Of all the people and entities John had ever made enemies with, an elemental mother was most certainly not someone who he would have chosen to have a feud with. Regardless of what he wanted, however, the Mother of Water was now firmly on the short list of individuals that he absolutely wanted to tear a new one.

It was one thing that she had roughed him up and threatened him. Actually, the Gamer had fully expected at least some amount of scolding. There was ample he could deserve it for and it wouldn’t have surprised him if Undine’s mother had prioritized his failures over hers. Such was the behaviour of wrathful parents, that blame landed at the feet of the foreign elements, regardless of what the context was. He would have been completely accepting of some amount of punishment there.

Undine getting tortured for an entire day was absolutely unacceptable.

His adorable slime-goth getting a scolding for past actions was fine. Getting torn, splintered and reassembled for hours in the quest to wash away the perceived taint was most definitely not. Of course, John would have been angry about any of his girls getting mistreated like this. The only person that had done an equivalent, that he had ever forgiven, was Eliza, and she had a pretty good reason for what she had done to Rave. That and an extensive amount of regret had cleared that up eventually.

The Mother of Water seemed to simply be offended by Undine’s existence. Which meant that John now took issue with the elemental ruler’s existence. Well, not quite that far, yet. John would happily see an apology and then get into a strained but accepting relationship. The main point was that he was, in good old Telltale fashion, going to remember this.

The damage wasn’t too bad, despite John’s intense emotional reaction to it. After an hour of soaking and getting tended to, Undine had calmed down to normal levels and was happy to just be back. As an elemental under contract, not even the Mother of Water could have permanently harmed her in her home plane. As long as the plane of water existed, Undine was spiritually immortal in this realm. As long as John existed, Undine was physically immortal in the other.

There were ample motivations for elementals to seek out contracts. John always guessed that access to the physical realm was the main one, but effective immortality for beings of pure magic that didn’t age certainly helped.

For the moment, John stepped out of the bathroom and left Undine alone with Eliza and Siena. “I’ll be nearby,” the Gamer promised, as he would probably be right next door and play something easy to get the edge off. Thankfully, Undine nodded, while waving after her summoner, as well as Rave and the maids, all of which left the room.

Outside, Metra awaited them. Sitting reverse on one of the dinner chairs, her hands and chin resting on the top of the backrest, she greeted him with a small wave. “I guess that makes for the third girl you have with mommy issues,” the First of Wrath joked without a smile. John could feel her boiling rage through their recently established mental connection.

At least minorly amused, John blew air out of his nose and walked towards the couch. Aclysia did him the favour of taking the few extra steps to press the button on the Switch. Something Mario sounded like a good way to go about this evening. He was replaying Dark Souls 3 at the moment, but getting engulfed in that seemed like a bad idea, while already pissed as hell.

“I guess it does,” he answered when his back bounced off the leather-clad cushions. Rave sat down next to him and started stripping. John soon mimicked the motion. Not because they were going to have sex immediately, but because being nude at home was a whole lot more relaxing. “Wonder if I should complain or be thankful that I don’t have any girls with daddy issues.”

“From what Eliza said about her childhood, I think she qualifies,” Rave threw in.

“Eliza doesn’t count, she has all the issues and deserves all the cuddles,” John retorted and looked to Metra. He had gotten better at blending out her steadily seething anger, but it was resonating with him a lot at the moment. “You’re taking this a lot harder than I thought you would,” he pointed out.

Metra shrugged and did her best to form her easy-going smile. “I’m as deep into this love-cycle shit as the rest of you at this point. Undine and I may not have a lot in common, and of the harem, I hang out with her probably the least, but I do care for her.” With an overbearing motion, she gestured at Beatrice. “I even care for that passive-aggressive bitch over there.”

“Appreciated,” the maid stated and bowed her head.

“Aren’t you going to shoot back with something unnecessarily pedantic?”

“No.”

“Wow,” Metra laughed and stood up. Unsurprisingly, she was already naked. “Shows how tense these minutes are.” With six steps and one jump, she sat down to John’s left. She only remained actually sitting for a moment, however, before she laid down. Her head rested on a pillow she grabbed and her feet on John’s thighs. “By the way, the ideas going through your head right now, really fucking stupid – and incredibly hot if you manage to actually do any of it.”

Rave, being the only one in the room without direct access to her boyfriend’s brain, hummed and closely inspected his face. “Lemme guess… you’re running mental gymnastics about how ya would handle the Mother of Water in the future?”

“I am considering if it’s possible to dispose of her,” John freely admitted, fully knowing how ludicrous that proposition was. “It’s a stretch, but it’s theoretically possible… at least if I got some information right.” He looked to Rave and asked, “Have you ever heard of Kingdoms?”

“Uh, no?” His girlfriend blinked. “Doesn’t sound like ya mean the government form. Have we reached the point where ya have to explain Abyssal stuff to me?”

“Seems so,” John answered and was handed the controller for the Switch by Aclysia. Two taps of the button and he was inside the Super Mario loading screen. “Has to be said that I only learnt about these in a recent talk with Magoi. You know how fantasy races in our world come from Natural Barriers, right?”

“Yeah? Faith leaks out and coalesces into forms of human imagination. Most are monstrous and a bit chaotic, generally non-sapient and all that jazz, and will just keep on feeding until they become so large that they cause a mundane catastrophe and get consequently smitten by Gaia. Very few are sapient and/or humanoid and they make their way into the Abyss.”

“Right,” John nodded, “that’s the common stuff. Those races can then theoretically procreate and, as long as they remain nearby to new sources of Faith, can just continue on living. They are lifeforms on a magical basis and so they need some form of magic, the rawer the better, to survive like we need oxygen.”

“Yeah, something, something, withering theory, can we loop back to what Kingdoms are?”

“Well,” John switched between stages and worlds, looking for one he hadn’t cleared with a perfect score yet, “they are either completely different worlds or Natural Barriers that exist outside of Earth. Magoi said he doesn’t know, and if he doesn’t know, I sure as hell don’t.”

Rave raised a hand to her forehead and groaned. “So, wait a sec,” she said and her eyes moved about as she thought. A little jingle played when John picked a level and his girlfriend tilted her head. “Are ya getting at there being worlds out there where fantasy races like elves and goblins and, I dunno, succubi just hang out unbothered by humanity?”

“Yup,” John answered nonchalantly, pleased that Rave was following so easily.

“And that there’s a second way those people can get to our world?” Rave theorized. “Like, people in the Kingdom just decide to drop off and live here instead?”

“Yup yup.”

“How isn’t that common knowledge then?” Rave asked. “How have I never heard of that? Hell, how have I never visited one, other worlds sound rad!”

“Rarity,” John responded. “How do you enter a Natural Barrier? You get in the real-life equivalent location and enter it through an easy ritual.” Mario took a particularly long jump and John raised his arm upwards as if he wanted to cast Exit I.D. “How do you enter a Natural Barrier that doesn’t have an actual location on the planet?”

“Uhhh,” Rave had to pause on that one, “ya take a spaceship?”

The Gamer giggled; he hadn’t thought of that one. “We are talking about invisible reality bubbles; how would you even know where to fly? That aside, that’s not a very magical solution.”

“Neither are cars and we still got our driving licenses.”

“Fair point,” John conceded on that front and got a quick kiss on his cheek as his reward. “No, but the answer seems to be that Kingdoms overlay with earth at some points. When and where seems rather random, but I think that’s more a question of things not having been properly mapped out yet. I’m sure you could spot some patterns if you wrote down things long enough. Apparently, you can also enter some through specific rituals.” He looked at her for a little bit. “For the most part, you have to be at the right place at the right time to enter one, and if you stay too long, you can’t get back. That would explain why it’s rather exclusive information. It could also mean that the more famous fantasy races simply got stuck here early in history. They then made contact with early-day humans, when Gaia was less strict about separation of Abyss and mundane, and then they entered folklore, so now humanity’s collective imagination is pumping them out sometimes.” He shrugged. “That’s a chicken and egg question.”

“Okay, but where do they come from?”

“I dunno,” John answered floppily. “Gaia got bored and created some experimenting places? Parallel dimensions? Natural Barriers that ‘bugged out’ and got shackled to their position in actual space rather than their relative position on Earth, causing them to be left behind because the earth is circling around a big plasma ball? All of the above? Your guess is as good as mine. They come in vastly different sizes, from neighbourhoods to entire planets, and apparently have some sort of physical core. At least that’s what Magoi said was the only overlap the few successful Fateweaver expeditions ever found.”

“I get the feeling we should spread intel about this to more people,” Rave mumbled.

“Maybe.” John wasn’t quite so sure. He knew exactly why the Fateweavers had kept it secret. For profit and for safety. Exploring entirely new worlds was bound to produce some interesting things. Until they had actually figured out what Kingdoms in their entirety were, however, telling people they were out there was the same as sending a bunch of bored, adventurous people to their untimely demise or permanent separation from Earth. “If we do, that has to be a slow educational effort. Anyway, to the point.” Mario jumped through the star and the level was finished; John put the controller down. He tapped against his forehead. “The Mother of Water had something in her head that looked exceedingly like the description of a core, a Hearthstone, that Magoi gave me.”

“Wait, so… the elemental planes are Kingdoms?”

“That’d be the assumption.” John nodded. “It fits pretty well, don’t you think? The elemental planes can’t really be accessed by anyone. The closest thing we can manage is projection of our consciousness, using a specific kind of ritual that opens a sort of portal. That’s pretty reliable for a Kingdom, given what little I know about them, but it also seems like Gaia has bent the rules for them a little bit, pinning them into relative proximity to Earth. If physical location is even a factor in all of this.”

Rave hummed to herself and wiggled her toes. “This sounds pretty exciting.” She grinned her thrill-seeking smile. “Here I thought I lived on a fully explored planet, now ya tell me there is all this other stuff out there.”

“All of this other stuff could be out there,” John corrected her. “Also, you couldn’t pay me to go Kingdom travelling. I’m not going to any other world, only to get stranded there.”

“Somebody has to find out how those things work,” Rave pointed out.

“That somebody won’t be me, not in this timeline,” John crossed his arms. “Because somebody also has to deal with all of my political issues and I don’t trust anybody but me to do that. That aside: I like this planet.”

“Okay, no dimension hopping then… weirdo.” Rave pouted in a joking fashion. “Anyway, ya say the Mother of Water had one of those, but how is that important?”

“It means she has the very centre of the plane embedded into herself. I would guess that’s the closest thing to omnipotence somebody that isn’t Gaia could reach,” John clarified. “Now, if you could take that away and give it to someone else that’s more closely aligned with my interests…”

“Aaaahhh, okay, yeah, I get it.” Rave nodded. “Much as I love the idea of that, sounds impossible.”

“That’s what I mean!” Metra, having listened to all of that with occasional nods and rising eyebrows, chimed back in. “It’s completely ludicrous and I LOVE the idea.”

“It’s just a theory, for the moment,” John shrugged, “a mental exercise should the Mother of Water ever become more than a very unpleasant one-time encounter.”

It was good to have back-up plans.