Nymphlopedia
Entry 25: Dual Nymphs
Beginning AN:
As promissed, here's the first "doozy." I'll say right now that Entries 26 onwards will be more of a return to form, except with one new main character.
I swear I came up with similar blue/yellow ideas before I knew that ENA existed. This Nymph here is not supposed to be ENA.
Oh, and me describing Tania's outfit here and in Entry 12 is important. It's... "part of her arc" kind of, also part of Sonata's arc. In Romancing the Last Dryad it'll be more important, I also promise that the next chapter will be the last one that I do this with. (At leas the last for a good, long while.)
"Sonata," said Tania, dressed in but a front-and-back leaf loincloth that was still extremely prudish by Nymph standards (and still without a top), "you of all people should know not to trust a 'strange source' in the Jungle!"
They - and Vince - were in the Underground Jungle, hacking away through vines (mostly Sonata with her Night's Edge), going down a particular narrow - and long - tunnel.
"I think this is one of the last places of the island we haven't explored yet?" Vince said, placing down yet another torch from his backpack. Thanks to a little adventure of his, the torch was automatically converted to a rich, green, Spore-powered one the moment it was in his hand. "Except, you know, that Solar Temple."
"Again!" Tania replied. "I don't have the key for it! Why don't you believe me?"
"...I do. It's just... weird."
"Hey, speaking of weird, I think we're finally here." Sonata interrupted. "You guys should really check this out."
They looked over and saw a small "bubble" among the Jungle. A rich, more pleasant-looking forest. One thing that stood out, its tree leaves, tree bark, bushes, and even the odd large birds that flew through there, they looked either blue-washed or yellow-washed. The place was already lit up with several standard-grade torches.
"WOAH." Sonata said. "A real-life Dual Forest! I've never been here before!"
"Wait, really?" Tania asked. "You've lived on this island for five hundred years!"
"Yes, and this place is surrounded by the Jungle. I don't go in the Jungle, because Fuck the Jungle."
All the torches went off at once, surrounding the trio in complete darkness.
"Uh-oh!" Sonata laughed. "Vince, did you piss off the Torch God again?"
A voice. One in a whisper. Two whispers, overlaying each other:
"Hello..."
Followed by a gleaming sharp-toothed grinning mouth appearing to float a good distance ahead of the group of three. Two eyes opened, its left blue and its right yellow.
"Vince." Said Tania. "We need to Recall. Now."
The torches lit back, but they...
For Vince especially, it was hard to describe. It looked like the entire room was lit with a color that was a blend of blue and yellow, that was not green. Or white. He needed to squint a bit and get used to the display.
Both Tania and to a lesser extent Sonata on the other hand saw that all the time.
Floating where the eyes and teeth were was another Nymph, one whose body was split down the middle of the two colors, although for obvious reasons they blended to one-another with the room's lighting. Her hair went down to her feet; to her left it was long, flowing, and curled at the bottom, looking somewhat like a stylized waterfall; and to the right it was jagged and zig-zagging.
"You must be King Slime's hate club." Her lips moved, but her voices sounded like she was speaking to the left of the group and to the right simultaneously.
Vince barely got himself back to a full stand and had to blink several times. "Um... we killed King Slime-"
"No you did not. That was just a fake. The True King Slime is far more powerful than any of us could hope to defeat at our current level."
Sonata folded her arms. "What? Bullshit. I don't believe anything you just said."
The Dual Nymph's body appeared to turn in to a swarm of butterflies, far more than an amount that could have reasonably made her up. They swirled around the gang and flew above, until they formed a giant replica of her face looking straight down at them.
"But I'm glad you enlisted our help."
"Not really, no." Tania 'corrected.' "Sonata-"
"Is using my real name right now really a smart idea?" Sonata asked.
"Oh I guess you're right."
"Cat's out of the bag, go for it."
"Sonata heard rumors that there was another way to awaken the forces of Light and Dark without... making a sacrifice. And that you had the answer."
The endless mix of butterflies, still emerging from the one humanoid-shaped hole in reality that the Nymph used to be floating, still adding on to her giant head, also formed a giant hand. The hand looked moved as though it would poke Tania with its finger, but as it closed in, Tania suddenly found herself looking at the Dual Nymph in her 'regular form' again. Around the time of the shift the torches went back to being their usual white and orange glow, finally casting the forest in a normal spectrum again.
"I don't know who told you that." she began speaking normally. With one voice. That came from her mouth. "But I don't know of that and neither do any of my friends. I only know about the trick to fight the Guardian."
"Would you like to at least help us?" Asked Sonata.
She smirked, chuckled, and slowly turned to the Oread.
"I would be honored." "I would be honored."
Dual Nymphs.
For Nymphs that love to have everything in doubles, they sure are good at cutting people in half.
Preferred Environment: Dual/Double Forests. Several have taken to the Jungles after the fall of Dryadkind.
Environment Threat Level: Extremely Severe.
Environment Stats: Average Moistness. Warm. Fantastic. Rare. Forests with twisting trees, with an even combination of blue and yellow plants, leaves, and so forth.
Other Names: Essence Nymphs, Bright Nymphs, Double Nymphs.
Affinity: Earth.
Color: (Bright) Blue-Yellow.
...Right, this will take some explaining: Visually appears half-blue, half-yellow (which half varies by Nymph, some may even have the divider line being horizontal instead of the usual vertical) to most humanoids. Are capable of "actually turning" a blue-yellow, yet this is an illusion. Recording equipment not meant to specifically simulate this ability reveal it as white. Some people untrained to impossible colors may see them as white, gray, or even black at first. But others more used to this will see a color they describe as blending blue and yellow together.
Some Dual Nymphs have other "color combinations" that work in a similar manner, almost always of "opposite" color pairs such as red-cyan and green-violet, but the most common by far is blue and yellow. For every four Dual Nymphs, three of them have the blue/yellow motif, the fourth having a more random assortment.
Traditional Costume Weapon: A single ring almost always around their left index fingers, with bands that are usually half blue and half yellow. Enhances their force powers, although Dual Nymphs are better than most other Variants on average with their magic powers already. The rings enhance this further.
Vince's Comment: Yeah, as you can expect from a kind of Nymph who takes a paragraph to answer the question "What color is their true forms," these Nymphs are real brain-breakers. Somehow, even more than the Psyche Nymphs. They always make you feel like they're two places at once. When they aren't really. Their tricks feel like illusions, but at the same time, they don't, I've handled some illusions but these feel "real," but not the "right kind of real." Isn't this some sort of Weird Quantum Shit? Even Tania doesn't seem to know. Even they don't seem to know.
Don't even bother trying to take one in a fight. Just teleport out of there and pray that they won't track you home.
Sonata's Comment: Oof, I probably shouldn't have talked about colors in the last entry, because now there's an elephant in the room here and I don't want to make this four entries in a row that have someone at some point mentioning color... even though they have that whole paragraph like Vince said... anyway, ironically, these are probably the least two-faced of all Nymph types. And yeah, I'm counting Dryads. You read that right, Tania.
Tania's Comment: Dual Nymphs.
Nymphae Duplex.
This is one of the most interesting and mysterious types of Biome Spirit, and that is no easy competition. They appear to have among the most powerful connection with nature itself, rivaling if not even surpassing my own variant, and indeed they have taken to themselves as caretakers of the Jungles in my absense (I don't mind this, by the way!) especially after their population exploded to the point of being unable to just live in their (sadly dwindling, but we are working on resorting that) native Dual Forest regions. Rarely among any Nymph type, they have a natural telekinesis and ability to fire energy, appearing to draw from the essence of the land itself.
Their ability to appear "blue-yellow" and other impossible color combinations stems from them directly projecting the image of a combined color in to the mind of the observer, rather than stimulating the right parts of their eyes. You can simulate this by crossing your eyes on a picture of a blue square and a yellow square!
Stefano's Comment: PLEASE don't say that they "should just be green!" No, you need to LOOK at them!
Closing AN:
End of Part 1, Bright Set. (Normally I'd write these "End of such and such" above the "Closing AN" line but since this is an in-universe book that might confuse you for something Vince/Sonata/Tania actually wrote.)
Well, I'd love to see how a visual adaptation would try to handle a "blue-yellow," especially if it's explicitely described as being everywhere in the room. I think the easiest thing would be to just graywash everything, with blue and yellow at the edges in like that sort of old 3D glasses effect.
Fun fact, originally I was just going to have this Nymph Variant's "color" be brown. I already knew that was a dark orange (speaking of which, you'll see that soon) but the game itself treats it as its own color and whatnot... but I went with a more exotic and surreal idea. ENA Nymph. Also Eve from No Straight Roads Nymph. Also-originally, this Dual Nymph was going to telekinetically hold the trio in a callback to Vince's line in the Psyche Nymph chapter, but... meh.
Anyway, with the "Bright Set" done, the biomes on average (there will still be a few "mundane" ones) should be getting a lot weirder, but... compared to this chapter indulging in quite a bit of mind-fuckery (sorry I really like writing stuff like that some times), the rest of Day 9 is going to be a bit boring and tame.
As promissed, here's the other doozy, a bonus:
"AAHHH! Harder! Harder!"
"S-Sonata I'm already about to-"
"AAHHHH~!"
"Fffffff... AHH~!"
Slap.
Sonata just fell on top of him after they both finished. Like, all the energy in her was just gone.
"Ow." The naked Vince flatly said.
"Pan I didn't know you could be that explosive." Replied the also-naked, but as always, Sonata.
"So, you're not going to apologise for how you just fell on me? That kind of hurt."
"Alright, sorry, I just, yeah, cooling off still hits me a bit. So, anyway."
They looked around.
Twenty-five Nymphs gathered from almost all around the island, lying around them in their colossal bed. All either spent or about to be spent from their partners or teammates. While Vince and Sonata did find a lot of Mushroom, Granite, Marble, and other locations, the Nymphs there were mysteriously AWOL. Probably waiting for some awakening or some stuff where the Guardian would die and their magic may or may not be juiced up, the "awakening" never happened before so it's impossible to tell for certain at the moment.
Sonata finally got off Vince and inched herself over to the Love Nymph. The former winked.
"Wow, that was hot and bothersome even for you, huh?" She asked.
"I lasted pretty far. You and Vince only finished last because you started later than us."
"True. But it's kind of a lot more romantic."
Meanwhile, post-nut clarity hit Vince like a fucking tank coming at a speed of HOLY FUCKING SHIT meters per second.
He was completely naked, unarmed, and surrounded by twenty-six women with magic powers, who come from groups that have a history of being hostile to Humans, and he barely met them recently.
Vince also thought about it and came to the conclusion that, at the moment, Sonata was the only Nymph he 100% trusted. And Tania, but she wasn't there.
The Dual Nymph came from behind him and rubbed his shoulders.
"Hey." She said. "I should have said this earlier, but I'm sorry for going a little overboard on the mind tricks back when we met. I wanted to make an impression."
"It's fine." Vince replied. Sonata was still the only 100 percent-trusty one to him though. But she was... like, maybe 97 at that point. Already. They had a lot of good talks in-between their meeting and the orgy.
Everybody heard Aquafla groan - and for once not because of anything to do with sex. "Okay, we've been dirty for too long! Everyone, to the showers, and clean up all this spilt popcorn! I need my sleep."
"Don't blame me for knocking the popcorn over for a porno that plot twist really got me!" Sonata complained.
They cleaned up, but they did not get to sleep so easily. After finally deciding that would be the first night they all slept in a big pile (Sonata wanted to be top and center, and surprisingly the Nymphs were just okay with that. The reason why being evident when she complained about the possibility getting a rude awakening should she fall off in her sleep, and so she shuffled around a bit while the other Nymphs and Vince laughed at her a little, finally deciding to sleep at the very left end of the pile with Vince cuddling her), it was only about two minutes after the lights were off before they heard knocking.
"Wait, I'm not decent!" Obviously Vince was the one that said that. Granted, the other Nymphs did not have their 'accessories,' but obviously that meant nothing to them. This is not one of those stories where the nonhumans would feel naked without a necklace or anything like that. Anyway, he somehow got the strength to lift Igniss out from her point in the pile near him, then move her over so that her body covered him from the front, and the rest of the pile covered him from all other directions. Igniss replied to that by rolling with it, inching herself backwards up to him. "Okay, come in!"
It was Tania, making him and Sonata flinch a little. What really sold it as bad news was that Trent was there with her.
Trent.
The only face to actually be with Vince when he first landed. His longest friend on the journey. The man who taught him how to make the best first home, what to do when we was stuck... who helped him make his very first copper tools...
"You should have told me that- you could have warned-" Tania groaned, frustrated, "nevermind. I should have known better, it's your house, Sonata."
"It has to be tomorrow." Trent said. "It can't wait longer."
Sonata, still right behind Vince, held him. "Oh no. B-but, there's still so much we can do first! Like... like... Vince is still a radar away from having a phone too! Just a little more searching, maybe fishing it up in crates, and I-"
"The Lunatic Cult won't just sit around doing nothing." Tania said. "They're in the middle resurrecting him right now, and the longer we wait, the more complete he will be. We have everything we need, our army is big enough, we have enough supplies, and we are on a strict time limit."
Vince sighed. "It's not that I'm afraid of the Guardian."
Tania walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder.
"I know. Rest well."
Bonus Closing AN:
Yep. Just to make it 100% clear, they actually fucked, and had an orgy back at their home base, no bait and switch. The NPCs may or may not join them down the line, I legitimately don't know if I want to go that far or not. I don't like harem stories that endlessly just not do that, and this is technically a harem story. Also, this bonus story is canon to Romancing the Last Dryad. Thar be orgies but they won't happen all the time and they'll be mostly offscreen. In fact in terms of word count they'll probably be rarer in RTLD than in this. Again this is a side-story specifically to focus on the Nymph types, there's... SUPPOSED to be more fanservice overall.
"What about manservice." Maybe. Moreso leaning to "yes" in RTLD proper.
Also I should change that thing in the opening notes about this being my tamest M-rated fic, that's not true any more. Fuck it probably wasn't true since Entry #3. I think that honor now (still?) goes to Steve Buhvillen's Intriguing Group, another Fictionpress thing of mine. But I don't want to say that, since the main reason that was rated M in the first place was mainly the violence, and if I say that the one rated M because of violence is "tamer" than the ones rated M because of sexual content, I'd sound like those Darn Dirty Puritans that's more okay with bodies getting torn apart than showing a nipple and I'm really, really the exact opposite of that, but really no IG's violence so far is pretty tame, it's not Saw-levels of shit. The deaths at the end of Volumes 2 and 3 are probably the most graphic it'll get in a while, and 2's was comical while 3's... I'm not really sure how I'll handle it, since that one's upcoming.
This bonus was a bit rushed, I orginally wanted all twenty-five Nymphs to at least be mentioned individually, but I also wanted to get to Entries 26 and 27 and I already started quite a bit late on this one. So, again, rewrites rewrites rewrites. Or in this case this would be more of an expansion.
To be clear: Doozy two: actual orgy happening, and arguably doozy three: things get probably the most serious this story will get, we suddenly whiplash to talking about preparing for Hardmode. Yeah, you'll notice there's little clues that this was all Pre-Hardmode.
We're gonna be in Hardmode from the next chapter all the way through Entry 100.