The Azra-El Series Ch. 16

"Thirty thousand aur, at least. Maybe fifty, and that's because we're starting small. We are still raising funds," Agatha answered.

"Oh wow! You really want to do this, huh?" he asked, eyes wide. 30,000 aur was roughly equivalent to six hundred thousand dollars. Agatha nodded. "Okay, count me in, but I want to own 1% of the company in addition to everything else. This is all I have, though," he said, producing the hundred and fifty aur he had saved from the pocket money Jie Er gave him. He wasn't a big spender and Elyssa always bought their meals whenever they went out at Tir.

"Done!" Agatha said, leaning from the opposite end of the table to plant a kiss on Blaze's forehead. She did not hesitate to take his money. Business needed money.

"But I think you should change the name to 'The Blazing Furies', instead," he said after she sat down again.

"Uh? Why?"

"That way, it could become a group thing, something everyone can be a part of," he explained, "We already have a playful group with that name in my class; one of my classmates even made an insignia of sorts. I just never thought we'd do something with it," he said, remembering the time he and Aahna had decided on making The Blazing Furies.

"Oh! That makes sense. Let me discuss it with my sister and her supplier. I can't make that decision on my own," Agatha said contemplatively.

"Up to you. It was just a thought," Blaze shrugged his shoulders. "I may also have someone who may be able to help with the posher side of the market. She may seem a little airy, but she is actually quite smart," Blaze said, thinking of Astrid.

"Oh? Who is she?"

"She's a young countess and a friend."

"Nobility, eh? Get me in touch with her," Agatha said, happy that Blaze was turning out to be more useful than she had expected.

They discussed their business venture a little more before finishing their meal.

Agatha was going to accompany Blaze and Jie Er on their carriage ride the next day. Puhar was apparently on the way to wherever Jie Er had been planning to take Blaze for training. Blaze was excited when he heard about it. Puhar was to the west, and to the west were the mountains.

***

"Aunt Aggie? Do you need me to do some research and give you an expert opinion on whether you're putting on weight?" Blaze asked, as they stepped out of the restaurant.

Agatha was confused for a moment, before light dawned in her eyes. "Yes, I was thinking along the same lines. Why don't we go back to my store and do this research?" she grinned at him. Blaze grinned right back.

When they reached her store, Agatha hustled him inside and shut the door behind them, leaving the closed sign as it was. She hurried him to her desk and swept her stuff off the table before climbing on.

Blaze wasted no time in tearing off her clothes and reached for the emerald ornament that held her hair in a high ponytail. Agatha stopped his hand with hers, before removing the bauble and shaking her head to splay her hair about over her naked back.

"It pulls my hair if I don't do it right," she explained, putting the ornament over her hand, and bringing him onto herself and over the table. Taking his member into her hand, she inserted him inside herself and wrapped her legs around him.

Placing his arms against her sides, Blaze fucked her on the desk as she screamed his name loud enough for anyone passing by her shop to hear, and then fucked her some more until she came in a quivering mess.

Then, he took her to the mirror room, lay her on the floor and did her sideways, while she watched him in the mirrors as he thrust into her from behind. It was only after Agatha came multiple times and couldn't go on anymore that he chose to let go, flooding her with his warmth and energy.

"I think we can go another two months before I start craving for more," Agatha said to him weakly, as he stood up after a few moments of holding each other. He hoped she meant it in a good way.

"Aunt Aggy, I think you are in pretty good shape," he told her, watching her long legs that were sprawled sideways, with his cum sluggishly dribbling out of the hole he had left gaping.

Agatha raised a tired brow at him.

"I've only seen Rebecca last longer than you did, and she's in the army," he explained.

Agatha gave him a wry grin. "I need to take you home but need some time to recover. Could you be a dear and watch the shop for me?"

"I can go home by myself."

"No. I promised Jie Er."

Blaze didn't bother to argue and kept an eye on her store until she was ready to take him home. Agatha dropped Blaze at Jie Er's cottage and spoke with Jie Er for little while before she left, promising to bring their cab to pick them up the next morning.

***

"So, we will be in Puhar for the next three weeks?" Blaze asked Jie Er while they lounged in their living room with Rebecca. Splash ran around the couch excitedly. She could smell Sky on his clothes and was running around looking for the absent bird. It tugged at Blaze's heart.

"Not exactly. We will be camping out most of the time, probably at the base of Mt. Raivataka. We shall head there as soon as we drop Aggy off at Puhar. Just have to meet someone before we do," Jie Er answered. She seemed to have already planned out the entire trip.

"And leave me all alone for the next three weeks!" Rebecca complained, before Blaze could ask who they were meeting. "I guess I'll still have Splash," she said, looking at the otter. Hearing her name spoken out, Splash jumped onto Rebecca's lap for a quick cuddle.

"Puhar is real close to the TriSaw ridge too, but it isn't our battalion's turn to man the ridge yet. I can't abandon my platoon, and I couldn't find a good enough reason to ask for a one-time transfer," she continued glumly.

"I am sorry, Becky. I am sure we'll be back before you know it," Blaze consoled her. "Besides, you'll have the house to yourself for a while, and you can always invite Rin and Lin over if you get too lonely. I am sure they've begun to appreciate your talents," he said to her with a smirk. Rebecca had the decency to blush at his words.

"Are you investing in Agatha's business, aunty?" he asked Jie Er after a while.

"Maybe a few hundred aur. I have my own business to take care of," she told him.

Later that evening, Jie Er began to fuss about in the kitchen, going over all the things they may need over the next three weeks. She didn't seem to care for his help, so Blaze simply kept Rebecca company in the living room.

"You lucky brat!" she whispered to him. "You'll be spending some nice alone time with Jie Er, sweating away and training on some scenic mountain!" she said, looking at Jie Er's form. Blaze had learned within the first few days of meeting her that Rebecca's appetite for doing "it" was not any weaker than his.

"Somehow, I don't think it will be as much fun as you make it out to be," Blaze shook his head, skeptically.

"I suppose not," she said, noticing Jie Er tick down multiple lists. "Well, it's been nice knowing ya. I won't blame you if you decide to run away. Just don't forget to write," she said, patting him on the head.

"If something happens to me, I will make sure to come back and haunt you," he said, pushing away her hand.

"If that's a possibility, we need to start early tonight. I will take all I can get from you," she grinned at him. "Jie Er! He's mine tonight. I will make sure he sleeps early though," she called out, taking his hand and leading him to her bedroom.

Blaze gulped but followed her in anyway. Instead of pushing him down on the bed, however, she made him sit down and pulled out a bill of exchange from her space ring.

It was for ten thousand aur to be invested in Agatha's new venture and it listed the terms and conditions. Rebecca and Jie Er were named as the co-owners of the deed. It could only be drawn once the company was started and Rebecca and Jie Er were made co-founders of the company with stock equivalent to the initial capital.

"Aunt Becky! Where did you get all this money?!" Blaze exclaimed, once he went over it.

"I sold my house, remember?"

"But this looks like all your savings! It's too risky," he cried out in protest.

"Don't worry. I still have a few thousand aur saved. Besides, I've got a really good feeling about this. I know what I am doing," she reassured him.

Blaze didn't bother to push it further. He too had a really good feeling about the business and didn't really know how to persuade her otherwise.

"Keep it a secret from Jie Er and try to give it to Agatha when she's not looking," she told him after a moment.

"But then why is Jie Er listed as a co-owner?"

"Because she doesn't know about it. It's my money, but I want to do this for her... because I intend to stay here for a long time," she told him, softly.

Blaze somewhat understood what was going on, so he silently nodded and put the deed into his space ring.

"Are you sure?" he asked, again.

"Yes! Now, let's get down to the fun stuff," she said pulling him into onto herself.

For the next couple of hours, they did fun stuff before they fell onto the bed, exhausted and satiated, with both of Rebecca's lower entrances leaking with their combined fluids. She seemed to have learned new positions that Blaze had only heard of before.

She quickly put Blaze's Txiki needle into her space ring, before she pulled him into her naked breasts. "I think I will need this more than you or Jie Er," she told him, before they fell asleep.

oOo

Agatha arrived with their hired carriage early the next morning. Their driver was an older angel, who didn't seem to care much for conversation. Rebecca saw the two angels out and stood watching them leave, with Splash in her arms.

The Pegasi drawing their carriage were a special breed that could soar long distances without taking a break. The carriage gained elevation until it reached six thousand feet, before the Pegasi began to head north-west, using a steady tailwind to their advantage.

A couple of hours before they reached Puhar, Blaze began to spot the distant snow-capped peaks of the Meru mountain range of Aranya, cutting north-west along the land with peaks resembling the serrated edges of a knife.

Slightly to the south-west of the range was Mt. Olympus, the tallest mountain of Azra-El. It wasn't visible from where they were, but Blaze had seen pictures of its bare rocky peak piercing the sky through a white carpet of clouds that surrounded its waist. It was said to be 3.5 yonders high, almost twice as high as Mt. Everest on Earth. Most angels could only fly up to a height of one yonder, so there were very few who had ever been to the top of the mountain.

The land beneath them began to change as they flew on. The slow rise in elevation turned the vegetation into grasslands, with pine forests filling the valleys where rainfall accrued both in the summer and winter. The colors of the land changed from green to yellow and then to a deep, dark green. Blaze leaned his face against the glass window and gazed at the changing landscape.

Suddenly, he spotted another carriage coming up from behind them. Three Pegasi in a triangular formation pulled the carriage, and it was not only faster than their own, but also much classier. Elaborate bronze carvings decorated the exteriors while its wheels were made of solid rubber, a rarity in the pre-industrial Heavenly Union.

Blaze watched it as it approached, glancing at its windows and wondering who he would find behind them. And then, he spotted those eyes. Oh, those big purple eyes with their dark, winged eyeliner. He could never mistake them, even if he may have forgotten about them.

Her eyes gazed at the lands below just as he had been, lost in thought and unaware of him or their carriage. Blaze however, got lost in her eyes. She wasn't wearing a veil like the previous time, but the only thing he could see were her eyes.

His heart seemed to pause as he watched her with unwavering focus. The carriage slowly overtook them, and before he realized it, the eyes were out of sight. Unthinking, he opened the carriage door and stepped out, scaring the Hela out of Jie Er and Agatha, who were conversing on the opposite seat of the carriage.

He plummeted a good five hundred feet before he remembered to materialize his wings. It took him another couple of hundred to slow down and come to a hover. His carriage came to a whooshing halt while the other one quickly disappeared out of sight.

I think I saw her hair. It was auburn, or was it blonde? He wondered, though it could've just been an illusion of the light of the setting sun streaming through her carriage windows.

"What in the name of Xihe are you doing?" Jie Er shouted at him, as she and Agatha flew down to him. The carriage and the Pegasi simply hovered in midair.

"Er... I thought I saw someone I knew in that carriage," he said dumbly, pointing in the direction of the other carriage.

"And you simply step out of a moving vehicle? Thankfully, we were cruising at a good altitude," Jie Er chided him.

"I am sorry, aunty. I guess I wasn't thinking..."

"You seem to be doing a lot of that lately," Jie Er commented, shaking her head and seemingly coming to some decision. Taking his arm, she brought him back to the carriage.

***

Puhar was a mining town to the south-west of the TriSaw ridge and was home to Aranya's largest energy stone mine. Numerous streams from the mountains flowed through the surrounding grasslands and a larger river flowed along the southern border of the town, all of them trying to get to the Purple Sea. Logs and big floating containers of mined materials floated down along the river.

The town was unlike Varan; most of the angels seemed to be either miners or merchants. Despite the abundance of water, farming was not a primary occupation and people survived mostly off forest produce, raw materials, and trading.

The miners were gritty and grimy, but their clothes were skimpy, which alone would have usually grabbed Blaze's attention. However, his mind was currently occupied by thoughts of Lynn, the girl in the carriage. It was the name she had given him when she dropped in on him at Saket, while he was trying on his Txiki costume.

Jie Er and Blaze dropped Agatha off at the town square. Blaze took her aside for a moment to hand over Rebecca's deed. He gave her a quick but clear explanation before they returned to Jie Er, with the deed inside Agatha's space ring.

Agatha's soon waved them goodbye, promising to travel back with them if she was still around when Blaze's training was finished.

Once again, the carriage headed north-west, traveling ten yonders before Jie Er called out to the driver. It started descending towards a small grassy knoll.

A small stream from the mountains curved around the hillock which was encircled by a row of pine trees. Hidden away from view behind the hillock was a brick house with two massive smoking chimneys and a few smaller ones jutting out of its roof.

Who the hell lives so far away from the town and what's cooking? Blaze thought, forgetting that they themselves weren't any different.

The carriage descended on the other side of the stream. Jie Er thanked the driver and the two angels waited for the carriage to leave before they crossed over and landed within the fenced area of the house.

Most angels loved gardening and had small herb gardens outside their houses. Whoever lived here, however, did not seem to care much for shrubbery. There were a couple of pine trees scattered around but most of the front yard was littered with stockpiles of wood, metals, and weapons. A couple of thick pipes ran from the stream and up the house into a large tank on the terrace.

The house was made of unpainted brick and lacked any decorations, except for the massive open windows that seemed to suck in air from the surroundings. A persistent and rhythmic ring of metal emanated from the inside.

The front door opened and a tall, lean angel, taller than even Jie Er, stepped out to meet them. A voluminous mass of braided golden blonde hair trailed behind her, reaching her ankles. She had sparkling turquoise eyes and plump red lips that were currently pursed. Her sharp, golden eyebrows seemed to be perpetually angled into a serious expression. Soot and char marked her otherwise white skin lightly tanned by the smithy's heat.

"What do you want?" she asked them gruffly, while Blaze admired her form. The hide skirt and tight hide bra accentuated her fulsome assets and reminded him of a sexy bandit from a game he used to love. She seemed a little younger than Jie Er.

"We are here for Valinna Strom. Is she here?" Jie Er asked, surprising Blaze. Valinna was one the best blacksmiths in the HU. The spear Elyssa had bought at Cali's auction had been made by her.

"My master is disinclined towards visitors. If you have an order or a job, I can consider it. I will offer you an approximate quote or I can show you some premade items. We aren't accepting any special requests or designs due to a long backlog," she gave them a practiced, unemotional reply.

"Tell her Jie Er is here to collect on her favor. We will wait," Jie Er told her resolutely.

The angel raised a questioning brow but did not bother to prolong their conversation. She gave her an imperceptible nod and headed back inside.

"Why are we meeting a famous blacksmith?" Blaze asked the first of many questions that arose in his mind.

"You will understand soon enough."

"How do you know her?"

"She is an old acquaintance."

Realizing that Jie Er wasn't feeling particularly forthcoming, he fell silent. The clanging of metal stopped after a few minutes, and the angel returned.

"She will see you," she said, opening the front door.

A thick, sharp smell of coal dust and molten metal hit them as they stepped into the workshop. Crafting tables, burning stone forges, slack tubs full of water, and a multitude of tools and weapons lay scattered around the cement flooring marred by chars and solidified drops of molten metal.

They made their way through the workshop and a corridor connecting four rooms, two on either side. On the other side of the corridor was a smaller workshop with an enormous forge and the largest chimney of the house.

The searing heat and bright glow from the forge temporarily blurred Blaze's vision, while the increased intensity of the sharp smell began to burn the inside of his nostrils.

"Jie Er, I've thought of you recently," said the angel standing beside the forge, while Blaze tried to focus his eyes on her. Her voice was deep and gravelly, eroded by years of being exposed to coal dust.

Valinna Strom was burly for an angel. She wasn't extremely tall, but her shoulders were broad and her arms muscular. A loose hide-skin skirt reaching her knees covered her lower half, but her torso was topless. What Blaze had initially thought to be a tight-fitting half-jacket turned out to be tattoos.

Long interlocking green vines spread across her arms and upper chest, connecting an array of colorful flowers. Her breasts pair of firm and creamy white balls with tiny pink nipples and small areolae, untouched by tattoos. Blaze couldn't keep his eyes off them.

Right under her breasts and etched on her upper abs were a pair of tattooed maroon wings, hugging the curve of her under-boob. Her six-pack diminished the curvature of her waist and hips.

"You have?" Jie Er asked, curious over Valinna's words.

"Blaze Er Lokra," Valinna stated, waving her hand towards Blaze. "There was a good chance she was yours," she said after a moment, a smile finally sprouting on her thick brown lips. Her shoulder-length pale blonde hair was swept back in a casual fashion with the help of a discolored hair band.