楼上的上瘾女士

A few minutes before Tanya arrived at her mother's office, Harlyn was visited by Hal who calmly sat before her and they just stared at each other for minutes with neither wanting to be the first to break the silence.

It was not exactly a power play, at least not in the case of Harlyn who just wanted so much to learn what Hal had to teach her but was not willing to let her eagerness get the better of her.

Eventually though,

"So how long before this starts?"

She broke down and spoke with her wanton desire oozing on every word and every pronunciation.

Hal gave a small smile. The little victories were never lost in importance to him.

"As soon as you are ready to truly surrender yourself," Hal said and as he spoke, Harlyn felt hands on her shoulders. Strong hands of comforting firmness that caressed her shoulders before moving over to her neck and roaming as though admiring the shape and structure of it.

As Harlyn leaned into the touch of the hands on her, the Hal that had been sitting in front of her fizzled out.

"What I showed before was a teaser but now you have to show that you deserve true primordial knowledge," Hal said as his exploration of Harlyn's neck continued.

Harlyn had let herself go in his hands and was ready to accept all that was to come partly because she felt she could not possibly avoid or evade him and mostly because he had too strong of a hold on her psyche which the Empress felt was her true self and the most important part of her person.

"You promised you would show me. There was hardly any mention of conditions back then.," Harlyn said in her most defiant tone which still came out as sultry and seduced with her neck still in Hal's wonderful hands,

"You said there would be no exchange,"

"Well, clearly I lied. Nothing comes for free, but I do not seek much. I seek surrender and you were going to give me that whether or not I offered you knowledge." Hal said and Harlyn likely would have protested had it not been for her overwhelming urge to agree with his words as they were all true.

"I would have thought you had experience with surrender already. One can not truly learn unless they surrender their pride in the face of the reality that they are not as learned as they wish to be." Hal added to which Harlyn raised a brow although her eyes were still closed.

"Did you surrender when you learned what you now wish to show me?" she asked and as she did, the mere thought of Hal surrendering to some higher power or authority seemed strange to her. Harlyn might not have known it then but that strangeness came about because of her ongoing surrender.

"Maybe I did.

You see, I am different from you and other mortals. The very existence of my strength and resources exist to deviate from certain norms.

All that I know is sourced by Infinity. No knowledge is truly hidden from me unless I decide not to reach out for it.

And,

Infinity is a concept I created and yet it is a concept I learned from so if I were to say that I surrendered to learn, then that means I surrendered to myself to learn from myself. It all starts with me and ends with me." Hal explained.

"That... You're describing an endless cycle... An endless loop that is ever moving without a start or an end." Harlyn said and Hal nodded,

"Yes, I am, and yet, I must discover the start of the cycle. I am stuck in the loop but the more I try, the more I understand it and the more I understand it, the more I progress in my development of Infinity for it is still an unfinished product," as Hal spoke, he placed his fingers at Harlyn's temples and moved his fingers as though he were giving a massage but he was mostly starting the process of giving her the knowledge she desired.

Harlyn could barely concentrate on what was going on with her temples though as she was much too engrossed in the conversation about Infinity.

"But going around in circles yields nothing. It might produce experience and fatigue but surely by your third turn in the circle, you have to have learned all there is to learn," she said.

"There is always more to learn," Hal told the Empress with a smile before adding,

"Enough of that now. We are ready to depart,"

He took his hands off Harlyn's neck and grabbed her wrists to use them to pull her up against his body after which they spun once and their environment changed.

"Where is this?" Harlyn asked. Just like many first-timers of the Harem space, she wanted to know and she was probably one of the few that Hal replied normally,

"It's a pocket dimension accessible by me and my women.  I trust you can imagine what goes on within the walls of this mansion"

​ "I can imagine indeed," Harlyn said matter of factly while she let her eyes roam the insides of the room they were in only to turn back towards Hal who directed her to her knees after which he placed a hand on her head while he floored the room with his pheromones.

Breathing in the sweet scent did not cause Harlyn to grow horny because those were not Hal's intentions... Yet.

The scent made the Empress more relaxed and more susceptible for Hal to complete the surrender that he had already sparked and made significant progress with while they were outside the Harem space.

Hal joined their consciousness to create a massive joint realm without having to resort to bringing her into his Sovereign space.

In that space, Harlyn's mental apparition was placed between her family and Hal to make a choice between both sides who were putting forth what they had to best entice her with.

Her main family, her daughter Tanya started by offering Harlyn the familial love they had always shared after which her husband, the Emperor, led the charge of the rest of the family by offering her a share in the glory the Haron family had always had and would only increase after their eventual defeat of Hal.

The offer was enticing but it paled in comparison to what Hal offered her;

Knowledge that surpassed that of the gods themselves no matter how long they had existed and how much they had experienced.

It was no contest and Harlyn did not think twice before she approached Hal at which point she sealed herself as a Custodian of Knowledge in Hal's court who would be working in close tandem with the Codex of Infinity.

When Harlyn placed her hand in Hal's, she got an in-depth look into what her future looked like and she saw herself with responsibilities in regards to knowledge and she saw her existence stretching out past the limits of the gods themselves.

She saw and felt herself learning more with every passing hour, minute, second, Nano-second, and to as far and as fast as her brain proved itself capable to think and comprehend.

There was just too much she had access to with Hal... Too many cultures, too many know-how's in too many fields of interest for her to reasonably believe she would learn it all and then grow bored.

Knowledge, with Hal, was infinite. A never-ending pool that she, now as custodian of said knowledge, knew all too well.

"This is not real, is it?" Harlyn said to Hal.

"In what sense exactly? That future is real and attainable. Even more so now that you have so readily chosen right" Hal said.

"I meant them," Harlyn said and gestured towards the apparition of her family at the other end of the space, "Those are illusions,"

"Yes," Hal answered simply.

"But the impact of my choice is not any less real," Harlyn said and Hal nodded,

"Tanya knows that all too well,"

Hearing her daughter's name pulled on the Empress' heartstrings but even then she did not second guess her decision. She still loved her daughter, very dearly in fact but that love just did not translate into faith in her goals or unconditional support.

Harlyn briefly entertained the idea that this made her a bad mother but that all was washed away in the face of the great temptation that was presented in what Hal was offering her.

The realization of what she had accepted hit her and filled the Empress with urges that originated from her psyche and spread to her body in a manner she could not hope to resist and in all honesty, she never even tried.

She wrapped her arms around Hal's neck and pulled him against herself in a hot kiss that thrust them both out of the mental space and back into the physical world where their bodies were mirroring their mental apparitions.

Harlyn wasted no time showing Hal what she was capable of as the mature millennia-old woman that she was and Hal wasted no time indulging in the feel of her body against him and the mouth-watering proximity between them both.