Chapter 29 - Attack Upon The Unsundered Gate

When Zee stormed out of the room, I didn't think there was even a remote chance that she had any intention of keeping up her end of our deal. I wouldn't have even entirely expected her to given how I'd "won" our challenge. Her expression was nearly impossible to read in the moments before she'd vanished, however.

"Seriously though, how are you going to pay me back for all that gold, hmm?" Meryl asked, her attempt to change the subject feeling more like a taunt than anything else.

"I've been giving it some thought but I've obviously had a lot of other things on my mind, okay?"

Meryl took a few steps closer to me only to push the damaged side of the couch back against the nearby wall. "Don't want to be on the hook for this too," she began with a conspiratorial wink, her smile turning into a frown a moment later. "No, Joe. It's not okay. And before you get all pissy about me being selfish, it isn't just going to be me."

"What do you mean?" I asked, not sure what she was getting at.

Satisfied that the damage I'd caused to Karisa's furniture wouldn't be noticed, Meryl tossed herself down onto the soft leathery cushions. "I mean that if you're having trouble worrying about just two women, you're going to have some serious problems with however many more you seem determined to pick up. And this is more than just sex. Even if it doesn't seem like it, we mamono have plenty of desires beyond that."

I knew what she was saying but this really didn't feel like the time for it. "I know, Meryl, and I'm sorry. It won't be a problem forever. I'd take issue with you thinking I owe you any gold, however."

Her frown deepened. "Oh really?"

I could tell she was about to be very upset-all part of my plan to pull her off balance. "Yeah. If we're more than just friends or lovers, aren't we supposed to forget about the things that are 'mine' and the things that are 'yours' and think of it all as 'ours'?"

Apparently she was several steps ahead of me, a light smile returning as she replied. "Oh, you're right! They actually have a legal way to handle that exact situation, too. It's called marriage, and if you're saying that you're ready, Joe…"

Even though she was messing with me, I could tell that she wasn't entirely joking. I liked her, sure...but marriage? Maybe I just had some hangups over the word itself. I did know more than enough about Meryl to know that I doubted I'd ever want her to disappear from my life. Isn't that what marriage was, really?

"Actually, Meryl…" I began with a thoughtful look at her.

"Whoa, hold on. I mean...yes, we should do that, but not until you're sure that's what you want. Damn, didn't think you'd call my bluff there. We'll have to talk about it tomorrow with Zee...and maybe my sister. I can't even fathom how the Alnor laws will be able to handle a situation like this. Oh, and have fun...but not too much," Meryl suddenly added with a wide smile.

Before I could ask what she meant, I was nearly dragged off my feet by Zee grabbing my hand and pulling me toward the door.

"I thought you were coming. Let's go." Zee still didn't seem pleased, but there were now definitely the very familiar notes of a growing lust plainly showing in the tone of her voice.

-

Meryl's house was even larger and more well-appointed than Karisa's. That just made me wonder why it looked like she hadn't lived in the place for several months at the least, even after having spent several days there since we'd arrived back in Alnor.

With a wide open design plan, nearly every part of the first floor was visible upon entering. Large Greek-style columns stood like a stone forest between the vaulted ceiling and the gorgeous marble tiles beneath. The few walls on the first floor concealed only a kitchen, a bath, and a toilet.

I also couldn't have missed the massive painting that had caused me any number of problems, hung obviously above a large hearth that dominated a large sitting area at the far side of the house, opposite the entrance. With a level of detail that suggested that any one of the three individuals depicted might leap from the canvas, I observed an impossibly lewd display of myself engaged with Delilah and Karisa in the Alnor market square. From the looks of the painting there were also dozens of spectators.

Zee looked at the painting for a moment and then looked back at me, pausing for only seconds before she began pulling me along again, this time up the stairs.

The second floor, to which I'd been dragged despite my pained limp, was divided into five large bedrooms. Within what had to be the master bedroom, the open space still managed to feel intimate, courtesy of the abundance of softness that permeated nearly everything within.

With a large circular bed, clad in fine silks, a welcoming floor of plush red carpet, and evocatively dark tapestries hung on the walls, the room was overtly sensual without feeling sleazy or overdone.

Pushing me into the room and onto the bed, Zee closed the door and leaned back against it, breathing far heavier than she'd been even after the fight with the orc Hilde. Her eyes seemed to be searching the room for something upon which she could focus that wasn't me as her face wore an expression of embarrassment or...fear.

Seeing her expression, I tried to speak. "Zee, we don't have to-"

"It isn't that, Joe. I want this...so much that it's driving me mad. I just wanted-needed to know if you meant what you said before about wanting more...with me." Her voice was uneven, like a mother calling for a lost child.

I nodded. "That's what I said before and I meant it. I was actually going to talk to you and Meryl tomorrow about...things."

She seemed to disregard everything beyond my acknowledgement as she continued. "I'm just really scared right now...of what I'll do, what you'll do...what will happen. I've heard stories...what if I get too excited and hurt you, or-"

Standing up from the bed, I took two steps toward Zee. "This is what we both want right now, right?" I continued to step closer, remaining just out of reach as Azalea held her ground despite visibly shaking knees. "If I die from this, just have my tombstone say that I died doing what I love."

The butterflies in my stomach began holding an impromptu cirque as I realized that what I said could have been taken more than one way...and that I was okay with her taking either meaning.

Her steely eyes leaping to meet mine, she angrily countered, "You dumbass! Don't even say something like that! What if-"

That was enough questions for one day, I determined with a firm resolve. Maybe to a nearly ageless mamono, it was easier to let such moments draw themselves out. To someone like me, the moment was already too full of far more important things to let worries about "what if" get in the way.

Before she could finish whatever silly statement she was about to make, I took a large step forward and placed my hand gently on her neck, locking my gaze upon hers for only another moment to feel for resistance before leaning in and drawing her into a kiss. By her reaction, I was sure that this was the first truly unexpected thing I'd done since the rules of our challenge had been set.

Without removing my hand as it rested gently upon her dark skin, I broke our kiss and looked up at Zee, seeing her looking shocked beyond the capacity to even draw breath.

"More?" I whispered softly, the touch of my breath easily calling goosebumps to every inch of her exposed skin.

"Mhm," she answered with a fervent nod, suddenly remembering the need to breathe.

The desire to make this as perfect an experience for her as possible the only thing holding my desire in check, I placed another tiny kiss upon those full luscious lips that had been driving me to distraction since the first time I'd laid eyes upon them. "Just like you swore to me, I promise I'll never go easy on you, Zee."

The scarce few moments of blessed contact with Zee's lips left little else on my mind beyond a sincere need to feel their touch again. I'd hardly let myself truly experience how it felt to kiss my beautiful salamander companion, the lingering feeling of softness the only thing remaining in the wake of that impulsive act.

I would never make that mistake again.

Fully embracing Azalea, I felt her entire body shaking like an overwound spring, threatening to snap at the slightest touch. From fear or from suppressing her more monstrous desires, the touch of my far more insistent kiss did nothing to lessen the tension in her body or make the cause any more clear.

Trying to draw her into the rhythm of the moment felt like dragging a mule through a car wash. She made no attempt to push me away, even after our tongues clumsily touched, her breath only catching as a growing heat began to suffuse her skin.

She was full of a dangerously growing sexual tension, to be sure. For all I knew, that urge had been building, suppressed, within her since she was old enough to understand the feeling in the first place. On top of that, a pile of worries and insecurities seemed to have her feeling like she had no way to unleash that tension.

Brushing back a lock of her dark hair that had escaped her fierce ponytail, I smiled softly up at her. "Zee, what are you afraid of?"

She looked down at me, her eyes bleeding forth a palpable fear that I never could have imagined ever seeing in Zee. "You, Joe. I'm afraid of you."

I gaped in disbelief. "How is that possible? You said yourself that you could crush my skull if you wanted to, and we both know I'll never be a match for you in battle. I'm shortsighted when contemplation is needed and thoughtful when the situation calls for action. What about me could possibly make you afraid, Zee?"

She turned her eyes away, directing them to some invisible point on the floor across the room. "Every time I look at you I feel...lesser. I watch you swallow sadness, even when it isn't your own, as though it is nothing more than a bitter medicine to make you stronger while my sadness poisons me and rots me away from the inside." She then brought her tail into my line of sight, the flame still weak, but steady. "Because of you, this flame refuses to go out. Fighting for something that matters has always made it bright but I'm still afraid of what will happen if I make the wrong choice again."

I hadn't been through anything nearly as terrible as what Zee had endured...that I could remember anyway. But how long did someone have to suffer under such a heavy burden before they could set it down?

Keeping my grip on her but making no attempt to push her any further until she was ready, I continued, "You were a leader, Zee. What did you tell your soldiers when they were afraid? I know that you'd never tell them to run when they got too afraid-to show the enemy their backs and worry only about their own survival."

She looked thoughtful as she considered what I said, probably already thinking of a way to tell me that this was different than a battle.

Swallowing hard, I continued, "I'm here with you now, Zee. Whatever demons you're trying to face, you don't have to do it alone. Knowing that someone like you has my back is what gives me that strength. We're in this together-you, me, Meryl, and probably a bunch of other people I don't even remember. I've got lords only know how many enemies just dying to take a piece of me, but I'm not going to run." I then extended a hand as though asking her to dance. "Zee, you reached down and pulled me out of the mud when I wanted to give up. Well...now my hand is right here for the taking, and if you choose to take it, I won't let go."

I expected her to spend several minutes mulling over what I'd just said, starting in surprise when I felt the passing of only a single heartbeat before she placed her crimson-scaled hand in mine and tightly squeezed.

And so we danced.

As my mind was left reeling by how quickly Zee had made her decision, my concerned reluctance was brought immediately to task as her body nearly melted into my arms a moment later, the tension so tightly bound up within her starting to rapidly unravel.

The seconds following saw Azalea assert herself in claiming our first true kiss, the satiny lusciousness of her lips so quickly stealing my strength that it felt like my legs had been kicked out from under me.

What she so clearly lacked in experience, she made up in a renewed enthusiasm that was only growing by the moment, her breath already coming hot as our tongues met again in a tentative accord. As that oral embrace grew more intense, I felt the softness of Zee's palms as they slid beneath my clothes wherever they could find purchase to touch my skin.

I returned the gesture, running my hands under her armor, across her powerful feminine shoulders and down to the small of her back, drawing my fiery companion toward the bed as our passionate kiss worked to set our desires further aflame.

"Ah-!" Zee exclaimed as I tripped over the bed and pulled the two of us down onto the silken softness.

I set about quickly setting my fingers to the task of undoing the many straps and clasps that held her light armor in place, finding the undertaking quite a bit more daunting than my legendary one-handed bra-removing skills could handle.

After several minutes of failed attempts by either of us to do anything more than tease the other with our shared inability to get the other any closer to a state of undress, Zee suddenly pushed me away.

Zee jumped to her feet and focused on undressing herself in an obvious growing frustration. "Damn it, Joe! I thought you were supposed to be the professional here. Look, the clasp is-" she suddenly froze as she looked back at me.

In the few moments she'd looked away to start pulling off her armor, I'd completely shucked my clothing, sitting on the edge of the bed to watch her in rapt fascination.

Blushing in embarrassment all the way down to my toes as she looked at me, I couldn't help but chuckle as I watched her trying to keep her eyes on two different things at once. With her grip now fumbling over the clasps of the armor that she'd probably been taking on and off for decades, it looked like she might actually cry in frustration.

"I can help you with-" I began before I saw her eyes harden.

"Don't you even move, I've-" she began as she simply grabbed the chest section and ripped the protective gear off, destroying the straps completely and sending at least a few pieces of metal flying across the room to points unknown. "-got it now."

The look of fearful anticipation returned as she stood naked before me only moments later, her head turned away even as her eyes remained fixed on me.

Just taking in the view of the woman before me, shying away from me when she'd have likely had no problem facing a dragon nose to nose, let the gravity of the gift I was already seeing sink in. Seeing Zee so vulnerable for the first time let me remember that, beneath her armor and scales was a beating heart that deserved to thump in time with another.

"Am I...pretty?" she asked, still standing a few meters from the bed.

I took a deep breath and shifted my position to give her an unobstructed view of my obvious arousal. "Pretty is what you call flowers and little girls, Zee." I was going to have to make the first move here so I stood up and grabbed the arm she was using in a poor attempt to cover her substantial assets. "You...take my breath away"

Wait...wasn't an azalea actually a flower anyway? I could worry about semantics later. The look on her face meant she took my meaning as I'd hope she would.

As my words of assurance passed across her membranous finned ears, her demeanor shifted. Having seen and heard all she needed, she wasn't about to simply lay back and let herself be claimed like a human. Becoming the sultry temptress I knew she could be, Zee pushed me easily onto my back atop the bed and stalked toward me, the lust-filled look in her eyes making it clear she intended to draw yet another surrender from me.

She may have known, but certainly didn't fully understand, that sex was far more than just an occasional hobby for me.

Teasingly sliding her skin across mine until her eyes were even with mine, she pulled her legs up astride me and placed her hands on my shoulders, the look of hunger never leaving her eyes.

I looked up at her with a half smile as if to ask, "Now what?"

Her answer was correct on so many levels as she leaned forward to kiss me again, her heavy breasts pressing against me as the full softness of her lips continued to validate every fantasy I'd ever had about them. While taking this more dominant role, Zee seemed to already be intuitively picking up on the pace of our act.

As I ran my fingers across the enticing smoothness of her dark bronze skin, I shifted myself a bit lower beneath her. While Zee's tail coiled about my leg, making her fiery embrace even more complete, my overly engorged firmness slipped across her skin to lay vigilant against the entrance to her core, fluttering slightly against her in time with the rapid cadence of my quickening heartbeat.

Zee gasped immediately as she recognized the sensation, her taloned hand going to my face as though the softly affectionate grip was the edge of a precipice over which she was still afraid to fall.

Searching my face for any sign of discomfort and finding naught but a lustful pleading, the dusky salamander nodded a silent assent and took her first step into a far different world than the one to which she was accustomed as she began to, ever so slowly, slide herself lower to envelop me within her.

I barely noticed the look of determination on her face as the inhuman heat of her overslicked walls swallowed me by agonizing millimeters, driving any other thought from my head. Somehow sensing my earnest desire to end the torture of being slowly devoured within her, becoming a moth that hurls itself heedless into the flame, she raised up above me, resting her hands on my lower abdomen for balance and then flexed her powerful legs about my hips to keep them almost entirely immobile.

With her scaled hands no longer restricting the movement of my arms, I sated many of the remaining curiosities I'd had about her body, cupping her breasts as their bounty nearly spilled from my hands. Pulling gently at her hardened nipples caused her to gasp again in a satisfyingly pleasant surprise.

When she made no move to stop my wandering hands, I continued to paw at her more than ample breasts with one hand while the other snaked to the gap between us, seeming to close at a pace that would infuriate a glacier caught behind it in the fast lane, and began teasing at the fully engorged pearl of her sexual pleasure.

This provoked an almost immediate reaction from Zee, her mouth dropping open as a hand went to cover it, a powerful moan easily escaping the grip of her scaled hand. At the same time, I hissed in further growing arousal as her descent upon me leapt forward in velocity by an order of magnitude.

Far sooner than I could have hoped or expected, barely a minute after I began to tease as Zee's sensitive clit, she shook and cried out while her legs surrendered all that remained of my manhood to the molten heat of her depths. Zee then let loose an even louder cry of pleasure mixed with unabashed amazement as she gave herself fully to the feeling that her monstrous heritage had begged for over seven hundred years.

The look of relief on her face suggested she thought our dance had finished, but I had a great deal more song requests to pass to the DJ. Barely holding onto my willpower as her clutching recesses held fast upon me in the wake of her spastic release, I redoubled the efforts of my fingers upon her oversensitive nub while I began pushing my hips up against her. After only a handful of small thrusts up into her, Zee's hands fell heavy upon my chest, her eyes closing as her every breath became a moaning gasp of escalating pleasure.

Gritting my teeth in determination, I kept up the pace until I again saw Zee's jaw slacken and her breath catch as another quaking orgasm again snatched away her strength. I silently blessed the increased sexual stamina I'd been afforded by Miranda's earlier ministrations as I took the initiative and rolled Zee onto her back.

"W-what are you-" Zee began before my first thrust into her quivering depths stole that thought from her. Her retooled response was to begin moving her hips in time with mine, exclaiming between ecstatic sighing outbursts, "Lords...just please don't stop!"

Seeing no indication of any pain or discomfort on her part, even from the very forceful tempo that had been set, I reached beneath her and tightly grabbed her shoulders to give me more leverage as I began to drive into her even more powerfully.

My rigid serpentine invader glistening upon each reluctant withdrawal with her natural lubrication in the light of the afternoon sun, beaming through the wide windows, I let the increasing distress at being pulled from her heat drive me back into her with ever greater passion. At such a pace, I knew there was little more I could take of the scalding heaven wrought by her inhuman passage.

I let my pace slow for just a moment to kiss Azalea deeply, entwining my tongue with hers as the liquid grasp of her lips drove my lust up against the breaking point. Pulling away, I then took a deep breath and began throwing myself into my scaled lover with as much power as I could muster.

Her eyes screwed shut in the unfamiliar sensations of the act as her large frame shook with each penetrative impact. The pitch of her "oohs" and "ahs" ever rising, I knew she was at least as close as I was and I was determined to push her over the edge again.

Lowering my angle of approach slightly, I pulled back a final time and then arrogated her pleasure to the hammering of my hungering cock into her, my glans thundering forcefully into her g-spot. The added quickly stimulation being far more than either of us could take, I was the first to fall.

Screaming out in ecstasy, I plunged into her quivering snatch one final time before the tightening sensation at my core overwhelmed me, my cock sending an absolute torrent of my seed within her, only acting to stoke the fire it was meant to extinguish. Her eyes flew open and fixed upon me in a curiosity that was quickly buried in wanton lust, her vaginal walls starting to spasm in sympathetic release a moment later.

"Y-you're-oh…" Zee shakily said, her eyes opening and then closing blissfully a moment later as she wrapped me tightly in her grasp, her legs and tail holding tight against the back of my thighs to keep me lodged as deeply within her as possible.

Feeling my release must have been the trigger that had set her off again, as it often did with mamono I'd been with. Nothing of my increasingly prodigious issue escaped from her thirsting womb as her innermost reaches pulled upon me like a traveller slaking a desperate desert-born thirst.

I could only bury my face on her shoulder with a whimper as I lost myself within her, holding her tightly as we rode out the storm of our shared climax.

With her breathing slowing back to the calm and even, Zee still seemed bitterly reluctant to release me from her arms.

"Just a little longer, Joe. I don't want to ever forget this feeling." Zee squeezed me tighter, her arms feeling protective now more than possessive.

"Um...I wasn't planning on that being the only time we ever do this, you know," I tried to protest.

Reaching down to smack me hard on my exposed ass, she only squeezed tighter. "It's the only time it'll ever be the first time, you ass."

"Fine. But don't blame me if I get the urge to start moving again," I teased with a smile.

Grinning back at me, she pushed the hair from my face. "I was hoping you might."

If that wasn't an engraved invitation…

"I won't go easy on you this time either," I offered with a tiny shaking of my hips.

With a small gasp, her eyes narrowed in a renewed desire. "Good. You wield this weapon with far more skill than any others. Show me what else you can do with it."

-

Not entirely sure how we were expected to "clean up" after what became the messiest sexual encounter I'd ever had, I tossed the pile of soaked bedding into a nearby basket and rushed to meet Zee in the foyer before heading back together towards Karisa's nearby home.

After several hours of very spirited...activity, I found that I wasn't much more exhausted than I would have been after a long jog through the city. Something about that bothered me, but seeing the bounce in Zee's step as we headed back convinced me that whatever was happening to me was worth it.

My wounded foot wasn't troubling me nearly as much as we headed back, lost as I was in a euphoric daze until running headlong into Zee's back as she came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the street.

"Zee! What the-" I exclaimed.

Zee cursed as she threw her unwearable armor to the ground and pulled her falchion free of its sheath. "Joe, draw your weapons and wait here. Something is very wrong."

Looking around, I didn't see anyone or anything about which to be concerned. It took several moments to realize that the problem was that there wasn't anyone around. Even during a change in the guard, there would almost certainly have been at least one member of the watch visible on the wide street.

Leaving me in the street, Zee strode inside without hesitating. Seconds later I heard the sound of steel on steel and rushed to the entryway.

In the foyer, I saw Zee amidst several unfamiliar armed figures as well as a few others that I recognized immediately, to my immediate dismay. From the doorway, I could make out Hilde, several obvious mercenaries, and the masked salamander from our encounter at the old guard post.

Advancing menacingly on an already bloodied Meryl were two of the mercenaries. Meryl was armed with a hatchet and a short spear that she wielded with a surprising amount of skill. She was, however, outnumbered and outmatched until Zee crossed the threshold, quickly dispatching two of the mercenaries.

Pulling her greataxe from her shoulder, Hilde remarked confidently, "Oh, now it's a party. Can I kill her this time, boss?"

"You can try," the masked salamander answered with no visible reaction as she crossed her arms. "You have until our targets are through the portal."

Zee didn't even slow her stride as two more mercenaries, a goblin and a werecat, charged her. Kicking the body of what appeared to be a fallen elf at the catgirl, Zee followed up with a two-handed swing that the goblin tried to block with a large hammer.

Cleaving completely through the haft of the hammer, the goblin went down screaming when her arm was taken off at the shoulder by the fierce strike. As a sickening amount of blood poured from the wound, Zee was already following up, grabbing the unbalanced catgirl to use her as an unfortunate shield against Hilde's first vicious attack.

Another swing of a weapon-another life ended for some infuriatingly inscrutable reason.

I figured Zee had to have the orc well in hand...and if she didn't, my actions wouldn't have mattered anyway. With that thought in mind and the pain in my foot completely forgotten, I dashed toward Meryl as she tried desperately to hold off a pair of green-scaled lizard girls.

One of the two enemies facing Meryl sidestepped and regarded my approach with amusement, facing me with a sword and shield. I had no idea if I could hope to match a mamono in a straight up fight, and I didn't really want to find out. Luckily, I had a longer reach than this lizard girl and had been beaten senseless by Zee's tail enough times to know how to deal with another one. Given that the pair of lizards hadn't yet brought down Meryl, I could also be assured that she wasn't as good as Zee.

Taking all of that together, none of it made me any less spineless.

I shot a look at Meryl and then at her opponent, hoping she would pick up on what I was thinking. She didn't make any outward acknowledgement, but she was certainly the more subtle between the two of us when such was needed.

"If you think I'm just some simple man you can smack around and then have your way with, you're sorely mistaken," I boasted as I circled around her. "Though if you surrender, I'll toss a pity fuck your way as a consolation. What do you say?"

Reacting as if she'd just heard one of the funniest jokes ever told, her eyes narrowed and a slow smile spread across her face. "I wouldn't let your festering whore's rod inside me. And if you think holding a weapon makes you more than a simple man then you've-"

Seeing Meryl move out of the corner of my eye was enough of a signal for me. I took two large steps and made a deep lunge-right at the lizard that was focused on Meryl, catching her in the back of the shoulder. The distraction allowed Meryl to bury her spear in the woman's chest.

Still unbalanced from my attack, I barely managed to deflect the incoming sword strike from my own opponent, taking a grazing slash to my side and then a shield bash to the face that threw me off my feet-just as Meryl tossed the wicked-looking hatchet at my opponent, catching her in the neck. I was only on the ground a moment before Meryl had me back on my feet as she ushered me toward the door.

"Zee can handle this...you can't be here, Joe. We have to go now," Meryl demanded, her tone not leaving the slightest room for argument.

With seven mercenaries on the ground and only two opponents left facing Zee, I wasn't terribly worried about the outcome...at least until what transpired in the next several moments.

After fighting Hilde to a standstill, Zee quickly began taking the upper hand. Still deceptively fast with such a large weapon, Hilde made a series of powerful attacks, forcing Zee into a defensive posture. After making several dodges backwards and to either side, the final attack in the sequence saw Zee vaulting forward over the massive greataxe to headbutt Hilde in the face, following up with a kick to the inside of Hilde's left leg.

As the orc could do little but howl in obvious pain from the two attacks and Zee was already bringing her weapon around to finish the orc, the masked figure finally moved. I say that she moved because she was no longer standing where she had been, now standing behind Zee with her weapon raised.

Before I could even shout a warning, Zee was already in a dive to her right. Had she been wearing her armor, the strike wouldn't have made any meaningful contact. As things stood, however, the masked woman drew a bloody gash across Zee's unprotected back.

Zee recovered far better than I would have hoped, coming up in a defensive stance as she scanned her opponent. My salamander companion then growled in an unfamiliar anger, turning and walking toward the lizard girl I'd struck, the fallen combatant still breathing but with a spear stuck in her chest.

The masked woman simply watched as Zee yanked the spear free and held it in her off-hand, all while Hilde struggled to her feet in an attempt to rejoin the fray.

With Meryl still trying to drag me from the house, I turned and angrily hissed at her, "What the fuck are you doing, Meryl?! What about your sister and the girls?"

Meryl didn't even hesitate as she slapped me hard across the cheek, her face pale and eyes already rimmed in red. "She wouldn't hurt them...but we have to go, now!"

"Who wouldn't hurt them?" I asked.

The loud clatter of clashing weapons drew my eyes back to Zee as I watched her single-handedly holding off both of her opponents-barely. On nearly every exchange of blows between the three of them, Zee managed to land several hits on the badly flagging Hilde while managing to keep the masked woman from landing any telling blows. It was like watching a puzzle being assembled-if such could be done with the grace and precision of a ballet dancer.

Zee was still taking hits from the masked woman, but the many tiny cuts weren't adding up to much and it was clear that Hilde was barely still standing, the orc bleeding from a dozen wounds and her face already swelling where the spear shaft had connected on more than one occasion.

After another brutal exchange, Zee leaned in against Hilde and caught her descending axe at the top of its arc, her tail sweeping the orcs wounded leg. A fierce kick to the falling orc's face then sent her into a bloody tumble across the stone floor, removing her from the fight. Zee's cost for taking out Hilde was two small cuts across her upper chest from a pair of attacks that had been too quick for her to fully stop.

As Zee then turned to face the masked woman, a trio of figures appeared at the top of the stairs as a black portal opened on the first stair landing, across the room from us.

Coming down the stairs, I saw the witch Mira leading the two other figures toward the portal. Seeing me being pulled toward the door, the witch happily waved at me with both hands, flashing a wide grin as she advanced, unconcerned by the fight that was between us, toward the portal that had materialized.

The first figure trailing behind the witch, carrying the unconscious Risa gently in her arms, was Ixi, the undead dragon girl I'd seen in the Prosperity mines. The care with which she held the young mother was evidence enough to me that this was the genuine article.

I tried to blink away disbelief as I saw that the second figure. Stopping at the apex of the stairs with the two young twins held sleeping in her pale arms, her eyes burning with an unfamiliarly chilling violet flame as they focused in my direction, was the absolutely unmistakable form of the lich Delilah.