Chapter 129: Bath Time [II]
Chapter 129: Bath Time [II]
Reina couldn’t take it anymore.
The sight of a master blacksmith using industrial forge equipment to give a monster a belly rub was too much.
She let out a loud, breathless laugh, covering her mouth with her hand.
Her laugh drew the attention of the junior squad.
Vala, Elara, Kaal, and the other five infantry recruits were huddled just outside the heavy ironwood gates, trying to stay out of the hot rain.
They were watching the Lord and the commanders scrub the Alpha, their eyes wide with a mix of awe and barely-contained excitement.
Vala took a hesitant step into the paddock, the toes of her boots getting wet.
"Um... Lord Silas?" Vala called out over the splashing water with her voice sounding nervous.
Silas looked up from the Alpha’s soapy ears, wiping a streak of suds off his own forehead.
"What is it, Vala?"
The swordswoman gestured toward the far corner of the warm stone paddock.
The four massive female wolves and the younger brother were huddled under the dry overhang of the roof, watching the Alpha’s humiliation with wide suspicious amber eyes.
Right at their feet, the three tiny golden pups were rolling around in a shallow puddle, completely covered in mud and looking like filthy happy little gremlins.
"The rest of the pack needs a bath too, My Lord," Vala pointed out, a hopeful, pleading smile spreading across her face. "Can we... can we help?"
Elara eagerly nodded right behind her, bouncing on her heels. "We can handle the pups! We don’t mind getting wet!"
Silas looked at the eager recruits.
They had marched into the Unknown Zone, fought a bear, and followed his orders without hesitation so they deserved a reward.
"Grab some buckets and sponges from the supply crate," Silas smiled, gesturing to the rest of the pack. "Get in here. Just watch their teeth."
The junior squad erupted into high-pitched cheers.
They didn’t care about their canvas uniforms getting ruined... They swarmed the wooden supply crate, grabbing everything that looked remotely like a cleaning tool, and charged directly into the flooded, steaming paddock.
Total chaos immediately ensued.
Vala and Elara made a beeline for the pups. The three tiny golden wolves saw the girls coming with buckets of water and instantly decided this was a new competitive game of swamp-tag.
"Come here, you little rat!" Vala laughed, diving forward to grab the nearest pup.
The pup was incredibly fast.
It juked hard to the left, its oversized paws slipping wildly on the wet tiles, and darted right between Vala’s legs.
The swordswoman lost her footing with her arms windmilling in the air before she crashed face-first into the warm, soapy puddle with a massive splash.
Elara managed to tackle one of the pups, wrapping her arms securely around its wriggling, muddy waist.
"I got one!" Elara cheered triumphantly.
She grabbed her sponge and slapped it against the pup’s head. The tiny wolf didn’t bite her.
It just wiggled its wet, incredibly slippery body, twisted its head around, and aggressively licked Elara right across the mouth with a tongue that tasted heavily of raw meat and swamp mud.
"Ew! Gross!" Elara shrieked, spitting and sputtering as the pup squirted right out of her grip like a soapy torpedo and went running across the yard.
Reina didn’t stay on the sidelines. The Beast Tamer threw her dry towel onto the fence and waded into the fray.
She walked past the chaotic puppy-chase and headed straight for the younger brother wolf. He was lying on the dry stone with his healed leg stretched out comfortably.
Reina didn’t just dump water on him. She knelt down, holding a block of lavender soap.
She kept her posture non-threatening, projecting that same calm resonance she had used in the wild.
"Hey," Reina murmured softly, reaching out to gently scratch the thick fur under his chin. "You took a heavy hit today so let’s get that dried blood off your coat."
The younger male sniffed her hand.
He recognized her scent from the clearing and he recognized the tether so he didn’t growl or pull away.
He let out a long rumbling breath, rested his heavy head directly on Reina’s knee, and closed his eyes, completely surrendering to the bath.
Reina smiled, a warm swell of pride filling her chest as she started working the soap into his fur.
This was what she was built for...
Over by the main fountain, the situation with the Alpha was rapidly deteriorating into a turf war.
"Move your elbow, pirate," Eluned snapped, shoving Morwenna’s arm away as she tried to rinse the soap off the Alpha’s shoulder. "You are splashing dirty water back onto the sections I have already purified! Your situational awareness is garbage!"
"My situational awareness is fine!" Morwenna barked back, shoving the Goddess right back with her wet hip. "You’re moving too slow! If you don’t scrub hard, the grease just settles back into the roots! Put your back into it, weed!"
"I do not scrub!" Eluned shrieked, her pristine composure entirely broken. "I cleanse!"
Thora was caught right in the middle of them, ignoring the bickering completely as she happily raked her metal comb through the Alpha’s flank.
"Ladies, ladies, please," Thora grinned, her goggles fogging up in the steam. "There is plenty of dirty dog to go around... No need to fight over who gets to touch him. Look at the glute activation on the Boss over there. He’s doing half the work himself."
Silas, who was currently wrestling with a stubborn knot of mud behind the Alpha’s ear, shot the dwarf a dry, flat glare.
"Thora," Silas warned her. "If you make one more comment about my glutes, I am going to take that metal rake and test its durability against your skull."
"Promises, promises..." Thora winked, unfazed by the threat of violence.
It took forty-five minutes of scrubbing, splashing, wrestling, and yelling before the entire pack was finally clean.
The hot rain from the ceiling array finally hissed and shut off.
The drainage grates built into the floor tiles quickly sucked the dirty, muddy water away, leaving the paddock warm and clean.
The seven wolves stood in the center of the yard.
They didn’t smell like wet rot or dead bear anymore.
They smelled strongly of lavender soap, pine needles, and clean spring water as their coats were slick and dripping wet, completely plastered to their bodies.
"Alright," Silas sighed, dropping his sponge into a bucket and stretching his aching back. "Step four is done... Now, how the hell do we dry them?"
The answer came immediately.
The Alpha male took one look at his soaking wet fur, planted his wide paws firmly on the stone, and violently shook his entire body.
A 500-pound direwolf shaking off water is not a gentle event... It was a hurricane!
A massive spray of water violently erupted from the Alpha’s coat, shooting outward in a perfect high-velocity circle.
The water slammed directly into Silas, Morwenna, Eluned, and Thora, soaking them even worse than the rain array had.
Before Silas could even wipe the water out of his eyes, the four females and the younger brother followed the Alpha’s lead.
Fwump-fwump-fwump-fwump!
Five more massive wolves violently shook themselves dry at the exact same time.
The air in the paddock turned into a chaotic washing machine.
Water flew everywhere, splashing the walls, the fences, and completely drenching the junior squad who had just finished wrestling the pups.
"Hey!" Vala yelled, throwing her arms up to shield her face as a wave of water hit her chest.
Eluned gasped in horror, looking down at her once-pristine spider-silk robes, which were now plastered tight against her skin and dripping wet.
"I just washed that water off you... the least you could have done was to not spray it over me."
Silas wiped his face with his bare hand, sighing heavily. "Okay. Shaking is not a viable long-term drying strategy. Thora, tell me you built a giant towel rack into this place. I’m sure you worked while we were gone.."
"Better, Boss!" Thora grinned, shaking the water out of her own hair like a wet dog. "You know me too well..."
She marched over to the heavy obsidian wall near the gate.
She popped open a small reinforced ironwood panel, revealing a complex cluster of glowing red thermal runes.
"This Pavilion is built on top of a deep-earth geothermal vent!" Thora explained, resting her hand on the control panel. "Watch this!"
Thora slammed her palm against the main thermal rune.
The smooth stone tiles beneath their boots instantly glowed with a dull cherry-red heat.
The ambient temperature in the paddock skyrocketed. It didn’t burn their feet, but a powerful wave of hot dry air erupted straight up from the floorboards, functioning exactly like a giant industrial-scale blow dryer.
The hot air hit the wet wolves.
Within sixty seconds, the transformation was staggering.
The water rapidly evaporated off their coats. As the heavy moisture vanished, the golden fur didn’t just dry flat. It expanded and it fluffed up to a comical degree.
The sleek, terrifying apex predators suddenly looked like massive dangerous golden clouds.
Their fur was so thick, soft, and impossibly fluffy that they looked twice as wide as they actually were.
The three pups were the worst victims of the thermal vent.
They looked like perfectly round, golden cotton balls with tiny black noses sticking out of the front.
"Oh my Goddess!" Elara squealed with her hands flying to her cheeks as she stared at the fluffy pups. "They are the cutest things I have ever seen in my entire life."
Even Morwenna, the hardened pirate killer, had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from smiling at the sight of the giant fluffy Alpha male looking deeply confused by his own sudden volume.
"Alright, the heat works," Silas nodded, incredibly satisfied with the rapid drying process.
He gestured toward the far wall of the paddock, where a long, low ironwood bench sat under the roof overhang.
"Let’s take a break. Grab a seat. We have one last piece of business to handle before we leave."
The squad dragged their tired damp bodies over to the bench.
Silas tapped his Warlord inventory.
Kaelia hadn’t just prepared roasted boar... she had packed snacks. With a flash of golden light, Silas pulled out several heavy wooden platters loaded with dried spiced venison, hard cheese, and canteens of cold crushed berry juice. He set the food down on the bench.
The girls swarmed the platters, tearing into the food with the ravenous hunger of soldiers who had just fought a bear and wrestled wolves.
Silas took a piece of jerky, chewing thoughtfully as he looked out over the dry warm paddock.
The seven wolves had settled down, lounging comfortably on the heated tiles with their fluffy golden coats glowing softly in the twilight.
"They need names," Silas announced, washing the jerky down with a swig of cold juice.
Reina, who was sitting next to Vala, immediately nodded in agreement.
"They do, Lord Silas.A tether is functional, but names create a psychological bond. It reinforces their identity as members of our pack, not just wild assets..."
"Exactly," Silas agreed. He pointed to the three fluffy pups wrestling in the corner. "Let’s start small. Who has a name for the babies?"
The junior squad practically exploded with suggestions.
"We should name them something fierce!" Kaal demanded with her eyes shining. "Something that strikes fear into the hearts of our enemies! Like... Bloodfang! And Bone-Crusher! And... Death-Bite!"
Elara wrinkled her nose in disgust. "They are glowing balls of golden fluff, Kael. You can’t name that one Bone-Crusher. It’s currently chewing on its own tail. They need cute names! Like Sunshine, Buttercup, and Daisy!"
"I am not riding a war-beast named Daisy into battle," Brida groaned from the end of the bench, rubbing her temples. "If I charge an Orc horde on a wolf named Buttercup, the Orc of the other faction is going to die laughing at me."
"How about Chum, Bait, and Hook?" Morwenna suggested casually, tearing a chunk of cheese in half with her teeth. "Good nautical names... Reminds them of their place on the food chain..."
"They are wolves, not fish!" Eluned snapped, glaring at the pirate. "They require noble, sylvan titles! Leaf-Strider, Sun-Chaser, and Star-Weaver!"
’What kind of names are these?’
Silas pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling the headache returning.
The naming committee was rapidly turning into a hostage negotiation.
"We are finding a middle ground," Silas interrupted the argument firmly.
He pointed to the largest, most aggressive of the three pups... the one that kept tackling its siblings. "That one is Scrappy."
He pointed to the second pup, who was currently gnawing fiercely on the edge of a wooden water trough. "That one is Bitey."
He pointed to the third pup, who was sitting quietly in the corner, looking remarkably regal and utterly bored by its siblings’ antics.
"And that one is Princess... It’s the final Lord decision and there are no arguments."