Daring had finished her first sermon, which had surprisingly gone on for over an hour. None of the ponies being trained as priestesses had any major problems, just a few minor issues that could be easily explained away as a lack of familiarity. The fillies were adorable in their attire, and actually performed better than the mares in some places.

Spike had been there for the ceremony and had been much more restrained when another mare milked Daring during the mid portion of the ceremonial meeting, didn’t stop him from implying he would hurt anyone that touched Daring without his okay. Daring chalked it up to his protectiveness, after all she was still carrying and he probably didn’t want anything happening to the baby before it came along.

After Spike’s inventory had gotten in he had sent out notice to the community and asked if anypony was interested in being a barista, Night Feast had answered the call. She had been feeling a bit directionless, even with a talent for food preparation and cooking, which was one of the reasons why Daring had placed her as staff for one of the bathhouses. After she answered the call she was measured for the store’s official dress, which was just a hat and apron.

Night Feast has quickly gotten into the habit of going about the entire town in the nude, so while working at Spike’s new store she was naked under the hat and apron. Almost as soon as the place opened several of the town’s foals rushed to check out the place, mostly because they had kept hearing about the fact the place had games and treats.

After the sermon, the fillies all changed out into their usual attire for the town and rushed on down to Dragon’s Sanctum for sweet treats and beverages, Spike had even taken to teaching the foals how to play some of the games around the shop. Several fillies, and a few of the colts, had gotten rather interested in some of the RPGs.

Since Spike could trust Night with cafe part he could focus on the game store part with fewer worries, especially after how quickly she had memorized the recipes for the entire menu and gotten each attempt down almost flawlessly in just one or two goes, one go for all the things that required full kitchen in back and two tries for the drinks made up front. With being able to put more focus on the game store he could both help potential customers and act as the one to play sample games with some of the ponies that entered the store to help them get a feel for the games or just see if it was something they would like to play on a more regular basis.

After the whole service, during which Daring was indeed dressed in the fetishwear inspired attire, Daring switched back to her usual attire for time around town observed the actions of the town as they filed out of the temple. They had decided forgo a religious text, for the time being, on account that Zelshirska herself wasn’t sure of how to structure the text or what to put in it. All the members community came to see the first service, and likely had only done so due to curiosity.

The following few services would give a good idea of how many would be willing to attend regular services, Daring wasn’t about to put in some law or rule that forced members of the community to attend, it all had to be of the accord of the attendee. Daring had read accounts of religious groups in the ancient past enacting rules and regulations on their congregations that effectively forced certain behaviors, this led to both zealots and uprisings that ultimately caused the downfall of these groups, she had even explored some of their ruins.

Although, Daring was starting to have cravings for gemstones, with assistance from Pinkie Pie she was able to get an acceptable substitute in the form of rock candy. Said candy was made extra tough and sparkly to give it a greater feeling of eating condensed earth minerals.

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Spike had mixed feeling about the service, on one hand he could see why Daring had things like other mares milk her but on the other his possessive instincts made it so that seeing the act caused a rather aggressive reaction. This was further made problematic by the fact he thought the sight of Daring being milked by other mares was more than a little hot, a feeling that was at odds with his possessive instincts.

But right now, he couldn’t really care. His shop was up and ready, and he had been treating some of the foals to sample campaigns to better introduce them. Of course, things got a little weird when the most recent shipment included several boxes of a card game he hadn’t heard of. The game’s name, Conjure the Calling, a game where you summoned creatures and items and cast spells at your opponent. The game seemed to really take off with earth ponies and pegasi, but only a few unicorns showed some measure of interest. Apparently this new game was so massively popular several card manufacturers were hard at work devising their own card battle games, chances are the market would be flooded with games like this before this time next year.

Spike was also thinking of how to make his own version of a card battle game, Twilight owned a card manufacturing facility and would probably let him utilize it for considerably lower than anywhere else. That said, she mainly used it for producing flashcards. Flash cards were Twilight’s favorite kind of card, but this new card battle game was right up Rainbow’s alley.

From the look of things, the future was getting more interesting. With games that hadn’t been seen before making an appearance left and right, not to mention, the way technology seemed to be growing at a rapid rate. Twilight was working on a newer version of the mechanical computer, she had already done that sort of thing with cameras.

To better assist Daring’s new cravings Spike introduced his customer base to what he called a “geode fossil cake” so that she could pig out at his shop and they could spend some time together outside of their residence. The cake was a dark brown chocolate cake with dirt brown caramel frosting with a rock candy white chocolate blend he managed to come up with the assistance of Pinkie and Maud Pie. What he didn’t anticipate was how much of a hit it was with the foals, and some of the adults, as well. The white chocolate rock candy bones were modeled after a wide variety of fossils that were found and identified around Equestria.

The treat was such a tremendous hit Spike started wondering what the snack would be like once the town officially opened up to the public. He also started stocking the cases with edible fossil treats that were basically the fossil treats in the cake that were thrown onto the confection in a haphazard manner, even seeming to be embedded in some of the frosting at times, assembled in the way they were supposed to properly go on the real fossils, the foals really liked those too.

Daring was somewhere around five months shy of having the baby now, assuming her pregnancy followed along with a standard pony pregnancy. Spike wondered what their little bundle of joy would be like, how much pony and how much dragon would be expressed in the baby’s features? Would be a colt or a filly? Was using pony terms really a good idea when the baby was only half pony? He had a lot of questions whirling around in his mind now, he blamed Twilight for that particular quirk.

Author's Notes:

You’ll have probably noticed there were no scenes about went on in the temple during the sermon, that was intentional. It was partly due to the fact I thought it would be more interesting for the readers to have no idea just went on during the service, but mostly due to the fact I couldn’t really come up with how to portray what went on during the service. I know it probably looks like a bit of a copout, and I’m sorry about that. But on the plus side, I don’t end up potentially misrepresenting any religious practices that could potentially trigger something. I’m aware it’s a fictitious religion, but I really didn’t want to pull from a real world one and potentially insult someone more knowledgeable about that sort of thing or part of the religion I pulled from in general.

So the closest you got was a mention of Daring being milked into goblets and sharing her milk with the congregation, which I admit does pull an element from Christian religious services and puts a fertility deity spin on it.

As always, you know my policies.