Grace of Blossoms

Darkness spread in all directions, crushing both sound and light in a painful emulation of the true void.

Once again, Laemno tasted its excruciating kiss as he floated aimlessly in the midst of nowhere. It felt so similar to the agonizing experience of his transmigration that he braced his mind for the incoming torture, yet it didn't come.

Instead, he surprisingly found his footing on an invisible ground, creaking akin to a wooden stage with each step.

His blindness receded like a tide, revealing a ligneous podium on which he was the sole thespian. Black curtains parted to the sides, and he saw rows and rows of vacant seats, all facing away from the platform.

The cold sting of rasping threads made him aware of the strings that squeezed his limbs, attached to a puppet cross far above his head.

As he looked up at the controller, he was greeted by three pairs of eyes, each with a completely different aura. One gaze was cold and detached, another was sharp and inquisitive, while the last was reverent and pious.

A heavy breath fell on his neck, whispering in a voice neither male nor female:

"Congratulations."

Laemno immediately woke up.

—

"Ohh, off the daze already, aren't we?~"

As the honeyed, dreamy voice reached his ears, Laemno discovered a scene far stranger than his nightmare.

He first noticed the voluptuous breasts dangling above his head—their pale, smooth surface gently grazing his cheeks while threatening to break out of the thin, white garments that held them. A little to the north, a face whose beauty could only be difficult to describe greeted Laemno with the purest smile.

She had golden hair, golden eyes, and golden lips—everything about her was aureate and perfectly shaped, like a sculpture of gilded marble. Her skin was paler than a corpse's, yet it took nothing out of her ethereal looks. On the contrary, it proved that her magnificence didn't belong to this world, an allure so mesmerizing that it dwarfed every other living creature.

Laemno couldn't help but gulp down a mouthful of saliva, but he tasted something new in his mouth; a textureless bundle of warmth that spread in his body and expelled his grogginess. Shadows of a faint headache still lingered, but they were nowhere as painful as they could be after one smashed his own skull against the bare rock.

Only then did Laemno remember. Flashes of what happened at Mount Eurymedon flickered in his mind, and the previously quieted migraine suddenly grew stronger.

I'm such an idiot! Why did I do that?! I was panicking and had no other options, but still... What if I accidentally killed myself? Damn my stupidity. Where am I now?

"Hmm? Are you still dreaming?~" The blissful voice resonated again, and Laemno felt weirdly at ease.

The woman on top of him didn't seem out of place despite her sprawling, shining golden hair covering the entire bed. She smelled like a field of sunflowers and felt like tangible daylight under his touch. Every sound she made echoed as gently as a spring breeze in his ears.

For a moment, he was utterly entranced, enough to forget how to breathe.

"Lady Anthea... P-Please climb down. The Honored One is no magus. Such proximity is h-harmful to him."

Lyra Elcmene's familiar voice brought Laemno back to his senses, though her jittery tone kept him from relaxing. With a sideways glance, he found her next to the room's entrance, with Stolos of Priene standing beside her. His expression was a mixture of reverence and envy, clearly jealous of Laemno's current predicament.

"Huh?" Anthea's puzzlement was extended into a long, soothing note. Her hands playfully brushed against Laemno's half-bare chest, stopping above his groin. "In past centuries, Celestial Offerings often spent their last nights amongst us in the Gardens of Hedone."

Her face got uncomfortably close to Laemno's, heating up his cheeks and, in an unfortunate happenstance, some other region.

"We would teach them many things," she sweetly purred, "things clergymen and women would be too shy to attempt under Her Divine Majesty's gaze."

Lyra Elcmene's usual serious expression turned into disbelief, her face reddening to a visible degree. Stolos, on the other hand, was staring openly and with barely hidden arousal. It was an expected display for a healthy young man, but Laemno still found it weird that he didn't even try to conceal it.

Anthea's finger briefly caressed Laemno's upper thigh, and then she retracted her hand with a teasing smile. "Unfortunately for you, dear Laemno, you're far too young. I hope you'll accept this as a parting gift~"

She got up from the bed, and the sea of hair followed behind like a wave of golden light.

"Oh my, I forgot. I don't believe we've been formally introduced to each other, have we?"

So you've done all this but forgot the introductions? Laemno stifled a bitter smile, surprised to find that part of him was cursing his young age.

"Please, allow me to do it." Lyra finally intervened after regaining her senses.

She took a step forward, extending her arm towards Anthea. "Honored One, the noble individual in front of you is Lady Anthea, the Grace of Blossoms. She's part of the Five Graces, Her Divine Majesty's personal companions and our holy nation's highest instances alongside the pontiffs."

"The Five Graces...?" Laemno echoed faintly, prying into his fragmented knowledge.

While the Pontiff of Stars and the Pontiff of Dawn were Hierapetra's two sacred pillars, the Five Graces were its cultural symbols and an object of worship in many cities, especially in the Western Province. As the Hallowed Sovereign's immemorial companions, they were considered secondary deities and rarely made a public appearance, though many myths and legends surrounded them.

In most tales, they were depicted as promiscuous young women without the negative connotation it held within Hierapetra's rather conservative society. On the contrary, sleeping with them was seen as a divine blessing that helped the heroes brave through their hardships.

With Anthea's earlier implications taken into account, there might have been some basis to those stories, but that wasn't what Laemno focused on.

Unlike the Pontiffs of Stars and Dawn, the Five Graces weren't some hierarchical ranks whose holders periodically changed. They were titles referring to the same individuals who had sparked legends about themselves even before the founding of the Kingdom of Stars and Astrologers.

Now that his thoughts were clearer, Laemno recalled that the Grace of Blossoms, Anthea, was associated with a pale and gilded beauty in folk tales—precisely as she was right now.

Magi possessed the ability to manipulate Mana and thus could acquire many wondrous aptitudes, but both extending one's lifespan and pseudo-immortality were supposedly within the realm of miracles. Yet, the Five Graces had always existed, even before recorded history. It meant that amongst the already powerful magi, they were considered undying monsters worthy of fear and respect.

And one of them was standing right in front of Laemno!

Anthea twirled strands of golden hair between her slender fingers, an indecipherable gleam in her eyes. "Now that we've been introduced, Stolos, Lyra, could you leave us alone for a moment?"

As the Novice and the Priestess promptly obeyed, the Grace of Blossoms gracefully took a seat on a nearby chair. While the thin garments covering her upper body were quite revealing, she wore an ample robe that completely hid everything underneath her abdomen. Still, Laemno could make out prominent bumps under the fabric as she crossed one leg above the other.

"A little intimacy could do us a lot of good, don't you think, dearest one?"

Although her tone accelerated Laemno's heartbeat, a chill cooled down his rapidly heating body when he noticed her expression. It was a stone-sculpted facade—a fake smile that was all too jarring to behold. How could he have missed that earlier?

"Tell me, cute little Laemno." Nothing in her tone changed, not even how she pronounced her words, but Laemno's hair stood on end as if he was facing an unfathomable predator. "When exactly did you learn spellcraft?"