The preparations for this journey to Sellis were almost automated.
Flurries of activity started before they even returned from the Queen's chambers. The girls were already prepared to move with their elegant camouflaged robes. They brought black silk capes for discretion. Kaarthen noticed how Dulia and Augussi held court in the map room already preparing to watch from the sky every moment of their travels. Everything seemed well rehearsed. Remy re-inspected all the weapons for sharpness. Marssel re-arranged Kaarthen's clothes to look like a traveling noble woman with a Marcos as a bodyguard and the girls as maidens.
Kaarthen knew her role was new in this, but the experienced stagehands guided and directed her through her part until she was standing in Marcos' quarters with her girls ready to go. The prince had been brought in gagged, blind folded, and hooded. The women couldn't resist and had tied his hands behind his back and exposed his little girl cock. They could be so ruthless when they wanted to be.
Marcos addressed them. "We travel to Leethon now. The travel would take three days with a double crew or more than a week by horse. Leethon is a pretty place. The city is right where the tip of the mountains meet the coast. It is our west capital and sits nearly on the border. The heavy infantry will be several days in movement but it will be unlikely we'll need them. We are going to travel by my gate to Leethon and save sometime."
Ein spoke up real quick, "How will we know where we're going?"
He marched them in through doors and hallways into the depths of his apartment till he found a map. "Okay let's try this..." Marcos held out his right hand and placed it flat facing up with his fingers straight together, and his thumb along the palm.
"If the wrist is the eastern shores then the heel of the palm is the great eastern mountains. The Moxle comes after and Astrokos is the thumb across the top. Directly below them is us, and Alcanton to the east going out until the sea. The ridge of the finger joints is the chaos lands, and Osmuun is at the pinky finger joint. Leethon is to the north east of that kinda."
"What about the rest?" Mara asked staring at her hand. They were all doing it now and stared intensely as if a cartographer had actually written something somewhere.
Marcos cleared his throat. "Well...If you drop the pinky from the other fingers and pretended it was wider that would be the swamps the mud people come from. If you cut off the fingers above that into small pieces those would be the colony islands. The one joint above that is Sellis where we're going, but it's only a city on the coast. Dar Delis is the crossbow trigger finger joint, but that's just where it is since it's an island. Munklin is on the mainland between them and Astrokos, so that would make them the tip of the thumb.
Ein asked her next question looking past him at the wall map. "What's it like out there?"
Marcos shrugged. "Mud people live in swamps and used to live across the entire west coast. Sellis is a bunch of tall fair haired people who came by ship to trade long ago. They don't even remember that, but what they found was mud people. Actually, mud people are pygmies who like mud. They use it for beauty, farming, cooking, curses, mix it with cow piss, the women decorate their hair with it. People don't like them because they're always trying to push their mud on people. If a mud person doesn't like you they throw it at you with a grin, if they love you they drip it on you with a smile. Do you think Queen Mensillin sits down with a diplomat from there?" He asked rhetorically.
"When the water pulled back, the mud people followed, and Sellis is alone now. In Munklin, the dark people are taller and forgot their mud since the shit freezes up there. And it's not just them, Astrokos has deserters all over up there, werewolves too. That country is as big as Astrokos, or Menthino but their internal politics are stunted by the sisters to the west and Astrokos to the east. In Alcanton, you can disappear stepping outside your village, you don't know who your neighbors are in that forest. In Munklin, they have factions. Some allied with the sisters, some try to just build what they can, others are off doing their own thing all the time. Some people plot their return to Astrokos in conquest, or to aide their people."
"They are all barbarians generally and excellent fighters. Dar Delis sends people over on vacations, and too poach a man or two. In fact, they have most of the enclaves up there just for visits. In other areas, there are only city-states. Most of the west and the east are just wild lands."
He looked over and caught Mara idly wanking the prince. He snuck over to the prince's ear and pulled her hand away for a moment. "Damn got myself a cramp..." then let her try to finish him off with her hand as he squirmed and wriggled in protest.
He stepped back and watched Mara win and finish off the sobbing prince.
Marcos brought them to another door in the very rear of his apartment and turned back to address them. "These are all private areas. Now, what is going to happen is, you will step on the platform I tell you to. Place you hands on your shoulders, step on, step off, and wait on the other side. The place where you go may be dusty or dark but be patient and we'll all go from there. Who's first?" He said looking around.
Inside the closet sized room, four clear grey platforms a yard square stood with the names of cities over them.
"Why didn't we go to Cardin this way?" Ein asked aloud.
"The prince wasn't allowed in here, and it wasn't important or necessary." Marcos responded. "Hence, the blind fold and leather hood."
Mara stepped up first and Kaarthen watched as she popped out of the room.
"Amazing." She said, reflecting everyone's surprise. The link was still there and strong but the distance made an odd echoing resonance between them. She and the Goddess synchronized and watched the language of the machine on its next three runs. It was different than the other flowing pieces of the god's magic because of the man made controls and its purpose built nature, but she could see the stifled elegance. And more importantly she learned its magic.
Her journey was instantaneous. She felt the power wash over her. The science that Ein had learned was re-written in the god's language. It was odd to see and feel it. After watching the machine several times, she understood how it looked at her and simply re-wrote her somewhere else.
She would try later, perhaps after understanding the where of the place it picked. For now, she looked around and found out the room she was in was a small parlor. Dusty and ragged in disuse, the room had no windows, but a paneled double door was open leading to a dark hall.
"Okay, not bad. We are in an apartment in the tower here." Marcos said after popping in last.
He moved forward through the room's door and led them out into the hall. The hall lead through the abandoned apartment and ended at a larger set of elaborate paneled doors. Marcos barely turned to count them before fumbling the lock and opening the door. On the other side was dark until he opened curtains to reveal a sunlit corridor.
The hall was quiet and clean with a window and skylights letting light in through frosted glass. The floor was pale marble with red and gold carpets lining the edges of the walkway. Columns studded the walls along the gently curving corridor and curtains in between created a closed in feel. Kaarthen didn't figure a room was behind every set of curtains but they kept her guessing.
"We're in a wing of the castle. I think the western side. It's not obvious now but the castle was built up and into a mountain. Leethon has some of the largest iron forges in the world. The design of the castle is a half circle that slopes up along a cone shaped mountain. It's actually an elegant defensive design that allows for an incredible layered defense." He said as they walked to the right. Marcos seemed slightly unsure as he looked around trying to remember.
They didn't travel too far before they found people. Around the curve and near a column they heard lovers energetically expressing themselves. A lady's ankle came up out of a curtain at almost eyelevel. The parted curtain showed a curtained abscess with a dark haired woman in satin standing up against the column embracing a richly dressed man. The woman's dark thatched pussy was visible and seemed to already have spunk glistening in the hairs as the man pistoned into her.
They passed quietly with hardly a giggle and came to the top of the curves arch. Wide bay windows and a pillowed benches of ruby velvet was on their right, and gold and red stairs led down to the lef. Ein and Mara looked curiously out the window.
