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Pairs of Pumpkins Chapter 03:

The Displacement of the Duodecaplets

Marmalade lifted the heavy, brass knocker and slammed it into the towering, double door once. Twice. Thrice. She was a busy feline and while time was always on her side, there was no good excuse for someone as important as her to have to wait for anyone. She glanced over her shoulder at the two blank-faced, brutish bodyguards that towered behind her before she paced a few steps, impatiently.

The exchange that awaited her had been close to two decades in the making, with her part of the deal long ago paid and she only hoped the prize beyond those doors was worth the distance they'd traveled to fetch it. She'd spent many years trying to shift her mindset toward longer term investments like this, in the decades that followed her studies of entropic magic. The youthful vanity of the sorceress had driven her to focus her learning on defying aging and her success left her appearing deceptively young.

The feline didn't look a day over thirty with a black cloak hanging off her petite, lean body, a figure shaped both by a life of walking more miles than some ships would ever sail but also neglecting her diet when lost in her studies. Her orange, striped fur and matching, short-cropped head hair didn't have a trace of grey and her posture was erect with youthful curiosity. Her voice was young to match her appearance though her mannerisms suggested some experience and wisdom beyond her apparent years.

Even before she'd started making the long term investments that immortals could afford to wait out, making money always came easy for Marmalade. As a sorceress of ambivalent morality and anarchistic inclinations, there was always a service to sell or an angle to profit from. She was savvy enough to learn about banking in the early years of her immortality to keep her dubiously acquired wealth working for her. 'Passive income!' the old and rich had always advised her. It was the same long-term mentality that had piqued her interest in the wizard Zarron's designer children business. There was also something more personal to it, thanks to the particular bloodline he was using.

This order was what would turn out to be the first of her six children yet would be the last to return to her custody. This one was supposed to be special. Part of the deal was that Zarron needed custody of it through adulthood, to study the child's growth and development. Back then, she'd had no intention of raising any children, her own or otherwise but that changed as the idea of shaping young minds as if they were long-term investments grew on her. That was Zarron's idea too and the daughters he'd been raising must be near adulthood by now.

She'd bought five children over the four years that followed, even splurging on twins one year. Each one cost her a small fortune, even after sweetening up the old raccoon for a discount but this first one had only cost her a night of seducing a handsome, royal buffoon and a vial full of his very valuable semen.

She hadn't considered bringing the five along on her journey. They were all coming into their own as young men but she'd left them with their three nannies for safety and convenience, theirs and hers respectively. Now she had some regrets, as the boys at least had some personality which her bodyguards lacked. She looked back again at the two, towering, monoliths of maleness: a wolverine and a bull. Both were around seven feet tall and both almost that wide. They were silent, blank-faced and glassy-eyed, staring forward to the door. The wolverine carried a pair of axes slung over his shoulders and the bull, a two-handed sword broad enough that she could lay down upon the blade.

With a roll of her eyes to her companions and an annoyed whip of her tail, she turned and slammed the ornate knocker again. The building beyond the door was somewhere between a fanciful manor and a subtle fortress, built with both security and aesthetics in mind. It's design suggested it was quite old but smartly made though it's most secure feature was how tucked away it was from the rest of the world.

After her second knock, there was movement behind the fortified, double doors, the faint but purposeful stomping of boots. A security slit in the heavy door slid open, revealing b right green, canine eyes framed by white and red fur. They scanned about, annoyed before finding her. "What the hell, lady?! We don't get a lot of visitors around here. Nobody sits back here all day long, waiting for someone to knock!" His barking voice was youthful and irritated. "We're not expecting any visitors for another month. Go away."

Another month?! What kind of sloppy book-keeping had this baby-peddling wizard been doing to not have expected her? She bristled and her nostrils flared.

"Clearly there is some mistake. I have placed a VERY special order many years ago and I am here to take my delivery."

"I will check the records," the boy said after a loud sigh. "Name?"

"Madam Marmalade the Enchanter," she stood back enough to be seen, somehow expecting that the young man behind the door might recognize her. Her accented hinted of a distant, unplacable origin.

"I have a 'Miss Marmalade the Conjurer.'"

There was a huff of a sigh before she nods. "Yes, that's me. That was me. I've been focused on Enchantment for seventy seven years but Zarron knew me in my youth so he..."

"You're a month early, Miss Marmalade."

She stopped for moment then shook her head. "No, that can't be." Her memory was too impeccable to have bothered to write it down but she was sure it was the first day of summer in the 256th year of the Qii Era, he had told her to return. "The sun is shining and the birds are chirping. It looks like summer to me!"

"Yes, Miss Marmalade, we're having an unusually nice spring. You should come back in a month when summer starts."

She drew in a deep breath and exhaled, steadying herself before speaking again. "It's over a week's walk through a woefully neglected trail back to the nearest village. This place is enormous and I know there are guest quarters you can spare. I've stayed here before! The Purple Room, upstairs I believe it was."

"Master is not here at the moment. Only he can invite guests in. I am sorry, Miss Marmalade but you'll have to come..."

The feline sorceress had slowly raised her hands below his eyeline, muttering unintelligibly to herself and the effect soon became clear. The gears and chains that held closed the heavy doors started to move on their own, unlatching and unsecuring before they started to slowly swing open on their own. The young man's eyes doubled in size before he scrambled back from the door. He fled deeper into the while shouting out for help, disappearing from sight until the doors had opened up enough for her to see inside the opulent, tapestry draped foyer of the manor and the fleeing, adolescent fox in a tunic and wool pants. She stepped over the threshold, the doors coming to a rest less than half open as she passed through them and her two bodyguards fell into a single line behind her to be able to clear them.

The foyer was a huge, rectangular room, twice as wide as it was, deep. There was a split grand staircase at the far end of it, leading up to a stone catwalk that surrounded the room on three walls, ending in smaller, more utilitarian staircases on either side of the room. In the gap that split the grand staircase was a cavernous hallway leading deep into the Manor.

Grand, ancient tapestries hung from the walls, difficult to discern a consistent theme but they served to dull what would otherwise be an echoey room. In the center of it was a blood red circle of glass in the floor and underneath it, a large, black sigil nearly fifteen feet in diameter. She'd remembered seeing it on her last visit and that it had something to do with location based magic.

"Intruder! Intruder!" It was the red fox. "The wards aren't going off! Stone: help me!" He stopped at the center of the room where a sitting area was set up. There were two couches, some tables and chairs in an arrangement suited for a room many times smaller than this one. From one of the seats, another presence rose, a thick, tower of flesh erecting itself. Standing upright at almost nine feet tall, the chiseled, handsome brute appeared to also be a fox, though that was impossible at his fantastic scale. Unlike the younger vulpine running to him, his fur was a faded, light grey from head to toe and his eyes, a striking pinkish red, though black freckles splattered the fur of his chest. His striking figure and lack of color disappeared under a loose fitting brown robe but it could not hide his broad shoulders, muscled, V shaped torso and the prominent bulge hanging freely in the front. He started towards her with a blank look in his eyes.

"Oh my, he's an interesting one!" She covered her heart and stopped in place, the outside air ruffling her cloak as she poured into the keep, her two companions following her in perfect formation. "Is he mine?"

"No, he's not!" the young fox incredulously barked. "No guests. Master's orders. Stone: remove them!"

Marmalade sighed and slumped with an annoyed look toward the loud, small fox as her two guards stepped up and in to flank her, reaching back for weapons but she raised a hand to stop them. "That won't be necessary, boys. Like I said, Zarron knows me. Tell him that won't be necessary." The boy was too far away to use a charm spell and she didn't want to start trouble with the old raccoon. The albino brute lurched forward on command, as expressionless as her own guards and the feline sighed. As he closed enough distance, she stared him right into his pink eyes. "Stop."

He didn't. The attempted spell had zero effect on the albino, fox-brute and her jaw clenched.

"STOP," she repeated. Nothing.

"SLEEP!" she barked to no reaction.

"Fuck." She was used to this working. "No weapons. Don't hurt him. Just stop him. And don't step on that seal." she ordered over her shoulder to her bodyguards before slipping gracefully back behind them.

They nodded in unison and released their weapons, shifting to wider stances and stepping shoulder to shoulder to form a wall between the giant fox and their ward. As he closed the distance, another commotion echoed into the room, swelling from the balcony: double time marching. Boots on stone, metal armor and weapons. From a single, wide hallway at the top of the grand staircase, two rows of grey-furred canine soldiers poured out, metal armor rattling and sheathed swords swinging at their hips. In each of their hands was a large crossbow and over their shoulders, a quarrel of impressive sized bolts. They spread uniformly to positions on the balcony before lifting their crossbows to train on the intruders. "Stone! Stand down!" the teen fox barked and the brute obliged, barely ten paces left to a clash with the feline's hulking escorts.

Marmalade regretted for a second time today, not learning to teleport. Her mind raced through her options as the situation had so rapidly escalated and her magic failed to affect the big fox. She was running low on options that wouldn't end lives, cause massive property damage and otherwise sour her relationship with another, potent and dangerous wizard.

"This is all a big misunderstanding. There is no need for violence. I am a repeat customer of your Master. Probably one of your best. I assure you that Zarron will be quite upset if you riddle us with arrows before he's had the chance to get any more of my money."

"She just barged in," the red fox barked, explaining to the soldiers above. "She used magic to bypass the locks and the wards."

"And yet, here I am inside without having caused any damage at all. I only want to stay until Zarron returns because there is nowhere else for miles!"

"If the Master has not arranged it in advance, you need to leave," one of the young men on the balcony called down. Were these more of his experiments, all grown up? How many of them had he kept for himself? Their impressive stature and coats suggested they may have been crossbred with a heartier canine breed, like a wolf. "If you insist on staying then you will be our prisoners until the Master returns."

CRACK!

A pulse of electric energy and hot air surged through the room then like lightning had struck inside, fur standing on end. The smell of ozone overwhelmed the room for a moment. A column of bluish smoke appeared from nothing, surrounding the seal in the center of the room and then disappearing almost as quick as it had arrived. As it cleared, it revealed Zarron, a aged, raccoon sorcerer but looking not a day older than the last time she'd seen him over a decade ago. He was frantic, standing over the prone bodies of two canine women, one draped over the other, both were taking up entirely too much space. He'd been hunched down to lay a hand on them both.

Marmalade looked on and laughed with relief, oblivious to the state of the two girls with him. She pushed inbetween her bodyguards to stand in front of them again. "Zarron! Oh thank the Gods you're here..."

The fiery-eyed raccoon whipped around to face her and confusion pushed through his frantic demeanor. "Miss Marmalade?! What are you doing here?!" he interrupted before looking around at the scene, seeing the dozen archers lining the balcony and the massive, fox-brute dangerously close to her Escorts. The vixen on top of the stack, propped up by tremendous bulk under her purple robe, rolled off unsteadily to flop on her side at the raccoon's feet. Laying there, she was an oddly shaped lump, either tremendously overweight or otherwise encumbered.

"What happened?! Are they alright?!" The young red fox raced toward the three of them in hysterics.

"They're fine. I don't have time for this! Have to go back. Stone! Get the girls off the seal. Do it now!" With that, he stood upright and gave a sharp nod before disappearing into another, much lesser and dramatic cloud of smoke.

"Stay there!" Duayne, the apparent least of Marmalade's worries warned before he rushed to the seal. Stone, the albino-brute had turned away from the trio of intruders and lumbered over to the sigil with no obvious urgency. He scooped up the black-haired vixen in the red dress first, presenting her outrageous curves for a moment before he cradled her semi-gently and carried her off the seal and towards a couch. The young, red fox arrived next, looking over the more oddly shaped sister in her purple robe for any obvious wounds or injuries where she lay.

"Get her off the seal, Duayne! Now!" one of the soldiers above shouted down at him. He nodded quickly, scooping his hands under her spine with some strain then hooking his arms under hers. The action twisted her to face the ceiling, swinging gigantic obscenities of massive breasts to roll on top of her like a tide of molasses, occupying most of her torso under her purple, silk robe. Grunting with effort, he started to drag her but Stone was back already and he shoveled her up effortlessly to cradle her by her spine and under her knees.

Marmalade gasped at the revealed the obscenity of her figure and stared with a sneer at all that heavy, soft flesh being compressed between her curved spine and her thighs as she was manipulated by the towering fox-brute. They must have been the daughters Zarron had kept, all grown up now. The black-haired one was built as she would have expected the girls of the bloodline to mature but other one while otherwise proportionate, had developed breasts well beyond anything she'd ever seen. It was hard to believe it was a natural endowment, even among this bloodline. "Disgusting cows," she muttered with a disapproving shake of her head.

CRACK!

Duayne scrambled back from where he sat outside the seal as the wizard, Zarron appeared again in the center of it, unflatteringly hunched down again. This time he was over a huge, limp, recumbent stallion at his feet. The massive brute of a horse was armed and armored as a seasoned warrior would be but all his weapons remained stowed and accounted for. "Stone: get him off the seal! Duayne, make sure he's alive. I'm going back for Portia and Joseph." After straightening his posture, Zarron nodded again and a small, momentary cloud of purple followed his disappearance. The effects of teleportation seemed to be more dramatic on the receiving end.

"What is going on over there?" Marmalade mused to herself with a chuckle. "A slumber party?"

Stone set the purple-robed, freakishly-busty vixen down on the second of the foyer couches before he turned in place and shambled back to the seal. Again, he hunched down to lift the horse from under his arms then squatted and hefted the thick stallion over his shoulder. The horse was similar in size to the vulpine brute, which only made the way he managed to carry him even more impressive, even as he only walked a few steps out of the seal before dumping him out of the floor, both couches taken by sleeping vixens.

Duayne scrambled to his feet then rushed to the aid of Zarron's equine heavy, checking his breath and pulse. "He's alive!" he excitedly declared but the room was too tense in their stalemate to even acknowledge. The young fox's excited smile melted and he set about inspecting him for injury.

It was the purple-robed, enormous bosomed of the two vixens that stirred first, awkwardly propping herself up, fighting against the weight and bulk of her chest. Silvery-white legs with charcoal socks ended in sandals, her fur uncommonly long, even for an arctic fox. The fur of her hands and face was similarly long, making the bulky vixen bulkier still with fluff.

Seeing her stir, Duayne rushed from the stallion to his sister's side but she spoke before he could ask anything. "Zarron knocked us out. We met mother..." There was a collective gasp among the twelve soldiers and the red fox. "She has Joseph. They..." she paused and collected her words with uncertainty. Before she could finish, the black haired vixen burst out, awake now as well and furious.

"She had Joseph, alright. She had Joseph INSIDE her! Our sick mother was fucking her own son!" Another gasp echoed through the room at the declaration, this time including the feline sorceress but she was the only one who started to laugh.

"Evangeline!" Duayne darted from one sister to the other as the black-haired vixen sat up and continued. "Our poor, innocent brother! Yet another despicable act for a despicable woman. I hope Zarron turns her inside out."

"Being despicable is the legacy of your lineage, girls. It's as much a part of your blood as your ridiculous breasts are," Marmalade nearly sang with smugness and both vixens turned to her but only Evangeline had an obvious scowl. "It's true. You're descendants from a long line of tyrants and hypocrites."

"You know our mother?" Evangeline's ears flattened back and she rose from her seat, presenting a young woman in a red dress with tall, alert ears like blades, two-tone fur of pure white capped with black at her extremities. Her figure was bountiful yet pinched at her middle and she was over-encumbered by a melon-like bosom but it was manageable in size, unlike her sister, who was apparently over-endowed to the point of disability. Her scowl announced she had no fear of the feline nor the towers or brutish meat that flanked her.

"I know your grandmother," Marmalade explained. "She's a xenophobic, iron-fisted hypocrite. She's a zealot who crushes joy, love and color in the name of racial purity. She gets it from hundreds of years of the same. So I'm not at all surprised to hear about your mother and her own son. In fact, I have a theory that your bloodline is so afraid of outsiders that the whole lot of you were inbred to be the way you are..." she gestured with her eyes to the chests of the two vixens. "...and you've been inbred ever since. There's no other rational explanation for what you sisters pack in their blouses and your brothers, in their trousers."

She had stepped forward as she spoke but a safe enough distance away from Eva still to not give the archers an excuse to fire. "So hopefully Zarron's care and education has helped you to not be the monsters that you were born to be. I know that helped with my boys."

Evangeline simmered with deep, huffing breath. A glare back at her sister found her calm as always, despite the offenses to their entire family, of which all the conscious residents in the room were. "You've got nothing, Anastasia? No spells to shut this witch up?" Purple-robe draped shoulders shrugged and Evangeline looked up then, to the semi-circle of her crossbow-armed brothers, ready to protect her. With a slow menace, she planted fists on her hips before her full attention turned back to the cat. "So, who the fuck are you?"

Duayne, the red fox hurried up to her side and blurted out before she could answer. "Miss Marmalade, the Intruder who was about to become a pincushion. She might still."

Eva eyed the balcony again before giving a calm shrug. "That seems reasonable. What are you waiting for?"

"You said you already have some of our brothers and sisters?" Anastasia spoke up, her voice soft and curious among the immediate threat of violence that surrounded them. She planted her hands deliberately on the edge of the couch before easing herself carefully to her feet. Standing upright over time revealed how top heavy she was and the degree to which is impaired her. The feline chuckled at her awkwardness.

"Only boys. Five of them. I knew how you girls were going to turn out and I needed able bodies to protect me. Not some jiggling, milk jugs that can't even stand up or move their arms properly."

Evangeline's growled but Anastasia, who had all the more reason to take offense, remained calm and there was more interest than offense in her tone when she replied.

"You're the one who has five of our brothers. That's a lot of money, even with a discount."Her hands folded in front of her lap, while the width of her bosom hid half of her arms behind them, down to the mid-forearm.

"It's a lot more money to pay three full time nannies to raise them them all but Zarron and I have history. And while he used his magic for weird experiments that make him money, I skipped the middle step and went straight to making money. Magic can be extremely profitable, if you've got the right buyers. And the right magic."

Ana's head tilted aside, digesting the thought for a long moment. "Zarron doesn't experiment for the money," she said before she blinked a new thought into her head. "You're Miss Marmalade the Conjurer."

"Enchanter," the feline inserted.

"I've seen the ledgers. You own more of our brothers than almost anyone: five of them hybrids and one... pureblood. I've seen the billing formula too. He charges three to five times more for hybrids and three for purebloods. Zarron charged you less than the base price for all of them. The pureblood was free," Ana gave a small twitch at that recollection. "Nobody else ever got one for free."

"You remember all that? Look at the brains on mega-tits here!" the feline chuckled to herself, looking up to the bull who forced a laugh as well. The wolverine picks it up a moment later, ending just as she does. "Yes, actually all that is correct. I have them all except the... what did you call it? Pureblood?" She gives another huff of a laugh. "What a pretty sounding word for 'inbred.'"

"I didn't make it up. It's what it says in the ledger," Ana gave a small shrug that had a big effect on the front of her robe. "We only have one pureblood here: Stone."

Duayne took a few steps back from Evangeline, pushing back his ears with hands, gripping his head. "Nobody said Stone was going anywhere! She can't take him!" He retreated some steps back to stand between them and the brute of a fox, still standing near the sleeping equine, staring at the ceiling and oblivious to the room's exchange.

"You're here for Stone?!" Eva laughed in disbelief and gave an aloof shrug. "I wasn't aware that he's inbred but that makes perfect sense. I don't know if you noticed but he's a drooling moron. So, good luck with that. You get what you pay for, I guess."

Marmalade gave a small smile and turned her palms out toward the black-haired vixen. "I don't need him for interesting conversations. Besides, he's nice to look at. But it does seem he's a bit dense..."

CRACK!

Another jolt surged through the room and a new pillar of smoke pushed up from the seal. This time, Zarron was on his feet and elbows, scrambling back before he stopped and panted at the edge of the seal. "Dammit!"

"Bring her back in chains! Or her pieces in a bag!" Eva doubled forward and snarled encouragement.

The fuming raccoon pounded the ground twice and growled. He tensing up and nodded sharply, as he'd done before, when he disappeared. But he did not disappear this time, still sitting before the seal. "GRRRRRRRRNNNGGGHHH!" He nodded again violently with no results. He slumped then, deflated and defeated. "The seals are all broken. There isn't safe way to teleport back to the Pale Lands now. And she's got Joseph."

"Portia, you said? Their mother? A Runaway Princess got the best of you? Twice?" Marmalade folded her arms and shifted her stance, unimpressed.

"Almost twenty years have passed since she ran away, Marmalade. I know we can easily lose perspective on time once age doesn't matter anymore but she's had half a lifetime to learn new skills. It turns out she really did take up adventuring and learned how to fight. And she was completely resistant to my magic!" He pushed off the ground and wobbled as he rose to his feet, one hand holding his back.

"Interesting. I just had the same thing happen to me with your brute, Stone."

Zarron paused and squinted, his ears moving closer together atop his head. "You tried to use magic on Stone?" He gave a huff of a chuckle with realization. "Ahhh, you tried a charm. No, that wouldn't have worked. Stone is too stupid for any mental magic to affect him. No, Portia must have had some kind of anti-magic charm or item." He paused and moment and narrowed his eyes, firm and scolding. "Don't use magic on my things."

"Well, that's actually why I'm here Zarron: I believe that per our agreement, he is my thing," she straightened herself out in a confident poise, her tail swishing behind her. "But if he is resistant to mental magic then we might have a wrinkle in our agreement."

Zarron slouched and sighed. "Look Marmalade: the whole 'pureblood' thing?"

"Inbred," Marmalade firmly corrected.

"Wait, are there are other inbred brothers and sisters?" Evangeline gasped to Anastasia who gave a small nod, either nonplussed or already aware. She had seen the ledgers, after all.

"Tati and Titian were also... inbred," Anastasia explained quietly before Zarron's cold glare silenced them both.

With their conversation halted, Zarron glared at the feline for a long moment, considering his words. "They were all failures," he finally announced. "The first two boys, Tati and Titian, were twins... naturally twins. I didn't force a split. They were the most abominable, little monsters I've ever seen and at this point, I've seen a lot of children. I sold them off to a military academy when they were five, hoping they'd learn some discipline. I received a complaint from them a few years back that the boys they bought turned out to be... not quite boys, after all. Last I heard they ran away. It was a big mess.

"The next three I sold off as they were born. Not one but two of them have since disappeared as murder suspects and the last one was returned after a few years because he was too damn stupid to be of much good. He's strong but no one wanted to buy a dim-witted, six year old. The last one I tried making was born a feeble runt and sold off at another deep discount. I believed your theory that this bloodline benefited from inbreeding but all I got was freaks, psychos, runts and morons. That grand experiment was a bust. The Vasiljev children, it turns out are affected negatively by inbreeding just like anyone else. Maybe even moreso."

Anastasia glanced to Stone then Marmalade, studying her reaction while she bit her lower lip, holding back.

Marmalade took a moment to consider the explanation. "Great. So now my free child that I tracked down and seduced a damn PRINCE for is returned merchandise and a fucking idiot that I can't even Charm? That wasn't the plan, Zarron. They were supposed to be unique. Tits here said you charge triple for the inbreds."

Zarron grumbled. "We don't talk pricing with the customers, Anastasia." With his attention back to Marmalade, he continued. "I did get triple for three of them but I had to give two normal sons up, when they returned Stone. The twins and the runt were deeply discounted. Nobody has enough money to buy a designer child but only enough to buy a defective one."

Marmalade considered the situation with her tail swishing faster, irritated. "So you owe me for the price of three. Three sons." Zarron's whole face compressed into a scowl but she didn't relent. "It isn't my fault that they turned out terrible and that was the going rate when we made our deal: I get you the sperm of one of Portia's brothers, you make your little inbreds and I get one, triple-price child for free."

"You stole sperm from some guy so you could breed it with his sister?!" Eva swung her hands out before her with a jostle of her chest, glaring between them. "What the fuck is wrong with you two?"

"The whole idea that there was any value in the inbreds was your idea!" Zarron snapped at the feline but she was undeterred.

"We made a hypothesis and it didn't work but that doesn't change what the deal was. I did a job worth the base price, times three. You owe me that, Zarron. Not like you don't have enough of them," she gestured to the dozen canines on the balcony, still ready to fire. "Frankly, having five of these little brats in my house made me rethink immortality. How many hundreds have you made now?"

Zarron growled at her logic before he conceded to it. "Fine. Three kids."

"Three sons. You know I don't want daughters. Not like them," Marmalade looked sideways to a disbelieving Eva and a blank-faced Ana.

Eva spun to look at her brothers on the balcony above. "Will someone please shoot this bitch?!"

"Stop it, Eva." The raccoon rolled his eyes. "Fine, three sons."

"Three MATURE sons." Marmalade insisted. "I agreed to sixteen years because that's when the spell will work. I can't wait another sixteen. I can't have another crying baby in my house."

"We have to start young if we want them to imprint with you," Zarron defended. "You want to raise them your way, you have to actually raise them!"

"I came here to pick up a mature boy. So you give me three, mature sons or something else of equal value. I can handle the imprinting. You know that."

Zarron stewed, clenching his fists. He stopped himself short of pouting with a long, slow exhale before looking up and around the balcony to the twelve canine soldiers above, their crossbows still aimed but their postures softened and confused glances were now being exchanged. They were likely too far away to be following the conversation, at their elevation and distance. "Fine. I'm losing my ass trying to keep all these mouths fed anyway."

"And a one Teleport scroll," Marmalade blurted. Zarron growled and glared back at her.

"Fine. But nothing else!" Angry eyes waited for her to acknowledge. She did, closing her eyes with a soft smile and his attention returned to the armed teens that surrounded them.

"DUODECAPLETS: STAND DOWN."

Marmalade looked on with curiosity as the raccoon sorcerer commanded them and they obeyed. The crossbows were drawn up and in toward the young men's bodies in unison, so that a misfire would now only hit the ceiling. All twelve of them moved their feet together and stood upright, straight and erect. Zarron lifted his finger and pointed to line between the third and fourth among them before he gestured splitting them. "You three: come down here. The rest of you are dismissed."

The teen soldiers exchanged looks of concern in the moment but before hesitation would have become disobedience, the twelve split in two and nine of them dejectedly shambled back to the corridor from where they had emerged. The remaining three exchanged looks to each other of more obvious unease before they turned to the closest stairway, a long, grand sweep downward from the furthest extent of one side of the balcony.

"You let this woman come into your home, insult you and us and now you're going to give her three of out brothers?"

"You heard her, Eva. Stone is no good for her," Anastasia gave a distance look and a shrug before she looked back as the three descended the stairs. "He'll be better off here. Whatever she has planned, the Duodecaplets: they're tougher."

"You have hundreds of brothers and sisters, Eva," Zarron glared back at the eldest daughter. "Every one of them past you two have been merchandise. What do you suddenly care about three?"

"Because they came up with us."

"They didn't come up with you two, Evangeline. Anastasia, I raised as a daughter and a student. You I raised..." he paused and reconsidered his words. "This lot was raised by teachers and instructors to be obedient soldiers and you happened to have seen them around over the years."

"They've been here in our home since they were infants," Eva held back her snarl, ears flat back against her head.

"They aren't a part of this household."

"They are!" she snapped while her thick tail swung rapidly.

Zarron turned his body to square off with her then jabbed a finger to the bottom of the stairwell where the first of the three reached the ground floor. "What's his name?"

"You didn't give him one."

Zarron's tone became firm and challenging. "I did. You know his name."

Eva's head was tilted forward, glaring under her eyelids as she growled: "Duodecaplet."

"And him?" The raccoon pointed to the next in line as they drew closer.

"Also, Duodecaplet."

"Him?"

"You gave them all one name," Eva was barely opening her mouth to talk now, her tail lifting behind her while the fur of the back of her neck . "You treat twelve of them as one and any less than that as a fraction of one."

"Exactly. Duanye got a name. Even Stone got a name. But these boys weren't even supposed to survive being born," Zarron's attention was fully on Evangeline as he spoke. Duayne observed and listened from the background. He looked over to Stone, crestfallen but the brutish canine was unconcerned with the words or anything else. He still stood there next to the stallion after his last command had been executed, like a machine of flesh that was currently switched off.

"Evangeline, you know the story: I was just trying to see how many times I could split an egg. It became unreliable after four or five so when I tried twelve, I didn't expect them all to survive."

The three canine soldiers arrived and lined up opposite Zarron before standing at attention, with no sign of fondness or even acknowledgement of their two elder sisters and Evangeline clenched her eyes shut, lowering her head further. Marmalade started her visual inspection, pacing around them, more interested in her merchandise than the conversation. Up close now, it was easy to see their patterns and builds were as lupine as they were vulpine and the twelve were so strong and formidable for the influence of a wolf as a father.

"The Duocaplets are only remarkable because they survived infancy. Now they are just more mouths to feed. Nine of them are more than enough to protect us with all the magic we've got around here. After my current line of experiments are complete, we won't have to wait sixteen years for a viable bodyguard either. You have no connection to them, Evangeline. They're merchandise that sat on the shelf for too long. Let it go."

Marmalade's eyes followed their exchange but her head only moved at the last words, as her curiosity piqued. She stepped forward, glancing over to see Evangeline fuming but not looking long enough to maintain her ire. Instead, she turned her attention back to her new acquisitions, giving a poke of them here and squeeze there, assessing their fitness and asserting her dominance. "They certainly don't look defective to me."

The three were all wolf-fox mixes but this close it was clear that they were also entirely identical, from their six-foot four height and strong, athletic builds to matching, wolflike grey and white fur patterns. Though they were disciplined and rigid at the inspection, both sisters could see that the three were hiding some nervous. Marmalade looked back to Stone, appraisingly before she tensed her shoulders and inhaled. Rolling off her booted heel, she gave a leisurely stroll back around the three of them to rejoin the old raccoon. "Yes, they'll do. I will need a private place to conduct the ritual."

"What ritual?!" Evangeline took a step forward, Anastasia advancing ever-so-slightly behind her with some interest. The three young men kept their heads straight and attentive while their darting eyes betrayed a spike in their nervous curiosity.

"You wouldn't be interested, Anastasia. It's sex magic."

The top-heavy sister cleared her throat and blinked quickly but didn't reply otherwise. The nervousness of the three young men changed tangibly to a different kind of excitement but all the while, they kept their poise.

Marmalade canted her head aside and squinted, ears pushing back and looked squarely at Anastasia. "Why wouldn't this fat cow like sex magic? She can't be good for much else besides breeding."

Eva threw her hands up and looked to Zarron expectantly while Ana tensed only slightly. He answered for her, looking right past the black-haired daughter. "Anastasia here is my apprentice as a sorcerer and she's quite good at it. And I tried introducing her to sex magic because... I mean, look at her," he gestured while she remained motionless in her upright posture, her robe hanging from the overabundance of her chest and masking all of her other womanly curves under the umbrella it formed.

"I see that part," Marmalade glared back to the bustier sister. "I just don't see how this empty-eyed bimbo can move her arms with enough range to ever throw any spell with a somatic component."

"True, there's a lot of magic she'll just never be able to do with those giant breasts in the way," Zarron was all too casual in conceding her disability. It was one Anastasia knew that he'd quite intentionally given her and her jaw tightened just visible enough that might have been noticed, were anyone minding her face just then. "But there's a lot she can still do. Just not sex magic!" she said with a laugh. "As soon as she started flipping through those the spellbooks and seeing the illustrations, she had a bit of a meltdown and threw up all over my study. Several priceless, erotic spellbooks were ruined. I guess nobody really needs a permanent erection but some of the fertility spells could have been useful."

"I was younger then," Ana spoke matter-of-factly through her tight jaw but Zarron only laughed.

"Not that much younger, Ana. I don't know how with your heritage, you could be so afraid of sex. You certainly don't get it from your mother."

"The pictures. It looked like they were hurt," she defended softly.

Ana tried to relax her lips, hiding the tightness of her jaw though her faster blinks betrayed her restraint. Eva gave a huff of a laugh at the story. "Lucky that not all your girls are prudes. Zarron's got big plans to pop my cherry on my 18th birthday."

Marmalade turned her head slowly to Zarron, like a cog struggling to turn without adequate grease, her brow craning as high as the muscles of her forehead would allow. The elder raccoon took an unconscious step back at the feline's ire. "A man needs a wife. A woman needs a husband. What's more perfect than one he raised and trained himself?"

The feline held her tongue for a long, judgemental moment with a gaze of daggers until she finally said it: "You've grown more disgusting in your age, Zarron."

"I'm not forcing her to marry me. I could have a whole harem but I choose to take a wife. And I'm waiting til she's an adult!"

The feline's attention whipped to the eldest daughter. "And you're okay with this?! You?! The bitchy one?!"

"A girl is supposed to be married," Eva shrank, her pride seemingly stripped away at once. She shrugged before she gestures to the unconscious horse on the floor. "Every other boy in this house but him is my brother."

"I'm not married," Marmalade snapped back.

"That's not surprising," Eva shot back.

Marmalade pause before her posture softened and she chuckled, eyes darting down Eva's body. "But I'm not deformed either. I suppose you should take any man who will have you. Doubly true for her." Her eyes flicked aggressively over Anastasia but Evangeline was the one who erupted, stepping right up to the feline and balling up her fist.

"I'm done with you," Eva said with a tick while her muzzle curled into a snarl. She brought back her arm to swing with fire of rage in her eye but Marmalade hadn't been oblivious to her fizzling fuse.

She threw out her hand toward the teen girl, barked "STOP!" and Evangeline did, instantly and right where she stood. It seemed she was paralyzed from the neck down for the moment. Furious eyes turned to the elder raccoon, her face and muzzle still functioning. "Are you going to do something about this witch? Or does every woman get the best of you?"

"Calm down, Eva. Marmalade is an old friend and one of my best customers."

Anastasia craned her head just a degree or two and glanced over to her sister, already having established from the ledger that, that was not the case. Zarron didn't seem to notice as he turned his attention to the feline. "Marmalade: stop insulting them."

"As you wish, Zarron. Be sure to invite me to the wedding."

"I sent you an invitation last year. You never replied."

"Later this year?"

"Three weeks from now."

"I have plans," Marmalade shook her head then looked to the frozen vixen. "But have fun with your... this... ewww."

The feline's patience was almost visible to the room as it abruptly fizzled out of existence and she turned on her heel to face Zarron. "Look: my intention in coming here was not to crash your affairs and I don't care about your mama drama with Princess Pumpkin-tits or your bitchy Bride-to-be. I thought you'd be neck deep in the boring business of egg-insemination or baby distribution. I'm just here to collect. I need a ritual space and privacy and we'll be on our way in the morning."

Zarron gave a small, begrudging nod. "Of course. Right this way, Marmalade. You three: come. Leave your weapons," he looked pointedly to the three wolf-foxes and they nodded in unison, obliging his order to set down their crossbows and swords on the floor then following behind them. "The rest of you... I don't know. Clean up your rooms, girls. We're staying here now. Duayne, have Stone bring Darren to his room to sleep it off. Then get started on dinner."

Marmalade's self-amused smirk crept back across her face. "Zarron: your horse is named... Darren? Why not Darr-ON?"

"I didn't name him, Marmalade. I just hired him." The grumpy, old raccoon led the feline sorceress, her bodyguards and the three, teen wolf-fox soldiers out of the main foyer of the Manor, down the long hallway between the grand staircase through the spine of the structure. At the end of it, they reached a tall set of double doors that began to open on their own with a twist of Zarron's half-raised hand, revealing a stone and tile room with another set of double doors beyond it.

Marmalade grinned and looked back to the three wolfoxs that followed behind her. "I hope you boys are ready for this." It was a statement, not a conversation started and she turned her focus to the room. She threw one hand to the left of the doorway and another to the right. Without a word necessary between them, her bodyguards obliged and split off with the wolverine posting up on the left and the bull on the right. They turned around in unison as Zarron crossed the threshold, followed by Marmalade then the three young soldiers in loose but defendable formation.

Their eyes drank in the new room as if they'd never been inside it before, despite being raised in the house. The whole, rectangular room was tiled on the floor and up the walls, with intricate, hand-laid patterns that pulled attention to the steaming tub of water laid in the floor, with room for five or six at once. Or at least two, if Marmalade's bodyguards, Stone of Darren were to step into it.

The boys exchanged nervous looks with each other, restraining the desire to speak as they'd seemingly been trained to do. Zarron stepped past the tub and turned to face them while Marmalade stopped at his side with the three on the other side of the water.

"Alright you three, here's how this is going to work: you're leaving with her. She's your Master now. You'll do as she says and serve her like you've served me. Unless she tells you to hurt me," he added quickly and Marmalade give a disbelieving shake of her head.

One of the three snappily raised a hand. "Permission to speak, Master." The old raccoon made him wait a moment before giving a nod of approval. "We are Duodecaplets. We are twelve. That was how we've lived and how we've trained. Now we're to be separated from our brothers... permanently?"

Zarron started to speak but Marmalade reached out across to silence him with a single finger. "I would never break up a family. I promise you will see your brothers again and it won't be long at all. Think of it as a temporary reassignment." They seemed satisfied with the answer and their tension waned before the feline smiled, appeased. "But first things first: the ritual. A formality really. The important part is that I need you three all cleaned up because like Zarron said: there's sex. With me. So get yourselves undressed and cleaned up! First one in the water is the first into bed." She grinned and winked as she finished and the three looked to each other with disbelieving eyes before they burst into action, scrambling to strip away their away armor and clothes. Zarron watched Marmalade and her self-satisfied smile. His eyes narrowed.

"You lie with such ease."

She spoke through her toothy smile with similar ease. "You sell children, Zarron. Don't get sanctimonious with me."

He looked back to the eager boys, oblivious to their fate. "I could sell you the other nine."

"I don't want them. I have too many now."

"I could give you four other boys if you can wait a year or two."

"I can't."

He sucked in a breath before nodding. "It's painless, at least?"

"Probably not for me!" she glances over to the raccoon with a laugh, gesturing to the three in various states of undress, one of them already with his pants off, an oversized bulge jostling in the front of his undergarments. "But for them? Absolutely painless. Their last, clear and free memory will be one hell of an orgasm. And then? Who knows what will go through their heads? Probably nothing at all until they're told what to do," she shrugged and looked back to them, speaking to the raccoon discreetly. "Is the altar prepped? I Imagine it's not?"

Zarron sighed. "I'll get it ready." Her started toward the next set of double doors just as water splashed dramatically behind him, announcing that the first of the three was in the tub. With a small hesitation and a shake of his head, he pulled the doors apart, revealing his elaborate ritual chamber beyond. Marmalade looked over, noticing the hesitation and caught the old raccoon muttering to himself as she stepped into the room.

"You poor bastards."

TO BE CONTINUED...