This is the first story--in chronological order--of Hylore, land of magic, mystery, pirates, and inhabited by different races, all of whom happen to be futanari of one sort or another. There are eight more tales in the series, of varying lengths.
*****
It is always hard to know the year, because it depends on where you are. On the continent of Valterra in the north, it is Year 19 of Our Lady Maricia Lindelhauf, Queen of Nortborg, home of the humans. In the south of Valterra, among the amazons of Nerevar, it is summer, time for fighting and sex. Across the sea to the east on Drexthis, there is no year; the land is a smoking, blasted waste. North of that desolate place, on fair Mangelo's elven shores, it is 178 of the Silvermoon Accord. Across the channel in the town of Baywatch on the island of Corsair's Nest, it is 2, as Malas el-Moonfall settles into her second year as Dread Pirate of the Crimson Sails.
But for us, who watch Hylore from afar, it is 298 BAC, Before the Age of Chaos.
Here is where it all begins...
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Save the Trees
A priestess of Leshar fears for her trees and suffers a crisis of faith--in herself
.
The trees were dying, there was no other explanation Dielle could think of after what she'd seen. It was her fault for not realizing the signs sooner. She'd known something was amiss days earlier and had scraped away the detritus from the dirt and given them water, hoping it was a temporary affliction, one turning mulch into the topsoil with her hand cultivator and adding water would cure. As usual she was wrong. And now she was paying for her lack of ability to be... heroic.
Her precious stand of bambobo trees, the only one on the whole island, maybe in all of Mangelo, had an unknown disease, one surely killing them. It was the only explanation. Spotty grey nodules half the size of her palm were popping up around the smooth green boles of the tall slender trees. They crumbled to bits resembling dried flesh when held and smelled of pepper and rotted leaves. She'd diligently cleaned the soil, digging as deeply as she dared to find the source of the blight but she found nothing to a hand's depth and was afraid to go further as how the trees grew was a mystery to everyone in Baywatch, even the whole of Corsair's Nest. It didn't help if the trees were also dropping their fruit--and it was rotten. At least it smelled awful, not that anyone had noticed because the temple was empty. The thought of her other, larger failure made Dielle blush with shame.
A failure as a gardener and as a priestess of Leshar. If she didn't find an answer to her problems the trees would die and the temple would close and she'd be out on the street again, with only Theris to look after her. This last was such a depressing thought she resolved yet again to save the trees and her beloved goddess. She was a failure in everything. In all her 62 years, young as she was, there had never been a time when she could look back and say it went well. It was her curse to have such grand ideas and none of them come to any good.
Again last night no one came to worship. Virtually all in Baywatch had ready access to drink and an assortment of willing sex partners. Why should they bother to worship at the temple of a goddess who taught contemplation and patience during sex was the path to enlightenment? A tankard of ale and a quick fuck were easy to come by--and didn't require prayer, well, not much, usually.
It had been so quiet Dielle sent one of the two virgins away. They were only part-time virgins; each had a regular job at a brothel and both were using the temple to perfect their technique. Dielle was bored enough she and the remaining virgin spent the evening practicing oral sex. Even that hadn't been particularly satisfying as the virgin was unable to control herself and came several times; it annoyed the priestess because she didn't come at all. It was another sign of her failure. She was so patient absolutely nothing happened. Perhaps Leshar had abandoned her, as several people had said. They meant it kindly but it stung none the less.
Dielle nearly ran dirt-coved fingers through her light brown hair before realizing she'd been rooting around in the soil. Instead she wiped the back of one hand across her cheek, leaving a streak of loam under one eye. Then she unconsciously checked the leather strap tying her short braid with a grimy palm. Trowel in hand, she screwed up her courage and began digging at the base of the largest tree.
The bambobo were her lone accomplishment in all her short life. She'd started with a small shoot given her by a worshiper from Nerevar as an offering to Leshar, a god unknown to the amazon. From a single pot to a small grove in the herb garden behind the temple, Dielle had worked hard to get them to thrive. It all seemed to be coming together--until the last few days, when her inconstant companion, failure, came to visit. She dug carefully at the base of the largest bole, over ten meters tall and big enough around at the base that she needed a third hand to encircle it. The soil was loose and well aerated to several centimeters, nothing amiss there, she'd removed all the decaying husks. Further down she encountered the larger roots and dug more carefully, as they seemed to be shallow rather than deep, until she was nearly three hands down and found an enormous tap root sunk into the ground. She felt better about probing now she knew the tree had a good base. Near the large root Dielle felt a nodule that probably shouldn't be there, given what she'd seen of the original shoot when she transplanted it from the pot. It was big, she couldn't get her hand all the way around it, but it came loose more easily than she expected. Hope raised its bowed head within her. Maybe this was the cause of the trees's sickness. What came out of the ground was totally unexpected.
The nodule was a fibrous lump larger than her fist, with a knobby tip. Dielle laid it on the work table at one end of the herb garden and brushed it clean. The lump turned out to be a dark red-brown tuber or root, tri-lobed at one end with a short, gnarled stem and dark stubby roots at the other. If she held the thing with the bulb up it resembled a squashed wine goblet; there was even a depression to suggest the bowl of a chalice. If she held it the other way around it looked like a scrotum holding three testicles. The skin was rough, like a root vegetable but it smelled oddly fresh, not a hint of dirt about it. As she cleaned the thing another bambobo fruit fell to the ground. It split open and the nauseous odor wafted across the garden. If the fresh-smelling lump was the source of the trees's disease and the awful smell of the fruit was normal, Dielle was seriously confused.
As she worked, she put a kettle of water to boil on her small wood stove; a cup of tea would be nice in the early morning. Once cleaned with water, her discovery glistened slightly and didn't look deathly or dangerous at all but the priestess was careful still. Dielle shaved a sliver of skin from the tuber and then a slice from the lighter flesh beneath it. She put it on the tip of her tongue for a quick taste. With luck, any poison would be slight and only make her a little ill. She knew far better than to actually eat any of it. The flavor was like a green apple with a mild earthy savor, not bad at all. The root was nearly impossible to cut, even with her sharpest knife, so she shaved several handsful of the outer layers and laid them on her table to dry.
The priestess decided to see if it was possible to make a lotion from the root as it smelled so good. She made a base of bee pollen, comfrey, and apricot oil, deciding at the last to leave out the lanolin. The root shavings proved tough to grind in her large mortar and the result had a pleasing aroma but a lumpy texture. The tips of her pointed ears tingled. She straightened, back still to the door.
"Do you never stop working with those gods-benighted trees?" The voice behind her was full of good humor and more than a little beer. Dielle turned to see Theris standing at the door from the garden to the temple, one hand holding a wooden tankard, the other a bag of something with a wonderful smell.
"
I won.
" the woman crowed. "
We can eat.
"
A Cup of Tea
A cup of tea becomes more than refreshing. Feelings are expressed.
From her earliest memories, Theris had always been the same to Dielle: tall, beautiful, flighty, loyal, scruffy blonde hair in no particular style other than attractively disarrayed, with a worse head for business than herself. This morning her dearest friend leaned against the doorway, knee-length tunic mostly on and strapped up, a dreamy smile on her bruised face. The fancy breechclout Dielle had given her last year peeked out from the traveling bag that was her constant companion. Her boots tops were turned up to cover her thighs, probably to hide more bruises.
"You making tea?" Theris limped into the garden waving the small bag. "Tea would be wonderful with these biscuits. They've got cimanommonnn."
Dielle took in the scruffy and matted hair, the bruises, and the wobbling walk. Typical, she thought. "You won?" Theris nodded enthusiastically as she neared the work table. "What did you win? And what does the loser look like?"
"Oh, lots worse'n me, for sure. She was laid out on the floor when l left. Good thing, too, 'cause she was tough as old leather and had a mean streak. Prolabibly would have asked for more. And I'm tired. But I won this." She tossed a bag onto the table and goggled her eyes playfully. The bag chinked with the sound of coins.
Dielle looked in the bag and her own eyes widened. "This is... a lot." She turned suddenly on her friend. "You didn't kill her did you? I've told you about getting involved with those kinds of people. It never ends well."
Theris laughed until she cried. "She's not dead. Just angry to have lost. I found out the odds were four to one against me, so I bet my winnings on myself. That riled up the crowd and made the odds five to one against me. I nearly lost until Calomnoa, that's her name, the woman I fought, got cocky--ha--and stopped punching me silly to play to the crowd. So I hit her with a chair and then spent some time working her over. All in good fun, see? Nobody dead."
"You hit her with a chair?" Dielle asked as she added a cloth bag of chamomile to the teapot.
"Well, she did the same to me earlier, so it was all legal like. You sound disappointed. I should have lost? What then, Dielle? We'd be having herbs with our tea. C'mon, enjoy it. We've got enough to eat well for a while. What's this?" The blonde pointed to the pile of shavings.
"They're from this root thing. Doesn't taste so bad. Kind of like an apple." The brunette didn't consider what she was saying, she was thinking of being able to have a good meal for a change. Theris picked up a large handful shavings and dumped them in the teapot as Dielle turned back to the root.
