Kitsara watched the dust settle where her father’s banner had been, three tails curled tight behind her.

The growing silence after hundreds of thousands of beastkin had marched through it carried its own weight, the kind of quiet that only existed because an army had just filled the space and left, and her red eyes tracked the dark smudge on the horizon where the column was still visible, shrinking toward the Elvardian border with every second.

The pride on her face held for one more breath before it thinned into the quiet worry of a daughter watching her father walk toward a war she could not follow him into.

"I told you to retire already... Hand your throne over to Darius... You’re too old to lead your people to war..."

The mark above her womb flared.

Crimson calligraphy blazed through the fabric at her belly, hot and sudden, and the foxkin’s hand pressed against it on instinct as her lips moved around words she did not intend to say out loud.

"...Don’t die on me, Dad."

The warmth spread from her mark through her core and down her spine, and a fourth and fifth tail spread from the base of her spine in a single smooth motion, white fur fanning out behind her as if they had always been there and simply hadn’t bothered to show up until now.

Kitsara did not notice.

She was still watching the horizon with wet eyes when something tugged at her newest addition, and a bright voice cut through her reverie.

"Kitsara has so many more tails than Blossom now!" Blossom’s fingers were wrapped around the fifth tail with the gentle curiosity of a girl inspecting a particularly fluffy pillow, and her own blonde tail wagged behind her in what could only be described as competitive admiration. "That’s not fair! Blossom wants more too! Then Master has to spend more time grooming her...!!"

As the jealous barrage of complaints reached her brain...

"Kya!"

The yelp that left the foxkin was not the sound of a renowned lady or a graceful princess but the sound of a woman whose tail had just been grabbed by a dogkin with no concept of boundaries, and the full-body shudder that followed ran from the base of her spine to the tips of her ears as every nerve ending in the new tail fired at once.

"B-Blossom...!" she squeaked, voice cracking. "Don’t just grab a foxkin’s tail like... wait." Her red eyes went wide. She turned, looked behind her, and counted. One. Two. Three. Four... Five?! "...I have two new tails?!"

She spun in a full circle trying to get a better look at it, and all five tails fanned out behind her like a peacock having an identity crisis, the newest one still catching the light with the soft sheen of fur that had never seen a single hour of sun. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

"When did that happen?!"

A warm giggle sounded from Quinlan’s side, and Lucille leaned against her axe with a grin that had clearly been incubating a theory for some time.

"I had a theory about this, actually~" The Bloodmonger’s green eyes sparkled. "Your second tail grew in right after you and Quin consummated in a very fetishistic way, if I remember correctly..."

Kitsara’s ears twitched. "No..."

"Khm! You got your brains blown out in the skies, your fluids dropping on your own citizens. Khm!" Aurora seemed to have a coughing fit.

"Noooo..." Kitsara shook her head, trying to deny a well-known fact with all her might. "Father might hear... Shush!" she then hissed.

"And you haven’t grown a new one in quite a long time," Lucille continued, tapping her chin. "So I was starting to think the requirement escalates each time, and I was about to suggest some very... extreme measures to Quin on your behalf~"

The foxkin’s face went through three colors in rapid succession.

"L-Lady Kitsara is NOT like that!" She drew herself up to full height, pushed her chest forward, and planted her fists on her hips in a pose that would have been regal if five tails weren’t still bristling from the Blossom Incident. "I am a renowned lady of the dogkin people! A graceful princess! I carry myself with dignity and poise at all times!"

Every woman in earshot looked at her with the exact same dry expression, save for Blossom who was busy pouting.

Then Kaelira spoke up, and the elf’s long ears had flushed so red they looked ready to catch fire.

"...Isn’t getting your lover’s demonic brand, which he gained after ravaging the Primordial Succubus, tattooed above your womb very fetishistic? It fits the depravity escalation theory..."

Silence fell across the group.

Lady Kitsara’s boastful aura stalled. Her chest, which had been pushed out with pride, deflated a fraction. Her chin, which had been lifted with dignity, dipped. The gulp that traveled down her throat was visible from ten paces.

"...Crafter girls should not theorize about illusion classes!" she managed weakly.

"Actually, as an artificer, I think I know a lot about different types of magic..."

"Shush! Crafter girl, crafts!"

"Okay..." Kaelira murmured, then blinked, and broke into a giggling spree, joined by a lot of her friends, which only made Kitsara’s cheeks redder.

The foxkin looked toward the horizon, hoping her father did not hear this exchange.

Then a gauntlet came down on her head.

The steel was warm from the sun and the weight behind it was gentle, the casual pressure of an armored man who had watched the entire spectacle without lifting his visor and decided the foxkin had been tormented enough.

Kitsara’s panic died on the spot. Her ears folded under his palm, her five tails went still, and the red eyes that lifted to the armored figure standing over her carried nothing but open adoration, wide and honest. Every scrap of Lady Kitsara she had been trying to sell was gone.

She held his gaze through the visor for one breath, then two, and on the third the shame evaporated entirely.

Who cared what her father thought? She was a married woman, a healthy adult. She had her needs, she had her man, and she had just grown two tails from a primordial bond mark tattooed above her womb. If that made her a depraved foxkin, then Lady Kitsara would be the most magnificently depraved foxkin the Confederation had ever produced.

Her trembling lips turned into a gorgeous grin.

Her tails flared, and the foxkin vanished from under Quinlan’s palm in a shimmer of displaced air.

The space where she had been standing folded in on itself for a fraction of a heartbeat before she reformed exactly where she wanted to be, perched on Quinlan’s shoulders with her thighs locked around the sides of his helmet, five tails fanning out behind them both like a war banner, and one arm thrust forward with a finger aimed at the open warp gate.

"Onward, Quinnie! To war! For Love and Prosperity! And Riches! And XP!"

The girls watched the foxkin perched atop their man’s armored shoulders with grins so uniform they could have been rehearsed, because this was their shameless slutty foxy, the one who made everything sexual, said what nobody else would say, rode the line between scandalous and endearing with her tails held high.

The fact that she had just been flustered into three colors and two denials was still settling across the group in quiet disbelief, because most of them had genuinely believed Kitsara could not be embarrassed by anything short of divine intervention.

They stepped through behind Quinlan.

...

Dawn broke over Greenvale.

The sun was climbing past the eastern ridge when the seam of dark light tore open over a wide clearing flanked by low hills, and the light that poured through was gold on green, catching dew on grass and the polished edges of a great many weapons held very still by people who looked like they would rather be using them on each other.

Two forces stood side by side in the dawn, and neither side had forgotten a thing.

On the left, the jade cloaks and silver stag banners of the Greenvale Dukedom’s elite ranks held a rigid formation, armored men and women whose faces carried the cold discipline of soldiers who had been fighting a war for months and had been told, without explanation, to stop.

On the right, the dark leathers and unmarked standards of the Vesper Consortium’s Shadow Vanguards and Veil Walkers stood in a formation that was looser by habit and tighter than usual by necessity, because every one of them knew that the soldiers twenty paces to their left had been trying to kill them just a few hours ago.

These were not illustrious armies.

Both sides were too broken for that, their ranks thinned by months of mutual slaughter that had gained neither faction more than a few burned towns and a great deal of fresh graves.

What stood on this field were the survivors who could still fight, the elite detachments scraped together from depleted rosters, and the hatred between them was a living thing that needed no introduction.

The warp gate opened behind them, and the Devil of their stories stepped through.

He was taller than the posters suggested, clad head to heel in dark armor that moved like a second skin, his visor down and his presence landing across both formations in a wave that straightened spines on both sides before anyone had decided to be impressed.

But the posters had failed to mention the foxkin perched on his shoulders.

Murmuring rippled through the Consortium side first.