“Come on, firecunt,” Eliza growled at Salamander, shoving her towards the water, “do you want to do this or not?!”

The endflame elemental’s heels dug a trench through the sand as she did her best to resist the much smaller woman’s physical force. Water rose as steam from the ground as she heated up. “First off…” she continued her best to have the movement stop, but Eliza kept pushing. Something that John observed with interest, as this amount of physical force would normally have roused Thana to do something. “…that’s…” Salamander’s toe hit the water and she managed to muster enough strength to take a step back. “…racist!”

“Are you fucking kidding me, you fat-titted piece of ignited fart gas?” the blood mage responded with crazily amused bewilderment. Laughing manically, Eliza stated, “Don’t give me that racist crap and just get into the water! You said you wanted to do it!”

“You even got yourself a bikini for it,” John chimed in, looking her up and down. Salamander had the sort of figure that belonged into as little clothing as possible but for that clothing to be as tight as it could be. Her giant breasts, the biggest in John’s entire harem, were barely covered by the tiny black and red top she was wearing, giving side, under and front boob view. The jagged black lines that covered her curves made her narrow, hourglass waist fly over nicely into her wide hips and large, round ass. ‘God, I could look at all of them for hours,’ the Gamer thought, still not sated on ogling any of them, no matter how often.

It didn’t help that her outstanding breasts were jiggling in a salivating way with every bit of resistance she took against Eliza. Speaking of Eliza, she was looking like a tasty treat herself. Sure, the blue two-part swimwear she had gone with conversely hid more skin than her usual outfit (without the robe anyway), but that didn’t make her thighs and ass any less appealing. Also, something about her shortness just made her so enticing to grab, push down and… do things to.

John glanced over his shoulder. ‘It’s almost eight thirty, can these families please go and throw their spawns into a bed?!’ he mentally complained, having to work really hard on suppressing an erection over here. Sure, Rave had said she wasn’t that enthusiastic about beach sex, but John was more than certain that he could find a way around the sand issue. Or another willing babe among his harem.

“Yes, I said I want to try getting into the water,” Salamander shouted, yet again managing to kick back when her feet touched the clear water. “I didn’t fucking say I wanted to be shoved into it. Can’t I take this at my own pace?!”

“No,” Rave shouted, standing to her knees, a few metres in. A beach ball was spinning with perfect balance on her index finger. “We’ve been waiting for 5 minutes now and all ya did was stand there and stare at the water. Get over it already. Ya were more enthusiastic about facing down Lorylim than ya were about this.”

“That’s two different issues entirely!” Salamander declared, finally getting Eliza off herself. The blood mage had decided that she was sick of shoving and just stomped around the indecisive fire spirit. “One was facing something I had resolved to due to pride and revenge and all of the feeling bullshit. This is like jumping into an ocean of acid!”

Undine peeled out of the saltwater. Completely in her element, the pure ocean, cleaned of most human waste, she moved with fluidity and grace that could only be likened to running water. Extending both arms towards her fellow scarred elemental, stretching out of the ocean with her upper body fully formed, she said, “Let me take your hand.”

The tranquil wave of her voice calmed Salamander a little bit, and John happily watched, as she allowed Undine to wrap her fingers around her right. The two of them had a bit of a complicated history between them, but it was all footed in the care they had for each other, a care that was displayed in that very moment.

“Do I feel like I am trying to dissolve you?” Undine asked, slanting her head slightly, the typical melancholic glint in her golden eyes.

“…No,” Salamander conceded immediately.

“Then be welcome to my realm, Sister,” the ocean elemental stated and gently pulled Salamander forwards. The first step Salamander took into the water was accompanied by her jumping at the cold feeling around her feet and a hissing of water evaporating on her heated skin. A heat that also affected Undine’s hands. “Do not worry, you have nothing to fear from water. You are much stronger than that.”

“I know, I know,” Salamander grumbled, mostly to reassure herself as she took more slow steps. When she was in up to her thighs, she slowed again. The boiling had stopped, brought back under control. Salamander took deep breaths as she got used to these odd surroundings. Carefully, John put an arm around her waist.

“Come on, you basically got it already,” he tried to motivate her further. Placing a quick kiss on her lips, he whispered into her elf-like ears, “No need to stop now, I know you can do this.”

That was the last bit of motivation that Salamander needed. Not exactly, or not only, because it was aimed at calming her, but because of how she, as a person, dealt with people trying to help her. “Okay, stop, I can do this without y’all continuously encouraging me!” she declared, her competitive side triggered.

“That so, Sally!?” Metra shouted over, the berserker babe grinning as she went ahead and tried the mocking way of encouragement. The initial hurdle done over, that might very well work wonders. “Come here then, you sissy piece of shit!”

“I’ll punch you in the face, Mat!” Salamander declared as the treatment indeed worked perfectly. Taking one more moment to steel herself, the endflame elemental then began to wade further, until water spilled around her shapely ass, midriff, and was almost up to her chest by the time she reached the ancient weapon.

The punch to the face was instead exchanged as a semi-serious headbutt between the two tall women. “How about you don’t waste everyone’s time next time, you smoking hot piece of ass?” Metra’s half-threat, half-compliment sounded extremely odd to John. They had all of these little internal jokes between them that he knew fairly little about.

“How about you stop being such an aggressive cunt, huh?!” Salamander responded.

“Interruption,” Beatrice suddenly emerged like a slowly rising submarine next to them, turning her whole body towards them. “You’re both wasting further time as of this moment.”

“”SHUT IT, BEATRICE!”” both of them responded at once.

“I will need further specification what I need to shut,” Beatrice responded.

Eliza interrupted before anything further could happen. “Why THE FUCK are we even in this deep?!” she asked, having followed Salamander. A whole head shorter, she was dipping her chin in the smooth surface of the water. “I thought we were playing some shit.”

“Which I maintain, I won’t be part of,” Scarlett stated, swimming nearby. She wasn’t particularly great at it, but she had enough experience from pools. “I am not having ‘death by beachball’ on my gravestone because one of you superhumans decided to be a retard about their strength.”

“You just got to be one with the waaaateeeeeer.” Sylph also swam by, but unlike Scarlett, she just had her legs sprawled out and was drifting over the surface like a leaf. Sitting with his front claws on her left breast, like a valiant explorer, Stirwin was looking over the scenery with the best grin a crocodile could muster. “The water, Sally, you got to be one with the water.”

“I’ll make you one with the water!” Salamander backed off Metra and grabbed the thunderstorm elemental by the leg, dragging her under the surface. That she had to go down under herself suddenly became a side issue for the endflame elemental. When they surfaced again, steam was rising off Salamander’s buzzcut.

Sylph’s wet hair, on the other hand, was so abundant that it hid most of her face from view. “I am blind, help, everything is shaking!” Sylph declared, bouncing like a buoy, too confused to control her magical mass in a way that would allow her to either float or swim.

“Bwahahaha,” Salamander found this greatly amusing, right up until a beach ball hit her in the face at over a hundred kilometres per hour. It bounced off, causing her to fall back into the water for a moment. By the time she got back up, furiously looking for the culprit, Rave had caught the ball and was spinning it atop her finger again.

“What did we say last harem meeting?” John’s girlfriend warned. “Less bullying the Sylph!”

“Yes, I am adorable, silly Sally shouldn’t bully me!” Sylph declared her, very expansive, opinion on the matter. “I am high-courtesan and mistress of sweet stuff! Bullying me is mean and only big old mean meanies do that and you are most certainly a dumb, mean, meanie bitch Sally!”

Distracted as she was from her own cascade of words, the air spirit didn’t notice when the beach ball hit her on the head next. “We also said less insulting Sally!” Rave voiced her second warning.

“You do decide a whole lot of stuff on these meetings,” the ‘owner’ of the harem chimed in, John really feeling like he was missing a lot of stuff. Sure, he attended those meetings sometimes, but he had long since decided that it was best that his girls had some time amongst themselves to get things off their chests that he maybe shouldn’t be privy too. What did they say about him when he wasn’t around, he wondered? ‘Well, given that they’re all still here and happy with me, nothing too bad,’ he pushed down any potentially self-sabotaging doubts and decided to have fun instead. “Anyway, pass it over, Jane! Unless you want to keep hitting people in the head.”

“It is kinda fun,” Rave informed him, but hit the ball over to him at a sensible speed regardless. John hit it back towards her, then headed into a shallower area. He didn’t have it as bad as Eliza, but he would have preferred to stand somewhere better. Eliza also tracked up towards the coast, a little further than him, and soon stood relatively close to Sylph. They formed a pretty loose circle and just bounced the ball between them. Occasionally it got a bit heated, especially when Metra got the opportunity to smash the ball in Beatrice’s direction.

“Take that, you spoiled piece of shit!” the berserker babe shouted, smashing the ball so hard John was surprised it didn’t explode immediately. The ball flew over to Beatrice, the passive maid using her immense Agility to react properly and bounce it up into the air.

“Calling excrement spoiled is redundant,” Beatrice retorted, waiting for the ball to come back down to her position at a sensible speed. “I also do not contain biological waste. I am purely made from metal and synthetic materials.” With that she passed the ball over to Aclysia, leaving Metra to seethe at the fact that she still couldn’t get a proper insult in on the passive maid.

“Insulting Master’s creation is a taboo, Metra,” the weaponized maid decidedly stated, gently passing the ball to Gnome. “I request you cease further activity on that front.”

“M-maybe we should all just swear less?” Gnome suggested, continuing to hit the ball. While John doubted it was on purpose, the ball fittingly went on to go over to Eliza.

Where it plopped into the water in front of her.

The blood mage was just standing there, arms loosely hanging. Everybody looked worried, the ball had been slow enough for a normal person to hit. For Eliza to not see it coming was as impossible as missing a kick directed at a very large and very close wall.

“Eliza?” John asked, carefully coming closer but not getting within arm’s reach. All the people had left by now, it was only them. Which was a very good thing should this all suddenly head south.

“Why?” the single word passed her lips, and John wasn’t quite sure who he was talking to. The tone lacked any signs of Eliza’s unstableness, sudden, violent mood swings were nothing new for the blood mage, but he could at least tell that it was her voice most of the time. By the same token, it had none of that wolfishness that Thana’s tone carried.

It sounded weak, confused and deeply troubled. Like a normal human that could not find an answer to something and was just so tired of the nothing that stretched out before them.

She raised her head, and John could see her eyes. 4 dots, 10 lines. “Why?” she asked again.

“Why what, Thana?” the Gamer asked, very softly. He was surprised himself that he could speak to the goddess of genocide so calmly. “Tell me, I will listen.” Silently he hoped that Eliza understood that she shouldn’t wrestle control back right now.

Thana cupped some of the clear water in her hand. “Why do you continue to be happy?” she asked, the clear liquid slowly running down her hand. “I don’t understand. How can this existence be anything but empty? Every breath you take pollutes the air, every thing you consume, every thing you make, every thing you want, you desire, it all just fuels vices and potential ends. What is there? Why do you continue to be?”

“Because I am human, Thana,” John answered quicker than he thought he could. Wisdom and Charisma mixed into words that he felt confident in saying instinctually. “It might very well be that I pollute and that the things I do are bad for me and my surroundings. However, I am also one of the kind of creatures that inhabit this planet that has the power to do all of these things – and to fix them. So I continue to be happy as I improve the things I can and see other people improve the things I can’t.” He approached another half step, lowering himself until he kneeled in the ocean and she was looking down at him. “Because the alternative is the emptiness you feel right now.”

Under the surface, he reached out to her hand. ‘Master, this is a terrible idea!’ Aclysia cried out to him mentally, a sentiment echoed by Beatrice and all elementals, all except Siena.

‘Help her, would you?’ the nightmare elemental stated instead. Despite of how awful the circumstances might be, even though the outcome was likely terrible, uncertain at best, Siena encouraged him.

John took hold of her hand and raised it above the surface of the water. It was maybe just wishful thinking, but he didn’t get the feeling that Thana would hurt him. Nothing had ever indicated she was a good actress. Hell, she had always displayed her hostile intent openly. Right now, she wasn’t even trying to use that killing aura to damage him, much less move.

“I know you think I am acting in self-interest, and true enough, I am,” he told her, closing both hands around hers. Like Undine had done earlier with Salamander, John now needed to pull Thana somewhere uncomfortable. Just that he had to present to her an idea, which was harder in most ways, particularly since this one was no less opposed to her than fire was to water. “But maybe, if you cannot find happiness in your current frame of mind, then it is time to find a new one.”

“You made me this,” Thana commented, not in a threatening or angry way. Indeed, she just sounded hollow, no less tired of this point than the situation as a whole.

“Yes, I am partially responsible for you ending up this way,” John nodded, wanting to be nothing but honest towards this fledgling humanity he saw before himself. “And I would do it again if I had to. Thana, it’s not my intention to make you suffer, but as long as you fight against the most basic thing I want to protect, lives, I cannot help but push against you. As it so happens, I have won in this. We both know that you can never be the primal force you were born as again.”

“…No… I can’t…”

“Then do you wish to keep struggling endlessly against a world that will not budge for a goal that you cannot attain?” John asked her, his thumbs gently gliding over her skin, hoping to keep her calm. “You can continue to do so, but it’s not going to leave you any happier. Perhaps you should at least try to be human? I know it disgusts you, I know you never thought you could end up this way, I know its all not what you wanted from life. Just, maybe, its time to stop with what you wish to be and start accepting what you could be. What do you think of that, Thana?”

He never got an answer.