“You should move to the balcony,” John recommended, before knocking twice on the table and standing up. The loss of his neck cushion was, while saddening, inevitable. By putting his arm around the apocalypse elemental, he got to enjoy her curves in a different fashion. “We’ll meet you up there.”

“Don’t tease them too much,” Rave joked.

While the group at the table started relocating, John and Salamander started walking towards their new guests. Although the people immediately locked eyes with him, they didn’t approach and just stood near the entrance. It wasn’t a sign of disrespect; John could easily read that from their demeanour. Rather, the uncertainty that was reflected in the way they moved and dressed also extended to their behaviour.

John kept his stride slow and collected, not wanting to seem too eager. During the fifty metre distance, he had time to grab Salamander’s big bubble butt. The blue denim of her jeans was an acceptable obstruction between his palm and the hot and juicy meat underneath. Her top stuck tightly to her magnificent breasts, creating a deep cleavage that drew the eyes of everyone they passed. Her partly visible midriff only enhanced her attractiveness.

The almost biker-like look wasn’t exactly common during galas, but when one had the devilish good looks of the apocalypse elemental, that hardly mattered. Her long hair flickered as they walked, tongues of flame extending from the torrent of glowing orange hair. A few of the flames were darker, or even completely black, depending on how close they were to the black strands of Salamander’s hair. When she had long hair, part of her hairline became an extension of the jagged lines that covered her body and the left half of her face. It was an interesting accent to her backwards oriented hairstyle.

Salamander grinned at him, her own hand around his back and her lizard-like tail curving happily behind them. It was always a bit odd to John to have a smile in his level field of view. Salamander was one of two women in his harem taller than him. The difference had shrunk to a mere two centimetres, but it was still a difference in her favour. Nathalia, being 1,91 metres tall, would have been more noticeably taller. He would have loved to experience again how that felt, but the goddess of volcanoes remained outside his reach.

‘Just another thing I would have liked to talk to Richard about,’ John thought and forced his gaze to wander away from the many desirable traits of Salamander and towards the new arrivals. Despite their inexperienced behaviour, they were the most important guests he had. “Good evening,” he greeted them happily, extending his right hand to shake the hand of everyone in the group. It took a moment to register, but after the first person did it, the rest were quick to follow. They each presented their own little greeting. “I hope the escort was to your liking?”

Like the handshake, the question hovered in the air for a little bit as the group of thirteen people looked at each other. John waited with a patient smile for them to sort out who should speak for the group. What they saved him in time by showing up today was almost incomparable to the slight hiccup of niceties he experienced there and then. That aside, it wasn’t as if he had nothing to do while he stood there. Salamander’s butt was as squeezable as ever.

In the end, it was Janna who spoke up. Expected, given that the woman had been the one chosen to represent the small guilds in the first place. “Yes, the drive was lovely. There was no need to send a limo for us, we would have found a building this large… I mean grand.”

John chuckled. “It is very large,” he said and halfway turned towards the open hall. “Please, follow me. There is something I’d like to show you, before I let you judge if the work of our chefs matches that of our architects.” The Gamer made sure everyone agreed, then guided them towards one of the staircases along the wall. ‘Get ready, Undine,’ he sent out.

‘Are there not further guests to arrive?’ the abysstide elemental asked.

‘The important ones are here,’ the Gamer responded. ‘Everyone else can only blame themselves for coming late.’

Among the many things John believed in was the idea of incentives. Most people behaved according to environmental stimuli, whether those were artificial or natural. A person who was slapped every time they gave a homeless person money was likely to stop fairly quickly. Someone who was praised every time they killed for their faith was likely to become more fervent. It took a fairly rare kind of person to continue through pain and raise continuous doubts at themselves.

That also wasn’t to say that this rare kind of person was superior to the ‘simpler’ environmentally guided ones. Someone tilted towards excessive freedom could look at normalized charity with disdain and renounce the entirety of a religion because facets of it struck them as disagreeable. Nobody liked sheep in people’s clothing, but nobody liked contrarians either. Statistically speaking, it simply struck John that there were more people willing to follow than there were people who liked to disagree. The fact that society existed in the first place seemed to support that thesis.

Incentives were the way to create, continue, and propagate a society. If the culture and institutions of a nation made people do the right thing, then that society prospered and the people were, generally, happy. The difficulty was discerning what the right thing was and what incentivised people to move towards that thing.

In the case of today, John could answer these two questions fairly easily. The right thing, from his perspective, was for more guilds to join Fusion of their own accord. This was why the press had been given the best seats tonight, so that all that was recorded looked the best it could. All of the things he had planned, every bit of splendour, had to reach as far as possible so that everyone currently wondering if they should join Fusion was dazzled by the display of wealth and power.

This evening would serve as a festival for the people, a proper welcoming for the new members and to show the carrot to every prospective member on the continent. The stick, Fusion’s military, had been shown often enough at this point.

They reached the lower row of balconies, where his harem, save for the elementals, and a number of other special guests, Maximillian, Magoi and Magnus among them, were sitting in a row of seats along the railing. There were more tables up there, a quiet retreat for the special guests. John directed the leaders of the small, western guilds towards the seats.

‘Everyone ready?’ John directed his thoughts at the elementals. Salamander’s answer was a quick kiss. Sylph waved from the balcony on the opposite wall. Gnome and Siena also signalled their understanding. Undine needed a few moments more, then she too made clear that she was ready to start. Stirwin let out an approving squeal. ‘Begin at your leisure then, Siena.’

‘What a dangerous suggestion,’ the midnight elemental’s sensuous voice whispered into his mind. ‘Perhaps I will never start?’

‘Don’t tell me you will let the opportunity slide to impress everyone with your fiddling skills,’ John responded.

‘Hmm… no, I will not be that easily manipulated. Give me something more.’

John glanced over to his guests. At the moment, they were eagerly waiting. That eagerness could quickly switch to nervousness if the silence persisted too long, however. In his heart of hearts, John knew that Siena would play along before it came to that, so he could have just waited her out. His curiosity spurred him to at least ask, however, ‘What do you want?’

‘A shared dom session. You, me, and a submissive Aclysia, at a moment of my choosing,’

‘Deal,’ John responded immediately. Letting Siena join him in giving Aclysia thorough attention, he was more than willing to give. Aclysia’s consciousness stirred at the edge of the conversation with exceeding expectation. The maid and the shadow spirit had their occasional issues, but by and large they were still friends. Further, Aclysia’s serving lifestyle had led to her fully embracing the submissive role in the bedroom. She could switch when appropriate, but it was clear which flavour of sexual roleplay she appreciated more. Albeit her flavour of submission was usually more about active serving than Eliza’s wish to be used as a toy, Metra’s eagerness to be commanded as a sex slave or Scarlett’s sessions of having the sass punished out of her.

No sooner had the thought reached Siena than a series of quick violin sounds suddenly echoed through the room. A cascade of notes drowned out the conversations all over the room with their feverish pace, slowing as gazes focused on the magically boosted source in the centre of the room. Their ears perceived what their eyes couldn’t at first, people blinking in confusion until Siena’s invisibility came slowly undone.

Siena’s form manifested in a crawling fashion. The white wood fiddle she carried and her hands came into view first. They were joined quickly by her smooth shoulders, her neck and her face. The silky river of her black hair was unveiled from root to tip in a running stream, bouncing softly with every firm stride she took. Her chest came uncovered next, jiggling in the tight black dress that covered her dark grey, blue-tinted skin. As the music slowed further, her narrow waist, her wide hips, her long legs, her long tail with the elongated, spade-shaped tip, all of it became visible. The display was made decent only by the thin layer of cloth that so elegantly stuck to her hourglass curves.

Her near unparalleled beauty sent shivers down John’s spine, even now. Those that watched her undoubtedly felt the same, especially as her sharp, vampire-esque teeth became visible behind the smile of her dark lips. Eyes as silver as the stars, surrounded by dots and lines that reminded of constellations in her midnight black sclera, wandered from one onlooker to the next and intoxicated them with their presence. John was the last one she looked to. It wasn’t until the last, long, long note ended that John realized he was holding his breath. The lights everywhere dimmed.

The entire room was silent.

Siena played a tiny note and the base of the fountain behind her flashed with a soft golden light. Siena played a small note and the base of the fountain pulsed with a soft golden light. Siena played a note and the soft golden light pulsed up with the water, falling back down on the two platforms above the pool. Siena played a long note and the soft golden light illuminated the entire fountain’s water from the base to the highest point, down to the last drop that formed the umbrellas of water cascading back down into the base. Siena played a near endless note. Then she suddenly broke out into another feverishly paced melody.

Water infused with the very essence of light flew across the room as Stirwin broke through the surface in his adult form. He wound his long body around the pillar of stone at the centre of the fountain, and roared towards the ceiling. The deep elongated sound of the fantastic creature became the base for many other sounds. Fire and wind clashed above his raised head. Heat was guided by tunnels of air into the outlines of flowers, forming the petals with flames of black, which carried gold and the colour of all elements at its core. Salamander and Sylph circled around the upwards stream of the fountain, continuously combining their magic to the impressive displays. The hissing of the water was a beat. The height the water reached became lower and lower. The volume of Siena’s melody quieter and quieter until it threatened to cease again.

The fountain went completely inactive, the music was competing with John’s breathing for what he could still barely hear. Stirwin remained still. His body and the magic he bled into the water were the main source of light still remaining in the hall. The occasional flicker of the flowers of fire exchanged that golden glow for a red tinted flash. Each flash came with a momentary rise in volume. It never lasted. The surface of the fountain came to a complete still.

In the quiet, in the darkness, from the stillness of the glowing water, rose a form. Gold transformed into greyish, dark blue, red lines swirled over the right side of a deeply attractive female form. Naked, but missing those sexual markers people could be offended by, the water spirit raised one hand as her black antlers and dark blue hair formed. With her hands rose a high-pitched, wordless note. A crystal-clear worship of nothing but the capabilities of the voice.

Undine kept that note. Underlined with it a slight rise in volume of Siena’s play. Another flower of fire flared above, another spike in volume occurred and a second Undine rose from the still waters. She, too, raised a hand and lent her voice to her first body. Like following the path of a clock’s hand, one by one, Undines appeared from the water. Their voices combined created a single note of such intensity that John’s ears could scarcely stand its beauty. Glass vibrated under the onslaught of the siren’s endless call. Siena’s play kept up with the volume.

Then it ceased.

All of it ceased.

Silence and flowers of flame.

Four of the twelve Undines sang. Still wordless, it was a proper song now, not just the simple holding of a note. Despite this, it felt less whole than the note had been. Circular pedestals of stone rose before those four Undines and the abysstide elemental moved those four bodies to those pedestals. Once they stood on the marble, each platform barely higher than the floor, their voices stopped.

Four of the eight Undines still in the fountain sang. They sang in unison of joy, of life, of prosperity and the deep melancholy of being. Of the calm that was misplaced in times of not knowing one’s path and the anger that was misplaced in times of problems. Their song was beautiful, words and voices, but still incomplete. Circular pedestals of stone rose before those four Undines. Once they stood on the marble, a step above the floor, their voices stopped.

Four Undines still in the fountain sang. Their voices and words wove into a mix of wordless notes and wholesome songs. They sang of love, a topic of endless depth and never-ending wonder. John’s heart cheered knowing that she was singing about him in many passages, even when she called him a fool for loving someone as flawed as her. Those lines that described the happiness she had in life around him and his other women, those he ingrained into his heart. Circular pedestals of stone rose before those four Undines. One by one, they flowed onto them in jumping arches. Once they stood on the marble, a metre above the floor, their voices stopped.

The amber eyes of all twelve Undines opened as the fountain suddenly reactivated. Water shot high into the air, cutting apart the final flower of fire. As the flickering fire faded the thirteenth, final and true body of the abysstide elemental manifested within. Before gravity could claim her, Salamander and Sylph came to hold her hands and hold her high, while Undine started the wordless song of the first four bodies. As soon as they had gone through one verse, she switched to the song of the second group. As soon as they had gone through one verse, she switched to the song of the third group.

Worded and wordless notes wove into a delicate fabric of musical perfection, the songs finally knowing completion in the canon of voices and the careful drawing of the bow across the violin. Stirwin stayed still, Salamander and Sylph stayed still, Undine’s many bodies moved only according to the part of the layered song they were dedicated to, Siena was the only truly moving part, threading through the pillars as if she was the needle that bound this fabric together.

John dropped into the music. He let his active thoughts dissolve until only the words and the melodies filled him. He fell deep into it. Deeper than he had thought possible, in fact. He came to understand everything about this display, despite not having been involved in its making. He had asked for it, accounted for it, known about the necessities for it, but he hadn’t known the structure. Yet, he felt every note in its entirety. From the simplicity of what his ears could perceive, over the difficulties of maintaining thirteen bodies singing three different songs, to the strain of continuing the flawless moment without thinking about it, and finally the worry of overseeing everything and making sure it all worked. Undine, Siena and Gnome, he felt all of their influence in the music, the overt songstress, the violinist and the organizer of it all. He was there for all of it. He lived the song in its entirety.

The finale came too soon, despite John knowing that it must have been at least five minutes. This sacred unity experienced in the complete song, it was almost like a revelation. If eyes were the window to the soul, then music like this was the soul itself reaching out and mingling with all willing to hear.

A final voice, a final word, a final note and a roar by Stirwin to end it all, then there was silence once more.

John’s eyes were open, but he didn’t really see as he slowly rose from his trance. Barely he noticed the lights going back to normal and barely he saw the window in front of him. As applause started to wash through the room from the stunned watchers within and the listeners without the walls of the hall, John blinked at the words before him. It was difficult to read, his mind still recovering from the experience, but the words were clear.