Days passed. We kept practicing the Nephilim state, and kept trying to break the chains. We ate meat and drank ambrosia. We filled up the demonic core. We talked to Zery. The Three-Letter club induction ceremony drew nearer and nearer.
"Do you have a status?" I asked the dragon.
She looked at me, cocking her head as if confused. Then her eyes cleared. "You mean a System status? No. It was among the first things they took away from me."
Behind her, the huge demonic core hummed with power. It was the main source of energy for this corner of the System infrastructure, according to what we pieced together from what Calyx told us, Zery's tale, and what little the treemind responsible for keeping the System functioning managed to tell us.
Its name was written in my status, under the slaves section.
Slaves:
Calyx (Dryad)
B2TTn#-7 (Treemind)
It was a strange name for a strange being, that's for sure.
"Where do you think my core might be?" the dragon woman asked idly. "Up here, between my breasts, or perhaps lower down, beneath my navel?"
"Maybe you don't have one?" I mused, still not taking my eyes away from the great orb at the far end of the room.
Zery shook her head. "I'm not a Great Race," she said. "And I remember the rules quite clearly. Anything that's not a Great Race has a core, doesn't matter if they are sentients. Break the core, you break their magic. That's why I was trapped here, so that the System could tap into my core."
Something didn't sit right with me. Through the bond, I felt Elyra shuffle, interested in our conversation. She got up from the desk where she was trying to mend one of the broken computer screens and joined us.
"Then, why does the System not tap into the cores of monsters for its power?" she asked.
Zery cocked her head. "It does, doesn't it? I saw you feed monster cores to it."
"Only after they were slain," I said. "It doesn't take energy from live monsters. Why was it taking energy from you?"
The dragon hummed, but even as we lapsed into silence, we remained where we were, each absorbed in their own thoughts. Except that mine mixed with Elyra's, while Vespera was trying her best to shut us out while also keeping the door open to listen in, because she was too curious not to.
"If you had a status," I said after a while. "Then you once were a Great Race."
Zery said nothing. Her face was hard to read. Or so I thought, but I realized that by sharing minds with two girls, I was learning to understand them quite well. In her silence, Zery was waiting for something.
"I know you were," I said. "Elyra and Vespera used to be Great Races, before they lost their status and access to the System. When they bonded with me, they became Great Races once more."
The dragon gasped, struggling to draw breath and sniffling. She cried, but never once did she take her gaze off of me, blinking away the tears that rolled down her scaled cheeks, never looking away.
"I hope you are not giving me false hope, human," she said, trying to sound threatening and failing.
"I am not," I said softly.
"Does it mean that they too have cores?" she asked, deflecting.
"I don't think I have a core," Vespera said, poking and prodding her own body. "Pretty sure I'd feel it."
Zery shrugged. "I wouldn't know. I was already chained when they stripped me of my pride."
"You have pride," I said. "We will free you, and you'll see."
She chuckled. "You really are a charmer, aren't you? Thank you, but you know what I meant. Perhaps… you could feel me around and see if you can find a core inside me?"
"Enough!" Vespera shouted. "Too spicy!"
"Says the horny demon," Elyra retorted.
"Yep, which means we are getting ahead of ourselves," the demon replied.
"Fair enough," the angel said.
"Well," I interjected, bringing the conversation back to safe topics. "That huge demonic core had to come to be somehow. I think Zery is right, and that she has a core. No, I'm not going to feel her up just to see if I can find it."
"Aw," Vespera cooed. "She's pouting! Maybe you should do that."
"What I'm thinking is, you two probably don't have it," I said.
"You'd know if we did," she shot back with a smirk.
I nodded. "I would, wouldn't I? In any case, this means that there is only one answer, and I don't like it. The dryads used the System to downgrade the demons from Great Race to sentient monsters, and forced their magic to coalesce into cores."
"And then…" Zery said. "The bond restored you?"
"Yeah! You should have seen it, Zery. Sol swore an oath to never abandon us, and the System actually recognized it!" the demon said, speaking with great emotion. "When he fulfilled it, after sacrificing everything, literally everything, the System awarded him with his current class and upgraded us to Great Races!"
Silence followed. Vespera looked at us, not understanding why we weren't sharing her enthusiasm. "Sol?" she called. "Elyra?"
The angel did not immediately respond. Curious, I waited for her to say something, but she simply stared at Zery for a minute. "We must extend the bond to include her," she said eventually.
"What, right now?" I asked.
"What Sol said. Might be a bit too early, no?"
"We must," the angel insisted. "My heart aches, seeing her like this. If we cannot free her, and we tried for days, then at least we can do this for her."
"And share everything? Elyra mine," Vespera said. "The bond is a very intimate thing."
"It's okay," Zery said. "I understand."
She looked away, and the conversation drifted back to idle topics. Yet, none of us could deny a certain weight to the air, and the way our thoughts kept drifting back to the idea of the bond, and to Zery.
"Don't worry," I said. "We don't need the System to make it official. You are with us, and we'll help you get your magic back."
"What then?" she asked, pleading. Her voice broke with the last syllable, and then she was half screaming, half sobbing. "Will you just let me go, a monster in the wild? Was all the teasing and the talk of me joining the harem just a joke? A lie?"
"No," I said in a low voice, feeling the weight in my stomach.
"Then why are you doing this to me!" she screamed. Tears were flowing freely.
"Sol…" Elyra began.
I gritted my teeth. "I don't want another Calyx situation," I said.
"What's a Calyx situation?" Zery asked, desperately latching onto whatever she could.
"He misunderstood the nature of the bond," Vespera explained. "He was desperate and lonely, and his mind saw the bond for what it was not. Luckily we cleared things up."
"But I understand the bond…" the dragon said. "Don't patronize me."
"What if…" I began. "What if there was a dragon civilization or something of the kind out there. Suppose we find them, and they invite you back among your kind with open arms."
I realized that it wasn't about Zery anymore.
I looked at her, and asked, "Would you leave us, then?"
The answer came immediately. I didn't expect it. I expected her to think about it. To mull it over. For the question to somehow stir her thoughts. But, instead, she looked at me with eyes that shone like the purest gold and said: "No."
Her voice was low, soft, and measured. As she spoke, Zery pulled herself up until her horns almost scraped the ceiling, and she was taller than me. Not to intimidate, but to show how proud she was of herself, of her choices, of her free will.
Somehow, I didn't need the bond to know all of that.
"Is this what you are scared of, Sol Nightguard? Was this what you were hiding deep down, a fear that only something as deep and intimate as a bond that touches your whole being managed to dredge up?"
I nodded imperceptibly. It didn't matter. By then, an angel and a demon had already leapt at me and were wrapping me in a fierce hug.
"Sol, you stupid silly idiotic moron," Vespera said, crying rivers.
"Sol mine, my love," Elyra also said, also crying rivers.
"You are…" the demon began.
"…the star of our lives," the angel finished. "Never will we leave you."
"Never and never."
I smiled, and they smiled too. We kissed, deeply, basking in each other's presence.
"Spacer boy, spacer boy," Vespera said after we had all calmed down. "How did you even manage to keep all of this hidden from us?"
I shrugged. "I guess I learned from the best."
She cocked her head. "Elyra, you mean?"
"And you, silly," I said, booping her nose. "You hide a lot of insecurities down there. I found them all. And I love you all the more for them."
The demon's eyes grew misty. "You're making me cry again," she sniffled. "Happy tears, but… I think we cried enough, don't you?"
"Yeah…" I said.
"We will not leave you," Elyra said. "And you won't leave us. We know, and we want you to also know."
I nodded, looking up to meet Zery's gaze. She had watched us, unable to do much in her chained state, but she looked like she really would have wanted to do something. What, I don't think even she knew. But still, her face said it all.
"This is what the bond is about," I said. "Just so you know what you are getting into."
"It was a very cute moment," the dragon said. "But you didn't do it for me, Sol. You did it for each other. I didn't think it was even possible for you three to grow even closer than before, and yet I can see how much closer you are already. As for the bond, I was and am very aware of its nature. I can see it in the way you acted around each other. Not to mention," she added as her voice lowered one octave. "I don't want to sound like a sage saying this, but a wild inter-species threesome while covered in monster gore right in front of my eyes, when I had just woken up from a thousand-year-long catatonic state, being used as a battery to fuel the System, kinda made it rather clear what you three are into."
I chuckled.
"Funny," Vespera said. "It was hot, though."
"Very," Zery conceded. "I didn't think you were real back then, but thinking about it now… very, yes."
"Speaking of, what's up with your disappearances through time?" Vespera asked.
"I don't know," she admitted.
"Later!" Elyra chastised us. "Zery. The bond. It goes much deeper than… sex. Deeper than you could ever imagine."
I took over. "Joining is about love. Do you love me, us?"
"I cannot answer such a question right now. Anything I say would be a lie, and you know it."
"Good answer," Vespera said. "I wouldn't have trusted you had you said that you loved him, and us."
"Does it mean that I pass the test?"
"It was never a test," the demon said.
"Oh, I know," the dragon replied with a smirk.
Vespera looked at her, crossing her arms, then at us. Shaking her head, her posture relaxed, as did her face. She grinned, fangs showing, red eyes glinting with the same color as the magic contained in the massive demonic core behind the dragon. "Then yes, you certainly pass."
Zery matched her grin, but not without a few tears showing at the corners of her eyes.