Malevein Part K
Jun. 22nd, 2005 10:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jessara40k_ljI'm beginning to worry that I'll run out of letters of the alphabet for this fic.
Elaira didn't object when Lord Xander insisted on putting her to bed as soon as they'd returned from their wedding, she loved feeling him carry her there, but she was upset that he wanted to leave her there alone. She reached out a hand to stop him as he turned to leave after he'd undressed her and put her in bed.
"Please my lord, stay with me." She smiled then. "After all we are just married. I didn't want to ask for time off, but I do want to celebrate this, don't you?"
"Yes my snowfalcon, but you are exhausted from powering the Gate, and I didn't Heal that brand fully."
"I'm not that exhausted, and the brand doesn't hurt too much. Please, I want to be with you, I'll hurt less after you take me, things always hurt less after sex." Elaira was pleading, and she knew it, but she'd felt how miserable some of the women at that temple were, and she needed to be with Lord Xander, to be reassured that she'd made the right choice of weddings, and she thought he needed it too.
He didn't say anything when he gave in, just stripped and slid into the bed beside her, kissing her gently, and arousing her with his touch. Still, Elaira knew that he needed her to be more agressive than she usually was, to free his mind from what they'd learned. She ran her hands over his back and kissed him deeply, then moved her mouth to his shoulder, and bit, lightly.
That seemed to be enough to release his inhibitions and Elaira lost herself in the pleasure of sharing Lord Xander's bed. Afterwards she lay in his arms, head on his shoulder, while they talked.
"Elaira was that wedding really what you wanted?" Lord Xander sounded worried by the idea, and she was sorry for that. "Why?"
"Yes, it's what I wanted, my lord. I want to be yours in every way, even now I feel safest with you. I wanted a ceremony that reflected that. I want this, I'm not like one of those poor women forced into it. And it isn't as if you would ever abuse me, is it?" She smiled as she teased him just a little.
"Never, my snowfalcon. I didn't like the way those women were being treated either. Do you think we can do anything about it?"
"We can't, not really. The laws of that country support that sort of treatment of women, and most of their gods think better of men than women. The only way to do something would be to conquer the country and..."
"We can't do that. First because we have responsibilities here, and secondly because we don't have the sort of army we'd need to keep the country under our control." Lord Xander just about growled towards the end, but Elaira knew he wasn't angry at her, so it didn't matter. And she felt pretty much the same way about those people. It was one thing with her, she wanted to be submissive to Lord Xander but most of those women had been forced to do as the men wanted, and never given any hint they could have choices.
"But I did cast a spell on that fee I paid the priest." Lord Darkwolf sounded happier about that. "Any man who accepts one of those coins will be kinder to women in the future and he'll also be more likely to spend the coin in a place where women are being abused."
"I'm glad you thought of that my lord. I didn't." But there was something she had thought about when Lord Thann had asked if the mystic rose was Lord Xander's insignia, and it might be a good idea to move on to lighter matters. "My lord, later, might I have a tattoo added to my brand, so that it is coloured like your insignia? I think I'd like that."
"If you want it, then yes. But you might be better off having it done when we visit my world."
"Thank you." Elaira snuggled up to Lord Xander, kissing him, and rearousing his interest.
~~~0~~~
Xander had finished supplying the Ki Radar Plots to the ships Danilo had selected for Waterdeep's anti-piracy fleet, and he'd married Elaira just a tenday ago. That gave him enough time to see about opening up his inns again, even if he only opened one since people had only just started to visit Waterdeep again. He wouldn't bring up visiting his home dimension until after Elaira had gotten the guard up to scratch and she could take a tenday off. Yes, he could adjust time, so that they returned only a few minutes after they'd left, but that would be dangerous, the precision requirements would be far too high, and it would be too likely that they'd end up trying to arrive before they left. Instead he'd allow for two or three days between their departure and return, and that would allow them time to visit Evermeet, and see about Elaira's daughter. She hadn't said anything about Azariah, but Xander knew she'd been worrying about the girl, even if she had managed to get her and most of the priesthood protecting her out of Waterdeep before the Malevein arrived.
So, now he was interviewing candidates to manage one of his inns, using his empathy to determine their honesty, and trying to judge their abilities in a field he'd never had any experience in.
"Thank you, Reysan, I'll make my decision by the end of the afternoon, around five. You are free to wait, or return then, if you choose not to then I'll send a message to the address you provided." This was a test in itself. If anyone had said he would return at the end of the afternoon, and didn't then even if Xander had decided on him he would have lost the place.
"I'll wait Lord Darkwolf."
He'd spent an hour each interviewing six candidates, and in the end Reysan had been the best of them, with the most experience, and the widest experience, including starting from scratch, which was almost what he'd have to do this time. He'd lost the inn he'd built up from scratch when the Malevein arrived, and he didn't have enough left to start over, but he seemed to be willing to work for Xander at the salary Elaira had suggested. Everyone had chosen to wait, apparently desperate for any job Xander could offer, and so Xander had each one escorted in to see him in private, explaining exactly why they had been rejected, leaving Reysan for last.
"I suppose you've chosen someone else Lord Darkwolf." He looked pale as he sat down opposite Xander's desk when he was invited to. Xander couldn't blame him, three of the previous candidates had broadcast almost despair when he'd told them he'd chosen someone else, and Reysan had been given the longest to stew over what Xander would decide.
"No, you're the one I want for the job, but I left you for last because I need to make some arrangements with you. Your salary will be fifteen Dragons a month, and I'm giving you a lot of freedom in how you run the place."
"Yes Lord Darkwolf. Thank you." His mind was bubbling with pleasure and joy, apparently the salary Elaira had suggested was very generous. "What do you wish me to do?"
"Tomorrow I want you meet me here two hours after dawn. I own four inns, and I'm going to take you to inspect each of them. Once we've done that I want you to decide which one would be best to open first, and I'll expect a report within five days telling me which inn you selected, giving reasons why, and including an estimate of how much it will take to get it ready for business, and an estimate of how much it will cost to run on a monthly basis. Once I've approved that I'll supply you with a budget for getting the inn ready to open, and when it's open an operating budget for the first three months. We'll see where we go from there."
"Thank you Lord Darkwolf, I swear I'll do my best for you."
"You're welcome. I'll see you tomorrow." Xander escorted Reysan to the door himself, so he'd be there to greet Elaira when she returned.
~~~0~~~
Elaira smiled in pleasure when she saw Lord Xander at the door, just showing a human out - probably one of the people he was considering having manage one of his inns. She was grateful to see him, while she was sparring with her trainees that day her shirt had ridden up and exposed the brand that marked her as Lord Xander's wife. It hadn't been too much of an issue, they'd more or less all known that she'd enslaved by the Malevein while they'd been around, and assumed that the brand had come from then, but that very assumption had bothered her, even if it had kept them from asking her about it, and what disturbed her more was that she hadn't said anything to contradict the idea. She was proud of belonging to Lord Xander, of wearing his brand, but she hadn't told them that, and she didn't know why.
"What's wrong, my snowfalcon?" Lord Xander pulled her into his arms, kissing the top of her head lightly.
"It doesn't matter my lord." And it didn't, not now that she was in his arms, being comforted and reassured of her place with him.
"Anything that upsets you that much matters. But we don't have to talk about it if you don't want to." He led her into their home, and up to their bedroom, where he undressed her slowly, then went to prepare a bath for her, leaving her on the bed to brush out her hair and pin it up out of the way. She loved it when Lord Xander pampered her like this, and he seemed to like doing it as well, but it always felt subtly wrong, she felt she should be serving him. Still, she did this for him more often than the other way around, and it was easier in a way for him to do it than for her to, because the only constraints on his time were the ones he put there, and she had accepted an appointment that required a heavy workload from her. But his spells brought more money into their household than her job did. Already he'd had people asking about having him cast spells for them, some of the rich had only moved back into Waterdeep after they'd paid him to cast spells on their homes to protect them from theft and violence.
Lord Xander joined her in the bath, and he used foreplay to get her to relax, finally pulling her into a close embrace, her back to his chest, her ass pressed up against his groin, and kissing the back of her neck. He was hard against her, and she wriggled just enough to tell him that she wasn't averse to more...energetic contact.
"Not now my snowfalcon. How are you feeling?"
"Better, much better." He hadn't said anything more about what had caused her mood, but... "My trainees saw my brand today. I don't know why they made so much fuss about it, they all have scars, some worse than that little brand, I used to have worse scars than that until you remade me." Scars that she'd lost then, Lord Xander's spell had made her skin flawless as it changed her gender. "But...they thought it was from the Malevein, and I didn't tell them that they were wrong. Why didn't I tell them it showed that I belong to you?" She twisted around to look at him, knowing that he'd see her confusion as well as feel it.
~~~0~~~
"I don't know, but it doesn't matter, why should you care what they think? This," Xander let his fingers brush the scar in the curve of Elaira's back, "is something for the two of us, no one else. I don't care if you decide to keep it secret, or to display it as often as you can. All that matters is that you're happy with it."
"Oh yes, I'm very happy to be yours, I'm proud that you've put your mark on me, it's just...I don't understand why I couldn't bring myself to say anything to anyone about the real reason I've got a brand."
"Perhaps you felt it wasn't their concern, it isn't, you know that."
"Yes my lord, I do. Thank you for being so understanding." This time when she wriggled on his lap Xander didn't resist, he lifted her onto his penis, and stroked her until she climaxed before he started moving himself. He brought her again, before he allowed himself release, and because he had to get out of the bath he knew he wouldn't just go to sleep on her. Elaira insisted on tending to him as they got out of the bath, drying herself off while he stayed in the water and watched the show sleepily, then helping him out, and drying him.
"My lord?" Elaira brought the subject up over dinner.
"What is it?"
"Do you still want to return to your dimension for a visit?"
"Yes, but not now. I decided to wait until you were in a position to take a tenday break. You see, just because I can theoretically return us to just after we left, it doesn't mean I'm comfortable with doing that. I'd rather return us here two, maybe three days after we leave. And I thought that directly after that we could go to visit your daughter on Evermeet."
"Really my lord? I...wasn't sure you'd want to meet her, and that means we'd have to let the priests know who I used to be."
"Does it bother you that much?" Xander reached out across the table, cupping Elaira's cheek in his hand, stopping her eating for a moment while he leaned in to kiss her gently, then sat back, still holding her face.
"Not really, just...I'm not sure about how they'll think it reflects on you, and I don't want to cost you anyone's respect."
"If loving you costs me anyone's respect then that respect isn't worth having, it's that simple." He sat back and began eating again.
"Thank you, my lord." She ate a few bites then she spoke again, asking a question that took his breath away. "Do you want to have children with me?"
It was something he'd never thought about before, but when she asked the answer was unequivocably "Yes. Yes, I do want to have children with you. But not if you don't want to. You'll be the one carrying our children, so your decision on the matter is final."
"Oh, but I was thinking, why not have the mystic rose line drawing as a clan insignia, and each member of the clan can colour it to create a personal insignia?"
"That's a marvelous idea. Do you want an insignia of your own?"
"I don't know. Let me think about it." She was blushing, and it made her look so delicious that he stood up and took her up to bed with him. They'd eaten enough, and he wanted to be with her. One thing he did realise though was that he'd have to come up with a spell to give Elaira an identity in his world, and he would have to work on that as well.
~~~0~~~
Her trainees had progressed far enough that Elaira had taken to sparring with one of them for at least an hour every day she was working on their training. Over two tendays she would spar with each of them once, and whoever ranked highest in the daily tests that she gave them on the other five days she had with them. The lowest ranked would be relegated to practising drills or katas, while she paired the remaining eight up so that the highest ranked worked with the lowest ranked, to force improvement, and help the better students learn how to teach. Today she was sparring with Selarkaen Darkamber, the half-elf who she usually sparred with three or four times in a tenday.
"Commander Silverhair?"
"Yes, what is it?" Selarkaen was the only one of her students good enough to talk while sparring, she wouldn't have been able to keep it up if Elaira was going full out of course, but she was holding back to the same level she used in sparring with all of her other trainees.
"That brand on your back, yesterday, it isn't what we all thought it is, is it?"
"No, it isn't. My lord husband removed all the scars the Malevein had given me, and all the other scars I had about a tenday after he first arrived on this world. I'd been crippled, and he restored me to health." Elaira shrugged as she moved in for another attack. "There were side-effects, but nothing I found undesirable."
"Is loving him a side-effect, or was that separate?"
"I loved him before he healed me. Perfect skin was one side-effect. You can try and guess the others if you want."
"Can I ask what the brand's from instead?"
Elaira considered that for a moment, and swiftly caught the other woman pressing their bodies together, controlling the slightly taller woman completely. "It was my choice, that's all you need to know. He wasn't so happy about it." Her whispered voice turned menacing as she continued. "You do anything to upset him, I'll find a torture spell from his books and try it out on you."
A wolf whistle drove them apart. Elaira had known Lord Thann was there, but everyone else seemed to have been surprised, she noted that fact in disappointment.
"That looks like fun. Can I join in?"
"What do you really want Lord Thann? The rest of you, get back to work! Selarkaen, spar with Rufio!"
"I want you to teach me how to access my ki, Arilyn managed it by herself, but..."
"You think it'll come back to you if you can access your ki again once?"
"Yes, and I was hoping you'd be able to show me a quicker way of accessing it than Arilyn used - I didn't see her for two days, and I don't think she slept."
"Yes, I can do that. You didn't ask Lord Darkwolf?"
"His spells are more valuable. I hoped you'd gotten far enough with your students to give me a start."
"Hmm." Elaira cast a considering eye over her trainees. "They could use another run. Then I'll know how they're progressing." If they were doing well they wouldn't complain about the packs being heavy. "Come back tomorrow, an hour after dawn. Listen up all of you. We're doing another run, just like the one you had to survive to test for this, tomorrow. I want you all hear an hour after dawn, no later, or I'll have to find new trainees. Clear?" She didn't have to raise her voice once she'd got their attention, they all fell silent when she told them to listen.
"Yes sir!"
"And Lord Darkwolf might join us, we'll see." Then she went back to training them as if Lord Thann wasn't watching.
~~~0~~~
Xander smiled at the looks of surprise on the faces of his wife's trainees when they picked up their packs and realised they weren't as hard to carry as they had been last time - even though they probably weighed more in truth. His pack was probably the heaviest of the lot, but considering the ki reserves he had it was unnoticeable to him. Danilo was the only one who appeared to be struggling at all with his pack, but that was now. He wondered absently if Danilo and Arilyn realised that he'd left them the Saiyan reaction to damage, healing stronger for the damage the closer to death they got, the reaction he still had to damage himself. They'd find out eventually, and he dismissed the thought.
"This is a test of how far you've come in using your ki abilities. The reason your packs feel lighter than they did before is that you're using ki to make yourselves stronger. Take a baton. As soon as your pack feels as heavy as it did the first time we did this squeeze it once. When you can't run any longer squeeze it again, then you can rest and return here when you've recovered a little. Hand the batons in to me, or to Lord Darkwolf for assessment."
"Danilo, we'll be running until you collapse, from exhaustion. Then if you want to be able to sense your ki you'll have to get up and run some more. The pack will let you reach that point sooner." Xander explained the situation to Danilo as Elaira briefed her trainees. "Don't be embarrassed if you can't last as long as the trainees do, just do the best you can. If you want me to I can have a couple of those packs delivered to you and Arilyn. Or deliver them myself, that would probably be better."
"Umm, thank you, I think."
"You're welcome, it looks like we're setting off now. Just follow me, I'll stay with you for now. Once you've sensed your ki I'll take your pack and help you get home." Then he'd leave to get back to the run and join the others.
"Won't that be a bit heavy, even for you?"
"No, the only reason the pack feels heavy to you is that you can't access your ki, and you don't have much of it at the moment. It only feels heavy if you're relying exclusively on your muscles to lift it, if you use ki, it doesn't."
"Right." That was the last thing Danilo had breath for, but Xander did have to admit that the noble did well, it took him almost ten miles, run at eight minutes each, before he collapsed, and then he managed to force himself to finish off that final mile. Xander crouched beside him, reassuring him that he'd done fine, and talking him through some exercises to help boost his ki before he helped the other man back to his home, and returned to join Elaira.
When Xander got together with Elaira to assess how the trainees were doing he was very impressed with Selarkaen Darkamber. She'd managed to keep boosting her strangth with her ki for almost a mile beyond the point where the next closest had just stopped running altogether, and then managed to run for another five miles before collapsing. Even Rufio had managed to use his ki for five miles beyond the point where Danilo dropped out, and managed another six miles beyond that.
~~~0~~~
Elaira finally felt confident enough in her trainees, and in the functioning of her guard, to take a tenday off, four months after her wedding. And for his part Lord Xander had said his inn had been doing well, it had even started to show a profit, slight as it was, by the end of the first quarter. So on her first day off she dressed in kenned copies of one of Lord Xander's outfits, boots, the trousers he called jeans and a long sleeved tunic that he called a sweater, and went to join him at the receiving circle.
"I'll take us to my world, and I'll focus on Willow, hopefully about a month after I came here by their time. We'll just stay for a visit, but it can be however long or short you want. I'd like to get a receiving circle built there as well, but if you want to come home straight away, if my friends upset you, then we'll return here as soon as you ask." Lord Xander took hold of her chin, lifting it as he spoke to her, making sure she understood. She couldn't blame him for that, he knew that she would do anything to please him, including go against and deny her own desires. But he didn't quite understand just how good doing that made her feel in some ways. He couldn't, he was a dominant, a protective dominant, and a kind one, but still a dominant, she was submissive now, and in some ways she always had been.
"I do not wish to separate you from your friends, and it will be far easier for you to visit them if you set up a receiving circle there. I can aways spend the time practising martial arts, and studying your style of magic. But I swear that I will tell you if things become unbearable." Elaira smiled up at her lord. And the more often he traveled between the two worlds the more comfortable he would become with bringing the time between his departure from and return to one dimension closer.
"You're my lifebonded, you come first. If they can't get along with you then it's their loss."
"As you say my lord, but I know that I come first with you, why should it trouble me if your friends wish to have your attention for a while." Elaira shrugged and reached up to kiss her husband, licking lightly at his lower lip in supplication.
"As long as they respect you then." Lord Xander pulled back without deepening the kiss, and pulled her onto the receiving circle. She could feel him weaving energy about them in a pattern she could never dream of matching in complexity, power and precision. The world dissolved around them and she felt herself fade into mist-
-and reform in a strange place, it had all the acoutrements of a bedchamber, but all subtly foreign, and other things as well. The only person there was a human woman with flame red hair, as short as most elves - Elaira was tall for her kind, as were the seven daughters of Mystra, and Queen Amlaruil was almost a freak despite her great beauty and inherent majesty. She threw herself at Lord Xander, apparently not even noticing Elaira as she stepped away from her lord to give him room to fight if it was necessary.
"Xander!Where'veyoubeen?We'vebeentryingtofindyoubutnospellswouldworkandwewereallsoworried!" She wrapped her arms around Lord Xander's neck, and Elaira suppressed a surge of jealousy. Then another woman, dark haired this time, opened the door.
"Babe, what-" But when she saw Elaira she began to attack. Elaira was prepared to defend herself, without doing too much damage since the woman was unarmed, but she didn't have to, Lord Xander used his ki to bind her. Then he pushed the redhead away from him.
"Willow, Kennedy, I'll answer your questions, but only when all the old gang are here to hear what I have to say. Kennedy, if I set you loose will you promise not to attack my lifebonded again?"
"How did you do that Xander? It wasn't magic. And lifebonded? Like in those Valdemar books?" Kennedy was Willow's lover from what Lord Darkwolf had said, but she was more interested in how he'd bound her than freeing her? The...Slayer, that was how Lord Xander had described his friend's lover, nodded and he freed her easily.
"I told you, I'll answer questions for everyone. But yes, Elaira's my lifebonded like in the Valdemar books. That reminds me..." He trailed off and Elaira could feel his power working on her and the world around them. "She's got a legal identity here now, and the records of my having lost an eye are gone. Anya left me everything in her will, and I hadn't gotten the insurance payments for losing my eye before Danilo summoned me, so I can afford to get a receiving circle made here once I figure out where to put it." Elaira didn't care about his finances, she could always ken whatever they needed if it was required, but she quietly followed him and the two women out of the room and down to another with more seating, kneeling at his feet almost defiantly.
~~~0~~~
Willow really looked at Xander as they made their way down to the living room. He'd changed in the past month, a lot more than he should have, he was more muscular, his hair fell past his shoulders now, there was a palpable aura of power about him, an aura she didn't understand - and he had his eye back. But it creeped her out when that woman, his lifebonded he claimed, knelt at his feet and he accepted it so calmly, reaching down to pet her like she was an animal or something.
"Kennedy, look after them while I get the others." Not that she really expected her lover to stop Xander if he really wanted to get out or do something, even if that was the message the Slayer would hear. But she couldn't bear to watch the way he was acting with that strange white haired woman. She hurried away, casting a quick spell to tell her where everyone was, and getting Giles, Buffy and Dawn together. She sent the new Slayers to the living room if she saw them, give Kennedy a bit of help, but that was secondary.
When she'd got everyone back to the living room Xander and Elaira both glared at her, as if they could feel her copntempt for a woman who'd automatically kneel at her lover's feet, and her disgust at Xander fo taking advantage of someone so obviously broken.
"First thing. Elaira is my lifebonded, and in the world she conmes from, the world where I live now, and will return to in a few months, she is my wife. Her behaviour is her own choice, she selected our style of wedding herself, but she could probably outfight a Slayer despite the fact that she's submissive. Still, if anyone hurts her they'll find out what I'm capable of doing to anyone who hurts my mate." His mate, that sounded like...
"Xander, did the hyena ever leave you?" She had to know, if it didn't completely...then what? Was that why he'd always healed quicker than he should have?
"Not fully. I kept it caged in the back of my mind mostly, because that was the only way I could control it. For you to understand what happened in the past six months or so for me you need to know one thing - I've always known how to use magic. I started to learn shortly after Buffy arrived in Sunnydale. But because I don't, didn't, have the power well that you have I never could do spells of any practical use. Instead I went into the theoretical stuff, and invented my own spells, spells that required a level of control and precision you couldn't match, Giles. They were usually things with a low energy cost initially, and then sustained by ambient magicif they needed to stay up, for instance the shields against magic that saved me up on Kingsman's Bluff. They absorbed and redirected your magic to keep me safe, mostly. Some of it came through. Elaira, you should tell the next bit."
"Our city had been invaded by a race with very powerful magic, powerful enough to cut us off from our gods, and to make them immune to our magic. Lord Danilo came up with the idea of summoning the saviour we needed from another world, and e rescued me from the leader of our enemy because he needed me to help cast the spell, and the information I'd picked up as his slave might be useful. We got Lord Xander. I was crippled, and he gave me his protection. And he made it very clear that he wouldn't require me to spread my legs for him in return. If he had, then I would have done it, it would have been worth it to buy his protection and his help in freeing our city." She fell silent then.
~~~0~~~
Xander picked up where Elaira had left off. "I'd come up with a lot of low power spells that needed high precision, and I'd theoretically designed stronger spells which needed perhaps less in the way of precision, but still too much for either of you to perform them, based on spells that I'd seen used. One of those was an adaptation of the spell Ethan used to turn us into our costumes that year. Another spell exchanged knowledge, and that one was low power. I used it to teach Danilo how to cast my style of spells, and had him cast Halloween to give me power to back up my skills. Then I healed Elaira, and a group of four of us each had Halloween cast on us three times. That gave us enough variety in magic styles, and the ability to use ki and throw ki-blasts, that we were able to defeat our enemies."
"How did you get your eye back?" Willow sounded unhappy about his assessment of her skills, but she still cared about him, he could tell.
"One of the people I dressed as could regenerate body parts, he was weird like that."
"If you didn't want to sleep with Elaira how'd she end up as your wife, and kneeling at your feet like that?" Kennedy was leaning forward eagerly, and almost leering at his lifebonded.
Elaira pressed back against his legs a bit harder, but she answered Kennedy's question instead of letting him do it. "I'm submissive, sexually, and I don't want to be anything else. Lord Xander has issues with that, so when it is appropriate I do little things like this to remind him that I consider him my better. I was very broken when we met, so he would reassure me with gentle, comforting touch, and eventually it turned sexual. Always at my urging, for instance once while he was sleeping and hard I rubbed up against him until he came, I started to kiss him, and climaxed against him and I was the one who asked him to take me to bed after our first fight."
"That's when I realised I could feel some sort of link between us. I dressed as Amberdrake and got his abilities because he had a lifebond himself, to confirm my suspicions. And because he was a Healer, and we didn't have any. I made Elaira a Healer too, a Valdemaran one. After we'd defeated the Malevein I started trying to figure out a spell to get back here for a visit at least. We have responsibilities in Waterdeep. I'm their most powerful and skilled magic user, and Elaira is the commander of the Guard, so we'll have to get back. But Elaira took a tenday of leave, and I can adjust the time when we go back, so that no matter how long we spend here it's just a few days there. I thought you needed to know that I'm alive and safe."
"If you can manipulate time why did you take so long to return here Xander?" Giles sounded disapproving, and Xander really couldn't blame him for that.
"Because I didn't have a receiving circle here. One of the things I'm going to do during this visit is get one built somewhere no one's going to have the chance to see it. But that meant I couldn't try for much in the way of precision, because I didn't really have a target in this dimension to aim for. One of the things I tried for was having all of the old gang in reasonable proximity - meaning in the same house."
"Where do you plan to build this receiving circle then?"
"Don't know. I'll probably buy a house, set up something to pay the taxes, and a spell to keep people from really noticing it, and have it built there."
"I'll ken the bronze inlay for it of course, but we'll need to make sure the craftsman doesn't remember what he did."
"I think we've covered everything. Your turn now, tell us what's been happening since I left."
~~~0~~~
From Lord Xander's reactions nothing truly important had happened while he'd been gone. Privately Elaira considered that fortunate, for she suspected they would have been in trouble without Lord Xander there to come up with all the solutions they needed. That had been the previous day, and she'd managed to persuade him that she could cope with his friends, that she didn't need to be chaperoned, and he should see to the important things he needed to do. He'd agreed, once he was certain she understood how to pay for things in this society if she needed to, since gold and silver weren't accepted as currency here, only those strange paper rectangles he'd given her, notes, and the little plastic cards she had two of. She was beginning to regret allowing Buffy, Kennedy and Willow haul her on a 'Girl's Day Out', which apparently meant buying a lot of clothes, and having her hair, skin and nails primped to a totally impractical extent. This followed the 'Girl Talk' of the previous day, where she was asked the most intimate questions about her relationship with Lord Darkwolf, and given equally intimate details by the others.
"No, I don't want to lose any of the length. My lord likes my hair long, and it doesn't stop me from fighting." That simple explanation shocked the hair stylist, but not her lord's friends, not anymore. Elaira wasn't sure how to soothe things over, but Buffy seemed to know what to say.
"Elaira's heavy into Ds stuff, you know? And she's a fencer and martial artist. It'd be a shame to lose hair that's so beautiful don't you think?" The Slayer reached out and ran a hand through Elaira's hair, she shivered slightly, but did nothing else.
"You're right. I'll just trim the ends, taking about two inches off, and then I'll put it up for you - unless you want something else?"
"Go ahead. Javander doesn't know much about how to put a lady's hair up, so it'll be a surprise for Lord Darkwolf, and I think he'll enjoy it." Elaira noted that she had to get someone to teach Javander those things if Lord Xander responded well to this. Fortunately she'd already had the skin treatment the others considered so important at the first 'Beauty Parlor' they'd been to, where the servants had marveled at how little body hair she had, and insisted on removing most of what she did have, save at her groin, and even there they had 'tidied' the fine silver hair that was barely noticable against her skin.
Apparently they were suposed to go to a 'Nail Bar' next, and then look for clothes for her, but...
"Is that a good place to get a tattoo done?"
"Yes." Willow was blushing almost as red as her hair, and her lover intervened to spare her.
"We got some done together there."
"Good. I need something done." Elaira didn't give the others time to protest, she just walked into the tattoo parlor, and once she'd convinced the woman at the counter that she was an adult and in her right mind she pulled out the picture that showed the colours of Lord Darkwolf's insignia.
"I have a scar on my back, a brand in this shape, I want the unbranded skin coloured as shown here, the red surrounding it can sort of fade out at the edges, and the exact shades of grey are less important."
"Elaira, we won't have time to get you any clothes if you do this now. And it takes at least a few days before you can even take the covering off - and it looks pretty bad then." Kennedy was the one who tried to talk her out of it, but Elaira wanted to wear Lord Darkwolf's colours.
"You have my measurements, just buy whatever you think will work best." She could adjust the size if she needed to, and she could accelerate the healing of her tattoo enough that it would look acceptable when she showed Lord Xander, by use of ki rather than true Healing. She thrust a wad of notes at Willow.
It was near three after noon when they came back, and her tattoo had just been finished. They were laden with bags and Elaira wasn't entirely sure she wanted to see the contents, but she knew that she'd end up modelling every outfit for the girls at some point. Then they went to the nail bar and had her finger and toe nails painted gold. And finally Buffy, Willow and Kennedry dragged her for a 'makeover', which meant a woman who was better at using cosmetics that Princess Arilyn did her best to improve Elaira's appearance.
~~~0~~~
Xander'd never seen Elaira in a dress before, she thought that it wasn't important for her to have decorative clothes instead of funtional clothes, and he'd agreed with her, so he couldn't quite believe his eyes when he saw what she would be wearing to the 'Welcome Home' dinner. She was wearing a dark green velvet dress with a skirt to the floor, and a bodice that made the absolute most of her slight breasts, with gold embroidery. Her jewellery was all gold as well, with a few emeralds set in the necklace, and she had to be wearing high heels underneath the skirt, just from the way her walk had changed. Her hair was partly pinned up on top of her head, and partly falling down her back in a cascade of curls, held together with little gold combs. He must have taken too long to say something, because her immaculately painted face showed her disappointment.
"Do I fail to please you like this, my lord?"
"You're beautiful, you always are, and nothing can change that, but this...this is amazing. I love it. What else did the girls talk you into getting?" He hoped that it was more decorative outfits like this, rather than the practical stuff she usually wore.
"I don't know, entirely. I...got my brand coloured, and they went looking for clothes for me while that was happening. I think most of it's fancy stuff like this, but they did get me some pairs of leather pants, and jeans, along with some simpler stuff to go on top. I'll need to get the underthings myself though."
"Want me to come with you for that?" Xander was teasing, he didn't expect her to say yes, but she looked relieved, not angry at the idea.
"Please! Those women are so strange. They wanted to know things about you that they shouldn't have. And they told me things I didn't want to know." Then she blushed, the blue clashing with and highlighting the peach blusher on her cheeks. "At least if it will not take away from anything important."
"No, it won't. I've figured out what sort of place we need to make our home in this world, and I've prepared a spell to find appropriate places. I'll give rough locations to Willow, or Andrew," the name still left a bitter taste in his mouth, "and they can do the research for us tomorrow. Do you want to go out on patrol tonight?"
"Please my lord. I'm not entirely certain of what the best techniques are, but you can teach me that swiftly enough, can you not?"
"It's pretty simple. With vampires, they're what we usually encounter, you can set them on fire, tear off the heads, pull out the heart, or put a wooden stake through the heart. With the other demons lots of physical damage will normally do the job, sometimes you need special methods, but in general removing the head seems to work."
"Oh! I can manage that." Elaira smiled at him. Xander felt underdressed in his slacks and shirt, but he offered his arm to her and guided her to the dining room, seating her at the table the way Vanyel had been taught to seat a woman.
"That is so romantic." Andrew was the last person Xander'd expected to hear that from, and the Slayers seemed split between agreeing with him, and pissed off at him for it.
"Ha! She doesn't need him to pull out her seat for her, she can get it herself." That was one of the younger Slayers, Xander wasn't sure what her name was, but she started an argument over whether he was right to hold Elaira's chair for her. He took advantage of the distraction to make sure she was eating properly, and to eat himself, things he would only get here.
"Enough! Whether Elaira needed it or not it was courteous of Xander to hold her chair for her, an old-fashioned courtesy, but one that is still relevant at times. And you could always ask how she feels about it." As soon as Giles had stopped talking all eyes went to Elaira.
"I am flattered that my lord is willing to treat me as a lady. It is very kind of him to disregard my history. He suggested that we could join you on patrol, is this permitted?"
"You can come with me. You've gotta be a good fighter if you're in charge of this 'Guard' thing." Xander didn't really like Kennedy, he felt she'd taken advantage of Willow, and was far too interested in power for his taste, but he appreciated the offer.
~~~0~~~
Elaira didn't object when Lord Xander insisted on putting her to bed as soon as they'd returned from their wedding, she loved feeling him carry her there, but she was upset that he wanted to leave her there alone. She reached out a hand to stop him as he turned to leave after he'd undressed her and put her in bed.
"Please my lord, stay with me." She smiled then. "After all we are just married. I didn't want to ask for time off, but I do want to celebrate this, don't you?"
"Yes my snowfalcon, but you are exhausted from powering the Gate, and I didn't Heal that brand fully."
"I'm not that exhausted, and the brand doesn't hurt too much. Please, I want to be with you, I'll hurt less after you take me, things always hurt less after sex." Elaira was pleading, and she knew it, but she'd felt how miserable some of the women at that temple were, and she needed to be with Lord Xander, to be reassured that she'd made the right choice of weddings, and she thought he needed it too.
He didn't say anything when he gave in, just stripped and slid into the bed beside her, kissing her gently, and arousing her with his touch. Still, Elaira knew that he needed her to be more agressive than she usually was, to free his mind from what they'd learned. She ran her hands over his back and kissed him deeply, then moved her mouth to his shoulder, and bit, lightly.
That seemed to be enough to release his inhibitions and Elaira lost herself in the pleasure of sharing Lord Xander's bed. Afterwards she lay in his arms, head on his shoulder, while they talked.
"Elaira was that wedding really what you wanted?" Lord Xander sounded worried by the idea, and she was sorry for that. "Why?"
"Yes, it's what I wanted, my lord. I want to be yours in every way, even now I feel safest with you. I wanted a ceremony that reflected that. I want this, I'm not like one of those poor women forced into it. And it isn't as if you would ever abuse me, is it?" She smiled as she teased him just a little.
"Never, my snowfalcon. I didn't like the way those women were being treated either. Do you think we can do anything about it?"
"We can't, not really. The laws of that country support that sort of treatment of women, and most of their gods think better of men than women. The only way to do something would be to conquer the country and..."
"We can't do that. First because we have responsibilities here, and secondly because we don't have the sort of army we'd need to keep the country under our control." Lord Xander just about growled towards the end, but Elaira knew he wasn't angry at her, so it didn't matter. And she felt pretty much the same way about those people. It was one thing with her, she wanted to be submissive to Lord Xander but most of those women had been forced to do as the men wanted, and never given any hint they could have choices.
"But I did cast a spell on that fee I paid the priest." Lord Darkwolf sounded happier about that. "Any man who accepts one of those coins will be kinder to women in the future and he'll also be more likely to spend the coin in a place where women are being abused."
"I'm glad you thought of that my lord. I didn't." But there was something she had thought about when Lord Thann had asked if the mystic rose was Lord Xander's insignia, and it might be a good idea to move on to lighter matters. "My lord, later, might I have a tattoo added to my brand, so that it is coloured like your insignia? I think I'd like that."
"If you want it, then yes. But you might be better off having it done when we visit my world."
"Thank you." Elaira snuggled up to Lord Xander, kissing him, and rearousing his interest.
~~~0~~~
Xander had finished supplying the Ki Radar Plots to the ships Danilo had selected for Waterdeep's anti-piracy fleet, and he'd married Elaira just a tenday ago. That gave him enough time to see about opening up his inns again, even if he only opened one since people had only just started to visit Waterdeep again. He wouldn't bring up visiting his home dimension until after Elaira had gotten the guard up to scratch and she could take a tenday off. Yes, he could adjust time, so that they returned only a few minutes after they'd left, but that would be dangerous, the precision requirements would be far too high, and it would be too likely that they'd end up trying to arrive before they left. Instead he'd allow for two or three days between their departure and return, and that would allow them time to visit Evermeet, and see about Elaira's daughter. She hadn't said anything about Azariah, but Xander knew she'd been worrying about the girl, even if she had managed to get her and most of the priesthood protecting her out of Waterdeep before the Malevein arrived.
So, now he was interviewing candidates to manage one of his inns, using his empathy to determine their honesty, and trying to judge their abilities in a field he'd never had any experience in.
"Thank you, Reysan, I'll make my decision by the end of the afternoon, around five. You are free to wait, or return then, if you choose not to then I'll send a message to the address you provided." This was a test in itself. If anyone had said he would return at the end of the afternoon, and didn't then even if Xander had decided on him he would have lost the place.
"I'll wait Lord Darkwolf."
He'd spent an hour each interviewing six candidates, and in the end Reysan had been the best of them, with the most experience, and the widest experience, including starting from scratch, which was almost what he'd have to do this time. He'd lost the inn he'd built up from scratch when the Malevein arrived, and he didn't have enough left to start over, but he seemed to be willing to work for Xander at the salary Elaira had suggested. Everyone had chosen to wait, apparently desperate for any job Xander could offer, and so Xander had each one escorted in to see him in private, explaining exactly why they had been rejected, leaving Reysan for last.
"I suppose you've chosen someone else Lord Darkwolf." He looked pale as he sat down opposite Xander's desk when he was invited to. Xander couldn't blame him, three of the previous candidates had broadcast almost despair when he'd told them he'd chosen someone else, and Reysan had been given the longest to stew over what Xander would decide.
"No, you're the one I want for the job, but I left you for last because I need to make some arrangements with you. Your salary will be fifteen Dragons a month, and I'm giving you a lot of freedom in how you run the place."
"Yes Lord Darkwolf. Thank you." His mind was bubbling with pleasure and joy, apparently the salary Elaira had suggested was very generous. "What do you wish me to do?"
"Tomorrow I want you meet me here two hours after dawn. I own four inns, and I'm going to take you to inspect each of them. Once we've done that I want you to decide which one would be best to open first, and I'll expect a report within five days telling me which inn you selected, giving reasons why, and including an estimate of how much it will take to get it ready for business, and an estimate of how much it will cost to run on a monthly basis. Once I've approved that I'll supply you with a budget for getting the inn ready to open, and when it's open an operating budget for the first three months. We'll see where we go from there."
"Thank you Lord Darkwolf, I swear I'll do my best for you."
"You're welcome. I'll see you tomorrow." Xander escorted Reysan to the door himself, so he'd be there to greet Elaira when she returned.
~~~0~~~
Elaira smiled in pleasure when she saw Lord Xander at the door, just showing a human out - probably one of the people he was considering having manage one of his inns. She was grateful to see him, while she was sparring with her trainees that day her shirt had ridden up and exposed the brand that marked her as Lord Xander's wife. It hadn't been too much of an issue, they'd more or less all known that she'd enslaved by the Malevein while they'd been around, and assumed that the brand had come from then, but that very assumption had bothered her, even if it had kept them from asking her about it, and what disturbed her more was that she hadn't said anything to contradict the idea. She was proud of belonging to Lord Xander, of wearing his brand, but she hadn't told them that, and she didn't know why.
"What's wrong, my snowfalcon?" Lord Xander pulled her into his arms, kissing the top of her head lightly.
"It doesn't matter my lord." And it didn't, not now that she was in his arms, being comforted and reassured of her place with him.
"Anything that upsets you that much matters. But we don't have to talk about it if you don't want to." He led her into their home, and up to their bedroom, where he undressed her slowly, then went to prepare a bath for her, leaving her on the bed to brush out her hair and pin it up out of the way. She loved it when Lord Xander pampered her like this, and he seemed to like doing it as well, but it always felt subtly wrong, she felt she should be serving him. Still, she did this for him more often than the other way around, and it was easier in a way for him to do it than for her to, because the only constraints on his time were the ones he put there, and she had accepted an appointment that required a heavy workload from her. But his spells brought more money into their household than her job did. Already he'd had people asking about having him cast spells for them, some of the rich had only moved back into Waterdeep after they'd paid him to cast spells on their homes to protect them from theft and violence.
Lord Xander joined her in the bath, and he used foreplay to get her to relax, finally pulling her into a close embrace, her back to his chest, her ass pressed up against his groin, and kissing the back of her neck. He was hard against her, and she wriggled just enough to tell him that she wasn't averse to more...energetic contact.
"Not now my snowfalcon. How are you feeling?"
"Better, much better." He hadn't said anything more about what had caused her mood, but... "My trainees saw my brand today. I don't know why they made so much fuss about it, they all have scars, some worse than that little brand, I used to have worse scars than that until you remade me." Scars that she'd lost then, Lord Xander's spell had made her skin flawless as it changed her gender. "But...they thought it was from the Malevein, and I didn't tell them that they were wrong. Why didn't I tell them it showed that I belong to you?" She twisted around to look at him, knowing that he'd see her confusion as well as feel it.
~~~0~~~
"I don't know, but it doesn't matter, why should you care what they think? This," Xander let his fingers brush the scar in the curve of Elaira's back, "is something for the two of us, no one else. I don't care if you decide to keep it secret, or to display it as often as you can. All that matters is that you're happy with it."
"Oh yes, I'm very happy to be yours, I'm proud that you've put your mark on me, it's just...I don't understand why I couldn't bring myself to say anything to anyone about the real reason I've got a brand."
"Perhaps you felt it wasn't their concern, it isn't, you know that."
"Yes my lord, I do. Thank you for being so understanding." This time when she wriggled on his lap Xander didn't resist, he lifted her onto his penis, and stroked her until she climaxed before he started moving himself. He brought her again, before he allowed himself release, and because he had to get out of the bath he knew he wouldn't just go to sleep on her. Elaira insisted on tending to him as they got out of the bath, drying herself off while he stayed in the water and watched the show sleepily, then helping him out, and drying him.
"My lord?" Elaira brought the subject up over dinner.
"What is it?"
"Do you still want to return to your dimension for a visit?"
"Yes, but not now. I decided to wait until you were in a position to take a tenday break. You see, just because I can theoretically return us to just after we left, it doesn't mean I'm comfortable with doing that. I'd rather return us here two, maybe three days after we leave. And I thought that directly after that we could go to visit your daughter on Evermeet."
"Really my lord? I...wasn't sure you'd want to meet her, and that means we'd have to let the priests know who I used to be."
"Does it bother you that much?" Xander reached out across the table, cupping Elaira's cheek in his hand, stopping her eating for a moment while he leaned in to kiss her gently, then sat back, still holding her face.
"Not really, just...I'm not sure about how they'll think it reflects on you, and I don't want to cost you anyone's respect."
"If loving you costs me anyone's respect then that respect isn't worth having, it's that simple." He sat back and began eating again.
"Thank you, my lord." She ate a few bites then she spoke again, asking a question that took his breath away. "Do you want to have children with me?"
It was something he'd never thought about before, but when she asked the answer was unequivocably "Yes. Yes, I do want to have children with you. But not if you don't want to. You'll be the one carrying our children, so your decision on the matter is final."
"Oh, but I was thinking, why not have the mystic rose line drawing as a clan insignia, and each member of the clan can colour it to create a personal insignia?"
"That's a marvelous idea. Do you want an insignia of your own?"
"I don't know. Let me think about it." She was blushing, and it made her look so delicious that he stood up and took her up to bed with him. They'd eaten enough, and he wanted to be with her. One thing he did realise though was that he'd have to come up with a spell to give Elaira an identity in his world, and he would have to work on that as well.
~~~0~~~
Her trainees had progressed far enough that Elaira had taken to sparring with one of them for at least an hour every day she was working on their training. Over two tendays she would spar with each of them once, and whoever ranked highest in the daily tests that she gave them on the other five days she had with them. The lowest ranked would be relegated to practising drills or katas, while she paired the remaining eight up so that the highest ranked worked with the lowest ranked, to force improvement, and help the better students learn how to teach. Today she was sparring with Selarkaen Darkamber, the half-elf who she usually sparred with three or four times in a tenday.
"Commander Silverhair?"
"Yes, what is it?" Selarkaen was the only one of her students good enough to talk while sparring, she wouldn't have been able to keep it up if Elaira was going full out of course, but she was holding back to the same level she used in sparring with all of her other trainees.
"That brand on your back, yesterday, it isn't what we all thought it is, is it?"
"No, it isn't. My lord husband removed all the scars the Malevein had given me, and all the other scars I had about a tenday after he first arrived on this world. I'd been crippled, and he restored me to health." Elaira shrugged as she moved in for another attack. "There were side-effects, but nothing I found undesirable."
"Is loving him a side-effect, or was that separate?"
"I loved him before he healed me. Perfect skin was one side-effect. You can try and guess the others if you want."
"Can I ask what the brand's from instead?"
Elaira considered that for a moment, and swiftly caught the other woman pressing their bodies together, controlling the slightly taller woman completely. "It was my choice, that's all you need to know. He wasn't so happy about it." Her whispered voice turned menacing as she continued. "You do anything to upset him, I'll find a torture spell from his books and try it out on you."
A wolf whistle drove them apart. Elaira had known Lord Thann was there, but everyone else seemed to have been surprised, she noted that fact in disappointment.
"That looks like fun. Can I join in?"
"What do you really want Lord Thann? The rest of you, get back to work! Selarkaen, spar with Rufio!"
"I want you to teach me how to access my ki, Arilyn managed it by herself, but..."
"You think it'll come back to you if you can access your ki again once?"
"Yes, and I was hoping you'd be able to show me a quicker way of accessing it than Arilyn used - I didn't see her for two days, and I don't think she slept."
"Yes, I can do that. You didn't ask Lord Darkwolf?"
"His spells are more valuable. I hoped you'd gotten far enough with your students to give me a start."
"Hmm." Elaira cast a considering eye over her trainees. "They could use another run. Then I'll know how they're progressing." If they were doing well they wouldn't complain about the packs being heavy. "Come back tomorrow, an hour after dawn. Listen up all of you. We're doing another run, just like the one you had to survive to test for this, tomorrow. I want you all hear an hour after dawn, no later, or I'll have to find new trainees. Clear?" She didn't have to raise her voice once she'd got their attention, they all fell silent when she told them to listen.
"Yes sir!"
"And Lord Darkwolf might join us, we'll see." Then she went back to training them as if Lord Thann wasn't watching.
~~~0~~~
Xander smiled at the looks of surprise on the faces of his wife's trainees when they picked up their packs and realised they weren't as hard to carry as they had been last time - even though they probably weighed more in truth. His pack was probably the heaviest of the lot, but considering the ki reserves he had it was unnoticeable to him. Danilo was the only one who appeared to be struggling at all with his pack, but that was now. He wondered absently if Danilo and Arilyn realised that he'd left them the Saiyan reaction to damage, healing stronger for the damage the closer to death they got, the reaction he still had to damage himself. They'd find out eventually, and he dismissed the thought.
"This is a test of how far you've come in using your ki abilities. The reason your packs feel lighter than they did before is that you're using ki to make yourselves stronger. Take a baton. As soon as your pack feels as heavy as it did the first time we did this squeeze it once. When you can't run any longer squeeze it again, then you can rest and return here when you've recovered a little. Hand the batons in to me, or to Lord Darkwolf for assessment."
"Danilo, we'll be running until you collapse, from exhaustion. Then if you want to be able to sense your ki you'll have to get up and run some more. The pack will let you reach that point sooner." Xander explained the situation to Danilo as Elaira briefed her trainees. "Don't be embarrassed if you can't last as long as the trainees do, just do the best you can. If you want me to I can have a couple of those packs delivered to you and Arilyn. Or deliver them myself, that would probably be better."
"Umm, thank you, I think."
"You're welcome, it looks like we're setting off now. Just follow me, I'll stay with you for now. Once you've sensed your ki I'll take your pack and help you get home." Then he'd leave to get back to the run and join the others.
"Won't that be a bit heavy, even for you?"
"No, the only reason the pack feels heavy to you is that you can't access your ki, and you don't have much of it at the moment. It only feels heavy if you're relying exclusively on your muscles to lift it, if you use ki, it doesn't."
"Right." That was the last thing Danilo had breath for, but Xander did have to admit that the noble did well, it took him almost ten miles, run at eight minutes each, before he collapsed, and then he managed to force himself to finish off that final mile. Xander crouched beside him, reassuring him that he'd done fine, and talking him through some exercises to help boost his ki before he helped the other man back to his home, and returned to join Elaira.
When Xander got together with Elaira to assess how the trainees were doing he was very impressed with Selarkaen Darkamber. She'd managed to keep boosting her strangth with her ki for almost a mile beyond the point where the next closest had just stopped running altogether, and then managed to run for another five miles before collapsing. Even Rufio had managed to use his ki for five miles beyond the point where Danilo dropped out, and managed another six miles beyond that.
~~~0~~~
Elaira finally felt confident enough in her trainees, and in the functioning of her guard, to take a tenday off, four months after her wedding. And for his part Lord Xander had said his inn had been doing well, it had even started to show a profit, slight as it was, by the end of the first quarter. So on her first day off she dressed in kenned copies of one of Lord Xander's outfits, boots, the trousers he called jeans and a long sleeved tunic that he called a sweater, and went to join him at the receiving circle.
"I'll take us to my world, and I'll focus on Willow, hopefully about a month after I came here by their time. We'll just stay for a visit, but it can be however long or short you want. I'd like to get a receiving circle built there as well, but if you want to come home straight away, if my friends upset you, then we'll return here as soon as you ask." Lord Xander took hold of her chin, lifting it as he spoke to her, making sure she understood. She couldn't blame him for that, he knew that she would do anything to please him, including go against and deny her own desires. But he didn't quite understand just how good doing that made her feel in some ways. He couldn't, he was a dominant, a protective dominant, and a kind one, but still a dominant, she was submissive now, and in some ways she always had been.
"I do not wish to separate you from your friends, and it will be far easier for you to visit them if you set up a receiving circle there. I can aways spend the time practising martial arts, and studying your style of magic. But I swear that I will tell you if things become unbearable." Elaira smiled up at her lord. And the more often he traveled between the two worlds the more comfortable he would become with bringing the time between his departure from and return to one dimension closer.
"You're my lifebonded, you come first. If they can't get along with you then it's their loss."
"As you say my lord, but I know that I come first with you, why should it trouble me if your friends wish to have your attention for a while." Elaira shrugged and reached up to kiss her husband, licking lightly at his lower lip in supplication.
"As long as they respect you then." Lord Xander pulled back without deepening the kiss, and pulled her onto the receiving circle. She could feel him weaving energy about them in a pattern she could never dream of matching in complexity, power and precision. The world dissolved around them and she felt herself fade into mist-
-and reform in a strange place, it had all the acoutrements of a bedchamber, but all subtly foreign, and other things as well. The only person there was a human woman with flame red hair, as short as most elves - Elaira was tall for her kind, as were the seven daughters of Mystra, and Queen Amlaruil was almost a freak despite her great beauty and inherent majesty. She threw herself at Lord Xander, apparently not even noticing Elaira as she stepped away from her lord to give him room to fight if it was necessary.
"Xander!Where'veyoubeen?We'vebeentryingtofindyoubutnospellswouldworkandwewereallsoworried!" She wrapped her arms around Lord Xander's neck, and Elaira suppressed a surge of jealousy. Then another woman, dark haired this time, opened the door.
"Babe, what-" But when she saw Elaira she began to attack. Elaira was prepared to defend herself, without doing too much damage since the woman was unarmed, but she didn't have to, Lord Xander used his ki to bind her. Then he pushed the redhead away from him.
"Willow, Kennedy, I'll answer your questions, but only when all the old gang are here to hear what I have to say. Kennedy, if I set you loose will you promise not to attack my lifebonded again?"
"How did you do that Xander? It wasn't magic. And lifebonded? Like in those Valdemar books?" Kennedy was Willow's lover from what Lord Darkwolf had said, but she was more interested in how he'd bound her than freeing her? The...Slayer, that was how Lord Xander had described his friend's lover, nodded and he freed her easily.
"I told you, I'll answer questions for everyone. But yes, Elaira's my lifebonded like in the Valdemar books. That reminds me..." He trailed off and Elaira could feel his power working on her and the world around them. "She's got a legal identity here now, and the records of my having lost an eye are gone. Anya left me everything in her will, and I hadn't gotten the insurance payments for losing my eye before Danilo summoned me, so I can afford to get a receiving circle made here once I figure out where to put it." Elaira didn't care about his finances, she could always ken whatever they needed if it was required, but she quietly followed him and the two women out of the room and down to another with more seating, kneeling at his feet almost defiantly.
~~~0~~~
Willow really looked at Xander as they made their way down to the living room. He'd changed in the past month, a lot more than he should have, he was more muscular, his hair fell past his shoulders now, there was a palpable aura of power about him, an aura she didn't understand - and he had his eye back. But it creeped her out when that woman, his lifebonded he claimed, knelt at his feet and he accepted it so calmly, reaching down to pet her like she was an animal or something.
"Kennedy, look after them while I get the others." Not that she really expected her lover to stop Xander if he really wanted to get out or do something, even if that was the message the Slayer would hear. But she couldn't bear to watch the way he was acting with that strange white haired woman. She hurried away, casting a quick spell to tell her where everyone was, and getting Giles, Buffy and Dawn together. She sent the new Slayers to the living room if she saw them, give Kennedy a bit of help, but that was secondary.
When she'd got everyone back to the living room Xander and Elaira both glared at her, as if they could feel her copntempt for a woman who'd automatically kneel at her lover's feet, and her disgust at Xander fo taking advantage of someone so obviously broken.
"First thing. Elaira is my lifebonded, and in the world she conmes from, the world where I live now, and will return to in a few months, she is my wife. Her behaviour is her own choice, she selected our style of wedding herself, but she could probably outfight a Slayer despite the fact that she's submissive. Still, if anyone hurts her they'll find out what I'm capable of doing to anyone who hurts my mate." His mate, that sounded like...
"Xander, did the hyena ever leave you?" She had to know, if it didn't completely...then what? Was that why he'd always healed quicker than he should have?
"Not fully. I kept it caged in the back of my mind mostly, because that was the only way I could control it. For you to understand what happened in the past six months or so for me you need to know one thing - I've always known how to use magic. I started to learn shortly after Buffy arrived in Sunnydale. But because I don't, didn't, have the power well that you have I never could do spells of any practical use. Instead I went into the theoretical stuff, and invented my own spells, spells that required a level of control and precision you couldn't match, Giles. They were usually things with a low energy cost initially, and then sustained by ambient magicif they needed to stay up, for instance the shields against magic that saved me up on Kingsman's Bluff. They absorbed and redirected your magic to keep me safe, mostly. Some of it came through. Elaira, you should tell the next bit."
"Our city had been invaded by a race with very powerful magic, powerful enough to cut us off from our gods, and to make them immune to our magic. Lord Danilo came up with the idea of summoning the saviour we needed from another world, and e rescued me from the leader of our enemy because he needed me to help cast the spell, and the information I'd picked up as his slave might be useful. We got Lord Xander. I was crippled, and he gave me his protection. And he made it very clear that he wouldn't require me to spread my legs for him in return. If he had, then I would have done it, it would have been worth it to buy his protection and his help in freeing our city." She fell silent then.
~~~0~~~
Xander picked up where Elaira had left off. "I'd come up with a lot of low power spells that needed high precision, and I'd theoretically designed stronger spells which needed perhaps less in the way of precision, but still too much for either of you to perform them, based on spells that I'd seen used. One of those was an adaptation of the spell Ethan used to turn us into our costumes that year. Another spell exchanged knowledge, and that one was low power. I used it to teach Danilo how to cast my style of spells, and had him cast Halloween to give me power to back up my skills. Then I healed Elaira, and a group of four of us each had Halloween cast on us three times. That gave us enough variety in magic styles, and the ability to use ki and throw ki-blasts, that we were able to defeat our enemies."
"How did you get your eye back?" Willow sounded unhappy about his assessment of her skills, but she still cared about him, he could tell.
"One of the people I dressed as could regenerate body parts, he was weird like that."
"If you didn't want to sleep with Elaira how'd she end up as your wife, and kneeling at your feet like that?" Kennedy was leaning forward eagerly, and almost leering at his lifebonded.
Elaira pressed back against his legs a bit harder, but she answered Kennedy's question instead of letting him do it. "I'm submissive, sexually, and I don't want to be anything else. Lord Xander has issues with that, so when it is appropriate I do little things like this to remind him that I consider him my better. I was very broken when we met, so he would reassure me with gentle, comforting touch, and eventually it turned sexual. Always at my urging, for instance once while he was sleeping and hard I rubbed up against him until he came, I started to kiss him, and climaxed against him and I was the one who asked him to take me to bed after our first fight."
"That's when I realised I could feel some sort of link between us. I dressed as Amberdrake and got his abilities because he had a lifebond himself, to confirm my suspicions. And because he was a Healer, and we didn't have any. I made Elaira a Healer too, a Valdemaran one. After we'd defeated the Malevein I started trying to figure out a spell to get back here for a visit at least. We have responsibilities in Waterdeep. I'm their most powerful and skilled magic user, and Elaira is the commander of the Guard, so we'll have to get back. But Elaira took a tenday of leave, and I can adjust the time when we go back, so that no matter how long we spend here it's just a few days there. I thought you needed to know that I'm alive and safe."
"If you can manipulate time why did you take so long to return here Xander?" Giles sounded disapproving, and Xander really couldn't blame him for that.
"Because I didn't have a receiving circle here. One of the things I'm going to do during this visit is get one built somewhere no one's going to have the chance to see it. But that meant I couldn't try for much in the way of precision, because I didn't really have a target in this dimension to aim for. One of the things I tried for was having all of the old gang in reasonable proximity - meaning in the same house."
"Where do you plan to build this receiving circle then?"
"Don't know. I'll probably buy a house, set up something to pay the taxes, and a spell to keep people from really noticing it, and have it built there."
"I'll ken the bronze inlay for it of course, but we'll need to make sure the craftsman doesn't remember what he did."
"I think we've covered everything. Your turn now, tell us what's been happening since I left."
~~~0~~~
From Lord Xander's reactions nothing truly important had happened while he'd been gone. Privately Elaira considered that fortunate, for she suspected they would have been in trouble without Lord Xander there to come up with all the solutions they needed. That had been the previous day, and she'd managed to persuade him that she could cope with his friends, that she didn't need to be chaperoned, and he should see to the important things he needed to do. He'd agreed, once he was certain she understood how to pay for things in this society if she needed to, since gold and silver weren't accepted as currency here, only those strange paper rectangles he'd given her, notes, and the little plastic cards she had two of. She was beginning to regret allowing Buffy, Kennedy and Willow haul her on a 'Girl's Day Out', which apparently meant buying a lot of clothes, and having her hair, skin and nails primped to a totally impractical extent. This followed the 'Girl Talk' of the previous day, where she was asked the most intimate questions about her relationship with Lord Darkwolf, and given equally intimate details by the others.
"No, I don't want to lose any of the length. My lord likes my hair long, and it doesn't stop me from fighting." That simple explanation shocked the hair stylist, but not her lord's friends, not anymore. Elaira wasn't sure how to soothe things over, but Buffy seemed to know what to say.
"Elaira's heavy into Ds stuff, you know? And she's a fencer and martial artist. It'd be a shame to lose hair that's so beautiful don't you think?" The Slayer reached out and ran a hand through Elaira's hair, she shivered slightly, but did nothing else.
"You're right. I'll just trim the ends, taking about two inches off, and then I'll put it up for you - unless you want something else?"
"Go ahead. Javander doesn't know much about how to put a lady's hair up, so it'll be a surprise for Lord Darkwolf, and I think he'll enjoy it." Elaira noted that she had to get someone to teach Javander those things if Lord Xander responded well to this. Fortunately she'd already had the skin treatment the others considered so important at the first 'Beauty Parlor' they'd been to, where the servants had marveled at how little body hair she had, and insisted on removing most of what she did have, save at her groin, and even there they had 'tidied' the fine silver hair that was barely noticable against her skin.
Apparently they were suposed to go to a 'Nail Bar' next, and then look for clothes for her, but...
"Is that a good place to get a tattoo done?"
"Yes." Willow was blushing almost as red as her hair, and her lover intervened to spare her.
"We got some done together there."
"Good. I need something done." Elaira didn't give the others time to protest, she just walked into the tattoo parlor, and once she'd convinced the woman at the counter that she was an adult and in her right mind she pulled out the picture that showed the colours of Lord Darkwolf's insignia.
"I have a scar on my back, a brand in this shape, I want the unbranded skin coloured as shown here, the red surrounding it can sort of fade out at the edges, and the exact shades of grey are less important."
"Elaira, we won't have time to get you any clothes if you do this now. And it takes at least a few days before you can even take the covering off - and it looks pretty bad then." Kennedy was the one who tried to talk her out of it, but Elaira wanted to wear Lord Darkwolf's colours.
"You have my measurements, just buy whatever you think will work best." She could adjust the size if she needed to, and she could accelerate the healing of her tattoo enough that it would look acceptable when she showed Lord Xander, by use of ki rather than true Healing. She thrust a wad of notes at Willow.
It was near three after noon when they came back, and her tattoo had just been finished. They were laden with bags and Elaira wasn't entirely sure she wanted to see the contents, but she knew that she'd end up modelling every outfit for the girls at some point. Then they went to the nail bar and had her finger and toe nails painted gold. And finally Buffy, Willow and Kennedry dragged her for a 'makeover', which meant a woman who was better at using cosmetics that Princess Arilyn did her best to improve Elaira's appearance.
~~~0~~~
Xander'd never seen Elaira in a dress before, she thought that it wasn't important for her to have decorative clothes instead of funtional clothes, and he'd agreed with her, so he couldn't quite believe his eyes when he saw what she would be wearing to the 'Welcome Home' dinner. She was wearing a dark green velvet dress with a skirt to the floor, and a bodice that made the absolute most of her slight breasts, with gold embroidery. Her jewellery was all gold as well, with a few emeralds set in the necklace, and she had to be wearing high heels underneath the skirt, just from the way her walk had changed. Her hair was partly pinned up on top of her head, and partly falling down her back in a cascade of curls, held together with little gold combs. He must have taken too long to say something, because her immaculately painted face showed her disappointment.
"Do I fail to please you like this, my lord?"
"You're beautiful, you always are, and nothing can change that, but this...this is amazing. I love it. What else did the girls talk you into getting?" He hoped that it was more decorative outfits like this, rather than the practical stuff she usually wore.
"I don't know, entirely. I...got my brand coloured, and they went looking for clothes for me while that was happening. I think most of it's fancy stuff like this, but they did get me some pairs of leather pants, and jeans, along with some simpler stuff to go on top. I'll need to get the underthings myself though."
"Want me to come with you for that?" Xander was teasing, he didn't expect her to say yes, but she looked relieved, not angry at the idea.
"Please! Those women are so strange. They wanted to know things about you that they shouldn't have. And they told me things I didn't want to know." Then she blushed, the blue clashing with and highlighting the peach blusher on her cheeks. "At least if it will not take away from anything important."
"No, it won't. I've figured out what sort of place we need to make our home in this world, and I've prepared a spell to find appropriate places. I'll give rough locations to Willow, or Andrew," the name still left a bitter taste in his mouth, "and they can do the research for us tomorrow. Do you want to go out on patrol tonight?"
"Please my lord. I'm not entirely certain of what the best techniques are, but you can teach me that swiftly enough, can you not?"
"It's pretty simple. With vampires, they're what we usually encounter, you can set them on fire, tear off the heads, pull out the heart, or put a wooden stake through the heart. With the other demons lots of physical damage will normally do the job, sometimes you need special methods, but in general removing the head seems to work."
"Oh! I can manage that." Elaira smiled at him. Xander felt underdressed in his slacks and shirt, but he offered his arm to her and guided her to the dining room, seating her at the table the way Vanyel had been taught to seat a woman.
"That is so romantic." Andrew was the last person Xander'd expected to hear that from, and the Slayers seemed split between agreeing with him, and pissed off at him for it.
"Ha! She doesn't need him to pull out her seat for her, she can get it herself." That was one of the younger Slayers, Xander wasn't sure what her name was, but she started an argument over whether he was right to hold Elaira's chair for her. He took advantage of the distraction to make sure she was eating properly, and to eat himself, things he would only get here.
"Enough! Whether Elaira needed it or not it was courteous of Xander to hold her chair for her, an old-fashioned courtesy, but one that is still relevant at times. And you could always ask how she feels about it." As soon as Giles had stopped talking all eyes went to Elaira.
"I am flattered that my lord is willing to treat me as a lady. It is very kind of him to disregard my history. He suggested that we could join you on patrol, is this permitted?"
"You can come with me. You've gotta be a good fighter if you're in charge of this 'Guard' thing." Xander didn't really like Kennedy, he felt she'd taken advantage of Willow, and was far too interested in power for his taste, but he appreciated the offer.
~~~0~~~
