Looking at all of the people sitting and milling about his tent, Kal realized he had made an enormous mistake.
At the first sign of an approaching sandstorm, Turam halted the caravan and had everyone bed down. Kal tossed the canvas square on the ground beside his litter and said the command to assemble the magical tent. Feeling overly cocky, halfway through the process he upped its size to biggest form where it matched the inside's dimensions. The shelter immediately drew attention from others in the caravan's wealthy section. He had men and women approaching him before the door shimmered telling him it was ready to use.
Kal then made the mistake of mentioning it guaranteed his safety during the coming weather. Seconds later came the exorbitant offers of gold to sit out the sandstorm inside.
His biggest mistake, though, was telling them yes.
Now, his tent's central area was packed with well-to-do Fazalan men and women joined by their spouses or pleasure slaves. On the bright side, money was a non-issue to many of these people and the gold they gave him for a day or two of safety boggled the mind. If they ran into another sandstorm, he could break even for this trip.
Still, Kal had to say it was kind of nice to see his tent filled with life and chatter once again. It hadn't been this lively since he rescued Dax and the dog-girls from Carriston.
One of the men came over, pulling along a giggling and blushing pleasure slave. "Kind wizard, could I use that room over there for a time?" he asked, pointing at Kashka's room. She didn't use it much anymore.
The mage looked over at the cat-girl. "Do you have anything in there?"
Tight-lipped, Kashka shook her head. The feline woman enjoyed having her Master, Laika, and the space inside the tent to herself. This crowd of people was disrupting that and setting her on edge.
Laika nudged him from his other side, "Master," she said, pointing toward the entrance to his library where a guest peered in through the canvas doorway.
Shaking his head, he turned to the man in front of him, "Give me a few minutes, and I will have a room for you. It will be smaller than that one, but it's the best I can do with this many people." Looking down, he called out, "Ria."
The sprite appeared and flitted up in front of his face. Instead of giving her customary greeting, Ria looked back and forth between Kal and the crowded common area.
"What the hell is going on?" she asked finally.
"Sandstorm outside. These people are paying me for shelter. But now I need to get them all places to sleep. Can we accommodate them if we make rooms with a bed for two and a little bit of room on the sides?"
The sprite did a quick headcount and thought for a moment, "Yes, I think so. If we remove your alchemy lab and the library, we should have enough space for a few more rooms if you get some stragglers."
Kal sighed, "Okay, let's do it. But first." Kal cleared his throat and raised his voice, "Your attention please!" Bringing a finger up under the sprite's feet, he pushed her up above his head. "This lovely little lady is named Ria. She acts as my seneschal and will be making some changes to the tent so you each can have a bedroom, small as they may be. Please listen to her and honor any of her requests."
"Great, we get to listen to some bitchy bag of holding tell us what to do," someone complained, followed by low murmurs of agreement throughout the room.
The mage looked up, "Care to show them why you aren't just 'some bitchy bag of holding?'"
"I'd be happy too," she said curtly. The room went silent as she slowly descended and a stream of lights flowed out from her bag and into her avatar. As each mote struck, her body grew until the lights eventually stopped. Her final size was just a little shorter than Kashka when her feet touched the floor. Ria molded her naked body to Kal's side like a long-lost lover, looking up at him adoringly.
"As you can see, Ria is a little different from other bags of holding," said Kal to the stunned crowd. "She is also my lover, and I expect you to treat her with respect. Choose not to," he drew their attention toward the exit, "and I will happily give you your money back and escort you out, by force if necessary."
Ria stepped away from him and glanced between Laika and Kashka, "Have either of you claimed him for tonight?"
"We do not get to claim our Master," said Laika, giving him a sultry look, "though sometimes I wish we could." The pleasure slave was in her public mode, which she explained was necessary during gatherings like this. She greatly enjoyed the freedom Kal afforded her. But she also couldn't risk word getting back to Turam that she acted how she did when alone with Kal and Kashka while in the presence of other clients.
The cat-girl merely nodded. She wasn't enjoying this situation, and it showed.
"Good," said Ria, "then I'm calling dibs."
"Am I forgiven now?" Kal asked.
"No, but watching you stand up for me got me worked up, and I want to show these people just how special I am. What better way than making them listen to me moan as you fuck the hell out of me." The sprite began shedding specks of light as she floated up and kissed him on the cheek. She didn't return to her aqua color and still had the ghostly wisps of white flame rising off her body, so she kept at least a few. "I need you to ask me to pack up the rooms," she said.
"Ria, store the Library and Alchemy lab, please."
As the sprite darted off, the caravan leader, Turam, stepped into the tent, followed by his second in command and their personal slaves.
"I heard there was a party going on in here, and I've brought the wine!" bellowed the big man to cheers from the crowd.
Staring at the caravan leader as he began producing bottles of wine from his bag of holding and passing them around, Kal wondered what it might be like to have just a typical, dull day back in Telsin.
---
"Mama, I'm hungry."
Silma regarded her daughter with sadness in her eyes. "I know, Firo."
During her daughter's incubation, Silma spent much of her time wrapped protectively around her little girl's shell, imparting some of her knowledge to the growing child necessary for the life ahead of her.
It had been just over a year since Firo hatched from her egg. By human standards, the child grew shockingly fast, reaching the size of a human five-year-old in such a short time. Though small, as a fire salamander, she was already one of the deadliest creatures in the region, second only to her mother.
She was also ravenous. Silma and Firo needed to range further down the river of molten rock to sate the child's hunger. Soon, they would need to venture out from their river and into the gigantic magma pocket where the leviathans roamed. Firo could sense the massive creatures from further away, could swim faster, and more importantly, could make herself hot enough to kill them. Over the next ten years, the little girl would drive them to the brink of extinction. Silma knew this because she remembered doing the same thing in her early years. By the time she reached adulthood, only a handful of leviathans remained in a magma sea that stretched for days in all directions.
As Firo grew inside her egg, Silma spent a few days checking on the leviathan's eggs to make sure they could handle the coming slaughter. She needed to make sure there would be food for her granddaughter when the time came.
Female leviathans mated roughly once a year but produced eggs numerous times from that single mating. If several leviathans inhabited the area, the unhatched eggs entered a type of stasis where they stopped developing. When the risk of overpopulation passed, the creatures resumed growing.
Leviathan young all hatched within a few hours of each other, creating a bloom in the area, but few would make it to adulthood. The activity often drew adults searching for easy meals while large magmatic crabs preyed upon whatever they could capture, and lava slimes cleaned up any remnants.
Silma ran across one of these blooms when she was younger and was nearly bitten in two by a huge lava-dwelling tortoise. Few things could crack a leviathan egg's hard shell, but the six-legged, slow-moving, turtle-like creatures grew a diamond-hard beak well suited for the job. The tortoises didn't have the same worry as their own shells were virtually impenetrable to anything besides another if their kind or her. Even then, she had to push her body to white-hot before they would melt. There was little need to kill the massive creatures except in self-defense. Their favored prey was unhatched leviathans which produced a fluid that made them taste horrible to most predators. The awful flavor was then transferred to the tortoises' meat, taking them off the menu. The creatures also cleaned up the unhatched remnants of a bloom, and only they, and the amorphous lava slimes, found the murky, disgusting fluid which poured out of a rotten egg appetizing.
