Chapter 4: The Hero
The ceaseless rush of the cataracts above and below was what brought them both back to the present: the sounds, smells, and shapes of the twilit mountain spring slowly resolving through the dark. All but boneless from her climax, her skin lit alive with flush and a depth of pleasure that she hadn't felt in years, Sofimon continued to cling onto her lover and silently thanked the spirit of the missing naiad queen, or whatever led her to this hidden spring and smiled on them tonight.
Lips curling into her own smile, she nestled her cheek into the hollow of Valkyon's neck—damp with the fresh musk of his sweat and the last, defiant hints of rose oil–, and closed her eyes again to feel him. The throb of his sex embedded far inside her. The pulse beating through the palms of his powerful hands as they cupped the flesh of the backs of her thighs. The deep, furnace-warm bellows of his chest rising and falling against hers, as he too fought to regain his breath.
Somehow, he still refused to set her down.
After another moment, Sofimon raised her head and pressed a slow kiss to the bottom of his chin, her voice mellowed to a sigh from the force of her climax. "Believe me when I say that this is one night I definitely won't forget, Valk..." Her eyes then pinched, admonishing. "But the last thing I want to remember is you falling over from exhaustion. So please, for my sake and yours, be kind to yourself and sit down."
"And believe me, Sofi: I've been through much worse than this," came his reply, with a smile that she couldn't quite make out under the deepening violet roof of the sky. But the glint of his eyes said enough, pulling an answering giggle from her as he took another step back and deposited them back onto the enameled bench with barely a grunt, her legs still twined around his middle, bodies locked together. Only then did his features return to light, under the wan beam of her lantern perched faithfully on the final step of the pool. And she was, despite herself, a touch surprised at what she saw.
Not once in a full year of serving in the Obsidian Guard, after seeing her captain through all conceivable stages of peace, success, crisis, and day-to-day befuddlement that came with serving at the frontlines of El, had she seen a smile like the one he was wearing now.
It was fair to say that he looked like a different man. Someone whom she was even more inclined to lure away into a torrid tryst in a mountain spring. Or two. Just to see him again.
He didn't object whatsoever as she pulled him into another kiss, teasing apart his lips to taste him long and deep. Her hips tilted flush against him in wordless instinct, rocking in short, curving thrusts into his thighs to plunge him through her depths again, his member already stiffening with want only moments after his explosive finish. His hands rose to cup her face, held it, then descended, patiently skimming the sides of her breasts and stomach as she swayed in his lap, sly thumbs sweeping around the hardening buds of her nipples, drawing equal parts laughter and languorous sigh from her once she broke free from his mouth.
But when she turned her lips to tease the skin of his collarbone, muffling her groan from the pressure of his answering thrusts, from the slew of sensations warming her body once again from the core of her womanhood to the pores of her skin, Valkyon suddenly stopped short, hands frozen far down below the curves of her buttocks. His breath stiffened, and not in a way that boded well.
"What's the matter?"
His voice when it returned was quiet, and drier than a skull in a desert. "…I think we will be expecting company very soon. Listen."
Sofimon raised her head, her pulse spiking in her throat, and focused on the faint trills peaking across the indigo-washed mountain beyond the crash of the cataracts. And her ears picked up, not far enough above them, an arrhythmic solo of wheezes, mutters, and faint curses that scraped above the night's orchestra like a rat in the rafters.
Slowly, she cupped her hand over her mouth, took a breath, and swore. Quick and vigorous.
"I suppose we should have expected this, given the hour. Though if you had been plainer about what you wanted tonight, I would have erased the chalk markers on my way up here." There was no condemnation in Valkyon's voice. Just fact.
"It was a surprise I meant to give you, not another chore…." she answered from behind her hand, not daring to speak above a muffled whisper. But there was a corner of her mind that already voiced the same observation, and was busy kicking the rest of her thoughts as they churned fast on how to ward off the last, neglected member of their party. Who was, according to Ykhar's missive, also the technical leader of this expedition.
On a good day, she could strap on her lightest field gear—sans armor– in just under two minutes. Valkyon could take even less, once again ignoring his light armor. Kero, unless he met with a timely accident in the next few seconds, was likely to poke his well-meaning head over the promenade in less than half a minute. And see more of his two colleagues than any of them were professionally obliged to.
Why did she have to leave Cereja back at the camp tonight? A motivated Jeanylotte, even juvenile, could wreak some helpful havoc for an overly-curious unicorn.
Sofimon's eyes fell on their lanterns, sitting one step above the other along the stairs to the naiad queen's pool; one of them was fast losing its fight against nightfall, fading into the shadow of the wall. Quick as a flash, she pressed one finger against Valkyon's lips, urging him to silence as she slipped off the warmth of his lap, her body promptly sending up a burst of protest from her core at parting from him. But there was one man arriving within moments that she had no intention of luring into the water with her feminine wiles. Sacrifices had to be made.
The rush of the cataracts drowned out the splash of her passage out of the water and up the steps to douse both lamps, snatching up the neat bundle of her clothes. Her feet nimbly dodged the scattered pieces of Valkyon's armor, and slipped back into the pool just as the patch of sky above the promenade flashed a paler violet, and Kero's thin voice ricocheted down the rock face.
"Valkyon…? Are you there? Sofi…? Is anyone here? For all the bloody teeth of the Black Dog, I swear… …"
She barely had time to mouth an apology against Valkyon's ear as she took a breath and ducked herself into her last refuge.
It took a moment for Sofimon, crouched nearly flat at the bottom corner of the darkened pool, to realize that her lover-cum-captain wasn't joining her under the lifesaving cloak of the spring waters, now dyed black and spangled with night. That he was, in fact, standing up from the bench, exposed for all the world to see from the waist up.
She sent an emergency squeeze through his fingers; he didn't so much as stir. And she realized that he wasn't adjusting his altitude out of confusion… but will.
It wasn't as if she could blame him for that, what with the evidence still left on the stairs. Her expression crumpled into an unseen wince as she let his fingers slip out of hers. One of these days, she would understand how he did it: to regard the body as a mere vessel, and stand stark naked before stranger, friend, and lover alike, without so much as batting an eyelid.
She felt rather than saw his legs cut crosswise through the thick rush of the current. On passing, his fingers dipped once—lightly, reassuringly—to brush her shoulder under the opaque wavelets, before withdrawing again.
Above the grouse and grumble of water, a violent clatter rent the air; the sound of a pantry shelf spilling pot, kettle, and skillet down a flight of stairs. More swearing, the outlines of the words muffled under the rush of water.
"Sorry. I meant to put those away," came Valkyon's voice by her. Drier than the pampas in high summer.
"Did you forget to light your lantern too?" Even from where she was, Sofimon could hear the atypical acid bubbling through the Head Archivist's voice. He must be footsore by now. A new, hazy light wavered pale through the chop of wavelets.
No reaction from her captain. "It blew out when I wasn't looking, apparently. The spare too."
"Right…." A loud sigh."Valkyon, what are you even doing up here at this time? You know that I hate to crack the whip, but we do have a schedule to maintain for this expedition, or else Miiko will have my neck. So I was really hoping we could get the passage blocked up by tonight, at least…" A pause. "And where's Sofi?" There was a strange edge under his question that made said woman wince again underwater, knees pinching together, forearms clutching the bundle of her clothes swaying in the current over her bare breasts. Her lungs pricked with impatience.
"I figured I could use a soak before we set off tomorrow, and Sofi recommended this pool," Valkyon answered, nonchalant. "Or so I assumed from the chalk markers. Don't worry; the passage will be sealed by tonight."
"That's good to hea– wait. So… she was the one who chalked out the path here?"
"A little circuitous; I thought so too." Sofimon was absolutely certain he was smiling right now. Well. This was the last time she arranged a sexy scavenger hunt for him. "But the destination was more than worth the trip." On second thought…
"Well… where is she now? She never returned to camp, and…" An uneasy note slipped into the unicorn's voice, like a drop of ink into the water. "…She isn't still around here, is she?"
A bubble of panic lodged in her throat. Pressed against her bare back, a pair of naiads copulated blithely on the lower strata of the pool's mural, legs scissoring shameless in the dark.
"If you want, I could help you look for her." Her heart dropped to her stomach, freezing her to the bottom of the pool with fire-pricked lungs as the surface of the captured spring broke, swirled, and gushed in the wake of with her captain's exit–
"No. No! Holy Black Dog, I—! No, d-don't let me bother you...! I- we'll look for her tomorrow. I'll see you tomorrow. All right? Good night; enjoy your—whatever this is. Good night. Good grief…!"
The hazy moonlet of Kero's lamp whisked out of the horizon of the pool. But Sofimon waited underwater until she felt the roiling currents shift with Valkyon's re-entry, And when his hands found hers again, she popped out of the spring like a cork into the waiting span of his arms. New air seared her lungs; her forehead fell automatically against his chest, as relief and amusement, embarrassment and pinprick anxiety emptied from her in a cascade of wheezing laughs. He simply waited, holding her steady, the air around him laced with his peculiar, unspoken brand of triumph.
"…Don't get me wrong, Valkyon. I'm grateful for what you did, but… you sure have a strange sense of humor." She shook her head, still laughing, and stepped back to wring her sodden field gear dry. After two tries, she gave up, slapping the dripping bundle over one shoulder and pushing her damp hair out of her eyes. "The trek back to El is going be unbelievably awkward after all this. Poor Kero…"
"He'll survive," came her captain's droll response. "There are worse things to see in this world." His arms closed warm around her once again, pulling her against his nakedness; the print of his mouth lingered against her forehead as his voice dipped lower still. "And besides… I suspect that what we have is a department secret with a short life expectancy. Not that I mind, in the end."
At that, she couldn't help but glance at him. In the faint wash of starlight that found them, she was just able to pick out the crease softening the corners of his eyes, the open tilt of his smile. And the last dregs of worry sluiced out of her.
Maybe when they return to El, she would ask him out again the old-fashioned way. For a simpler appointment in her room, perhaps. Well into their off-duty hours, just in case they exceeded their schedule for the night again.
Sofimon rose to the balls of her feet, cupped her lover's chin to kiss him on the corner of that gentle smile.
"Now that's a relief… because this is one unbareable mess that I landed us in. I promise: no more clandestine trysts on missions. I can't imagine any date that will top this night anyway, in success or disaster."
For a moment, Valkyon stared at her; the standard social response to Sofimon cracking a bad pun. Then he flashed her that tiny, sunburst grin once again.
"For what it's worth, I think you've got a knack for expose-ition. Though there's nothing wrong with hosting a stripped-down date."
Time and again, it was the little things about Valkyon that confirmed to Sofimon that calling him amor was no mistake.
Those Obsidian ladies in the locker-room could keep their nicknames for him. They didn't have the faintest idea of what they were missing.
His arms promptly received her as she swung herself up out of the hot-spring, thighs locking flush around his waist in a maneuver that already felt so natural between them.
"A promise is a promise," she laughed lightly, her hands twining together behind his neck. "But you did leverage a whole night for us from our poor expedition leader. So… how would you like it if I finish what I offered you this evening? There are a couple more traditional spa treatments I found while reading up on this place. And I'm willing to bet that you'll find them as fascinating as I do."
Under the torrent of stars overhead, emerging to pour their pale, quicksilver light over the forest and the shallow fog of steam and spray that ghosted above the stream, Sofimon caught the soft shape of Valkyon's laughter before he pulled them down again to the water.
FIN
Disclaimers:
- Yes, part of the request included Sofimon cracking one bad pun. I threw in two more on Valkyon's end. It's nice to find a soulmate.
- It's confirmed in the game that Valkyon has nerves of steel and exactly zero shame for walking around naked. (Which may be one reason why he's still keeping that plot armor.) I'd like to imagine he knows how to use both to his advantage, if he really has his back to the wall.
- This story was loosely-inspired by the Greek myth of Hylas and the Naiad(s), a sub-story from the epic of Jason and the Argonauts: in that episode of the voyage, Herakles' favored companion, servant, and man-at-arms Hylas is abducted by an amorous naiad (or a troop of them) while fetching water for his master, and vanishes for good. One Roman version of the myth adds an optimistic coda in which Hylas appears to a grieving Herakles in a dream, and strongly implies that he's quite happy living with the naiads in their realm under the spring. Three guesses why.
- The three protagonists in this story were based off the characters from the above myth (of Hylas), and had a chapter titled after them. Sofimon is of course 'The Naiad'; Valkyon takes the role of hapless Hylas, or 'The Soldier'. Which leaves Kero as the long-suffering Herakles, or 'The Hero' who's stuck on an impossible quest, missing his colleagues, and gets thanked about once every blue moon. I'm sorry, Kero. But you're the real victim in this story.
If you've enjoyed this story (and even if you didn't), don't hesitate to leave a review. My inbox is always open for feedback.