The Potions classroom was located in the dungeon, the air thick with the sour, acrid scent of pickled toad livers mixed with moonstone powder.
Snape stood behind the podium, his black robes pooling at his ankles, his sallow fingers clutching a silver stirring spoon as he explained in that hair-raising, low-pitched voice the theoretical principle of why the Invigoration Draught had to be reversed counterclockwise by half a beat on the seventeenth stir.
The classroom was so quiet that only the scratching of quills on parchment and the bubbling gurgle of potions in cauldrons could be heard.
Jerry sat in the third row against the wall.
Inside his cauldron, the color of the Invigoration Draught had already transitioned from dark green to the second-stage sky blue, a layer of fine silver froth floating on the surface, his stirring rhythm as precise as if calibrated by a timer.
His left hand rested on the edge of the desk, his right hand gripping the stirring spoon, his grey eyes half-open and half-closed, looking as though he were zoning out.
The bracelet on his wrist let out a soft sound.
The sound was extremely faint, like a microscopic silver needle dropping onto a glass plate—a tiny ting that only Jerry himself heard. His grey eyes snapped open, his pupils sharpening from a daze to absolute focus within a tenth of a second. He glanced down at the bracelet on his wrist. A dark red vein had surfaced on the bracelet, expanding at a rate of three millimeters per second, spreading along the band from the clasp.
His brows furrowed, and he stood up from his chair.
The chair legs scraped against the flagstone floor with a sharp, abrupt screech. Sitting to his left, Hermione instantly looked up, alertness and confusion flashing in her brown eyes. Malfoy, sitting to his right, also turned his head, his grey-blue eyes narrowing slightly as his platinum hair swayed gently in the rising steam of the cauldron. Snape's lecture paused for a beat, his black eyes cutting across from the podium to pin down the suddenly upright Jerry.
"Stomach ache. Using the restroom."
Jerry's voice was perfectly calm, as if he were simply mentioning that the pumpkin juice in the Great Hall today was a bit too sweet.
Snape's lips curled slightly, an expression caught somewhere between a sneer and not bothering to press the issue. He gave a flick of his stirring spoon toward the door, granting permission, before resuming his lecture on the subtle shift in wrist angle during the eighteenth rotation. Jerry squeezed out through the narrow gap between his seat and the wall, his sneakers tapping against the flagstones. As he passed Hermione's seat, her lips twitched as if she wanted to ask, "What's wrong?", but Jerry had already moved past.
He pushed open the oak door of the classroom, and the exact moment his lead foot touched the ground outside, his entire body dissolved into a blur.
It wasn't a spatial leap accompanied by a loud crack like Apparition, but a silent, fluid visual dissipation, like a drop of ink dispersing into clear water. The contours of his body blurred in an instant, turning into a few wisps of grey smoke that glided forward along the stone walls of the corridor. The fireplace at the end of the corridor ignited automatically the moment the grey smoke approached, emerald-green Floo flames erupting from the hearth and roaring halfway up the chimney flue.
The grey smoke plunged straight into the green fire. The flames constricted violently upon the smoke's entry before snapping back to a normal burn, a few stray sparks spitting from the hearth and dying out on the stone floor. The hand of the magical clock above the fireplace had barely ticked past three seconds; from the moment Jerry left the classroom to his complete disappearance into the Floo Network, it had taken less than five seconds. Silence reclaimed the corridor, save for the crackling of the green flames inside the hearth.
The pocket dimension of Black Feather Castle existed in a perpetual state of twilight, forever caught on the borderline between dusk and night. The sky was painted a hue between deep grey and dark purple, completely devoid of sun or stars; the sole light source was a fist-sized, dark red orb hovering dead center in the celestial dome, like an inextinguishable core of burning charcoal, blanketing the entire pocket world in a thin, crimson glow. The air temperature remained at the level of late autumn year-round—not cold enough to freeze, yet every exhaled breath condensed into a faint white mist.
Black Feather Castle stood proudly upon a highland of black rock. The main structure of the castle was built from greyish-black granite, its spiked towers branching outward from both sides of the main keep, while at the apex of the tallest tower hovered a massive, translucent black crystal, its surface slowly swirling with liquid radiance—the hub of the core defensive matrix for this entire pocket world. The castle's outer walls were covered in layers upon layers of runic carvings, etched one by one by generations of Rozier family heads. Each carving represented a permanent defensive ward, and after centuries of accumulation, not a single stone brick remained uncovered by runes.
The courtyard directly in front of the castle was paved with black flagstones, the crevices teeming with a species of moss that emitted a faint, dark green phosphorescence, gleaming with an eerie green hue beneath the crimson sky. Dead center in the courtyard stood a tree.
The Ancient Tree of War.
The tree's massive roots pierced straight through the courtyard flagstones, anchoring themselves into the rock strata dozens of meters below. Its trunk was so incredibly thick that it would take thirty grown men linking hands just to barely encircle it; the bark was a deep, dark brown, covered in prominent ridges resembling dragon scales, each vein pulsating slowly as if actual blood were flowing beneath the surface. The branches split into seventeen tiers from the main trunk, the boughs of each tier stout enough to support an entire tower. The leaves were a dense, dark green, their edges razor-sharp like knife blades, and when they collided and rubbed against one another in the wind, they produced not a rustling sound, but a metallic, clanging cling-clang.
The Ancient Tree of War towered past the highest spire of Black Feather Castle, its canopy spreading like a colossus of an umbrella to shadow the entire courtyard and the castle facade, filtering the dark red sky into fragmented, mottled shadows of green.
An elven tree planted right in the courtyard of Black Feather Castle. This had been planted personally by Jerry's mother-in-law, the Queen of the Wood Elves.
The elven tree's root system would actively guard the territory of its host family; upon sensing a threat, the tree would automatically enter a state of war—the trunk swelling, branches extending, and leaves hardening into weapons to envelop the entire domain within its protective embrace.
Right now, the Ancient Tree of War was in a full state of war.
Illynia stood upon the highest branch at the absolute peak of the Ancient Tree of War.
Her feet were completely bare, her soles pressed directly against the bark, her toes slightly spread to grip the prominent dragon-scale ridges of the surface.
Her body swayed naturally with the slight rocking of the branch in the wind, looking for all the world as if she had grown out of the tree itself.
She wore a pale green, sleeveless short tunic that hung just low enough to cover the mid-point of her thighs, cinched at her waist by a deep green vine belt, from which hung a short bow and a quiver.
The fletching of the arrows inside the quiver was a pale gold, forming a certain harmony with the color of her hair.
Today, her hair was a rare pale green, a shade that assumed a bizarre, lustrous sheen somewhere between emerald and tender leaves under the dark red sky.
The length of her hair cascaded down to her waist, the ends curling naturally as they fluttered gently in the wind.
Her ears were longer than a human's, the tips slightly pointed and peeking out from between the pale green strands of hair, the skin at the tips flushed with a very faint pink.
In her hands, she gripped a fully drawn longbow.
The body of the bow was fashioned from the oldest branch of the Ancient Tree of War, its string twisted from silver-thread fibers woven personally by the Elven Queen; nocked on the string was an arrow, its tip aimed directly at a golden patch of light that was continuously expanding in the sky.
Something in the sky was actively attempting to breach the world barrier of this pocket dimension.
That golden radiance was initially just a pinpoint of light, a tiny spark blinking against the dark purple canopy.
Then it began to expand at a terrifying velocity, growing from a pinpoint to a fist, from a fist to a wagon wheel, and from a wagon wheel into a colossal cluster of light that blanketed a quarter of the sky.
The edges of the light cluster swirled with ripples woven of dark purple fragments of the world barrier and golden divine power, the two energies clashing violently at the boundary to produce a continuous, agonizing screech like metal being violently torn apart.
The trunk of the Ancient Tree of War suddenly swelled a full size after the appearance of the light cluster, the dragon-scale ridges on its bark shifting from a deep brown to a dark red, its pulsation accelerating from thirty times a minute to ninety.
The branches began to extend; the highest boughs shot up nearly twenty meters into the sky in less than ten seconds, the perimeter of the canopy doubling to shelter Black Feather Castle and everything in the courtyard beneath it.
Atop the tree, Illynia adjusted the aiming angle of her arrow, the tip tracking the center of the light cluster, her pale green eyes narrowing into slits as her pupils shrank to the size of pinpoints under the dark red sky.
The flagstones of the courtyard suddenly flashed with light.
A jet of green flame erupted from the crevices between the stones, rising only to knee height before rapidly expanding into a circular ring of fire on the ground. At the center of the fiery ring, a grey blur coalesced from the flames, taking less than a second to transform from a vague silhouette into a distinct form. Jerry stood in the courtyard, his sneakers stepping on the black flagstones and smothering a tiny cluster of Floo powder flames that had splattered from the edge of the ring.
Old Bob walked out from the main entrance of the castle. He wore a crisp black tailcoat, his shirt collar stark white and stiff, his bowtie knotted impeccably, and his leather shoes polished so finely they reflected the light under the dark red sky. His ears were pointed, thrusting upward from both sides of his greying hair; his skin was a light brown unique to goblins, and his fingers possessed an extra joint compared to humans, the knuckles distinct and slender. In his hands, he carried a silver tray upon which sat a cup of still-steaming tea.
"Good afternoon, young master."
Old Bob presented the tray before Jerry, the arc of his bow measured precisely so the teacup remained exactly where Jerry could reach it just by extending a hand. His voice carried the slightly sharp, but not grating, cadence characteristic of goblins.
Before Jerry could even reach for the teacup, a silhouette leaped down from the apex of the Ancient Tree of War.
Illynia dropped from a height exceeding thirty meters. Her body carved a fluid parabola through the air as she fell, her short pale green tunic whipping upward against her skin in the slipstream, completely exposing her two long, naked legs. Her feet made absolutely no sound as they touched down; the exact instant the skin of her soles met the black flagstones, the phosphorescent moss in the crevices flared to life, as if absorbing the impact of her landing.
She landed directly behind Jerry, then bent down, slipping both arms under his armpits to hoist him up, locking him firmly against her body.
The crown of Jerry's head aligned exactly with Illynia's crotch. The back of his head was buried in the valley between the two soft mounds of her breasts, his back pressed tight against the warm skin of her stomach, his two short legs dangling in midair as the soles of his sneakers swung about thirty centimeters off the ground.
"Little Jerry, you're finally back."
Illynia lowered her face over the top of Jerry's head, her pale green hair cascading down from both sides to envelop his head completely within a curtain of silken strands. Her chin rested on the crown of his head, her two arms tightened, pulling Jerry's body even harder into her embrace. Jerry's face was completely smothered into the soft flesh of her breasts, his nose rubbing against the bare skin exposed just below her collarbone at the edge of her tunic's neckline.
"I thought you had forgotten all about me."
Her voice descended from above his head, saturated with a sweet, cloying cadence that blended coyness with complaint. As she spoke, her lips brushed against Jerry's hair, her warm breath filtering through the strands to caress his scalp.
With his face squished between the two soft mounds, Jerry's voice came out muffled from the compressed space.
"Put me down first."
"No. Let me hold you a bit longer." Illynia's arms tightened even further, giving Jerry's body a little upward jolt to make him sink more snugly into her flesh. Her hands interlaced over Jerry's back, her fingers tracing small circles on the fabric of his hoodie.
Old Bob stood nearby, the silver tray still balanced in his hands, the steam from the teacup rising steadily. His head was turned aside, his eyes fixed on the far edge of the black flagstones, the expression on his face looking as though he were observing something profoundly fascinating that had absolutely nothing to do with the scene before him. He stared at a completely ordinary black stone at the edge of the courtyard, his concentration so intense it was as if a rare relic of goblin civilization had suddenly sprouted on its surface.
Jerry managed to slip his right hand out from the gaps of Illynia's embrace, patting the outside of her arm.
"You've done well."
His voice remained muffled, but his tone shifted to that calm, matter-of-fact stability.
"But stand this big guy down first. It's not an enemy coming."
Illynia blinked. Her eyes were a pale green very close to the shade of her hair but slightly lighter, shimmering with a watery luster beneath the dark red sky. Her eyelashes fluttered twice before she finally released her hold on Jerry, allowing his feet to drop back onto the ground.
She stood straight, her right hand raised, her five long fingers spreading open with her palm facing the trunk of the Ancient Tree of War. Her lips moved without uttering an incantation, yet a visible wave of green light erupted from her palm. The radiance was not a beam of light, but resembled a transparent wind laden with luminescent particles, blowing from her palm toward the tree.
The trunk of the Ancient Tree of War shuddered. The swollen bark began to constrict, the dragon-scale ridges reverting from dark red to deep brown, and its pulsation frequency dropped from ninety beats a minute back down to thirty. The seventeen extended branches retracted inward at a visible pace, the metallic clanging of the leaves subsiding into a normal rustle. The perimeter of the canopy halved, shrinking from its coverage of the entire castle and courtyard back to being only slightly taller than the castle itself. Its height reduced from that sky-blotting stature to roughly level with the castle's highest tower. The portion of the sky previously obscured by the canopy was exposed once more; against the dark purple vault, the golden light cluster had expanded to engulf a full third of the sky.
Standing in the courtyard, Jerry looked up at the golden cluster of light in the heavens. He raised his right hand to his chest, pressing his index and middle fingers together, and gave a light twirl.
The black crystal hovering at the apex of Black Feather Castle's tallest tower suddenly emitted a deep, low hum.
The liquid radiance on the crystal's surface began to rotate violently, transforming from a slow stream into a high-speed black vortex.
From the depths of the crystal, wave after wave of greyish-black light surged from the center of the vortex, blasting outward from the top of the tower into the surrounding sky and coalescing into pillars of black light.
Boom—Boom—Boom—Boom—Boom—
Pillars of light erupted one after another from the castle's outer walls, their thickness exceeding the circumference of the towers as they shot straight up into the stratosphere.
Dozens of black light pillars arranged themselves into a circular array across the sky, the apex of each embedding deep into the cloud cover, pinning the churning dark clouds—which had been rolling violently under the pressure of the golden light—firmly in place. Once pinned by the pillars, the churning of the dark clouds decelerated sharply, transitioning from a violent boil to a sluggish crawl.
The sky began to shimmer with a grey luster. Not gold, not dark purple, but a deep, light-absorbing greyish black, like a transparent protective film being laid over the celestial dome.
Jerry twirled his fingers once more. The black pillars of light ceased their upward advance, no longer thrusting higher, yet they did not retract either; they remained rigidly anchored in the sky, constructing a semi-transparent defensive palisade.
He was not blocking whatever was entering from beyond the sky. The defensive array formed by the black pillars was open, the intervals between them wide enough to allow the behemoth breaching the world barrier to pass through smoothly.
The center of the golden light cluster suddenly tore open into a massive gash. The rift ripped all the way from the zenith of the sky to the edge of the horizon, its margins burning with golden divine flames that spread across the dark purple fragments of the world barrier, incinerating them into a rain of debris crackling with blue electricity that showered down from the heavens. At the center of the rift, thunder and lightning detonated simultaneously; hundreds of golden lightning bolts slammed down from the tear, striking the terrain of Black Feather Castle's pocket world, each strike instantly whipping up a mushroom cloud of shattered rock and dust.
A howling gale followed immediately in the wake of the lightning. The wind was violent enough to lift a grown man off the ground; in the courtyard, the tail of Old Bob's tailcoat whipped furiously, and the silver tray in his hands tilted, causing the teacup to slide to the edge. Yet, using his elongated finger with its extra joint, he steadily pushed the cup back to the center of the tray, his movements retaining the absolute poise expected of a goblin butler. Illynia's long pale green hair danced wildly behind her in the gale, the hem of her short tunic blowing upward to her waist, exposing her bare thighs as her long legs stood braced and unmoving against the black flagstones, the phosphorescent moss beneath her feet gleaming exceptionally bright.
The hood of Jerry's sweatshirt was blown off, his dark brown hair turning into a messy nest in the wind. A faint greyish-black light emanated from the soles of his shoes, acting like two tiny anchors to pin his body to the courtyard stones.
From within the rift, a palace began to emerge.
The first to appear was a colossal stone base. The width of this foundation exceeded the frontage of Black Feather Castle's main keep; its underside was carved with countless bas-reliefs depicting the history of the Olympian Pantheon—from their birth out of Chaos to the Titanomachy and Zeus's ascension to the throne—every figure chiseled at a scale larger than life, looking vividly animated under the golden divine light. The base descended sluggishly from the rift, every centimeter of its downward transit bleeding massive shockwaves of golden divine power that radiated outward, producing muffled hiss-hiss sounds as they slammed into the black pillars of light.
Next came the pillars of the palace.
Twelve titanic white marble columns rose from the edges of the base, the height of each surpassing the tallest tower of Black Feather Castle, their shafts thick enough to swallow an entire Hogwarts classroom. Coiled around the columns were reliefs of vines and mythical beasts; the leaves of the vines were pure gold, and the eyes of the beasts were embedded with gems of varying hues, flashing brilliantly within the golden glare.
Then emerged the main body of the palace. Walls of pure white marble rose behind the columns, punctuated by arched windows with golden frames, the light pouring from the window openings even more blinding than the gold inside the rift. The dome was a massive hemisphere covered in a layer of solid gold tiles, and the daylight hitting it from every angle reflected bands of gold light in a myriad of directions.
The Pantheon.
The entire descent of the Pantheon from the rift lasted nearly three minutes. The celestial canopy of Black Feather Castle's pocket world was utterly transformed by this gargantuan palace, the original dark purple sky rewritten into a backdrop of gold and white; the defensive array of black light pillars encircled the Pantheon like a dark fence thrown around a mountain of gold and white marble. Golden light showered down from the Pantheon's dome, staining the black flagstones of Black Feather Castle's courtyard with a dark golden hue.
Illynia stared upward, her pale green eyes wide with shock, her lips parted but forgotten to close. Old Bob finally stopped staring at the stone at the edge of the courtyard; his head tilted back as well, the hand holding the tray frozen mid-air, the tea gone entirely cold.
Jerry stood in the courtyard, his grey eyes observing the slowly descending Pantheon in the sky, his expression as impassive as if he were checking today's date on a calendar.
"She's here."
Hera took a step out from the edge of the Pantheon.
Her foot stepped directly onto the open air. Lacking any platform condensed of divine power or airflow generated by flight charms, she simply walked upon the atmosphere. The thin layer of air beneath the soles of her high heels compressed into a visible, semi-transparent plane; with every stride, that plane would flash briefly with a golden shimmer beneath her shoes before vanishing. She walked down along a straight line stretching through the air from the Pantheon's base to the Black Feather Castle courtyard, her pace measured, the train of her gown trailing a fluid curve behind her. The golden light of the Pantheon projected from behind her, outlining her form into a moving silhouette.
She landed on the black flagstones of the Black Feather Castle courtyard. The heels of her shoes struck the stone with a crisp clack. The phosphorescent moss in the crevices of the stones flared in a ring the moment she touched down, then dimmed once more. She straightened her body, her hands resting naturally at her sides, her pale-gold hair draping over both shoulders, the tips swaying gently at her waist.
She was a full head taller than Illynia. Illynia stood behind Jerry, her arms still looped in front of his shoulders, leaning forward slightly to encircle him within her hold. Hera watched this scene from the courtyard, the corner of her mouth curving slightly. She gathered both sides of her gown, dropping into a slight curtsy as she bowed her head. The courtly gesture was so elegant it looked as though she were curtsying to a king at a royal ball, rather than standing on phosphorescent moss-covered stones before a short boy cradled in the arms of an elven princess.
"What a beautiful little elf."
Hera's tone carried an easy, unforced appreciation. Her voice emerged from her curtsying posture, low in volume, yet every word delivered precisely to Illynia's sensitive elven ears.
Illynia blinked. Her pale green eyes lit up at the word "beautiful"—not a gleam of wariness, but one of pure curiosity. Her arms remained looped around Jerry, but she lifted her face from above his head, her nostrils flaring slightly. An elf's sense of smell was far sharper than a human's; Hera stood three meters away from her, yet she had already caught her scent.
"I smell the scent of the Olympian Pantheon on you."
Illynia's voice carried the excited cadence of someone discovering something fascinating. Her nose twitched twice more, her pale green strands of hair brushing back and forth over the crown of Jerry's head with her sniffing motions.
"Those gods always possess all kinds of inviting, pleasant fragrances on their bodies."
Then she directed her nose toward Hera's direction.
"But the scent on you is unlike any of theirs. You smell like ripe fruit baked warm by the sun in an orchard—it's very warm, very inviting, but..."
Her nose twitched again.
"Beneath it lies an underlying layer of something incredibly cold and sharp. Like a frost-bitten blade resting on a field of snow."
Hera let out a soft laugh. The chuckle escaped her nose—light and brief—yet it caused the phosphorescent moss across the courtyard to brighten by a full shade.
She leaned forward slightly, her left hand tucked behind her waist while her right palm rose to chest height, her five long fingers spreading open with her palm facing up. Her palm was initially empty, but then a transparent glass bottle materialized out of thin air: the base appearing clear before solidifying into a smooth bottom, followed by the body taking shape, and finally the neck emerging—the entire process taking a single second.
The glass bottle contained a generous amount of a pale golden liquid, its texture somewhere between an essential oil and pure water, shimmering with a layer of fine, pearl-like froth as it sloshed gently inside.
"The scent on me comes from using this body wash."
Hera extended the glass bottle in her right hand forward. Her fingers were slender, her nails trimmed smoothly into a rounded shape, the surfaces coated with an extremely faint layer of clear nail polish that was nearly invisible without close inspection. Under the dark red light of the sky, the pale golden liquid sloshed gently inside the glass bottle, emitting a faint fragrance that was a mix of ripe peaches and some kind of woody spice.
Illynia released the arms wrapped around Jerry and stepped out from behind him. Her bare feet made no sound against the black flagstones; with a few strides, she stood before Hera and reached out to take the bottle of body wash. She brought the mouth of the bottle beneath her nose to take a sniff, her pale green eyes narrowing into two slits.
"Peach and cedarwood. And a little bit of clove. I haven't smelled this formula before—where did you buy it?"
"That newly opened bath supply shop in Diagon Alley. The owner is a witch who graduated from Hufflepuff. She said this formula was passed down from her great-grandmother, containing seventeen different floral essential oils and three woody extracts."
Hera straightened her waist and brought her left hand out from behind her back as well, overlapping her hands in front of her lower abdomen. Her stance formed an interesting contrast with Illynia's. Illynia stood barefoot, her body leaning slightly forward, holding the glass bottle up to the sky to observe the liquid inside, looking for all the world like a cat inspecting a new toy. Hera stood ramrod straight, her chin raised slightly, her lips curved into a smile that wasn't quite a smile.
"Seventeen floral essential oils? Taking a bath with this would make the whole bathroom smell so strong it'd make you dizzy," Illynia said, lowering the glass bottle from her eyes and running a finger around its body.
"It really does make you dizzy. Every time I finish using it, I have to open the window to ventilate for ten minutes."
"I'm not afraid of getting dizzy. I live in the trees, ventilated on all sides; no matter how much essential oil I use, it won't feel stuffy." Illynia gripped the glass bottle in her hand and looked up at Hera. "What did you say your name was just now?"
"Hera."
"Hera, the Queen of the Olympian Pantheon?"
"The former Queen of the Olympian Pantheon. Now, I can only be considered a wandering goddess running around with a broken temple." Hera threw her hands up in a gesture that carried a casual sort of self-deprecation. "What is your name?"
"Illynia. Princess of the Wood Elves. But the title of princess just sounds nice; in reality, I don't even have my own bedchamber and am currently borrowing a place to stay in Black Feather Castle."
Illynia laughed. That laughter was as crisp as metal bells clashing in the wind, echoing across the courtyard for several seconds before fading away.
She shook the bottle of body wash in her hand, the pale golden liquid inside frothing with even more pearlescent bubbles.
"I really like you," Illynia stated straightforwardly. "Let's be friends."
"Sure." Hera's reply was equally straightforward. "Consider that bottle of body wash a greeting gift."
"I didn't bring anything on me to give in return... Do you want to taste the fruit wine I brewed? I used seven types of forest berries and fermented it for three seasons; there's only one jug left."
"Fruit wine aged for three seasons is definitely worth a taste."
The two found a corner inside the grand hall of Black Feather Castle.
Illynia sat in the second chair on the left side of the table, her legs curled up and crossed on the seat, her bare feet tucked beneath her hips as her pale green short tunic spread out over her thighs. She placed the bottle of body wash on the table, then untied a palm-sized wooden wine flask from her vine belt, unplugged the stopper, and poured two glasses. The liquid was a deep purple, so thick that it pulled a slow, viscous thread as it flowed from the spout. The aroma of the wine exploded the moment the liquid touched the air; the intense, sweet fragrance of berries mixed with a rich, heavy scent of high alcohol content, completely overpowering the faint smell of potions that originally lingered in the hall.
Hera sat opposite her, legs crossed, the tip of her shoe swaying slightly beneath the edge of the table. She picked up her glass and took a sip; the liquid moistened her lower lip, and she darted her tongue out to lick away that small patch of wetness.
"This taste is better than the finest wine on Mount Olympus." She held the glass up before her face, the amber liquid glimmering under the firelight. "Zeus's wine cellar holds hundreds of exquisite wines from different worlds, but not a single one can reach this level."
"Because the mood of the brewer is different." Illynia took a sip as well, her cheeks bulging slightly as she swished the liquid around before swallowing. "Zeus's wine was brewed by slaves; my wine was brewed by myself. It's different."
The two of them just sat there in the corner of the hall, illuminated by the dark red sky and the swaying shadows of the Ancient Tree of War cast through the window, chatting about the ornaments in the mortal world. Illynia pulled out a small box of glowing pearl powder wrapped in leaves from a hidden compartment in her belt; it was something she had discovered in an ornament shop in Diagon Alley, capable of emitting seven colors of light when activated by magic. From her spatial storage bracelet, Hera dug out a bracelet strung with shattered crystals from the Muggle world; each crystal was a different color, strung on ordinary cotton thread, yet wearing it on the wrist would refract rainbow-like spots of light under the sun.
"Made by Muggles?" Illynia took the bracelet and held it up to her eyes, her fingers flicking the crystal beads. "They don't have magic; how did they polish the stones to be so smooth?"
"Using a machine called a grinder. No magic, just flowing water and a grinding wheel. Muggles don't have magic, so they spent more time researching tools. Their craftsmanship is actually finer than a wizard's in some aspects."
"I want to learn too."
"I can teach you." Hera took the bracelet back from Illynia's hands and slipped it back onto her wrist. "Muggle jewelry-making is a completely independent technical system from magic; with enough patience, you can pick it up in a month."
Jerry stood by the window. The windowsill was just high enough to reach his chin. He rested both hands on its edge, looking through the pointed-arch window at the Pantheon hovering above the castle. The Pantheon's golden dome cast a colossal golden reflection against the dark purple sky of Black Feather Castle's pocket world; the edges of the reflection shifted shape slowly, like some kind of living golden liquid. The defensive array formed by the black pillars of light was still nailed to the canopy, encircling the Pantheon like a ringed fence. From beneath the base of the Pantheon, a drop or two of residual golden divine power would occasionally drip down; the moment each drop fell, it would vaporize into a microscopic cloud of golden mist in mid-air before being blown away by the wind.
"Is Zeus dead?"
His voice drifted over from the window. He didn't turn his head, his tone exactly the same as when he asked, "Did they put too much sugar in the pumpkin juice today?"
Hera set down her wine glass and stood up from her chair. Illynia was looking down, playing with the box of glowing pearl powder, and didn't notice Hera's rising movement. Hera walked around the long table and approached the window where Jerry was standing. Her high heels clicked clack, clack, clack against the marble floor, the rhythm completely identical to when she descended from the Pantheon.
She stood to Jerry's right. Her height was a full head taller than Illynia's, while Jerry was merely a short, small boy; as he stood by the windowsill, the top of his head couldn't even reach Hera's waist. The profile of Hera's body, from Jerry's perspective, looked like a high wall wrapped in silk fabric.
"The Pantheon was forged from the power of faith contributed by countless deities." Her voice drifted down from high above his head, like the toll of a bell falling from the clouds. "It is indestructible, and possesses the ability to heal itself automatically. As long as believers still exist, there will come a day when it completely recovers."
"I was asking about Zeus."
Jerry still didn't look at her. His grey eyes stared at that golden reflection outside the window, his pupils constricting into tiny grey dots at the boundary between the dark red sky and the golden light.
Hera looked down.
Her body shifted slightly to the right, transferring her center of gravity from her left foot to her right, then slid a step to the left with her right foot. This movement shifted her body from Jerry's side to directly behind him. Then she bent down, bracing her hands against the walls on either side of the window, completely boxing Jerry into that narrow space between her body and the window.
Her chest pressed against Jerry's back. It wasn't an intentional, forceful press, but simply because her body was too large; when she leaned forward, she naturally blanketed the entire space below. The back of Jerry's head slotted into that soft, silk-wrapped region between her lower abdomen and hip bones. In front of his two short legs was the wall beneath the window, above him was Hera's encompassing body, and to his left and right were her two arms.
He was entirely trapped between her body and the window.
Jerry inhaled through his nose. A rich, fruity-woody aroma surged from all directions; it was the scent on Hera's body. The sweet warmth of ripe peaches, the crisp coolness of cedarwood, the slight spiciness of clove—the three scents mixed in an incredibly precise ratio, creating a fragrance profile that made one want to close their eyes and take a deep breath. At the very base of this fruity-woody aroma lay an incredibly subtle scent, almost completely masked. It was a faint, musky scent emanating from that area covered by the silk skirt beneath Hera's hip bones, like a thin layer of salt coating some ripe, fermented fruit—not heavy, not pungent, but carrying a throat-tightening warmth.
The flaring of Jerry's nostrils involuntarily shifted into an expansion.
"Zeus is not dead."
Hera's voice came from above his head. Her mouth was very close to his crown; as she spoke, the hot air brushed over his hair and scalp, making a few stray strands flutter gently in the draft. Her arms made a minute adjustment to their bracing angle against the walls on either side of his body, a shift that pressed her hip bones even tighter against Jerry's back. The silk fabric and the material of Jerry's hoodie ground against each other, letting out a minuscule rustle.
"He handed over control of the Pantheon at the very last moment, and then entered a subspace. I didn't catch up to him, and I couldn't go in, because I could feel something inside peering at me."
Her body pressed down a bit further. The range of that downward press was incredibly small, perhaps only a centimeter or two, but it forced the backward tilt of Jerry's head to increase. The back of his head fully embedded into that soft depression below Hera's lower abdomen, the skin of his neck pressing against the surface of the silk fabric. The texture of that material was cold and smooth, forming a bizarre temperature contrast with the heat of her body radiating through it.
In the process, Jerry's face involuntarily tilted upward. His grey eyes caught sight of the fair skin of the collarbone beneath Hera's neck, saw the fluid lines of her jawbone, and saw the tiny dark purple mark left at the corner of her lips by the residual fruit wine. Then his gaze tracked downward, passing the curve of her breasts, past the contour of her lower abdomen, and locking onto a spot about ten centimeters directly above his head.
The underside of her silk skirt.
Hera's skirt was knee-length, but because of her posture—hands bracing the wall and body leaning forward—the hem was hiked up to the middle of her thighs. From Jerry's upward-looking angle, a narrow, shadow-filled triangular space was formed between the underside of the skirt and her hip bones. In the deepest recess of that triangular space, separating the silk fabric from her skin, was a thin, black material bearing a microscopic lace pattern on its surface.
Lace panties.
The black lace fabric could barely contain the width of her hips. Two plump mounds stretched the lace into two arcs, the peaks of which were two rounded contours threatening to spill over the edge of the lace entirely. Down the middle of the lace fabric ran a thin vertical slit, flanked by denser, finer lace patterns that clung tightly to the texture of her skin, moistened by her body heat and secretions.
That faint musky scent was emanating from right there.
It wasn't an illness.
She was dripping wet.
"But I killed all the others." Hera's voice continued from above his head, her tone still light and breezy. "Not a single one of them was willing to kill themselves—honestly, if they had committed suicide, I would have been willing to reincarnate them."
Jerry's gaze tore away from the lace panties and looked back up at Hera's face. Hera's lips curved, an arc bearing the teasing amusement of knowing exactly where Jerry had been looking but deliberately not pointing it out.
"Who were you planning to reincarnate them with?"
Jerry's voice echoed in the narrow space between the window and Hera's body, his tone exactly as flat as when he had asked, "Can the Pantheon be anchored in this world?"
Hera raised an eyebrow. The motion of raising her brow stretched two extremely shallow fine lines at the edge of her eye socket, lines that could only be seen when looking up closely from below. The tip of her tongue darted out from between her teeth, licking away that small patch of dark purple wine residue at the corner of her mouth, pulling it back inside. The action carried a deliberate, slowed-down sense of timing.
"What do you think?"
Jerry's chin tilted up a fraction higher, the back of his head sinking even deeper into the soft depression below Hera's lower abdomen. The silk fabric let out a second rustle under the compression. The distance between his nose and the bottom of that black lace fabric shortened to less than five centimeters; the fruity-woody aroma and the underlying faint musky scent grew even richer at this distance, so rich his tongue could taste a hint of sweetness.
"Then it looks like I'll be having quite a few fewer children."
Hera's lips parted into a more pronounced curve. The arc carried the approval of "Nice comeback." She gave a single nod, her jaw pressing a small patch of folds into the skin at the front of her neck. She withdrew one arm from the wall, letting her right hand drop to rest on Jerry's shoulder. The grip of that hand wasn't heavy; her five fingers fanned out along the shoulder seam of Jerry's hoodie, the pads sinking into the knit texture of the fabric. Her fingertips tapped lightly twice against Jerry's collarbone, each tap accompanied by a microscopic rustling sound of her nails scraping against the material.
"They were all obliterated by me. Even their souls were utterly crushed, all becoming nourishment for the Pantheon."
Her fingers slid downward from Jerry's collarbone, her pads tracing over the front of his hoodie. They paused for half a second over his chest, then continued downward, tracking slowly along the midline of his abdomen. Her nails dragged faint trails across the fabric, each trail springing back to its original state through the fabric's elasticity a second or two after she passed.
"However, aside from those idiots, I still have quite a few useful people by my side." Her fingers stopped at Jerry's waist, her index finger and thumb pinching the edge of his hoodie's hem, giving it a gentle rub. "They are all slumbering within the Pantheon right now. Once the Pantheon is thoroughly anchored in this world, I can awaken them one by one."
Her index finger flicked the edge of the hoodie's hem upward, the fingertip slipping through the gap in the fabric and brushing against the small patch of flat skin just above Jerry's navel. The temperature of her fingertip was slightly cooler than his body heat; the moment it touched his skin, the muscles of Jerry's abdomen contracted involuntarily, the spasm pulling his skin slightly away from Hera's fingertip for a fraction of a second before pressing right back against it.
"Among them is an old acquaintance of yours. The Goddess of the Harvest. Do you remember?"
Jerry remembered that individual. His grey eyes narrowed slightly.
"Can the Pantheon squeeze into this world and anchor itself? This is merely a pocket world."
Hera's finger traced a small circle on the skin of his abdomen. Her fingernail scraped against the edge of his navel, a touch that made Jerry's breath hitch for a beat.
"It came in, didn't it? It's just getting it out that will be difficult. But I have no intention of moving it out again anyway."
Her finger moved away from his navel, continuing downward along his abdominal midline. Her pad crossed the line of his hoodie's waistband; the tip of her finger met the edge of the elastic band of his sweatpants, pressing lightly against the surface of the stretchy fabric to create a small dimple.
"And as time passes and faith gathers, the scale of this world will also slowly and silently expand."
Her index finger wedged itself into the gap between the elastic waistband and his skin. The pad pressed against the small patch of skin just below Jerry's lower abdomen, hidden by the waistband. Her fingertip was cool, but the skin of his lower abdomen was warm; that temperature difference made the sensation incredibly pronounced.
"This world is a bit too dim. After the new Sun God is born, this world will have a sun of its own."
Jerry's shoulders remained completely still under the caress of her fingers. His grey eyes continued to stare at Hera's face, his pupils never leaving the visage of the woman currently feeling him up.
"I have no intention of sunbathing here."
Hera's fingertip stopped beneath the elastic waistband. The tip of her nail lightly scraped the shallow inguinal crease just above Jerry's pubic bone. The curve of her lips deepened, bearing a smiling implication of "You don't have the final say."
Her body suddenly jerked back, withdrawing both hands from the wall and Jerry simultaneously. Jerry thought he could move, but the very next second, her hips thrust violently forward. She wasn't pressing with her torso; she rammed directly into him with the softest region beneath her hips. Separated only by two thin layers of fabric—her silk skirt and the black lace panties—she smothered his face.
"Mmph."
Jerry's face was shoved dead center into her crotch. The tip of his nose buried perfectly into the vertical slit at the front of her lace panties; his lips were crushed against two soft mounds whose contours could be felt even through the lace material. At this distance, the fruity-woody scent and the faint musky odor were no longer just smells, but a sensory assault that invaded the very base of his olfactory nerves. The scent drilled into his nasal cavity, coated the back of his tongue, and filled his airway with every inhaled breath. The musky scent had multiplied several times over, yet it wasn't repulsive—wrapped within the fruity-woody aroma, it smelled like the slight tartness wafting from the pit of a perfectly ripe peach when sliced open.
Hera's hips swayed slightly. Driven by her hip bones, the area pressing against Jerry's face traced a microscopic, agonizingly slow circle over his nose and lips. The black lace fabric rubbed against his lips, the lace patterns on the material leaving several slightly raised indentations on the skin of his mouth.
"Are you still planning to go back to Hogwarts to continue teaching the Dueling class?"
Jerry's voice squeezed out from between his smothered lips, muffled, every single word causing a minute vibration against the lace fabric. That vibration transmitted to the skin covered by the lace panties, causing the muscles of Hera's inner thighs to tighten subconsciously.
"Not planning to."
Hera's hips swayed again. The arc of this sway was half a circle wider than the last; as her hips slid from left to right, the area fitted against Jerry's face dragged from his nose to the corner of his mouth. The side of Jerry's lip was rubbed into a slightly upturned curve by the lace fabric; when he relaxed his tightly pursed mouth, his lower lip snapped back into place, drawing out a thread of silver saliva so fine it was almost invisible, which clung to the black lace, shimmered briefly in the dark red light, and broke.
"I will be taking up a post at the Ministry of Magic. This was also one of the clauses in the treaty signed back then with McGonagall and the entire European Ministry of Magic."
Her hand moved away from Jerry's abdomen and gripped the waistband of his sweatpants. Her five fingers seized the double-layered structure of the elastic fabric and pure cotton inner lining, pulling downward.
Jerry's two short legs curled up involuntarily in the process, but Hera's crotch remained firmly crushed against his face, leaving him no room to retreat. Trapping his face in that dark, warm space between her legs, she took advantage of his head being pinned against the wall beneath the windowsill to unhurriedly strip off his pants.
When that thing sprang free, it swayed once in the air before pointing straight up, casting a thick, massive shadow under the dark red light of the sky. Both the length and the girth of the shadow were entirely disproportionate to Jerry's physique—Jerry's entire upper torso was only about two-thirds the length of this thing. The veins on the surface of the shaft bulged starkly in its fully erect state, every single blood vessel throbbing. The head had already secreted a layer of transparent pre-cum, the entire crown gleaming with a wet luster under the dark red light.
"Tch." Hera's mouth twisted, leaking a short puff of air from her nose. Her right hand released the waistband of his sweatpants, her five long fingers wrapping around the base of that thing's shaft. Her fingers were very long, but even after gripping the shaft, a segment of the cylinder was still exposed between her fingertips and the base of her fingers. The girth of that thing forced the web between her thumb and index finger to stretch to its absolute limit; the span between her thumb and middle finger was spread wider than a normal pianist's reach. She simply held it, her wrist rotating slowly to the left, her fingers pulling the shaft into an arc to the left. Then she let go; the entire thing snapped violently back to its original position, slapping heavily against Jerry's lower abdomen with a crisp smack.
"If this thing had grown on Zeus, he would have unified the faith of the entire world long ago."
She grabbed the side edges of his sweatpants and yanked them down further, completely exposing Jerry's entire lower half. Then she shifted her posture, driving her right knee into the wall beneath the window, swinging her left leg smoothly over Jerry's right leg, and dropping her hips heavily.
Her two thighs clamped around Jerry's waist. It wasn't a loose hold; it was a true vise grip. The muscles on the inside of those two thighs, wrapped beneath the silk skirt, engaged simultaneously, locking Jerry's pelvis and waist entirely within the clamp of her legs. The length of her legs was two or three times Jerry's waist circumference; the muscle lines on the inner roots of her thighs were squeezed into sharp relief by the skirt under the pressure, the arc of the muscle stretching from her hip bone to above her knee, pulled as taut as a fully drawn bowstring.
Jerry's waist and hips went slightly numb from the compression, but that thing sprang upward under the squeezing of the roots of her thighs. The crown pierced the air between her legs, pressing viciously against the underside of the black lace panties. The pre-secreted transparent mucus overflowed from the meatus, soaking a copper-coin-sized circle into the lace fabric.
"Mmh... you really aren't holding back." Hera looked down, pressing her chin into her collarbone, staring at the massive object grinding against her private parts through the soaked lace.
"What do you think." Jerry threw her own words back at her. His voice drifted out from the shadows beneath her crotch, muffled, but the tone remained perfectly flat.
Hera laughed. The laughter was smothered into a muffled groan; she simply released her right leg from its grip on Jerry, shifting to bear her weight on a single leg, and took a half-step back with her entire body.
Her right hand wrapped around the midsection of that thing's shaft once more, while her left hand pinched the crotch of the black lace panties and pulled it to the side.
She went in!