasthi's twin sister."

"Other than inky black skin, and gold eyes," Lina remarked fearfully, "You don't look a whole lot like her..."

"We're not identical twins silly!" the voice softly chuckled, "No goddettes are!"

"So," Lina got back to the original point, "Why do you want me to make up with Lonnie?"

"Lonnie?" she asked confused.

"That's the name I gave her since 'The Lord of Nightmares' is just plain stupid."

"I see." the voice replied, "It fits her better." after a moment, "Thank you."

"For what?"

"For being the first friend she ever had."

"I'm not her friend!" Lina protested, "And why do I have to make up with that spoiled brat anyway?"

"Because Lina," the voice replied calmly, "If you do not, everybody you love down below you," she paused for emphasis, "Will soon drown."

Episode 28

"The Tears of God?! We're Drowning In Lonnie's Sorrows!"

Alyth and Bruno stepped from the small copper room and got dressed in their own room before going out to tell the others they had completed their mission.

"So what do we do now?" Filia asked.

"We've done all we can do at this point." Alyth shrugged, "Its all up to Lina at this point."

"Knowing my sister," Luna remarked, sighing and rolling her eyes, "We're all going to drown."

"You can't just say something like that now!" Alyth came over and embraced Luna warmly, "Surely she has more love for her family and her world than that!"

Filia's eyes flashed at the scene of Alyth holding Luna and Luna saw this, "Yeah," she nodded pasting on a hasty smile agreeing with the innkeeper, "I guess I just gotta have more faith in my lil sis." ending with a bit of a nervous chuckle.

"Well," she added working free of the embrace, "Its getting along time to feed the little ones again," she said, looking directly at Filia's displeased face, "So we really ought to get back before they mob my parents..."

"Oh," Alyth caught on, "Okay sure!" she backed away gracefully, "By all means don't keep those little angels waiting! They just might eat the house!" she chuckled as she hurried off to the dining hall.

"What could I do?" Luna asked, "Its not like she's going to..."

Filia growled softly, grabbed her wrist forcefully and they vanished.

Moments later they appeared in their upstairs guest bedroom.

The children were all downstairs doing something, so there was nobody else in the room with them.

"Hey!" Luna said, "What's the problem?" rubbing her wrist, seeing as golden dragons are very very strong, and transmutation spell or not, they have every bit of their full strength!

With those same fierce eyes, Filia just grabbed Luna by the collar of her maid outfit and threw her down on the bed.

"Hey -!" Luna began, but Filia pounced upon her, that golden tail whipping side to side, pinning her wrists to the bed, then quickly diving into a deep passionate kiss that left Luna with no more questions.

Ep 28, Chapter 2

Zelas had changed her plans and decided that elevating the entire island was more important than putting in an estate garden.

"So you want them to literally raise the entire island?" Lemmy asked, incredulously yet keeping a relatively calm an professional tone, "Seriously?"

"All they have to do," Zelas said, "Is dredge up rocks from the bottom of the sea nearby and bring them ashore." its not rock science you know.

"Ahhh..." Lemmy said, "You do know," she pointed out, "That they can't breathe under water, and neither can I, right?"

"Of course, darling," she chuckled, "That is why I bribed my sister Deep Sea Dolphin to come get involved!"

"How are you going to do that?" Lemmy asked, clearly dubious.

"I promised her a lot of free negative energy for starters," she smiled, "AND, she leaned in close looking conspiratorially, "One of my few reaming Black Lotuses..."

"Oh?" Lemmy asked, "At the bottom of the sea?"

"That's the beauty of it darling," Zelas purred, "They are the only surface plant that is capable of living at the bottom of the sea."

"Well," Lemmy replied dismissively, "I'm not a botanist, so whatever floats her boat," she shrugged, "If it makes my job easier on me, I'm all for it."

That day, the men got the horrible news that they were going to now be wading out into the mysterious black waters around Wolfpack Island and dredging up rocks and hauling them ashore to raise the island.

"B-but I can't swim!" one gangly man cried.

With a solid konk on the head, Lemmy knocked his face into the dirt, "Then what the hell were you doing on a SHIP in the middle of the sea you moron?"

"Alright you miserable worthless cretins!" she shouted,"Listen up!" she pulled Jack from his scabbard, "If you can't swim and can't pull rocks, I'm going to cut you up and use you for shark bait to catch Mistress Zelas' dinner with! You got that?"

There was a general waver of cowering and sobbing amongst the crew.

As they began the tiring task of dragging rocks from the smelly hot black water in the cloying humidity, many painful surprises awaited them from stinging fish to pinching crabs to getting tangled in seaweed.

And as for the rocks, those were hauled up above the beach line and a ring was scheduled to be stacked around the island.

The men had heavily bandaged hands and feet, while they had to venture out further into deeper waters to find rocks.

Lemmy instructed the lesser demons to keep watch over the men while she returned to Zelas to discuss the idea.

"This is getting nowhere." she muttered, "We need some means of really raising the island or there's no point in doing this."

"Well," Zelas commented, "They are quite miserable, are they not?"

"This is true they are."

"Then it still accomplishes my ultimate goal just perfectly!"

"You know," Lemmy got to thinking, "What you need to do," her eyes peered through slits as the thought solidified in her mind, "Is hire this place out as a penal colony for the rest of the world."

Zelas' eyes lit up with extreme delight upon hearing this, "Why Lemmy my darling that is such a SPLENDID idea!" she clapped her hands together and laughed that strange 'noblewoman laugh' of one overconfident in their superiority over others.

Although the Laugh annoyed Lemmy, she gritted her teeth and bore up under it.

Ep 28, Chapter 3

On the ninth day, the rain did in fact begin to slacken up.

Luna and Filia were still laying up in the bed when the kids went downstairs for breakfast.

They spent several hours enjoying each other's company intimately.

As the day wore on, the lightning lessened, the hail stopped, and the rain went from a deluge to a gentle medium rain.

The edge of the storm had stopped expanding.

Alyth's scrying showed that the forces driving the rain had subsided.

People could go outside in relative comfort, but still yet, there were very few places to go.

Inland runoff had caused dry gulches to become rivers and rivers to become lakes, and lakes had long overflowed their dams, some of which burst, causing massive surge walls of mud, water and debris to race downstream, wiping out much in their paths.

Crops were ruined, landmarks displaced, homes and businesses destroyed, ships sank in the harbor, people and animals killed and misery ensued.

Those who remained safe simply had to wait.

On the tenth day, the storm completely dissipated.

There was both cheer and mourning.

As people came out into the sunlight, they saw the devastation and were taken from one state of depression into another.

As people from the nearby regions scouted as far as the nearby barriers would allow, and their limited range showed that traveling by normal routes as difficult to impossible, Alyth came to the Inverse's house to ask if perhaps Filia could do a little scouting around, seeing as she could fly and teleport.

Luna agreed to remain there with the children, and so despite her recent romantic impulses, Filia agreed to scout the region to see what she could learn.

Upon transformation into her natural self, all the babies swarmed her legs rubbing on her adoringly so that she was having a hard time taking off for all of the 'ground clutter' of little children under foot.

"Come on girls," Luna called them all back, "Mommy has to go look at some things and you need to be careful not to get hurt."

Reluctantly they all withdrew a safe distance for Filia to leap up into the air and activate her flying magic.

As she took to the skies, the little ones all wanted to go with her and a few of them who had already figured out flight sprang right up, but both Luna and Filia convinced them that they had to remain here.

Amanda cried, Heather held Amanda, and everybody waved 'bye-bye' as this was the first time they had really been separated from her since being born.

As she sped off into the distance at tremendous speed, she was out of sight in seconds.

Ep 28, Chapter 4

Naga and the mirror maidens set forth to clean up the damage to the farm.

They had to use healing magic on some of the animals who were sick from exposure or injured by hail, and some trees needed mending, but all in all, the farm fared pretty well under the circumstances.

"I'm really impressed with this place you all have made for yourselves," Naga admired, "All this hard work seems like such a farfetched idea to me."

"We understand momma," Gracia replied, "You and we are mirror opposites, so where you live for adventure and love to travel, we enjoy quiet peaceful time here together, just the two of us and our quiet little world."

"Does that mean you don't like hot springs either?" Naga suddenly realized with wide eyed concern.

"Oh!" Gracia responded with the exact same facial expression, "No, I LOVE hot springs!" she replied, "There's nothing greater in the world!"

"Why we often sit out in this big old iron kettle filled with hot water for hours when the day's work is over!" copy Lina replied.

"Well," Naga said, "I'll tell you what." winking and raising a finger, "Once we've finished cleaning up here," making a sweeping gesture with her other hand, "I have JUST the place for us to all go!" and she was already so excited thinking about it, "Its where Lina and I had our very first kiss!"

"Oh?" copy Lina asked, "Knowing momma, it HAD to be some place special!"

Naga was beside herself with eager anticipation, "Trust me, it is!