>>5512375“What is the purpose of this?” she asks, squirming slightly. “You have important business elsewhere. I… Do not understand.”
You watch her fidget, faintly enjoying her obvious discomfort with your newly-augmented Divine Presence. Even without activating your <Radiant Aura>, no mortal in your presence, in your dominion, can fail to feel your dominance—your mastery of Bloodrise an all who dwell therein. Despite this literal divine commandment to obey, the Novice struggles against it. She keeps her neck extended, chin high, haughty expression strained, eyes narrow slits. Her tail whips about so frantically that you half expect it to break away, as if she were a gecko relinquishing it to distract a predator while it escapes.
But she does not break. Does not bow. Perhaps that is part of why you love her?
“I had a personal matter which I wished to discuss with you,” you admit.
“While eating?” she demands disdainfully, gesturing widely to the meal before you.
You have commanded a full course of lightly-seasoned, scarcely-singed farm-flesh and oil-preserving imported fish be presented to the two of you. Each of you has also a bowl of preserved humanoid blood—a delicacy among the Master Race, reserved for special occasions. It is that of the roguish halfling adventurer, whom you and your forces slew in battle many moons ago. Each of you is seated on either side of a dwarvencraft table, upon sturdy chairs built particularly for your larger and heavier frames—yours primarily muscle, hers largely the result of her hefty, bottom-heavy scholar’s build and appreciably-thick tail.
“You are staring,” she hisses, “at my hindquarters.”
“Yes,” you admit.
She hesitates, clearly uncertain how to reply to so brazen an admission.
“Is the meal not to your liking?” you ask innocently.
“You know it is,” she spits, shoving some meat into her mouth to muffle her embarrassment. “You remembered that the milk-beasts of the surface-scum are my favourite, and that I find halfling blood most flavourful of all humanoids.”
“I have known you all my life,” you note. “Manipulating you through such petty remembrances is as a hatchling’s pastime.”
“You are obsessed with me,” she alleges.
“Perhaps,” you readily admit.
She averts her gaze and drinks her wine, tail curling with some measure of pleasure which she cannot hide.
