Moriko was amused at Mordecai's antics, though she also understood why he'd provoked Dersuta. He was at an awkward point in reawakening his powers; he needed to go to ridiculous lengths to put himself under enough strain that his body and spirit would respond properly.

But it had put the rest of them in a difficult position. Mordecai still looked fresh enough to take on a serious fight, but Moriko felt thoroughly and painfully wrung out, and everyone else looked to be in about the same state. The kids were even worse off, though Fuyuko at least was beginning to recover.

Frustratingly, even being this exhausted wasn't helping with an issue Moriko had been having the past few days. Hosting even a tiny drop of a god's power like she had, did not come without a price. Moriko was feeling hyper-aware of everything around her in ways that left her with some mixed feelings. Previously, such as with Gemeti, Moriko had needed to focus on the girl to vaguely pick up her passion-related emotions. Now she was being slammed by them from everyone.

It was almost erotic to be able to feel how passionate someone was about whatever they were doing, but it was also a rather indiscriminate sense that she couldn't control. Even worse, Moriko could tell that this was the result of her mind not really processing this new sense correctly; she knew about this perspective from her studies, but that was different than experiencing it, let alone understanding it.

For the goddess of passions, non-erotic passions were just as potent as the erotic ones, full of pleasure and ecstasy without being sexual.

Moriko's mind had trouble matching that intense level of pleasure to non-erotic passions without also associating it with erotic ones.

Besides the difficulties that caused, she also did not want to know how much Bellona was enjoying cooking and teaching how to cook, or how much Xarlug had enjoyed that extended battle across the plains.

She did not want to know every time Orchid and Paltira exchanged flirty looks; she really did not want to know how each of the teenage boys were feeling about the various pretty girls and women around them. Most of all, she did not want to know the exact difference in intensity between what Amrydor felt for Fuyuko and what he felt for other girls.

As if all that wasn't bad enough, Moriko had reason to worry that this was never going to entirely go away. Most people wouldn't have to worry about it, but most people weren't also faerie queens. She was suspicious that this was part of the set of powers that allowed some fae to become muses to mortals.

At least the experience had come with some benefits besides helping Mordecai with the conflict between his faerie nature and his oaths.

Sakiya's parting advice had been useful; Moriko needed to be confident that she had the trust of her wife and her husband, and to be comfortable with being herself. This didn't mean indulging herself the way Moriko had before she met them, but it did make her realize there was a different option. It was possible they would be open to occasionally bringing another lover to their joint bed for a night or two.

Moriko even had an idea of someone whom it might be interesting to invite, though any such ideas needed to wait until after Satsuki's situation was dealt with. It seemed, mm, rude to even casually play with another while Satsuki was waiting on their decision.

Which brought up another point of advice from the Lady of Passions. It had taken a bit for Moriko to understand what other aspect of Sakiya the goddess had been referring to, but that was mostly because Moriko didn't particularly want to go there.

For some people, guilt can be assuaged through steady penance over time. Mordecai was an example of that. He needed to do good works to feel less bad. The punishment of his confinement had been needed to begin the process, but more intense punishments would not help.

Other people need a more personal touch, to experience their punishment to an extreme that was a twisted sort of passion, though it also needed to be sincere agony instead of masochism or such. Lightweight teasing would be as much pleasure as pain, so playfulness could not be part of it.

The Lady of Passion's more dangerous side was that of a punishing fury, and Moriko had a dreadful certainty that Satsuki was going to require being thoroughly purged of her guilt. The steady toil of penance was not the sort of thing that the woman would find sufficiently cathartic if she needed to work through her feelings of guilt.

Having Satsuki become a part of their relationship while she was still burdened by guilt could be problematic. The woman was already unstable when her emotions got away from her; guilt that had centuries to fester seemed like something that could exacerbate the issue. It did not help Moriko's unease that she couldn't imagine Satsuki's issues regarding Mordecai being enough to require this sort of purging, and it made her wonder what else Satsuki had done.

Dealing with the nine-tails' guilt this way was not something Moriko wanted to participate in. Few if any priests of Sakiya did; Moriko and her fellows pursued this path to bring the pleasure of fulfilled passions to others. This duty was almost the opposite, yet, who else could do it?

It had to be one of the three of them, Moriko was certain of that. But the others had their roles to play already. It would not be good for either of them to deal with Satsuki at this level.

Moriko used her concerns to distract herself from the ongoing awareness of everyone else's emotions, especially the more passionate ones. That helped through dinner and the conversations that followed, but she couldn't keep that up when it came time to sleep.

Despite how exhausted she was, Moriko found herself facing another sleepless night after her watch shift. So instead, she meditated as best she could while curled up with Kazue and Mordecai. It wasn't as perfectly restful as sleep, but it cleared the body and mind at least.

She briefly wondered if more rowdy activities might distract her long enough to fall asleep, but it wasn't like they had the privacy to do anything else; there were no tents put up inside the shelter, to ensure everyone could respond quickly if needed. The weight of her familiar was a comforting warmth that helped her rest, even if she couldn't sleep.

Before they set out for the next day's worth of delving, they resorted the younger member’s team groupings. It was clear that teamwork and instinctive trust was stronger amongst some individuals than others, so it was time to make everyone work with teammates they knew less well. This not only provided a chance to grow stronger bonds, but it also got them more used to working with people they didn't know well in general. Being able to work reasonably closely with strangers or near-strangers was a valuable skill.

This also meant having some of them focus on different roles. Fuyuko was teamed up with Allannia and Rika, as she'd had the least experience with them. But as she and Rika had somewhat similar fighting styles, Fuyuko switched to her falcatas, which were heavier than the blades Rika used.

Once the rest of the team was divided up similarly, Moriko took to the skies and called forth her own bow from her bracers. She was only a modest archer compared to her other fighting skills, but it did give her another option, and she might need the range. Thunder and Lightning launched themselves from her shoulders once she had reached the height she wanted; her dragon boys were going to guard her back.

Mordecai had promised to not pull the same stunt this time; instead, he'd picked a different combat style for the day. He was going to be primarily an archer, but he planned to rely entirely upon mana-generated elemental arrows.

Which Moriko presumed meant that he was going to try to find ways to push himself using that as simply the base skill

With Mordecai taking up the rear, the rest of the adults spread out in a wide half circle to keep the teenagers from being flanked and overwhelmed. Which left the youths to continue dealing with anything that came up in front of them, the very first of which was a set of five ursavianes, each with a different type of bird of prey for a head.

However, Moriko didn't have the time to watch; her aerial watch came under pressure almost immediately after. Fiery golden eagles and ice-cold silver hawks had been approaching in a wide circle, and they started swooping in as soon as the ursavianes were engaged.

She was working on a technique she'd practiced, but had not yet tried against live targets. The first step was to get into the rhythm of automatically boosting every arrow she shot with air chi, making it fly faster and strike harder.

Once Moriko was doing that reflexively, she started including the next step, which was to charge each arrow with electric chi, making it burst with lightning and thunder when it struck its target.

The third, and most tiring, step was to include her shadow lightning in the charge; when done correctly, this caused the lightning to cling and sap vitality as well as potentially entangle the target briefly. On aerial targets, that latter part would bring the creature crashing to the ground if they could not break free quickly enough. Well, those that used movement to fly. Creatures that simply floated or levitated would not be as hampered.

Of course, doing all of that while dodging assaults and occasionally countering with strikes other than her bow kept Moriko moving, but leaping into a spinning kick was so much easier when you didn't have to worry about landing on uneven terrain, and enhancing her kicks with slicing winds or electric bursts had long since become second nature to her; she had not slacked on her training over the winter!

While Moriko had been working her way up to using her shadow lightning on every arrow, the enemies she had been facing had also increased in variety, though still with the same initial theme, such as iron vultures and bronze ravens.

The next set of foes she faced after that were griffons. But not just normal griffons — Dersuta seemed to be as fond as Mordecai was of changing things up. She wondered if it was just something common to all nexus cores?

Instead of just being eagles and lions combined, these used what looked to be nearly any possible combination of large feline and predatory bird. This gave each of them a different combination of strength, speed, agility, and flexibility. The variation in abilities wasn't huge, but it was enough that Moriko couldn't trust her expectations and had to dodge them with room for error.

They were also tougher than the metal birds had been, and she was fairly certain they were tougher than normal griffons should be, though she did not have the experience to be sure.

Because of their size and strength, they were not so easily entangled by her shadow lightning, so Moriko pulled out a new trick. The next time she started to draw her bow, she moved her hand into position before summoning a pair of arrows from the storage in her bracers.

It took a bit more concentration as she had to focus both on ensuring that they were rotated correctly for nocking and that they appeared on different sides of the arrow rest, with the shaft between them. This gave them an angle of separation as she pulled back on the string, and Moriko's final touch was to alter the way her shadow lightning was charged on each of them.

Lining up the shot was a bit trickier as she couldn't modify the angle they fired at easily, but she was also very mobile and fast. Both arrows struck true to her selected pair of targets. Naturally, with the force of the bow split between them, neither arrow penetrated very deeply, but that wasn't the point. The black tether of lightning that dragged the griffons into each other was the point.

The tether didn't attempt to entangle their limbs, nor did they have ground to dig into and provide themselves with traction. This gave the pair very little leverage to fight the tether, and when they slammed together, the griffons dropped out of the sky together.

Excellent. She hadn't had a chance to try that on live targets before, and she was glad to see how well it worked.

The rest of the griffons immediately spread further apart and only flew in for attacks when there was no way for her to readily repeat that trick. Moriko's speed meant it was still possible, but it was a lot more difficult and generally not worth the effort, so she switched back to single arrows.

She wasn't unsupported out here; arrows occasionally flew up from Mordecai's position with spectacular effects, but Moriko was carrying the majority of the aerial combat. She didn't bother chasing down those who slipped past while others were busy occupying her; her job was to keep the group below from being overwhelmed.

Then a shadow crossed over Moriko, as if a small cloud had blocked the sun. However, the skies had been clear when she'd last checked. So she glanced up to see the reality of what she was facing.

Damn. That was a big flying ... lizard? Its overall body shape resembled a bird's, but the scaly hide was that of a lizard's, and the membranous wings that replaced its front limbs reminded her of an oversized bat. That had to be a zone boss, and her rough feel of its strength suggested that they were at least two zones deeper than when they'd broken camp that morning.

Moriko didn't know what the creature was, but an idea on how to deal with it came to her before the giant beast started its dive. She dismissed her bow back into her bracer and started wrapping bands of shadow lightning around herself. When she dodged, Moriko didn't try to completely avoid the creature. Instead, she allowed gravity to take hold of her a couple of seconds before it struck her, dodging slightly to the side to help reduce the impact.

Her lightning lashed out to tether her to the beast when their bodies hit. Moriko hadn't been able to match its speed completely, and even with succeeding in avoiding its beak and claws, the impact of its body was still rough, but she maintained contact with it and used her lightning lashes to drag herself across its skin until she reached the base of its neck and back.

Now she reformed her lightning into a makeshift harness to hold her in place as she settled herself astride its neck, followed by a set of reins. It had already been pulling out of the dive by the time she was in place, but now Moriko could apply some control to it.

Moriko yanked hard on the reins, dragging its head around to aim it at the other creatures nearby. It naturally fought her and did not want to fly into them, but she wasn't giving it much of a choice. Especially when she started using air-chi under its wings in order to guide its flight more precisely.

The spins she forced it into knocked several griffons out of the sky from the slap of the larger monster's wings, but between it struggling against her and what she was forcing it to do, there was far too much strain of the wrong type being put on those giant wings.

So she was not surprised when she heard what was either a joint dislocating or a bone breaking after a very solid hit against a griffon that crushed one side of the griffons body. Moriko released all her tethers immediately and leapt off, leaving the effectively one-winged creature spiraling slowly to the ground.

There was still too much going on for her to do more than keep half an eye on it, but she didn't entirely stop tracking it until it hit the ground. She doubted it was dead, but it wasn't her problem anymore.